Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 111 - Ultra Runner Zach Bitter

Episode Date: September 13, 2018

Zach Bitter is an endurance athlete and coach. He has been competing in marathons since 2008 and ultramarathons since 2010. He is a World and American Record Holder, a 3X National Champion, and was sent to the World 100k championships as a member of the US Team. He is driven to find his limitations in a variety of environments and help others find theirs. Rewatch the live stream: https://youtu.be/UU-Ewk_f1rk ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

I don't know if it's good to get like someone who's a professional in anything called ultra. I don't know if it's a good idea to get him a nitro coffee, like ultra and nitro. It sounds like a, uh, I'm like a bad combo. I'm like, something's going to explode around here.

Let's start running laps around the studio. You can't help it. Yeah. It'd be like a Hunter McIntyre, you know, just bouncing off the walls. Hunter McIntyre. We run into him before.

Yeah. Uh-huh. I've chatted with him a couple of times. Hunter McIntyre. Have you run into him before? Yeah. Uh-huh. I've chatted with him a couple of times. He's an interesting guy. He's got a lot of energy, doesn't he? A lot of positive energy too. Yeah. Uh-huh.

How did, how did, uh, how'd you get into all this? Cause it's unconventional to be involved in, in running such great distances. Yeah. Uh, I mean, I guess I, I got into running back when I was really young and we were talking about this earlier, uh, with some of your crew, like, you know, we did the presidential physical fitness, which I don't know if it's even around anymore. Uh, but I thought that was such a cool, like kind of setup for kids to kind of learn, like where their strengths and weaknesses were from just a physical fitness standpoint. And, you know, for me though, I was, I guess, pretty average at all of it, except for the mile. I was a little better at that. And, uh, I think the thing that resonated with me with that was when I finished it, it wasn't that I ran a super fast time or anything, but, uh, I looked at all my classmates and they were all like, I never want to do that again. And I was like, I kind of want to do that again. So like, I think that's when I first had an idea, like, okay, 10 years old, 12 years old. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was like fifth or sixth grade or

something like that. And then, you know, and then the other thing too, is I think at that age, you're definitely trying to figure out what you're good at and, uh, you know, where to kind of spend your energies and stuff. And, you know, we'd go to a track and field day and I would get, you know, beat by a lot of people in the a hundred meter dash or I could win the mile. So it was like, let's do the mile. Um, and then it kind of just, it grew pretty organically. Like I don't, I didn't take it super seriously. Uh, right after that, I would, I'd love track and field day. I'd love doing that type of stuff, but I wasn't like entering a super strict training regimen or anything. Um, it wasn't until probably the end of high school that I really even paid

much attention at all to like real methodology of training and things like that. And even then it was more or less just doing what the coach told me. And I was fortunate that I had a, had a coach kind of knew what he was doing. So there was some, some real good kind of endurance periodization occurring there. And, uh, in college though, is where I really kind of started getting interested in, I guess, the science and the, um, the training stuff with it. And, uh, it was, uh, I went to a division three school in Wisconsin. And, uh, one thing I learned was of all the workouts we do, I really liked the weekend longer on the most. So after college, uh, when I didn't have a team to train with anymore, I just kind of started doing a lot

more long runs more frequently. And, uh, eventually that led to doing an ultra marathon and, uh, ultra marathons are kind of goofy where I think people look at them that haven't done frequently. And, uh, eventually that led to doing an ultra marathon and, uh, ultra marathons are kind of goofy where I think people look at them that haven't done them. And they're like, why would you do that? And I was certainly in that camp at one point. Uh, and then you do one and then your next question is usually, well, maybe I'll try this one. That's a little further. And then that kind of keeps adding up. And then before you know it, you're doing a hundred mile races or, you know, some people are doing even more than that. There's, there's six day events where you see how far you can run in six days and stuff like that too. So it's goofy, it's goofy, but sometimes I look back and wonder kind of how I ended up, ended up doing this stuff, but it's, it's been fulfilling and exciting. I've been enjoying it.

The first few times that you did it, um, obviously it sounds like a a sounds like a fairly natural progression for you uh just like it is here with us at super training where we have men and women who have lifted extraordinary amounts of weights they started out with some form of lifting as a kid maybe they got into it because of something that they were exposed to in gym class or whatever it might be and then over a period of time they start to lift more and more so it's not really a huge deal to them to bench press 400 pounds or 500 pounds or some of these big weights. Whereas other people are like kind of in, kind of in shock. Is that kind of what you feel your progression has been? Because you've, you were able to keep up a seven minute mile, I think for

11 plus hours or something like that. And it just sounds like you're just, you know, looking at it as an outsider. I'm like, holy shit, man, that is a tremendous amount of work capacity. Yeah. You know, it's, it's interesting because I think when it's, it's, it's easy. I think when you're in any type of community, uh, like for me, the ultra running community, you kind of tend to normalize this stuff. So like you start thinking, well, everyone runs a hundred mile races and the reality is that's not true. Like, so like when you're talking to folks who just, you know, don't do ultra marathons and, um, that's the majority of the population, like you got to remember like, okay, like this is a little odd and it's like, you, you have to when I went to meet with my college, uh, cross country coach, uh, he was kind of breaking down like the different training distances and things that, you know, the kids would do throughout their college career. And he was talking about a 90 mile training week. And I

remember thinking I'll never run a 90 mile training week and, you know, fast forward a few years and you're running more than that in one day. And, uh, you know, and then you, it's like you said, though, uh, you, it happens slow enough. I think that you start to kind of, uh, look at it as more, more natural or like not as, as shocking. Like, you know, when I ran that American record where I averaged seven minute mile pace, my, my first thought wasn't like, wow, I ran a hundred miles at seven minute pace. My thought was, well, how do I do this and run it in six minutes and 52nd pace? So, but had you told me that like five years earlier, if you said you're going to break an American record and you're gonna run a hundred miles at

seven minute pace, I would have been like, no way. So it is kind of interesting how that all kind of plays out. And, um, when you look at the process altogether, it is a little more gradual. We talk a lot on this podcast about goals and we talk a lot about dreams. Um, you said like years ago, there'd be no way that this would be on your, um, you know, like on your list of dreams, right? Like it just wouldn't even register. Cause you're like, I don't, I can't even make sense of that. When did this become like a goal or, or was it a goal and you just ran and you just smashed

it and didn't even really know? Yeah. You know, I think, uh, like I was kind of saying before, after college, I, I didn't really have a necessarily a strict goal as to like what I wanted to do for races. I just knew I loved running. Uh, so just doing that was kind of the goal at the time. Like, uh, I remember thinking I'm going to build my mileage up and, uh, see what it's like to run a hundred mile week. And then once I did that, you know, then it's like, well, I should probably find some races to do. And, you know, I played around with some of the races I'd done in the past, the traditional distances, like 5k, 10k, that sort of stuff. Um, and then, uh, when I did

finally decide to do an ultra marathon, then the goal was kind of just like, well, let's, let's see what this is like. Let's see if I'm any good at this. And I think the cool thing about starting ultra marathons, uh, and whenever I'm talking to someone who wants to do their first one or who's new to the sport, I always tell them, you know, really enjoy the first for all these distances. Cause you only get that experience once. So there's this really cool feeling. I think when you start a lot, you step to the line of a race and you say, well, if I, if I finish this today, I'm going to run further than I have before. And, you know, as you get further and further in the sport, you start kind of focusing

on other goals and just kind of finishing and start thinking like, well, now maybe I can do better than before. And those things kind of build off each other. And, um, you know, for me, like in terms of like running, you know, a fast hundred mile race, you know, that wasn't really necessarily on my radar until 2013. I actually was preparing for the U S 50 mile national championships and I had won it the year before. So my goal was to, was kind of twofold. I wanted to break the course record, improve my time, but I also wanted to win again. Um, and at the time I didn't really realize that I ran a pretty good race. I was actually under the old course record, but I got second place. So, um, you know, I was four minutes behind the guy who won it. And so

part of me didn't really realize, I think how fit I was that season. Cause in my mind, there was at least a little bit of a buzz that was kind of saying you didn't win this year. So you're not as fast as you were last year. You're not as, you're not as good as you were last year. Uh, and that was kind of supposed to be my A race that fall and, or my primary gold race. And since I was kind of, didn't really have a plan after that, I actually just randomly signed up for this 50 miler. That was like 13 days later thinking like, well, I'm just going to experiment here and see how fast I can recover from this. And, um, I ended up going to this really flat kind of road, 50 mile race in Chicago and ended up running five hours and 12 minutes, just about a six 15 pace per mile. Um, and that was actually the fastest 50 mile time of the year in the U S uh, and I

didn't really think I could run that fast 13 days after a peak race. So I was, I think that's when I started to connect like, Oh, I'm actually pretty fit right now. Um, and then I got invited to that race, uh, called the desert solstice track invitational. Um, and that's where like the people are kind of going there to chase various distance races, whether they're or goals, whether they're like age grouping goals or outright records and things like that. So that was really my first exposure to like ever targeting an American record or targeting a specific time, I think. And, um, really it was, it, it may, I laugh at it a little bit now, but when I went into the race that year, my thought was, I looked at like what the American record was and it had actually just gotten broken a couple of months earlier. There was a guy who was the first American to break 12

hours and a hundred miles. And he finished just under at like 11 hours and 59 minutes. And, uh, his name is John Olson. He's a super nice guy. And I remember thinking, well, if I can do 50 miles in five 12, and I should be able to slow down a fair bit. And if I can just do that twice, then I'll break the American record. So that was kind of the goal going in. And I'm, I'm sure no one thought I was going to do that, but, uh, um, that's kind of, um, that's where I kind of got that, that itch to try to do these fast, flat a hundred milers and started looking at a goal of like, how fast can I actually do a hundred miles in when the environment is pretty ideal, like a, like a track with room temperature. the form and technique that you may run a hundred miles, similar to that of the form and technique that you may use to run a marathon. You know, they're both long distances, but, you know, maybe there's some small differences in how you may conserve your energy. Yeah. You know, the way I describe ultra marathoning, especially to folks who are

more familiar with traditional distances or not familiar at all, is like you still have all the variables of running there. Like there's still like, you know, being able to pace yourself properly, proper mechanics, you know, doing specific workouts. You had beautiful hair back in the day. Yeah, I chopped that off. It was pretty long for that one though. Yeah. So like the variables are the same, you still have periodization of training, I think, and I think you still want to specify. The difference is you're specified for something a lot different. So like 100 miles, the pace that I would run for that is probably pretty close to, if not even

slower than some of my easy run paces. Whereas if I were to race a 5k race pace is significantly faster than my easy pace. So for me, I look, I kind of operate from a philosophy that you want to be race specific close to the race. So if I'm training for a 5k, I'm doing a lot of workouts that are close to 5k pace near the race. Whereas if I'm training for a hundred mile, um, I'm going to be doing like the long, slower stuff closer to the race. I'm going to move some of those shorter, faster type interval speed sessions earlier in the training block. Um, so that's kind of where it ends up. And then it's also a big variable that I guess, I guess this would be the variable. It's probably not in some of the shorter stuff is eating. Um, you know, there's, you're out there for a hundred

miles for 12 hours and, and actually, you know, 12 hours seems crazy, I'm sure. But like there's you're out there for 100 miles for 12 hours and and actually you know 12 hours seems crazy i'm sure but like there's there's people who are doing longer than that and if you get into like a much longer than that if you get into an event that's 100 miles through mountains and things like that you know you might be traveling 100 miles but it might be twice as difficult to get through places so you're planning to be out there for sometimes 20 24 hours what pops in my head immediately when you talk about eating, I think about that scene. I think it's Anchorman when he says milk was a bad choice. He's like drinking milk while he's out in the hot sun, running a hundred miles. Yeah, yeah.

That must have been a hell of experiments trying to figure out what foods to eat, but we'll get to that in a second. Break it down for me, kind of like from your toes all the way up, like what the hell happens to your body? Like what happens to your feet? Like your feet must just get destroyed. Yeah. Yeah. You see all kinds of stuff. And I've seen pictures of people who've had like blisters on their, that their size of their heel and it's literally peeled off and it's just like red raw, like skin underneath. That is like, that is like, that is some serious pain. That is just, it's not okay to deal with that pain. Like there's certain pain where you're like, oh, my knee's tweaked a little bit.

I'm going to kind of get through it. Yeah. That kind of pain is like, every step hurts severely. You're just like, ah, I can't handle it anymore. Like how long does it take to like really take your mind somewhere else to like not even feel that? Yeah. And that's the trick. That's the trick.

I think with the sport itself is like, I mean, you look at my American record, uh, you know, seven minute mile pace, most people, if they decided they wanted to run a seven minute mile could do that. And I think that's where some of this starts to differ a little bit. Like, you know, you could take like, you know, a world record for a mile and there's like very few people who could even have any business trying to break that. Uh, whereas with like a seven minute mile pace, like at no point are you really going super fast or like crazy fast. So it becomes like, you know, how much can you put your body through? Uh, and it kind of is like the way I describe it is like when you're doing a shorter,

faster thing, you have this this really sharp, intense pain. And you just have to be able to kind of push through that for a short period of time. When you're doing something like 100 miles, you get this kind of dull pain that just kind of keeps pinging your mind saying, Hey, slow down. Hey, stop. Hey, what are you doing? Just being tired. Well, yeah. And in the beginning, for me, a lot of times, I think it's somewhere around the 30 mile mark is where like you start to kind of notice things aren't feeling great anymore and you have to start getting ready to like, you know, push that feeling back. And, you know, when you get there, the way I describe it is like early on, you know, the miles click by fast, you feel great, you feel like it's meant to be, you feel like, oh, I could run this pace all day long. And then you get further and further in like those little, like,

like, uh, annoyances start to pop up more frequently. So the way I describe it is you start as the race prolongs, you start using more and more mental energy, kind of beating down those doubts, beating down those negative thoughts, beating down those like pains, like, oh, my hamstring hurts. Oh, my knee hurts. Oh, I think I've got a blister. You know, those things pop up more, more frequently and then you push them down, uh, and then they pop right back up. So you get further and further on, they pop up more quickly. And like your mind, I think just wears down from being able to do that. So a lot of times, you know, the person who's going to win the race isn't necessarily the fastest runner in just pure running. You know, it's the person who is fit ready and, uh, is in the best mental position to kind of, um, have a great day.

So your mental game could be on point, but if you're not in condition and you're right, your mental side is going to probably crumble anyway. Cause you're just, you know, I can be as mentally tough as I want to be. I mean, we can take, uh, you could take a really well-conditioned, uh, Navy SEAL who we'd all agree. And we'd all say, Hey, look, this guy's got a lot of guts. This guy's fearless. Um, but he's on a hundred mile run with you.

And at some point he may, he may fold up just because he's not in shape for it. Yeah. Yeah. There's a huge specificity to training and, you know, there's probably some, or there's definitely some just, you know, natural kind of propensities to be good at running versus getting really big or something like that. So, um, yeah, I think you, you, it kind of goes back to what we were saying before. Like, I think a lot of times with sport, you end up finding what you're good at early on and being,

trying to identify yourself, you kind of gravitate to that. And then, you know, you end up getting people who are kind of more or less a little bit genetically inclined to do something, really putting a lot of energy and effort into it. And then, uh, you know, over time, especially with a sport like ultra running, you build this huge base and you kind of have this consistency thing in place. And it's, uh, you, you can start running long distances like that without, um, without really thinking too much about it. I have two children. I got a 10 or 11 year old, just turned 11 and a 14 year old. And, uh, what I see from them and some of their friends is, um, and maybe it's just cause they're still, they're still very young.

Um, but I don't see people pursuing stuff, uh, that they're good at as much or, or even like, um, just kind of pushing on it a little harder. Like my daughter, she likes to draw and, you know, I try to give her positive feedback on it and who knows what she'll do or won't do with it or whatever. But I remember when I was a kid, like when I played football and I started to excel in that little, just even just a tiny spark of like being able to do anything in football. Then I was like, I'm all in, you know, I'm playing football all the time. And, uh, my brothers were like that too. And a lot of my friends around me at the time were like that. And as soon as I, as soon as I picked up weights, it wasn't like, I didn't really understand

what I would ever do with weight. So I didn't know that was a thing. I just was lifting them and I just happened to be stronger than some of my friends. But even with the lifting, the lifting was always kind of this side thing that I always knew I'd go back to. And I'd always knew I would, uh, I always knew I'd pursue. How does somebody, you know, have a good, a good idea of, you know, when something is, is, uh, like a good idea to really pursue, is it just one of the things that kind of takes over your life? Like running has kind of taken over your life. It seems like in

some ways where it's the only thing you're not the only thing, but probably one of the only things that you think about and focus on on a daily basis. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's rare are the moments that some running related thing doesn't pass through my mind. So no, you're right on. I think, uh, you know, it's interesting. I think, uh, one of the reasons I think I am like that is I'm a real curious person. So for me, like I'm very content picking something that it's interesting to me and just like really exploring all the avenues within that topic or within that thing. Um, you know, some people probably aren't like that. Some people are

probably more like a Jack of all trades, Renaissance man type where like, I want to try all these different things. And for them, they might not want to specialize in something where they got to, you know, spend like all their free time or, you know, their entire working day type of thing, doing that stuff. Um, they might be better off just, uh, you know, trying out a bunch of different things and experiencing all of them. And, uh, and I think really at the end of the day, like when you have young kids, especially at the middle school age and stuff, we're better off having them try a bunch of different stuff because I mean, they really don't know, they don't know what they want to do and what they're going to be good at and what they might enjoy later. So giving them like points of reference, I think are really, really key. And I mean, they're also

growing, developing bodies. So it's like when it comes to sports and activities, like, um, I'm really happy that I wasn't like all in running when I was in, you know, fifth, sixth, seventh grade and even high school. Like, you know, I didn't run year round until my senior year in high school. Um, and I'm happy about that because like, um, you know, I, I, I think there's something to be said about, you know, the way you develop having, not having like a real uniform one dimensional type of an approach. So, uh, you know, there's arguments against that too. You can say like, that's a really good point. So, uh, you know, there's arguments against that too. You can say like, really good. That's a really good point. Cause, uh, you know, I, I refer to it on this podcast before as dicking around, like you need, you need time just to like, you know, you try something and you're not great at it and you're good at this other thing and you go back and forth and you

eventually hopefully find something that you love. Yeah. Yeah. And I think too, it's like, uh, especially nowadays when, uh, you know, I was talking to this about some of the other day, it's like, what age is it that we get to when, when we decide that like, it's no longer cool or appropriate to play. Like, you know, we're, we in middle school and elementary school, we go for recess and we play and, you know, even in high school, I guess maybe less now. I don't know. Um, like I remember when I was in high school, we, you know, play pickup basketball and all this stuff. Like it was just thing to do. Um, you know, but then at some point it's like, you decide you're going to be an adult and you have to get a job. And that means you can't play anymore. And I think some of it's just like access to stuff too. Like some of the popular things like football, baseball, it's kind of hard to do with a group of adults. Whereas when you're in high school, you sign up for club or the team sport or something like that. So you kind of have the infrastructure there. Kids are incredible.

They love to play so much that they'll make up their own games. They're like, okay, we're going to play a game. And you're like, I got nieces and nephews and stuff. I'm like, okay, what are we doing? Yeah, but they always change the rules. Oh, they cheat. They're so bad at that. They cheat so bad.

It's incredible. They're like, okay, you're going to balance on that curb. And then I'm going to try to push you off the curb. And I'm just standing there and they're like four years old. They can't move me. And they're like, okay, well, they're like, okay, let me try. And I just poke them and they fall off. And like, let's play something different.

But then when they change the rules and you're sitting there halfway through an argument, like, no, no, no, you said it's this way and that way. And then you're like, am I really doing this right now? Like, well, I can't let them just be a cheater and get away with it. They got to learn, you know, what the hell's going on. And then you're just like, okay, it's not worth it, but then you just can't let them win

because then they're just getting away with it. My nephews are funny because they'll come to me and they'll show me something, like they'll dribble a basketball or they'll throw a football up in the air and catch it or something. They're like, is that good, Uncle Mark? And I'm like, nope. And then they just look at me funny and then they walk away. But I never had any younger brothers.

So this is my payback. I was always the youngest and I always got picked on and made fun of. This is my time to shine. Zach, you worked with kids for a long time. How do you think we should get kids more active then? Yeah. You know, I was, I was a school teacher for about five years in Wisconsin. And, uh, yeah, I think, uh, you know, at some point, uh, we started kind of getting away from, I think, prioritizing physical movement. And, you know, some of that was, I think just, you know, this idea that like science and

math were the future and that, you know, sitting in a cubicle was the reality. And we decided to stop sending kids out for recess. And, you know, I think like that should just be the focal part of the day. You know, if I could design a school myself at those early ages, I mean, we'd be going outside. We'd be doing that for maybe half the day and we'd be learning life lessons, moving and stuff like that and establishing, you know, that sort of thing. Um, early on, you know, that's, that's a, an important thing I think is to learn how to move your body and learn that there's many ways to do that. And, uh, I always had a, got a kick out of thinking about that. You get these like 12 year old boys.

I always had a, got a kick out of thinking about that. You get these like 12 year old boys, we're going to sit them in a desk for seven hours and make them sit still. And then we're going to blame them when they decide to get out of that desk. It's like, no way. Right. Yeah. And then you got ADHD and you got to give them all kinds of pills and weird stuff for it.

Yeah. Maybe they just need to get out and run. Yeah, I think so. I think, and I think there's ways to teach valuable lessons. I mean, I think of this too, like, like when you think back to like, uh, elementary school and even high school, like the amount of like, I think we do a lot more learning how to learn at that age, as opposed to learning specific tasks or specific facts and things like that. I mean, there's certainly, there's definitely going to be kids that you want to kind of fast track into the maths and sciences. Cause they have these early signs

that this is going to be our next, uh, Elon Musk. This is going to be our next Elon Musk. This is going to be our next genius. And it's important to give those kids the tools, I think, to really kind of find that as a passion and interest and really, you know, get into that type of stuff. But, you know, I think there's also a lot of big overreaching goals that we're kind of looking past and overcomplicating it, that we can teach kids through a variety of things and moving is one of them you know i think going outside and playing and doing things that are a little more a little more physical are going to be valuable assets for kids physical activity i mean kids love it usually when you were a teacher was that anything you were able to kind of introduce or you had to kind of stick to your curriculum yeah no i i had a lot of luck with that you know i able to kind of introduce or you had to kind of stick to your curriculum? Yeah, no, I, I had a lot of luck with that. You know, I've, I had a lot of good

administrators that were pretty open to me trying things, even if they were non-conventional. And, and then actually the last place I taught at, I taught for two years and we had a school that was, uh, it was, um, it was kind of part charter and then also part, part of the public school. So we could do a lot of a different setup. And we built a school that was like project-based more or less. And we would put on these seminars that were topic-based. And then we try to tie as many things into that topic as we could. And since we had the charter license, we could teach outside our certification. So if I wanted to try to tie in a science or a math concept in, you know, we could do that.

So the role as a teacher kind of like changed from what I think a lot of people think of. A lot of people think of this teacher as this person who is like an authority and they're going to tell you what you need to know. And in that role, it was the teacher is a professional at one thing, and that's how to learn. And they were going to teach you how to learn. And then you're going to take an interest or a passion and then tie that skill to it. Because it was always, you know, fun for me as a

teacher, there'd be a kid who had a really big interest in something and they would know way more than I would about it. Right. So it wasn't my job to try to get them to learn more about it. They already did that or wanted to do that. It was, it was my goal to kind of give them the opportunities to dive deeper or teach them different avenues to explore that topic. And, you know, I would always be looking to tie a physical activity into that if I could, because, you know, that was, I think something I saw was important to get high school kids who'd spent, you know, all their education basically sitting in desks for the most part. It's like, let's, they want to be outside at that point.

You give them an opportunity to do that. They're going to do it. It's actually a really interesting thing because when we're at death's door, I mean, you're not worried about science, math, history, you know, none of that matters. What matters is can I still move? Can I still breathe? Can I still, right. Like even just to hold your own body up, like all these things are very important. So I agree a hundred percent. I wish that there was more of a focal point on it. And I think that, you know, we are going to continue to lose when it comes to nutrition,

it's going to be very hard to turn the corner. And I hope that, you know, a Jeff Bezos or an Elon Musk or one of these guys who's really smart, you know, Jeff Bezos with Amazon and owning Whole foods. It's like that guy could really change. Yeah. He could change the, the, the country forever. Um, you know, it, it wouldn't be easy because he probably has stockholders and everything else, but he said, you know what, anything that's bullshit, I'm getting rid of it. I'm getting out of my store. And that would be debatable too on, you know, what's healthy and what's not. Cause people, people are all crazy about it, but, um, it could really have a huge impact. I mean, I was just on a website last night.

It was, uh, the grassland beef website, um, that, uh, we've heard some other people talk about on that have come on the podcast. It just has like, um, uh, you know, grass, grass fed foods on there. And, um, it's got a lot of different options in terms of like meat, but what was interesting about it, and I thought, wow, what a cool grocery store idea. It had whole 30, you click on whole 30 and had everything for whole 30. You click on keto, it had everything for keto. That's awesome.

You click on paleo and boom, there was everything for paleo. Makes it so easy. Now, obviously it'd probably be a nightmare if you're a grocery store, you know, if you have a grocery store to set it up that way for people. But I just thought, man, like this, I think this could, this could possibly be the future. Yeah. I was down at a Whole Foods when I was in Los Angeles. And it was just, it was massive.

But most of the food there, I mean, of course it had just, you know, had sugary stuff, just like any other whole foods had, but man, it, did it have an abundance, a huge abundance of foods that were very healthy? Um, that looked, that looked great. It looked like they tasted really good. It had smoked salmon, had marinated this, marinated that. And I was like, man, something like this could really be, you know, the future because not only are these healthy foods, but they also look appetizing. You know, and the prices weren't outrageous, even though it was a whole food. Well, like with like Walmart, you can like set your grocery list or whatever, and they'll go get it for you.

So if you were to have like a, like a, you know, a tab or whatever, it's like, I just want all keto. So like they don't have to rearrange their store, but they'll just have your menu right there and then just make them go get it. Yeah, you go to throw some carbs in your basket and it's like, buzzer goes off. Really quick, just for anybody on the live stream,

I'm going to have to reset it. Everything's fine. So we can keep talking, but I'm just letting everyone know where if it cuts out, we'll be right back in like half a second. So just stay with us. There is a TV show my son used to watch all the time i think it was called lazy town and it had a like it had this like fit guy was like the main guy and he was kind

of like the teacher of all these kids and his name was sporticus and he would go out he'd like work out and he would he would fight off these bad guys but the bad guys all they were trying to do is like give kids like cupcakes and candy bars and chocolate milk. It was just, it was funny. But I was like, man, like this is kind of what we're, like this is a, this is like, this parallels what's going on right now. There's just this, all these unhealthy foods surrounding us.

Yeah, it's easy to make mistakes. And I think like, you know, it's, it's, And I think when you're a kid too, I think about when I was even in middle school and elementary school, I had easy access to a lot of junk food. I crushed it. And, you know, fortunately for me, I was super active and, you know, probably I wasn't maybe as predisposed to getting obese as some kids are. But nowadays it's like, uh, you know, there's hardly even the play, like we were saying before, like now they're sucking down that soda and going and sitting, uh, and playing video games all day long. And it's like, uh, you know, you're, you're removing both of those pieces of the puzzle that are kind of, um, going to push you towards healthy, a healthy lifestyle. And then you have a recipe for disaster. I think it's really the job of the parents too, to be involved. Um, just yesterday, like I've been cooking breakfast for my kids

over the last, uh, few weeks. Um, I did a bodybuilding show not too long ago. And as I was doing the bodybuilding show, I'm like, well, I'm prepping all these healthy foods for myself. Why don't I, you know, start prepping some of these healthy foods for my kids too. And I was a little bit here and there, but not that much. I was like, no, I'm gonna do it every day. I'm gonna at least do breakfast. My wife normally takes care of a dinner and the kids are at school usually for lunch. Um, but at least there's some, uh, control. There's some monitoring of, of what they're doing. I mean, it's our job as parents to protect our children, to try to do what we feel is in their best interest. And a lot of times they're just not old enough. They're not prepared to really make all the decisions that they need to be able to make.

And that's your job as a parent. You do that from the time your kid is zero, basically, until they leave your house, you know? Yeah. And so i started taking this on but my son you know i gave him some orange juice and then he went to like pour like another big thing of orange juice and i was like no you can't you know just save that for your sister or whatever because you already had some orange juice and he's like you think that orange juice is gonna like make me fat and i said no i mean uh it's not going to make you fat today uh but it's just unnecessary

you already had some you're good to go and same thing with like soda and stuff he's allowed to he's allowed to do to every wants i just tell him uh like let's try to have some sort of moderation over let's have to have some sort of control over all of it you know yeah you know it's interesting too because like you know i don't necessarily think we need to demonize any one specific food. It's like, you know, it seems like dosage is usually the issue. And then, uh, portion control with that dosage is like, you know, hard to control when you can suck down a thousand calories in a little jug, as opposed to having to eat that in a raw fruit form or something like that. What does your diet look like?

I know you've talked about it quite a bit on many podcasts. You have your own podcast that you have with Dr. Sean Baker, and you've been talking about basically kind of a keto diet, but obviously with what you do and being able to, or sometimes having to train multiple times a day, uh, there must be some carbohydrates in here somewhere, right? Yeah. You know, that's where it gets interesting. I, I, you know, I, when I started running ultra marathons, I was very much kind of what

I would call a, uh, a clean whole food, high carb, like a diet approach. And, you know, that was basically where all the, where all the information kind of leads in a Dern's runner. Um, and it was, uh, end of 2011 when I switched to a high fat approach. And, you know, some of that was just because like, I started noticing things seem to be like a little, a little unnatural. I mean, it was in my mid twenties and here I was waking up three, four times a night, uh, to go to the bathroom or just, uh, you know, tossing and turning and then having kind of big energy swings. So at the course of the day and noticing like swollen ankles and things like that after big workouts and, you know, it would have been easy. And I mean, you certainly could have pointed to

my lifestyle as a product of that. Like, I mean, I was training hard. I was racing 50 at that time, lifestyle as a product of that. I mean, I was training hard. I was racing at that time, 50 mile races and things like that. The question to me though, was do I enjoy this activity? And the answer was yes. So I'm like, well, I don't want to make that the first thing I cut out. I want to keep doing it if I can, if I'm not going to drive myself into the ground, but I got to fix some of these signs that are super. You're also thinking like, I got a couple of friends that, that train just as hard as I do. Right. Or, you know, some people that train at least as close as hard, as hard as you do.

And you're like, they're not suffering from these other problems. So yeah. You got to figure something out. And even if they are like they, you, you can easily justify, well, you know, it's a, this is just what happens. You know, this is what we, this is what we, this is the, the, the path it takes to be an endurance athlete. Isn't that an interesting mindset?

Like, yeah, your back's supposed to kill you when you power lift. Right. Yeah. Actually, it's not. You actually, you should, you should feel, you should actually feel good. You should feel strong. Yeah. Somebody be like, huh?

Yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it was interesting to me because around that same time, I, this was probably just a somewhat a stroke of luck on, on my part. I, I had been looking at how much I was training as well as just like where I want to invest my time. And I was a full-time teacher at the time too. So I was investing sometimes upwards of 20 hours a

week to running. And then, you know, you're working a full-time job on top of that. There's not a whole lot of extra time there. So you have to ask yourself at some point, is this worth all that? And, uh, you know, I, I was probably more or less looking for a reason to say yes. So I decided I was gonna start listening to podcasts and audio books and things like that, uh, while I was doing runs. So I could kind of justify that at least I'm learning something and getting this run in at the same time. So when I was interested kind of in nutrition and, uh, you know, a high fat approach, I started just kind of consuming a lot of information on that through podcasts. And then you could go back and look at articles that they referenced and things like that. And that kind of got me connected with, um, these guys, uh, Dr. Jeff Bullock and

Dr. Steven Finney, who kind of been like kind of huge guys behind the scenes with, uh, Dr. Jeff Bullock and Dr. Stephen Finney, who've kind of been huge guys behind the scenes with the more current move. Did you end up meeting up with those guys, perhaps? Because I know Dr. Finney is here in Northern California. And I think that you used to live in this area, correct? Yeah, I was in Davis for a year and Sacramento for a year before moving to Phoenix. So yeah, I've met Dr. Finney a couple times and Dr. Bullock a few times, actually. And I've corresponded with both of them over email from time to time. And, uh, Those guys know a lot of information, man. They do. It's, it's, it's insane. And, uh, Dr. Volokh used to be a power lifter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. So it was, uh, you know,

the lot of stuff they said made sense to me. Um, it made sense like, uh, in the way they broke down kind of how to do it. And fortunately for me, they looked at performance as well as just, uh, you know, keto as a, as a, you know, something to help you with epilepsy or seizures or type two diabetics, um, at least enough to kind of have some literature available. And, um, so I started kind of diving into that stuff and, you know, for me, it's always been like, well, let's try this. And if it doesn't work, I can always go back. And if it does work, great, I found something. So, you know, I, I, I started doing a relatively strict or I guess, very strict ketogenic diet, like what you'd see a clinical stuff like the 30 to 50 grams a day. And, you know, just, you know, I read enough to know that it was probably gonna take a few weeks

for it to kind of really, really start to click or have that metabolic switch flip. And, um, I also started it kind of after the end of a season. So I wasn't like in the middle of a big training session. Was the protein real low and the fat was real high? Yeah. Yeah, it was. It was, uh, I think my, my protein was certainly under 150 grams. Fat was probably making up close to 70, 80% of my intake during that introduction phase. Did you find any of that to be kind of gross? I've done that style. I've done regular keto diet or even a low-carb diet, but I've done a clinical keto diet before where it's like 80, 90%, you know, some crazy amount of fat. And I found the diet to be somewhat enjoyable, but also somewhat gross. Cause like eating fat, especially even

like, uh, even if it's two hours before you train, it takes a while to break down that fat. I found that to be, uh, not a desirable, not desirable position to be in is like to chug down some fat before you go train. Yeah. And you know, I've done, I've done different, different kind of like approaches with low carb where I'm really strict about protein and keeping protein at a relatively low amount. Um, more recently though, I, I've been a little more relaxed with that and, you know, I don't fear if my protein gets up to 20, even 30% sometimes. Um, and, uh, you know, it's, uh, I, I think it's like a lot of things, you know, we, we like demonized protein at some degree and, you know, there's, you know, some study or something that said protein does this protein does that. And like, you know, then you look into it and

it's like, well, it does this in that context, but it doesn't in this. And so then you have to really, really ask yourself, like, you know, what's really going on here. And, you know, for me, it's, it's like, you know, I, I like to listen to my body and let that be the guide. So like, if I'm feeling less like subpar performance wise, I've got a pretty good grasp of what it feels like to be optimal versus, you know, not feeling quite right. Um, just based on the volume of running and stuff I've done over the last few years that like, if I reintroduce a new concept, I'm pretty confident that my body will tell me if it's a good thing or a bad thing to do. Um, but yeah, with the carbs, like, I guess to answer your original question too, it's like, um, I think a lot of times people will look at,

they'll say, you know, here's this endurance athlete that is low carb or keto or eat zero carbs or no carbs. I cringe a little with that because it's not a zero carb diet. Not that not what I'm doing anyhow. It's it's it's what I look at any of these things as tools. So like for me, it's like it's not about like going on this this journey to demonize a carbohydrate or to glorify fat or protein or anything that it's like, well, how am I going to use these to optimize my own performance, my own health? And for me, that so far, that answer has been, you know, matching that stuff to lifestyle. So I have an interesting lifestyle in the sense that if you would pluck like a week out of my year and you pick a peak training week,

you might find a week where I'm doing running twice a day, maybe going to the gym, doing some strength, doing some mobility. And at the end of the week, I'm training upwards of 20 hours. You could also pluck a week out of the year where I just finished my peak race for the season and I'm barely moving for a week. So those are two completely different lifestyles. So for me, like to kind of dial in a nutrition plan and kind of plug and play and do the same thing day in and day out out doesn't make a whole lot of sense in that context because there's all kinds of things in between too. Like those are the two ends of the extreme. There's stuff in the middle as well, where I'm kind of slowly building volume or gradually introducing some intensity. Um,

so it's a very periodized year in terms of, uh, training. So I try to do the same thing with my diet where I, I call it a periodized high fat approach where when I'm kind of in the… So your diet and your training change together. Yeah. What do you know? More of a concept. How nuanced. Yeah.

But, you know, what it is is, you know, when I'm in that kind of off-season mode or low volume, low intensity, you know, that's when I'll keep my carbs super low or non-existent. You know, I'll do phases where I'm eating essentially a quote unquote zero carb approach. Um, and then once I start kind of adding more volume and maybe a little bit of intensity training, I'll up the carbs a little bit. And then when I'm in peak training, that's when my carbs are usually going to be at the highest. When I'm in peak training, the nature of peak training is that it's pretty harsh on your body. So even during those phases, I'm doing like deload weeks where after a couple of weeks of real hard work, I'll step back and kind of reduce volume and intensity. So those offer up great spots to kind of also do a really low carb reset during that timeframe. And really at the end of the day, what it comes out to is at

the end of the year, if I would just average everything out, I'm taking in approximately 10% of my intake from carbohydrate. You know, there's phases of the year where I get up to 20 and maybe a couple days where I even hit 30% carbohydrate, but then there's also days where I have 0%. And when you look at the nature of an ultra marathon, you know, it's relatively low intensity. So a lot of my work is aerobic. A lot of my work is not very, not very intense. Uh, so I can get away with training with a fuel substrate that is a little slower acting, uh, especially if it gives me the advantage of not having to do a lot of extra onboard fueling when I'm racing. Um, and, uh, gives me a more sustained energy source or something that I don't have to worry about

depleting. Um, you know, so I think it's a lot of times it's like, you know, when you start doing, when you start pairing lifestyle with nutrition, that's when you start finding the answers. And, you know, everyone's different too. Like I've had coaching clients and stuff where, you know, they're interested in doing a keto or high fat approach and we start them off. And usually my protocol is let's do a hard reset. Let's go really low keto, And usually my protocol is let's do a hard reset. Let's go really low keto, really low carb keto and kind of let that your body reset. And then as we start training again, we'll start introducing some carbs if we need to, based on carb for a workout. They're hitting like short interval sessions with really low, almost more clinical keto approach, lower than what I've been able to get away with. And I got other times where it's not quite that same.

You know, it's like they lose that last gear and they, you know, we start looking at ways to sneak in some carbohydrates to kind of, you know, punch that. And the thing that I'm most interested in these days is actually like a workout frequency versus actual intensity. I think a lot of times people jump right to intensity equals carbs, slow aerobic equals fat. And I mean, that's true to some degree, but, um, you know, when you have someone who's really fat adapted, uh, if you're training really intensely, you're probably not training as long. So if you're working out once a day for like 45, 60 minutes, super intense, you've got a good 23 hours before your next workout. Um, so those folks might actually be able to get away with less carbs than me even, uh, just because they're giving their body the time to kind of restock glycogen, um, through

other channels outside of just taking in carbohydrates, whether that be protein or some through other channels outside of just taking in carbohydrates, whether that be protein or some trace amounts of fatty acids and stuff like that. So it's, I think it's a little different. You really have to consider the lifestyle and ultimately, you know, be your own kind of compass with that stuff too. No, you bring up a great point. Lifestyle is a huge part of it. So if you're, if you're a bodybuilder and you're trying to build up your, uh, unless it's trying to, you're just trying to build muscle period. It makes a lot of sense that you do a workout that's 45 minutes, maybe an hour. You know, you got a little bit of a warmup in there, whatever it might be.

It makes sense that you just pound the ever living, living crap out of whatever move, whatever a body part is you're working for the day you're working your back or whatever it might be. When you're done with your training, the quickest way to recover from your training and the quickest way, maybe not even to recover, but the quickest way to kind of replenish everything is to get in some salt, get in some carbohydrates, get in some protein. It doesn't always have to be done that way. There's many different ways you can go about doing it, but sometimes bodybuilders will even do two sessions in a day. It's very common for CrossFitters to do multiple sessions in a day. And it just doesn't really make a lot of sense unless you're going through something specifically for a very specific

reason. Maybe you just want to like suffer and just want to go through something mentally that's challenging. And that's enough reason too, because as athletes, we got to get to these points where we're kind of screwed in some way. So maybe, you know, potentially you could work out two or three times in a day and go no carbs, but it's going to be really damn hard to get through that. And as long as it's just for a period of time, you'll be totally fine. And you keep going back and forth, like, like you're saying between some of these different styles of diets, as Jay Cutler has said on this podcast, he's a four-time Mr. Olympia. And he said, you don't need to be fancy. You just need to be consistent. And I love that mindset. And that, that really plays into

shit running a hundred miles. Like I ain't got to start out real fast and I don't have to be fast in the middle. And I ain't got a sprint at the end. I just have to do my thing, my way, one foot in front of the other. I got to pay attention to my breathing and I just got to keep going. And it's just that consistency that will take you to where you want to go. But in terms of, you know, some power lifters, I've had a lot of power lifters ask me, you know, they're like, shit, man, like, do you lose strength when you get rid of carbs do you lose this do you lose that yeah first of all when you lose any significant amount of weight you are always going to lose strength the only exception to the rule is every once in a while somebody be like somebody may be uh very under

trained maybe they never really trained before in their life. Now they're starting an exercise program. Now they're starting to hit some weights. They go on a low carb diet and three months later they lost 30 pounds and they gained some strength. That's because they didn't have a reference point to begin with, or they're never really that strong in the first place. Yeah. And so,

but very rarely do we see somebody, you know, lose a really big chunk of body weight and get stronger. Get stronger at the same time. The carbohydrates, as you mentioned, I've heard you talk about this before. I'd like you to expand on it a little bit more. When you don't have carbohydrates in your system, sometimes you're missing that kind of top end that you're talking about peaking for these competitions and stuff. Sometimes you're missing that peak performance, that last little oomph, that last little bit. Can you tell us what that's like and how that feels when you

maybe don't have carbohydrates in your system versus when you have some in your system? Yeah, for me, it's, I've played around with this a lot because, you know, I've, you know, I've seen a variety of different like amounts of carbohydrate or lack thereof seem to work for people. So I'm always curious about, okay, well maybe it's going to work differently for me this time. So I've kind of run this experiment on myself time and time again, where usually what I'll do is like, uh, when I'm kind of building up towards peak training, uh, all inevitably, at least for me, I've inevitably gotten to a point where I go out and I try to do a workout on a strict clinical ketogenic approach. And, uh, either I just cannot hit the same interval pace that I've been able to hit in the past. Um, or I'll notice that like my heart rate

is a decent bit higher at a given pace. Um, and for me, that's the sign that like, okay, my body needs a little bit of carbohydrate to kind of, um, you know, tip sharpen the spear, so to speak. Um, so for me, that's when I've always done that. And it is where I feel like a lot of people are, I don't want to say misled because there's certainly people doing phenomenal in the high carb approach in the world of endurance. Um, but for me, it's like when I bring back a little bit of carbohydrate in the context of being fat adapted, uh, it doesn't take much. Like I'll, I'll bring it up. Like say I'm doing the strict clinical ketogenic approach. And then I noticed, okay, my workout, my high end workout speed is suffering a bit. No, I might bring back, uh, you know, a relatively low amount. Like maybe I bumped my

carbs up to 20% for a day or two. Uh, which, you know, when you look at a traditional endurance nutrition program, you're probably looking at 60, 70, in some cases, even 80% carbohydrate. Uh, you know, so it's relatively really low still, but that always brings my heart rate back down at that given pace. And I'm always able to still then hit those fast intervals paces. So for me, it's like, the question is like, how are we using carbohydrates? Are we kind of taking something that is a great performance enhancer and abusing them by making it the majority of our diet, or can we kind of keep them limited? And then when we do bring it back, it's got way more

punch to it. Um, and that's kind of what I've seen in my own training. And some of the folks I've worked with is that like, you know, if we get you fat adapted enough, then we can bring the carbs back a little bit and they just work a little better. It's the, the, the best comparison I've used, I think so far as like caffeine, you know, like you, you have a little bit of caffeine and it gives you a nice pop, uh, you overdo caffeine and you're kind of like oh and then boom you crash so i mean the carbohydrates kind of work the same way i think you know you you you always think a little bit more is going to be better a little bit more is gonna be better and eventually you kind of hit that margin of diminishing

returns and you know personally i just think especially with endurance where even if you're training for like a 5k you're spending a lot of your working hours in an aerobic state uh you, you know, I think we may be, uh, for a lot of people at least, or some people, at least we've overestimated how much carbohydrate they actually need to, to perform. And it gets a little, I think it gets a little more, uh, uh, valuable when you move away from like these folks who are like at the absolute tip of the spear in the sport. Um, you know, you get these Olympic athletes and, you know, the continent always get as well. Why are all these Olympic athletes doing high carbohydrate? You know,

if your approach works so well, they would all be doing it. Right. And, and, you know, I, you know, it's a, it's a great question. It's an awesome question. And it's, well, the one I would ask if I were on there, if I was arguing their side as well. And, you know, to me, it's like, I'm thinking about this, you know, we're shuttling these people into this system, more or less of like, this is what you do if you're an endurance athlete. successful or they fall along the wayside somewhere. So my question is always, and it's simply just a question. It's like, well, what happens if we take those people who had all the potential in the world when they were young and some, for some reason fell off in their late 20s, early 30s, you know, what happens if we would take them and tried something different nutritionally? Would that have been a ticket for them? Would that have been something that would have been beneficial for keeping them in the sport or being able to compete at a high level.

So all we've really done, I think, by saying this is the only way to meet full potential in endurance sport is identify the people who can really handle that process quite well. We're also super talented, super gifted, and had a really good work ethic and went out and were able to do all the workouts and things and stay healthy. So, you know, it's just it's one of those those things where like, I never want to deal with absolutes. Like I think absolutes are the, what the downfall of a lot of really smart people. So like, you know, for me to say, everyone should do my, you know, periodized ketogenic approach would be kind of silly. Um, but then on the same side of things, I think it's kind of silly to say, you know, everyone doing endurance sport needs to do high carb. Right. Um, you know, I've just worked with a lot of, and this is what I was trying to say before

too, with people who aren't quite at the top, they're just, they don't have the genetic propensity or the, the lifestyle required to get to the very top. You know, if I have someone who comes to me and, you know, they're like, uh, I want to improve, uh, I need to lose 20 pounds. You know, they're like, I want to improve. I need to lose 20 pounds. You know, when I'm eating this endurance athlete, high carb diet, I, you know, I can never seem to lose anything. And then I put them on a keto diet and they lose that 20 pounds.

They're going to be faster just because they're carrying around 20 less pounds. And I'm not even saying like that the ketogenic diet is this magic weight loss thing. It's not. Like you can lose weight on a high carb diet as well. But what it comes down to is the individual. So when we stop trying to put the same program on everyone and start focusing on the individual, that's where we can find out. Maybe this person who had 20 pounds to lose has a hard time regulating appetite when they have a high carb context in their situation. And when they go low carb, they drop their energy intake and they lose that extra 20 pounds. Um, so it's really, I think something where we have to look

at all the pieces of the puzzle, which are going to be different from each person. And then, uh, you know, start unpacking it from there. And, uh, it's for me, I love it because it's like, you're playing around with things, you're getting curious and, um, trying different things. And, uh, it's always fun to see someone kind of have that click and say oh this worked great for me or you know i'll get an email from someone saying oh i read your you know your website about kind of how you periodize high fat and i i started doing it and i just ran my best race and you know i'm 42 and i ran a faster race than i did when i was in my 20s and that sort of thing so it's like um you know i i just think it's like why would we want to eliminate any tools? Like we, we have an opportunity to create multiple tools. Let's use them all. Let's see what works for everyone or what works for some

people, but maybe not others. And then instead of saying, well, look at this person, they did this on a high carb. I mean, I think that's great. Good. They did that. Um, keep doing it as long as it's working, keep doing it. Um, but don't tell someone else that that has to be the way they do it or you know they won't be successful or they you know won't get where they want to be either so for performance and uh in in ultra marathon or just long distance running or endurance and whatnot is just being as light as you possibly can be optimal or is there like a certain tipping point or you know eventually look like for you what's your best what's your best fight and wait yeah yeah no and that's an interesting topic and it's definitely a touchy subject i think with endurance runners i

you know a lot of endurance runners get down this kind of nasty rabbit hole where they think well the lighter i get the faster i get power weight ratio. And they, they somehow forget the power side of the power weight ratio and think if I could just lose two more pounds, I'm going to lose strength. Right. Yeah. So I think there's always a, there's a, there's a tipping point, like I'm in on both ends where, you know, you don't want to be super bulky in areas that aren't going to move you forward, but you don't want to be super weak either. So, you know, I've, uh, I've raced at a variety of different weights for me personally. Like usually I feel my best at around one 40. Like when I'm at one 40, I feel like I'm light, but I'm strong. If I get much under that, I start feeling like I'm,

you know, light, but I'm not strong at all. And much over that, it's like, you know, then I'm just like, maybe I'm stronger, but I might not be stronger in areas that are beneficial for running a hundred miles. That's not to say that that's not necessarily good for just overall health. I think it probably is. I don't necessarily think running a hundred miles is a great longevity protocol. It might be, it's a, it's a lot better than the couch potato protocol, but you don't need to run a hundred miles to get the health benefits from running. So yeah, yeah, I think, uh, you know, a lot of times that's what you see it all the time. The endurance, the endurance world, like great runners to like fall off because they got kind of stuck down that, that poor relationship with food thing.

And, you know, you know, trying to get as light as they can and then having the performance suffer. And, and I think it's tough for some people because they look at someone who's just like kind of naturally a really, really slender person and think, well, that's what I should look like to be a fast runner. And for them, that's just not the reality. Um, and I think, uh, I'm not sure, uh, why that is necessarily other than, you know, I think just the people who are kind of the, like I said before, the tip of the spear, they tend to be able to naturally be a little lighter. Um, and then their, their body just kind of works well at that, that, that lighter weight. So we see, we see like the Olympic marathoners and stuff are pretty tiny people. Uh, and then someone thinks, well, I have to look like

that in order to be good. And that's just not their reality. Yeah. Sometimes it's hard to really like, uh, it's hard to, it's not hard to like fit into like certain categories. Like, um, you know, if you want to, if you want to play football and you want to be a free safety, that's going to weigh a certain weight. If you want to be a running back, that's going to be a certain weight. Um, there's all these things that have these certain features to them, but as you get closer to the best, the best people in the world, you know, the best CrossFitter in the world, uh, the fastest runner in the world. And some of these things, you start to get closer to that, then that's like, wow, like you need a lot of genetic components to kind of all come together along with all the dedication, along with the longevity of being

able to train that long, along with being able to avoid injury, along with having good coaches, along with having good knowledge. I mean, a lot of things have to really, uh, line up and sometimes even just your flat out body type, you know, for something like bodybuilding, these pro bodybuilders, it's, it's, I, out of asking a lot of these pro bodybuilders, uh, many of them told me that they're unaware of any, uh, high level pro bodybuilder that was fat. Uh, that's, that's a professional that competes, uh, on the Olympia stage, which is interesting. And it doesn't, doesn't really say that, uh, somebody that was fat can't turn lean. We've seen a lot of people do it. I've done it myself,

but, um, it does give you kind of an idea of you can't really change who you are or what you're made up of uh it would be very hard for me to turn into a 100 mile runner uh however i could probably run just fine uh but for me to get to the top level that would probably be an unrealistic thing just due to the fact the way my body's been shaped for so long or for me to be a jockey and ride a horse or what you're right like the horse would be like get the hell off i'm down to give that a shot because people are asking like oh no so is mark going to do a marathon next so i'm like i hope not because i don't want to train to do that no i definitely i definitely want to uh mess around with some running I'm just not sure when. Yeah.

That's the only thing. Last time I did it, I nearly killed myself. So I need to pay attention to that. But I enjoy running. I like the, it's a pain in the ass, but I like anything. Like we do farmer's carries in here sometimes. And we do like walking lunges and some of these things. For some reason, I love anything that the moment that you start to do it that you want to quit yeah yeah like as soon as you go like for me anyway i'm not i don't love running you know so it's not really my thing but the second that i go for a run i'm like i just want to stop

and there's something like kind of thrilling to me about continuing that process when you do a farmers carry uh and uh we sometimes do it with this trap bar that we have in here, it just kills your hands. Right away, your hands feel like they're getting torn in half. And that's all you can focus on. Like, that hurts, that hurts, that hurts, that hurts with every step you take. Yeah. I got to make it through it. Yeah, a lot of anxiety from that because you start looking and like, dude, I'm not even halfway there and I already want to stop.

Then you get halfway. It's like, fuck, dude, I'm not even halfway there and I already want to stop. Then you get halfway. It's like, fuck, dude, that took everything out of me and I still got halfway to go. It just turns you into a bitch right away. Right away, yeah. Well, it's funny too then because I think you set benchmarks then, right? Like you get to a certain spot and then next time you're like, well, I'm at least going to get to that spot. And then you go a couple feet further and then before you know it, you're going further than you ever thought. I think that's, that's the same thing with running too. Like, you know, like I've been

really fortunate and rarely gotten injured since I've started kind of really being serious about running. But I had a, um, I had a injury last year where I was out for seven weeks and I had to stay off impact. So like all the eccentric contraction stimulus I'd had and like my quad muscles gone by that point. So I went out for like a, I think I did like a five mile run or something like that on just a flat concrete, like minute to two minutes per mile slower than I normally would for that run. Next day, my quads were more sore than they had been after some 50 kilometer races. And it's just like, you know, you, you get to that. I think like with running, especially it's like, uh, there's like this three to four week stretch of time where like every part of it is just like, this sucks, this sucks, this sucks. And then something kind of

clicks eventually and you start enjoying it a little more. But I mean, it is also one of those things where like, um, some people probably just will never really like to run. Not that much anyway. And then it's like, uh, the cool thing about all the modern technology and stuff is there's, you've, you do have access to a lot of different ways to move your body. So if you choose that moving your body is in your best interest, which I think everyone should do, it's like, you've got a lot of things to pick from. You just gotta like look for them, find them and then find what one you enjoy. So even if you're an adult, it's not too late to do that. How are you preparing for these competitions? Let's say running aside for a minute because we can dive a little deeper for some of the people that are listening that enjoy running.

Running aside, how are you training for this otherwise? Are you swimming? Are you lifting? What do you got going on? Yeah. Um, I would say like if from a cross training standpoint, uh, the most specific thing I would do is like some mobility work and then some strength work in the gym. Um, you know, I was telling the guys here before is like, yeah, if you guys saw my strength routine, you'd probably be laughing at me, but, but, you know, I think there's definitely like, you know, when you're in a sport like mine, where it's such a kind of one dimensional movement, more or less like, uh, you're going to have like, uh, muscle dominance in certain areas and weaknesses and others. So I think like some of those real basic fundamental movements like squats and deadlifts and lunges and things like that are

really important for runners to do. Uh, I think that's, uh, you know, just, uh, I think it's just good to overall health too. Like when you have a huge muscle imbalance, like for me, it used to always be my posterior chain was way weak. And I think that's pretty common for endurance runners, especially like long distance ones. Um, you know, so I started doing a lot of like deadlifting, deadlifting, uh, and stuff, just, uh, especially during like the base phase of training or the early phase of training. Um, and just try to really get that, that area of the body kind of a little more strong, a little more resilient. Um, and I think it's just, it's, it's important. And, you know, I like weightlifting too.

Like I started weightlifting actually back when I was in high school. Um, you know, just because that's what you're supposed to do to get chicks to like you, I guess. You got to have some muscle on there. Yeah. So, I mean, I love going out the sleeves of the shirt. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, from, in terms of a real passion, I've certainly gone the opposite direction

in terms of that, but like, uh, you know, in high school and even in college and time for a zig, I love going to the weight room and, um, you know, doing some of those core lifts and things like that. And, uh, there's, there's a certain like feeling of accomplishment or satisfaction when you like, you know, like you're able to like, you know, be relatively strong, you know, overall, as opposed to just like really good at one thing, but useless at everything else. What about the upper body? Some people don't really like to train the upper body. It's a kind of concern that you might put on too much mass and maybe it's not a, not something you need to run. Yeah. I mean, I think with, there's certainly parts of the

upper body that are probably like, aren't going to necessarily help you a whole lot for running. Having 22 inch arms is probably not a great idea. You're like, oh my God, these things are slowing me down. You'll look good though. Yeah. For about 20 seconds. Bicep curls are probably not the first weight, weight room routine that an endurance runner is going to go for, but I do, you know, what I like to do is, uh, I focus real heavily on like, uh, the core, especially the core in the upper body. Um, and then, uh, outside of that, I try to just work on some real functional movements, like pull-ups and push-ups and things like that, where, where it's like, I w I don't want to like, if I'm running out there, if I trip in the trail fall over, I don't want to be so weak that my collarbone breaks. You know, like, like that's a, you know, that's, that wouldn't bode well for me when I get older and I'm no longer competitive

anyhow. So like, I think kind of keeping around strength and stuff like that. And I think the endurance world is coming around to that a little bit. I think that we're seeing more professional athletes at, at the high level of the more traditional distances from 5k to marathon, you know, getting into the weight room and not being afraid to, you know, even put on a pound or two of muscle. Um, and I think that's something that we'll probably see continue, uh, as a sport in the science and the sport starts to keep growing and moving forward. What about conditioning the upper body? Has anybody ever talked about that? Like, um, uh, maybe throwing punches or hitting a speed bag for really long periods of time, or even just, uh, they have that, uh, that like arm deal or, or even just doing like excessive amounts

of pushups or having somebody battle ropes or something. Yeah. Battle rope, or maybe having someone hold your legs and you do like wheelbarrow. Like, uh, is it like, how, how nerdy do you get on some of this stuff? And have you heard about anybody really doing anything with the upper body? Yeah. Uh, um, I know people people do i don't know necessarily i'm sure there's some study out there somewhere that says like this is the thing to do for yeah i'm not necessarily i don't really know what it is

to be honest but uh um you know i think the i think there's some like probably value in like keeping your upper body strong enough. Cause I mean, you're still swinging your arms, you're running and when you're doing ultra marathons, you're a lot of times you're carrying a water bottle, you know? So it's like carrying one of those really tiny dumb wells. So like if you're completely like deficient in strength in your upper body, you're going to start changing your gait because your arm isn't able to be positioned the way it should be while carrying that water bottle after a while. And, um, and you know, some events too, I mean, you're carrying a pack, so it's like, I think there's, um, and then that would be like, you know, when you think of like

how your body is going to get stressed when carrying a backpack, it's like, there's a lot of stabilizer muscles in the core and lower back that are making that, uh, you, you able to do that in a good biomechanical position. So, um, I think there's a lot of stuff that, that, uh, you, you able to do that in a good biomechanical position. So, um, I think there's a lot of stuff that, that, uh, you know, people have in the back of their mind. Uh, but, um, I couldn't say how many people are actually executing or not. I see your endurance runners in the gym more doing upper body stuff than I probably would have in the past. So, um, something's resonating. Yeah. Um, so in terms of like running, uh, we can get to your actual running in a second, but it's just on a totally another level that people will understand. Where should somebody start? Like, is it okay to just kind of start with like, uh, uh, you know, I'm going to go out and I'm going to try to run today. And, uh, if I need to walk for a little while, I'm going to do that, but I'm just going to see if I can just, I don't know, make it around the block. And if I got to walk a little bit, then I'll do that. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, uh, you know, I think it goes back to what we were talking about before,

you know, if you, I think a lot of people it's that getting started, right. Getting that routine in place and then, you know, being afraid of the process because they think I've never run before, or I'm way overweight or, uh, you know, I can't do this. And they start thinking about like where they maybe want to be or where they envision themselves. They think like, oh man, well, if I could just run a marathon, that's a big kind of pill to swallow if you've never run before. Um, so, uh, you know, I think like getting the routine in place is key. So if that means going around the block once and walking half of it and kind of run shuffling

the other half of it, that's a phenomenal start because that is one block of walking and shuffling more than you would have done if you decided to put it off another day. And then if you do that and get it done, you know, pat yourself on the back. You know, you just did something you weren't going to do. Otherwise that's a step in the right direction and tomorrow, see if you can do it again and maybe you'll go a little further. And then that stuff builds off itself. I know it's kind of cliche or it's like one step at a time and that sort of stuff, but it's so true. It's so true. Like, you know, people, people don't get to these like big achievements, you know, and they can be very personal too. You don't have to run a world record or American record to these like big achievements, you know, and they can be very personal too.

You don't have to run a world record or American record to be a big achievement. You know, for, for most people, like, you know, running a marathon isn't a, regardless what your time is, it's a pretty phenomenal feat. Well, how excited are you? And someone comes up to you and they said, you inspired me to run. And I ran my first mile yesterday and it took me 11 minutes. You're, you're pumped. Yeah. You're like, I don't care. I don't care how long it took you. Yeah. I first mile yesterday and it took me 11 minutes. You're, you're pumped. Yeah.

You're like, I don't care. I don't care how long it took you. Yeah. I don't care if it took you 20 minutes. Uh-huh. You know, that's great that you got started. That's awesome. No.

And it's, it's great. That's probably one of my most, uh, exciting things to see if I get an email or a social media, like comment about saying, Hey, I listened to you on this podcast and I decided to start running and I, I did this or I changed this. I think, you know, that's, that's great. I mean, I don't teach anymore, but I got into teaching for a reason because I love like learning stuff and kind of passing that on to someone else. So if I can do that, even if it's virtually through a podcast, that's, that's really cool. And, uh, you know, you don't maybe see quite as much of that when I go on like a podcast that's geared to running. Cause most people listening to those are actually runners already. So for them to say, Oh, I got off the couch because of your pockets, I'm more likely to get one and say, Oh, I tried your nutrition approach. And that one of the fatties listen to this right now, hopefully get up and run. Right. Well, no, it's a, and it's, that's the cool thing about coming on some of these other, the pockets that are not necessarily running specific podcasts

is you reach such a different audience in terms of what, um, you know, what people are doing. And, you know, if, if someone decides to go out for a run today, or even if they just say, Hey, cool, this guy, you know, it started out, you know, running just, you know, a mile at the presidential physical fitness thing, and then found himself running a hundred miles one day. If he can do that, then I can certainly go to the gym and start a strength routine. I'd rather get big and buff anyway. So I'm going to go that direction. Then great. That's cool too. So, I mean, I think it's, uh, it's like we were talking about earlier. It's, uh, um, if I can inspire anybody to get out and, and work out and move and, uh, get the satisfaction of, uh, of that healthy lifestyle,

then I think it's, it's one of the most fulfilling things. Have weights ever hurt you for your run for your running? Um, not that I know of, although I'll say this like every once in a while, like if I don't do a deadlift for a while and I go back in there, you get a little cocky. You're like, well, you know, I did three sets of 10 of this last time. And you do three sets of 10 of it. And the next day you go to do a workout and you're like, why am I so sore? Yeah. Deadlifting is, uh, deadlifting is his own category. It really is. It's its own monster. It's like, uh, the equivalent of doing like three exercises rather than just one. And what I've noticed about deadlifting for myself is, uh, I just can't, I can't deadlift too much in a training session.

Um, the frequency could probably be okay. I could probably deadlift like, you know, we only deadlift like one, like about once a week, but I probably deadlift more often than that, but it's the, uh, the volume like within a given workout, I gotta be really cautious. So I gotta, gotta get into the deadlift and then i gotta convince myself that i need to do something else and it's hard because you get excited you're like oh man this is fun we're deadlifting as a team and as a group and we got everybody with us we're getting all fired up and so you know it's hard but yeah getting getting just into another exercise always uh has always

helped me what i would advise for you is just to always try to just really make sure the form and technique is there because you're not dead lifting to, you're not like, quote unquote, making your money dead lifting. Right. You know, that's kind of the thing to kind of keep in mind. I won't be pulling 700 pounds off the ground anytime soon. Right. And what happens a lot of times is somebody will go to do three sets of 10 and sometimes a coach will program for somebody or somebody will say, yeah, you know, three sets of 10 and next week you do three sets of eight or whatever.

What people are missing with the three sets of 10 is the three sets of 10 should be fairly easy. Not, not from like an effort standpoint, you should be putting a lot into it. But it should look easy and it should look flawless. The technique should look really good. It shouldn't be any, it should probably be the equivalent of you, you know, running a mile. Like it just shouldn't be, there should be no breakdown in form and it should, it should look really good. Back positioning should stay on point.

Now, when you get into like three sets of six and you start going a little heavier, that's when you're going to have a little bit of a breakdown in form. But maybe it's the last rep of every set, or maybe it's the last, yeah, maybe it's just the last rep of the last set. But if you're doing sets of 10, you don't want reps six, seven,

eight, nine, and 10 of every set to be rounded over. That's when your recovery is going to be impeded and you're going to go to run the next day and you'd be like, Oh my God, what did I do? So whenever you go back to your deadlifts, that would be the main thing that I would, I would look into is like, just have your starting point.

Maybe be a little, just pull back a tiny bit on it. And that way you'll be able to manage that a little easier. Yeah. And that's kind of what I've noticed too. Like when I kind of get it right, um, it's like, i feel like on any one of those sets if i had to i could have probably pulled like four or five more reps that's it exactly and you know it's when i try to say i wonder if i can get one more and then that's when the lower back is sore the next day for uh for us when we do uh like it yesterday's for example we do you know deadlifts

that's our main movement but then after that we'll do accessories um other than more running is there any like accessories that a long distance runner does so like you talked about sprints earlier but you know stuff like that yeah uh like within the training protocol i think you know it gets easy to think like and certainly there's ultra runners that do this and a lot of times it's because they just really enjoy running and they don't really necessarily consider like peaking necessarily. And they just like to go out and run. So they just go out and run.

And I was certainly in that camp when I first started, you know, cause I enjoyed the long run. Um, you know, and then when you start to get a little more into kind of the philosophy behind things and like, how do you actually make yourself a strong, resilient runner, um, and then specify for the specific event, you know, that's when I think you start introducing things like, uh, like intervals of 60 seconds or 400 meter repeats or something like that. Uh, the, yeah, the big difference though is, uh, yeah, that hurts. Yeah. Yeah. It looks kind of goofy on paper for someone who's maybe done like, you know, a 5k training program because they see some of the workouts that maybe I would do in the beginning of the training session. And they think, why is he doing them there? His race is in four weeks or four months. And it's because like at no point during a hundred miles, should I be running my 400 meter pace? So I'm trying to keep.

Terrell, you did a hundred, Terrell, you did 110 meter hurdle, right? Oh, hurdles. Nice did 110 meter hurdle, right? Oh, hurdles. Nice. 300 meter hurdles? 300. I never did 300 hurdles. Man, there's a guy who enjoys suffering. Yeah, no kidding.

I didn't know he was that crazy. 300 meter hurdles. I've always been told that like of all the track events that the 300 hurdles, or I think at the Olympics they do 400 hurdles, I think. Like biggest gut check like you just yeah so props to you for that that's awesome um but yeah so I'm doing some of that faster shorter stuff in the beginning because it's less specific to the actual race um pace and intensity and then as I get closer I'm weaning off a little bit I don't necessarily

always eliminate them all together but it's definitely not the primary system I'm engaging when I'm getting closer to the race itself. At that point, it's like I need to be very familiar with just being out for a long time. But in terms of stuff that it's like non-running specific, we're seeing more and more of this, I think, with some of the ultra marathon runners because we've just had some guys that are

like kind of top of the sport nail some performances uh and you know they they did a ton of mountain biking alongside and i i think that that i think there's two things going on there i think for one like especially when you're running on more like mountainous trail type stuff uh i think like it's uh if you can just build up that volume, regardless of whatever it is, you're going to, you're going to, cause you just engage yourself in such a variety of different ways, running up a hill, then down a hill on technical terrain, winding trail versus just, you know, a straight line or around a circle, like what I've done mostly. Um, you can really kind of, uh, start to play around with stuff. And, you know, actually

one of the best ultra runners pretty much ever considered by most, this guy named Killian Jarnet, he's a professional skier half the year. So he won't even run a step for large chunks of the year. And then he'll come back and, you know, he'll be running for two, three weeks. He'll already be entered a really competitive mountain race and he'll win it.

And sometimes he'll set the course record. It's pretty crazy. So like there's definitely like other things to do. And I think a lot of times what people need, this kind of goes back to what we were talking about before is like, you know, people tend, sometimes people decide, okay, I'm an authority in this, in this sport or this, and this is the way to do it. It's this way, or you won't meet full potential. In reality, when you're dealing with a sport where the difference between you going faster or slower is probably in your head more than it is in your legs, then whatever training program is going to get you to be able to decide at mile 80, I can still run this fast as opposed to I can't go this fast.

I better slow down is probably the right move for you, at least for that event. least for that event with the uh you know what back to the the carbohydrates you're saying earlier you know i i uh just kind of think about some of the lifters that i've talked to over the years and and crossfitters and different people that are trying to get a better physique along with being strong or having good performance and i think what i'm even hearing you say is uh you know have enough carbs to have really good performance, uh, but don't have so many carbs that it slows you down, makes you fat, uh, makes you lethargic or whatever the case may be. Yeah. You know, I think it's, I think, uh, I think you're right on, especially when you're looking at performance. I think you, you have to be honest with yourself

and let the, let the gym or the race track or the workout track be, be your guide with a lot of that stuff. And that amount of carbs is probably, you know, it's probably not that high because I think I've heard you talk about being in, you know, anywhere from a hundred to possibly 300 on a, on a really brutal training cycle. Right. Yeah. And, you know, I've also noticed over the years too, as I've kind of done this longer and longer, like my ability, I don't, I don't check like whether I'm in ketosis all that often. I will sometimes, cause I'll get enough questions from people saying like, how often are you in ketosis or are you in ketosis after you do this? So, you know, people are obsessed. Yeah. If I'm going to give them the right answer, I should probably actually check. So like, you know, what I notice is like, you know, I've been told like a variety of

different things like, oh, well, if you go, if you do your approach, you just won't be able to do the workout. And then I'll go and I'll do my approach and I'll do the workout. And I've got reference points from when I was high carb as well as to how fast I should be able to do some of these sessions. Uh, and then, you know, after that session, maybe I dropped the carbs back down. I can get back into the coast just really quick. So like, you know, sometimes it can be a pretty healthy dose of carbohydrates for me. Like I was gearing up for a really big workout not too long ago and I had, you know, like a bunch of melon berries and a sweet potato and a little bit of raw honey the day before, um, probably a relatively high carb day for me. And I was probably out, I was definitely

probably out of ketosis after some of, after those meals. Um, but then I went and I nailed the workout. And then the next, like right after that workout, I was already back into ketosis. So like, I think what happens a lot of times is people try to kind of get in a camp and, you know, they have to be one or the others. Like I have to be in ketosis all the time or don't get a ketosis. That's dangerous. And like, they kind of forget this middle ground. Uh, and it's, uh, it also goes along with, I think, um, you know, you have someone who has a lot of success with like a strict ketogenic diet and, um, they're excited. Like, I mean, I would be too, if I was 30 pounds overweight and I found something that worked well for me and I dropped that 30 pounds, I'm going to

tell everyone, I'm going to tell everyone it's the only way to do things. Then you run into a problem with science because you're telling everyone the stuff that worked, but you're also adding a little flavor to it when you say like, this is the way to lose weight or the ketogenic diet is gonna like magically cause you to lose weight. It's like, it's not magic really. I think it's just like getting it to be where you start doing what your body wants it to do in terms of feeding it. And that's going to gravitate towards a healthy weight as opposed to an unhealthy weight. So if eating a high carb diet makes you 30 pounds overweight, eating a ketogenic diet gets you down to your optimal weight, that's awesome. But I mean, same with a high carb approach, I suppose, too. that's awesome but i mean same with a high carb approach i suppose too like if you know if you if you go on a ketogenic diet and you're 30 pounds overweight and you can't seem to

you know lay off the heavy cream and the cheese and the bacon and all that stuff and then you go to a high carb diet and you get down to a healthy weight and your biomarkers are all great it's like more power to you i think that's cool um and i just think it's really interesting how like people seem to always want to kind of overcorrect a little bit uh as opposed to just say hey we got some great things with this tool let's let's let people know about that uh and you know i think i know you guys have had lane norton on the show before and he's been uh i find that guy hilarious and i love listening to his podcast he gets so pissed. Yeah.

Well, it's just something about like, you know, like this, here's this, this really smart PhD guy. He's not afraid to go tell you that, that you're an idiot.

And it's in, and I think he has fun with it, but like, uh, um, it, I, I,

I cringe a little bit when I see like folks who are really what he would call a keto zealot go after him. Because here's a guy who could be a great asset to the ketogenic approach. And he is. And if you look at and listen to what he's actually saying, he's not telling you that keto is a waste of time. He's not telling you that keto is dumb, keto doesn't work. He's just saying, don't say keto is doing something it's not doing. If keto gets you to, you know, make your best weight room performance or your best race performance, that is awesome. He'll, he'll, he'll applaud you, I'm sure. But if you say that, like, you know, keto is going to do something

that it probably doesn't, then, uh, he's going to tell you that as well. For myself, I've had success with the ketogenic diet because, and I like what you're saying, it's not magic. And that's really important for people to understand is the only magic pill, if there is one, is consistency and just doing, you know, finding something that you can do for a long period of time. And for me, it was the ketogenic diet because I just happened to like eggs. I happen to like red meat. I happen to like bacon. I happen to like cheese. And so, uh, once I, you know, kind of found out that, oh, this is a style of eating that you can do and you can manage your weight with, I was like, oh shit, this is, this is great. This matches up really well with a lot of the foods I like. The other thing it did is it helped to kind of kill, kill off some cravings and then mixed in. Um, I also utilized, uh, some intermittent fasting here and there. So the combination for me

was awesome because I could enter, I could do some intermittent fasting. I could eat a little bit more later in the day, which I enjoyed anyway. Um, I didn't have to really watch out for portion control, uh, because I would fast for 12 hours or 14 or 16, depending on the day. And I could just kind of have at it and not really pay attention to how much I was eating. And it was, it, that was my experience. It worked really well for me, but as many times as I try to share that with people, uh, they still kind of misunderstand, you know, I got a book called the war on carbs and they're like, you're anti carbs, you're anti carbs.

No carbs are great. I've utilized them in my powerlifting career. I utilized them to set records. Um, I still utilize them and, uh, they're, they're part of, they're always part of my diet in some way. Sometimes I'm avoiding them and sometimes I'm implementing them to have a certain training effect. I think that's cool. Demonizing stuff is usually not the right answer. I think we have enough

success stories on such a weird variety of nutritional approaches. I think it's about finding like you said, what works for you. And it does seem like, you know, keto works wonders for folks who like to eat really big meals or have a hard time kind of pushing away from the table once they start get going.

People that have struggled for many years with control, you know, yeah, you can have the rice and you can have the chicken, you know, and you can have this or that, but you can only have half a cup of rice. It's like, ah, half a cup. I'm having six of them. Yeah. Half a cup. Like, are you serious? That's all I get. Are people in ketosis anyway, when they're doing some of these long duration events? Yeah. Uh, I, I think like some of that

stuff is, uh, is pretty specific to the, the, to the person. Some people just seem to be able to get into ketosis easier than others, regardless of their diet. Um, and like, I think like just the nature of, you know, if you decide if I'm like, let's say I went on a high carb diet for, for months and then decided to start doing long runs in the morning in a fasted state, I'm probably going to get into ketosis just from that. I mean, when you look at the nature of like a 30 or 35 mile run or something like that, like your body's going to learn to burn fat. If you don't give it, you know, you don't give it an exogenous carb source, uh, by just, by just default. Like it's, I think that's a kind of another example of people kind of going a little too extreme. They always think like, well, I'm either burning all carbs or all fats.

And really, you know, most people are burning a combination of that. And it's just where on that pendulum are you? Are you skewing a lot closer to fat? Are you skewing a lot closer to being glycolytic? And the pace is going to play a big role in that as well, but so is diet. But you can certainly get a fat adaptation effect from just doing a lot of training, a lot of volume. Um, but it's just not going to move the needle nearly as much as it is to just avoid eating carbs in the first place. That's the other thing too. Someone will tell me like, well, I'm going to go do a bonk run is what they call it running where they intentionally don't eat before. And they go for a long run and wait for them to kind of hit the wall. I mean, when people

hear like hit the wall and like a marathon, that's essentially just glycogen depletion. And then you don't have like, you know, you just can barely move after that. You know, when you're fat adapted, you don't really bonk in that same way. You can certainly go out too fast and have your muscles break down and then not be able to kind of keep moving. Cause you got out over your skis a little bit, but, um, you don't really kind of have this body failure slash I'm going to start snapping at anyone who talks to me type of a mentality. So when someone says, I'm going to go on a bonk run, I'm like, well, why would you do a bonk run? That sounds miserable. That sounds awful. Yeah. That's what I was just thinking. Yeah. I'm going to do a bonk lift. Bonk lift. Bonk set of deadlifts. Yeah. Hopefully it's

a body weight. Yeah. But yeah. So, you know, I think like at that point I, you know, I tell them like, well, I could get more fat adapted by not running a step and just eating less carbohydrates. So if that's your goal to get more fat adapted, I think it's easy to manipulate that with the diet than it is to kind of, you know, try to train it. You can certainly do both or you can certainly, you know, do it that way if you want. But I find that kind of interesting. that way if you want but uh i find that kind of interesting and i'm sure uh diet is huge for this but are you doing anything outside of just the ketogenic diet for um like inflammation um yeah you know i'm just uh uh i do a few different things like uh i'll i've been a big fan of like taking out some salt baths and things like that and uh, I don't know like enough, I guess, about how foods in certain

combinations are really anti-inflammatory outside of just like, you know, the metabolic process of metabolizing a carbohydrate might be more stressful from an oxidative standpoint as opposed to like burning a body fat. Um, so I think by the nature of my lower carb approach, I'm probably generating really low levels of inflammation. Um, and then, uh, you know, something I've been kind of looking at, I haven't done much of it yet, but, uh, looking into like CBD oils and things like that, it, uh, it seems like those have had some pretty cool things come out about them. So it's probably worth checking that stuff out. But, um, yeah, it's, uh, you know, you're definitely causing damage when you're running as much as I am. So I think trying to be proactive is probably the way to go.

And then has there ever been any like injuries where you had to take a significant amount of time off? Uh, you know, I had most of my running injuries when I was in college. Uh, and I think part of that is just because when you're training for something like a five kilometer race or a 10 K or an eight K or something like that, you know, you're doing a lot more speed workouts and they tend to be a little more intense. You're more likely to get injured. And then on top of that, I was still kind of growing into the sport and building kind of that, that endurance base. So I was probably more likely to get an overuse one. So I had like the biggest injury I ever had. I was out for 16 weeks with Achilles tendonitis back in college. So I

would have been like probably about 20 years old or so since ultra running though. I mean, I've had a few things that are just like minor little things that keep me off for like, you know, a few days here and there, other than I had one stress fracture that lasted seven weeks. Um, but that was really the only significant one that, uh, kind of stunted my training altogether. So like throughout your whole career, it seems like life, you never really like had a situation where you plumped up and made running hard. No, yeah, not really. Like I've, I've, uh, I, I took a little bit of time off, a longer amount of time off after college.

When I started student teaching, I just kind of started burning the candle a little bit on both ends with, you know, starting a new job and all that stuff. And just got kind of tired and started not enjoying running. So I just like I'm shutting it down for a little over a month. And during that phase, I was pretty relaxed with things. And this was well before I, I even knew what, uh, keto was or high fat, low carb was, but I think I got to my heaviest at like around 160 pounds. Um, I, yeah, I wasn't, I wasn't fat. I was definitely fatter, but, um, yeah, I think that's the biggest I've ever gotten. Usually, I think maybe we talked about this already, but I think I'm, I'm usually around about 140 or so.

Yeah, and that's like your walk-around weight. You just kind of stay basically ready to go whenever you need to. Yeah, more or less. I find that my weight doesn't fluctuate that much these days, and maybe that's the high-fat approach. When I was high-carb, i would fluctuate quite a bit like a lot of it you know it's just like you know the processing of things going from dehydrated to hydrated and whatnot um but when i was high carb i would fluctuate like probably 10 pounds sometimes now it seems like it's that window's a little tighter you know i might be like three or four pounds heavier at the end of the day after dinner or something like that. Or if I'm really hydrated, uh, versus when

I get back from a run, like I might be, you know, a couple of pounds lighter than what, what I normally am to just from like dehydration. Uh, but it seems like that window is a little tighter, um, for whatever reason. Uh, and yeah, I mean, after I get done with like a big goal race as when I'm going to kind of reset and kind of take a little bit of downtime and then gradually rebuild, I don't really like, uh, like try to stay at race weight, so to speak. I don't like say, okay, I better be portion control. Like I'd actually, I actually prefer to maybe gain a couple pounds during that phase because it's just to me, like that's just going to make the buildup easier. Uh, cause if I go into a training phase already at weight race or

yeah, race weight, like, um, that just means I'm going to have to try to eat more during some of those really big sessions. If I go in kind of to peak, uh, if I start getting into kind of peak volume and have a couple extra pounds from the off season, like I don't have to try to like quite eat as much at the beginning of that. And, um, and people probably find that silly. It's like, man, I'd like to just eat all day. But when you think about it, like, you know, some of my workouts and races are big enough where like, you know, I'm metabolizing two to three times my resting metabolic rate. So sometimes I'm eating for two or three of me and I'm still only my size. You know, it almost gets fatiguing at a certain degree if you've done it for long enough.

Yeah. We spoke about it earlier. And the only reason why I want to bring it up is mainly just to get to the point where we were speaking about the ultramarathon community being like a grassroots type of thing. In other endurance sports, you hear about people getting popped for PEDs, blood doping and whatnot. Is there anything like that in ultra marathon running or is it rampant? Is it rare? Yeah. You know, it's actually a fairly, I guess I'd say it's as hotly debated topic as you're going to find. I, um, even within the ultra marathon running community, just because, uh, you know, ultra running has an advantage, I think in that realm outside of some other sports, because there wasn't this mass influx of money in a very short period of time. Um, and you know, I think when you see, when you, you get enough money in any sport and people are going to cheat, that's just kind of the

way that the history books have kind of let us know about things. Um, but with ultra running, you know, in, in the United States, especially like as it kind of got popular, it got popular on the trail scene and the mindset was very kind of non-competitive by nature. Like everyone was kind of competing and trying to get them, get all out of themselves. But it was kind of this, this goofy situation where people were like, Oh, we're going to go to this race. Let's hang out, drink a couple of beers, run this 100-mile race, and then celebrate with each other and hang out. And they kind of developed this really tight-knit community where I think that strength of that community has really kind of helped deter drug use when in other sports, it was almost like, uh, like I think cycling is the best example of this, where, you know, you have an American cyclist decide to go over to a tour in

Europe and they're met with a team. And that team says, you're going to do this protocol. We'll send you right back to the States. And it's like, what do you do at that point? You know, especially if you're, you know, someone who bypassed a collegiate degree to try to race competitively cycling, like that type of scenario hasn't really presented itself in ultra running yet. We're still kind of small enough. There's certainly more money in the sport today than there was like five, 10 years ago. And that certainly brought in people who've probably cheated or skirted the rules. There's been people who've gotten caught doing different performance enhancing stuff.

And we are, you're starting to see more drug testing protocols take place in some of the bigger events to kind of help, uh, make sure that that doesn't become, uh, kind of a fixture of the sport. Uh, but yeah, I do think like when I look at some of this stuff, I think like, you know, it's, it's, I just, it's, it seems like with any sport, like, I think if you'd be like most people, like the majority of the people, they want to do it right. If they're given that option as like a, like an option they can believe in. I think when you get like a sport where like I said before, we're cycling or, you know, we were talking about Icarus before where it seems like, you know, track and

field and marathon running and stuff as is just as bad as cycling probably, uh, that where, you know, the, the culture is like, this is what you have to do, or, you know, your career's over or, you know, your dreams are done. And that's a tough position to put someone in, especially when they're, you know, in their lower twenties and they're, you know, they've been told through middle school and high school that they have the chance to go to the Olympics or something like that. Personally, I'm very happy I haven't been put in that position because it's like you don't know what you would do.

You just don't until you're in a position like that, I think. Is there a lot of testing? No, not a lot. I mean, we're seeing more at big events like world championship races. If you break a world record, you have to get tested or it's not verified. Some of the bigger races, one of the biggest 100 milers in the world actually is right around here. They start in Squaw Valley and run on the Western States Trail to Auburn called the Western States 100. And they test the top 10 men and women at the end of each one of those.

And, uh, there's this organization, uh, called ITRA, um, International Trail Runners Association that, uh, they have started implementing some out of season or out of race day type testing protocols, where if you're ranked high enough in the ITRA series that, um, they can show up your front door and ask for a sample. Um, so there's definitely, it's definitely kind of like, they're trying to get out ahead of it to some degree with that. Um, but you know, if, uh, it's, it's one of those things where I think the best antidote to that, if you're going to try to keep drugs out of the sport is build a culture that is going to not promote it but also but kind of like ostracize you if you do it and i mean i mean it's some of the things too i think it you know there's sports too where it's just it's not even like uh it's it's just no it's just part of it right yeah

it's like this is what everyone does and. And then you have clean versions as well. So it's like if you're someone who's just like, I don't want to touch that stuff, and you still have somewhere to go, I guess, to kind of compete if you want to. So then when a runner gets popped for something, like what happens? Is it like if they won that race,

does their winning purse get taken away? Or basically, what's the repercussion from getting caught? Yeah. So ultra running is a, is a little different than like, I guess, world marathon running where, I mean, marathon runners certainly make a large chunk of their income from sponsors as well. But like, if you win, like say the Chicago marathon or some of these big races like that, you're going to take home a big paycheck from the race itself. Most ultra running events don't actually have prize money. There are some that do. But most people who are making money on the sport are doing so by winning big races or doing well at races, setting records, and then having a sponsor identify them or a product they use.

The company sees a return on investment by having this person represent them and then they pay them with a contract. So a lot of these contracts now, they'll have a clause in them that says like, hey, if you get paying for performance enhancing drugs, we can take this money back or you'll be cut from the team immediately. So that's kind of like the way a lot of it works and it's, it's, uh, the, most of the drug testing done follows the water rules. So I think they use the same penalties system where like, it's either a two or four year ban if you would get caught. And then I think after a certain number, if you get caught more than once, you can get a lifetime ban and stuff like that so um it's uh

it's um you know it's something that that uh i think is is a little uh a little uh scary as an athlete to be honest with you because like you know i'm pretty careful about what i eat i eat a pretty clean diet as i think kind of gone through so i'm not taking a lot of like weird goofy supplements or anything like that but you, you see people getting paying for stuff that like, you know, because there was a tainted supplement and stuff. So like when I go into a race, like all the stuff that I take with me have been like, uh, I think it's called like double or triple verified or something like that, where they, they confirm like not, there's no weird thing that got in the vat with this batch or something like that but i save all that stuff after a race or before i prepare for a race

because if like there would be a false positive i want to have like a sample that they can they can look at and see that it's that it's legitimately labeled the way it was supposed to be um i think like ufc learned that lesson kind of the hard way they had a lot of um yeah people and and then that's a tough spot to be in i think too because like i mean then you have someone who actually is cheating it's like well what's the easy way out well it was a tainted supplement you know it's like it makes it tough to kind of kind of know who's lying and who's kind of gonna just get pinged for something they didn't do yeah but what makes it sound really cool to me so like you know like you just brought up ufc john jones he's out i can't wait for him to get back

yeah you know banned substance whatever the heck it was like i want to see him fight but it seems like in the uh the ultra marathon community it's like like dude come on man like yeah why the fuck you cheating yeah, the people who have gotten, have gotten caught, um, you know, they're, they're essentially ostracized. Like there's, uh, they're not going to get a sponsor, not a, not a, a really good one anyway. Um, most of the major brands would look at that as a, you know, uh, a really bad PR move. Yeah. Um, and then, you know, you know, there's been people who've got caught, whether it was, you know, they're always arguing it. So assuming they were actually doping, and they get through their ban and they show up to a race,

and it's a big deal. Like, well, so-and-so's at the race. Like, he shouldn't be here. And that kind of like, that's when you hear the most chatter about, like, we got to be strict on this is when you see something like that. But I mean, it is pretty rare though. I mean, I think that's happened in the CrossFit community too, where they're, you know, they, there was a CrossFit documentary they do in every year on the, um, on the CrossFit games. And the last one that they did, uh, one of the athletes gets popped like during the filming,

um, they're showcasing this guy as kind of new up-and-coming guy and the champion uh the guy who's won the last three years matt frazier and there's a few other people too um you know a few people were like shocked you know but matt frazier was an olympic lifter so he he knows the game and he knows what's going on but he was like you know what this is total bullshit he's, I don't want this guy in my sport. He's like, I don't want other people, you know, and who knows what he may or may not be doing. But a lot of these athletes are getting tested. They're getting past the test.

And that's the current testing that they have. And that's the standard they go by. But I thought it was kind of cool. I'm like, this is from the champ. You know, this is from the top guy. And he's saying, look, you know, we don't like this bullshit our sport this is this is the way that we want our sport to go and so we're gonna we're gonna ride with this and i thought that was kind of cool because you know you do you do want the uh just whatever people are going to choose to do you just want that out on the table

like let's just know like what what are we fighting with what are the weapons that we can we can utilize you know are we doing it this way are the weapons that we can utilize, you know? Are we doing it this way or are we doing it that way? Just everybody's on the same page. Yeah. When it comes to gear, like knee sleeves, whatever, you had talked about, like, water packs and stuff. Do you wear anything? Yeah.

Like, I think a lot of it depends on the race. Like, I think a lot of it depends on the race. Like when I'm doing some of these fast flat track sessions or track events, it's like the beauty of that one to me is that you can be incredibly minimal. Like you just wear your short shoes and your singlet. And then when you need something to drink or eat, you have someone hand it off to you and then you can throw it right back to them 400 meters later. Um, but then when you get to these other events, like what I talked about, the Western States where it's point to point through canyons and mountain passes and stuff, uh, you know, you might not see your crew for 15, 20 miles.

You might have like a stretch of, you know, five, six, seven miles between aid stations, which depending on how fast you're going and how technical the train is, you know, it could take a couple hours between, you know, so for those events, you've got to be a little more strategic about what you're bringing with you. So you don't end up, uh, you know, running out of something you need. And, uh, that usually means some kind of belt or pack, you know, the packs are something that I think is really come along the most since I started running. When, when we first came in, it seemed like, uh, you know, people were just kind of using whatever whatever like some triathlete brand type thing would have and then as the sports kind of grown these packs have turned into these you know pretty cool performance style like setups where like the pack itself is almost like a vest and then you can kind of like it's a flexible enough material or you can like pack it out if you want to jam a bunch of stuff in there or you can keep it nice and tight up against you if you only have to carry a

few things and they've just gotten better with where they put pockets where they put the water reserves and the water bottle holders and things to kind of minimize you know any potential chafing or like uh trying to put it in the most logical spot from a biomechanics standpoint because when you think about it if you're carrying a pack with five six pounds of extra stuff in it that could change your gait a little bit if you're not having all that stuff in the right position, or it can make it really hard for your body to be in the right position. So you're kind of fighting it a little bit. So there's been a lot of, I think, technology put into that and thought putting that sort

of stuff. Chafing. That sounds painful. It is. Yeah. Yeah. You have to. Especially when you're running that far.

Right. If it gets wet, blisters and stuff like that too. So, so even like a lot of the other stuff too, like people don't often think about like, you know, something like a pair of socks and the, there's a lot of technology in that where it's like water, it like wicks at a certain spot, but also propels in a different spot or keeps you warm when it's still wet and all kinds of different weird things like that. And it's kind of cool how much like technology you can put into something that is like, you know, pretty just like low maintenance, I guess. Yeah. And what type of shoes are runners using? Um, it, that's another thing that really has evolved in the sport is like really unique in that I think when you think of like a sport, like football, baseball, or basketball, like you have this real uniform surface. So everyone's kind of on that same

terrain all the time. So like the same general design is, is, is pretty much, you know, par for the course. You can see one soccer cleat. You've seen most of them, um, you know, with, with ultra running or running in general, you might be on a track, you might be on a road, you might be on the trails through snow, ice, rain, all that stuff stuff so you have shoes that have like big lugs in them you have shoes that are like high cushioned shoes that are low cushioned no shoes that have like different shapes and things to like i bought two pairs of shoes the the company you're sponsored uh by is it ultra oh yeah yeah yeah and uh called? Oh yeah, Ultra Footwear. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, super comfortable. Actually, like, um, I, I didn't, I, I bought them cause, uh, my wife and I go on these trail run walks and stuff like that here and there.

Uh-huh. And, uh, I was like, yeah, I need something better than just like a regular, you know, sneaker type thing, a tennis shoe. And, uh, I bought them and they kept, it kept pulling my sock off, but it's because it fits really well on the back of the heel. And I'm, I have never had a shoe that like fit me well that way. And then also the shoe was a wide enough. My feet are kind of wide.

So I was really happy about that. I was like, these are comfortable and they're great. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They make a foot shaped toe box, which is pretty unique to the athletic sneaker world, I guess. And, uh, um, it's pretty nice to have that room up front. And like you said, the one thing they learned early,

I think was if you're going to give people that foot shape room up front, it's gotta be dialed in, in the back. Cause you can't be sliding around in the back if you have the flexibility to flex your toes out up in the front. And, but yeah, it's a, it's been a pretty cool brand and they make everything from road to trail to casual wear stuff now too. So it's been cool to see that brand grow. What does running do for you? I think it gives me a very clear thing to kind of focus my energies on. You know, I think I would have been an athlete, not, not maybe an athletic person,

but someone who really always did some type of workout or tried to stay in shape in some shape or form, uh, regardless of whether I started running. Um, but what running did, I think is it kind of gave me like this clear thing to set a goal for and then build towards it. You know, I love the process of getting ready for a race just as much as I do the race itself. Um, so like when I'm kind of at the beginning of a training program and I'm sitting down and looking like, okay, where am I going to put this? And you know, how am I going to structure this training plan? Or, or when I'm reflecting on the one I did

previously, if I think like, okay, this is something that went wrong. What do I have to do differently to fix that? Or this went really well. How can I implement that strategy from like a mountain trail course training program into a flat one? And so I really like the, I think the, just the, the logistics of it all. Um, you know, I, it's like I kind of said in the beginning, I, my personality might just be like, I like to pick a topic and then look at everything around it. And running has so many, I think, potential things for that. And I think everything probably does. It's just the one that I happened to stumble upon at an early enough age where I got addicted to it.

Has it made you stronger and tougher as a person? Has it changed a lot of the things into perspective outside of even running too. been running too. Um, you know, and it's a nice reminder to like, if you're, if I decide to get lazy or, you know, relax something that needs to get done outside of running, you know, look at myself and say, Hey, if you can run a hundred miles in a day, why are you being so, so, uh, procrastinating on this thing too? So I think it kind of cuts that groove that like teaches you to be tough and teaches you to like, you know, make sure you're, uh, you know, checking all the boxes. Do you ever get into a slump? Um, oh yeah. You know, I definitely do. I think that's something I, I try to pay close attention to at the end of a

training block in a race, uh, is like kind of almost twofold, like a, like where am I at physically? Uh, and then B, where am I at physically? Uh, and then B, where am I at mentally? Um, I've certainly had training phases where after the race, I didn't, I'm not that beat up physically, um, after a week or so. And then I'm like, all right, I'm going to get back at it. And then you get a couple of weeks into the training program. You realize I should have taken another couple of weeks just to kind of let my mind rest. Like that was like, whoops. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm a little more cognizant about that. And that's certainly something I'm always really like, uh, cognizant of telling folks I'm coaching or working with, with that stuff too, is like, you know, you could have a really good race and it's

really tempting to want to kind of just get right back at it, but just be careful that your mind is ready to go. Um, you know, that's, uh, you don't want to get to a race and then decide that you don't want it that badly because like we were talking about before, like sometimes it's just how bad you want it that depends, determines how well you do. So if the training process and the whole thing becomes kind of more, more fatiguing than it is rewarding, then I think you need to step away and kind of let that, that, that passion kind of come back. Yeah. How do you combat that? Just, uh, you think time mainly is the thing, or do you let off on your diet and some other things too, for just a little bit? Yeah. Yeah. Time is good. I think relaxing things, uh, you know, that's what I kind of like about the periodized high fat approach is different phases of the year are kind of

different food groups to some degree. Um, there's certainly staples that are kind of there year round, but then there's nuances that come in and out. Um, and the other thing too, I think is just like, uh, changing where you're running is always a big one for me. Like if I just prepare for a track timed event every time I'm going to start to wear thin on that mental approach. So it's kind of nice to be able to like say, okay, I'm gonna train for this flat hundred miler. And then maybe I'll train for a hilly 50 miler or something like that, or a mountainous 50 miler. So you're just, the program is a little different. The mindset's a little different. Um, your rate of progress is different. Um, cause that's another interesting thing. Like

when you really start doing the same type of race for quite a while, um, you know, minus an injury, you don't really get deep fit to the degree where you see massive gains the next time. So you're seeing incremental gains throughout a pro program, which can sometimes be a little less motivating than say, if you start from the beginning and you say, wow, I made a big progress from week one to week two and two to three. So switching the train and the type of race, I think sets you up to be able to see some bigger progress gains and things which are, you know, pretty motivating. The, uh, main discipline for you is, uh, uh, isn't the act

of running the main discipline for you, for you would be not to run. How do you convince yourself not to run occasionally that that is healthy for you and that that's the best option. Uh-huh. It's funny how that works, isn't it? Like, you know, there's a, I think everyone who has a hard time taking a day off at one point had a hard time getting themselves out the door to do the run. But yeah, you know, that's the thing. And I, you know, I always tell myself like this, and I'm, I'm guessing you guys have a similar thing within like, you know, power lifting and stuff is like the gains aren't made when you're actually doing the run or the workout itself. The gains are made when you're recovering from that. actually doing the run or the workout itself. The gains are made when you're recovering from that. So, you know, when I wake up in the morning, if my body says, hey, you had a really good workout yesterday and today you're not feeling all that hot, responding appropriately in that circumstance is going to be a huge determinant as to whether I make gains from that workout that I worked so hard to do or just kind of wash it out.

So I think when you kind of look at it from that perspective and have a good relationship with running and with working out, that's when things tend to work out better. Is there anything in particular that you're thinking of when you're, uh, you know, at mile 50, at mile 60, at mile 70, is there something that inspires you that keeps you motivated, keeps you motivated, keeps you fired up or are you just running? Yeah, I think earlier in the race, I, I, especially when it's on something that's really monotonous, like a track or a flat road, um, I'm trying to almost kind of zone out more or less, uh, and just, uh, like daydream,

I guess a little bit, which is a little easier to do in the early stages. Cause you can hit your paces pretty easily, just naturally. Uh, and as you get further on, like, especially when you get to like mile 70 and 80 of a hundred miler, it gets a lot harder to maintain the pace you're trying to hit. You have to really focus mentally. So then during that, I'm always trying to kind of, um, do two things. One is like kind of motivate myself. And the two ways I do that is I try to look at, well, if I'm at mile 80, um, don two things. One is like kind of motivate myself. And the two ways I do that is I try to look at, well, if I'm at mile 80, um, don't ruin all the 80 of those miles in these next 20, 20 miles is something I do on a regular basis. So it's, I'm trying to remind myself, like

I do 20 miles all the time. I can do 20 more right now. And it will be a lot more fulfilling if I get everything out of myself for these, uh, these 20 miles. Then if I put myself in position to for 80 and then just waste it all by, you know, falling apart. And the other thing too, is just like looking at the whole process, like it can be daunting to look at like a hundred miles or 12 hours as a whole, but then when you get there and you're in the middle of it all, if you try to put in perspective and realize how much time and energy you spent to get to that race, the time of that race is actually really small. And then you can kind of try to put it in perspective that way. Um, but other little tricks I'll do during a race too, is you just try not to think of like the end of the race. Um,

so sometimes races are set up nicely for it, where they have like an aid station every like five or six miles. And then you just say, all right, I'm going to get to this aid station. And that's my only goal. And then when I get to that, I'll decide what my next goal is. So instead of thinking of, oh, I got 30 miles to go, I'm thinking about, I'm just going to get these next couple of miles done. Um, so kind of like, uh, breaking it down and like, uh, micro focusing on, um, small things instead of the big thing. Do you ever, uh, start hallucinating or seeing stuff that's not actually there when you're deep in a race? Yeah.

I don't know. I read about that and hear about that, but I, I, I don't identify with that. I guess, I mean, maybe, maybe I need to find a, a new level of pain or something. Oh man. The closest I would say I get to something like that is like, you do get into like a flow state more or less. A lot of times when you're out there, especially when you're on, uh, for me, it happens a lot, a lot easier. I think when I'm in a train where I'm really comfortable with, and I don't have to think about like, if I step wrong, I'm

going to roll my ankle or something like that. Uh, and you just kind of get in this like little, like this mental state of this groove where, um, it's kind of weird where like you're moving and you know, you're moving, but you don't really feel like the impact. Whereas when you're out of that, like, and you get in kind of a negative vibe, you're like, you take a step and like every little bit that hurts, you notice like, and you hyper-focus on it. So like, those are the spots you want to be at. And I think they kind of come and go, uh, and you kind of know going into a hundred mile race that they're going to come and go. So, uh, when they happen, I think you just say like, you know, you appreciate the fact that you were able to get to that and, but also recognize that it's probably going to

flee at some time and you're going to get through a hard part. Um, but then the same thing, when you get into a hard part, you know, that that's going to probably release at some point too, and then you can get back into a good groove. We're going to have to get you some, sorry, no, I was just going to joke around. We're going to have to get you some mushrooms before your next run. I just kept running after that dragon. That's the ticket for the world record. Yeah, I was going to say, how did he break that world record?

This fucking dragon was breathing down my neck. Yeah. Have you ever gotten emotional during a run? Like, a lot of shit will run through your head when you run. So, anything ever, you know, got you really excited or sad or anything like that? You know, I've, maybe not to an extreme level, but I'm definitely thinking about certain things during a race to, like, you know, I've, uh, maybe, maybe not to an extreme level, but I'm definitely thinking about certain things during a race to like, you know, if I'm like 30 miles into a hundred

mile race, uh, it's, it gets easy to kind of get like a, almost like a warm feeling of, uh, uh, kind of satisfaction kind of thinking, okay, maybe today's the day I do something I've never done before. And it's, it's almost kind of like more like a kind of a goose bump chills type of euphoria. Yeah. Over you. Yeah.

Pretty cool. Yeah. I haven't had any too many issues where, or any issues really where I kind of broke down and started like, um, crying or getting mad at my crew. You see that from time to time, like you,

someone who's really far into a race and they kind of lose it and they're just kind of acting way outside when the race is over. Uh, never just, like you, someone is really far into a race and they kind of lose it and they're just kind of acting way outside. What about when the race is over? Uh, you ever just, you know, gone so hard and trained so hard for it that you do break down? Um, I've certainly had races where I feel like when I hit the finish line, that was about as hard as I could go. Like you just kind of like fall over, lay down and just relax. I mean, there's definitely this huge weight that comes off your shoulder when you finish a hundred miler, regardless of whether you met your goal or not. I think there's something about turning your mind on and saying you're on until you get to this specific spot or this specific time. And then when you actually hit that spot and that release happens.

So, I mean, it's probably like, I mean, it's the payoff that brings people back. Like, I think people oftentimes say, like, during a race, I'm never doing this again. And, you know, they do the race, they finish it, and then two days later, they're online signing up for another one. That's pretty wild. I saw, like, I think haynes uh posted one time he was like oh here's you know my first uh ultra marathon or something he posted some picture he's like i remember i vowed i'd never do it again or something like something like that and he talked about how uh how emotional it was afterwards you know um and how he couldn't

help himself but to do another one because he loved, he somehow, even though it was really painful and it beat the crap out of him, he didn't think he was going to be able to do it. He wanted to immediately, like you said, do another one. Yeah, the way I kind of describe it too is like when you cross the finish line, it's like it's really hard to not be happy. Like you're just really happy, and it's like kind of the ultimate runner's high. You know, you hear about the runner's high where like someone does a workout and they feel really great after it. And they're real positive and optimistic. It's like, it's like that to the

extreme almost. How do you train that much and prepare this much and have this much amount of running on the table at all times, uh, and not be selfish? Um, I mean, I'd probably be lying if I said it wasn't, there's definitely selfishness in it. And I think anyone doing a hundred miles or ultra marathoning, um, if they're honest with themselves, they're going to admit like, okay, I'm being selfish about this. And it's interesting. Cause I mean, there's people who are running for charity and stuff like that, which is certainly awesome. But then there's also, you know, you know, like if you, if you have like a family and, you know, you, you decide to go out and run for three hours a day. And, uh, you know, that's a,

that's, that's a, something you have to be honest with yourself about and say, is this something that, that I should be selfish with? And I think there's definitely, there's definitely room to excuse that. Um, I think there's, uh, people, people look at the word selfish, I think, and they automatically put in an all negative with it. Right. Um, but I mean, you have to be a little selfish in order to like, you know, treat yourself right too. Um, now running a hundred mile races, the question is, am I being too selfish? And, you know, for me, it's like, you know, my wife is an ultra marathoner too, and she loves the sport. So like we, I, I definitely get away with a lot because of that. Like I don't have a family of kids or a wife that hates running and I'm like bouncing out on them a

lot or anything like that. So, well, even if she didn't like, uh, even if she wasn't an ultra runner, um, whatever the arrangement is beforehand, as long as she understands like, Hey, this is part of my life. Just like if hunting was part of your life, fishing was part of your life or playing pickup games of basketball or whatever it is, uh, you know, playing pool or golfing or any of these things. Yeah. Kind of being a similar category, except for, you know, you're on kind of more of a professional level. Yeah. And I think, um, I think the other, the other thing too, is like communication is huge with that. Like, you know you're on kind of more of a professional level yeah and i think um i think the other the other thing too is like communication is huge with that like you know if you sit down with your family and your friends and say hey i want to do this are you guys okay

that i've you know i might not go out and party till two in the morning on saturday then you have to ask yourself are they in my best interest am i in their best interest and like how do i make this work and stuff like that? So, you know, for me, I guess I've, maybe I've been fortunate that I've, uh, like dove far enough into the endurance running world where it's kind of been part job, part, uh, passion. So, um, I probably have a little more time to kind of, uh, you know, waste running a ton of miles than maybe someone, well, certainly more than even I had when I was teaching and stuff like that. When you have a whole nother

avenue of, uh, um, pursuit kind of there. What kind of foods are you bringing with you on, on, uh, a run on game day? Yeah. Uh, you know, the way I describe it is I think a lot of people think I'm bringing like bacon and coconut oil and that sort of stuff is that would make sense based on kind of my macro nutrient breakdown from a day-to-day standpoint. But the way I look at it is like, uh, in for an endurance runner, even kind of at the leanest state, uh, the, the leanest fittest endurance runners, they have a lot more body fat that they can metabolize and they do glycogen stores. So even for one of these long races, I've got enough body fat to fuel that side of things without having to eat any fat during the race itself. So for me, that makes a lot more sense than trying to, you know, digest

something. Um, so for me, my mindset with fat metabolization during a race is if you can do it from onboard, uh, body fat, great. You can always replace it after the race. Um, you know, put a bunch more butter on the steak or something like that. Uh, and then, uh, the thing that's going to potentially deplete, um, is your glycogen stores. That's the small tank, small fuel tank. So for me, what I do is, uh, I rely mostly on body fat for fuel and mostly on body fat for the fat side of fueling. And then I will trickle in small amounts of carbohydrate throughout the course of the race. And the easiest way for that I explained is that, you know, since becoming kind of more of a fat adapted athletes or focusing on fat as a primary fuel source, I've been able to reduce my in race fueling by over half. So like in the past, I would maybe be taking in, you know, maybe three, four hundred plus calories an hour of just sports drinks, gels, and things like that. Whereas now I can get away with quite a bit less just because I'm not pushing into that side of

the fuel substrate as readily as I would have been in the past. But the fuel source hasn't changed a lot. It's just a reduction in the quantity for the most part. I like liquid calories just because they seem logistically a lot easier. You can kind of hydrate and fuel at the same time. Uh, they tend to be easier to kind of bring with you or plan for than say like, you know, a sandwich or something like that. Um, but you know, a hundred miles is a long way, all day is a long way to eat the same thing. So I try to keep an open mind with that and realize like if I come up to an aid station and something on the aid station looks really good and it's going to kind of get me motivated to keep running, I'm going to grab it. It is interesting when you're running that far that you got to like, it makes sense.

Yeah. You're just going so long, you got to eat something. Yeah. Yeah. And when you think about it too, like some of these races where you span like a full day's worth of meals, like you're not only fueling for the event itself, it's like you're also bypassing breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's kind of funny to think about as you realize what you're doing throughout the course of the day. At the end of them,

they always feel like they went by fast, which is weird because, as I mentioned before, mile 80 of 100 miles sometimes feels like time has grinded to a halt. But when you get to the end of the day and you realize, wow, I just spent all day running, it seems like it went by pretty fast at that point. And how long would a hundred mile race take? Um, trains the big equation with that one. Like, I mean, I've got the American record with 11 hours, 40 minutes and 55 seconds, but you know, there's guys who've, there's a guy, uh, in the sport who is, um, you know, for my money, the most, uh, the, the best ultra marathon or North American named Jim Walmsley. And he's run the Western States, 114 hours and 30 seconds.

And, you know, I would say that that is as good of a performance as we've seen in a hundred mile distance. Uh, you know, he's going through four canyons, uh, you know, river crossings and stuff like that. So like it was a little, little more, uh, uh, things in the way to slow you down a bit. So, uh, it's kind of apples way to slow you down a bit. So, and it's kind of apples to oranges when you start getting into some of that stuff where like specificity of training is a lot different when you're training for a mountain race versus a flat

race. Um, but yeah, you know, there's, uh, at the, at his fastest, I can do under 12 hours, you know, I've done a hundred milers where it's taken me over 17 hours cause they're out on trail and stuff like that. And, and, you know, there's, there's a hundred mile races that have drawn the most competitive hundred milers in the world that, you know, breaking 20 hours is going to win it most years. So it's, it's pretty crazy. Do you have a training partners? Um, you know, I, I do most of my training by myself, but, uh, I do, uh, I've been, I've, I actually just moved to Phoenix in January, so I'm pretty new there yet. Um, but I'm, I, I tend to like to train by myself a lot, but then I also like to have a couple options to jump in with other people from time to time just to kind of break it up. Uh, so I've been kind of putting

together some potential or some training partners to kind of run with out there too. Um, but it's not quite like a team, like it would be in college where like, you're never really doing anything by yourself. Right. What about like when you sprint, you know, does it, it might be a good idea to have someone that maybe is fast or faster. Yeah. Yeah. And actually from what I find, like sometimes with the sprints, it's like, Yeah. Yeah. And actually from what I find, like sometimes with the sprints, it's like, uh, I'm almost like, it's like, it's full throttle enough where like you just kind of go into the brink and holding as long as you can. The ones that I think actually are the most, uh, beneficial of a partner are some of those like perceived efforts of like seven or eight out of 10, where you're going to go for quite a bit longer, but you're trying to hit like this specific pace. Cause then you have someone who you can kind of just feed off of a little bit and it's just a little longer in duration. So sometimes, cause that's when the mental thing I think comes in a little bit too more. Um, so those ones are always great. Like I always feel like I can do a tempo run better with a partner or the group. Do you have a regular job on top of this? Uh, yeah, I do a few things. My main sponsor, Ultra Footwear,

I also do some marketing and event stuff for them out in Arizona. So I help them out on top of running for them. And I do coaching as well, coaching and consult stuff on my website at zachbitter.com. So I kind of try to stay busy with a few different things,

mostly running-related stuff. Yeah, I don't know if I would really like to be, even if I had the option to, just train and race. I feel like because then you just end up putting so much into that one performance that if it doesn't go well, you just end up dwelling on it and then it can get, become a vicious cycle. I like to be kind of involved in other things too. And, um, the most recent thing I started up, uh, is, uh, a podcast myself with, uh, Dr. Sean Baker called human performance outliers. So I think we've got like right around, I think we're at

maybe 40 or so episodes right now. And that's great. Yeah, so it's been kind of fun, and we're starting to build a bit of an audience, which is cool to see people checking it out and stuff like that, and fun to talk to the guests and keep learning. Have you tried the carnivore diet, like just straight up carnivore diet? Have you had any room in your training to just try that flat out? Yeah, yeah. I haven't probably given Um, I haven't probably given it, I haven't taken it through its full paces in a way that I would say is long enough

where I could confirm or deny whether it's a going to be like the next best thing for me or not. I've done an eight day stretch of just, uh, carnivore approved foods. Um, and, uh, I did that kind of after a race and that seemed to work really well. I mean, normally after a race, I'm going really low carb, if not almost zero carb anyway. Um, but, uh, that seemed to be just so like low maintenance. I think people kind of think like, oh, if you're just going to eat meat, like, you know, that's must be boring or that must be hard, but it's really, I mean, Sean talks about this. It's like, it's actually kind of freeing because you're not thinking about what you're going to eat. You're just like, Oh, here's the stuff I'm going to have. I'm going to have it. And then, and then

when I'm full, I'm going to stop. And then you just do it again when you're hungry. So I think there's something kind of cooler, like a nuance to that. Um, but like really the way I kind of look at, uh, my, my diet most recently is, uh most recently is I build a lot of things around meat. So I'm eating a lot of fatty cuts of meat and then kind of sprinkling other things in alongside it. And really, the question ends up becoming, like, do I want to add more fat source to that or do I want to add a little bit of carbohydrate? And, you know, that's always dependent on the training for me at this moment. And it's not something I wouldn't want to try and see, like maybe at the end of a big a race, just go straight carnivore and, and take it as far as I can into the training before I either notice that it's better or worse or somewhere in between just to kind of get an idea.

Um, it's, it's an interesting enough approach. Yeah. Uh, what's something fun that you want to do, you know, with racing, like, uh, whether it's racing another country or, or whatever it might be. Yeah. You know, there's, there's a few things that I'd, I'd like to get into that I haven't done yet. Um, you know, the most immediate one is, uh, a 24 hour event where you just see how far you can get in 24 hours, which isn't true. Basically just run the entire time. I mean, is there any stopping at all or just. Probably to go to the bathroom maybe a couple of times. And, uh, if it, depending on where I did it, most 24 hour events are on short loops. So the interesting thing about that event to me is like, you're so exposed, like every

weakness is shown. So like, if you stop, you're stopping because you don't want to run. You're not stopping because you need to really. Um, and so that adds a little bit of a kind of an intrigue but that's not too far from what i've been doing so something that's maybe a little more uh out there is there's there's some cool like different like things where like fastest cross-country run where you try to go from san francisco to new york and see how quickly you can do that. Um, you know, that's a, the guy who's got the record right now, averaged like 70 miles a day. Um, sounds very, uh, Forrest Gump like. Yeah, no doubt. Yeah. Yeah. If you're not, if you're going to get, if you get called Forrest Gump already, you're probably going to wear that

badge for the rest of your life. You do a cross country run, but that looks like something that would be maybe something I would do that would be quite a bit different from what I have been doing. I mean, to date, I've really focused a lot more on specific events, like within a day's timeframe, whereas that would be a, you know, a 30 plus day venture. Do you and your wife run together here and there or not really? Yeah. Yeah. You know, my wife was a former division one, uh, cross country and track runner. So she's pretty good, uh, in her own rights. And, um, you know, a former division one, uh, cross country and track runner. So she's pretty good, uh, in her own rights. And, um, you know, a lot of times, like the way our training intensities work is like if I'm doing kind of what I call like a base run, uh, that's kind of like her tempo pace, uh, or

like my tempo pace is kind of like her short interval pace. So a lot of times we can pair things up and then there's some days where it's like the goal is just kind of recovery, really easy running. Right. And, uh, you know, sometimes we'll just go out and do that and not have a huge goal or go for a trail run or something like that together. So we spend a decent amount of time on the roads and trails together. Guys ever butt heads, uh, with different running philosophies or styles or whatever. Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny cause like, uh, I love the data. Like I love looking at like the, like how fast I do this, like how many feet of climbing was that. And she's the opposite. She doesn't even wear a watch. So I wouldn't say we necessarily butt heads, but like, it's definitely, it's opened my eyes to, I think this idea that like there,

we probably, if anything are underestimating the amount of different ways you can successfully do something like this and meeting full potential is very dependent on the person and their personality so for my wife like i could put her through the most like scientifically based strict like periodized training program that on paper should get her to run her exact fastest time possible and she might run the worst race of her life. And then I send her out and just, you know, tell her run this hard or, uh, take it easy today or just follow me. And then, you know, she kind of probably does better with that. Cause it's just, for whatever reason, not, not as, uh, uh, as stressful on her. Do you guys ever have to say, Hey, we're going to go out,

you know, we're going to go on a date and no one's allowed to talk about running for tonight? She's put that one on me a few times. Yeah, you've got to make some rules. But you're like, oh, but hold on one second. I just got this one thought. I wanted to try this new thing. She's like, nope. Let's talk about shoelaces. Come on. You're going to love it. I've been thinking, if I put Velcro over top of the shoelace. This is so much more aerodynamic. She's figured out a good glare that kind of lets me know.

Oh, yeah. Three hours of running talk is enough, especially since we just ran three hours. You just know like that she might just throw down and just pop you one, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, she's really cool about that, but, um, I mean, we definitely, I think it's good for both of us to like, you know, to branch out, think about other things and, you know, yeah, do other stuff too. And, um, uh, it's, uh, we're a

good fit for that. I think. Awesome. Well, it's been great having you on the show. You got any other questions, Andrew? Yeah. Um, if anybody's following the show, they know I'm balls deep with sleep right now. Uh, what, how many hours of sleep a night? What's your sleep looking like? Yeah. You know, I, when I'm just like left to fall asleep and I get tired and then wake up when I wake up, I usually end up hitting between eight or nine hours a night. Um, and, and it's pretty funny cause that's huge. That's been pretty routine for me, like since I was young, like when, even when I was in elementary and middle school, I would, um, like that's about what I would sleep. Uh, and the only real like divergence from that was when I, before I switched to the high fat, low carb approach where I was waking up a bunch. And

as soon as I, you know, one of the reasons that I really gravitated to that approach is that went right back right away. So it's like, if I get eight to nine, um, I can just pretty much knock that out almost every night. And then usually what'll happen every once in a while, you know, have something come up where you got to get up really early or you stay up way later than you should have. And you don't sleep as much, I'll get like six hours. And if I do that a couple of times in a row, then I might, you know, knock on a 10 or 12 hour night. Like if it catches kind of up, but, um, you know, the average is usually between eight or nine hours or so. And then, so last question, you can answer this any, which way you like,

um, do you consider yourself an outlier? An outlier? Um, I guess like if you consider an outlier, something that someone that does something that very few other people do, then I think just by being in the sport of ultra marathoning, I'm an outlier. I think it's a, it's an interesting word. Cause then you're like, what is an outlier? And, you know, Sean and I have actually juggled with that when we named the show. Cause we're like, well, what is an outlier? And you know, we started like going down different avenues, like as an outlier, someone who knows something that very few people know, you know, probably. So, uh, you know, I guess, yes, I would have to say yes. Um, you know, it's, uh, uh, whether it's something, I don't think an outlier is something that people can't achieve though. I think everyone has the potential to be an outlier. They just need to find what that area is and then decide if they're interested and

passionate enough to kind of take it to its extreme. I'm sure you've had the request many times over, but, uh, you guys have to do each other's workouts, I think. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Originally the idea was we were going to kind of meet in what people were considering a middle ground into a 400 meter dash or something like that. But i'm not all that confident i can beat sean in a 400 meter dance so we might have to make it an 800 some long ass legs yeah yeah he is yeah it's no wonder he's good at that rowing machine yeah yeah he's he's a big he's a big guy it's just extremely athletic yeah he came in here went went crazy. He went nuts in here. He deadlifted like 405 and then just went on to leap across the whole gym.

It's like, what the fuck is this guy doing? Yeah, he did these weird leaps and he was throwing the med balls everywhere. Just straight up in the air. Man, he had a party in here. He loved it. Yeah, I bet. This would be his jam for sure. Swinging the 200-pound kettlebell and he was going bonkers.

Tell people where they can find you. Tell them about your website, all that kind of stuff before we sign off here. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, my website is just ZachBitter.com, Z-A-C-H-B-I-T-T-E-R. And then social media, I'm most active on Instagram and Twitter. Instagram, I'm at ZachBitter and Twitter at ZBitter. So if you want to give me a follow and, uh, shout at me, if you got any questions, there we go. Strength is never a

weakness. Weakness is never a strength. See you later.