Modern Wisdom - #470 - Zach Bitter - The Mindset To Break A 100-Mile Record

Episode Date: May 7, 2022

Zach Bitter is an ultramarathon runner and coach who held world records for the 100-mile run and the 12-hour run. Understanding what it takes to run an ultramarathon is one thing, but doing it at a world record pace is something else. I wanted to find out what the mindset of an ultra runner can teach the rest of us about resilience, dedication and commitment. Expect to learn the biggest mistakes that runners make when taking on a long distance, how Zach copes with the pain when things get hard, the best intra-event nutrition he's found, how to deal with negative self-talk, whether he's tempted to do a Back Yard Ultra and much more... Sponsors: Join the Modern Wisdom Community to connect with me & other listeners - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Get 20% discount on the best quality Kratom from Super Speciosa at https://getsuperleaf.com/modernwisdom (use code: MW20) Get 20% discount on the highest quality CBD Products from Pure Sport at https://bit.ly/cbdwisdom (use code: MW20) Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and Free Shipping from Athletic Greens at https://athleticgreens.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Extra Stuff: Check out Zach's website - https://zachbitter.com/ Follow Zach on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/zachbitter/  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's happening people? Welcome back to their show. My guest today is Zach Bitter. He's an Ultramarathon runner and coach who held the world records for the 100 mile and the 12-hour run. Understanding what it takes to run an Ultramarathon is one thing, but doing it at a world record pace is something else. I wanted to find out what the mindset of an Ultramarathon can teach the rest of us about resilience, dedication and commitment. I expect to learn the biggest mistakes that runners make when taking on a long distance, how Zack copes with the pain when things get hard, the best intro event nutrition he's found, how to deal with negative self-talk, whether he's tempted to do a backyard ultra, and much more. But now, please welcome Zach the show.

Hey, thanks for having me. How are you finding training now that you're in Austin, is it got the right requisite trails and running routes that you need? Yeah, you know, the biggest transition for me so far has just been going from like a very oppressively hot dry climate in Phoenix to slightly more, or I shouldn't say slightly, but much mugier climate here in Austin. Equally oppressive, but then what's a, yeah. Yeah, I grew up in the Midwest.

I spent a couple decades in Wisconsin actually. So I got sort of familiar with humid summer. So I have an idea of what's coming and one of the reasons why my wife and I moved to Austin was because I ended up coming down here I think five times last year. And she was already kind of interested in moving to Austin at some point. So we decided it was time to make it happen.

So, but yeah, adjusting, I'm training for mostly flat stuff right now. So terrain isn't as big of an issue. It's just normalizing the temperatures more or less. We don't have a lot of elevation or mountains in Austin or at least I haven't been to see any yet, haven't been shown any of them. No, they, I mean they call it hill country I guess, so you can get some rollers, but not a lot, like two mile, a cent type of situations like you're going to find in like the canyons out in California and stuff like that.

So it's a little different. I kind of like it though. I like running controlled surfaces a little bit better. I like doing the trail stuff as well, but usually I'll use that as a way to kind of like it though. I like running controlled surfaces a little bit better. I like doing the trail stuff as well, but usually I'll use that as a way to kind of like break up, kind of big buildups for more flatter races. And that just kind of keeps me excited about it, makes it not quite as monotonous. And I think just kind of gives you a little of an edge when you're kind of going back and forth a little bit.

But I'm sure once the summer's really picked up, we'll head up to Colorado for some training sessions up in the mountains. If there's a race, that's kind of targeting that type of terrain as well. What are you working towards right now? I'm actually preparing for an event that as silly as it sounds, it's on an indoor track at the Olympic training facility in Milwaukee, Wisconsin called the Pettit Center. And it's a little over 400 meter indoor track. They have a speed skating rink in there. So they keep it at like 60 degrees constants, which is, is kind of a nice control

there from a weather standpoint. And I'm probably going to do a hundred miles or distance traveled in 12 hours there, but I'm sort of keeping the door open to do 24 hours just in, just in case, but that's in June. So everything I'm doing from a training standpoint is kind of moving towards that. You must be in the thick of it, then, if that's what, like, between six and eight weeks away or something, this must be ramping up towards a pretty intense set of training weeks. Yeah, and when I do stuff that's kind of like 100 miles and further, I'm usually compartmentalizing

the different intensities a little more than what a lot of folks would probably think of with an endurance plan. And the periodization is still there. It's just a little more structured so that I'm working on, say like shorter intervals earlier in the plan, longer intervals, or would you call like a tempo run kind of in the plan longer intervals or what you call like a tempo run kind of in the middle and then spending the last like six to eight weeks working on kind of race specific pacing, which for longer races just tends to be slower versus most endurance races where race day is going to be kind of a more faster pace comparatively to what you're normally doing in training.

So I think when you kind of stretch out the distance as far as 100 miles and beyond, you get into this kind of territory where you're really not going to cross a bunch of different intensities on race days. If you're doing things right, you're going to kind of dial in the right intensity and hold on for dear life. So to speak, and that just kind of puts you in a position, I think, to be a little more one-dimensional throughout the different phases of training. Do you still hold the 100 mile record? I have the American record for 100 miles in distance run in 12 miles,

but I lost the world record to a guy named Alex Sorkin who's just been on a tear. He actually now holds the world records for 24 hours, 12 hours, 100 miles, and 100 kilometers. So he's just been ripping it up, but it'll be fun to kind of take a swing at some of the times he's been putting up the last. Do you know what the time's up? Yeah, so he recently just broke the 100 kilometer world record, which was six hours and five minutes.

So he's like sub six minute miling, essentially, for 62 and a half miles or 100 kilometers for that. His 100 mile PR is 10 hours and 51 minutes. And what was yours before? Mine was 11 hours and 19 minutes. So he took a good chunk off of that Then he went 110 miles and 12 hours. So That's his distance. They do these weird things and ultra running where you see how far you can get in a specific time frame So some popular ones are like 12 hours 24 hours and then when you get real crazy

You do like 48 72 and sometimes even six days So he's gone up to 24 which he did I want to say that was maybe about Eight months ago you ran a hundred and ninety two and a half miles and 24 hours So he's been just kind of lighting the flat, runable ultra-seen on fire recently. He's been kind of cool to see him take a big swing at that stuff. Is that indoors as well? His were all outside. So there was an event he did two of them at called the Centurion 100, where they have an outdoor track that is designed for kind of record chasing. They try to minimize

the field size. So you're not kind of spending too much time in lane two or three if it gets real crowded on the track. And he did the 24 hour run. I think it was like a short loop around a mile, little maybe a little over a mile. And yeah, and I think the other, I think the other, so he's actually run 100 miles now twice since I broke the world record.

You did once, he ran 11-14, and that's kind of was his first race. Then he did 192 and a half or 24 hours, went back and did another 100 mile, and that's when he went 10-51. And then just I think, was it a week ago? He did the 100-commoner world record. Yeah, it's been insane to watch. So a six, like a sub six minute mile, sorry, a sub six minute kilometer?

For a mile for the 100 kilometer actually. So it's like, I think it's like, it's in the 550s for a mile pace for that. And I think if my math is right in my head, it's like he's getting around like for his, he's down into like sub four kilometer, four minute kilometer pace for some of this, which he's disgusting. It is insane.

It's really cool to see the sport kind of kind of grow because I got an ultramarathon running in 2010 and that was kind of at the precipice of like a big surge of popularity with the sport and it's just kind of continued to get more more popular over the last decade or so and a lot of the growth was on kind of the trails in the mountain side of it and it was kind of a draw away from the kind of more structured running that you see historically but there's a pretty big history and kind of flat run-able control short loop stuff time to events and things like that so as the sports continue to go we're seeing this side of it grow as well. He's certainly doing his fair share of putting a spotlight on some of this stuff. And the way that it works, because the 100 mile and the 12 hour time tend to be so tightly close together, you have a crack at the first one.

And then if you feel like you've got a little bit more in the tank, you just keep on going and see what you've got. And then maybe even have a look at the 24 as well. Yeah. The ladder is a little more rare, but most, I mean, there's only a few people who've been in a position to go under 1200 and then continue on. So it. But that seems to be the move. I ran at one time I stopped at 100 miles in 2015. I ran 100 miles in about 11 hours and 40 minutes and was just like burning and fumes basically. I stopped with, I always wondered about that on how much of that one was just my mental exhaustion, which is the likely case there versus just

kind of physically running out of steam. But I think usually when you're in a position to be running a time that's under 12 hours or in Alex's situation under 11 hours, the motivation to kind of keep going since you've put yourself in that position is there and you tend to stick it out even if it's at a slower pace. 24 gets interesting because there's just so much more dynamics there in terms of what you need to do for that extra 12 hours. So I think it maybe looks appealing when you cross that 12 hour mark, but then as you

kind of tick up to 16, 17, 18 hours, it gets a little more daunting to maybe wrap your head around that. So usually people are picking one or the other or if they they do pick both, usually one of them goes well. Talk me through a controlled environment for hitting 100 miles. How many breaks are you taking through there? Are you trying to not stop and refuel as you move pretty much for the entire 12 hours?

Yeah, as much as you can tolerate, really the only thing that should pull you off of a track in an event like that if you're going for just your fastest potential time, is a bathroom break. So what I'll usually do is I'll have a couple people out there that are just at a table with all my stuff. And if I'm coming around the loop, if I want something, I'll just say what I want, and then a couple minutes later, they'll hand it to me. So all the hydrating and fueling and things I'm going to be doing

is going to be on the fly, so to speak. Then it's just you hope for the best digestively and for bathroom breaks and things like that. My most efficient was I did 100 miles with, I think, between 60 to 90 seconds of total stoppage. Total stoppage. Yeah. 12 hours basically. Yep. And then when I ran my fastest time 11 hours and 19 minutes, that was, I think I stopped

for maybe three, three and a half minutes total on that one. Wow. And then is that, where do you, because I've seen certain races where people take, they have to recover, they have to either do a little bit of Sleep or some sort of soft tissue or just get lift a legs up or whatever was the line if it's not 12 hours Is it 24 is it 48? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean if you look at just like world record performances and things like that or record breaking performances There's not gonna be a lot of that. There's, I wanna say, the previous American record for 24 hours, a guy named Mike Morton,

when he got near, they'll find a lot of hours, he was starting to really tighten up in the hamstring area and he would stop every four loops and do like this stretch that seemed to kind of keep him moving a bit. But when you get to like, Alex Sorkin's world record, his average pace is right around seven and a half minute

miling. So any stoppage there just means he's got around faster to average that time. So I'm pretty sure he had a pretty, you had a middle-only. That's the 24, 7, 7, 30 for the 24. Yep. I think once you start getting to like 48 hours,

is where you start kind of considering is like say a 20 minute power nap going to actually produce a faster overall distance versus staying out there and slogging it. And it's just, you know, as you stretch out to those distances, two uses, the fields get thinner and thinner and the data points get less and less populated. So you do have a little bit of a variance. I remember specifically I was following, there have a little bit of a variance. I remember specifically, I was following, there was a popular time to event race actually down in near Phoenix that they

do every year at the end of the year. I just called it cross the years because you start in December and end in January. And the six days kind of their big calling card for that one. And there was a close battle between two guys, a few years back. And one of them slept, I think, a total of somewhere in the upper 20-hour time frame during it. And the other guy was like less than eight hours total over the course of six days. So you do get a pretty big variance. They ended up finishing in and not too dissimilar time. Yeah, they were close to one another. That's a one mile, like kind of dirt loop that they do that one on. And I want to say they were within like a loop or two of one another by the end of it all.

Who's that crazy guy that did the the race that's kind of orientating. And now it's one mile on the hour, every hour until everybody quits. Oh, yeah. So they've got these events called Backyard Ultras essentially where yeah you have like a loop or something that you need to complete in an hour's time and it's just a last man standing is what they'll call it because everyone keeps going out until there's one left. The most recent one I think is Harvey Lewis is probably what you're thinking of. I see the guy that made that cold. There's a special trail that he did for ages and ages,

and it was a real sort of interesting type of race. The route was always different. It took a little bit of orientating to kind of get yourself around. I think you're thinking of the Barclays marathon. I'm thinking of the Barclays marathon. Yeah, that was another interesting one where it's, I mean, it's all like kind of a mystery.

They say it's a 20 mile loop that you do five times, but in reality, they don't really know. It could be like much more than that. And yeah, it's like, it's total bush whacking, orientating, and usually, I think there's been 15 or 16, hopefully I'm not butchering this, but like 15 or 16 total finishes over the years. And it's almost got to be like, as ideal weather as you can get for that area.

If it's like rain coming in, it's basically a foregone conclusion that no one's finishing that year, even though everyone goes in and thinking, all right, I'm going to find a way. So you get some some crazy results with that one. Gary, Gary Robinson one year, he, the way they confirmed that you did the loop is they've got this book. And you're supposed to pull a page out of it. So when you come back down, you have to show the page that you did it. And he, he came down, but he came down. He had all his pages, but he came down the wrong trail. So like he got turned around somewhere out there, ended up at the finish

area, but had taken a different route. So he essentially disqualified himself on the fifth loop at the very end of the race. Yeah, imagine it was like spending almost 60 hours out there in the rain and through all that and finding out, oh, I've made one mistake and that basically bottomed everything else. I heard so much. Are you tempted by doing a last month's standing type race? I would for that. I like the concept of the idea of that where there's kind of this, you're obviously in a battle with yourself, but there's like a hundred different ways you can probably structure

that time frame. With that hour in which you're trying to pace yourself around and then you're also trying to kind of monitor the field and sense like, how much does this person have left and how deep into the depths of sleep deprivation and fatigue am I going to have to go before someone else breaks? So I think I'll probably do some of those eventually. The interesting thing I think is you sort of get these hyper long ultramarathons where age is definitely still a factor but it's just pushed way back so you can be a fair bit older and then you have like some

of the racing that I've done more historically, I could call like single day ultramarathon stuff where I do think there's probably a earlier point where like all right now I'm likely not physically going to be able to produce the same times I was before but you still have this door open for some of those like multi day type stuff so part of me is kind of holding off a little bit on that so that I don't spend spend my youth so to speak in things that I can wait for and maximize the shorter shorter distance ultra as well I still kind of have a little bit of pop in my legs. How old are you? 36. Okay, cool. And is this, are you kind of looking at the precipice over the next, whatever, five to 10 years of the single day ultra's maybe being a little bit difficult to keep up with? Does that start to look a little bit more like a sprint when you 45 or 46 instead of 36?

For sure. And I think it's actually in my mind that this is something that I've probably had to relearn or reevaluate in my mind as I've thought that as the sport evolved, we did see kind of like a push of younger folks coming into it where historically it was kind of, you went through a full sort of like career if you wanna call it that or at least like of, like, career, if you want to call it that, or at least, like, personal, like, project of the single fast you could run, like,

the 5K, the 10K, the half marathon, the marathon, and then you'd sort of age out, and then maybe if you still had some, some, some fire in you, you would decide to do an ultramarathon. So you'd see a lot of the winners would be kind of a little bit older than your average athlete would be. We started seeing that get a little younger as a sport group, but then recently we've seen the men's and women's 100 miles 24 hours, 12 hours all go down to 40 year olds. So now I'm thinking to myself, well, maybe I got more time, time left on the single day stuff I've originally thought. So it is an interesting kind of a thought experiment to run through your mind, but I think the 24 hours is gonna be something I'll spend a fair bit of time

training for and preparing for in the future. And then I don't know how much of the fort. The word on the street from the very experienced multi-day folks is that the four, eight hours, the most brutal one because that's the one where you could in theory, probably not sleep at all. Whereas, once you get up to like 72 plus hours, you're probably going to have at least some breaks in there. And it's just a lot to wrap your head around, I think, from the mental side to be going into a 40 hour race and thinking like, I'm going to push through two sleepless nights and try to stay consistent and

on target for what I'm going for. And that one sounds a little daunting. So perhaps I'll skip that and just do some last man standing stuff. Do you, have you got any concerns long term about your health? Obviously, I've heard rumors or whatever seen things online about free radicals from these people that do tons and tons of endurance events, you know, like absolute long out longevity, is that something that you consider? Yeah, it's definitely something I think about. And it's, when I'm like looking at what I do, relative to just running in general,

I've clearly gone past like the mark, like the health benefits and into like the kind of masochistic territory of your brutalizing your body and you're gonna fight a little bit of an uphill battle to probably keep things in check. So I think about that stuff. I'm just been, I sort of look at life more though

through the lens of I wanna maximize my time and enjoy it as much as I can. So if that means I'm taking some years off the back end in order to be like really able to go after the things that interest me, I'd rather have that than be kind of more moderate and find myself, you know, living to be like 90 or 100 and kind of wondering what if I would have pushed a little harder or trained a little differently.

So I'm definitely trying to do things in a way where I feel a little keep me sustainable and keep me healthy and not destroy myself. And some of that I think is just being kind of mindful of when injuries do pop up, making sure you're taking the time to not let them fester into something that's going to be long-term or permanent. I think paying attention to nutrition and things like that so that you don't end up in a situation where you're constantly depleting yourself and running yourself into the ground and premature aging and things like that. But at the end of the day, it is probably the,

you know, like I said, I probably cross that point where I'm maximizing health through the activities I'm doing and leading a little bit more into performance at the expense of some health, but Part of this also, I don't necessarily see myself as being like this 65-year-old still out there kind of slogging through ultra-marathons for the sake of doing it. My suspicion is that when I get to a point where I'm no longer competitive, I'll probably focus my energies on some sort of other physical type of thing and maybe lean a little more into some strength type stuff. Hopefully preserve some lean muscle mass as a age.

Yeah, yeah, man. It is interesting thinking about the people at the peak of the sport. You have the 100 mile record for chunk of time and then you're going to go for it again this year, talking about life balance and offsetting longevity and considerations about that. All of those things are just mitigating performance, basically. All of those things are just going to get in the way, even if it's ever so slightly. Whatever it is that you decide that you're not going to do with regards to your training or your nutrition or whatever, it's not going to be to the benefit of your performance. So if you are going all out to try and be the best in the world, which you are, it's interesting, right? Because the role model that we have, that we see in people

that give absolutely everything that they have, most people who aren't at the peak of that sport, because there's only a handful that are, take that strategy as the one that they should use in their daily life. And I think that you need to look at, okay, what are the things that they are doing that I can bring into my own life, whilst taking into account the fact that this isn't my calling, right? I'm not trying to get a world record. I'm not going for this. This isn't my source of income, my desire for legacy, my highest calling in life, and trying to blend those two things. What is it that Zach's doing that I can bring on board myself that I think is a good strategy? But also, do I want to be ending myself to the same degree that someone who's trying to create this long-lasting legacy as well? If you're just a recreational runner, then maybe not.

Yeah, it's a really good point because I think it's funny. I think I actually like, because I coach people from beginners who barely ran at all in their entire life to people who've been running their entire life and are chasing like an age group record or something like that. And the difference, I would say between like someone like myself who's doing this as a career or a profession and someone who is doing it as like a passion, but they also have a full time job, a family, a whole other life outside of it, is they just have a lot more variables that they're actually dealing with.

Like when you put yourself in a position where you decide I'm going to spend, say, four to six months just living this life of a professional athlete and do everything I can to kind of maximize my performance on one singular day, you sort of eliminate so many variables out of necessity, like you said. You start whittling things down where you just draw your parameters so tight that you have like a very short list of things that could negatively impact or impact what you're trying to do versus the everyday person who simply can't turn those things off, nor do they necessarily want to.

And where I find that interesting is a lot of times we'll take things like like studies and research on kind of training methodology or nutrition and things like that. And we'll be looking at like the elites, the tip of the spear. And it's like to a degree, like you said, there's a lot of useful things you can pull out of that. But once you start introducing life variables that are not present or haven't been fine-tuned to the degree that they are with a professional athlete, it starts getting interesting. And I think it gets more exciting in terms of finding out like,

well, why does this work so well for me, but not for that person? And then you kind of have to play around with some of those variables and figure out why it's working for someone and not you or vice versa. I'm interested by the mindset that you need to be able to do that sort of an event. So obviously you're doing your training, you're doing your recovery, you're probably learning about different strategies for fueling and refueling and intraday workout, fuel and stuff like that. How much are you doing formal mindset training? Is there, are you working with a mindset coach?

Are you going through any particular types of techniques that are assisting you there? Yeah, you know, the mindset side of the sport has been something where I think when I first got into it, I sorta just thought like it would take care of itself more or less, where it was just, you know, I think my mindset about mindset was the reason I'm doing this is because I have a strong enough mindset

to push through this stuff, and that was just a skill set that I didn't necessarily need to practice or that was just a skill set that I didn't necessarily need to practice or that was just kind of unique to someone who's doing this sort of a sport or this sort of an activity. But as I kind of went through it, I started recognizing just kind of how you can train your mind differently and kind of structure the training too. So for me now, when I'm looking at my training schedule, I'm thinking about just like,

how do I work on things like visualization during training to try to kind of help me close the gap between, say, the last time I ran 100 miles and the next time I'm going to, because the mindset of an ultramarathon, the uniqueness comes in the relative limited amount of experiences you actually have at it, it's from just like being very specific to it. So you never, sorry, you rarely run 100 miles in, in fact, do you, have you ever run 100

miles in training? No. So what's the longest that you've run as not a competition? Not a competition. 60 miles. Yeah. So barely half of the thing that you hold a record in. Right. Yeah. So when you think about it, like even like the marathon, which we were looking at standard endurance events is kind of the pinnacle from a distance standpoint, not uncommon at all that even like folks that aren't elite will get up to if not at that distance. So at least they can wrap their head around them on a time. They're going to be out there and you see the elites

training for marathons. They're sometimes pushing upwards to like a long run where they're doing 16-18 miles at goal marathon pace. So they've narrowed that gap between executing their race and what they've done in training to a fairly small margin where as long as something uncertain doesn't happen, they can almost predict what they're going to do on race day. Whereas yeah, 100 miling, like the last time you experienced miles 70 to 100 was the last time you did it. So for me, like the mindset side of things is just practicing like visualizing where you want to be on a vent day and working yourself through that.

And the best spot for that, I think, is always when you're doing things that are specific to what you're doing. So I really start to lean into the mindset side of things a lot more when I'm in about the last third of my training buildup, where I'm really starting to build up my long run and add back-to-back long runs.

So I might find myself on, say, like a Saturday, Sunday, long run, double double where I'm running 30 miles on both of those days. And on that second one specifically, I'm going to have a little bit of fatigue from the training week there. And I'm just visualizing what is it going to feel like to move from mile 70 to 100 and just like taking snapshots in my head through that through these long runs so that when I do get there on race day, I feel like it's kind of a little more close proximity in terms of like what I want to do, how I want to do it.

And I find that that's really helped me kind of wrap my head around the whole thing because one of the biggest mistakes I think ultra-unters can make is you find yourself at the starting line of a hundred mile race and you just create this monster in your head of what you're going to do, and then you try to wrap your head around that, and you burn so much mental energy, thinking about that all day, that when you get to the end and it's time to really push, you've got nothing left to give mentally, you've kind of drained that mental battery, so to speak. And if you can build that up and put yourself in a position where you can kind of work through

those paces in your head on a little more of an autopilot because you've felt like you've done it a bunch of times. I think that's the sweet spot there. So that and there's some other mental tricks I like to use. One is like intra-ray stuff where you actually are breaking down different segments. So like when I start a hundred mile race, I'm not going to be thinking about finishing. I'm going to be thinking about hitting that first benchmark of where I'm going to try to get to and what time I'm going to try to hit there and try to crowd out any other thoughts if possible. I'm also going to be thinking about if I find myself standing on the start line of a 100 mile race,

I'm essentially like 99% of the way there when I look at it from the entirety of the training build-up. So being mindful during the training, so you have these reference points to think about, oh yeah, four months ago I was there and now I'm here. And three months ago, you just have these like mental pictures in your head that really highlight the breadth of everything and help you minimize the big task at hand, which I think is very helpful in kind of getting yourself positioned to be able to stay on top of the physical side of things with your mindset.

Zooming out is so important. It's such a difficult skill, though, right? We're so short-termist as humans, especially if discomforts in the situation. You're doing this thing and all that you feel is the taste of metal in the back of your throat and the blood in your lungs and the throbbing of your legs and stuff. And you can't, it's so hard, you're totally right. If you've been preparing for three to six months to go and do any sort of a race and your part way through the race,

but you aren't, it's 99 points, something of the way there. Of all of the time that you've spent researching and looking at kit and hydrating and diet and going on practice runs and thinking about how the race is all of that. And you've just, it's just the end. You know, what's the, it's the final stage of the Tour de France that's basically like a trophy lap. Right.

It's kind of just a, I can't remember what they call it, the, the peloton just comes in and it's a symbolic, right? It's not, it's not I can't remember what they call it, the palatine just comes in and it's symbolic, right? It's not, it's not actually part of the race so much. And it's precisely the same as that, but except for the fact that you, if you get yourself in the wrong headspace, you probably can talk yourself into this being this huge, big problem that you need to overcome and then you're going to be stressed and you know that that's not going to be good for your performance. And because you know it's not good for your performance, you're thinking about the fact that the thing you're that's not going to be good for your performance and because you know it's not good for your performance, you're thinking

about the fact that the thing you're thinking isn't going to be good for your performance and it makes it worse and makes it worse. Inspirals. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny too because I think in this maybe goes back to a little bit to one of the questions you asked before. It's like for me, I think when I don't belong on a starting line of an ultra marathon

a longer is when I get to a point where the process of preparing for it is no longer enjoyable and no longer fulfilling. Because when you look at the race as kind of like more of a celebration of all the work you did to get there, then it becomes just kind of part of it versus the end all be all. And when people ask me like why I run

Ultramarathons or if they ask like what they should do for running endurance race, I think digging into that is gotta be square one. It's like well what do you actually want to be doing on the day to day? How are what kind of fulfillment are you gonna draw from this? Because if putting in the training is like pulling teeth, then it's not going to be something that you're going to find enjoyment from even with a good race result long term. So at that point, it's probably more about finding another activity that gets your body moving, that you do enjoy doing on a day-to-day basis, where the training becomes such an enjoyable part of your lifestyle that even if you have a bad

race, you don't look back at it and think, well, I just wasted that last half year or third of a year. It's hard to compete with somebody who's having fun. Really, really difficult to compete with someone who's having fun, right? It's a competitive advantage to do the thing that to you feels like play and to everybody else looks like work. That's one of the things. Everybody likes the idea of the end result, separate from the process that gets you there. Everyone likes the idea of being a rock star up on stage. Nobody likes the idea of five to ten years during your teenage years playing sequences on the guitar over and over and over again, or like obsessing over the way that your voice

sounds or going for vocal coaching three times a week for a decade or something, right? The same thing goes for podcasting. You know, lots and lots of people like the idea of doing a podcast. We go, okay, you're going to have to research the absolute best people in a field within the space of a couple of days. They're going to have had their entire life to learn about this. You've got a couple of days to do it. And then as soon as you've done that, you have somebody else waiting in the wings like an endless convey about that's just constantly coming around. Like, do you like learning about stuff

at a predefined cadence like running on a treadmill? Because if you don't, that is what being a podcaster is. Right? Like what being a podcaster is is consistently learning about lots and lots of different things and then managing different things and then managing to try and coax that out of the expert that you're speaking to. And if you don't like the sound of that, then podcasting isn't for you.

I know that you like the idea of that, the same as you like the idea of being a rock star, you like the idea of being an endurance runner, but if you don't want to go and do lots of training and get to sleep and miss out on social events and stop drinking and do all of that stuff, the same as learning how to play the guitar, the same as reading the books or doing the research and practicing on your diction and your conversation craft. The end result is moot because the journey to get there isn't something you're prepared to go through. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I remember before I kind of changed career paths and focused more on coaching and racing and stuff. I was a school teacher and I'd have students who would, you know, they generally wanted to be doing something other than being in school and some of it's not their fault. But they would, the stuff they'd want to do a lot of times were, you know, what most, you know, kids and teenagers want to do. Like, I want to go skateboarding, I want to, you know, play guitar, like you mentioned, and things like that. And eventually, it would get to a point where you're just like, well, well, like, what's

your long-term plan with this particular thing? And like, well, I want to be a professional at it. And if you want to be a professional at it, it's like, you have to look at those examples like you described. And I would always share with them, um, Zach Wilde, the lead vocal and guitars for a black label society who when he was in high school would play guitar I think something like eight to ten hours a day and would just be like super groggy during school because he was up all night basically playing guitar but by the time he graduated high school he was so good good, he had guys like

Ozzy Osborne looking at him. And it's like, that's what you kind of got to do if you really want to be that guy standing on stage and playing the guitar for Ozzy Osborne or something like that. And obviously, there's other offerings to success within those things that don't include being the best of the best. But these are things you probably want to think about as you're deciding, is this something that I really want to spend my time and energy on versus the endless list of other things that are out there?

Yeah, and I think it's a good idea to have a couple of pursuits that you decide to try and be very, very good at. I think that makes a lot of sense, but you can't do that for everything and trying to do that for everything is going to mean that the few things that you should be really focused on that you could perhaps become the best in your county, city, country, world at. They're going to be diluted down by the fact that you're trying to spend a ton of different plates. But I don't think that it's a bad idea to recreationally have something that you want to do or to challenge yourself even once. You know, to say like, I really, really feel like it would be very meaningful to me if I could run a hundred miles.

I don't think that I can do it. And yet it's going to be this transformational experience. So it's going to be interesting. And I'm going to learn a lot about it. And I'm going to do that. Like, that's a very different mindset than I'm going to try and live the life of a professional runner because I want to try and become the best in the world. And you know, that can maybe even facilitate or improve the thing that you have decided

to be really, really good at, whether that's running a business or being a parent or being a creator or whatever it is that you want to do. I do think that you can facilitate that with stuff from outside of it, but this is the core concept of Greg McEw and Scentualism where he says, look, there's maybe between one and three highest points of contribution that you have to the world. Everything else gets in the way. Like the ultimate productivity system, as far as I can see, is getting ruthlessly clear about what you want and then calling everything else

that doesn't contribute to it. Now, running 100 miles might actually contribute to you being a really good businessman because it may teach you to overcome difficulty and to lean into discomfort and all that sort of stuff, right? But again, like, if starting up knitting or something isn't facilitating the thing that you're supposed to do, it's taking away from it, maybe that's something that you need to question.

And the same thing goes for whatever other pursuit you try and introduce into your life. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you hit it on the head, and I think it's the really interesting thing I think about ultra-marathon the hundred mile distance gets a lot of like spotlight for this and part of it's probably just because It's it does end up kind of putting a lot of people in this position where They have like it's long enough where there's just no way around some big ebbs and flows and kind of your your mind

state of mind and your state of how your body feels that almost is counterintuitive to you going in. And the best example is there's always gonna be a point in a hundred mile race regardless of whether you're finishing very last in that group or in the very front or somewhere in between where you get to a point where you feel like you've hit rock bottom.

And your mind immediately goes to this spot of like, if it's this bad now, how can I keep doing this and expect it not to get worse? And if you let that continue to happen, your mind to keep going down that path, you're gonna drop out. But if you kind of like hunker down, focus on a short term goal and get through that It's amazing like you might have like this scenario where five miles later

You feel better than you did all day long and you're left. They're almost laughing at yourself thinking like How did I continue the activity that got me to feel that miserable and the continuation of that activity actually now makes me feeling better Than I've ever felt before in my life. And you have all these experiences, bold up into essentially one day. And it's just like you can almost live like a lifetime worth of emotions in one day. And the perspective you get from that is like you said, it bleeds into everything. Because then let's say you are really focused on a business that you started. And the 100 mile thing is just like a side hobby that you're doing for fulfillment or for whatever reason.

And now you're at a point in your business where you hit a very difficult obstacle and it's like what you do. And you think back to that experience you had running that 100 mile race and pushing through that. And you kind of leverage the same mindset. You leverage the same visualization tactics, the same attitude and everything. And then you end up breaking through that and you have a similar experience of, oh, now I hit a new height with my business, we've

took this to another stage or another benchmark is met and things like that, and then you laugh at yourself for thinking that you weren't able to do it like earlier on, and it's just a really rewarding experience, I think. Can you try and explain the typical emotions over 100 miles from start until finish for those of us that don't intend on running it? Sure, yeah. The way I usually kind of think about it is you're going to have, essentially for me, it's like the first about 30 miles feels pretty good because I have to be running slow enough that it's sustainable

for 100 miles. I've typically been doing like my long runs up to about that distance. So it's something my body's still familiar with. The intensity is low enough where, you know, I'm not feeling a ton of wear and tear yet. And getting to that feels almost like a snap of the fingers. You get to, I get to 30 miles and I like look back. I was like, wow, it feels like I just started. And then you start to kind of get into this phase where if you give it opportunity to think about, you think, okay, well, I got 30 miles in my legs. That's

the longest long run I did during the build up. I got 70 miles to go. And that kind of plants a bit of a seed of doubt. So now you're thinking, can I do this two more times? And then some, what happens if, you happens if I start feeling more miserable by 40? Am I going to be able to do 60 more miles and you start getting that negative spiral? That's where I typically have to start focusing on positive self-talk and thinking about how do I get myself to think about the next goal and block out the end goal, at least until it becomes time to focus on that. So usually I'm kind of like really kind of starting that mindset from between miles 30 to 40,

where I'm focusing unconsciously minimizing my targets and getting to them versus thinking too far ahead and then when I get to the next one, picking the next one. And then there's some kind of like basic benchmarks that I like to use. One is like 50 miles. It's halfway there. It's also a race distance that I've done a few times in the past. So I have some precedent in terms of like what I'm capable of doing in that time or that distance versus where I'm doing for the pacing. So you can kind of normalize. Okay, I'm where I need to be. I'm not being too aggressive. I'm not being too slow, this checks out. So then that's kind of a good goal to get to. Next one is kind of like 100 kilometers.

I like to kind of start focusing on that one after I've crossed the halfway mark because, again, it's another race instance, I've done a few times and have some perspective of how I should feel relative to like going on all out effort there and start kind of using those as kind of like positive things to get to. Once I get to around 100 kilometers, then I'm within like, you know, five to 10 miles of the longest long run I got to. So then my next goal is get to within the longest long run you did for that build up. And then you just have one more long run to. So when I can get to that spot, if I've taken care of myself properly that day and I'm

in a good, like head space, then I can almost forget that spot, if I've taken care of myself properly that day and I'm in a good head space, then I can almost forget about doing a hundred miles and start thinking about I just got one more long run, which is gonna be you know something I've done six to eight times at least going into this race and that just becomes something I can easily wrap my head around comparatively and you know you're gonna still probably hit some rough spots in there, but kind of keeping that in the back of your mind as well as any like mini benchmarks. I like to be a little more like present with my goals at that point because you do are going to, you are going to get a variety of experiences from that last part. So like determining like, am I going to focus

on just getting the next two miles done, or am I going to focus on a bigger chunk is something I'll usually leave to race day in that part. But I'll definitely be leaning on kind of that mindset stuff I talked about before with the long run development where I'm thinking about like the various stages in there and like what I need to do when I have a have a negative self self self thought kind of come in. And the the part that makes it really interesting is there's always a race that you do where you kind of push past some discomfort or a mental block that you hadn't done before. And you have this realization of like you start second guessing your mental strength or your willpower in previous ones because you now you kind of redefined what you're capable

of and you start wondering was it my mind that limited me before that didn't get me there your mental strength or your willpower in previous ones, because now you kind of redefined what you're capable of, and you start wondering, was it my mind that limited me before that didn't get me there, or was I actually just not physically able to do this yet at that point? And I think in most cases, it's the mental side of things. And that can be both fulfilling and a little depressing, depending on how you process it.

So you have to have to be careful, especially post-race then too, is going through the mindset of like, if you achieve something you never have before, not to kind of be hard on yourself or prior attempts. It's like, yeah, for having never done it before.

Dude, that's such an interesting thought pattern. I'm really glad you brought it up. The fact that a success in one moment can highlight your failures previously, and you can almost tarnish the thing that you're really proud of in the moment by using that as a retrospective benchmark to gauge all of the things when you, all the times when you didn't do that previously. It's so interesting. And I think it's, there's also like a, something I've thought about before and said is just like there's really

no such thing as a perfect 100-mileer because it's just too long. There's going to be a mistake or something happens that you didn't anticipate or if you didn't anticipate it, you were hoping it for it not to happen and then it does. And it's a little like Nebula says to how that impacts your final time, but when you walk away from the event itself, if you really review everything, you can find a few places where it's like, well, if I had done that a little differently, I may be saved myself a minute or two. So there's almost this endless target of what you're capable of. So I think there is, and perhaps this is me coping, but perhaps there

is some value in just acknowledging that when you're doing something as long as 100 miles, there's really no way that every piece to that puzzle fits absolutely perfectly, and there is no uncertainty throughout it. So you, at a certain point, you have to say, hey, I minimize the number of mistakes, and I responded to the uncertainty as best I could and that's what produced perfection for what I can expect out of this type of a project. How much discomfort do you go through? Because for me, somebody who, if I had to run five miles, that would be pretty ugly to me, even with all of the training and even with all of the preparation, pain and discomfort,

how much does that play into 100 miles as a limiting factor? Yeah, I think the interesting thing, because I always try to compare this to like earlier in my life, because when I got into running, I was doing more standard distance stuff, like 5Ks, 10Ks. And it's really interesting to me because with those type of endurance events, there's like a sharper pain that you have to kind of white knuckle through for however long it takes you, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever happens to be. And that's just like a different type of discomfort. It's like a really sharp, acute discomfort versus an ultra running.

It's like nothing really, unless you really get hurt by like falling or something like that, I guess. Nothing really hurts like super sharp where you feel like it's like a stabbing pain, but there's like this low level of discomfort that kind of arrives somewhere around like the point where you get to your longest long run. And it kind of just like stays there and it doesn't go away.

So you have this like low level discomfort that just eats away of you. And like every hour, every minute that goes by, it's like just one more hour, one more minute that you had to tolerate that low level of discomfort. And I think that's really the big thing you have to get over is physically, you could often push through a lot of that, but do you have the mental currency to be able to actually kind of consciously say, this is uncomfortable. I've been managing this discomfort for X number of hours already. I can do it for X number more in order to get to that finish line. And this maybe goes into like what I was just talking about where inevitably during that time frame

there's gonna be some moments where you're like, I don't know if I can do this and perhaps that slows you down for a little bit or causes you to take a break that you maybe didn't necessarily actually need to take that kind of adds up to the totality of the experience. But yeah, that's kind of, it's an interesting question

because it's like the day after walking down the stairs there's some sharp pain for sure. In the moment, it's like, it really is, I think, just like, you know, there's big, you like, like this long, like subtle discomfort that you just have to be able to, you know, in your mind, you feel like it's never gonna turn off and just like the prospect of living through that

for however long it happens to be is can get very overwhelming and that's where I think people usually hit a roadblock and sometimes drop out. I think you're right by making the comparison between shorter runs that do have a more acute sharp pain to them because that's what most people have done. Most people don't have a 12 hour or 24 hour event of consistent but prepared low-level discomfort that slowly gets worse over time. So what I'm doing is I'm extrapolating out like running cross-country when I was in school or something. I'm thinking, God, how hard was that?

Oh, God, imagine if that was what it was like. Or doing a fran in CrossFit. It's a seven minute workout. It's not that bad. Did you see that the rowing Ugg, the C2 rowing Ugg 5K record just got broken this week? No.

Homeboy held a 153 for five kilometers, a 153 one K split. There's just straight up disgusting. Yeah, he was probably a puddle on the floor after that. He looked pretty happy in the photo, but yeah, just wild. And that's this sort of thing, especially if you've ever seen the two K record, which I think is kind of like the gold standard for the Urg.

You look at those guys and that is, you know, that's all out effort. There is tiny little bit of pacing I suppose within the first half. And then after that, they're just stamping on the face of whoever it is that they hate the most in the world, you know, for three minutes straight. And yeah, I understand what you mean. I understand the distinction between that real sharp in the moment. Vision has condensed in and all the rest of it.

I'm going to guess as well that there's not so much left in the tank that even if you decided to put the hammer down as hard as you could, mile 97 to 100, how much of a difference can you even make to your pace? Like if you decide to complete the empty, is there some limitations in there with regards to fatigue and nutrition and hydration and stuff like that? Yeah, I actually think hydration and nutrition is probably the bigger piece to that puzzle, because as you start depleting your muscle glycogen, I think once you get around about 40% of the capacities when your body starts kind of increasing the perceived effort at a given intensity.

So you have this situation where if you find yourself at mile 97 and you're flirting with that number, you just might not have like the, like to push as hard, if you push as hard as you would to produce whatever fastest time you could run in that distance, that level of discomfort just gonna produce a much slower time. So if you can stay like as hydrated and fueled as possible,

which is impossible actually, like you can't actually consume enough fuel or stay hydrated enough you're gonna have at least some depreciation there that takes a certain amount of intensity off the table at the end there. So then it becomes like a best of the worst type of a scenario where you want to do as good a job of staying as hydrated as well fueled as you can but know that you're probably not going to be able to do it as perfectly as you would as like when you start a 5K and you have full muscle glycogen and completely hydrated. So I think that's a big limiter there. I also think it's just like mental fatigue too because you get to these like you described it perfectly. You said like when you're doing like this fast, like, like, rowing, or like, like three K or five K race, you are at a point where like the intensity picks up where you tunnel vision in and you really can't even process any other information other than like push, push, push, push.

That's like all you can really think about. Whereas when you're at the, in a 100 mile race, it's slow enough and that pain is dull enough that you can think of a variety of different things and that can either work for you or against you. So like if you allow the thoughts to be like, I can't do this, there's no way I can go any faster. I'm at my limit, then you just define your limit. If you say that, if you go into that and you're thinking, I can go 10 seconds from now faster. Let's try it. And then you tempt that. And

then you try a little more, a little more. You can think of all these things. You have the opportunity to actually have a conversation in your head where I just don't think you can do that with the shorter endurance events. Like the conversation is basically like, go or don't go. And that's all the further it can really get. This is why I think the Tour de France is so compelling because you get to see the discomfort and the struggle on the faces of the riders, every single day or every single stage, and you get to watch the battle between them and themselves, them and their discomfort, especially on the ill climbs.

And that's why it's so compelling, it's why I love watching it. So I also love watching the longer CrossFit events. The short ones are fun or whatever, but I much prefer watching the longer ones because you get to see outwardly what's happening, a representation of what's happening inwardly, right, the self talk, the icon, I can't do this. I always put the bar down, what does him putting the bar down mean? Has he wanted to or is he getting angry or is he doing whatever?

I had Eddie Jones, who's the England head rugby coach, right? So we've got the World Cup 2023 coming up next year. He'll be the guy that leads England's World Cup hopes, hopefully for that. And he was telling me this story about when he goes to go and see players, he's scouting players in the England club, the Premier League, rugby, and he'll go and watch from before the game begins, from way before the game begins.

And I asked him what he looks for in the players that are the absolute best that he's considering bringing into the squad. And he said, well, obviously they need to perform well, right? They need to be able to play the game of rugby, but that's kind of part of the course. I already know that that's something they're going to do. So that's a bit of the focus, but most of the focus is actually on the way that they interact with the training staff before and after the game. The way that they help or don't help the other players during that.

What do they like as a teammate? If the game's going well, what's their body language like? If the game's going badly, what's their body language like? If the game's going badly, what's their body language like? If they make a mistake, what's their self talk like? What's their posture like? How are they dealing with the discomfort of something being on their side or not being on their side? How much are they looking to the coaches for advice and how much are they continuing to just stick to their own game plan?

He really wants people to be like solitary, loan ranges and a self-contained unit within the team. He doesn't want them to be relying on the coaching staff. He wants them to be very much sovereign individuals when it comes to that. I just thought that was a really interesting way to look at things. So, you think, well, huh, that's kind of interesting. It's less about the performance and more about the stuff that isn't the performance because that tells you what is impacting the performance. Where is that coming from? How is this person performing or not?

Oh, well, a lot of that might be due to their self-talk and I can see that easily when the other team scores are tried or when they just miss their most recent kick or their penalty or whatever. It's pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like any of these sports you get into, I find that fascinating because it's like, I think it's valuable for anybody to have like a deep dive into something physical like that. So you understand like all those details because they're kind of universal

for all of them at the end of the day, but if you don't know what you don't know, so like I've on my casual observer just watching the rugby game, I don't know anything other than maybe a layer deep, but if I've done another sport where I've gone multiple layers deep, I can assume there's got to be some really cool things going on back here. And that kind of I think just spurs the curiosity of learning more about like why they're doing what they're doing and it adds a little more excitement to like the viewing side of things. Zach Betta, ladies and gentlemen, if people want to keep up to date with what you're doing, where should they go? So the easiest spot is my website at Zachbetter.com to ZAC, H-B-I-T-T-E-R.com and that's got

links to everything from my podcast, social media channels and things like that. Is there anywhere that people can watch the race that you're doing? Is that going to be broadcast on a... Yeah, that's usually live streamed. I don't think they've announced where it is yet, but if folks check out my Instagram page, I'll be putting updates on there with live tracking and things like that as well. So good luck, man. I'm rooting for you. Thanks a bunch. It was blast half coming on the show.

Yeah, I'm fed