The following is a conversation with Zach Bitter, ultra marathon runner and coach who held multiple

world records in the 100 mile run and other ultra endurance events. He is currently training for

a run across America, which for now is planned for September this year. Like many of the things

Zach has done in the past, this is a big, fascinating challenge. Quick mention of our sponsors,

Ladder, Velcampo, Noom and BetterHelp. Check them out in the description to support this podcast.

As a side note, let me say that Zach has been advising and coaching me on my own

running journey. I want to mention that Zach sent me some running shoes from Ultra,

which I think is a company that sponsors him. When I put those shoes on, I feel like Zach is

watching me and I get that extra motivation to make him proud. And by that, I mean I want to put

a lot of miles on those shoes. Running is something that has always been difficult for me,

but I love it because it is difficult. The hardest part is I'm left alone with my thoughts

for one or two hours. Some thoughts are dark, like thinking about mortality, my own and that of

others. Some are self critical, like personal weaknesses or dreams not realized. Some are simply

human feelings of loneliness, personal and existential. And yet, there are the moments

during a run when all that fades and I'm left empty of negative thoughts and full of appreciation

for the beauty of experience, of nature, life, the whole thing. This is why I return to running,

not to get in shape, but to face myself and to run through it. That's why I'm inspired by people

like Zach and by David Goggins and others like them who seek to find the limits of their body

and mind. This is the Lex Friedman podcast and here is my conversation with Zach Bitter.

Where does your mind go when you're running an ultramarathon? Are there a lot of positive

thoughts, negative thoughts, demons, inspirational things, maybe no thoughts at all?

Yeah, that's the really interesting part of the sport, I think, because you can,

essentially what it is when we're looking at like the 100 mile distance or anything that's

like all day long is you're going to have the full range of the full spectrum of emotions

of mental processes, both kind of positive, negative and in between. So it almost feels like

you've lived multiple, multiple lives or full life maybe is his way to say it in that one time

period. So it's like a, it's almost like a simulation of what you may experience in a

long period of time in a very condensed period of time. And I think that's just a weird mental

process to reflect upon and that's what kind of draws people back to it. But I mean, it's a battle

too, because if you're looking at it from a performance standpoint versus an experience,

you obviously want to minimize the negative mindset stuff. You want to try to keep those

emotions and those thought processes at a low. And I think when you can keep yourself from

letting those thoughts creep in, they, you end up having better races and it's, it can spiral in

either direction. Like I noticed like there's, there's kind of like this scenario that occurs

where in the beginning, like a negative thing creeps in your mind, it's like super easy just

to slap it down and say like, get out of here. You know, I've did the training, I'm fit, I'm

feeling fresh still, you know, everything's going well at this point in time. You get a little

further along in the race and you're starting to feel a bit of the fatigue, maybe a little bit

of self doubt creeps in, you start asking yourself, well, you know, maybe I should have done one more

long run or did I, did I not quite taper long enough? And those things can kind of spiral

into a negative way. And if, if you let it keep going, it keeps going all the way to like,

why am I here? Why am I doing this? This is stupid. All the way to like, there's another

one of these two weeks from now, I'm going to drop out of this one and sign up for that one

instead. And then you just find yourself in the exact same situation. So you kind of have to

go through the process, I think it's why I think the there's kind of a, I wouldn't say it's a rule

of thumb necessarily, but something I think is fairly valuable. If you do a hundred mile

of the first time, make sure you get it done. Even if it means like, you know, death marching is

what they'll call it in the alternate community to end of the race. Just to say like, you got

that full experience, you experienced the highs, the lows, the full thing, the starting, the crossing,

the finish line, that release of emotion when you're done and all that stuff. So that when you

go back to do it again, you have like a template to build off of, and you know, or you just have

some data to pull from about how your mind is going to work as well as your body so that you

can start practicing, well, what do I have to do to kind of keep my mind from spiraling in a negative

direction? Or how do I catch some positive momentum and kind of keep sending it that way and things

like that. And that just I think you just add to that over a career of running them or a series of

running them. And it sharpens. It's kind of like any sport with that where, you know, you always

have this balance between the youthfulness that you may have earlier in your career versus the

wise intelligence that you have maybe near the end of your career. So in terms of wisdom,

is there mechanisms by which you kind of observe the negative thoughts and let them go? So you have

people like the David Goggins is who kind of, he seems to almost like separate his mind into

there's the weak David that he hates. And then there's this strong one. I mean, there's like a

very contentious relationship there. So he basically says like, I refuse to be that person. And he's

almost like angry at that person. He's almost like sometimes literally yelling at that person,

the weak version of themselves. And then there's another more sort of Sam Heresy approach,

which is like, just observe the thought and let it go. Maybe knowing that this two shall pass,

like no matter what, this moment will not last forever and kind of sort of accepting the natural

flow of things and taking one step at a time and allowing whatever the negativity, whatever the

pain you're experiencing, just to pass, even if it means a death march, which one is more effective

for you? Which one, like, would you say generally speaking to the population is more effective?

Yeah, that's a really good question. It's probably unique to the individual. I wouldn't

argue that, you know, David is finding success with his approach. Some may argue it's an extreme

version. You know, Sam has obviously thought about these things and really probably, you know, I see

those guys as kind of two ends of the spectrum in just the way that they kind of come across in

general, where like David's like really actually a kind of high energy and Sam's kind of this calming,

soft presence, and he's just going to slowly methodically lay it all out there. And I think

there's value in both of those. I think most people are probably going to get a benefit from

pulling some from each. I mean, there's times where I need a kick in the ass and then it's like

have the Strong's Act, tell the Weeks Act to get moving. But there's also times where, you know,

it's just like, you know, a subtle voice entering my head about, you know, I don't know if I feel

quite right now, should I maybe pull back on the pace? And I think that little subtle voice

is best approached with a subtle positive voice where it's more like, okay, well, let's think

this through here for a second. You're 40 miles into a 100 mile race, you spent four months

preparing for it. You know from the workouts you did that you're ready for this, there really isn't

any real reason for you to slow down or to fall off your goal or your pace or, you know, reassess

what you're doing. Let's just give this another mile or two. And then we can reassess if we need

to in order to kind of figure out if I'm doing the right things or not. And I think like in that

situation, you definitely probably want to lean more towards the Sam Harris approach with that

because there's really no reason to, it's almost like the same thing you see with like

just training and even nutrition to a degree where like some folks, they just want to be like,

kind of like drilled. They want to be like yell that and said like, get going, get doing this.

And that helps and that motivates and that helps them stay accountable. Other people need some

softer love with it where it's like, you know, this isn't necessarily your fault. You were put

in this environment that kind of created an atmosphere of lethargy and maybe poor nutritional

choices and things like that. And so, but it's correctable. So we need to step away from that

and we need to kind of start heading in the direction that we know is going to bear fruit

down the road. And that person may respond better to that. So I think both those guys have great

value with their approaches. They're just probably polar ends of the spectrum and I think most people

are probably going to benefit like anything, right? You get the polarizing ones and those

are going to work great for the polarizing people, but then most people are going to fit somewhere

in the middle. So they're probably going to be able to kind of pull from both of those if they're

able to sit down and kind of like assess which one's going to work better in which situation.

So the quitting thing that you mentioned, the like the final stage, which actually I get to

much quicker than you seem to, which is like, why am I doing this? I get there with basically

anything I do. It's like, this is probably the stupidest thing I've ever done is the feeling

I get often. And then immediately you have these excuses that are like, there's all these other

better things you should be doing. Or the other alternative of that, like you said,

I'm not prepared enough for this moment. I'll be much more prepared in two weeks for the next

event. So like, why, let's try this again. Let's start over. Let's start over in two weeks.

How do you deal with that quit? Like, so maybe do you still go through that process and by way

of advice for people that are more sort of amateurish like me? How to deal with that quitting

voice? I think a lot of times when the quitting voice kind of comes in, it what it does is it

kind of just it comes in with the added disadvantage, I guess, in this situation of being kind of a

narrow scoped view where you're looking at like, what it's doing to you in the moment or how you're

feeling in the moment versus how are you feeling about the whole process. So one thing that I

started doing in 2019, and I think I don't think it's necessarily, I think, I think, I think this

was a big reason why I had one of my best racing seasons in 2019 that I had had to that date.

It was part of it was I started, I think, putting a little more emphasis on the big picture versus

putting emphasis on like, this is one opportunity or one day of work. And this is one, one emotional

kind of flare up. But how does that actually relate to my general broader picture? So when I

decide to do a race or an event or something like that, it's often four or six months out ahead of

time, you're planning to like kind of do a series of workouts and a flow of things where you're

going through the process of getting fit, getting ready, preparing for the specifics of the day and

all that stuff. And then you get to the race itself or the event itself. And it's very easy to look

at that and think that's an isolation, like I'm going to run 12 hours today, or I'm going to run

100 miles today or whatever it ends up being. And it's a lot easier to quit when you think to

yourself, I'm 40 miles into 100 mile race, you know, that's just a 40 mile run, which sounds kind

of silly to most people. But in perspective, and we're talking about the ultra marathon running

community, you know, it's a lot easier just to say like, well, you know, I'll scrap this 40 miles

and try again. It's a lot harder to say, I'm going to scrap the entire last four months, the entire

reason why I was doing it, the countless hours I spent in there. So I think I just try to reposition

it of like, I'm in a bad place right now, maybe in my head or I'm hitting a low point here. But

I'm 99% of the way towards the goal I set out four months ago when I add in all the work I did

leading up to that. So I think it's important to ask yourself why, because I mean, there are times

when you're doing something and you ask yourself why and you don't have a good reason. And then

maybe it is advantageous to step back and really reflect on that and decide, is this something

I actually want to invest time and energy into? Because, you know, someone like yourself who

is very much into a variety of different things, it can be easy probably to overextend and get,

I mean, I'm a very curious person. So there's like 100 things I would love to do if I wasn't

doing what I'm doing. And I know how to enjoy all of them. So at a certain point, though,

you have to say, okay, which one is going to be the most meaningful for me? And if the answer keeps

coming back to saying, I guess this is still the most meaningful to me out of that 100 things that

I could otherwise be doing, then I know that I'm in it for the right reason. And then I just need

to identify some of those things like, well, why did this one take the top spot out of the 100

things that I could have picked from? And keeping like a list of those in your head so that when

you get to that point where you start saying, why am I doing this? Why am I here? You just have

those kind of ready loaded in your head to say, well, I already took inventory on that before

I started this. And I knew this voice was going to come at some point, whether it's early, middle,

or late. And then you just remind yourself kind of what you were thinking when you had a little

more of a level head. Well, there's something about the thing you mentioned when you mentioned

the death march, it seems extremely valuable to just never quitting. Like in the moment,

if you decide to do something, like never quitting, even if you do go through the process and realize

that it's not, it's not the wisest thing to be doing within the full context of your life.

Like once you decide to do it, it seems like never quitting prevents you from sort of having

that escape clause from other things in your life. So I've quit on a few things in my life.

And I think I still, I deeply regret that because it opened that door. It's almost like a muscle.

I don't know. So I think I'm, I don't know, maybe everyone is, but I think I'm kind of a quitter.

You know what I mean? Like, I'm really good at coming up with reasons to quit. My mind is really

good at that. And I, it feels like I have to come up with like really work hard to make sure

that there's no quit that never allow myself to quit no matter how stupid the thing I'm doing is.

I don't know if any of that makes sense, but it just, maybe to rephrase this whole thing.

Do you think it's good to live life by the ethos of never quit?

Yeah, that's a really interesting thing. And I think it actually resonates with a lot of

ultra marathon runners because there seems to be a trend when you have someone who's

been in the sport for a long time where there's a point where they start the sport, right?

And they're like, super excited about everything. Everything's new. It's very easy not to quit

because you're like, Oh, this is the first time I've ever run a 50 case, the first time I've

ever run a 50 miles, the first time I've ever run a 100 case, the first time I've ever run 100

case, the first time I've ever run a 100 miles and so on and so forth. And when you're doing

that for the first time, I think there's a heightened motivation to not quit because you

don't want your first attempt to be a failure. And then you get a little further along and you

start reflecting on the landscape and all the opportunities that are out there and you find

yourself quitting on an event. And there does seem to be a trend where once you do that once,

now all of a sudden, like you described perfectly, that quit pops up in your head maybe a little

sooner the next time or maybe a little bit before. And I've certainly had these experiences in my

career as well. And what happens, I think, if you stick with it, again, I think it is important

to assess whether you really want to be doing what you're doing. But if you start recognizing

that about yourself in a certain activity where it's like, I think I might be pulling the plug

early on some of this stuff. I think you just need to kind of get into a position where you just,

at that point, you need to make a decision, do I want to keep doing this? If the answer is yes,

you hold yourself accountable to not quitting. And eventually what will happen is you'll find

yourself in a position where I'll use ultramarathon, for example, where you're just clicking on all

cylinders for that day. And you still get those scenarios where doubt creeps in your mind, you

have these low points. But for whatever reason, when those low points come, you're able to push

through them better than you would have in the past. And then you push through maybe two or three

more than you did after you had quit the time before. Then it's accountability time, right?

Because then you have to look back at that and say, well, why did this time was I able to be

mentally more strong and kind of push through those extra opportunities to quit when I wasn't

before? And it can be easy to look back and say and live kind of retroactively in the sense where

you're like regretting, well, why did I drop out of those races? Why did I do this wrong there?

And I just think that's where you have to kind of catch yourself and say, no, those things happen

to me in order to put me in a position where I decided, well, this time I'm not going to quit,

no matter what, minus my leg falling off, I'm not going to quit. And then you put yourself in position

to have that day where you push through more times than you ever have before and you just

redefine what you're capable of. And then once I think you do that, you start looking at those

earlier lessons as lessons. Were they failures on paper at the time? Probably. But can you pull

things from them to learn as to like, well, where is your actual threshold? Where is the limit

actually for you? And then kind of start redefining that stuff. So I think the never quit

mentality can be good in certain situations, but I don't think it's necessarily like a

holistic thing where you need to be in something where it's never quit, always do more, because

then you end up in a situation where you find this like margin of diminishing returns, especially

when it comes to training and workouts and things like that, where there are times where,

often there are times where you want to actually quit a little bit before you would have to,

because the stress that was required to elicit a growth response has already occurred. And

then just to do more is just going to require more recovery time to get back and do it again.

Yeah, this is the tricky trade off. Living by the never quit mentality, you're not going to achieve

optimal performance. In your head, you might. It seems like when you look at the full arc of human

history, the people who do great things are more leaning towards the never quit. Like, I feel like

at any one moment, you're more in danger of quitting than you are of being suboptimal.

So like, in terms of advice, it just feels like never quitting is always the right advice,

unless you deeply know the person. Maybe this is like wrestling mentality. I've seen too many,

and because I'm annoyed with the current culture telling me to relax and have a

work life balance and all those kinds of things, which all have a deep, deep truth to them.

But the reality is like, there's not enough people that walk out to me and like slap me and say,

get your shit together. Like, don't quit. Work harder. I think we need to hear that more.

And I remember that from the wrestling rooms, like that when you're pushed that way, when you're

forced to the very limit and you don't quit, that makes better humans.

I think people need to get that in their life. I think they need to have situations where

that becomes kind of the reality for them so they can see that avenue, experience that avenue,

where I think it's maybe to the extreme as if it becomes like your entire life philosophy,

where like every little thing you do is never quit.

But life is short, Zach. Like why? I mean, this is the problem I have. This is probably the

programming thing too, is over optimization is dangerous. It's like every once in a while,

I mean, you're, you do this kind of stuff. You're not, for example, with a hundred mile run,

I mean, you could just be doing that for the rest of your life and do like the most optimal

hundred mile run ever. But you keep taking on like new challenges. And there's a lot more chaos

than that. And there it feels like the muscle of never quit will be much more important than

the optimality of your training. Yeah. So there's probably a couple sides to me

with that kind of a thing where for one, I think when we talked about the why. So like,

I think the why can kind of shift a bit and it probably will if you do something long enough

or evolve, maybe is a better way to put it. And for me, like one of my big drives and one of my

big passions within ultra running is to first of all find an event that I really, really love to

train for and participate in. So for me, I feel like I've kind of identified that to a degree.

And that's kind of runnable hundred milers. So once I found that it became more of a driver for

me to see like, well, how fast can I run a hundred miles in a very controlled environment. So let's

eliminate weather, let's eliminate, you know, elevation, let's eliminate like having to wait

extra long to get crew or support and that sort of thing. And that's how you find yourself on a

400 meter track running a hundred miles. But for me, like that the important part of that is that

I can control the environment enough where if I come back year after year, I can retest myself

and have a decent ability to kind of say I improved or I regressed or I stayed stagnant. And I think

that's a big driver for me. But one thing I've recognized within that is if you just keep doing

that, like if I could probably pick three flat runnable hundred milers a year and optimally

prepare, race, recover and repeat without like burning myself out. But one thing I think I learned

also in 2019 was that sometimes you kind of need to step away from some of these really, really kind

of important markers in your like your performance or in whatever you're trying to do and take a

step away from it and try to do something a little different in order to kind of hit the reset button

on just like what I would call just like your mental energy to be able to continue to do it

at a high level. So almost like happiness. Exactly. Well, and here's the example. Like,

I mean, I love running in trails too. Most people would consider me a flat road track

runner, runnable ultra runner. But I like to do trailer runs too. So and at the end of 2018,

I recognized that I had been kind of pushing the gas pedal on trying to run fast hundred

milers for quite a while without really a break in that where it was like, okay, I did one. Now

I'm going to, you know, take a brief off season, but then I'm going to ultimately build up in peak

for another one. I might introduce some fun trail races in the context, but they're going to be B

races are going to be training races, time on feet type of stuff that are going to kind of mimic

like a long run essentially. And but the main focus they always in the back of my mind was like

getting on the track and seeing how much faster I can run 100 miles. And that just kind of that

energy that it takes to continually think by that, that I think the motivation to keep that

stoke high enough to really meet your full potential fades if you don't step away from

it for a little bit. So I took essentially half a year away from runnable stuff and just decided

I'm going to prepare for the San Diego 100 mile, which is like a much more elevation

in a technical trail type of an event. Is that a trail run or no? Yeah. It's a trail 100

miler actually just kind of just outside of San Diego. And yeah, it goes through it goes over

part of the Pacific crash trail and stuff. So it's very different than running on a runnable

surface. So to give you some context, like I ran was it I think just under 17 hours for that race,

whereas on a flat surface, I can run 11 hours and 19 minutes. So just the environment alone

added an extra, you know, five plus hours to the day. So it's just a different experience,

different skill set. And what it did is it allowed me to kind of step away from kind of focusing on

like splits on a track, running flat stuff, like preparing for things specifically for a flat

environment and start training for something that's more climbing and descending, more technical

running skill sets and things like that. And the cool part about it was, first of all, you know,

when you step away from something and enter something a lot different, I mean, it's still

running. There's still a huge advantage I had from the running I had done in the past that was

going to put me in a good position to be successful. But there was a much higher or much

bigger range of potential improvement for me. So through the like, you know, four plus months

I spent preparing for that race, you know, I noticed, oh, wow, I'm getting faster on this climb,

or I'm getting better at descending this technical trail. It was one of the most fun races I've run

actually. So it was kind of a cool experience. I ended up taking the lead at like 93 miles.

So you were racing, racing, like you were trying to get first. So still a race.

Yeah. So what was the enjoyable aspect of it?

I don't think I recognized it so much while I was doing it, actually, it surfaced afterwards.

I mean, the enjoyment of the race itself is like when you find yourself in a position where you're

sitting in basically second place all day long, and then you take the lead at 90, I think it was

like 91 or 92 miles. It's like, yeah, that's kind of a cool way to race.

But afterwards, I recognized a few things just about kind of pacing and, you know,

how to maybe pace the first half of 100 miler versus the second half. I also recognized shortly

thereafter, once I finished, recovered and decided my next event was going to be a flat

runnable race that, wow, I really was way more excited to do the workouts that I needed to do

to get ready to run a fast flat 100 miler. And I don't think that would have been the case had

I just tried to do another flat, fast 100 miler earlier or during that year and end up in a situation

where I maybe had normalized a suboptimal outlook on something that I had just done so many times

already. And I recognized that just every workout I did, I was like, I did this workout a year ago

and it was not nearly this much fun. And then the interesting thing about these track hundreds too

is like, you find yourself doing like your peaking phase where you're running your long runs, which

for me are usually like, you know, around 30 miles or so, and I'll do them back to back days.

And, you know, I try to replicate the environment I'm going to race on. So I'm

finding myself on a 400 meter track. And it's like, when I started doing that again, I just felt

like I was super motivated to go out there Saturday and Sunday and do those back to back

long runs and see the progress and then head on again the next week and do it again. So

I had some of my more enjoyable long runs, which are going to be the most specific

to race day environment that I had in quite some time. And I think that was really beneficial

and kind of putting me in a right spot to be able to push through barriers on race day

and put me in a position where quitting was going to be much less of a likelihood,

given the enjoyment I had in the months leading into the race itself.

Yeah, even the thought of quitting. Yeah. So you mentioned the track,

you've also ran 100 miles in the treadmill and the trail 100 mile. Broadly, if we zoom out,

what does it take to run 100 miles? For most of the world, that seems like a crazy distance to run.

So maybe it's interesting to ask not only is just setting the world record, but

purely running, what does it take to run that far?

Yeah, I mean, I think people probably overestimate what it takes in terms of just getting it done.

I think this is consistent in just running in general. I think the marathon was always a big

one with that where people thought like, well, you have to do this training or you just literally

won't physically be able to complete a marathon. And then we got into an era of kind of like

running as more of an enjoyment thing versus a performance thing. And then you'd have people

running granted much slower. I think if you look at the Boston marathon, average finishing times,

it goes from like, or maybe it wasn't the Boston marathon, I might have just been marathons in

general went from like three hours to five hours or something like that. So it's like,

people I think got past the fact that you can only do it if you're optimally prepared to, well,

I can do it and maybe not meet my full potential if I'm going to like not do much training,

which I wouldn't necessarily advise. But I mean, I've talked to people who basically run 100 miles,

sometimes almost off the couch. And it's like, it's, to me, what that says is just the human

body is incredible and what it can tolerate above and beyond what it's been exposed to,

if it has to, or if it feels like it has to.

So that's the basic sort of getting from point A from the start to the finish. It's the human

body and the human mind is capable of doing it without much preparation. But then you start to

increase the goal of performance and you try to get to actually a good like the most out of your

body that you can. How does that start to change then? Going from fun to performance?

Yeah, I think once you start putting marks or goals on outside of just finishing,

that's where it starts getting interesting because now you can maybe go on with multiple goals where

like if one falls off due to something that you didn't expect, then you have another one to target.

But you can always build those up and try to think like, well, I want to run faster than last

time or I want to break a course record or an age group record or something like that.

And that I think is just going to be a little bit of a different mindset because now you're

looking at every little thing from what do I need to do to prepare as well as what do I need to do

to be efficient on the day itself? So like transitioning aid stations and things like that or

do I want to pacer or not? Or does this race allow someone to like hand me a bottle at a

certain spot or do I have to be in specific areas to get that type of stuff? And what it ends up

doing is it ends up bringing a lot more variables to the table. And I think it's interesting because

there's always going to be more variables on the day than you are able to account for. So at a

certain degree, you have to kind of find yourself in a position where I'm going to make sure I take

care of the big ones or the ones that are like, obviously, I need to be ready for like my fueling

strategy, my hydration strategy, my pacing strategy, what workouts are going to put me in a position

to physiologically have this process go as well as possible. How am I going to like, you know,

hold myself accountable in aid station transition? So I'm not like having a ton of non moving time

versus moving time and things like that. So there's these like, big variables that you're aware of

and you're trying to optimize over the space of variables. So you get to start to play with that

when you're looking for performance. It's almost like moving from checkers to chess, right? You

have like, or maybe even like connect four or something like that, where it goes from just

kind of like, well, one foot in front of the other. And when I get to the next aid station,

I'll just eat whatever looks good, drink whatever, you know, quenches my thirst and then move on to

the next one to like, well, which one of these food products is actually going to make me move

a little faster to the next aid station or, you know, which one of these pacing strategies is

going to get me to the finish line faster than the other one and that sort of stuff. So it gets

more complicated, more interesting. And in my opinion, anyway, also there, I mean, but there's

a breaking point with that too, because like I said, there's an endless number of variables you

could account for. And as a distance gets longer, that list gets longer too. So you find yourself

in this position where, where you have to at some point say, okay, I've accounted for everything I

can reasonably account for. Now I need to be in a mental space where when something happens that

I wasn't able to account for, I'm able to respond to it with the right decision and keep going and

not dwell on it. Because that's another thing. I mean, you're running slow enough when you're

doing 100 miles, where if you make a mistake, you can sit there and just fixate on that mistake

and say, why did I do that? That cost me 10 minutes, blah, blah, blah, blah. When in reality,

what you need to do is that happened. Everyone else out here is going to have a situation like

that at some point. Mine happened now. I need to figure out how I can move forward at the fastest

sustainable pace and not think about what happened back there. And that's where I think it gets

really interesting. What would you say it takes to set a world record in the 100 mile?

First of all, I think you probably have to focus on that specific event.

I mean, there's the interesting about ultra running where it maybe deviates a bit from just

other endurance sports is there's such a wide range. I mean, we talked about a little bit when

I talked with the San Diego 100 versus kind of the flat, runnable stuff. So can you maybe paint

a picture of what are, there's a huge range of different kinds of ultra marathon events.

What are like the big ones in your mind? So marathon, we know the distance for a marathon.

There's the 50k. What are different kinds? There's a 100 mile that in your mind,

like kind of these islands where people gather off.

Yeah. So there's a few that really stand out. I would say the three biggest ultra marathons

right now, even from a historic, maybe not necessarily a historical standpoint, but

in modern day ultra running is going to be the Western States 100. That's the biggest,

most competitive 100 miler. It's on the trail side of things in the United States. Then there's

Ultra Trail Mountain Blanc, which is probably the most competitive 100 miler on the planet right

now. In previous years, it's been debatable as whether Western States or Ultra Trail Mountain

Blanc is more competitive. I think in the most recent few years, you're just seeing a lot more

of the bulk of international talent on the trail side of the sport heading over that way.

And then you have the road running side of things where the comrades marathon,

which is technically 56 miles, but they call it the comrades marathon,

is going to generally be the most competitive ultra marathon. The weird thing is the distance

thing, right? Because most people in the think of endurance sports, they're thinking about

precise distances like five kilometers, 10 kilometers and all that stuff. And then you get

into the ultra running world and it's like, sometimes it's the event. So like the Western

States itself is much more important than the distance. Right. Yeah. So the Western States 100

is actually 100.2 miles, which isn't that big of a deviation when you think about it, especially

when you figure like tangents are going to probably account for more than 0.2 miles on a

100 mile race. But the ultra trail mountain Blanc, you know, that's listed as a 100 miler,

but it's actually I think like 104, 105 miles. So, you know, it's more, there's different cultures

too. So the United States is definitely more motivated, I think, to try to get as close to the

exact distance. You're going to hear maybe a little more grumbling if someone says,

I signed up for this 100 miler and it turned out to be 103 miles versus like over in Europe,

they don't really care too much about the distance. They're more interested in like a specific route

or a loop. It's consistency important in terms of the exact length of the of the route. So like

you can compare performances from previous years, or are they a little bit more flexible?

Like they redefine the trail from year to year. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely hard to compare.

I mean, there's events that take, for example, I would say the best ultra marathoner in the

world today on the men's side is Jim Wolmsley. The reason I think Jim Wolmsley is the best is

because he is the most versatile and not only the most versatile, but he's arguably the best at

almost everything up to 100 miles. So there's a race called the Angeles Crest 100 miler.

They, the trail has drastically changed from when they originally had that event. And it's a different

time a year. So it's much warmer on that course. And Jim's not the kind of guy who would sit back

and say like, I can't chase that record. But I think Angela Crest, when he looks at the segments

and the pacing for that one, he's like, that one is maybe not even the same event anymore.

So you have that, you have some that are a little more controlled and a little more kind of like

preserved, I guess you would say, but I think it gets really rare on the trail side. I mean,

comrades is going to be very comparable from one year to the next, because that's a road race.

And that's where you get, you maybe get like the split in the sport from people who really want

that kind of like, I want to compare myself to someone who ran this course in 1970 versus like

someone who just says, I want to be competitive today. And, you know, maybe the weather is going

to be 30 degrees different from one year to the next on this course. But if I beat everyone on

this day, then I'm the champion of that big name race, like ultra trail Mont Blanc or Western States

100. And my legacy will be cemented because I won that big race. And it doesn't matter when or how

the course was or what the time even was to some degree. When you were optimizing for trying to

set the world record in the 100 miler, were you doing like analysis of maybe like what were the

variables you were looking at? Is it more in the realm of the actual race day, the track, what it

looks like versus like the variables of the training leading up to the, to the race? I mean,

it evolved a bit. Like I think the, as I learned more about just like what is required to kind of

really do that stuff. So there's some variables you can control for, you know, I try to control

for as many as I can. The big one that kind of stands out that you can't necessarily control for

is it's pretty rare where you get an event where they're just doing 100 miles on a track. It's

usually like, like an event of like a series of different events where they might be like,

some people out there doing 50k, some people out there doing 24, someday, like the event I did

that there's six day folks out there, they're trying to see how far they can get in six days.

So you have like this much wider range of pacing just due to like the distance. So, you know,

track protocol is always like you pass on the outside. So if you're running one of the faster

paces of the day, which when you go on up to six days, you're going to, and you're doing 100 miles,

you're probably going to be running faster than most people out there. Then, you know,

you just end up running more because you end up running in lane two around the turns and sometimes

lane three around the turn. So it's down to those little details that have a big impact. Yeah. So

I had to build that into my pacing strategy. I also have to build into the pacing strategy,

like relative non moving time. You know, I did a race just recently as the US track and field

100 mile road championships and I did not stop once other than like, I guess I technically stopped

to like in the aid station for like few seconds to like grab bottles and get myself wet because

it was like 94 degrees that day. But I didn't like stop at all during that race from like what I would

say is like a long period of time where we're getting up to like a minute, but that's pretty rare

even on the track. Like when I ran 11 hours and 19 minutes, I think I stopped three times for maybe

a total of like, I believe I have to look back for sure, but I think it was like three to four

minutes or something like that. So you got to, you got to figure that into your pacing strategy,

especially if you're chasing a specific time, because you know, if I'm pacing for, you know,

at the time, the world record was 1128. So if I'm pacing for say 1127 30 or something like that,

and I don't account for that three minutes of stoppage, then I might run the exact pace I had

planned on, but then I'm a minute off of the world record. So 1128, we're talking about 11 hours,

we're talking about 100 miles. Can you mention what the world record was? What kind of world

record you set? Can you tell your own story here of what you were able to accomplish?

That world record that I broke, actually, just recently got rebroke by a guy over in Lithuania,

Alex Sorkin, phenomenal race. I mean, he's won the 24 All World Championships. He's won the

Spartathlon, which is another big historic ultramarathon. It's 153 miles, so it's getting

a little more lengthy than some of the stuff that I've traditionally done. He ran 1114,

I believe it was 56 or 57. So his pace was 645 per mile. Mine was 647 and a half in terms of

just like the pacing strategy. It's just really cool because for me, the motivation with chasing

the world record was, it was multifaceted. I think there was, as I kind of moved through,

because I mean, it took me almost six years from the day I decided I want to chase that time

to the day I actually did it. And through that five to six years, I think I merged from just like

my number one goal was to try to break the world record to my number one goal is how fast can I

run this thing? And then ultimately, what needs to be done for a human to break 11 hours in 100

miles? Because I think that's going to happen soon. I think it's going to happen in the next few years.

What pace would that be? Sub 11 would be, I think it's like 635 right about per mile.

You're moving quick, but not so quick that like your void of being able to think about

everything as it's happening. So what's the pace in terms of if you look for each of the

one mile segments for the 100 miles? Is it pretty steady? Like in order to break 11 hours,

would it be pretty steady 635? Does it go up and down? Do you speed up at the very end?

Like what's the pacing? If you were to, maybe how much variability is there in the pacing

for an optimal performance here? Yeah. So if you're talking about someone, let's say that

there's someone, well, let's just take me for example, let's say that we could just like,

we had this infinite knowledge and we knew for a fact, a perfect performance for me would produce

a 1059, but I'm not going a second faster. And I need to do everything right in order to run a 1059.

I would definitely want to either have a slight negative or a slight positive split.

So when, and I think there's, I think there's a, there's a range in there where like,

being a little bit faster, the first half and the second half isn't going to necessarily

change your outcome or being a little bit slower, the first half and a little bit faster,

the second half isn't going to drastically change your outcome. So that's what you're referring

to the split is you're looking at the first 50 miles and the second 50 miles. And you can break

it down as, as tiny as you want. Like I think when you take out the outlier laps where I stopped to

use the bathroom, which would have been that like three to four minute non moving time that I talked

about before, my splits were really tight. I had a couple that were, it was weird because that,

that track that I did that on was actually like 400 and some weird number like 400 and like 38

meters or something like that. So I actually like ran like my numbers based on that. So they're,

they're normally I'm dealing with 400 meters. And then it's a little more like clean as to

like what my lap splits are going to range from one event to the next. So we're talking about

running 100 miles on a track. Yeah. And so then you can be really scientific about getting the,

the, the, the, the pacing right. And you're, you're running on the inside lane or is there

some kind of tricks to this? Like, are you alternating directions? Yeah, they'll switch

directions at most events every four hours. So you'll do four hours one way and then they usually

put a cone out. And once it hits like, like, let's say it hits four hours, you finish the lap

you're on and then you do a loop around and then you start the next, your next lap. Would you say

you take the exact same number of steps? Like when you're really in the groove, when you're taking

the pacing, are we talking about that level of precision or is it a little bit more feel?

You mean like footstrike frequency? Yeah. Like frequency then over the distance to the lap,

would you say it's so precise that you're like, you get in this groove where it's like perfect?

Yeah. Gosh, you're making me wish I would have strapped more like a foot pod to my,

but like, yeah. So I think like my guess is it's pretty precise. Like it's,

Is there a video of this? Sorry, I keep interrupting. Is there a video of this? Cause I,

I've actually, this is now three years ago, build a computer vision algorithm that counts footstrikes.

Oh really? Yeah, for fun. Yeah. I was trying to understand, we'll talk about that. We have the

same definition of fun when I've got my, find myself on a track for all day and you find yourself

counting footstrikes. I was trying to understand if, if there's how much variability there's in

extreme like elite performers within a particular race, but also across races. It was just interesting

to me from a robotics perspective, if like how much variability there is in the human body

in the way they use legs to move quickly. I think my guess would be that at the individual level,

it's going to be pretty precise, assuming the pacing is consistent. So you get, so

my pacing on that day, I ran two minutes faster, the second 50 miles and I did the first 50 miles.

So my splits were very even most of the day. I actually ran so my fastest miles at the end.

So there's going to be probably a slight variance from my fastest miles to my slowest

mile in like your cadence or your foot strike, but probably not by a huge margin, but you might

have a pretty big variance from one person to the next. So you get someone whose gait is just a

little bit different. So like for me, I supinate, which means I kind of come down on the outside of

my foot and I'm kind of more of a mid four foot striker. So that's going to kind of impact my cadence

to a degree, whereas you might have someone who is kind of more mid to rear their foot or heel

striker and they might pronate where their foot kind of rolls in. So that person may have a little

bit of a different cadence as well. So you get someone, and I think you see this in elite

marathoning too, which is going to probably just be a much larger data pool, much, much more

probably precise from just like a number of opportunities to study this. And I think even

their ranges from one person to the next can be, I wouldn't say drastic, but to the degree of like

10 to maybe even 20 steps per minute or something like that from one person to the next.

But most people, the faster they go, the higher their cadence is going to be,

the slower they go, the lower their cadence is going to be. But there's going to be probably a

range of optimal lowness and I don't know, probably optimal highness too than that.

If you can just linger on the 11 hours, the person, first of all, would you like to be the person that

breaks 11 hours? And second of all, the person that does break 11 hours, like what would it take?

And third question, is it even possible in your engine?

Yeah, I mean, I would definitely, I would be lying to you if I said I didn't want to be the first

person to break 11 hours and 100 miles. I think that'll be, would be a cool like barrier to be

the one to usher that in. But with that said, I think I'm much more motivated in seeing it done

from the sense that like, I think when we're talking about records, it's something that

is inevitable that it's going to get broken. So I mean, we were talking about happiness before

this, right? So I've contemplated this in the past, where I was thinking to myself like,

if my motivation is to break a world record or any record for that matter, course record,

and have that be my defining reason or my defining motivator, I probably need to do

an assessment of what I'm kind of where my mind is at and where my focus is at.

And just reflect on how I'm behaving in life, because it's going to get broken, right? I mean,

I could run 1050 tomorrow. And in 10 years, chances are that's no longer going to be my

world record anymore. Someone's going to run faster than that. So if you're living to hold

on to a record versus living to try to move the sport forward, which anytime you break a world

record, you're moving the sport forward, then you have to look at that as like that was my

contribution. And whether I contribute again or not is kind of besides the point. What you want

is that your performance, your contribution brings new people into the sport who are excited,

motivated, and they can make their contribution. And then we can ultimately see, well, how fast

can someone run a controlled environment 100 miler? And that's what I really want to see,

because I think I've gotten so much enjoyment from the sport. I mean, I've gotten so much

enjoyment from the sport, I mean, I'll turn it into a career. And I think there's other people

who can do the same thing, and it's not necessarily going to come at the expense of my career,

but it's going to bring more attention to the sport. It's going to bring more interest in the

sport. It's going to open the sport up to people who maybe otherwise would have never thought about

it, seen it, considered it. And to me, I think that's like a much more rewarding goal than saying,

I want to break this record and I want to hold it for decades or I want to die with this record.

So I never have to see someone go faster than me. Well, that's the progress of human civilization

was down on the shoulders of giants and we keep creating cool stuff. Well, and it's the other

thing is just like, if you're honest with yourself too, it's, I mean, we're seeing this right now

in the running world where, you know, new innovations come in, new technologies come in,

new nutritional approaches come in. And then we see like the new crop of folks have advantages

that the old crop didn't have. And it can be easy to look back on that and say, like, hey, well,

you know, if I would have had that product or if I would have done that, I would have run this.

But then you're getting into that negative, you know, thought process again, which I

generally try to stay out of. I think that came in, if I had fire, I would have done

way better with this. Look at these idiots up there with their cars. If I would have had a car

back then, I would have been ruled the world. Let me just zoom up briefly and ask you about kind of

beauty and love. What's the most beautiful thing about running to you? Why do you love it?

I think there's kind of a couple of directions to look at it through or lenses look at it through.

There's like the in the moment, right? There's always going to be that run where

you're clicking along and things just feel great. You get some endorphins and you get the, you know,

the, the quote unquote, runner's high and that sort of stuff. And that's like just like this

great feeling that you can kind of tap into on the like the real like, like in the moment type of

level. You know, you've my wife and I talk about this because she's a competitive ultra runner as

well. And you will have a day where, you know, we'll take a forced day off or something like that.

And it's necessary, right? It's going to allow the enjoyment to continue. But you get into this

like routine of I wake up in the morning, I do this run and that kind of gets my day started.

That gets my, my energy's up. I get that runner's high afterwards. You remove that from the equation

for a rest day. And you just sort of like, Oh, man, I don't feel like I never got started today.

Like, you know, it's just this weird thing. It's almost, I think it's, it's funny because

non runners don't always like necessarily recognize it because for them, it's the complete opposite.

They're like, if I can get away from not having to run today, that's going to be a good day versus

Yeah. But it's one of those things that I think gets more addictive the more you do it. So

that's purely from the running perspective. There's this joy of the runners high of the post

after the run, you feel like you can take on the world, that kind of thing. Yes. And I think that's

one of the drivers from just a quality of life standpoint, just a, you know, and in the moment,

immediate gratification standpoint, but then there's like, I think the bigger picture stuff

or the longer term stuff. And for me, that enjoyment is like, just the process, like of,

okay, I'm starting at this fitness level. And I'm going to do these workouts. And by doing these

workouts, I'm going to see incremental progress from them. And then that's another kind of like,

kind of short term gratification that's maybe a little longer than the day to day, but

still like shorter than like a career or a, or a buildup for a particular race,

where you're saying, you're seeing yourself like, okay, maybe I'm focusing on short intervals

right now. And on week one, I covered this much distance in three minutes, but by week four,

I'm covering this much distance. And you can just see that progress is almost like in elementary

school, when you get the gold star for reading a book, it's like, did that gold start really mean

anything? I don't know, but I felt great when they gave it to me. Yeah. Something about just

finding improvement. And people love to see improvement, I think. So that's where I think

you can also get some value. And it was saying like, I started here and I got there. And then

I think there's also just like, I would call this maybe more the cherry on top, which is like,

where you express your work, which is the race itself, where that's going to be kind of the

thing that kind of like, shows up on the end result and where it kind of identifies whether

you did things right or wrong. Yeah. So there's a sense which in which training is a kind of

a preparation towards race day and race day being the thing where you get to be the artist,

you get to create this, this piece of art and they might suck and might be beautiful. I mean,

I see in the grappling world, I see competition in that same way, when I feel the best about it,

which is like, sounds pretentious to say, but like, I'm trying to be the best version of myself in

this particular day of competition and to do something that I'll be proud of in an artist way,

not in a kind of, some kind of numerical way, but like as a holistic sense, like do something cool,

like in grappling, that means for me, that means like not stalling, like taking big risks and

trying to dominate another person in the context of grappling and do it, like push myself to

limit both cardio wise and technique wise and just play beautifully. I mean, you see this in

kind of chess, there's systematic chess players and there's people that allow themselves to have

those moments of genius, where they take the big risk that eventually pays off or doesn't.

And that to me is art. I mean, there's art within running, there's art within chess,

there's art within grappling and you got a chance, like all the training is more like science and

then it feels like the competition day's art. Yeah, I think that that's a really cool way to look at

and I think it's when you really open up the perspective of that too, it's like even obviously,

you know, having a great day, like winning the tournament or, you know, getting further than

you were expected to or beating someone who you've never beaten before or something like that,

or in the running perspective, like achieving that goal time, that sort of stuff. Obviously,

those are kind of like the ones you, when you're honest with yourself, you really want and you're

going to probably get the most satisfaction out of. But even when they don't go wrong, like maybe

like with your grappling tournament analogy, the, you know, maybe the guy you're grappling against

does a move on you and you're like, I was not prepared for that move. So now the enjoyment

becomes, okay, back to the drawing board. Now I need to find out what do I do when that happens

to me next time. And that's where the, I think the why comes in again. Same thing with running,

like maybe I make a mistake and, you know, like eat something I didn't really want to eat or thought

was going to work, but didn't work. And it costs me more time than I gained by having it or something

like that. And then I go back to the drawing board and say, okay, well, I can't do that,

that didn't work. Or if I'm going to do that, I need to be more prepared to be able to do it.

And I love that part of the sport. Just the rearranging of things and adjusting and tinkering.

There's some sense in which the mistakes and like the flaws give us meaning. Because like, if, if

everything, if you weren't able to find mistakes and something you've done, it feels like the life

would be void of meaning. It's a lost opportunity too. Like if, I mean, like when I look at even

my 100 mile race of 1119, I can find spots in there where I was like, oh, you know what, I could

clean that up a little bit. Maybe if I do this differently. And I mean, that's going to get me,

you know, a little bit faster. If I sat back and said, hey, well, things went great that day.

Cool. Let's see if we can replicate it. Then, you know, I probably run 1119 again.

So can we talk about training a little bit? Yeah. What does your training look like year

round, day to day, hour to hour, like optimal, maybe, maybe you want to pick a race in the context

to which you want to discuss that. But, and also people should follow you on Instagram. You have

a lot of kind of interesting like little glances into your training process, into your training

thinking, which is quite fascinating. But if you look at an optimal training process, what does

that look like? Yeah. So I think the, if we were looking at it from like a philosophical level

or like an approach level, I think there's some things that carry over from regardless of the

distance. So I think working on your weaknesses and things that are least specific to what you're

going to do on race day, but are still going to be important things in terms of improving your

ability to perform on race day or maximizing your potential with the things that are specific,

you do first. I say that, but there's a caveat with endurance sport. I think maybe even more

specifically with things like our ultra marathons or 100 milers where you want a really strong

aerobic foundation or like a base before you really start, I think, structuring things towards a

specific one. So for me, I think like a target for me is oftentimes like, you know, getting really

fit at like what my pace would be at like my aerobic threshold or what a lot of people maybe

call like a maximum aerobic function. I mean, the running world is kind of weird where we have

like these terminologies where there's sometimes multiple words that essentially mean the same

thing, but one is from like a just an actual physiological reaction and one is just like

a feeling and stuff like that. So you mentioned time versus time in optimal physiological state.

Like how important is it just to get like running done versus like running in a particular pace?

That would depend on the event, I would say to a degree. And there's

contradicting ideas about like kind of how to structure it. I think a lot of times like

you do want to like time on feet in most cases is just going to be like I'm running easy,

whatever feels easy that day. And that can be different from one day to the next. Like I might

feel great. And you know, that produces a much faster pace than if I, you know, feel really

miserable or something like that. So that's why I think a lot of times running, well, they'll do

the whole perceived perceived effort or perceived exertion. And there you're looking at kind of

understanding the response your body has to a certain effort level, and you're supposed to

target a certain effort level in order to like get a certain response. So to maybe simplify

that a little bit or make it a little clearer, like, I think I focus on essentially like short

intervals. I focus on longer intervals or tempo runs. I focus on like race, pace, intensity,

which is a lot of times what I'll build my long run around. But I'll also like those are kind of

like the small pieces to the puzzle. Those are the options you're working with.

Yeah, but I'm going to always try to work with those options on top of a massive

aerobic base, which is going to probably be like 80% of the work.

So how do you build that massive aerobic base? What are we talking about? Just distance?

Distance and essentially, so I like to call it micro stressing, because you're going to

always start at a different spot, depending on where your fitness level is at and depending

on where you're at as an individual, I'm going to be targeting my aerobic threshold. I'm going to

get right up to it, but not necessarily cross over it. It's, you know, it's, it's been popularized as

maximum aerobic function as kind of a training philosophy. That philosophy in itself, I think

maybe is a little more like holistic where they're saying, do this basically all the time.

And by doing so, you're going to like, you're going to raise your aerobic potential by so much

that, you know, you can kind of like race yourself in a shape at that point. And this would be maybe

more specific for like shorter distance or endurance runs where you're not going to race

yourself in the shape of 100 milers. But for five days, you might, you might do like a huge

base building phase where you're going up to that maximum aerobic function or that aerobic

threshold and you're watching your pace come down at that. So the rule there is basically like,

if you're seeing improvement, that's the sign you're looking for, or which would just be your

pace dropping at that heart rate or at that intensity. And if you're seeing that continually

go down, you're heading in the right direction. If you start seeing it go the opposite way,

you're, you're probably overreaching where you're trying to do too much of it. So that's kind of

dictates how much the dose, I guess you'd say. When we talk about maximum aerobic function,

we're talking about heart rate as the ultimate, as the really important metric here. So maintaining

a particular heart rate during the run. Is that the measure that like, how do you know you're in

the right place? Yeah, yeah. And then that's where it gets a little tricky because like,

unless you go into a lab and get your aerobic threshold tested, it's really hard to have like

an exact number on it. You know, Dr. Phil Maffetone with the maximum function process,

he'll say 180 minus your age is going to give you your. Yeah, that's the math 180 formula that I

thought was fascinating for it's like, uh, in the same way equals E equals MC squared is fascinating

that there could be a formula that captures like optimal running. Yeah. So that for people who don't

know, that's 180 minus your age. If you train at that heart rate, if you run at that heart rate,

you're going to progress a lot. And here's the advantage of that. I think like with any of

these things, you want to look at it through where are the advantages here and I need to account for

those and then where are the potential disadvantages and then decide for me as an individual,

do these advantages outweigh the disadvantages and what's the alternative approach and is that

going to produce more advantages or less. So with, with maximum function, uh, here's some

advantages. Like it is low enough intensity where you can train pretty consistently at a fairly high

volume with a very low injury risk with a very low like things that are going to maybe lower your

quality life, like muscle damage and things like that. Um, it's a more efficient way in the sense

that you're going to be like prioritizing like fat metabolization, which, um, I mean, if you're

looking at like Jeff Follick and Dr. Jeff Follick and Dr. Dominic DiAgostino, some of their research

and things like that, like they're going to show that, you know, that's going to be a little cleaner

way to go about things from just a recovery standpoint, a breakdown standpoint. So they could

be like a, what they call like a fat adapted athlete. So you can go to your fat stores for energy

if you're applying this map. What is it called by the math 180? Is that a good, what are your

thoughts about in general for yourself and for the broader population? I think the math 180

formula is about as good of a formula as you're going to find in terms of capturing as many people

as you can get away with capturing with a kind of a universal thing, uh, like any of these things.

I mean, it's, it's more likely kind of on a bell curve where like the bulk of that 180 minus

their age is probably going to be a pretty good, at least starting point to kind of figure out

where that is. There's some other things you can like maybe use to kind of check it that I like to

do. If I'm, let's say I just, I did 180 minus my age and I went out and I started running and it was

like, I'm running along and I'm just like, my, my breathing is labored. I'm, you know, I'm struggling

to get a sentence out without gasping for breath. Well, that's my body telling me I'm probably not

actually at my true like math number or my true like underneath my true aerobic threshold. Like

aerobic threshold and maximum of function. You should be able to do that for hours and you

should be able to breathe pretty efficiently and talk. Yep. Carry a conversation. Other people

will say like you, another way to kind of gauge it, if you can breathe in your nose and out your

mouth, that's not necessarily the best way to do on a, from a performance standpoint, but it can be

a good kind of governor that will allow you to like, if you can, if you can no longer breathe

in your nose and out your mouth, you're probably going too fast to actually technically be at your

math pace or under your math pace. Yeah. I had a, actually when I was in better shape, I had trouble

getting to that math number. I found myself like either I would be doing way too much work.

Like it was too hard to do it. It was too hard to get to that number. I was running a much lower

heart rate, like 10 to 20, what do you call that beats lower? And that's, I was still for myself

happy with the pace. It was a good pace. And I was felt good. I was smiling and enjoying life. And

the moment I take myself to that level of like the math 180 level, that's like, that felt like a

real work. And it felt like I can't do that for five, 10, 15 miles. Like I, I started feeling

it like this is a one or two mile thing. But I think his answer to that, I feel Mephidone's

answer is maybe you're supposed to like, what, maybe do some more sprints or something like that

or build up your, maybe like I'm too weak. Yeah. You're wise to like, yeah, like that's a sign

that you need to work on some stuff. You can't just keep enjoying life. There's, there's two ways

to look at that. I think, and I think you're, you're, you're right on. I think they would,

what the advice from that, from that kind of a process would say is either you, you're doing

too much of it. So it's getting too hard for where your skeletal muscle system is currently at

for that particular activity. So like, I mean, it can be different too. Like if you're cycling

versus running, you know, that's a little bit of different mechanic where it can be different,

where you could take a super fit cyclist and then put them on, you know, the, the bono volume,

they're going to be able to tolerate relative to what you're going to do when you remove like

impact forces and things like that is going to be lower if they haven't been practicing that

activity. So for you, like, you know, you're prioritizing like, you know, wrestling and

mixed martial art, not mixed martial arts, but jiu jitsu type stuff. So, you know,

running is maybe kind of that, that, that secondary activity versus the primary activity.

But yeah, so what they would say is probably like maybe instead of doing that at, let's say you

were doing that for like 30 miles a week or something like that, and it was getting too hard

to continue, they'd say, you know, come back to 20, get used to 20, get comfortable with 20,

then let's get you up to 25 and 30 and kind of just like inch you along.

One of the intuitions I had about the ways I was failing at running is the form was probably not

great. Like the way to get to those 30, 40 miles is to get the form right. Maybe I was doing too

big of steps, not so like playing with a different gate, playing with a different kind of the form

of your form, the economy, the efficiency. Yeah. So that was the intuition, like I was doing

something wrong. But I suppose that's the benefit of these kind of formulas. It challenges you to

think like, how can I improve this kind of stuff? Well, and it also, it simplifies it so much that

you're forced to, right? You're forced to optimize within that real strict parameter versus,

is am I doing my short intervals right, but my long runs wrong? Or am I doing my like long

intervals right, but my short intervals? And then you just kind of complicates things when

you start throwing a lot of stuff there. And for most people, especially when they're first

getting started, you know, you're, you can't overcomplicate it, or you're just going to like,

you're going to do like a bunch of half right, half wrong things, and then not really know where

your progress or your deficits are necessarily at. So I do think this is an amazing approach,

especially for people who are just getting into it and building that, that foundation,

where, where I think maybe you want to deviate from that a little bit, especially when you

start to get into these events that are operating well outside that intensity. So you take something

like, you know, let's say it's a race that takes you in the neighborhood of around like 12 minutes

or something like that, then you're going to be running significantly faster than your, your

maximum or function pace. So most of the research is going to say at some point in time, you need

to get around to practicing the pace at which you're going to perform at and really fine tuning

the mechanics, the efficiencies, how it feels, how to judge it, how to pace it at the pace

you're going to try to compete at. So there's obviously like a large range of targets there

when we're talking about the endurance world in general, where, you know, you have these shorter

events like five kilometers, and then you also have 100 mile races, which are going to typically

be quite a bit below your maximum aerobic function, especially on these trail races.

I need to admit something. So I don't measure the runs at all in terms of time.

I get competitive with myself. So I kind of decided that running for me is going to be this

thing where I just go by feel. Is it possible to be that kind of runner and, you know, still have

running as part of your life and be a good performer in running? I actually think that's,

that's where you want to get to. The problem is most people have a hard time getting to that,

because they'll go out and they'll run with a friend and match their pace, or they'll go out

and they'll say, well, I want to run this pace, so they'll target that pace or target a specific

heart rate, which is, you know, not necessarily how they maybe feel good doing it. So I think like

once you, I mean, obviously, I think when you put a race on the calendar, if your goal is

performance, it's a little harder to just say like, well, I'm going to run where it feels good today,

because eventually you have to get around to doing what's specific. But from just a fitness

standpoint, health standpoint, enjoyment standpoint, I think it's totally fine to go out and say,

I'm going to run what feels good today. And, you know, maybe someday you will feel like at the end

of the run, I'm going to do a couple sprints just to get some, you know, that because it does,

that one's a hard one to kind of jumpstart. But once you do it, and you realize how kind of good

it feels, maybe to throw in a few accelerations at the end of a run. And then you, you say, oh,

wow, that feels pretty good to do that. I feel a little more accomplished. That's right. That's

a forcing function. But I like to finish runs with sprints anyway, because you're already there

without right, you don't need to the timing. I'm afraid of the time becoming a drug. But the flip

side of that is useful tool to get you to learn the right form, the right feel, like what it feels

like to have to be in good shape. And then you could throw out the time. Well, I think too,

with with feel running, and what I mean by that is X kind of back to that perceived effort thing

where like, you do enough of it, and you start being able to recognize, like, I can go out. And

if you said, okay, run, you know, 60 minutes at your aerobic threshold, I could go, I could know

where that is on my heart rate. And I could go up there and just say, like, okay, I know what

that feels like, and go and run that feel. And I'm going to hit that spot. Like, I bet you if we

looked at my heart rate data after they'd be right in there. And I wouldn't have to look at some of

that's just experience. Yeah, some of it's just understanding, like, when like, not noticing

the physiological responses when you cross over versus step a little bit too below it.

But you can get yourself daydreaming and forget I'll do this sometimes too, where I'll be tired,

because I'm kind of like you too, where when I'm getting really fit, especially with my foundation,

like, I got a, you know, I'm moving pretty quick at my aerobic threshold. So like, if I start daydreaming

too much, I can notice, oh, I'm drifting back a little bit, I look down at my heart rate amount,

oh, yeah, I'm 10 beats under. You know, so you do it, it does take a little bit of, I think, just

awareness. But it's also not necessarily something where you have to be so exact that you're hitting

an exact heart rate all the time. There's usually a range. And there's even like, some fluctuations

where like, if you've been healthy for a year or two, without any injuries, and you've been fit,

that you can probably add five beats to your maximum aerobic function. If you're using that as kind of

your target from the 180 minus your age formula. So let's try this, lay this out for yourself. But

for others, you, you offer ready made plans for people, you know, depending on the, I think the

I think the key thing there is the distance, maybe you can elaborate. But what does that plan

look like usually? What are the key options as you already kind of mentioned? And how does your

week look like? How do a lot of people's week look like in terms of splits? Are we talking about,

you know, in terms of rest days, in terms of how often do you speed work versus longer distance,

you mentioned long runs? Like, is there something you could say that's generally applicable about the

structure of these plans? The ready made plans, I definitely follow like a philosophy. And it's

going to be the kind of like lockstep in that. So for those, like there's always going to be a

sacrifice when you do like a ready made plan, because there's you're removing the individual

context there. So for folks who are like really want to get into the weeds, I usually do like a

personalized coaching plan with them, where we sit down, we actually look at their strengths,

their weaknesses, and really kind of go in from that perspective and fine tune it. And it also like,

it avoids a situation where, oh, my ready made plan says, I'm supposed to do this run today,

but I don't feel great today. So what do I do? And some people are fine with that because they're

aware enough of like the process that they can adjust it themselves. Other folks just need a

little more support. So that's kind of the difference there. But in terms of the structure

of it, it kind of goes with an approach where we're saying you build this foundation, you're

going to spend, you know, usually anywhere between eight to 12 weeks just building up

your your aerobic foundation, you're going to be doing a lot of stuff that are kind of at,

I call them base runs, but they're basically your maximum aerobic function or you're up to your aerobic

threshold type stuff. And they're really going to get really fit with that. And once they kind of

have that foundation laid, then it's time to get into the specifics of whatever distance they're

doing. So if it where it'll differ will be like if they're doing right now on those plans, I think

I've got 5k half marathon marathon 50k 80 to 100k and then 100 miles. So if they pick a 5k plan,

the order of operations is going to be different than if they pick the 100 mile plan, you're going

to see some of the same workouts show up in that plan and just going to be different areas of it.

So once they're really fit at that, you know, that foundational level, then, you know, if they're

doing say 100 mile plan, they might start doing some short intervals, which I would on my plans,

I usually range between 30 seconds up to four minutes. It's kind of that short interval range.

Can you describe what you mean by short interval is it's like a sprint and a rest?

Yeah. Yeah. So I'll use basically like I'll use like a basic a 12 minute time trial. And that's

going to kind of like dictate for them what the intensity and the pace is going to be for some

of those. When they're under a minute, they'll push past that a little bit. But usually when we're

up to like above a minute and certainly up to four minutes that like whatever pace or intensity that

they get for that kind of 12 minute time trial where they're just seeing how far they can go in

12 minutes is going to be kind of like about where they're going to target for those intervals. So

then those intervals are going to be structured. Let's say they're doing two minute intervals,

they're going to do two minutes at that intensity that they could do for 12 minutes at a time trial,

then they're going to do a two minute real easy job or maybe even walk just to kind of bounce back

and they're going to repeat it. How do you figure out how far you can go in 12 minutes?

Is that just trial and error? You build up to it, there's formulas, what?

Yeah, there's some newer formulas that are probably a little less brutal.

Where you kind of, I haven't really dove into these that in depth yet. I know like

that you can kind of replicate it by doing like a short, a very short interval and then a slightly

longer one. And then like another one where like at the end one, that last one will kind of indicate

what it is. And so you're doing less of it to get the same answer to the question.

But sometimes I think when it's someone who's new, I'd rather them just do a 12 minute time trial

because it's easy for them to execute in the sense that it's pretty clear. You do a warm up,

you do some strides, maybe some dynamic stretches and you just run as hard as you can for 12 minutes

as evenly paced as you can manage. And I mean, if it's going to produce the data I'm looking for.

No matter what happens, they'll produce the data.

I mean, you can screw it up, I guess. You can go way too fast and then you have this scenario

where like, oh, it looks like your first two minutes were drastically faster than your last

two. And then it's like, oh, we maybe screwed that one up. But I mean, really, you don't even

need to do the time trial technically. A lot of times you can go off of feel like what we

described with the threshold stuff. And it's a high enough intensity where your body's going

to kind of limit you to a degree where if I said we didn't do the time trial and just started

doing the intervals, we could figure out that if they're doing them right or not, if we see a

scenario where, oh, it looks like these first two intervals were significantly slower than the last

two, chances are we're still not quite dialed in in terms of what the intensity is that you

should be targeting for those. And as you do a few, you just get to know the pacing of it a

little better. And then you start seeing more even splits. So like, you know, their first two minute

intervals pretty close within a couple seconds of their second, or I guess we'd be looking at

distance if we're doing time. So like you went approximately the same distance on that last one

as you did the first one. And then we're just looking for improvement over time. So, you know,

we might spend four, six weeks kind of focusing on improving that we're going to still include

kind of foundational running volume where you're going to be running like an easy pace and enjoyable

pace kind of in the interim. And then there's going to be some rest days. And that's going to

be where the levels come in my like level one plans are going to be like four day a week training

plans level two are going to be five day level three are going to be six day with one day off.

And you can obviously operate outside of those. Those those are just the ones that I put up for

the ready made when I'm coaching people kind of personalized, we just we look at like what

their history is with running their schedule, all sorts of stuff. Because oftentimes people get

hung up on like, well, what are the elites doing? What are the professionals doing? What are the

Olympians doing? It's like, well, it's like, what the Olympians are doing is they're waking up and

they're living and breathing everything around this one race that they're going to do in four years.

Or so it's like, we need to step away from that if you're working, you know, 10 hours a day,

and you got kids and all this other stuff too. So there's a lot of variables that make it more

interesting to coach someone who's actually like, not an elite athlete, or someone who's a

professional athlete, I should say. But but yeah, so they're going to do that stuff, those shorter

intervals, for probably about like four to six weeks, if they're doing if they're doing a longer

race, like 100 miles, if they were doing say a 5k, we'd start bringing those workouts in

near the end of their plan, because that's going to be specific to their race pace. That's going

to be the intensity that maybe they're doing for, you know, like a 3k or 5k or something like that.

So it's going to be more relative to what they're going to use. So it follows that philosophy,

the plans follow that philosophy of weaknesses and least specific stuff early. And then we

start phasing closer to most specific stuff and strengths as you get kind of near to the end

of the plan. And then the distance of the time that you're going to spend out doing whatever

event it is going to dictate how those kind of get ordered in there. I wonder if I could ask you

for some sort of advice, maybe almost maybe look at me as a case study of a particular

runner and then see how we can plan stuff out. So which context to give? Okay, so I have been,

first let me say how much we're currently in Austin. I want to say how much I love Austin

for many reasons. First and foremost, people are super kind and just like, there's so much love

that I've experienced immediately when I came to the city versus many of the other cities I've been

in. It's not quite as welcoming and full of kindness immediately. I mean, I really love it here in

Austin. And because I've been going through a bunch of stressful stuff, I just kind of gave myself

a chance to say, okay, I'm going to stick to a diet of carnivore keto, but I'm going to eat as much

as I want. Because primarily because just barbecue was part of the love I was getting here. And I

was like, either I resist or just give in and I decided to give in and actually use this as an

opportunity to relax and have fun for the past three, four months plus whiskey and so on. And then

the training kind of all, I also let go of the training a little bit just to relax, to really

focus on the work, focus on the love I've been getting, all those kinds of things. But now I

just kind of want to set a goal for myself to get back into both competing and grappling,

but also doing a hanging out with David Goggins and doing a conversation with him. But almost,

this is my own personal kind of race that I'm looking forward to. And in terms of distance,

that means running with David, something like a marathon plus plus. It's like, it's unclear what

plus. So my goal would be to continue eating carnivore, which is a whole other topic. I'd

love to talk to you about. I feel great psychologically, sort of in terms of mental performance in my

work when I eat carnivore. And physically, I love it. I've never felt any kind of need for carbs

to improve performance in my running or anything else. Combine that with fasting, intermittent

fasting or eating once a day. I just, that's when I feel the best. What else? I also feel

best. And this is something you can push back on. I feel best when I just run every day,

like no breaks ever, and usually the same way every day. So I know this is suboptimal. It'd

be interesting to hear your opinion of just how suboptimal that is. So I think that actually lays

out where my mind is. I'm happy eating carnivore once a day. I like running every day. The goal

is to run a marathon in two months ish, two months plus, and then about three months to do a bunch

of competitions and grappling. Okay. With those parameters, I think like you actually probably

would be a great candidate for maximum heroic function training strategy. Like you want that

consistency where I'm going to do the same thing each day. You don't want to beat yourself up so

much any one day that you can't get out and do the next one. That's the sweet spot with maximum

heroic function is the trademark there is that you can keep going and keep doing it again and

again and again because as long as you're not going out one day and trying to do twice as much

as what you're ready for for that one specific. So the key for you is going to be picking the

right starting point and then building from there on what that day kind of entails in terms of

how much running you do. So where you could maybe get creative would be if you decided

that it's a hard fast rule that you run an hour every day, seven days a week. But we find out

that to run your maximum heroic function means you probably are better off sticking to 30 minutes.

Then what you would maybe do is you would run underneath your maximum heroic function

for the first 15 minutes in the last 15 minutes. Maybe throw some of those strides in there if

you want to do that at the very end. And then that middle 30 minutes is going to be maximum

heroic function target. And then maybe after four weeks you start noticing, you know what,

this 30 minutes isn't wearing me out near as much as it used to. I feel like I could easily push

past that. Well, let's up that to 40 minutes of that 60. You're always staying within that

60 minute parameter that keeps your schedule consistent, your routine consistent. I'm wearing

a heart rate monitor to sort of as I run to monitor it. Sure. You could do that. You could go

perceived effort. I like to use them in tandem in the sense that early on I'll maybe look at

my heart rate a little more often, especially for shorter length. Heart rate can get messy the

longer you go. So I end up kind of maybe stepping away from heart rate a little more than some will

at a certain point because ultimately I'm going to be usually training or working with someone

to run like a race that's really long and they get cardiac drift, dehydration, heat,

things that are going to make the heart rate super messy. Yeah, but your probability to measure

perceived effort is exceptionally good. Mine is actually really weak. Okay. Heart rate then.

I need to do the still the work of connecting heart rate to the perceived effort.

Yep. And that's exactly what I would use heart rate for then. And you'll get to a point probably

by like in the first couple of months where you can still lean on heart rate if you want,

but it'll be kind of one of those things where you keep looking at it, you're like,

oh, wow, I can guess it. And you play a game with yourself too. And you say, well, how close can I

guess? You'll get it. So like for me, what I'll do is I'll do the run and then I'll look at the

heart rate afterwards and be like, oh, cool. I was right there. Or I remember feeling like I

was speeding up a little bit there and their show is right there on the heart rate. Or

I also love sort of something we haven't talked about. I love pushups and pull ups of like body

weight workouts. Again, it's mostly mental. I just enjoy the mental challenge of it. I also like

it makes me feel like if all I'm doing is running, it makes me feel I'm not like

one dimensional. Yeah, one dimensional. I mean, there's some aspect to running that's

not to be like hippie about it, but like, you know, you're, you're with nature, you're running in

the, it's like we're born to do this thing. And that same way, I feel like when I'm doing pushups

and pull ups, I feel like I was born to do that kind of stuff. Like it's like this body weight

exercises have that way about them. It doesn't have that dumbbell feel or doing bench press or

squats, squats with weight. When you're just doing squats, body weight, when you're doing pushups

and pull ups, body weight, and just basic abs stuff, core stuff, body weight. I don't know,

I just love the way I feel doing that. So it's usually, I forgot to mention that part,

combine that with the running afterwards, doing some basic body weight stuff.

Yeah. And I think like you're going to get from, if we're not looking at it from like specifically

like training at a pace in order to get both the skeletal muscle adaptations as well as the

cardiovascular benefits, you're probably tapping into some of the higher intensity stuff with that

body weight stuff. Unless you're doing, I guess, no rest. It's very quick. So is it,

you're getting pretty high heart rate from that? Yeah, very hard. Okay. Higher than running. Yep.

So you're checking that box there from just like a lifestyle, enjoyment, fitness, overall fitness

standpoint. I think you want to keep your running more aerobic then because you're getting that,

and you're probably getting it from like your grappling workouts too, I would guess. So

there's just not as big of a need for you from a big picture standpoint to be

doubling down on that stuff with your runs as well. And it sounds like you prefer not to.

That's right. So I mean, what about the distance of marathon versus 100 miles? Is that big

difference? What's a good goal to work towards? Is it marathon and the rest of it just takes

care of itself? So you want to do a marathon and then ultimately do 100 mile after that? Is that

what you're saying? I have no idea what the guy wants to do. Oh, so he's going to tell you spot

on what you're doing. So you have to be ready for anything. For anything. Right. My own personal

goal is to feel somewhat challenged, but comfortable running a marathon. The longest I've ever run is

22 miles, but I, you know, there's been many stretches in my life where I would regularly

run like the long run would be close to 20 miles. So, you know, and then I was comfortably running

10 miles four months ago. It was like forever ago until I injured myself a little bit by running

in the snow and stubbing my toe to where it was like, you don't realize how much you appreciate

your toes until you stub them. That big toes where all that power comes off. And so it was

surprising how long it took to heal and how essential it was and how unpleasant running,

how much you're running with it. And then I kept like coming trying to get back out there

to run to think, I think it's okay. And no, it's not okay. You really need to let it fully heal.

At least that was my experience. I couldn't like just suck it up. It was making it worse every

time as one of those injuries that could really feel even though it's so small where it's essential.

So is there any difference between the goal of marathon or 100 miles? Would you say should I be

prepping for 100 miles if that's at all a possibility? The big difference is going to be

like you're dropping intensity significantly by going up to 100 miles versus the marathon. So

the maximum rolling function I think is actually going to feed into that maybe a little bit better.

It's probably going to be a little closer. Depending on where I mean, it all varies a bit

because like people will focus on specific distances and they'll get very efficient and very

adapted to that. So like the it kind of like it's what makes running kind of messy where like you'll

get for for example, like the average person can hit their like lactate threshold for probably

about like 60 minutes or something like that. Whereas you get these elite marathoners who've

been basically spending their entire life preparing for a marathon race, they can push

almost up to their lactate threshold and at their lactate threshold for almost like two hours. So

it gets a little messy when you start looking at it from that lens, but you don't really like to

worry about that too much because you're not really focusing on being the best possible 100

mile or the best possible marathon you could be. You want enough overall fitness that you can just

do either one of them without absolute misery because you did the couch to 100 mile. So I think

like for 100 miles the biggest difference I think given your context is just like the more

physical things you are doing, the better prepared you're going to be for the 100 mile.

So it's almost given your context. I wouldn't say irrelevant. You want to be doing running,

but you're going to be doing that once you put it in your program. It sounds like it's going to be

pretty locked in. If you view it this way, it's probably going to be more mentally beneficial

too where, hey, today I did my run. I did my body weight exercises. I did some grappling practice.

I spent three hours working out today. If you think of it like that, then you're moving your

body. You're doing things that are active for a good chunk of the day, especially relative to

most people. So that's going to actually be very helpful for you. The problem or the battle to get

over is going to just be like, you're going to break down physically running 100 miles.

I mean, you're going to break down physically running a marathon too. So you might just have

to push through a little more discomfort from a physical standpoint compared to be a few decided,

I'm going to do everything I can in these next 24 weeks to be able to run a full 100 miler.

Would you say it's physical or is it mental discomfort? I mean, isn't everything physically

uncomfortable? What do you train for if you're training for the chaos of, so it's not necessarily

100 miles. It's the chaos of the unexpected, which might include 100 miles, but it might also

include 1000 pushups in my case. You need a bit jack of all trades, which you need to be. Yeah,

but also building up the confidence or maybe not, I don't know, how do you survive 1000 pushups?

It's a combination of confidence that you have to know that you can do that kind of thing,

not necessarily the actual number, but doing crazy stuff. And the second is probably the base

strength and endurance and also just the practicing that process of not quitting.

I feel like that's one of the things I really need to do in the running space

is like doing slightly unpleasant things where I'm practicing that like bringing my mind back and

saying, nope, I'm going to keep doing it. And part of the running every day has that benefit

because some days you really don't want to, don't feel like running and doing that then you're

practicing that muscle of doing it anyway. I don't know if there's something you can say in

terms of advice how to practice the like doing something unpleasant every day. Yeah, what I

would do with that is I would try to make the unpleasant thing be different from one day to

the next if you can. So the fear I would have with making running unpleasant every time would be

it becomes like a negative feedback loop in your physiologically potentially as well as mentally

where if the entire running process is miserable, you're going to be miserable when you step on

that starting line, whether it's a marathon or 100 miles. So you've trained yourself that running

equals miserable. Well, and here's the thing, like, I mean, if you look at just like, here's where

the literature says on paper are like the, you know, dozen workouts you should do in a training

plan. And this is how you should structure them right down to the minute. And you just say like,

I'm going to give everyone this schedule, and they're going to do this every time rinse and repeat.

My biggest concern with that approach is you are potentially putting them in a position where

the training is so boring and so monotonous, that like, if they hit a roadblock mentally,

they're going to fall apart very quick because they've already exhausted themselves mentally,

just trying to do the same old interval every time, doing the same old, you know, workout,

and it doesn't necessarily have to be like one specific plan in its entirety could just be like,

like the mix of things within it. So like, rather than like, if I just said, well, we're going to do

three minute intervals to this entire short interval process or two minute intervals or

four minute intervals or 60 second intervals, you know, by that sixth week, they might be so sick

of that that they're not actually maximizing the potential within that because there's no flavor

there. And then they're also actually getting less out of themselves than they would if we just got

a little more creative and said, okay, let's mix this up and let's do, you know, four one minute

intervals, then take a little bit of a break and then we'll do three minute intervals or at least

changing it up from week to week so that they have something different showing up even though

we're addressing the same kind of physiological adaptation. So like, I think what you want to do

is you want to introduce the misery, you want to be able to test yourself to the degree where

like when you can recognize these points if I don't want to be here, but I can do it and push

through it, but recognize that like, there's not necessarily going to be one event that you want

to lean on to get that from because you won't want to make that one event so miserable that you

don't want to do it when it comes time for the challenge. So if you can possibly say like, okay,

on Tuesdays, the pushup workout, I'm going to go 10 pushups more than I want to I'm going to get to

that point where I'm like, there's no more and then I'm going to do 10 more. And you're going to

make that one miserable. And then maybe on, you know, Thursdays, you decide to do like some

of those sprints or something at the end where you do a few of them and you're like, okay,

this is where I'd be comfortable to stop. Like, well, I'm going to do two more of them because I

know I don't want to do two more of them, but mix that up. So you're not, so at least you're

getting enjoyment from some of it and not just getting complete disgust from the entire price.

Yeah, there's actually quite a lot of ways that I can introduce misery into the pushups and the

running get creative, including, you know, even just like stuff outside of the running, like

taking a freezing cold shower or those kinds of things, just introducing random kind of chaos

into the system or having conversations with people as an introvert is terrifying. More podcasts.

So now starting the training and Zach, you've been kind enough to also kind of be willing to

help me out throughout this process. So I look forward to where that goes. It's kind of fascinating.

On the diet side, you're one of the many things that make you fascinating is you've played with

diet as well. And you're somewhat famous, I would say, if we're doing low carb or playing with low

carb or meat based diets, can you describe the potential, like how you're thinking about that

has evolved and the potential beneficial role of a carnivore diet or keto diet or a meat based

diet in training as an ultra marathon runner? Yeah. And I think like where a lot of times

things get confusing for people here is the context of it too, where it's like they want

an answer as to what do I eat for endurance sport? And it's like, well, endurance sport is quite wide

ranging as we've talked about many times here. So there's going to be differences, I think,

in just like what you want to maybe necessarily prioritize both for the event you're doing

and the intensity that's required for training that's required for that event. And then also

the individual component to where I think this one often gets overlooked where we tend to say,

like, well, we've got all these Olympic medalists at the marathon and below distance who are,

you know, eating a moderate to high carbohydrate diet. So everyone needs to do that if they want

to reach their potential in, you know, say the 3k to the marathon. And, you know, in a perfect

world, maybe that would be true. But there's a lot of other variables that often get forgotten

then that could positively or negatively impact that decision choice. So I think Dr. Jeff Volk

has done a great job of kind of highlighting this in the sense that, you know, when he works with

people, he works with people in the health sphere as well as the performance sphere. And, you know,

he's one of the main guys at Virta Health who's they've got like a 60% success rate with working

with folks with type two diabetes to reverse their type two diabetes. And I mean, that's an

astounding when you think of just any nutritional protocol at success rate, they're all incredibly

low. They're very, very low. And the big difference with his is the coaching aspect of it. Like,

they give support. So these people like have someone to turn to when they make a mistake,

or if they're thinking about doing something differently, or they don't know what to do,

rather than just kind of throwing throwing it all up in the air and quitting, they have a resource

there. And that's probably a big reason why that's the success rate that they have with that is

they put those support mechanisms in place. That picture needs to be carried into the performance

world or the running world to where, you know, we may have just been identifying that, you know,

Olympic distance athletes that can tolerate a very large portion of their diet coming from

carbohydrate is going to just, it's going to filter those ones towards the Olympics filter

those towards the same. Yeah. And that doesn't mean that like, if we would have taken, say the

gold medals in the five K and put them on a low carb diet, they'd run faster, they probably wouldn't

because we may have already selected that that person's thriving on carbohydrate.

What I would be interested in is like, you have, let's say we have someone with equal talent,

but got weeded out along the way, potentially because for whatever reason, they just weren't

able to tolerate like both the training and the nutrition requirements that they're being told

to do. So the coach is kind of, there's a culture where the coaches would really push a carb heavy

diet and that that would in itself would do the filtering process of people that are not, it would

filter out the people that are not able to tolerate carbs as part of their training. I mean, I might

be an example of this actually where you take someone where they, for whatever reason, the carbs

aren't working for them, like it's unsustainable for them to continue that path. Or if they do,

they might have a shortened career. So they might be able to eke out a few really good years,

but then they're not going to be the person that are like, wow, that person's 38 and they're still

competing at the Olympics type of a person. And you put them on a low carb diet. If you can control

everything else, like their entire lifestyle is based around training and racing, then they may

still have better potential by introducing carbohydrates at a higher level. But if that's

not going to be sustainable for them as a person, then what's the point kind of at that?

Unless they want to be like a spark in the pan, so to speak.

I just feel good eating meat performance wise.

Well, I think there's that group too. They may just not be the Olympians.

Yeah. And so we're not talking, I guess this conversation has several layers. One is for

the Olympics. And one is for like, what is it, active athletes, they're like amateurs,

whatever, whatever category I put myself into, like people that exercise regularly. And then

maybe people, and then there's people who like exercise rarely. So on all of those fronts,

I mean, do you think it's possible to live a happy, active life eating meat only or mostly meat?

Yeah.

What have you learned about this?

Yeah, I think so for some context, like I followed what I would call a low carbohydrate

diet for the last 10 years. And just like kind of the training, I periodize it to a degree where

there are parts of my training where I do bring back a little more carbohydrate. And there's

periods of my training, especially like the off season where I'm like very low. And I might be

like kind of in that ballpark of like, you know, ketogenic, strict ketogenic or no carbohydrates

for periods of time.

And what kind of food are we talking about? What's a strict low carb diet?

I've ranged everywhere from like mostly plant based low carb keto to like mostly animal based.

I've very rarely gone much more than like two weeks strict where it's like I'm strict carnivore or

strict plant based or anything like that. Like we're talking probably more like 95%

at the peak in terms of any type of like longer lasting from my personal experience of like being

like either in like the animal food camp or like the plant based camp kind of a process.

So I've tried all of them things that stayed consistent over the 10 years as a kind of the

macro nutrient profile that I've done throughout the course.

So one didn't win over the other until it was a meat based versus plant based?

Oh, for me, meat based, definitely. What was, I mean, I was my highest meat consumption in 2019

and that was by far my best racing season.

Yeah, we keep coming back to that year. That was a good year for many reasons,

philosophically and nutritionally.

Yeah. Well, in 2020 happened and now I haven't had a really good chance to

We'll see. Hopefully I've got some more in the tank.

That's strange is most athletes that competed at your level

have more carbs integrated into their diets.

So what have you learned about using meat in high performance?

I think it's maybe less about the meat and it's more about like what are you, what is it replacing?

So if we go, if we step away from like me specifically and just like the people that,

because I mean, we're getting to the point where I get its anecdotes, but like,

like that's what we have at the moment because there's, I mean, there is actually a study being

done on like, I think, I guess they'd call it hyper carnivore where they're like,

I think above 80% of their intake from meat.

And they're looking at a few different things there.

But it's so weird and I keep interrupting, but so weird that it sounds unhealthy,

hyper carnivore, but it makes me feel really good.

So that's the individual thing, right?

Yeah, the individual thing.

There's countless people now who like, and I'm not saying that they could not have found

another route, myself included, like in 2011, when I switched from moderate to high carbohydrate

to low carbohydrate and saw some very noticeable differences in the way I felt,

the way I performed and all this stuff, that doesn't mean that there wasn't another path.

I just did not find that path.

And the, the fact that I found a path that was producing the results I was looking for

is really all that matters in my mind, you know, like, I don't really care if there was

a parallel path that works just as well or, you know, something like that.

Because ultimately we only have one shot at everything we're doing.

So like, it'd be great if I could go back and try four or five different things.

Well, the annoying thing is that the body adjusts to whatever the heck you're doing.

So you can't, it's hard to do good science even on yourself.

Yeah, I've referenced my 2019 racing season a few times.

And it's like, it'd be silly for me to put all of the emphasis on my nutrition plan for that

because it's also comes with two decades of endurance training.

So it's possible and it's very likely that a huge portion of that success was just the

culmination of a lot of work over time from the training side of things.

I just think like anytime you hyper focus on one area or pick a couple variables and just target

those, you find yourself in a position where you are, you're putting other things in the most

uncharitable light possible.

So, so then you have this situation where like, it's actually a combination of a variety of

different things. So where are the big movers? And, you know, for me, nutritional shift was

pretty clear that that improved my sleep and my recovery.

And I mean, people can say, well, there's the placebo effect, which is a very real concern.

But, you know, for me personally, a 10 year placebo effect would be a quite lengthy placebo

effect. And I do think it's individual though. I emphasize that a lot because I mean,

I've worked with tons of people with this and I do see a range from person to person.

I've worked with people who come to me and they're like strict keto and we raise up their

carbohydrates a bit and they're like, okay, I feel way better doing it this way. And I've

worked with people who they come to me moderate carbohydrate, but they're interested enough.

They want to try a lower carb. So we, you know, we titrate them down and I've had clients where

I'm like, okay, I'm going to give them this workout and they're going to wish they brought

back a little bit of carbohydrate and then they go and they nail the workout and I'm just like

baffled that because they're different from me. And every time, you know, when you have your

own personal experience, the first kind of guttural response is, oh, if I had done it,

would have gone this way. Why did it go the opposite way for them? And you kind of have to

just kind of step out of your own perspective a bit and say like, okay, well, they're different,

you know, for whatever reason, they're getting, getting along like this.

I've had like several moments in my life where you kind of realize

that the body is weird and it's weirder than the average advice. Like one of them is how well

I perform for my own standards when I fast. First of all, intellectually, but that's more known

and understandable, but like physically, the fact that I could train like not eat 20 hours,

24 hours, and then do a hard like jujitsu session for like two hours, like hard. It's incredible

to me. Like this makes no sense because I used to eat like many times a day. Of course, you have

to eat like you don't want to eat too close to the training session was my thinking, but you

definitely need to load up on carbs like three hours before they can order to have enough energy.

The fact that I could not eat and have like incredible focus, but also athleticism, like both

endurance and explosive. I mean, jujitsu is a special thing. It's like more like chess.

It's not like powerlifting. No, not powerlifting. Olympic lifting or it's like true explosiveness,

but that's fascinating. It makes me wonder like what other things are there to discover about

yourself? The annoying thing about food is it's delicious. And so it's hard to do good science

on yourself. Like to do for two weeks or a month to do like strict no carbs. And then maybe next

month you add 20 grams or 40 grams of carbs and see how you actually feel. Not like in that moment,

but over a period of several weeks. And then doing everything else right with based on best

available science, like with electrolytes and the vitamins, but then also like remove all the

humans from your life that affect you positively or negatively because you might feel amazing

because you're hanging out with cool people and then removing basically all the variables.

It's kind of fascinating and you kind of all of us land in a place where we find something that

worked for us and then we maybe use some of the placebo effect to help us out to stick in that

place. And then I suppose that's the way to live life. It's impossible to find the optimal for

any of us, but carnivore is an interesting new kind of caveat and new challenge to the

nutritional community because more and more people seem to be doing well under carnivore.

Yeah. Well, the nutrition community is probably we just got done like dealing with the vegans.

Now we got this opposite end of the spectrum coming at us. But I think, well, I mean, what this all

tells me is like there is for one like in our food environment, like the failure rate of any one

approach at a population level is going to be incredibly high. I mean, it's why we have what

is it like 88% of the population has some sort of metabolic syndrome. And it's because there's

an endless quantity of everything that you can get your hands on for relatively cheap.

And I think that presents a problem if your mindset is going to be we need this set of

parameters for nutrition and everyone needs to adhere to that or you're wrong. And it's like,

well, tell that to the person who like went carnivore and cleared up some like crazy skin

ailment or something like that. That's a weird one. Yeah. Like where the carnivore seems to treat

like like depression. It's like like mental stuff. It's fascinating. There's all these stories. Again,

it's anecdotes, but it's like the mental one, I think may I'm stepping out a bit on a limb here.

But I want to say like some of the research of Dominic DiAgostino and Jeff Valic was looking at

the ketogenic diet, which a carnivore diet is basically going to be a part of a ketogenic.

I mean, you could always go like way too high on the protein, I guess, but most people that I see

doing carnivore, they're cognizant enough that at least if they're doing it for therapeutic reasons,

they're not going like, you know, 50% protein 50% they're more like 70, 30, 80, 20, something like

that. And I think like you do see some work with like the brain and so the mental stuff. I know

some of the, I'm not sure if this was part of the DARPA funding that Dr. Dominic DiAgostino had,

where they were looking at things like mental stuff, like post traumatic stress disorder and

that sort of stuff with like a strict ketogenic diet. So I wonder if some of that like the

depression related stuff has to do with that, where now like their body is just fueling their brain

differently than maybe they were in the past. But that's just, you know, wild guesses on my part.

And I'm deviating from the conversation. But like,

No, that's brilliant. In terms of your own story on food, can you say something? I think we're

kind of referring to diet broadly. Can you say something about how you like to fuel your, like,

whether it's race or great training sessions, like maybe the day before, let's go even that far,

during and maybe a few hours after. Okay. It'll be a little different for racing than it will be

for like a big workout just because the interesting thing about ultra running is just like you never

do the race even like most endurance races, you're going to cover the distance, you're going to

replicate the race almost up to it in training, whereas with a hundred miles, you can't, you

might replicate a third of it. So, so I'll do, I'll walk you through kind of my approach for

for like a hundred mile race. And I can tell you maybe what I would do differently on like a training

day. But yeah, so for where the community is an agreement is that you do want to be

very good at burning fat for ultramarathons. I mean, there's just like the intensity is low.

If your, if your ratios are skewed very high towards carbohydrate metabolism, then you're

going to have to defend your muscle glycogen through tons of carbohydrate consumption. And

that's just going to be very hard to do over the course of an entire day, even at low intensities.

So it's a fuel tank thing. I mean, it's like your, your leanest endurance athletes have way more

fat than they do glycogen stores. When you're doing low intensity performance, you want to be

burning high levels of fat and sparing that muscle glycogen. What I tend to do is I want to

start the race burning really high levels of fat. So I'm going to, I'll maybe have some carbohydrate

the night before for dinner, but then I'm going to lean into the overnight fast breakfast, the morning

of, I'm going to stay away from carbohydrates for a hundred mile or anyway. And I'm going to have

something like something that's pretty like the high energy, low volume. So like I'll do like an

S fuels life bar. They've got like, what's in an S fuel life bar? Are we talking about carbs or

we're talking about protein? Fat protein, fat protein bar. And then they make some awesome.

Yeah. So it's not as low carb. Yep. Yeah, they make S fuels makes a whole product line that's

like kind of positioned for a low carb athlete. So they have some products on their lineup that

offer some carbohydrate, which is perfect for me because I do introduce some carbohydrate on racing

and some of my bigger training sessions and things. But the majority of their products are low carb.

So like they have like, you know, how you get like the powders that you put into like your

drinks that are like high carbohydrate, you know, sports products, they make a version of that,

that's like fat based. Oh, cool. That you can mix in with water? Yep. Cool. Yeah. So they've got

like a creamer version and then a fruity flavor version. So you can like replicate the taste

and the feel of drinking like a, like, you know, a sports drink. That's awesome. I know it is.

Well, and that's so much of it too, because people are always like, I don't know, I just,

I just like to have my Gatorade or whatever. It's like, well, you can have it now. It just,

it won't have all. So you can bring that kind of thing with you. Yeah. So I'm leaning on a lot

of those like kind of liquid calories, like those low volume, high energy, fat protein stuff the

morning of so that when I start the race, my body is going to be encouraged to start out burning

high levels of fat. Once I get going, probably about 45 minutes in, I'll start introducing

small amounts of carbohydrate. So at that point, my body's revving pretty high fat metabolism.

And by introducing some carbohydrate in the context of the, you know, let's say my 100 mile

personnel record, you know, I'm, I'm running approximately nine miles every hour. So I'm

probably going through about a thousand calories in an hour's time. I'm going to start just like

defending muscle glycogen by burning super high levels of fat at the heart rate I would do for

that. I'm probably burning somewhere between 80, 90% fat, you know, 12 hours of that you

can chip away at your muscle glycogen to the point where you don't necessarily want to go zero

carb. So I'm basically just trying to defend what I know I'm going to be burning from the carbohydrate

side of that 80 to 90% fat, 10 to 20% carbohydrate by taking in like usually, you know, I've gone

as low as about 15 grams of carbohydrate per hour and as high as 40 grams. And the reality is

somewhere in between is probably the sweet spot, but 40 I can get away without any digestion issues.

So I'm not really concerned pushing up to that during a race since I'm only concerned about

performance on that day. Is it the carbs that's the problem or is it fiber? Oh, from going about

40 grams? Or just because you mentioned digestion issues. Like one of the things for me, like one

of the cool things about fatty protein, protein of fat is like my stomach just feels way better.

So like carbs introduce like bloating and just not feeling great. Yeah. And I think the funny

thing is like if you look at the position paper for ultramarathon single day events and it's,

you know, it's very limited in the sense that then it's not anyone's fault. It's just we don't have

a lot of great research on 100 mile races. It's really hard to study what's going on when someone's

running 100 miles. But they will say a moderate carbohydrate diet is recommended, but they'll

also say that it's like something like 60% of participants are going to report some sort of

like digestion issue during the event. So then it kind of becomes an issue of do you want to flip

that coin? Do you want to flip that coin and be the 40% right? Exactly. So for me, what I found

is like I can push up to 40 grams without getting any digestion issues. Do I need 40 grams? Probably

not at least not based on kind of the numbers that would be like that I would see on like if I

went and actually got like a metabolic heart test or something like that. But it's possible. I mean,

if I had a really good race that I would get close to burning that per hour. Most folks that

are following a moderate high carbohydrate diet are going to be recommended to like 50 to 70 grams

during a single day ultra marathon event. And you'll see some, you know, some recommendations

of up to like 100 grams, not so much for ultra marathons, but just in general for like a performance

standpoint, which I mean, it's one of those things where it's like application versus like what you

can do in a lab for one hour is going to be a lot different, especially when you're stretching out

distances well past that. And there's, there's, I'm diverting a little here, but I mean, there's

like an approach of like training your gut so you can like be able to tolerate that much carbohydrate,

which you can do and you may have to if you're going to follow a high carbohydrate diet. But again,

we go back to that practicality standpoint of if you're a professional Olympian who's living and

breathing performance and you're burning two to three times, you're messing, resting metabolic

rate on some days, like you, you may be able to actually consume 100 grams of carbohydrate per

hour during your training sessions and, and just, you know, barely stay on top of your nutritional

needs. Most people who are running ultra marathons aren't going to be, you know, probably training

much past 10 hours per week. And they're probably not going to have the, I'll call it they're a

dietary budget to tolerate 100 grams of carbohydrate consumption during their workouts and still be able

to stay healthy. And, you know, so I think that's kind of like a, a bit of a, of a non, a non starter

for the majority of people. Unless we want to talk about like a tiny percentage of the 1% of

top performers. So maybe you can talk about the training, like feeling yourself during training

as well. Is there, and also as part of that, is it possible to train mostly fasted? Because as a

side comment, let me just say, I like, again, not anywhere, not even like one tenth of your level

of performance, but you know, I try to push myself and I just feel much better when I'm fasted. So

water and maybe some salt for longer runs for anything over like 10, 15 miles, but not no food.

Yeah, I think, I mean, I like to train on an empty stomach. I do most of my, my biggest training

sessions usually in the morning and it usually what'll determine whether I eat something or not

before that is like, how much do I need to eat that day in order to stay on top of it to be able

to train again the next day. Gotcha. So I'll, I'll, I'll usually do something similar to what I

would do before a race if I need to kind of stay on top of calories for the day. So I'm not like at

noon with like no calorie intake and like 5,000 calories to try to consume before I go to bed

that night and get out and do the same thing the next day. But yeah, I think if I were, if I were

doing what you're doing, like if that were my lifestyle, I think I would do almost all my runs

fasted. I don't see why I would be eating a lot before it because it's like, I'm just introducing

something that could, especially if you're noticing, like here's what I'd say. If I was doing that and

I was like, wow, this run sucks. And then I introduced something beforehand and now my run

was feeling great and my progress was getting better. That's when I would maybe consider

having something before, but if you're running both of those, those like self experiments,

you're noticing, yeah, if I eat something before I go on this workout, the workouts less enjoyable,

I'm not noticing any, any increased improvements on it. Again, it's a little messy, like we said

before, it's hard to really, you can't go back and try it a different way on that specific day.

But I think, I think most people, if they're just like, they go at it with like no bias in the

sense that they're like trying to make one work versus the other, you can get at least a good

enough look at it. And if absolute peak performance in one activity, one very specific activity,

isn't your goal, then it's like, do you really care if one X has a 2% performance increase

that you won't even probably notice? Because there's other variables that will clearly overpower

that 2% one way or the other. And there's some benefit in terms of freedom and letting go of like

having to think about some of these variables. I see sort of fasting is even if it's like a hit on

the performance, it's worth it to just not think about it. There's some really nice aspect to just

putting on shoes, not carrying like what shorts you wear or like what you're outfit is like not

being optimal in every way and just not caring and just enjoying the purity of just running,

no matter what, just enjoying the natural aspect. There's a side to me that sometimes just like

craves a lifestyle where it's like, I have like such a small house and only what I need and just

like a handful of food products I know I enjoy and work well for me and I don't even have the

distraction of the other stuff. There's like a there's like a there's almost like a weight that

comes off your shoulders when you can when you think even just thinking about it like it's so

simple. So the reason I'm mostly a minimalist like that, the reason I have stuff is I realize like

you probably have to fit into society and if you want to have other people in your life,

you should probably get used to having stuff. Yeah. Because most people like stuff.

Right. Well, yeah, there's that side of it too. And there's there's a whole,

you don't want to ostracize yourself too much. And I think anything you can kind of like,

you can manipulate that a little bit where there's things that are like not specific to,

you know, that's gonna negative impact the people around you or your experiences with them.

So there's a balance like everything, I guess. Yeah. I mean, that's why I drink,

I think I mentioned you offline, drink vodka, whiskey, sort of alcohol, because I don't feel good

about it the day after or sometimes multiple days after. So I know it's not good for me.

So I do a lot of stuff that's good for me. Everything we talked about,

exercise and diet and all those kinds of things. But the alcohol almost symbolizes

embracing the chaos of life, the, the wild and the amazing things that could happen.

And I think that's really important because if you optimize everything about life,

then you're going to miss most of the fun stuff that happens in life. So it's not

all about the optimization. It's some of it, like everyone has different things

on what they, how they introduce that chaos in a controlled way. For me, alcohol is that because

I'm okay drinking not too much. So I can control that aspect. Even though it's unhealthy,

it introduces just the right amount of fun that I embrace it. Yeah. And I mean,

it is one of those things where it's like, I'm going to benefit now and pay later a little bit too,

where like, and hey, if you go and you, you go out with some friends and drink and you have

memories that last a lifetime from that experience and you paid for it for a couple of days after,

then maybe that's a fair trade off from life experience. And part of the vodka thing is,

I need to honor my ancestors. So it's like, you have to, you know, you can't,

you can't turn your back on your past. Let me ask about the 100 mile world record on the treadmill.

So for most people running on a treadmill is really boring. So that's kind of their experience

of it. That's probably the first thing that would say that seems like really boring to run 100 miles

in a treadmill. Would you say it's boring? Like, what were some places your mind went to make that

happen? So this one is interesting to me because I definitely recognized the boredom and the,

the difference. The thing that the question I can't quite answer, I think with it is like,

could I have remedied that with better preparation? Because the scenario that put me on a treadmill

for 100 miles was, you know, it was March, 2020, basically the cascade of every race

on the planet got canceled. And I was in a position where I was going to be doing a

runnable 100 miler on a track in mid to late April. So I had like the majority of my training

under my belt. So I was like, kind of putting the finishing touches on that. And I was like,

oh, great. Here we are. Like, you know, what do I do with this fitness? Do I just scale back and

hope the events come back in fall and then peak again? Or do I find something to use this fitness

for? And the treadmill was the closest thing to what I had been training for in terms of just

like a mechanical like flat running, essentially, that I could, that I could think of. And my thought

was, okay, well, I'll just live stream myself on a treadmill and see what happens. It ended up turning

into like a quite a big event. But so you don't usually incorporate treadmill running into your

running into your training? I don't not incorporate it. I just don't incorporate it in the way that

would be necessarily conducive to, you know, dealing with the mental aspects of being on a

treadmill for 100 miles. Was it that different than running on a track? It was from the sense

that here's the way I describe it is when I'm on a track, it's a controlled environment and

everything can be very uniform. But there are tiny, little micro adjustments in pace that

that I'm doing subconsciously that give me the sense of control, right? No, I might run the exact

same split, but there's like a fraction of a second or, you know, a fraction second faster than

a fraction seconds slower, that equals the same outcome. It gives you that sense of control,

you're determining how fast you're going on a treadmill, you're responding to the belt. So

the advantage is you can set a pace and know you're hitting it. The disadvantage is you're

being told what to do by that machine. And that gets very frustrating. I've felt like I wanted

to step off, like you get to like certain points where you're just like, like even stepping off

what I noticed, I learned this on the day of actually, I noticed there's something where it

didn't really matter how long I get off, like I get off to use the bathroom, and that was a little

bit of a longer break. Then I had, I had like a hiccup during my event where we ran so much power

through one end of the house that the screen on the treadmill was blacking out. So we ended up,

so I ended up jumping back and forth on treadmills for quite a bit in the beginning.

And I noticed even turning it off, stepping on the other end, starting the other one up,

gave me like, you know, a handful of seconds between, was enough of a mental break of just

like that release of being told what to do to reset. So maybe if you were in the future, you would

figure out what exactly how much is needed to have them at the break. I never actually thought

about that. I mean, obviously for you, but also for people like me, like amateur runners, that

that's the source of frustration with the treadmill, that there's sometimes small adjustments in pace

that we do running, not on the treadmill, on the ground that feel like essential for that feel,

just like you said, that experience of control, like feeling like you're in control, somehow

that's really, I don't know, that's somehow liberating in the way that a treadmill can be just

the source of frustration. The funny thing though about the treadmill is I actually like to do

faster workouts on the treadmill, like long intervals or something like that or tempo runs,

because for that type of stuff, sometimes for those, I want to release the brain power required

to hit that pace and say, you take care of that. And for that, it's fun, but those are over quick,

so you don't really run into the times. Yeah, that's fascinating. For like precise control

of pace. You've also, during that stream, got to interact with one of the greatest athletes of

all time, birth pressure, what's your, he's actually doing, I don't know if you're paying

attention to this, but I guess he has a goal of running 2000 miles this year. Yeah. I don't,

I've gotten, she has to talk to Joe Rogan yesterday about this, which is fascinating.

I think he's a little bit doubtful of, of Bert's ability to be the ultra performer that he so

naturally is. Yeah. What's your thoughts about Bert as a runner? What's your advice to him?

And what was your interaction like as part of this treadmill challenge with him?

I love Bert because he's such a nice person. I mean, as a guy who's just accelerated in popularity

over the last few years, like he is like super kind. So for folks who are curious, like, I've

met Bert a couple of years earlier, and I just randomly asked him like, Hey, I'm doing this

live stream thing. We're doing it for fight for the forgotten. We're trying to raise some funds

for them. Would you want to come on the live stream for a bit? And I thought maybe he'd come

off like five or 10 minutes. And I thought that would be amazing if he did that. He ended up

coming off like over an hour. He said, he went past his slot, sat in the next slot and just

started talking with some of the other guests. It's just, he's just, Bert is definitely like,

I feel like he's as unchanged from like his popularity as one can get away with.

And it's just like his, his lifestyle, I think is very unpredictable in the sense that like,

if he wants to run like X time for a specific race, that's going to pull away from his lifestyle

so much to focus on that. Luckily for him, he's actually a great athlete. Like it's,

it's under that layer of fat. Yeah. So people who are not familiar, Bert

Crash is a comedian who takes off his shirt often has, he's a elegant layer of fat around him.

He's also a party animal. So he's a weird balance of like healthy and unhealthy.

So he drinks a lot during, I think there's some debate about that, but certainly after

his, his performances, but at the same time he's into kind of the running thing. And he does quite

a bit of treadmill running, I think. So, and like I said, has this challenge of running 2000 miles

this year. So it's fascinating to have somebody who so fully embraces life and the full joys of

life as represented by the huge amounts of drinking and partying and just being a wild man,

but also at the same time, like being at least curious about this challenging yourself in the

physical realm. It's kind of fascinating. It reminds me of one of my favorite comedians,

like Eddie Isard, who's been doing those challenges basically off the couch, just running a marathon,

a day kind of thing. It's fascinating to see the purity of those challenges when like exercise

hasn't necessarily been deeply ingrained in your life. And you kind of just embrace the challenge

anyway and take it on. And that's another way of looking at it. Because we've been talking about

running as a performance like optimization thing where training is such a huge part of this process.

Like race day is just the cherry on top. But there's for some people where the race is the cake.

It's like they just take it on as a pure challenge. As the thing you haven't really

trained for is the thing you haven't, you don't understand the intricacies of, but you take it

on anyway. And that reveals something about the human spirit as well. Yeah. And there's definitely

like a switch that flips when you in your mind decide, I'm going to do this, where then all

of a sudden it goes from like, you stop thinking about, oh, that's not possible. So like, well,

I'm just going to do it. And I think Bert highlights that perfectly in a lot of cases where like,

he's, he's maybe not even thinking it through enough to get to the point where it's like,

he gets the point where he thinks this is not possible, where most people would look at it

and think, huh, I don't know if I can actually physically accomplish that task. Bert's just like,

oh yeah, I'm going to do it. And my, my thing thought with Bert was the 2000 mile thing is

we're, are we going to find him at the end of the year with like 36 hours to go on 100 miles?

And that's right. That's right. That's what's going to happen. And it's going to be hilarious.

So speaking of things that are insane and like taking on challenges that don't seem like you

didn't, you didn't think through, you're thinking about running across the country in, in a challenge

you call the transcontinental run. Can you describe this challenge and what the heck you're thinking?

Yeah. Yeah. So this is, uh, you know, one thing that is exciting about ultramarathons,

I think in a lot of places, especially early in someone's ultramarathon adventure, if they

decide to do that as a, you know, part of their life is you have like these early years where

you're doing things for the first time. And it's like so cool and scary at the same time to think

today I'm going to run 100 miles and the furthest I've ever run before is 50 or something like

that. And you just know you're going to do something that you've never done before. You're

going to experience things you would have never been able to predict. And it's like this really

interesting, unique like human experience, I think. So for me, I've spent most of my career at this

point like doing, I got through that phase in a lot of the events I'm really interested in.

And then it was like, now let's repeat it and see if we can do it better. And you get into that

mindset for a while, which is also a fun mindset. But there is that kind of like, uh, desire to

kind of have that human experience again of like, you know, not knowing what could happen or is this

doable type of a thing, but still doing it and figuring it out along the way. So I would describe

the transcontinental project as something like that. It's not anything unique to me or anything new.

There's been a lot of people who've done it before. But essentially it's a route. There's

different routes. There's one kind of main one that's done for like the, that is used as the

record route more or less that you go from San Francisco to New York. And essentially you live

out of an RV while you're running. So you run as much as you can during the day, then you go to

bed at night and then you get up and do it again. And you're, you're handling all the logistics in

the process of trying to make sure you can get up the next day and do again, which did the day

before, which is going to be the biggest difference. So for me, I've done all single day ultra marathons

where you're going to ring yourself dry at knowing the next day or week or however long you need,

you're going to be able to just kind of like shut everything down and let them catch back up.

Whereas with this, like, you know, you're doing it again and again and again. And, you know,

the record is by a guy named Pete Costinick who average just over 72 miles a day, finished in

42 days, six hours and 30 minutes. And I mean, just like 72 miles, 73 miles. And then like

next day again, next day again, just knowing every day when you finish, you spend a whole day

running and then, okay, I'm going to go to bed. I'm going to wake up in the morning. I'm going to

have to do this again. And then, you know, have that happen for six weeks. And that's if it goes

very well. So luck I assume is a big part of this. Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's just so many

variables that are uncontrollable on this type of an experience just because I mean, you go over

this year as maybe you hit a storm, you know, you try to time it. Most people do it in start

in September. So you can get over the mountain passes without a big storm coming through.

But then also get to the East Coast before it's like the middle of winter. So like September,

early September start is kind of ideal. But you can, you know, I mean, Pete was very fortunate

from a weather standpoint. I think he made one big mistake. We had a little too aggressive

in the beginning had to take a full day off. So he actually averaged from a moving day standpoint

closer to 75 miles per day. But yeah, I mean, there's going to be things that I can't prepare for

or won't know. It's going to happen. You know, a lot of that will get a lot of the logistical

stuff will get leaned on with the crew. So that's, I mean, that's the hardest part right now is just

like getting all that put together where it's like, okay, I need to have the RV ready. I need to have

all the stuff. I knew we need to have the places figured out where we're going to stop and the

people that can, you know, dedicate that much time to an activity like that. You know, there's

a lot of moving parts even before you start the adventure itself.

When you see you're taking the San Francisco to New York?

Yeah.

And when are you doing the run?

September 1st is when, you know, barring anything like catastrophic between now and then.

This is really exciting. But I mean, this is incredible. So you probably have a bunch of

people just randomly running with you. Are people going to be tracking where you're located?

Yeah. So I'll be documenting everything because I mean, my hope is that I'm doing it primarily to

raise awareness for Fight for the Forgotten Justin Reigns charity. But with that said,

I think I am capable of if I have a good experience, you know, chasing the record or going after the

record or at least getting close to it. So you're going to try to beat this record?

Yeah, I'm going to go out with it. I'm going to structure the process in a way that leaves

that door open is the way I would describe it. I'm going to try not to do anything that would

potentially put it in a situation where that becomes the primary goal just because I want to

make sure that the reason I decided to do the first place was for Fight for the Forgotten.

So I want to make sure that I don't end up two thirds way across the country with a broken leg

and I'm like, hey, guys, I guess the donation button's turned off. So focus on like, don't

sacrifice that goal. But also there's a community aspect to it that I feel like, are you going to

I mean, so you're going to document and post, but are you going to also,

is there a safety perspective here? It's like the Forrest Gump thing. You might have

large numbers of crowds that run along with you for a while. Are you worried about that kind of

thing? I wouldn't say I'm worried about it. I mean, I think there's probably, there's remote

enough spots along the way where you'll get some alone time more likely. I don't necessarily mind

if people want to jump in, there'll be some people that will definitely want to do that and

they can come in. But the reality is like, it's probably not going to be a scenario where there's

40 people following me at all times. You say that now. Yeah, you never know. Wait for this podcast.

Yeah. And then if Joe finds out you're doing this, then we're really in trouble. All right. So

what are the things that you think will be the hardest for you? And also like, how do you train

for this kind of thing? And what are the hardest things you anticipate and how do you train for

them? Yeah. So the way I'm looking at this is it's much less about performance from the traditional

sense where I need to be able to be ex fit. I think I need to be injury proof. That's what's

going to be a detriment. If you think about it, like, if I managed to average nine minute mile

pace for a day, that would be 80 miles in a 12 hour time frame. So I'll easily have 12 hours

of moving time per day. Nine minute pace, I think is slow enough that it's not an unreasonable clip.

So like when you, I mean, obviously there's things that slow you down or I'll probably take

walking breaks, you know, stopping breaks, you got to stay on top of nutrition. That's the other

big thing too. I mean, I'm probably eating like anywhere between 10 to 15,000 calories a day,

which is, you know, I can probably count on my hand a couple of occasions where I've eaten that

much in my life. So now I got to do that for six plus weeks in a row. And you don't want any,

having stomach problem or trying to minimize the amount of stomach problems. So would you

estimate about 12 to 13 to 14 hours of running every day? Yeah, that's probably like from the

first step to the last step, it'll probably be somewhere around like say 14 hours, 13 hours

or something like that would be a pretty good estimate. And then getting rest. And so, and then

minimizing the risk of injury, which could be as small as like, like literally uneven services

resulting to like stepping the wrong way. I mean, that's going to be a lot of steps.

Yeah, yeah. So the probability of injury, are you worried about that kind of stuff?

Can you strengthen the ankles or those kinds of things that prevent

possibility of injury? And that's where I'm putting a lot of my focus in is,

I think like just being running fit is going to be like generally speaking is going to be

important. I'm going to, I think just from a lifetime of running is going to be a huge advantage.

A lot of these like kind of like mechanical movements are going to be very established.