The Nick Bare Podcast - 042: Setting the Conditions For A Sub 2:45 Marathon with Jeff Cunningham

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

In today's episode, I had a conversation with my coach, Jeff Cunningham. We discuss all facets of training and how patience while embracing the hard things is vital for a marathon build. Jeff has been essential to my prep for the California International Marathon and helped me set the conditions to have a successful race day. Sub 2:45, here we come! Enjoy! Save 10% at BPN Supps: https://bit.ly/nickbare10audio Follow for more:  IG: https://www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: https://www.youtube.com/@nickbarefitness Keep up with Jeff here: IG: https://www.instagram.com/jdcunningham97/ Topics: 00:00 Intro 1:51 Welcome 4:32 Do you consider yourself an expert? 6:51 The curious amateur 11:41 Marathon prep 15:48 Training volume 25:52 Patience is key 32:02 Changes that have had significant impacts 35:11 Setting the conditions 45:03 How stress can affect your build 47:26 Keeping priorities straight 52:30 CIM Marathon 59:21 Motivation 1:04:33 Pacing strategy for CIM 1:08:06 The different points of a build 1:15:21 Embrace the hard things 1:22:25 Where to set your pace 1:31:01 Respect the marathon

We create our own opportunities in life. What you do through adherence to process, through an intense willingness to invest in the mundanity of life. Because let's face it, those 11 mile runs every single morning are redundant. But that's the part of it that makes it so rich. It makes it so fulfilling because you create your own opportunity. The opportunity is December the 3rd. Opportunity is for you to go out and have the best athletic. performance in the best athletic moment of your life, the opportunity to succeed, the opportunity

to have a transcendent performance on December the 3rd, that's all there. But it is only created by those 11-mile runs in the pitch black on a hilly course in Nashville with nobody's looking. In life, we have to understand that we create our own opportunities. And then when the window opens, we have a choice to either dive through that window or let the window slam shut and then watch the rest of the world go by on the other side of the window. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to thank you for tuning in and supporting the brand. Now, I have spent the last decade plus of my life building bare performance nutrition, and we create effective supplements that you can trust to support your wellness, endurance,

and performance goals. We offer high-quality, great-tasting weight protein powders, effective pre-workouts, superfoods, sleep support, electrolytes, and much more. So if you want to support the content that we produce and the message that I am sharing through my content and on this podcast, I would greatly appreciate it if you went to BPNSups.com and you can use code Nick Bear 10 to save 10% off your next order. So thank you guys. I appreciate you. And let's dive into the show. What's going on, guys? Welcome back to another episode of the podcast.

Today I have the man who helped me run sub three hours. and has progressively helped me get faster. Jeff Cunningham, we are here to talk about running. We're here to talk about CIM, which is the next race that I am personally running on December 3rd, going for a sub 245 marathon. And we're going to talk about how to PR your next race, get faster, run smarter, and keep kicking ass. So, Jeff, welcome back. Man, it's always a pleasure. Excited to be in Nashville, having been back in a while,

and flattered and honored as usual to just hop on here and just talk a lot about something that I'm just absolutely, completely over my heels excited about and passionate about. Sport of running, man. Well, every time we get together and we talk about running, talk about what we're experiencing with running, a prep, the response is always great. And, you know, you have,

helped a lot of people improve and get better. How was that response from the online running community and kind of what you have provided for them? How is how is that felt from from your side? It feels almost surreal because when you're doing something that you're so passionate about and it comes so naturally to you, you know, I think in general, and I'm talking about, people in general, I think people would probably agree with me that you don't think of yourself as an expert, whatever that sort of self-adulatory designation may be. You don't think of yourself as anything unique. I'm just a guy from Tyler, Texas, that drives a pickup truck, you know, who happens to know a little something about running, but it's really, really fun looking at the

impact. In fact, yesterday on my Instagram, I was actually super proud of a young guy who just sign of college scholarship. And what I said was people don't realize that the people who I coach contribute far more to my life than I've actually contributed to theirs. And I think people are surprised by the fact that I'm flattered, honored, and I'm moved to a pretty emotional state when people just say, thank you. Because to me, I don't see it as anything that incredible it just comes naturally and I just love it and I just want everybody to succeed. Yeah? So I don't mean to put you on the spot with this question, but I'm currently reading this book and it's called Show Your Work.

And the whole concept of this book is about documenting the process of learning and doing and sharing that with other people and that by other people watching your work and the process of that work, they gain just as much as you are gaining through that process. My question for you is, do you consider yourself an expert? I don't think of it in those terms. To me, that's sort of a self-aggrandizing sort of statement to make about yourself. It's an overly self-agulatory sort of designation. I don't get to call myself an expert, right?

In fact, we were just leaving the airport, and my wife told me that I don't get to call myself a great driver. Other people get to tell me I'm a good driver, right? We were disputing which exit to take. But in all seriousness, people seem to have gravitated toward that spot in some instances, and it considered me an expert. Frankly, I consider myself more a student of the art of coaching, and I spend a whole lot of time looking up at the mountaintop at people who I perceive who are far more knowledgeable than I am, who were better at it than I am, the same way, a lot of runners who are consider fairly elite such as yourself, right? You spend a lot of time looking at people who are faster than you and you're not going to call yourself good, great elite. You'll let other people

call you that. So no, I don't wake up thinking, man, I'm an expert. That's so off-putting and I don't even think of it in those terms. I'm just trying to do the best I can. I think people that often consider themselves an expert believe in their. own mind, they have reached the pinnacle of what it is and they stop pursuing the process. In this book, one of the key takeaways, I'm only like 30 pages in at this point, but great read, great quick, easy read called Show Your Work. And it dives into, the author dives into this concept of the curious amateur. and the curious amateur is so hungry for the pursuit of success and embracing the journey

that they just want to keep learning. They are this student. I think if you view yourself as a curious amateur also could be known as a student as opposed to an expert no matter how much you have achieved or where you can hang your hat, you will keep pursuing growth and helping people in that journey. Exactly. And the curious amateur is what I see myself as some people refer to me as a professional coach.

I guess on some level, if you're ever paid $1 to do anything, technically I guess you could call yourself a professional. I don't really know where that line of demarcation is, so to speak, right? but I can tell you that I view myself as the curious amateur. Keep in mind. And, you know, most people probably know this who are watching this, but a lot may not. I'm an attorney. I'm a JD. That's a doctor of jurisprudence. I'm not a Ph.D. Okay. I didn't have any formal training in labs in Alamosa, Colorado Springs, the Olympic Training Center. I, I'm not an MD. I don't, I don't, I'm not a scientist. I've learned enough science to be good at this. So I'm always trying to learn, trying to evolve.

Two weeks ago, I'm sure you noticed it on your last big long run workout, or maybe it was last weekend, right? You did more volume of fast-paced work than I've ever had you doing a long-run workout because I looked at it and I thought physiologically, I think this is where he is and what he can handle. So I even switched things up a little bit and added a little bit more of that high-end faster the marathon-paced work down to as fast as your L-T pace. And I had never given you that much before. It was 4-21, right? Two times of 4-2-1. You did 14 miles of work at sub-6-minute pace. I've never had you do that much. So I'm learning. I'm evolving. I'm the curious amateur coach who coaches a lot of people who are doing sort of elite-ish very, very non-amateur-ish things in the

marathon, but I don't view my coaching ability and my coaching acumen is anywhere near a glossy finished product. If I ever get to that spot, I'm going to stop coaching if I think I'm done learning. Because what would the fun be in that if you don't ever think you have anything to learn? Yeah. No, I mean, it's arrogant. Exactly. It is. How much better of a coach do you think you've gotten over this last two years as you've coached more people? infinitely. Infinity. Yeah, because you have so much more data that you've learned from.

Here's the other thing, though. Here's the other thing, though. And this is something that I think people aren't super comfortable with, but I really, really am. You are what you coach. You are who you have coached. And right now, without going too deep into the, the weeds, BPN and people who I coach who are BPN athletes and on Bad City Track Club in

Austin. We've got five runners in the U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon through careful design and planning stuff that I've gotten so much better at over the last two years because I get to guinea pig you. I get to guinea pig them. I get to guinea pig runners all over the globe. and you start figuring out what works, what tweaks work. And I tell you what, it's not wholesale philosophical change to get you there. It's my new little tweaks. It's little changes here, little changes there, like adding two extra miles to your marathon pace working your workout.

It's not suddenly going from not doing it to doing it. Well, we're past that. But I'm infinitely better because of the seemingly innocuous things that I've changed in my approach to fueling, rest, recovery, volume of fast-paced, running all of that holistically. I'm just better. So you've helped me go from a 324 marathon to a 256. Yeah.

And then from a 256 to a 248 that we did in Buffalo, I guess that was almost two years ago now. It was June of 2022? Yeah, end of May. Yeah. May of 22. Yeah. And now we're going for a sub 245. Let's talk about this, this prep that, that I'm in right now for CIM.

And the way you've approached this prep while working with me, what did you change in my programming, if anything, from this last prep that led me to a 248 marathon to this prep where we're going for a sub 245 marathon? What's a difference? there's a confluence of two thought processes that go into anything that we do in life. We're all familiar with the old adage, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But just because it ain't broke, don't mean we can't tweak it, right? All right? I like tweaking. So we don't say you like tweaking because people are like,

Nick bears a tweaker. That's going to be the next big thing, right? It's out there we go. That's mean. Okay. So we know what works and we know what worked. But so the, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Philosophy is what we rolled into the build with is our foundation, understanding we still had to make some changes, right? Or you would just go back and run the same thing that you did. Right. And I find actually globally that that's one of the big challenges for a lot of people in the distance running space and the marathonic space is they do the same thing over and over expecting a different result when you've got to look at it and say I wanted to get from here to there what I did didn't quite get me the result that I wanted what do I need to change so what did

we do you're doing a little bit more just total volume of running nothing that's just some massive like shift in philosophy but you're you're you know you're you know four to eight to ten miles a week more than what you were going into Buffalo, right? And if it was just two or three weeks, eh, probably wouldn't make a difference. But over the course of 10 to 12 weeks, where you're going to run possibly as much as an extra 10 miles a week for two and a half, three months at a time, you're going to net some aerobic gains by just simply spending more time on your feet. So that's the one thing we did. The next thing I did was I slightly increased the volume of your repeat sessions and your lactate threshold sessions, especially your repeat sessions, they've gotten

bigger. That one workout that I had you do with, I think you went 2K, 1K, 2K, 1K, 2K, 1K, 2K, if I'm remembering right, if that's 11,000 meters of work. And then I've assigned 11K of work when used to it would be 9 or 10, right, on a lot of your interval sessions, not all the time, but quite often during this bill, we've done that. And then challenging you with pace. Listen, here's the deal, man. If you want to race faster, and I'm not real bright, like I said, I grew up in the middle of the woods in East Texas, but correct me if I'm wrong. If you want to get faster, you might want to try to actually run faster. I don't know.

Call me crazy. So what we did was is, I said, okay, how does that feel? Okay, let's go a little faster. Let's go a little faster. Well, you did eight times a mile repeat and averaged like 527 last week, something along those lines. Yeah. Right? I couldn't have thrown you out of our airplane with a center block and tied to your ankle two years ago.

You couldn't have run more than two or three reps at that pace on a minute recovery. There's no way, right? And so through a meticulous process by which you just consistently ran for the last three years, we added more total volume to your running in this block and then added more volume within certain sessions like your repeat sessions. At faster paces, we've just made you a better. runner consistently and appropriately applied stress that's not some major philosophical shift from what you did it was a philosophical shall we say tweak on a few very carefully calculated days and workouts that have really made the difference yeah i want to talk about volume for a little

bit yeah because i was actually thinking about this on my run this morning right now in this training block, my average run on any given day is at least 10, 11 miles. Yeah. There's really only one day a week I run 10 miles. The rest is above

11. Now, I was thinking back to that first marathon prep we did together. Now, granted, I was also in a Iron Man prep during that, so I was on the bike a lot and I was swimming a lot as well. But I believe my daily run back in 2021 in preparation for that marathon was seven miles a day. And then when we went and ran Buffalo for the 248, I believe my average was like nine miles a day.

That's correct. So we've slowly ramped mileage up to get at this point. You know, when we started the prep, even before I started training for last band standing, And we were talking about where running mileage was going to get to. We're talking like mid to high 70s towards the peak of the build. And I'm thinking, well, what is like an average day, you know, running there? You're like, 11 miles. You're like, holy crap, 11 miles a day.

Like, that's a lot of running. It's a lot of mileage. But then you get to this point in a build where 11 miles just feels like, like nothing. Like every morning you wake up, right? Oh, 11 miles. That's easy. Wednesday morning. critical velocity or lactate threshold workout of 14 miles of work, oh, it's nothing.

That's easy. Then you go on these big 20, 21, 22 mile workouts. I don't want to say it's easy, but you're recovered by the next morning. Right. And that is the body's just adaptation to a stimulus and growing and becoming more effective and efficient over time. I want to talk about how important training volume is. is for the endurance athlete as someone is training to run faster because you hear so many different

extremes. You hear the person on one side who's saying you need at least 100 miles a week to run certain paces in certain times. And then you hear the other extreme that's like, no, no, no, no, you don't need more than 45 miles a week. Right. Where's a sweet spot? How do we view running mileage, how is it change based off of the experience of the runner? What is perfection in terms of where should people start with training volume? It's a sort of a multifactorial analysis that I have to engage in with each athlete. And it typically comes down to injury, resilience, and bandwidth, right? You know, I have some folks who are working so hard and they're so busy and spread thin in so many areas, often out of necessity, if you're trying to run a law firm and you've got two small children at home and you're trying to be the best parent that you can be, there might be limits on how much you can actually dedicate emotionally and,

physically to running. That actually is a runner who I coach up in the Northeast. And she actually just ran 257 in a marathon at Hartford in October. What was her weekly mileage? She was probably in the 60 to 65 range, right, not running as much as you because there was just limits to what we were going to be able to get done there, right? But the reality of it is, the easiest way to put it, is we got to run as much as you can without rolling over undue amounts of fatigue

and getting overly banged up and injured on a consistent basis. And typically, through a little bit of trial and error, but a whole lot of forethought and careful planning, we can arrive at that spot for each athlete. I was asked on a podcast with another podcaster about what my thoughts were on low-volume high-intensity marathon plans. And I picked my words very, very carefully because I don't like to just wave a really, really broad sword, because for some people, that might be the best solution to their limited time and the

limited bandwidth they have to train for a more just elapsed time a day because of time constraints. But generally speaking, low-volume, high-intensity marathon training programs are not the best idea. If they were, you would go and look at the nation's top 50 or 60 marathoners on the men's sides and the top 50 or 60 American women. And you would see a whole bunch of people doing a low volume, high intensity plans, and none of them are. As in zero. Nobody's doing that. So volume is the most vital component. One runner who I coach who has now become a really, really good runner. She's one of the top marathoners in Canada. She was not two years ago. She looked at me one day. She came down to

train with the team in February. She looked at me. She said, coach has a really long workout. And I said, Michelle, you run really, really long races. If you don't want to run big workouts and you don't want to run volume, don't run marathons, don't run half marathons. Volume's huge. Because we know the human phylogy is such that you get increased mitochondrial density, distal capitalization with appropriately applied moderate aerobic distress on a repeated basis day after day, week after week, month after month. The more you can run and not roll over, undo fatigue, and run the risk of injury, you are going to be a better marathoner, right?

So I don't say 100 miles a week. Well, you know, for some people, high mileage might be 80 to 85, and that's the most we're going to do safely, and that's going to be their sweet spot. I have another runner, right, who can run 100 miles a week, right? Mitch Ammons can run 100 miles a week. Is that what Mitch does? In our peak phases into the last two big marathons where he ran 216 at CIM last year, then he just ran 216 in New York in October.

You know, 95, 90, 100 miles a week is the norm. Yeah. For him, what's like an easy Monday, Tuesday run? how long? A lot of times twice a day. Maybe you go and hit 10 in the morning and then four or five in the evening running, you know, probably seven minute pace per mile. Sometimes as slow as 715, 7.20 a mile. You know, when you're running 15 miles a day, right? But then just the other day, he goes, wow, that went better than I thought. I was like, yeah, let me check your splits. You ran five miles and like 24 something the other day in practice. I think he closed in 449 on the fifth mile. That was his first

hard work out back. But the point is for him, it's 95 to 100. For you, you know, we're like 75 to 80 in this prep most weeks, which is really high volume, right? On 45 to 50 miles a week, you could not begin to hope to do what you're doing. You couldn't even hope to do it. It would be fantasy. And by definition, fantasy is not reality. And I don't know about you, but I live in reality. We got to have the work, match the goal, right? Don't tell me that you want to do calculus, but then all you're willing to do in practice is simple arithmetic. I'm going to flunk that exam, man. That's what I love about fitness.

And that's what I love about the marathon. The marathon is my favorite distance running by far. And to say that you want to do a marathon, anyone can commit to a marathon today and run a marathon tomorrow. and that marathon is probably going to run you instead of you running the marathon. But in order to keep getting faster and faster and faster, you can only make so much progress in a given training block and a given year. And it often takes years and years and years to build that ability to run a marathon at a certain time. I would also argue that if you tried to,

putting me in the same training block that I'm in right now three years ago. There's no way, one, I couldn't hit the splits, but two, my body won't be able to recover the way it is now. And that's just due to the physical adaptations that my body is learned and acquired through continuous consistent effort. Yeah, you would have broken, right? Yeah. Everybody's breakable and we have to treat our bodies with kindness. We have to treat our bodies. as if they are breakable, but we also have to understand that our bodies are the greatest machine in the history of earth, like any machine. We cannot build a machine that's better than the one that we have.

But we have to understand the machine's limitations and the machine's promise to us that if we take care of it and we feed it what it needs, it will make the adaptations within reason, right? And so the reality is, is you are where you are right now because you've adopted something that is becoming unfortunately quintessentially un-American patients, right? I have a lot of it. And it's a lament of mine that I see people who have so much promise and have so much potential but don't have the patience to see it through and just understand. See, I've got people on a five-year plan, and I'm not going to name their names, right?

Because these are conversations that we have that are private, that people might say that you're a little bit nuts for talking about it. But I've got some runners who I coach right now who are on a five-year plan for the 2008 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. And so I'll have some people call me up who are maybe a little bit less sort of familiar with the process of marathony. And I say, well, I want to go and do this. I says, hey, man, you know, you're giving yourself 10 weeks to do something that might take 10 months or a year and a half or two years. And then I tell them about some of my people that have a five-year plan to get to a goal

and running with the expectation that you're going to make just incremental progress month to month and week to week. And there's a lot of people to just tap out. They're like, well, I just don't have the patience for that. And this is the self-circuiting that we've done culturally that I'm fighting it. I'm always going to lean into that headwind. I'm never going to succumb to it and try to go for low volume, high intensity. I call it the American shortcut, right? You got rapid cleaners. We have drive-through liquor stores now in Texas. We got, you know, rapid filing on the tax return. We got, you know, instant cup of soup. I mean, you go ask somebody if they know how to take chicken stock and you boil your chicken and your vegetables, you chop them up and you do all that. They're like, well, I don't

know. I just go and get the hungry man meal and pop it in the microwave and beep, beep, beep, and go and nuke it and, you know, hope the microwave doesn't blow up and have mashed potatoes all over the wall. I mean, that's where we are. Just everything's to be fast, fast, fast. So I tell people, let's be super fast, let's be super, quote unquote, efficient in all these other things. speak, but you cannot create more efficiency in running by rushing the process. You will actually hurt yourself because you will actually physically get injured. You will get frustrated and frustration is the largest hurdle to human development and human progress is frustration. I got frustrated so I quit law school. I got frustrated so I quit trying to master photography.

I got frustrated with running because it didn't come as fast as an easy as Nick Bear makes it look in his videos. So I stopped after six weeks and I tell people, breathe deep. Let's be patient. Let's use the machine that we have been given, which is our human body, but we must be deferential to its physiology and the science that goes into getting adaptations. And you cannot change the fact that your body is only going to. to develop at a certain rate, and you cannot, you cannot rush it, or you're, you're, you're, you're, you're in peril. You're in peril. I think it's one thing actually that running teaches a lot of people as patience.

Yeah, man. There's so many people who want to start running and they try it and it hurts. It's uncomfortable. I often hear the, the response, I just don't get it. You know, I, I am bored. I'm bored of this. And then it's one of those things, though, where the people who embrace the patients required to consistently keep running that achieve and are rewarded with all the benefits

that it provides emotionally, physically, mentally. That is one of, in my opinion, as you bring that up, and I think about it, the greatest outcomes of starting and learning and embracing how to run. and that is applicable to all other parts of your life, whether it's your family, it's building a business, it's your work, it's conversations with other people. Being patient is such a critical, important skill that you can master through the art of running.

Yeah. I think sometimes ultimate patience is sometimes confused with lack of get up and go and lack of ambition, right? that guy's he's just not he's just not intense enough got to have it all now we've got to go get that he's got to get after that guy that guy's dragging his feet he's not dragging his feet he's not lacking ambition he's not lacking get up and go he simply is recognizing that the patient approach is a good one now i'm not saying that um you know we have to take longer than we need to to get stuff done we got to make sure that we're not doing that but the reality is is um uh you

got to talk to people who understand what they're doing and allow yourself in any, in any arena to be coachable. Always be coachable, right? If you are trying to learn how to be a diesel mechanic, understand that you got to listen to an expert, right, who is a diesel mechanic and who's teaching you how to do it and don't try to cut corners and don't try to rush the process, or you're going to end up not accomplishing your goal. Be coaching. be a listener, be a learner, and running can teach patience. And I really like what you said there because you're right. Even if you don't bring patience to the table, sometimes running can teach the patience. I'm not sure that the patience needs to be a predicate to running, but running is sure

going to teach it to you. Sometimes the hard way, sometimes the easy way, depending on whether or not you have some sort of massive flame out on a race or you get injured or whatever. But yeah, It doesn't necessarily, one doesn't necessarily have to precede the other, but at the end of the day, patience is always going to be the element of development as a distance runner, for sure. Yeah, no, I agree. Yeah. One of the things I did want to talk about in regards to this prep, from my perspective, some things that have changed and that are different, that I believe have had significant impact on the outcome. Because I would argue that I'm in the best running shape of my life right now. Not debatable.

Not debatable. I'm hitting paces and splits that I've never hit before at an effort that is lower than I've ever experienced before. I was thinking about this. One, I haven't missed any workouts, which I never do. I never physically miss a workout in terms of like I always show up and put forth the effort. But there have been times in these last couple of preps we've done together. where I've missed hitting splits in times. You know, I send over my, after every Wednesday morning track workout or lactate threshold

workout, I screenshot my Garmin data, I sent it over to you, and you called me within a matter of minutes. Typically. And then Saturday, I did the same thing. I screenshot my data. I send it over to you. One thing I can say about this prep run right now, there hasn't been one workout where I have not missed a split.

I've run significantly faster than what you have prescribed in all these workouts. In many cases, yes. So there hasn't been, and I'm proud of that. I'm really proud of the fact that I have, like, I've just blown through all these training sessions. And I think there's, like I said, there's, there's some reasons. In our last podcast episode, you talked about the difference between being all in versus all consumed.

I'm typically someone who is all consumed by a fitness prep. This is one of the first, if not the first fitness prep I've ever done where I'm all in as opposed to all consumed. My life has more balance. I'm spending more time with family. I am going out to dinner more with my wife now that we're in a new city. I'm still consuming alcohol from time to time. Nothing crazy, a drink or two here and there.

I am all in on this prep. opposed to all consumed, and I'm running faster than ever. Another change is that I'm here in Tennessee as opposed to Texas. When I was in Texas, everything I was running was flat. I got to Tennessee in the Nashville area. Those first couple weeks here broke me off. There's hills everywhere. I'm running uphill and downhill on all my easy runs.

Now when I do these big Wednesday workouts, Saturday workouts, I'm finding these flat stretches to get a more accurate read of where I'm at. Sure. But the rest of the volume throughout the week, I'm climbing hills. I'm running downhills, pounding on my quads. Those are two of the differences that I've made in this prep as opposed to previous ones. But if there's one thing that I do really well, and I would love your take on this, is that I set the conditions in order for success to follow.

So if I know there's a big workout, and I've talked about this a lot in this podcast and in my content, because I'm a massive believer in it. Tomorrow, for example, I have a long run for Saturday. Today I'm going to hyper-focus and emphasize hydration, electrolyte intake. I'm going to make sure I get more carbs in. I'm going to keep my diet very clean, focused,

stay off my feet, get a good night sleep tonight, lay out all my clothes before I go to bed, have my nutrition prepped for the morning, have a fuel plan and strategy for the workout throughout the duration tomorrow. I'm setting the conditions to make sure I succeed for every single workout, every single run moving through this build in preparation and run sub 245. If there's one thing that I do well at, it's that. I know how to set the conditions to succeed and to win. I would love your take on that where you see athletes excel with that trait and where they fail and neglect setting the conditions.

Runners love running. A lot of runners don't love the quote-unquote non-running things that set the table and set the conditions for the running itself to go well. The big difference that I see right now with you is that you have so much more neurologic bandwidth and less neurologic clutter. You have less cortisol coursing through your veins on a day-to-day basis now than you have at any point since I've met you. That's true. That's very true. In a word, you've just got less life stress, now, right? We know that cortisol and stress, that's the byproduct of stress, okay, both good stress and bad stress, is a impediment to performance in the endurance space, sluggishness,

inability to focus, just basically just sort of feeling kind of rotten a lot. And so, You're sleeping more than you ever have in the last two years. You are spending quality, neurologically calming and emotionally, a fulfilling time with Steph and with Charlie. Okay. Please keep posting the videos Charlie the other day. I think she looks like she could squat a Toyota right now, man. Honestly, like her...

Like, what's up, man? Her squat ability is incredible. She gets in the squat position all the time. Yeah. It's crazy. Kids and babies know how their body naturally is supposed to move. And as we get older, you know, it gets stuck and tight and we lose mobility. But Charlie's squat form is spot on.

She is so powerful. Love that. In the depth of the squat. Amazing, man. Whether she's trying to pick something up or poop her pants. Right. Wow. Well, hey, listen, the only people in the world.

who are allowed to poop their pants are really old guys and really young guys, right? So there we go. But, you know, in all seriousness, bad, to be the fact that we're sitting here laughing and talking about Charlie and all this, you're just, you're just so much more relaxed, you know, and you're happy and you're sleeping and you're not dealing with, with shit shows and dumpster fires. And oh, my God, waking up at 3 o'clock in the morning, did I send that email? You're just not dealing with a lot of that stuff, right? that you had to deal with, okay? And that's when I talk about bandwidth. Some people need to run five days a week and they can only run 45 miles a week because they got those things going on and that's the best they can do in anything you can do. If you can run one mile, you're a runner, right? So I'm not,

I'm not saying that, you know, if you can't run big volume, don't go run marathons. I'm just saying that it's better to try. You're able to handle all that now because neurologically you're not fried, right? All the wiring that had all the casing stripped off of it. You've got all that casing back on the wire, right? You've got nice, strong electrical impulses going exactly where they need to be without this sort of scattered, frayed thing. That means you are going to feel better on interval sessions. You're going to feel better on lactate threshold sessions, right? Because it's all very neurologic, right? It starts with the sort of the ENIAC or the UNIVAC of the human race, which is our brain, right? So your brain has more rest, so your body is at its best.

I think I just made up a little saying there. I love that. That's awesome. You always have at least one during every podcast. So that's the major thing I see is you're just you're sleeping more. You're not is neurologically fried. And so it's leading to you being able to do this. And then also, you're not all consumed by it because you have enough free time. You have enough satisfying time to just simply engage in recreation and just downtime, just sitting on the couch, watching Charlie just grow and develop and all the joys of fatherhood. you're just, you're just not as tired, man. And you don't have this whole idea of like every waking moment that's not spent worrying about exactly how many pallets of weight protein powder do we have in distribution, you know, snags and all that stuff that you don't worry about as much now as you used to. You can then have more free time dedicated not to simply going, well, I'm going to think more about running and I'm going to hyper-obsistible and I'm ready. No, no, no, no.

you're actually able to just use that time in just neurologically calming activities that's allowed you now to just simply be all in rather than have all of what little free time you had all consumed with the obsession of the next marathon. That's how I perceive that you're feeling so good right now. Yeah, I got really good for years at burning the candle at both ends. If there was a three-ended candle, you would have lit all three ends. Easily. God, man. Remember, but remember when we sat in your office about a year and a half ago, I don't remember when we were planning one of our preps or something, we had a meeting. And you and I both looked at each other and you're like, you're tired.

And I looked at you. I'm like, no, you're tired. And we're like, so is it hard to write an email right now? And you're like, yeah, it's pretty hard. I'm like, me too, man. We just both had that that thousand yard stare where we were just, we're just, just, just, just. burning it. Just burning it, man. Yeah, I mean, at the same time, that's like, that was part of the process to get here.

Had, it was a necessity, right? It was a necessity, right? It was a necessity. Like, yeah. It's the mud. Like, I was talking about the mud. Sometimes you have to go through the mud to get to the other side. Yeah. But you're right. Like, right now in my life, I have less stress. Yeah. I think it's partly like, I, I have less stress that I'm managing, but also, at their time, I'm, I think it's partly like, I, I have less stress that I'm managing. but also after Charlie was born, it put things into perspective. So I worry less about things that really don't matter. So I'm concerned about things that actually matter.

And I'm not worried about the things that don't matter. And yes, less stress in my life, but also choosing what I decide to stress out about has allowed me the mental bandwidth and freedom, I'll tell you, I feel lighter. I feel lighter. I feel at peace. I feel really good right now. But I think that's something that people need to recognize is that if you're going through a chapter of life that is super stressful, you had a death in the family, big life

transition, maybe you're about to get married, new job, you might be on the verge of losing your job. If you have a lot of stress in your life, going into a big fitness build, say a marathon build is not going to alleviate any of that stress. That's going to be another layer of stress added on top of. So it's having the self-awareness of auditing your life, realizing what you have going on, how much stress is associated with each one of those things. and then what can you actually realistically do in a marathon build and prep?

And is this the right time to go after the school or not? I'm curious from the large amount of athletes that you work with, how often do you see life transitions or stressors significantly impact their workouts and then their whole build? Is it night and day? Big time. I mean, the most stressful thing that has happened for any of my athletes in the last couple of months was a guy who sent me a message. It said, hey, I've just been deployed to fight with the IDF, right?

In Israel. And that's a stressful situation. Don't get it twisted, man. And so needless to say, he says, hey, man, I think I'm probably going to need to pause this marathon prep. And I said, you know, you probably do. You probably do. Probably smart. Yeah.

You know, but lots of, lots of my, my, my, my U.S. military guys and ladies who I coach will get, we'll get deployed. I had, you know, a guy who was running in a hot, a workout room on a treadmill. mill on an aircraft carrier to stay fit. But I'll be damn, that guy, that guy ran in the 240s in the marathon this fall. And that guy was well over a three-hour marathon or a year and a half ago. So he got it done. But it was tough. We had to make some pivots. We had to make some changes. And that's, that's stressful when you're deployed and you're on an aircraft carrier and you're on a, on a treadmill and a hot little, you know, a cigar box size workout room. You know, I mean, these are things that we have that happened.

I had one lady, you know, who had to come and take care of her mother and fly from Europe, you know, and come to Florida recently. And it was tough, you know, and she ran a real gutsy race at the New York Marathon. And we were really happy with the performance because you've got to compartmentalize it and recognize, hey, we're going to have to pivot, either actually to a different race or pivot from our goal. and it's a sign of maturity. It's a sign of emotional intelligence to recognize that pivots aren't always and almost never actually, if it's for a good reason, like, you know, I want to pivot. I don't want to run that marathon because I've decided I want to enter a binge drinking contest.

Well, that's not a good pivot. I mean, it's not a good reason, right? But most of the time, it's a sign of emotional intelligence. It's a high EQ thing to be able to say, I'm going to revise my goal, but that goal is going to be my victory. Because I'm being fair to me. I'm being fair to the process. And I'm just recognizing this is where I'm at. And it's okay.

So I might run a different race. I might run the same race, but with a different time goal in mind. I might have to go to running four days a week for the next two months because I've got a parent in hospice care who I've got to take care of. I still want to run the race, but I'm going to pivot. See, it's just a high amount. emotional intelligence thing to be able to analyze your own situation, make fair and just conclusions about what you're capable of, and then redefining your victory. That's the key, man. I've seen this before with people, and I could argue that I've done this myself,

where they turn a hobby, which say is running and running marathons, into their full-time priority, and they put that full-time priority, which is a hobby, above everything else in their life, being work, being family, kids, responsibility, spouse. Because fitness can take over your life and the things that you're training for,

which were once a passion and hobby, turn into everything, turn into your identity. And I think that's where you start running some tough spots. and spaces. I've been there before. Trust me. Or you put that fitness school above everything else. Yeah. And it's tough because when we're passionate about something and we love something so much and we get so much emotional fulfillment out of it, sometimes we think, well, if I just got more of that

and I just put a lot of other stuff either on the back burner or just put them on ignore, somehow this is going to make me a happier person. And I don't necessarily think that that's the case. Because once again, we're back to the all-consumed versus all-in conversation. Now, I have had a few runners. And I've had these very frank conversations, even this week, with three of my runners. And if they're listening to this, they're going to know who they are. Well, we are having to start making some decisions.

some conversations about transitioning into a period where they do actually focus on running as a career and as a job. But we're talking about an infantasmically small percentage of anybody who ever does anything in sport who has ascended to the level where they can actually say, I actually might actually try to do this for a living. I might actually just do this. This might be my job. But I mean, that's such a small number of people that we don't even really need to even have the conversation because that's not reality. That's just fantasy, man. I mean, listen, even I was a pretty good runner and I was smart enough. I had to figure out how to eat. That's why I went to law school because, yeah, sure, I was pretty good, but I wasn't good

enough to ever do anything. And so I decided not to become all consumed with running. I was all in during the periods that I was in it and I was training hard and having fun with it, even in law school, but I recognized that it could not, I could not consume me to the point where I ignored my fiancee, who's now my sweet wife, Anselaique, nobody knows how or why you've been married to me for 22 years, but thank you for putting up with me. And I had to get my law school studies done, and I had to do all that. And I couldn't just put all that on ignore to chase this thing that I actually really loved, right? Which is running because, you know, you gotta, you gotta prioritize your life and make sure

that you're being fair, kind, and you're being, frankly, lack of better, putting it, being reasonable. Be reasonable. Right. Yeah. It's super important to see. It's a level of self-awareness that is necessary. Yeah, man.

And a lot of times you'll actually be faster. You'll be faster. I've had people who've got a little too, uh, uh, uh, close to that edge of being so close to it that they actually started making some decisions that maybe weren't the best. And so you backed them out. And they actually sort of, you could see their shoulders drop, relax a little bit. Actually ran better.

They ran better. Well, self-destruction is a real thing. Sometimes people ruin their own progress and success by no other reason other than themselves. 100%. Yeah. you know, a lot of times to put this into some real terms, you'll see people, well, I can't miss that workout or I'm going to quote unquote fall behind. And I'll tell them, yeah, you go do that workout on that sore Achilles tendon and you get an Achilles tendon injury that knocks you out for three

months. Then I'm going to show you falling behind. I'll show you falling behind. Don't run for three months. One workout? It's a, it's a drop of water in a big bucket, man. Just sometimes the best workout is not done. But the people who are so consumed, where there's like literally all in on that to the ignorance of everything going on in the world, right? And they're like, I must go run. It's like, hey, you know, you just finished work. It's 11.30 at night. You had a huge project done.

You had to get to the boss. You worked a 16-hour day. You know what you need to do? You need to go home and drink a cup of ice water. Watch some horrible Seinfeld reruns and go fall asleep. That's what you need to do. Eat a meal. And eat, of course.

That's right. So let's talk about the race itself coming up. Yeah, man. CIM, Sacramento, California, California International Marathon. I've heard you talking about CIM for years now because apparently it's a fast course. A lot of people go run there for their last opportunity of the year to qualify for the Olympics or go to the Olympic qualifier. That's correct. Well, let's talk about CIM, the race itself first.

I'm curious. I've never been there. Right. I've never seen the course. I've only heard great things. Tell me about it. Well, I mean, CIM has always been viewed as one of the fastest races in the United States. Even before I had ever even contemplated running a marathon when I was a young teenager, I knew about the California International Marathon, right?

What's really interesting about it is people think, well, that's just downhill point-to-point race. when it's actually a fairly challenging course, which is interesting because it still runs so fast. You typically get pretty good weather in Sacramento in December, right? And that is one factor that's really, really good for marathoning, is having nice, cool, relatively dry most of the time weather. The other thing is that even though it's a net downhill, it is rolling and has some hills in it for the first, 12, 12 and a half miles or so, then a few rollers after the half marathon. And then it really bottoms out nicely for the last many miles of the race to where it's like a racetrack, right? And what we find is that a rising tide in life races all boats, we usually have a bunch of

really fit, really motivated, really fast people show up to CIM. And it's almost as if sort of, it's this tidal wave of momentum where everybody just gets rolling. And that's one of the magic things about CIM is people run really fast because there's other people around them running really fast. I've heard that. And that's what's going to happen. CIM, we're in an Olympic cycle. It's the last day that the U.S. OC has set for hitting the qualifying window. I'm actually going to have four runners in that race trying to hit an Olympic trials qualifier, right?

And we're fit. We're ready to go. and you're going to be in there in the midst of that. And it's a really, really, it's very much of a momentum race. Now, it's point to point. So they're going to buss you to the start, right? They have buses and you go to a staging area. You get on your bus and then they'll take you to the start.

So spectators and friends and family are not allowed at the start. So it is a unique start in that usually when you're at a big marathon, a big urban marathon, there's just crowds everywhere and there's music. and it's a big sort of energized hubbub of activity. But at CIM, it's just the runners and then the bus drivers and then the bus drivers and then the event staff. And then you take off running and you start in Folsom and then you run down into Sacramento. And it's one of these things that I want to make clear is that even though it's known, okay, for being a net downhill course, the IAAF, which is a governing body, for track and field and running worldwide.

It's called the International Amateur Athletics Federation, even though the amateur part is sort of funny at this point because it's professional runners, right? Has a rule on net drop for a marathon. It's a certain number of meters per kilometer. Marathon is 42.2 kilometers that you're allowed for it to be legal for qualifying for international championships, the U.S. Olympic trials, breaking world records. national records, et cetera. CIM is an IAAF legal course.

That's the reason why it's so popular is because the IWF has determined that you can have a certain amount of net drop where it doesn't impact the actual athletes' performances enough where you can't get a relatively apples-to-apples comparison between performances on various courses, right? So CIM is an IAAF legal course, right? In other words, it's within the International Amateur Athletic Federation's governing bodies world rules on how many meters per kilometer net drop you can have to quote unquote ratify your result. That's the reason why everybody's going to CIM to try to get that last chance to qualify

for the U.S. Olympic trials. It's going to be just an absolutely electric, emotional, the hairs are standing up on my arms. It is going to be the race of all races in the United States this year. That's exciting. It's going to be badass, man. What's, um, how, how would you compare it to, say, you know, Buffalo? Buffalo is my last marathon I did. Other than that, like I've done the Austin Marathon. I've never done a point to point and never been bused to a starting line.

I'm used to these races having high energy, you know, people out in the course, handing stuff out. How could you compare CIM to any of these other ones? Equally as high energy, the energy obviously is going to come from the amazing, motivating, productive tension that you're going to have at the start line. And then as you start rolling down from Folsom, the crowds get, you know, bigger along the course. And then there are some places where, you know, it's a cheer tunnel coming through, you know, into the last 10K. it's a much bigger race than Buffalo. It's an incredibly elite race, you know.

You know, I mean, I would assume that the winner, you know, was probably going to be around 210, you know, at CIM. His name's Nick Bear. Huh? His name's Nick Bear. Nick Bears can run 210. 210, baby. Oh, my God.

That's under five minutes a mile, right? Five minutes a mile is low to 11, actually. So yeah, you really can't compare them. Buffalo is an awesome regional marathon that was a really, really great experience. I've encouraged anybody that wants to run a great regional marathon in the early summer, late spring. Buffalo is a really good option for you, but just very different. This is a very international race.

It's an elite race. And there's going to be people out there who make running fast look really. easy. I can assure you that it's not, but they're just, uh, these, uh, these are different, different breed of cat, man. So I'm going to run New York City Marathon in 2024 because I want to love that. I just want to embrace that experience. New York Marathon is, uh, um, one of the great marathons in the world. And there's not even any debating that. I mean, I had FOMO watching everyone out there this past, this past week. Right. It looked epic. But for me, like, when I, I go for a PR at a race, I don't need spectators.

I don't need energy. I don't need signs. I don't need the tunnel. This past week for my big 22-mile workout, I did that on an old abandoned air strip. It's 1.2 miles in length. And I did the whole workout there by myself. That's all I need because I'm taking every mile by mile, by mile. mile and I'm feeling pace.

I'm feeling effort. I'm thinking about the next one. I'm strategizing to get through this workout and do this effort. I don't need the frills, the whistles, all the extra stuff. But when I go and run a race for the experience, like New York City, yeah, I want that. But I'm going to be dialed in. So I think I think I will feel the energy, though, from. from the field that is there

from seeing these super elite runners just cooking and cruising I will be motivated by that energy yeah it is really motivating to be in a race where the competition and the participants in general are high caliber I too agree with you

that if you need somebody with a you know a freaking whistle on the side of a street or if you need a pet ban on the side of the street to be motivated to try, that perhaps you're just not motivated in general. You know, somebody said, well, I've heard that that course is really boring about a course on a marathon in the Midwest. And I once looked at the fella and I just said, listen, ma'am,

I don't have time nor am I concerned with your emotional excitement about the scenery. If they were going to run a marathon on an airplane landing strip, and I thought that was your chance to run a personal best. I'd be sending you to run that marathon. Your enjoyment and your boredom are literally 1,347th on my list of things to worry about for you. I don't care. If boredom and, you know, if you want, you know, I always love it when you see the description of a marathon course and it says scenic. And I'm like, that scenic, when it says a scenic course on the, you know, the coast of whatever,

that means really fucking hilly. That's what scenic means, you know? Subliminal. Right? Love that. Yeah, man. Yeah, get, you know, when you're dialed in, when you're dialed in, it's sort of funny, I'll have people who have raced a course.

New York, I coach a lady up in New York, and she said last year was the first year she ever ran New York for fun. She said she had run that race four, five, six times in a row. And that was the first time. She said she had ever noticed like 70, 80% of the stuff that she noticed on the side of the street, you know, the skyline, the scenery. She says, because I had never noticed because I literally had my blinders on. And all I was concerned about was what pace am I running and how am I running? She said, I just blocked all that other stuff out.

It's interesting. Yeah, we had a conversation with the BPN leadership team a few weeks ago. Yeah. Because we were talking about putting a go gel billboard. up on some marathon courses. So when people were running these marathons, they look up, they see the BPN GoJel. And the response was, well, first off,

if you're in a race and you're not using the GoJel yet, you're not going to change your mind mid-race. And two, no one that's actually running that race is going to be looking at that billboard. They're going to be concerned with how far have they gone, how much further they have to go, what is their pace, how do they feel? But I would like to point out that I'd be happy to meet them at the finish line and extol the virtues of using go gels versus whatever other gel that they used.

I would be happy to do that. But yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, I've run a lot of marathons, a lot of races, and I couldn't tell you one sign and one billboard on the side of any course anywhere in the United States in the history of ever that I've run. I can say that with a fair amount of certainty. No. Of all the races I've done, I remember parts of the race, but not the scenery, not the landscape, not the landmarks. But it's been these small moments in memories of like this turn or I felt this cramp here. I saw this runner at mile 17. Small things you remember from the race. I guess my next question. We talked about course profile. We talked about CIM, the

experience. What is the pacing strategy that we're taking going into CIM? I like the question because it's a strategy that has to be based on the course profile, your fitness, and your goal. And those are the three things that I always look at. And then, of course, you know, sometimes we have to take weather into account to if that's something that we need to be looking at. Being cautious on the front end because it is actually rolling, and there are some hills in the first half at CIM, being cautious and being very measured in our approach in the way we sort of use our fuel, right, our energy reserves.

Marathons are a race in any running race where you start with your gas tank on full and the needle should be bottoming out below E right as you cross the finish line. And you've got to figure out how to meet out your resources appropriately. So in CIM, we're going to be restrained early. We're going to run right at 244 pace off of the line. And it's probably going to feel quite doable. And I always tell everybody, if you're super fit and you're doing it right, the first 18 miles of a marathon should be boring. So when some people say, well, I was bored or if they go out too fast and they say,

But the first 11 miles felt so easy. And I says, yeah, but the problem was the other 15.2. I had this conversation just the other day with somebody. So we're going to take you out very, very restrained. We're going to meet out our resources really, really carefully in the first hour and a half of the race. We're going to get 14, 15 miles in. And then when the course bottoms out, you get through the hardest parts of the course and we get to the nice flat straight stretches coming home. And you've taken your gels.

you've stayed hydrated, right, and you've managed your energy reserves and the pace. Then we're just going to be able to hit full send coming home. We'll drop that pace down from probably right around 615 pace, which is where you're going to start, right? Technically, 617's 244 pace. We'll call it 615. And then if you're feeling good, I'm actually pretty confident that you're going to be able to drop that down. 611, 610, 609, 608. Your data has been so phenomenal, and I'm very, very data-driven.

You are what your workouts say you are. And right now your workouts say that you are incredibly fit and incredibly adept right now because you've synergized volume and intensity in a way that tells me that you're ready to really, really uncork one here. I can't wait to let it rip Oh man I can't wait I get so fired up about this shit man I tell you what You know I mean there is nothing

That fires me up more than Then saying here's the plan Executing the plan Meeting or exceeding the expectations Every single bit of the way During This this plan And then getting to the starting line

With that anticipation the moments before the gun goes off When you're like Oh boy Boy, here the hell we go. We're about to whoop some ass today. God, I love it, man. There's no better feeling. You know, this is, I would say my third intercompetitive marathon.

So I go out and race, I'm racing against myself, the clock, my previous time. This is the third marathon I've done where it's a real effort of trying to do something significant for myself. Yes. The first sub three, then 248, now sub 245. And through those repetitions, that repetition builds confidence. But it also builds and teaches you predictability. Yes. So you know, at this point in the build, I'm going to feel this.

At this point in the prep, I'm going to feel this. At this point, the starting line, I'm going to feel or should feel this. if you do things right and you set the conditions to succeed. Last week was the peak of the bill. We haven't started necessarily tapering yet, but we reached the peak of the build and now we're slowly reducing volume. After that 22-mile workout, I felt great.

I asked you, how are you feeling? And I would have expected you to say, hey, I feel good, but definitely a little tired. You're like, I feel 100%. Like, you actually typed 100%, and I'm like, like, as the in line, Like, good. Like, yep, I feel like I could have gone out and done another set if you had asked me to do.

Like another set of four mile, two mile, one mile. And I'm like, I'll be honest with you. My honest reaction, I was sitting out there in a cabin in West Texas and right near Big Bend National Park on a little glamping trip. And you send me that. And I just stared at the data. And I had a two-word thought. Holy shit. It was that good.

It was that good. In fact, of all the runners that I've ever coached, and the workouts are relative to where you are, your talent on all this, right? That was probably one of the five best workouts I have ever have a runner. I've ever had a runner run or run. It was just that good. I was just like, holy crap, man.

I mean, this guy is going to make me actually look like I have three brain cells when he goes and runs since CIM. It's been a good build. Yeah, it's been really good. It's been really good. Yeah. But after that week, felt strong this week, the week after peak of the build.

I still feel strong, but I can tell I'm holding fatigue from the build. But I always get to this point. I know I'm holding some fatigue. I'm holding some inflammation. What happens with every single build is I get to this point, then we go into the taper. The taper, which is just as hard physically as it is, mentally and emotionally.

It's called the taper crazies. Oh my gosh, it's real. And you get these phantom injuries that pop up. Right. A real thing. Yeah. But we'll reduce volume and intensity going to the taper.

My body always drops a few pounds in the taper because of this inflammation that I've been holding during the build. And we'll get to that day before the race. I'll do a shakeout run, which feels like I'm floating. And then we get to race. day that morning where it feels like I'm one of those little toys that was you know you're a little kid you spin it up but you're holding back before you let it rip that's right and that's how I will feel when we tow the line December 3rd at CIM but it's all of these things that come together

what's so beautiful to me about a marathon build and a prep when it's done right is you spend weeks training and then you do a successful taper and in carbload you top off muscle glycogen, you rest, you're recovered, you're fresh for the first time in months, and you tow that line in a shape and condition that you could have only achieved by the last couple months of work. And that effort you're about to put forth for that day, the only way to get back to that level is through another build or something similar to. So it's this symphony of all of these factors. that come together and it's almost like the opportunity is yours.

Sees it if you want it, drop it if you don't. But you have to set the conditions to get there. That's why it's so beautiful to me. We create our own opportunities in life. Now, we do have opportunity that sometimes falls out of the sky for us. Some might call that blind luck. So what you do through adherence to process, through an intense willingness to invest in the mundanity of life and the mundanity of that process, right? Because let's face it, those 11 mile runs every single morning are redundant, right?

But that's the part of it that makes it so rich. It makes it so fulfilling because you create your own. own opportunity. The opportunity is December the third. Opportunity on December the third is for you to go out and have the best athletic performance and the best athletic moment of your life. The opportunity is December the third. The opportunity to succeed. The opportunity to have a transcendent performance on December the third. That's all there. But it is only created by those 11 mile runs in the pitch black on a hilly course in Nashville with nobody's looking.

In life, we have to understand that we create our own opportunities for the most part. Okay? And then when the window opens, we have a choice to either dive through that window or let the window slam shut and then watch the rest of the world

go by on the other side of the window. It's your choice, man. Take it or leave it. Take it or leave it. So you're going to seize that opportunity on December 3rd and you're not going to drop it. Now, it's sports. Nothing's a guarantee. That's what's so exhilarating and exciting about it. Right? Because if they were just going to just go hand out the medals, they would just go down a list, pick the guy with the fastest time previously and just hand him the medal and the paycheck for CIM and let him walk away and not run the race. Right? So we still have to run the races. That's why it's sports. That's why we love it. Right? I mean, nobody would have predicted at the beginning of the season that the Texas Rangers were going to win the World Series. But they did because they created their own opportunities by being repetitively good throughout the season, making good decisions and playing well in the playoffs.

Listen, you've been repetitively good. You've created your own opportunity. Now you're going to go and you're going to seize it with the full understanding. There's always a chance because it's sports. It's not going to go well. But you've controlled the controllables. And now you're on the precipice of something great. one of my favorite things you say when we talk after a big workout.

Let's use last week, for example, Wednesday morning, eight times one mile repeats, big workout. It was a hard workout. And you asked, how did you feel? I was like, well, like, it was hard. It was challenging. I'm not going to lie. And you say, it's supposed to be hard. Marathons are hard.

And it's a reminder for a reminder for. a lot of people that when you go to no matter how well you prepare and train for this race, when you go and run your best race possible and you empty that tank over 26.2 miles, it should be hard. It is supposed to be challenging and difficult. It should hurt. You will reach points, highs and lows throughout that 26.2 miles that feel like you're about to crumble and fall.

and it's quickly followed by this high where you feel like you can just cruise for the rest of the race that is what's supposed to happen that's why we keep signing up for them that's why we do it it is to push us beyond what we believe

is achievable for ourselves but through the process learn that it's doable with the right effort if marathons weren't hard do you think as many people

was signed up for them no way no damn way right We look at the Boston Marathon Qualifying Time. You had to be five minutes and 29 seconds under the actual established Boston standards to even get into the race this year. People worldwide, globally are embracing hard. And I am, I am so motivated by the state of marathoning and the state of mind of distance runners worldwide that they're leaning into hard.

Okay. Qualifying for the Boston Marathon is empirically difficult. It is hard. Marathons are hard, but more and more people are running them. Okay? Marathons are hard. And I think if they were easy, I agree with you, fewer people would actually try to do them. Why do you think more people are choosing to do hard things now, especially with running? But, you know, regardless, it could be cold plunges, ice bass. distance running ultra marathons whatever it is why are people now pursuing hard physically challenging events compared to the previous decade i think that we're at an interesting inflection point and i'm not going to get uh overly philosophical here or political okay but the reality is just we have a certain segment of population who just want everything to be easy they want everything to be given to them. Everything needs to be, you know, dumbed down to the degree that it's all achievable, right? And so what I think is we have a certain segment of our population that's growing that's actually in search of the hard to replace the relative ease and the comfort of the Western lifestyle that we

lead. And so I think people are out searching for that hard thing because they simply, from a cognitive standpoint and from a philosophical standpoint are still, okay, I'm sort of beholden to that throwback, that past where we want things to be hard and things were harder. So we have these parallel tracks where things are super easy, right? I mean, don't get it twisted, man. I really like my air conditioned seats in my truck, especially because it's black weather and it was, you know, 70 plus days in a row of 100 degrees, right? I like the comfort of that. But, But then parallel to the comforts that we have, we then go and try to choose something hard to do. And so I think people are gravitating toward that because as comfortable as life can be in certain respects.

Let's go and make life hard because I think human beings still like to be chiseled. They like to be chiseled. They like to have to lean into headwinds. They like an uphill battle. We like it. I think we like it. I think that's the way we're hardwired as a species. We still like hard.

I 100% agree and believe that as well. In our DNA, in our blood, we thrive for a challenge. We thrive for hard things physically as well as mentally and emotionally. And I think as the world has evolved and changed and catered to make things easier and softer and less challenging. like you were previously mentioning, you can get anything you want in a matter of minutes or days, whether that's food or shopping on your phone or Amazon Prime. Oh, I was about to bring up Amazon Prime.

I wish I had been clairvoyant enough to go and take every single nickel of everything I ever, I had 20, 25, 20 years, whenever Amazon was a thing when I thought they just sold books. But I, you know, I'm. just wasn't smart enough to realize that. But yeah, everything is just right there, right there. Now, now, now, now, now. Yeah, and the world is moving that way. That what used to be a hard life naturally is no longer a hard life.

So we have to actually pursue challenging things to maintain that thing that our bodies naturally thrive and crave. Yeah, I mean, think about it, man. do you think Neanderthal man, cavemen? Think about it. Before the invention of fire, before we discovered fire. Do you think they woke up when they go, you know what? Let's make life a little harder. Let's go run a marathon.

Well, no. I mean, hell, you're just sitting there hoping you make it through each day. Now it's just kind of like, you know, we don't have a lot of those challenges. And it's great. It's wonderful. I mean, I'm not going to decry it. You know, like I always said, I'm not sure how much of a fan I am of camping because I didn't get where I went to go.

go on vacation to act like I'm poor. I mean, I don't want to sleep on the ground. And I stole that one from my wife. I was like, I'm not going to, I don't want to, you know, but the reality of it is just we lean into hard things because there's still that part of our brain that really needs it. It doesn't it. It needs it. Right. That's why a lot of guys like to hunt, too. You know, why we like to go run marathons, why we like to go do cold plunges. It's why we like to climb Mount Everest. It's the reason why, you know, Salar McCray goes and runs multiple 200, 250-mile races in a matter of weeks and months. I mean, well, there aren't very many humans as tough as her, but, but you know what I mean?

We lean into hard things. It keeps you sharp. It keeps you refined and sharp, agile, and just, it strengthens you. Yeah. You need that. Yeah. So one of the questions to pivot a little bit here, one of the questions, I'm, I'm, I get frequently that I would love to hear your take on in your approach.

You know, I share a lot of my workouts online. I've shared a lot of my workouts to this prep, and I've shared a lot of the data, paces, mileage, all these things. I love the quote comparison, is a thief of joy. People will look at their total mileage and they will look at mine and they will be influenced to take their weekly mileage. which is say 45 miles and start running 75 miles a week because they see me doing that, which I would encourage against.

Yes. Slowly ramp up volume. But where I'm going with this in terms of comparison is often paces. And a lot of people don't know where to start with paces. Like say you want to run your first marathon. Well, what pace should I be aiming for? Or I go to run a track workout with, say, 800 meters. meter repeats, thousand meter repeats, or a six-mile tempo run, where should I set my paces?

And I know it's very specific to the individual based off of their experience, their ability to run, how fast they want to run. But is there like an umbrella answer, broad strokes solution for people on how to find paces just to get, started, right? Well, one of the big questions that I get asked, and I'm sure you get asked to it too, by people who are really trying to find a way into the running space, is what pace should I do my easy runs at? And so the starting point is you just got to go and run a little bit, and you got to go and run easy for a little bit before you can ever talk about running a marathon. And what I've told everybody is that easy is not a pace. Easy is a feeling. The same way hot is different from cold.

The same way hard is different from soft and up is different from down. Easy is different from hard. And run easy. What I refer to is running adept. Get to the point where you can run four, five, six days a week, three, four, five, five miles a day. And then you can start spot checking your data because we do have the use of, of garments and chorosis and whatever smart watches you have. And it will tell you what your paces are.

And you can start getting a feeling for what feels doable, five, six, seven, eight, ten miles. And you've got to build into it. And then what you really need to do is actually either consult somebody who is a runner or who is a coach and start formulating a few workouts where you actually have some designated paces that are constructed in a way to get a desired physiologic result, right?

And you can start feeling your way through paces. If you can go out and you can run 18, 19, 20 miles and feel really, really solid at a certain pace, it's reasonable to hope that you could probably slow that down by maybe 10 seconds a mile. And on a race day, tapered, prep, fueled, probably hold that for a marathon, right? But there's so much that goes into it that my encouragement is get started, go run, learn a lot about yourself. You learn a lot about yourself by simply just going and doing. And then when you start running more, you start getting familiar with pace and feeling and the difference between I'm dying and I'm feeling competent. Then you start can start looking at that and saying, I think I can hold this for a marathon.

or I think if I did that for 17 miles, slow it down by 10 to 15 seconds a mile, I can probably hold it for a full 26. That's a reasonable conclusion to reach, right? Talking about easy running. Yeah. My friend Helisadee, he made this post a few months ago when he was training for Western States 100. And to make sure that he maintained an easy pace, what he would do is he would take a tennis ball with him. and he'd bounce the tennis ball on the ground. Kind of like a basketball, you know.

He threw the tennis ball on the ground. He'd catch it. Keep shuffling. Hit it on the ground. Grab it, keep shuffling. Because it made him slow down. Fascinating. And it did something to just keep his mind off of trying to run so slow because

oftentimes running slower is hard for some people. Because it's not sexy. It's not sexy. So after I saw him post this, actually, I was running one day. and I was running by a tennis court. I saw a tennis ball on the side of the road. Don't tell me. So I grabbed it and I started doing it.

Dude, it was so much fun, actually. It slowed me down. And, like, I would throw it down. I throw it hard, like, let it go up in the air 20 feet, catch it. I'd fumble it a little bit, go grab it. But it forced me to slow down. So, like, that's one thing people can do. Take a tennis ball with you.

Bounce it on the ground if you really want to slow yourself down. Mm-hmm. And it'll make. you focus on something other than the pace. Right. Yeah, because if you think about it, when you're having to bounce a ball and catch it, you're engaging a part of your brain and you're taking that away from maybe just the focus on pace and just hurrying up and getting the run done.

And it's a level of neurologic distractiveness that forces you into a space to just simply divide your psychological and your neurologic resource. such that you just slow down and you just, you just, I'm theorizing that you actually default into just sort of like the easiest pace possible so that cognitively you can just focus on that ball. Yeah. Catching it, throwing it, throwing it. Another thing that the founder of C-Susana, Pete does is he calls him Zone 2 meetings.

So he'll take his team out for these runs. Right. But they'll actually have an agenda for these runs. So there's things that they need to talk about and discuss for the business. Oh, I love it. And it forces them to run slow in like Zone 2 so they can have full conversations because another way to describe Zone 2 running or aerobic base building is just a conversational pace. Yeah.

Go grab some buddies, go grab some friends, go grab some coworkers, have a conversation during those runs and make it super productive. But it will force you to slow down, actually. Yeah. I tell people and, you know, some people listening to this are probably laughing because I've told them this. The rule is not be able to speak in full sentences while you're running on an easy day. I want you to be able to speak in full paragraphs. That's how you know you're running easy. Yeah, and I'll grab people all the time and go run.

Like, people will come in for the podcast and we'll go for a run. We'll go for dinner because oftentimes if you don't know someone, it's easier to have conversations prior to going into a podcast. And when we go for a run, we'll have these full conversations that are paragraphs in length. And it makes you slow down, for one. But also I have this approach where if I go running with someone who's a lot faster than me, I always have these questions in my back pocket that are very open-ended, that force them to speak not in paragraphs, but pages, so that I toss it over.

to them so that I can breathe at their pace. I love that. Yeah, but you know, um, uh, running easier, um, helps prevent injury running easier, helps prevent you from feeling cooked on your hard days. And then what I tell people is we're in the volume business. We're running marathons. If you run easier and you're not just rolling fatigue over from one day to the next one workout to the next one week to the next, um, simply put, you're just going to be able to run more. And at this juncture, One of the things that I've really, really begun to realize is if you slow down and you can simply get your volume up and then be really good on the hard days, that's how you get really good at this business. Right. So there's one last thing I want to hear from you.

And Jeff, you're obviously a very wise man. You have years of experience working with many different people. And I always value what you have to say in the way that you say it. Yeah. The marathon owes you nothing. Not a damn thing. Nothing. And if you don't respect the distance,

if you don't respect the 26.2 miles, if you don't respect the effort, it will crush you. I'd love to hear you just riff on that concept for a little bit and how you've seen people approach marathons with ego and be destroyed. And then have seen people approach a marathon with respect and have succeeded.

What does that mean to you? You're one of the, and I'm just going to go ahead and say it, one of the best entrepreneurs in the United States. You are the best entrepreneur I have personally ever met. And one of the things that I'm guessing at, but not totally because I know you really well at this point, is that respect pervaded your approach as you got BPN growing.

You respected the space that you were in and you were willing to listen and you were willing to respect what it took for other people in other ventures, other entrepreneurial pursuits, what they had to do because you've got to respect what you're walking into. Right? Correct. If you respect the marathon, the marathon gods will not rain down on you with the power of a thousand fire breathing dragons. Respect the marathon gods because they are a spiteful, spiteful bunch of folks. Respect the marathon because the marathon will not respect you for running with a certain level of dumbassery.

and dumbassery is a very intricate, very complex term that means you're a dumbass. Right? If you're only in shape to run seven minute pace, don't try to run six minute pace and think it's going to work. And so having respect for the marathon, respecting what it takes to get fit enough to do it, listening, being coachable, it's all about respect. But you know, I'll tell you what, you would, you just open up a Pandora's box here. Respect is something that I think that we all need to look at globally right now.

And I find that people who proceed with respect rather than obtuse arrogance and sort of a bull in a China shop mentality when they go into any situation, people who proceed with respect tend to have a higher chance of succeeding, respecting the marathon, respecting ultra-man. marathons, right? I've had a lot of conversations recently about, you know, understanding what you're getting into if you're going to go run Leadville and really understanding what we're doing here. Respect entrepreneurial patience. Respect what it takes to end up being the greatest tennis player in the world, right? And then when people tell you, hey, I've done this. This is some recommendations I have, I would highly encourage people to really, really dig in there and listen and try to implement some of the advice that they get. And life goes pretty well. It really does. I think a lack of respect for an effort equals a lack of respect for yourself.

Oh yeah. We always have to respect ourselves. We have to respect ourselves enough to set ourselves up for success. And I think I've said this before to you. In fact, I know exactly when it was. I believe it was three or four weeks prior to Buffalo. I was talking about the fact that you have to respect yourself enough to set yourself up for success. Respect yourself enough to put in the work. Respect yourself enough to value your commitment to a goal to then commit both the emotional and the physical resources to accomplishing the task. You know, disrespect for an endeavor and disrespect for a race in a lot of ways really emanates for a a lack of self-respect.

We don't respect ourselves enough to actually value the steps, the incremental steps, and the progress that needs to be made to truly accomplish something meaningful. It's really important. I agree. I mean, respect is, in my opinion, one of the greatest skills and characteristic traits that you can learn but have you never been taught how to respect others or an effort or yourself

it's something you can also teach yourself. It's a responsibility. Yeah, man. It's an individual responsibility. So there's a lot of people who don't respect themselves or don't respect a process or don't respect an effort

and there is often an excuse of, well, I wasn't shown how to do that, but that's all a self responsibility that we are obligated to maintain

and adopt and implement to be contributing members of society in the world. And it doesn't mean we're always going to be perfect.

It doesn't mean that we're never going to have a misunderstanding or proceed with a not volitional ignorance but just true ignorance just like I just didn't know

but seek to fix it and that's what's so fun in looking at the marathon. Think about, you know, what did you run? 424, like in your second marathon? I don't, I'm trying to remember. Four-fifteen. Right. Think about how much more you respect the process and how much more you respect the marathon itself now than you did back then. And back then, it wasn't that you're like, you know, you're just a disrespectful, a-hole. You just didn't know. I was ignorant. You were ignorant, but you invested the time in the recent. sources and the sort of the emotional energy into, I'm learning what you needed to know,

committing to the process, and look at you now, man. I mean, ignorance is bliss, but bliss will kick your ass. Oh, bliss. Bliss will take a bite out of your posterior, that's for sure. Yeah. Well, Jeff, I respect you tremendously. Thank you. And what you have taught me about the marathon, about the marathon, about the.

the distance, about the effort, about the respect, applying that not only to running, but business and life as a whole. I respect the fact that you've helped so many people through your platforms and mine, get faster and embrace the challenge of the distance, of the race, and learning through that journey. And I'm super excited for CIM. I'm ready to kick ass. I'm excited for CIM.

I'm excited to see all the work come to fruition for you and for all the other people who are on that starting line who dare to show up to be audacious. I'm excited about the future of running. I'm excited about the future of BPN. And I'm excited about the opportunity just in one tiny, tiny little way to try to help make my life and your life and everybody's lives around us. Just even just a little bit better and just a little bit more fulfilled. And for me, that's the definition of success. Well, guys, December 3rd, 2003, California International Marathon, we're going sub 245. We'll see you there.

He's got a first class ticket on the Ask Kick Express, folks. Dude, I need to be on my bib. I'm getting that print on something. Let's do it. All right, thanks, Jeff.