StarTalk Radio - #ICYMI - Ultra-Running, with Ann Trason & Dr. Ultra

Episode Date: November 29, 2018

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel… Do you have what it takes to run 50,100, or 200 miles? Hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly explore ultra-running and ultramarathons with runner Ann Trason and Shawn Bearden, a.k.a. Dr. Ultra.Photo Credit: John Doe [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

I'm Gary O'Reilly and I'm Chuck Knight and this is Playing With Science. Today we throw a little something extra into our endurance. It's not going to be enough just to go long or even play at being Ironman. Today we're going to max it out as this show goes ultra. Ultra, baby. You ever run a marathon? You know, 26 heartbreaking miles of bone-jarring pain, right? Why am I saying right like I've ever done that? I've never done that.

Neither have I. Guess what? I'm never going to do it either. But imagine that and then take it to another level because that marathon is a warm-up to an ultra runner these guys and women are the ones who run 50 mile races blast through 100 kilometer runs and drop 100 mile races like it's a dime that's how it goes down it's their thing man it is um and Trasson is one of those truly amazing athletes who just happened to have broken 20 world records in her time. Just 20.

Just 20. And she'll be joining us along with a fabulously named Dr. Ultra. Dr. Ultra. I must admit that has really captivated my imagination, a.k.a. Sean Bearden, who will be with us very shortly and bring us the insight into the science behind ultra endurance so let's not waste any time yeah let's get straight to uh sean and aka dr ultra dr ultra are you there i am here sweet we are living in the age of ultra okay i'm sorry welcome to the show i'm not going to do it anymore. Let's just introduce you a little bit better.

Exercise physiologist at Idaho State University with particular interest in ultra endurance performance and host of the podcast Science of Ultra. So maybe you could tell people what is ultra running really? Like, can you give us a more detailed breakdown? I mean, people know what a marathon is. And is it really just running longer or is there more to it? Technically, that's exactly what it is. So very specifically, an ultra marathon is anything defined as anything longer than a marathon.

So, you know, in some ways, everybody who's run a marathon has run an ultra because they've walked a few more steps. But of course, that's that's pushing the limits of the definition. Really, an ultra marathon race, the shortest ones are about 50K. So that's 31 miles. And then the standard distances are 50 miles, 100K, which is 62 miles, and 100 miles. But they go on up to multiple, several hundred miles, and the longest sanctioned event is in New York City at 3,100 miles. Now, can you please tell us about that? Because I've never heard of a race that's 3,100 miles long, and you're running this race? You're running for

3,100 miles? Indeed. So it's called the self-transcendence and get, so it gets even worse than that. Please. You go around a city block in, I believe it's in Brooklyn. It's a half a mile and you have to go around it 6,200 times. Wow. Now in one go, you just don't stop or you're going to take a relay. I certainly stop. So it takes people 50 something days to do that. Wow. That is insane. It's a city, a New York city block square block is what we're talking about. When you say go around the block, you mean all the way around. So it's, it's really like four blocks when you think about it, the way, the way things will be set up and you just do that 6,000 times. You do. And self-transcendence, it kind of gives you an idea of where your head has to be to be

able to accomplish something like that. But that's an oddity. Traditionally, marathons, ultra marathons are on trails. They're sometimes on track, actually, and sometimes on road, but they're often on mountain trails and you know the typical distances are like i said up to about 100 although the 200 mile distance is becoming much more popular wow and these trails 100 miles isn't enough again exactly 200 miles wow yeah you know i just knocked out 100 miles like it was no thing i i'm not even tired i'm not even tired. I'm not even winded. I'm going to have to up this to 200. So when you're running these trails, are there sanctioned trails and different races that take place during different times of the year so that you can kind of train for the terrain? Does it work like that? Yeah, sure. So there are races all around the country and, of course, indeed, all around the world of all note. I'd like to take you to some of your

research. And you have a fabulous term here called bioenergetics. And that's the sort of gaseous movement at a cellular level. Could you break that down for us as we can understand a little bit more of what your research was about and what you actually came to the conclusion with? more of what your research was about and what you actually came to the conclusion with. Yeah, sure. So bioenergetics is really just a fancy sounding term to describe an interest in the energy use by the body when we're doing work. And in this case, it's running. So do we use carbohydrates? Do we use fats? How does oxygen use incorporate into all of that? And so my research is really about understanding the efficiency of movement and the economy of movement, particularly of running then, and trying to then translate that understanding

into helping people be able to go these greater distances just a little bit easier. Yeah, well, that's what it's about. So when you're talking about efficiency and you're talking about conservation of energy and output, so what are some of the ways that you see to increase efficiency? And does it happen on, is it something that we can do in terms of changing our physical behavior while we're running? Or is it something that happens on a cellular level? So we have to change maybe our diet or how does it work? All of the above.

Okay. So initially, we're talking about people learning how to run better, better form, better gait. We've all seen people that look like they're running from a fire when they're running. So people become more efficient early on from that standpoint. Once you're fairly well trained, though over years you become more efficient, we think through a lot of connective tissue adaptation. So we think about normally of our organs, our muscles, our heart, all of these sorts of things. But what holds us all together is the connective tissue. It's the stuff between the cells. And it turns out that we now appreciate when muscle contracts, the muscle itself, the muscle cells aren't the things that are transmitting most of the force.

That in fact, actually most of the force is transmitted laterally into that connective tissue, about 80% of it. And it's that connective tissue that's holding the tension and actually able to do the work for us. Now, give me a second. Give me a second. Let me, just so I can understand you. I'm sorry.

Well, because when you say connective tissue, are you actually talking about tendons and ligaments and actual connective tissue? Yes. Okay, thank you. So tendons and ligaments and inside the muscle, that tissue continues. The tendons continue up in between cells up in the muscle. Okay, okay. But at a cellular level, we become more efficient as well.

So you know if you start to exercise, you get to a point where it's hard, but conversation is still possible. And then you go a little bit harder and now maybe it's shorter sentences. And then you get to a point where you're just like, dude, don't talk to me. I want to, I just need to run. I need to focus. Right. Yeah. And then you get to that point where, you know, something's burning inside because you're working too hard. Well, there are a couple of cutoffs in there. The one that's around where you no longer want to have a conversation. And then one that's closer to where you're sort of starting to burn. And we can predict the amount of oxygen, the amount of energy you're using for every increase in pace or every increase in speed during those easy, that easy segment.

But when you get above that conversational effort, we become inefficient. We actually start using more oxygen for the change in pace. And with training, we can reduce that. So we do become more economical and more efficient, both of them, from the cellular level right up to connective tissue and form. You're saying that there is a law of diminishing returns that's at play during the performance of running. And so you can actually change that to kind of increase that threshold before you reach that law of diminishing returns or that point of diminishing return.

That's right. And for shorter races, you go ahead and you just use up that inefficient place because going faster is more important. You're not going to necessarily fatigue until you hit the finish line if it's a 10K or 5K or even a marathon. But if we're talking 50 miles and 100 miles, now that little bit of inefficiency catches up to you long before the finish line. And you need to train to get better at that. And you also need to manage yourself better in your pacing strategy. Isn't that what we would always call muscle memory? And sort of in the broader term where you're conditioning

your muscles and the connective tissue therein, and you're adapting it to work at the load that you want it to work at? Yeah, I think there's probably some, some parallel there. When we think about muscle memory, we're really thinking more about the, the adaptations that occur in muscle and then what we're able to stimulate that muscle to adapt to again later. So from a training perspective, I think there's probably, there's probably some truth to what you're saying. Particularly for the endurance and the ultra runners, is there a muscle type fiber that's more conducive to that? We always hear about fast twitch muscles and sprinters, but what's the other side of that

or the other end of that spectrum for endurance runners? Yeah, sure. So we classically think of fiber types in three or four kinds. There's a slow twitch, there's fast twitch, and we can start subdividing the fast twitch muscles into ones that are more oxidative, more endurance prone, and ones that are just much more power. Well, so it's the slow twitch type one fibers that are the ones you really want if you're going to be an endurance runner. And one of the interesting things that happens with aging is we tend to get more slow twitch fibers as well as training. So training, we now know will do this and aging tends to do this as well. And so we're finding that the

peak age for people in ultra marathons, that is the peak performance age is somewhere in like the older thirties to the younger forties. Yeah. Let's hear it for the old people. Yeah. That's right. There's hope for the old people. Yes. Okay. So speaking of training, what's the most important thing when it comes to training?

Is it proper training in terms of your regimen? Is it nutrition? Is it sleep? Is it recovery? What is it? Rule number one, absolutely. We'll get you 90% of the way there. It's consistency. Oh.

So the number one pillar for training is just being consistent. And so people take up running and run, say, on the weekend because they don't feel like they have time during the week. Right. You can't make up on the weekend for what you didn't do during the week. You just go through this cycle of sort of you're getting injured and then trying to recover and getting injured. So consistency.

A little bit every day trumps all the rest. Then we can start layering and all the other little subtleties of doing little faster bits or doing hill speed work, things like that, or cross-training even. But number one,

consistency will get you most of the way there. But I love that you brought up recovery and sleep because that is where we get better, isn't it? During a workout, when you go for a run, you are not getting faster. You are not getting better. You're breaking down. Right. But that's the point. So it's a stimulus. And then we get better when we're resting and our body can recover and adapt and change so people need to really pay a little more attention to to that and ultra marathon runners run a lot of miles a lot of people get away with doing something like like 50 miles per week but there are many people who do 90 100 140 and even a few rare people where do you get the time to run those kind of miles i'm bad well of course the people doing close to 200 or that's their job right so

they're professional yeah yeah all right we got that one so so thinking of when you talk when you talk about 200 miles a week okay i want to i want to phrase this so i don't offend anybody okay this would be a first chuck you're worried about people's feelings what the hell just happened what happened to so I don't offend anybody, okay? This will be a first. Chuck, you're worried about people's feelings? What the hell just happened? What happened to Chuck? What have you done with him?

So I have a friend who has to have a tendon taken out of another part of her body and put into her Achilles because she kept running when the doctor said, hey, you need to do this, this, this, and this. And she was like, oh, I can sneak in 30 miles a week. It's okay. So here's what I want to know. How do you stop that from happening?

Number one. Number two, is running that deleterious in terms of punishing your body? Number two. And number three, is it her fault? Is it your fault when that happens? Okay. You're testing my memory with these multi- I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. It's a lot going on there. Achilles strain is one of the most common injuries in all of running, whether you're doing massive miles or not. And so it is something that's common. The way that you can avoid, to the best of your ability, avoid injuries like that is that the first time you start to feel something, rest. There you go. So too many people say, oh, it's just a little something. Right. And it's okay.

And they keep going and they keep going before, you know, they develop a chronic injury that either breaks. Right. And like you're talking about surgery or then you need to take a tremendous amount of time off. So that's the most important thing to be able to do. In her case, was it her fault? So I would say it sounds like yes because it sounds like people were telling her that she needed to rest more, right? And she didn't. There you go, Jackie.

I told you. I'm the one who told you. Okay, I'm sorry. So going back to the recovery, I mean, occupational hazard for anyone running or performing in that sense is an injury. When you are doing this sort of mileage, when you talked about the professionals who might be running north of 200 miles per week, how do they recover? Some of the elite guys, I mean, I've seen people like Mo Farah, who's not really an ultra, but he's a distance runner. He'll go to sleep in an oxygen tent. You've got cryo chambers.

You've got all these other things i mean are we are we way past ice baths by now and we're into the real science fiction or are there other things going on well there are quite a number of things you mentioned that is is there cans of worms yeah things like altitude altitude tents and oxygen tents and ice baths and so to not take us off on to sort of those tangents no i want to goents. No, I want to go on those tangents. I want to go on those tangents. Don't worry. You seem to have a problem with those other things. Do you?

Well, there are some modalities that are useful, but many that athletes use that are not. Well, let's get into that, man. That's good stuff. Let's go there. We'll go there. So what are the ones that you think are not good and why just i mean just as a general let me address the original question okay go ahead i'm sorry i got too excited pushing the limits and i think that we are and a good example was this last year at a famous race in europe called utmb where an american runner named jim walmsley was

really expected to do very well but in the the months before this, he was pushing his training to the limits and he was doing about 140 miles per week in the Grand Canyon, which included about 50,000 feet of elevation gain and loss per week. And then when he hit the race, the start line at UTMB, he didn't get very far and he broke, he was burned out. And we do, and we see that happen. So these runners, and it's rare to have a runner that is doing 200, but they they're out there. We tend to see them not living in the sport for more than a couple of years. Generally, it's the people who are more conservative down closer to a hundred or a little over a hundred that tend to last longer, but

that's still a lot. You're right. That's still a lot. And recovery is important. So, you know, oxygen tent, uh, probably not is because what we're trying to do there is, is deliver higher pressure of oxygen for better recovery. But the reality is that our blood flow to all of our tissues when we're resting is adequate. If we measure the blood that's coming out of those tissues, we have not extracted all the oxygen that's there. Higher pressure of oxygen probably doesn't really do much, but you know what? The placebo effect is real. It matters. If somebody believes it works and it doesn't hurt you, do it. I'm all for placebo effect, whatever benefit you can get. So physiologically, maybe the data aren't there, but if they work out mentally, then no. Ice baths, if you have an acute injury, yes.

If not, what you're doing is dampening the reaction of the immune system that is beneficial to helping you to adapt. Ah, interesting, interesting, interesting. I don't like the idea of an ice bath for my whole body. That's just, forget that. I mean, it's bad enough you ice your ankle and you put it in a little ice bucket. Yeah, I hated those things.

Right, we're going to take a break. More from Dr. Ultra. I love saying that. More from Dr. Ultra, a.k.a. Sean Bearden, when we get back. Welcome back to Playing With Science and our ultra running show. Ultra.

Ultra. And we have Dr. Ultra, a.k.a. Sean Bearden. And if you've just joined us, you've missed an awful lot. So you've got a lot of catch up to do. Yeah, good stuff. And just press rewind and go back and listen to the rest of it. Hey, Doc. Gary was just saying in the break that you played soccer.

And, you know, before you got into running, period, you played soccer. And so I'm interested to know, and maybe, Gary, you can help me with this, too. Is soccer a good prerequisite for getting into distance running? Because you guys, Gary is a professional soccer player, former professional soccer player. Many years ago. But still, you did it. But you guys run, I don't know how many miles do you think you run during the game, honestly. It depends on position.

Certain positions will cover more ground than others. You might do the conversion for me, Doctor. If you get a midfield player who's really, I would say, active, they might get towards 15 kilometers. 15 kilometers in a game. So did that have anything to do with helping you in your discovery that you really love this ultra running thing? No, it didn't help me discover that at all. But I do think it helped me in performance. And I do think that it helps in performance.

The reason it didn't is because I love, you know, soccer is sprint, rest, sprint, walk, sprint, jog, sprint, right? It is not continuous slow running. And when I was a soccer player. It's almost like an interval training, isn't it? Exactly what it is. Exactly what it is. I looked at the track runners and I just thought they were crazy. And that's just looking at people going five, 10 miles.

But when you get into your later years, soccer isn't competitive anymore. And, you know, if that's my mindset, then I can't just play for fun. And so I looked at other ways to push myself and this seemed to be one. But I think that a background of soccer and I would say multidimensional sport. So lacrosse, other things like that works really well for, for mountain trails. So again, ultra marathons are often run on track or road, but they're most commonly thought of on mountain trails. The power that you're, that you develop in soccer is very useful for pounding up short hills. Yeah. And the agility, the leg agility for running over rocks and roots and uneven terrain, I have found seems to be a real benefit.

Ooh, there you go. That's great. That's great. We've discussed in that first segment with you about the biomechanics and all the cellular things and things that needs to be done. But we are learning so much as we do on every show. So much has to take place upstairs in the mind. Mentally. And the psychology of ultra running. First and foremost, most people will run the other way

from an ultra event because that's just way, way out of their comfort zone. How have you found that as regards to- They can run the other way. Yeah, that's just way, way out of their comfort zone. How have you found that? They can run the other way. Yeah, that's good. As long as they're running, I'm happy. But you took my point. How do you see the psychology of ultra runners, ultra endurance athletes? You know, that really is what it's about. Honestly, that is what it's, that is what it's about. So I like to say that, that running an ultra marathon is about 50% physical and 90%

mental. Wow. Okay. Okay. I love, I love the math. I don't believe you can go beyond. I always have physical and 90% mental. I love the math. 110%. Let's be honest. You only have a hundred percent. Right. But, but it gets the point across. And the point is that these, once you, once you can run a marathon, a lot of people think these ultra marathons are crazy and they think they will, I ran a marathon and I'm destroyed. How can I possibly go more? I promise you, even though I've run a hundred miles at a time, every time I finish a shorter race, I think the same thing. So how do I do that? And it's because it's, as you said, it's all upstairs. It really is mental. It's about taking care of yourself. It's about doing all the things that

are important in life skills, if you will. How do you handle a day? How do you handle adversity? Do you take negative feelings, quickly observe that they're there, turn them around to find a positive in it and keep going? So how do you, because that's, it's that they're there, turn them around to find a positive in it and keep going. So how do you, because it's not something you go, oh, now I know how to do it. I'll do it. So how do you set yourself up to achieve that? Identifying it firstly is step number one. What steps follow number one? And where do you go with that? Secrets. Give us your secrets. Number one, what steps follow? Number one, where do you go with that? Give us your secrets.

Don't talk to Dr. Ultra like that. Go on, please. There are a lot of parallels here to meditation and mindfulness training. Because that's exactly what that is all about. It's really just to get you observing your own thoughts. You know how your day goes. You drip, you're paying attention to a thing at one moment. And suddenly now you're thinking about the next thing. And that thought takes you to something else. And before you know it, you're thinking about, you know, you're way off topic and it's being able to see that happening,

catch it and bring it back to the present moment. So the, what you do is you go out, you run and you practice this. And as you're running, you think about how am I feeling? You look around, you're paying attention to yourself all the time and you're paying attention to your thoughts. You know, am I suddenly thinking about what's for dinner later or that appointment I've got to get to? Bring it back. That doesn't matter right now. What matters right now is being here and making sure I don't have a blister, making sure I'm eating, making sure I'm drinking. So you practice it and running. But you know what I encourage my athletes to do, and I coach as well, is to do this in their daily lives. You're driving down the road. What are you thinking about? You know, pay attention to

what you're really doing. Stay in the moment. And when you observe yourself starting that conversation with that colleague that you don't like so much, and you're starting to feel a little aggravated, observe that as quickly as you can and bring it back. Oh, sorry, Gary. I didn't mean to do that to you. I don't know how the good doctor knew about that, but there you go. All right. So let me ask you this. Let's switch gears for one second, okay? as we get kind of towards the end here of our interview. So I see people, and this is a maybe a cliche, or just a trope for running, but they're running and they're running, and then they stop and they throw up. But I read that one of the most common reasons for a DNF, which I believe is a dude that did not finish is gastrointestinal distress. So can you speak to that, please?

I sure can. So yes, but we need to be careful about how we view the science. So first of all, those studies have been done in very hot races. Okay. All right. And when there's a lot of heat, we're sending a lot of blood flow out to our skin and we're getting less blood flow to our gut than we even normally do when we run. And the gut doesn't like that because blood flow is what we need to be absorbing those nutrients. And you have to be eating in an ultra cause you run out of available energy. So that's an issue that's already set up in a hotter race where those studies have been done, number one. But number two, yes, it's the most common single reason for a DNF. But if you add up all the other reasons as one group,

more people drop out of a race for a reason other than GI distress. So in other words, GI distress may be like 20 or 30% of the dropouts. Gotcha. But there's no other single group that's bigger than that. No other single reason that's bigger than that, right? Okay. Still, a lot of people just find it hard to eat after they have been running for a very long time. And it's hard to get calories and just nothing looks good. Wow.

Do you have to train the body in terms of the muscle and you acclimatize it if you're running altitude and you acclimatize to the distance. We've now got ourselves focused because we've listened to Dr. Ultra and we're in our zone and in our moment. Do we now have to learn how to eat? Yeah, brilliant. Yeah, we do. We do. Absolutely.

So our guts do adapt. The lining of our intestines does adapt. Absolutely. So our guts do adapt. The lining of our intestines does adapt. The things that we eat, we express more of those receptors and channels to absorb things. And the reality is that at aid stations, at ultra marathons, it's a lot of junk food. It's candy and potato chips and cookies and things like that. And things that a lot of people don't normally eat, especially health conscious people don't normally eat during the day. And it is important to train your guts. Eat when you go for a run and eat the kinds of things that you're going to be eating at an aid station.

Wow. Very cool, man. I can't believe we're out of time, man. When are you running next? Cause you do like, I mean,

you're how many, how many, how many runs do you undertake per week? I take one, I take one day off. I take one day off. And so it's, I run every day and i do

about i average about 70 miles a week and it goes up to 80 90 sometimes 100 depending on on the race i'm training for why do my knees hurt right now just hearing him say that i don't know why you see my whole body is just anyone who's never met you or was unfamiliar with you now knows that Dr. Ultra isn't just, you know what, I'll call myself Dr. Ultra because I can. You kind of live in it. You are absolutely immersed in it, aren't you? He has the fun because he runs the run. There you go. I am. It's an amazing thing to find what you love in life and be able to do it in all the aspects of your life.

Well, it's been a pleasure having this conversation. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it. Without a doubt, man. Well, yeah. Another day where we sat in the front of the class. Yeah. Learned a lot of good stuff today. We did. So thank you to Dr. Ultra. I'm only going to use Dr. Ultra. Dr. Ultra. And we're going to take a break. And then when we come back, Anne Tresson. This lady is an ultra, ultra runner. She has broken 20 world records. Oh, wow. Going to enjoy talking to her. Stick around.

We'll be back very, very shortly. Welcome back to Playing With Science. This is our ultra show. Yes. We can talk about the science, we can talk about how the mind does things, but in the end, we need to talk to someone who knows exactly what it's like to put one foot in front of the other. Yeah. And Trazon is our guest. Here we go, Chuck. gonna love this broke 2020 world records yep um it's not unfamiliar with running 50 mile races 100 kilometers or 100 mile races that's right wow that is ultra that is pure that is the pure to me definition of ultra and trazon welcome to

the show well thank you very much for having me. It's a pleasure. You are welcome. What first attracts an athlete to running this sort of distance? Not thinking that you can. Not thinking that you can. I mean, you're talking ultra marathons. You know, you can get into people have discussions on what really an ultra is. I personally think anything more than a marathon. So anything more than 26.2 miles is an ultra. And I knew, say, when I was 24,

I was looking for a new challenge in my life. And I knew I could run a marathon because I'd done 20 miles in a race before in high school. But when I saw a 50 mile advertised, I was like, that's not possible. Yeah, it was like you saw you you start something and you think i'm not sure i can do this and it gets you alive it's like electricity flowing through your body like i'm starting something and i don't know if it's possible and there's not a lot of things in life really that you can do it within a reasonable amount of time and challenge yourself like and also train for it and you know there's just a lot that goes on how did it feel to be so far out of the comfort zone because that is way out of the terms of my thinking that distance that's you got you hit

the nail on the head you do you getting out of the comfort zone i'm someone if i'm not getting out of the comfort zone then i'm not feeling part of life. The first 50 I did, it was 110 degrees. I had no idea what I was going to do. So it really, um, wasn't a very pleasant experience. I should say, you're not kidding. I cannot having, I mean, at the moment I wouldn't even run a bath, let alone 50 miles. Is it a kind of addictive thing that once you get going in there, you just got to go back and do it again and again and again? You know, I think probably for a lot of people, it is. Some people, it's like a bucket list. They want to go do this thing called Western States 100. It's 100 miles in California. and then we always say, Hey, that person got bit,

got took the bite. And those are the people you see that, you know, there's a guy I met, he wants to do there's 50 hundreds in next year. Right. And I was at this running new running store where I live. I live in Auburn, California, where Western States happens to end. I love that race, by the way. By the way, you've set a world record in Western States, just to let people know that. No, I didn't set it. There wasn't a world record, but I did win it 14 times. 14 times. The women's. But I'm seeing the store, and I said, prove it. He had a spreadsheet. He was like, see, and I'm driving. And he figured out how much money it would cost to drive to all these events. And each one, like, he's paid for it.

He's on the fence. And he has 53 he's going to sign up for. And he's trying to do 50 hundreds. And, I mean, you know, whatever challenge, you know, pretty amazing. How do you train for an event like that? Well, I try and train it, you know, kind of comparable to whatever I'm racing on. So if I'm doing a mountain 100, I do a lot of mountain running. If I'm doing flats.

But oppositely, what people don't realize, it's the recovery time. So say I'm doing something that has a lot of mountainous trail then my recovery was on roads and do short road runs because it's quick it's fast it's different so um yeah but every single person when you're pushing the envelope reacts differently so that's kind of the beauty of training you kind of learn what how your body can handle i could never do back-to-back a lot of people run 30 miles 30 miles at 20 20 it would take me six weeks to recover so there's a lot of trial and error well at least that's how it was for me i mean other people might not but um yeah i think that's

the beauty of it because you really you learn so much about yourself mentally, physically, emotionally that I've never, never got it before in anything I've done. So I'm interested to know, like with all these races, you know, the 14 World Championships and all the world records, you run the 50s, your 100ss the 100k and all these races do you do you are they kind of like children to you do you have recollection of every single race is is there a race that was your toughest race and a race that was your favorite race i mean how do you look back and view these accomplishments you know i tell people i don't really have much of a review mirror when I'm talking to people like yourself or people ask me. Western States was where I felt most comfortable.

I ran the first 30 miles on that course and it changed my life. I mean, I was going to go to graduate school. I was going to get married. I was going to do all this stuff. Within 30 miles, I decided I wasn't getting married to this dude and I was going to spend the rest of my life outdoors.

I wasn't going to be in a lab. Wow. But Western states, definitely. There's things in life. I mean, I fell in love with it like you fall in love with a person. I mean, I... But the hardest race I ever had was Comrade's Marathon. It was in South Africa.

I was really challenged there and i am i ran a performance when i wasn't feeling at my best and ran uh was pushed and i responded in a way i didn't know i could really respond and it's probably something i hold dearest to my heart that i could do that and be challenged and not give up there's a woman maria bach subsequently she did get popped for steroids i'm just saying but as you do yes yeah she but you know i knew that was what was hard i looked at her and i've been running against her and i'm like damn man she's not there's something going on here but you can't say anything right i'm interested i'm interested when we discuss with athletes

that if they don't do it it doesn't get done so all of the responsibility lies with them and they are faced we we recently did a show with sugar ray leonard the boxer oh whoa oh yeah oh yeah uh and he was getting served by uh roberto duran and he said i had to dig deep i had to go somewhere and he said we've all got that place it's how we use it when we get there and i'm interested in your story where did you go what did you find and how did you use it when that challenge came to you? You know, I looked at myself and I kind of was watching myself run. I was two minutes behind Maria for the longest time. She took off up this hill.

And I said, how do you want to be when you cross that finish line? And I said, I just don't want to be two minutes behind her because I kept saying two minutes, two minutes. I said, you know, I'm going to hold my head high no matter what happens. I said, damn, if she's going to be two minutes behind her because they kept saying two minutes two minutes and said you know i i'm gonna hold my head high no matter what happened so damn if she's going to be two minutes ahead of me so with when it got to be doubled single digits it was in k so 15k this big downhill i'm just going to pretend the bottom of the hill's the end of the race so i just started sprinting i just said you know what i just i'm going to be the person i want to see at that finish line and it just clicked and I started running super hard. I had one of the fastest last 15 K's And there are 15,000 people in this race

And I just when I cut the bottom I was 145 behind her and it was just like someone I was like I don't know what happened. I just like took took off i'm running like five three miles at the end of a 50 some mile race and it was so crazy i entered the stadium i mean we're talking there's so there's over a million spectators just things on tv live south africa nelson mandela gave the awards i mean this is a big deal for ann and I'm pretty shy at the time. And I entered the stadium, and Nike had my, they call them seconding teams, all these rugby players, and they announced me as Maria Bach. I'm not kidding. And then the rugby team busted through all the security people.

I mean, I don't know how I did it, but I beat her by two minutes. And I never said anything. I just, you know, and I was grateful for the challenge because I really, and I just put everything else. I just focused on the now moment. It sounds as if you have a certain amount of freedom mentally when you are running those sort of distances. Is that ultimately your reward? Apart from if it's a

race you're winning i always tell people you have to be in the now moment i mean if you start if i start daydreaming a trip and rock fall i mean there's sometimes i used a lot of times you have a companion i had a really good friend that used to they're called pacers but like the last it's nice when i get to and i'd look hey gary look at the river and then bang i hit my head on a rock or my knees you know so and also the more you're in tune with your body the better you're going to be because you're really and all these things you're kind of pushing the envelope and so the more you're in tune the less something less something will mess up you know or you have to catch it before it becomes a problem

i always said i wasn't the most talented but i was a good problem solver what were the problems so i was always thinking how am i doing how am i feet i had a little mantra and then if it was a problem i wouldn't panic i mean i'm one of these one of the things i'd say is there's a place where i get so much pressure, I do better. But if it's like today or something where, you know, there's a lot going on, I have an event coming up, I'm scattered, I'm not focused. But if there's something like, you know, a car coming towards me, you know, 50 miles an hour, somehow I can rise to that kind of pressure. But day-to-day pressure, I'm kind of a plague.

50 miles an hour. Somehow I can rise to that kind of pressure, but day-to-day pressure, I'm kind of a plague. Wow. So let me ask you when you, with all of these championships and these victories and, you know, of course you love what you do. And so that is what drives you. But do you, is there ever any kind of, I don't know, post race letdown or like, it's like, wow, you did all this training and now here you are, you've accomplished a goal. You've even maybe even exceeded your own expectations. Is there ever any kind of like, I don't know, maybe like post-race blues, like, like what they used to call like the baby blues after you have a baby or like post-race blues, I mean mean or anything like that do you ever experience that kind of stuff because you're so accomplished i mean is

is there any psychology involved with that well you know when i well you don't know i hate when people say you know you know um when i first started doing these it was and i couldn't stand it so what i did was i started planning my next event before the event even started and so because I'd get a little nervous so how I would do it is I'd start sketching out my challenge for the next race and I wouldn't let myself I said like I didn't have rearview mirrors so I'd finish a race and I wouldn't even be saying I'd be like well that's great but I have this other goal wow so I'm very goal oriented and I found that help because I know a lot of people talk about that and most likely um it did initially but I'm not that kind of you know I'm always

looking after that 50 mile it was so miserable I said well you know I really want to find some endurance I like the endurance I'm gonna try double century didn't like that on a bicycle After that 50 mile, it was so miserable. I said, well, you know, I really want to find some endurance. I like the endurance. I'm going to try double century. Didn't like that on a bicycle. And I tried a marathon. And I was successful, but it was not my, it didn't drive me. So then I just got back into trying to do more 50s and 100s.

But there's always, there's always something. Like right now, we were talking before the the show right now i have a goal i unfortunately i got diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and i i can't run anymore oh i love people yeah it's it's not it's not a nice illness but no it's not like around and you know uh i started like walking ultras and now i'm doing one in every state i'm gonna do one in every province every territory and I have Kansas next week I'm going to Virginia then we have Thanksgiving and I'm going to South Carolina and my new biggest challenge is I'm gonna do a six day and those are historic so they go back to the 1880s and I just need those challenges and the people it's like kind of

my tribe it's my family and it's where I feel comfortable and yet even after everything I've done I go out and I waddle around and can't hardly do these things you know like for instance I did 107 hours I went and did this one in in. It took me 29 hours to do 62 miles. Okay, I was chatting around, but I don't like, oh, wow, man, that's kind of depressing. And that flickered through my head. I went, whoa, that would get most people depressed. And I said, hey, you know, I'm still out here. And that's just it.

There is still an element of competition within you, no matter what condition your body is or is not in. That competitive self won't diminish. It's a competitive self. I never really, really tried to compete against someone else. Like that one in South Africa was a big deal. And Nike, it was my sponsor. And they, you know, it's kind of you you have a sponsor, it's like win or go home. And somewhere like that, I knew, you know, I didn't want to let them down, they'd put a lot, but mostly it's like, how to make, do better against Dan. I think if you competed, especially these endurance, and you're always thinking about someone else, you're never going to be the best

you can be. Wow, that is some great advice right there. I've got one question, Anne, and hopefully, how do you organize your nutrition? Because you can't eat heavy, but you're going to need as much energy as you can get your hands on. So how do you organize that? Well, I've done a little research. What I did in the day was, you can't really digest, I think, more than, you know, don't. There'll be scientists out there, you know, say 350, no more than 400 calories an hour. So I try and just get it. I set my watch. I'm old.

You know, you have garments now. You have everything to go off every 30 minutes. And I just take a goo. Before that, I ate some M&Ms and jelly beans. But I tried to get 100 calories in. And it's not easy because you kind of might, after a while, you don't want to eat. But I just pretend to see myself kind of sitting on a rock and how I'd look if I bonked. And they'd be like, okay, you got to eat.

And I'm just like, what? But, yeah, I just force myself to do 100 calories every 30 minutes. And it's not easy. Some of the stuff, the research is still out. A lot of people get upset stomachs and throw up. It's kind of disgusting. I used to have a lot of problems. I kind of learned how far you could push it, chew on a little ice that kind of swallowed.

I was thinking well when i had surgery you know they always give you ice chips so i started doing that that helped but yeah you have to keep that constant kind of energy going and just sometimes that's the hardest part i have to say a lot of people you got to figure out what to eat. I was lucky when goo came out. It's like this gel. I honestly, I would do one. We're talking every 30 minutes for 18 hours. That's a lot. That's a lot.

It's a lot of good. I would do it. Wow. What a pleasure. Yes, it was. And thank you. And good luck with your quest to do a hundred mile walk in every state. Oh, no, no, no. Anything over 26.2, it's my rules.

There you go. And they're your rules and you'll make them break them. Okay, well, nice chatting with you, gentlemen. Pleasure was ours. Thank you so much indeed so thank you to and trass on i mean there is so much going on out there that i didn't realize with the ultra ultra and things we've learned from this endurance series the thing i've learned the most is i'm not ever doing any of this stuff. No, I agree with you.

I'm not running a marathon, let alone going ultra. Never again. But. I said never again like I've done it once. Exactly. I mean, it's another area of sport where we've sort of like pulled the curtain back, stuck our head in, had a look around and gone, total respect yeah for what these athletes are achieving what they have to do i mean who thought you've got to consider all of your

dietary nutrition and everything else not just your your monday to friday saturday sunday but you're in race nutrition how you do it and you don't, the problems that you might have. Right, right. And then the constant battle with your own mind. That's where it is. To achieve. I mean, the elite athletes who are out there going for world titles, you think, well, they're winning because it's easy for them.

No, they've got devils and arguments and conversations going on in their head, just like the rest of us. I know. I know. I know. It makes it even that much more daunting to think about that. You know, I mean, I just think about how scattered my brain is, you know, walking from the bedroom to the shower. I can't imagine running 26 miles.

I think what we've discovered is that's your best excuse for not doing ultra. And not taking showers. Oh, TMI. Right, on that note, which is possibly not the most fragrant, we are going to say goodbye. I've been Gary O'Reilly.

And I've been Stinky. Fabulous. Right, this has been Playing With Science. Hope you've enjoyed our ultra marathon endurance show and we look forward

to your company very very soon