The Nick Bare Podcast - Archive - The Sub 3 Hour Marathon Formula With Coach Jeff Cunningham

Episode Date: December 16, 2021

If you feel like achieving a sub-3-mile marathon pace is beyond your reach, this episode of The Bare Performance Podcast will inspire you to expand your horizons. Nick invites Jeff Cunningham, an elite marathon trainer, to share the formula and mindset that consistently lifts runners who compete around the country to excel beyond what might seem possible. An attorney by day, Jeff has developed a hybrid coaching program that keys to training volume, speed work, adaptations and nutrition. Hard data and metrics factor in, but at the end of the day it all boils down to the one non-negotiable component: Passion. Not just passion for running a marathon or even for running itself; it’s got to be a passion for doing the work. Jeff took Nick on and believed he was capable of a sub-3-mile race pace goal based on a few key biographical elements. With those baseline ingredients, Jeff believes, anyone is capable of hitting a sub-3 marathon goal. And he has proved himself right, time and again, as his runners reach their goals and blow beyond them. No one can explain what it feels like to be ready to go on race day. Knowing how to manage exhaustion is the essence of marathon running – and something that cannot be achieved without exacting, consistent intentional preparation towards a specific outcome. Jeff explains how he builds confidence in his runners, brick by brick. His formula has certainly worked for Nick, who now knows the difference between running a race and racing a race. It’s an incomparable, indescribable feeling.  The episode features lots of practical advice and reveals Nick’s plans to turn his goal of running a sub-2:50 time at the Buffalo Marathon this spring into an opportunity to share resources, training programs and tools with other aspirational runners. The ultimate goal? To inspire 10,000 personal records in the coming year!  You can follow or reach out to Jeff about coaching @Insta. Click here to listen to/rate/review previous episodes of The Bare Performance Podcast. You can also find out more about Nick’s performance nutrition and health supplements here. Key Takeaways: (02:30): How Nick met Jeff and started working with his team – and got on the path to his first sub-3-hour marathon. (04:45): Jeff shares the roots of his passion for running, which stretch back to his childhood in the early 1980s. He continued to run competitively through high school, college and law school. From there he stumbled into coaching, which is his big love. (7:30): Jeff, who brings a hugely competitive mindset, is all about his runners’ success. When they set a goal and he helps him achieve it, that’s his ultimate satisfaction.  (09:30): Why the sub-3-hour marathon has such an allure. In the larger context, they’re monumental but relatable. They can be completed by athletes at all levels of fitness, but there is a line of demarcation when your time starts with a “2.” (13:07): Running is a rare sport in which the barrier to entry is low and the possibilities for any given individual limitless (within reason). It’s all about training and mindset. (17:45): Jeff shares his initial thoughts when Nick came to him with his sub-3 marathon goal and some of the amazing athletic

In today's episode of the podcast, I sit down with running coach Jeff Cunningham. And Jeff was my coach when I ran my sub three-hour marathon in January of 2021. And he is also the coach that I am going to be working with as I trained for a sub 250 marathon that I'll be running at the end of May, which will be the Buffalo New York Marathon. Jeff is an amazing, passionate coach who is an attorney by day and coach by all other hours of the day and night. He has helped many runners reach elite levels and he has a formula to help runners run a sub three hour marathon that we're going to dive into that revolves around training volume, speed work, adapt. expectations, recovery, nutrition, and just putting in the time. And he believes most people can run a sub three hour marathon.

So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode to learn the sub three hour marathon formula. You are listening to the Bayer Performance Podcast, or we discuss topics on fitness, nutrition, business, and leadership to help you perform at your highest level and go on more. I'm your host, Nick Baer, founder of Bear Performance Nutrition and Prior U.S. Army Infantry Officer. We've scaled our brand through our core pillars of transparency, service, and integrity. And now I want to share with you through our experience and our guests, how you can optimize your life. Welcome to the show. Ladies and gentlemen, we have the man with a sub three-hour marathon formula. This is Jeff Cunningham. What's up, Jeff?

Not a whole lot. How you doing? I'm good, man. I'm a lot faster now that I met you. And I do want to dive into that in this podcast, right? So I think to kick it off, the way we met, it was probably a little over a year ago. Yeah. And I reached down to Natasha. And it's funny how all this came together.

I reached out to Natasha because she was following me on Instagram. I was following her. and I would post these photos of my watch after a run and I'd say nice easy run and it'd be like a 715 pace and she would respond with you're running too fast, you're running too hard,

you're doing this wrong. I was like, who is this person? And I reached down to her, kind of learned a little bit more about her and I said, I need you to coach me for my next Iron Man. And she was one of the best coaches

I ever worked with. And then when I started working with her, She said, but I'm not going to do your running coaching. I'm going to have Jeff Cunningham do your running coaching. And Jeff is a character. I was like, all right, I got to meet this guy. And I met you. And I was training with you Wednesday's downtown Austin with your team on the track,

on the east side loop, doing workouts. And then working with you led me to the 256-27 marathon last January, where I achieved my sub three. So it's been a journey since meeting you. It feels like I met you like five years ago. How about this past year? Wild. This past year has been a wild journey for everybody.

That challenges all the way across the board. In fact, on the way up here, I need a DEF for my truck because I drive a diesel. And apparently we're having a DEF shortage. And they're still blaming it on COVID. Classic. Unbelievable. You know what I remember about that truck, actually. I'll always remember that truck because we'd be doing a workout.

on the east side loop and you'd hop in your truck Yoli and Tyler would hop in there with you to film and I'd be running around the corners here and the truck coming out and I can image it, imagine it in my head

right now because of one we had the video footage to prove it but it's you driving past with Tyler and Yoli hop out of your truck and saying paces for everyone passing by. A heavily involved coach. Before you were coaching, what did running look like for you? Where did running this passion or running stem

from? Well, it's funny because I ran my first race in, I want to say it was 1983, 84, in Tyler, Texas, in the Azalea Trail's a two-mile race. It was tacked on to a 10-K race, and I loved it. the concept of running down the road where the cars are supposed to drive, right? When you're, I don't know how old I was, maybe eight, nine years old, it was just a fascinating concept to me. I found out I was good at it, ended up running well in high school, and ended up getting a college scholarship, went on and ran collegiately at Baylor University,

and then went to law school and actually had some of my best running competitively. competitively, believe it or not, when I was in law school. And it seems a bit counterintuitive because I had less time to run. But what I did was, was I fashioned it in a way that sort of wove it into the busy life I had, which essentially was just staying up until two in the morning reading case law. That's what you do in law school. And I did fewer workouts. And I took it a lot easier on my easy days and my training didn't amalgamate into some sort of unrecognizable blob of semi-hard running, which I think a lot of collegiate runners fall prey to because you get in a pack, it gets rolling in your easy runs, just like what Natasha hit on with your easy runs,

becomes something that's slower than hard but much faster than easy. And so I ran my PRs in law school on lower mileage, actually, and less hard training. But it was a lot more, I would say, focused and intentional on the days when I did run. I thought, hmm, this is interesting. So I started coaching high school runners. And I actually coached at St. Michael's Catholic Academy here in Austin, where my wife was the athletic director. And I coached high school runners, did well there. And then one of my ex-high school runners got hold of me after she was done running collegiately and said, would you help me? And then we ran our first marathon and that's how I started coaching the marathon. Kind of stumbled into it, but applied all of the physiologic principles that

had worked for me and they apply all the way across the board from 18-year-olds to 60-year-olds and above because human physiology is what it is. So coaching for you is, it's actually a passion. Oh, big time. Because, you know, I actually am probably more competitive as a coach than I was as a runner. And when I say competitive, I mean my mindset, my desire to see success. When my runners succeed, when my runners set a goal, we go from point A to point B and we arrive successfully, that's the most fulfilling thing for me because I get to see other people happy. And the investment in other people's success, frankly, drives me and it inspires me. And to see seemingly ordinary people doing extraordinary things is one of the most fulfilling things for me. Well, I mean, I can,

I can attest to, like, your active passion through coaching, watching you literally run the marathon, part of the marathon with me. And like, when I watch, you, you know, like, when I watch, you coaching your athletes, you are running segments. You're sprinting next to them, coaching advice. And it's funny because in the fitness space, a lot of the times you find people coaching, whether running, bodybuilding a lot of the time, triathlon, not necessarily because the passion, the coaching isn't a passion. The sport, the activity is a passion.

And they think, oh, I can coach and I can make money doing this as well. Right. But what happens when you take that, that monetary need out of it? And you're just doing it because you love it. And your attorney by day and then you're coaching on the side. On the weekend, you're programming workouts for your runners. Right. when I met you, I was like, oh, this guy doesn't,

he doesn't need to be coaching. He wants to be coaching. And that was powerful. So I really want to talk about sub three. And why do you think the sub three hour marathon is such an attractive number for people? Because for me, before I even knew, and part of it was based off of Boston Marathon running standards,

of why I was attracted to sub three. But when I ran my first marathon, it was like 357. My second marathon was 415, did worse. My third marathon after my Iron Man was 324. That's why I did in Austin in 2020, and I started working with you and I ran the 256. When I started running, sub three was never achievable in my head. It's like, I'll never, I'm not a runner.

I'll never run sub three. And then I realized, hold on, this is actually achievable. I can do this. I just need to implement some structure. I need some help to get there. Why is sub three this thing or runner say, that's what I'm doing. That's what I'm going for. Well, in the larger context, I think marathoning and marathons are so relatable,

but still a big time challenge for your average runner. Because being able to run 26 miles is not average. You're above average, way above average, if you can just run 26 miles alone. But it's relatable in the sense that you can enter one. You being a generic person can enter a marathon, and you can stand on a starting line, with people who are professional athletes, who are Olympians, who are just incredibly good at their craft.

The three-hour marathon has, I think, become a line of demarcation between people who are running marathons to finish, running marathons to complete them as the goal, rather than becoming, I think, something that people recognize as not necessarily elite, elite, but definitely way, way, way beyond just what somebody we refer to as just a pure recreational runner. And it's not to say that there aren't a lot of incredibly talented people who run 310, 309, 313, whatever that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that time may be, who don't invest amazing amounts of time and energy into their training. I don't mean to insinuate otherwise, but that line of demarcation, getting to put a tomb at the beginning of your marathon personal best is something that is fairly elite.

It is a status symbol of sorts in the marathoning community. and it separates people. It does in a way that's just so incredibly satisfying for people who are working 40, 50, 60, 70 hours a week. Like I am as an attorney or you are or who are working as an accountant or school teachers or whatever it is that they do. It's an elite athletic accomplishment that can be achieved by people who many would consider to be. you otherwise ordinary athletically. That's what I like about it

is if you think of other professional sports. There's a level of skill and talent that's required. Doesn't matter how hard I ever work. I'm not going to be a professional football player. It doesn't matter how much time I put into it.

I'm not going to be a professional baseball player. But running is one of those things that the barrier to entry is so small. For me, it's like how far can take this. That's why we establish this new goal. Let's go sub-250. Right. You know I want the 245,

but let's go sub-250. Right. And we talked about this a little bit before we started this episode, but to kind of set the expectations, can anyone run sub-3? If I was like, hey, I pulled someone out of a crowd

and I said, all you have to do is put in the time, the effort, and be patient with it, you will run sub three, is that possible to say? Within reason, yes. Now, I think we all recognize that not everybody can dunk a basketball. It's just one of these things where there are limits. But within reason, if you have achieved certain sort of checkpoints in you're running, It's possible to get to sub three if you have the ability to do so.

And that ability is actually has much broader spectrum, excuse me, and is a lot more prevalent than people would believe. And I think that there's a lot of people who are in that 305 to say 325 range in the marathon who could probably run 26, 650-ish miles, let's call it that to get to 259 low, right? Who could run 26, 650-ish miles back to back if there are fundamental changes in the structure and the volume of their training and also changes in the mindset and the attention to detail that can be touched upon at a later time. but you get this sort of matrix of stuff, for lack of a better way of putting it together. And I think that given the proper amount of time, a lot of people who are in that 305, 310,

up to 325 range in the marathon, of which there are thousands of them, thousands upon thousands of them in the United States, could achieve that three-hour goal. I just thought of this. I wanted to bring it up. I know one of your athletes, Will Nation, I just saw a post that he was top 10 marathon times from 2021. Is that correct? I did not coach Will through this last marathon build. Okay.

But he ran in the U.S. Olympic trials in 2020. And yes, did run an absolute unbelievable marathon at the California International Marathon. talked to him last night, actually, at a wedding. But he got himself through that marathon build this time around. And just absolutely unbelievable. Couldn't be prouder of that guy. Yeah, it's impressive. I saw him.

I remember training with you guys on Wednesday since seeing him run. Yeah. That group of guys, him, Mitch, watching those guys move. I'm like, it is like butter, just clipping. It's a five-minute mile. Right. And it's amazing to see. It's just racing Sunday.

With that foot, the way their feet just turn over. Yeah. Dude, it's amazing. So when I started first working with you, I kind of want to interview you now in terms of what it was like when I started working with you to kind of paint a picture for the listener or the viewer of if someone's saying, hey, I'm running a 330 marathon. I want to get to 256, 257. when I started working with you and I said, I'm a 324 marathoner at Austin, which is a tough course.

And I said, I want to run sub three in, I think it was like six months. Did you instantly say, yeah, I can make that happen? Or was it, I don't know about this.

Like, what was your initial reaction when I said, this is what I want to do? And oh, by the way, we're going to be showcasing it to hundreds of thousands of people online.

And you're going to be the coach for it. My initial reaction was, we're going to have to see. But here is one thing that I was taught, and I will never, never forget the fact that I came to the realization in the summer of 2010 that my athletes teach me more than I have to teach them in many, many instances. This young lady came to me and she says, I'm going to run at the University of Texas. And I had that moment like the priest had in Rudy, where he pulled him aside and said, Rudy, Notre Dame's not for everybody, right? So I talked to this young lady and I said, golly, I mean, the University of Texas, I mean, probably one of the best athletic departments in the NCAA every single year,

if not the best in many cases. I mean, what about maybe another school? And she says, no, I'm going to run for the University of Texas on scholarship. And I thought, oh, my gosh. Okay. So I said, we're going to, okay, let's go to work. And so we went to work. And then sure enough, I get the phone call in late October at the end of her senior cross-country season.

And she was offered a scholarship by the University of Texas. And at that time, I learned the difference between really. and pessimism and the tendency that we have to confuse the two. And so I harked back to that, and I looked at the 324, and I thought to myself, no, let's look at the data. Let's look at what he's done. Let's look at everything from being an Army Ranger, which automatically makes you one of the toughest sons of guns. Can I say that? Guns. Sons of guns. You can say guns.

Okay. Sons of guns on the planet. So I thought, okay, there's inherent toughness. There's also going to be an attention to detail and an appreciation for regimentation and rigor and a tolerance for monotony. Those are all things that you have to have. Let's remember this. We're not running the mile. We're not running the 400 where you have to pay attention for one lap. We're running 26 miles.

You have to appreciate. Seat joy in and almost relish the monotonous nature at times of being a distance runner. So I thought, okay, he can do all that. that. I know that about him without having to talk to him. So then I looked and I saw, well, this guy's run a five-minute mile. Everybody on the planet who can run a five-minute mile, in fact, I would posit everybody who can run probably under 540 in the mile is capable physically of running a sub-three-hour marathon, right? So then I said, let's see the volume. Let's see the structure of your workouts. And then, with all due respect, it looked like a raging dumpster fire. I thought to myself,

holy macro, all I've got to do is be an extinguisher here and just put out the dumpster fire, then create organization, create structure, create workouts that are based on his physiology that get you from point A, 324 to point B, which was 259. It turns out you got far fitter, you progressed far faster, and you ended up running 256. And here's something that I want everybody to know. I think there's what, 700,000 plus views on the YouTube video of your marathon. Here are the things that people don't know from those clips. It was 60 something degrees, almost 100% humidity, and it was blowing 20 miles an hour.

That 256 was a transcendent performance in my mind because I know what that would have been on a deadpan flat course in 40 degree weather with no wind. It would have been pretty damn good. So, yeah, I mean, you basically went and got 30 minutes on your marathon time by simply being tough, committed to process, able to invest in. in the repetitiveness in the monotony that you have to be good with, being tough as nails, and then handling all of the non-running-related things, including recovery, fueling, hydration,

those things go into it too. It's funny on that race day. Yeah. The night before my dad said, because my dad was in town for the race, he said, it might be a little windy tomorrow. In my head, I was like, I don't care. I'm going sub three.

I don't care what the conditions are. woke up and the wind was blowing. And I said, what's the miles per hour of this wind? And he goes, five, it'll be all right. After the race,

he told me, when I saw it was going to be 20 mile per hour winds that day, but I don't want to tell you to scare you. And I remember running up that hill and you're running alongside me. And I couldn't, you were probably three feet away from me.

100%. I couldn't hear one thing you were saying because the wind was blowing so hard into my face. And I'm telling you, that's saying something. Because one of the problems I've never had is volume. Volume is unfortunately one of my only transferable skills

because I can just talk and yell really loudly. You couldn't hear me? I couldn't hear you on that hill. But when we kicked off the video, some of the best clips we have from that marathon prep is you yelling paces during track workouts and then during that marathon. And for me, that was one of the performances

that I'm most proud of because we made a plan. We stuck to that plan. We hit we had to hit. I stayed on top of nutrition and recovery, which I really want to dive into because I believe that's one of the downfalls of runners, as we've talked about.

And I knew what paces I had to hit showing up that day and just hit a pace, one mile at a time. People say run the mile you're in. And that's how that day was. I'm running one mile at a time checking my watch are at 630, 628, 626. All right. There was like a 619 in there.

And remember I started cramping up that last like three miles. I don't know if you remember that. Oh, listen. I was conscious of the reality that we were getting close to the end of a railroad track that didn't just come to the end, but it also ended at a cliff. And I saw that you were starting to cramp up. So what I was doing was telling you, hey, man, you're actually ahead of where you need to be. If you need to, let's just slow down because a hamstring cramp, you know,

and if your foot goes up and goes, you know, up to your butt, you're going to topple over. Believe me, I've been there. you can't run a marathon on one leg. And so I was just really conscious of making sure that you were able to get to the finish line. And you can see from the videos, you were running a little straight leg and they're the last 100 meters.

I waddled across that finish line. We can call it waddling. That is probably what you were doing. That was an epic day. And you know what's funny? As soon as we finished that race, weather was beautiful. Sun came out, wind stopped,

I think it was like it was it was the opportunity to really test myself. Right. That night, the weather was perfect for running. It was great. I got a bunch of text messages from my runners who were saying, you know, coach, if you would just schedule that marathon for about 6.30 p.m., we would have been golden. It's like, well, yeah.

Hindsight being 20, I suppose. But, you know, that's the allure of the marathon is, you know, you're not always in control. And I think that we have this notion. And I think it's sort of a part of the human condition is that we are in control of more than we are. But that said, one of the biggest things that I stress to everybody is let's take advantage of the things that we know empirically are in our control, right? Were you in control of how windy it was going to be? Nope.

Were you in control the fact that somehow, even in Texas, and I know this is hard for people in Minnesota, in Alaska to believe, even in Texas, 62 degrees is an anomaly in January, which is when you ran that. Are we in control of the weather? Are we in control of when we get sick all the time? No. But what are we in control of what we put in our mouth?

Are we in control of our mindset? Yes. Are we in control of adherence to plan? Are we in control of a firm belief in what we've set out to do and affirm belief on ourselves? Yes. Are we in firm control of something as simple as I'm taking a gel or a goo at 10K, 20K, and 30K of a marathon?

Absolutely. Am I in control of not running in worn out shoes to avoid injury? Absolutely. Control what we can control. Do not worry about the rest. What are you going to do? I always say that too, control of control bulls. There's so much in life.

This applies to everything. So much in life that's. You can't control. You can control how you react to it, but it goes back to Leadville. I knew there were certain things I could maximize and control. I don't live at 10,000 feet, but there's things that I can control to maximize performance at 10,000 feet. So if someone comes to you, I really want to turn this into now, how do we achieve this sub three hour marathon formula? Right.

If someone comes to you and they say, I want to run a sub three hour marathon in six months, what data do you want to see? Is it mild time? Is it half marathon time? Is it volume of mileage? What does that look like? What are you looking for? It's interesting. The first piece of data that's actually not data that I want to see is passion.

I don't know how anybody can do anything that is of any import or any significance to them. Forget importance and significance to other people. How can we do anything that's of any import to us without passion? The answer is not a damn thing. So I want to know, first off, are you passionate about this? Is this what you want to do and are you fired up about the actual process of doing it rather than just the idea of doing it? Hell, everybody's fired up about the idea of achieving greatness. Are you fired up about the idea of doing what it takes?

The mechanical and methodical removal of the rubber from the soles of our shoes, every thing. day, are you fired up about that? And if the answer is yes, we're already part of the way there. So then we start looking at the empiric data, the empiric data, such as what have you done? And not just what have you done? What have you done recently? Right? I mean, somebody says, well, 37 years ago, I ran XYZ. Well, you know, that data might not be as helpful as what you did 37 days ago, right? If you can run a mile in, oh gosh, I think it's safe to say if you can run a mile in 540, I think you've got a chance. And why is that? Because your marathon pace is going to be about a minute slower than what you can run a mile.

And it's feasible then at that point for you to be able to train your body to be able to, quote, unquote comfortably, because I think you get a tested fact, surely not a damn thing comfortable about a marathon the last 10 kilometers. But you know what I mean. Comfortably run 650 miles at infinitum, 6, 8, 10, 14 miles, right? If you haven't run a mile, we can look at your 10K. And it's like, okay, can you run a 10K at about 620 pace, 630 pace? Yeah, well, okay.

You can run a 10K at 620, 620, 6. 30 pace even, you know, that's a buffer of about 20 seconds a mile there where you're running six miles all out. We could slow it down by 20 seconds a mile. We might be able to run 26. Even if you can't do the 26 now because you're only running maybe four or five miles a day and you go out on a little bit of spit, bubble gum, and guts and run that 10K, right? You just have the raw materials, the talent to be able to do it. You've got to be able to handle some volume. I think it's safe to say that outside of a statistical outlier, somebody who's just a born gazelle, you know, being able to run a marathon in under three hours if you're only running 20, 25, 30 miles a week is probably unrealistic.

We have to deal in reality. And here's what I do. I deal in reality. In my world, 2 plus 2 equals 4. I'm never going to be able to get 2 plus 2 to equal 5. Now, we can set the formula and we can address the attention to detail. We can address the little things, and that's all part of the two and the two, and we're going to get to the four, which is your sub three marathon. But we do have to look at the raw material somebody comes to the table with, but here's what I want to tell everybody.

The raw material is actually far less than what I think people believe it to be. Okay? Josh Holly, who I coach, who you had on the podcast, what, three weeks a month ago? It's about a month ago talking about finances and, yeah, I'll tell you, Josh was one of those people I met through you. Yeah. I learned a lot through Josh because I would go out on these runs and I'd try to redline. And Josh was next to me saying, pull back, dude, pull back, pull back. and I'm competitive in nature

when we're doing track workouts I want to be in the front leading that Josh would be like hey dude come back here just pull back I got a lot better that way I got a lot better I'm pulling those reins back a little bit

and pulling off of threshold to get faster right and Josh is a case study and similar levels of improvement that you had Josh was I believe

leave a 316, 319 range marathoner when he came to me. And he says, I want to break three hours. And of course, I had my heesh moment, but it was only a moment, right? And I said, well, this guy's a reasonably athletic guy. This guy is an ex- Soccer player. This guy is committed to process through what he does professionally. This guy is committed to stick-tuitiveness and committed to process. I think we can do this. Josh goes and runs 257. And that was 20 minutes that he got, right? And so, you know, I had another guy come to me and his PR was 319. And then this past November in Indianapolis, he runs 257, goes and gets 22 minutes. I mean, guys, that's almost a minute a mile. right and I had another lady come to me and she said well I want to run three hours in a marathon

and I thought well okay let's do this see now I get a little more confident I'm like all right okay okay you got two legs and uh uh and in a set of lungs we can do this right you know she was a 315 to 320 lady and she ran 258 at the Boston marathon in October so the point is is all these people come and I think a lot of people would say I I don't know if they have the raw materials by which this can be done because going and getting 45 seconds a mile over the course of 26 miles, you're running a different race. It's not the same race. But we got it done. We got it done.

So what do you look at first? Is it if you had to prioritize when you're planning a training block is volume first and then after volume, is workouts, being speed and tempo. And then after that, it's hitting certain workouts, like 18, 20, 22-mile workouts at marathon pace, and then ready, taper. How do you kind of plan that out? I look at somebody's ability to do volume. The first thing I ask people is, how much do you run on average?

on a day-to-day basis and give me a snapshot of your last month. I also asked them, what's the longest run you've done in duration in the last four weeks? Generally speaking, if they're in the double digits, you know, on the longest run they've done in the last month, 10, 11, 12 miles, it's completely feasible to run a really, really good marathon within 15 to 20 weeks of that time. You know, if you're able to run six to seven miles a day, even as little as five, depending on how fast you run them and what some of the other data tells me as far as your recent personal best distances, the mile, the 5K and the 10K, it's completely feasible. Sometimes I can say, hey, I think in 12 weeks you're capable of doing this. Some people, I tell them, hey, it might be six months because we have to achieve certain sort of almost diagnostic changes.

checkpoints along the way with certain workouts. And remember, I would tell you, hey, this workout is diagnostic of your ability to run X time in a marathon. And I know what those workouts are. They're relatively tried and true. And that's the reason why I've had a lot of people go and run between 252, actually, 252 and 259 since 2019. And every one of those people who did it had never run under three hours in their life, including young lady at Indianapolis in November, was at 302, and she goes and runs 252 and goes and gets 10 minutes. But nobody came into it saying, oh, this is going to be easy.

but they said it's been hard. I think maybe I'm missing something. Can you take a look at this and let me know? And then typically there are at least two or three things in the training that need to be changed. And a lot of that has to do with doing marathon pace work during long runs rather than just going out and jogging 20 miles, which I think a lot of people over the last 20 to 30 years have sort of adopted as sort of the process by which, you get ready for a marathon. I'm just going to go jog 21 miles. Well, that's okay. I mean, that's fine. And there's a big place for that in a training program, but we've got to inject

marathon pace running into workouts starting anywhere, usually about anywhere from 11, probably more like nine weeks from the marathon. Well, that's like I remember you saying, you can't go run 20 miles at a 730 pace if you don't know what 645 pace feels like. Right. And for me, I was like, oh, you're right. So when we started implementing these marathon-paced workouts, those one were a massive confidence booster, some of my favorite training sessions ever, going back to passion. I think, you know you have passion for something where the night before a big workout like

that, it feels like Christmas. day where I lay out all my stuff that I can't wait for this workout because I knew it was like you know a 22 mile workout with segments of four miles at marathon pace loved those workouts loved those so let's talk about speed work a little bit right the intent of speed work but I think the best way to kick that off is before we start recording you talked about coach canova and what he has found that is kind of possibly the downfall of the way Americans train. Can you

discuss that a little bit before we talk about the importance of speed work? Well, the wonderful thing is that we've experienced a renaissance in U.S. distance running. When I think that there were certain realities, which then begat realizations for

all of us in the distance running world. And it filtered all the way down to the high school level. I was having a talk with a coach just last night about how in the decade of the 1990s, the state of Texas high school distance running was far different than it is today. There was one high schooler who ran under nine minutes for two miles, the entire decade of the 1990s in Texas.

And then we have multiple guys in the same race, do it now. And it's been an investment in training. But to your point, basically, without going too deep into the weeds here, Konova basically said this. If you spend months and months on end, just jogging, you are training to jog. You must, through the entire training cycle,

months, years, you must inject something relatively fast into your training on a regular basis so that you're turning over and you're getting some neuromuscular stimulus so that you're not just training to jog. Now it doesn't mean go and run sprints. It doesn't mean go and do hill repeats until your Achilles detaches from your calcaneus. That's not what we're talking about.

But you've got to do faster up-tempo running. We call it fart late or tempo running or some. threshold interval work something fairly regularly so that your body doesn't revolt when you start making demands upon it when you decide, okay, my race is X date. I start training now. Well, your body doesn't appreciate that kind of hard start. So always sort of be ready to, quote, unquote, dive into a structured training build for a target race. always be ready. So is speed work more so,

like when we go out and we do these 800 meter repeats or we do these two and three mile segments at past the marathon pace? Yeah. Is that either building your anaerobic capacity or is it more of a focus on neuromuscular stimulation and adaption? Yeah, it's really interesting

because I find that when people say speedwork, that we're often all not talking the same language. Because when somebody said, well, I need speedwork, or when do we do speed work, or that guy does speed work, I always ask them, well, what does speedwork mean to you? and the answers vary from slightly faster than my goal marathon race pace to sprinting 40-yard dashes. Well, I think that we can all agree that there's a lot of running on the continuum between running an all-out 40-yard dash and running just a little bit faster than for you, say, 645 pace. Well, I mean, well, hell, there's the whole gamut of running paces there.

So speedwork is a lot of times relative to the race you're running, right? Well, if your goal pace is 650, if we're doing 1,000 meter repeats, 1,200 meter repeats down to 800s, and I think we went as low as 600s, you were doing those at 555 to 6 minute, mile speed. Well, when it comes to the speed that you need to run 645 pace, 555 pace is speedwork, as we could call it that, in relation to what it is you're seeking to do pace-wise in your race. Now, we could get into the physiologist of speedwork and talk about anaerobic work, which is really, really fast running where you're not actually building your aerobic oxygen delivery system, but running what's referred to as anaerobically, which is basically like sprint speed, right?

We have to be careful with that. Here's why. There's a place for a little bit of it. But we know the physiologic makeup of running a marathon calls on about 99. Whatever percent aerobic capacity. It's 99% aerobic in its composition, what you're seeking to do, right? And so you've got to spend time training aerobically so that you can then and physiologically get these things, distal capillization, which is basically building

the little blood vessels into your extremities to deliver oxygenated blood to your muscles, and then go and get increased mitochondrial density. I think everybody's taken biology. You know, mitochondria is sort of the engine that makes cells go. You get increased mitochondrial density by moderate, consistently applied aerobic stress. And that's faster than running easy. but not doing sprint work because you can do so little of it. You start running anaerobically, meaning without oxygen, so early that you don't actually go and get those physiologic adaptations, the capitalization, and then specifically mitochondrial density, right?

Now, keep in mind, I'm a JD. That's a doctor of jurisprudence. I'm not an exercise physiologist. This is stuff that I learned in order to be a better coach and stuff that I learned because it requires. requires me to know what the heck it is we're doing at the basic sense so that I could tell somebody, here's how we're going to go from 315 to 259. Okay. Now, the training comes in two basic forms. You've got basically lactate threshold training, and then you've got what I refer to as critical velocity training. And it's not what I refer to, because we're not reinventing

the wheel here. Exercise physiologists have figured out that if you train at about, you know, 89 to 90, up to about 95% of max VO2 pays, you're going to get the greatest aerobic adaptations with the least amount of strain on your body. Your recovery time is fast. Let's strain on your fascia, your connective tissue, right? And so that's why when I had you doing that track work at the paces you were doing, it was based on the rough estimate of what 90-ish percent. of max VO2 pace

look like for you. Do that every other week and fairly high volume on the track. It's not, you know, not the most fun. I mean, nobody wakes up at dreaming of going to run 10 half-mile repeats at 555 mile speed on one-minute recovery.

But those are the kinds of things that we have to do. Those are always a workouts that slightly uncomfortable as way to describe it. Yeah. It's, the one-minute rest never felt like enough.

Yeah. And you're just trying to control your breathing during, but I always saw massive gains from those workouts. And it works for runners at all levels, from running the mile up to the marathon. Because what you're doing is you're building this massive oxygen delivery system, which is required to run anything of any distance from, I would even posit 800 meters, but especially the mile all the way up to the marathon, right? And I always tell people that you don't have to be rolling around on the ground like a skull of the earthworm

to be able to say that you had a great workout. And in fact, I would posit that's probably not the best way to do it because then you're going to spend so much time recovering. You're going to feel like hammered crap the next day when I say, all right, Nick, let's go out and run 10 miles tomorrow. Oh, I feel horrible. It's like, well, yeah, because we overran things, right? You don't want to overrun your workouts.

But yes, mildly uncomfortable. And if we get mildly uncomfortable repeatedly, week after week, month after month, it builds this massive aerobic system. It's like doubling the number of streets and highways in your city and creates the ability to deliver so much more to its intended destination. and that's what we're doing physiologically. Listen, one of the most important things I tell people is, is it's more important to be consistently good than occasionally great, right?

And what I mean by that is, is you don't go out there and go, man, I crushed that workout. Well, yeah, you were lying on the ground for an hour after you were done, and now you can't walk for two days later, right? That's occasionally great. Let's just be consistently good. Let's show up. Let's understand the parameters of the workout.

Let's be passionate about investment in the process and sticking to the plan and be passionate about watching the fitness creep in almost insidiously. It's like plate tectonics. It just slowly creeps in and then suddenly you wake up on race day and it's like, wow, I put in some amazing training. I'm ready. That's the key. And that's a feeling. Like race day? Hell yeah, it is.

After a taper and you feel like you're floating, that is, it's one of those feelings that you can't have all the time because you have to build into it and then taper. But is that one of the best feelings in the world. It is. And here is what I think is funny is people will ask you, well, why would anybody want to run a marathon? And they ask people, well, you're not getting paid to do it or you're not getting a bunch of sponsors to do it. Why are you doing it? And it's that feeling that you just described that until you felt it, until you've been in it, people can't possibly understand it.

And I think that distance running and marathoning, I think, is viewed as a sort of a quixotic pursuit by your average, you know, a couch dweller. Am I allowed to say that? I guess I just did. You can say whatever you want on here. There we go, baby. Let's go. So it's confusing to people. Well, why would you want to do that?

It's like, because that feeling that you just described, it's nothing better in sports, man. I miss that feeling. I look forward to that feeling again. And it's one of those things that when everything comes together, you know, all the work you put in over months and months and months, and you build and you get there, it's that feeling that when you're in it,

there's a difference between, I've heard this before, and you might have said it, there's a difference between running a race and racing a race. And when you're running a race, you're sometimes suffering and you're not in control.

When you race a race, which is you're not racing to beat someone else. You're in the race. You're racing in the race. race, you put in the work, you did the training, and you know what paces you're trying to hit for each mile and it feels good. And you're not just dragging ass through it. Yeah.

Like my first marathon of mile 16, my full body seized up with cramps, didn't train enough. No, no track work, no speed work. I just went out and jogged. And I suffered through it. And I never wanted to feel that feeling again. And when I actually did, I followed the formula, I followed the plan, it took me to where I wanted to be and actually enjoy, like I enjoyed that entire 26.2 miles. Enjoyed. Enjoyed.

Yeah. Quote unquote. Here's what I have to say about that is, remember what I told you about the first piece of data. It's not really hard data, which is the assessment of passion, right? That passion has to then be followed by the meticulous wall that's built one brick at a time that is the runner's confidence, right? The confidence often follows a succession of great weeks and great workouts. And so when you get into the race, you're racing it rather than running it. you're enjoying it in a way that might be a little difficult for people to understand in the standard

context of what enjoyment is, right? But you're enjoying it rather than just surviving it. That enjoyment comes not because you're not in the process of getting tired, not because you're in the process of doing something that's not challenging, but because you're managing the exhaustion, You're managing the stresses of race today and you're enjoying it because of the confidence that you've built because of this vast, vast underbelly of amazing training that you did weeks and months prior. You enjoy it because you're so good in the moment at what you're doing. And you did it. Nobody else did that. Nobody else ran those damn workouts, right?

Now, I could be out there like a chihuahua on crack over caffeinated like I often. Hey, I'm yelling and screaming and all that, right? But at the end of the day, those are your legs that did all that. So you're enjoying it because you're in the process of succeeding in a way that's so emotionally fulfilling. That's the key. I think the way you said it describes it perfectly, where enjoying a marathon, adjoing a race is managing. Managing your exhaustion and you're not redlining. I think for me, one of the best analogies for running is I was on a plane and I was watching Ford versus Ferrari.

And in the movie, they were trying to get these vehicles to threshold where they could put out max effort, max capacity without breaking down. They're just under redline. What happens, though, if you're running or you're racing a car and you take that vehicle, that engine, whether your body or the actual vehicle, over redline, it can only hold that output for so long before it's going to break down. That connection for me made a lot of sense in regards to running. Running these workouts or these marathons, these races, under that red line, see what you can hold and hold your max capacity, manage that exhaustion, manage that exhaustion, manage. that output so you don't burn out during. Exactly. We live in an ever-changing world.

Things are not static. So when somebody comes to me, their red line is a certain place. It's my job to help change where that line is. And then that way, redlining might be at a completely different pace than what red lighting might have been 16, 20 weeks prior. and through the process of doing the workouts, you actually learn where that line is. And that's what I find actually the most interesting is. Because I think a lot of people come to me and they don't actually know where the red line is.

So a lot of their marathoning experience and not even marathoning, even 10K, half marathon racing experience is that they cross that line too early. and then they end up cratering, bonging, falling apart, whatever ways we describe it. And so moving that line. And that's what I did for you. I moved where your red line was, right? No, it's spot on. And it was meticulous. And there was no one day where I think you looked at me and you said, I can't do this.

Because guess what? it's my job to not give you things that you cannot do because that's not coaching. And one of the things that I abhor in the coaching community is, man, I ran the breaks off of them today. Or, man, I'm going to kill them today. It's not developmental. It's not developmental. We need to stop, you know, hiking our shorts up too high, beating our head on a locker. Listen, that's great for, you know, movies and, you know, an Al Pacino out there and was it the longest yard, I think, you know?

Yeah. Listen, that's fine. That's great. Love that mentality from the standpoint of just being tough. But let's be tough and smart and meticulous and let's pay attention to detail. That way we can effectively move that red line. Because, listen, if you're tough, you're going to get it done on race day. It's my job to have you physically equipped to actually do it rather than being all.

bark and then having no bite. Nobody likes that dog. No, no one. I do want to talk about these big workouts that you incorporate into your formula and your training plans. I do want to tell a quick story though because you mentioned fart lick runs. Yeah. I do love fart like runs. I do. When I was in college, I was in the Army ROTC department and our senior year, we have to plan out the physical morning training, the PT sessions. Right. And we had to brief the battalion commander. I think it was like every Friday for the next week's training. So it was my week to brief.

And I write up the slides. I plan the training. I love fitness. You know, at this point in my life, you know, it's always been a passion of mine. Running back then was just suffering. It was never something that I enjoyed doing. It was I had to do it because the Army says you have to run. And I create these slides and I created a fart lick run for this day.

But I spelled it. F-A-R-T-L-I-C-K. Oh, boy. So my battalion commander goes, you guys are doing some fart licks next week. Said, Roger, that, sir, doing a fart-lick run. Said you spelled it wrong.

I'll never forget that because whenever I see it, I thought it was fart-lick. So do you put Tabasco on that? Like, how is that? It's tangy. It's tangy. It's really funny. Yeah, it's F-A-R-T-L-E-K.

Yeah. Right? And word for speed play is what it is. Let's talk about these workouts. Yeah. The big ones you do in a block. Sure. Because those were some of my favorites, and those for me told me, okay, I can run sub three.

Let's talk about that, where you put them and what they typically look like. Right. Well, you know, standard workout days are on Wednesday mornings. typically we would alternate some sort of tempo running specifically I guess referred to as you know lactate threshold running right and then on the interim weeks we would do those critical velocity workouts at about 90% of max VO2 pace typically 8 to 10k on the track on the track but then you know when you start getting close to marathon I tell people look you don't want to get to the mile marker 20 20

and the fastest you've ever run the 20th mile is eight minutes, right? You're just going out and jockeying your long runs, right? So I said, look, let's do something where you actually feel marathon pace at the 20, 21 mile mark of a run. Because then your body, mind connection is going to be there on race day and you're going to have peace. psychologically and then of course the very physical reality is is oh I've done this before this is your body talking to itself right so what I do is is typically it listen it varies and you have to be malleable and this is where I I take each thing individually which he's asked each athlete and say okay I think we could do yours five weeks out we could

start yours but typically seven five three weeks out sometimes nine seven five weeks out weeks out, we do runs anywhere from 18 to 22 miles, typically getting a mile longer each time, where we build in huge segments at marathon pace or faster. So I want to say one of whom you did was four times of three mile. I remember that one. At sub-650 pace, right? Eight sets of two mile on and one mile off at faster than marathon pace. That's say eight sets meant six sets, right?

six sets. So typically anywhere from 10 to 14, typically about 12 miles of marathon pace or faster running in the midst of a 20 mile run or a 22 mile run. I'll never forget. I believe that it was on the 22 mile day where you ran mile 21-ish, I want to say. I think you ran 617, 612, something like that. If I'm remembering, right? I remember that day. I remember where I ran that. Yeah, I remember We're coming down Great Northern. Yep. Coming south on Great Northern. I said, damn, he's running pretty fast, you know.

I think I was running with Camila. Yeah. We were both right next to each other. Yeah, yeah. And that's when I knew. I said, man, this, you know, he's at mile 21. And he just ran 617. But yeah, workouts like that.

And, you know, typically every other week, listen, man, you can't go out and do that every week. or your body's going to revolt, right? You've got to be smart about what you're doing. But the way we structure these things allows you to have the confidence. I had a guy just this morning. I was showing you his workout. We were looking at it before we came on.

Guy ran four by three mile this morning, and it was 71 degrees this morning here in Austin, and the guy averaged 641 pace on each of those four three-mile segments. And his goal was to break three hours at your marathon. It's awesome. It's could be incredible. Me, crap. So other than volume and this speed work.

Right. When I was training with you for this last marathon, you always told me one of my strengths was that I stay on top of my nutrition and my recovery. Right. And I value that because I know if I, that's a controllable, right? Going back to what's controllable, I can control my recovery, my sleep, my stretching, my massage, some yoga stuff, what I'm putting into my body, then I can perform the way I want to perform.

But what I've also found is that so many runners are undervaluing recovery and nutrition. What do you experience with that? Yeah. And I think that without going too deep into the weeds, keeping the conversation global in this respect, I think that there are some pitfalls, and they usually go on two different ends of the spectrum. It's really horrible diet where it's drinking too much alcohol, eating too much processed food, not having enough quality carbs and good proteins, right? and then on the other spectrum,

I see people who don't eat enough. And I think that sometimes the theory that the lighter the chassis, the faster the truck comes into play. And like I always tell people, you would never leave for the cross-country family driving vacations. We've all suffered through them with your car on E. you ain't going to make it very far, right? So make sure that you're getting good calories in, quality calories, and enough calories

so that you can then go out and run for two hours the next morning without your body saying, I've got no fuel, I'm done, right? And then hydration, you know, make sure that you're drinking water. Make sure that you're drinking sports drinks. that have the proper formulations. I know that you make some good stuff. There's other things out there on the market. And then intra-run, making sure that you're taking gels

and that you're getting some calories and some carbs in during your long sessions because your body responds to that. If all you're doing is taking three sips of water, then, you know, you're going to not feel so great the last 45 minutes of the run because your body should be like, I'm done. I'm done. So it's this whole gamut of things that people need to pay attention to, for sure. And it's controllable.

Oh, gosh. Yeah. I would, when I would do those track workouts with you downtown, before starting those, and we started those at 6 a.m., I would already have 100 grams of carbohydrates in my body. Yes, absolutely. And then during the workout, I'd have another 60 to 80 grams of carbohydrates with about 2,000 milligrams of sodium. Yep. and just staying on top of electrolytes and carbs.

Because Natasha told me once, I remember I was riding bike next to her. She said, if you feed me all day, I'll train all day. I thought, you're right. If I just stay on top of my nutrition,

I can stay on top of my training. And that's what I did. And it made a big, big difference. Absolutely. So let's talk about briefly, tapering into a marathon.

How often do you typically taper your athletes. Yeah, you know, the taper starts sort of in a soft fashion, typically 20 days out. We do that last really, really big run. I like to put it, 21-ish days out. And I say 21-ish, because, you know, Boston Marathons on a Monday, we got working people we're going to do the last long run on the weekend three weeks before, so that might be 23 days, right? But generally in that range. And I find that people who have been training for four, five, six, seven months and are actually comfortable and in that rhythm, if you cut the volume too much too early, they just feel really out of sorts. I think it disrupts your biarrhythms, and I think that that's a really,

really big thing. I think that you start feeling in sort of the generic sense, stale, just kind of meh, Right. So we cut your runs maybe a mile or so, you know, three weeks out. We cut your mileage maybe about 10 miles that week, but then we cut your mileage significantly more two weeks prior, right? And then the week of the marathon, the six days prior, you're down to running probably about maybe 60 percent, you know, of the mileage you were at, maybe as little as as 50 percent. of the mileage that you were out at your peak, say, four weeks prior, right? It's more difficult mentally than physically at that point. Oh, yeah, because I think that all of the sort of the neurotic concerns about, am I getting out of shape?

You know, and the answer is, is you can actually go seven full days with zero physical activity and actually lose no aerobic fitness. And so when people say, well, I'm not running this much, it's impossible. It's scientifically impossible to get out of shape, cutting your volume by 60%, even 70%, even that last week before a marathon as compared to what your volume was four weeks prior. The other thing, too, is just doing some workouts that are just really, really good to get you ready to run the marathon. Typically, we can have or so out. I'll give somebody a, you know, a tempo run of some length, anywhere from five to seven miles or so. But we're going to be knocking that thing down at 20, 25 seconds a mile faster than what they're going to be doing the marathon.

And basically, for no other reason, it just flush the pipes, just physiologically, just run a pace. It's just a lot faster than what you're going to have to run a week and a half later. And typically, you're incredibly fit. You are already happy through your taper and you're pretty rested. And I've had people run 10K PRs in practice 10 days prior to the marathon and not even run all out. I did the same thing. Oh, did you? I remember that you ran it fast.

I didn't know that was your 10KPR. Yeah, we did that six-mileer on the track. What'd you run? I don't remember off the head, but I remember just, I think it was me and, it might have been me and Mariah, or me and Camillo on that one. You, you, Mariah, Camila, and Amy, I think we're all out there. And I just remember moving fast on that. Six, I want to say you averaged under six-twenty a mile. I did, yeah.

I'll go back and look. Yeah. The funny thing is, is you got to the finish and you probably could have run another mile. Yeah, and that's how I knew I was ready. Hell yeah, you were. So let's talk about what's your plan of attack now that we're going into a sub 250? What changes are going to be made based off of where I'm at right now? Arubically, I'm a lot stronger.

I'm coming off a triathlon prep, two ultra preps. Weekly mileage right now, average is 70 to 80 miles a week. what is what is the work look like from February until late May for the Buffalo New York Marathon where we're going sub 250? Right. Well, first of all, we're running fast, man. That's 627-ish, 628-ish pace, right? So it's my job to figure out how to get you to run essentially, and we'll just round down, 26, 625 miles back. back to back. And harkening back to what it is I said earlier is, is we have to change where your

red line is, right? Your red line, we had it established, was probably at about 640 to 645 pace. Your marathon red line, right? Not your red line for running a 5K. That's what we're talking about. Yep. So we've got to move that red line from 640s down to the high 620s. And that means taking a look at our training paces, taking a look at our training volume, but more so the paces. Your volume was really, really quite nice,

headed into that last marathon, but it's tweaking the paces in a way that doesn't overload you early and then we slowly get the adaptations, neurologically and otherwise, to where running 625 pace is, you have to put this in massive air quotes, Um, easy, right?

If you can't run 15, 18 miles easily at 625, you're not going to do it at a marathon for 26 miles. It's not going to happen, right? So it's changing where the red line is, right? We also have to look at other things. Like I think at the time that you were also training, uh, for a triathlon. My training, my training volume was insane. Right.

It was like 18 hours a week. Right. And so, um, one of the things I look at. at also is what is the total aerobic load and what is the total aerobic stimulus on an athlete. One of the things that I've had a lot of success with, and I got one young lady to the U.S. Olympic trials marathon running five runs a week because we decided that getting aerobic stimulus in the swimming pool or on the bike was going to be able to allow her to stay injury free given the personalized approach that we took to this and looked at the injury history,

that that seemed to make the most sense. But for you, you were getting swimming. You were getting running. And there's nothing magic about smashing your foot into the pavement to get generalized aerobic gains. You were doing that in the pool and in the bike, as an adjunct to what we were doing, running. So I have to look at training volume. And if we're not doing as much of the cycling, as much as the swimming, we may have to look at adding more miles. Just flat out, there's really no other way to put it. We're going

to have to maybe run more, right? But not much more. I think that your fitness is cumulative over the years. We don't jettison what we did six months prior, a year prior, two years prior, if there haven't been any big breaks in training, whether it's for triathlon specifically or a Marathon specifically. So you've got this massive, call it robust, aerobic system already built here. So we're going to be able to do with only incrementally, I think, more mileage as compared to what you did in your last build. And I'm fine with that because my mileage right now is, I'm comfortable with my mileage right now. And I'd even be willing to throw in some cycling again.

Yeah. Go on the bike and just add some aerobic capacity there. And it's really interesting because we have to make sure that we always remember. And I say we, I mean, we in the running community, coaching and athlete alike, that the mileage goal doesn't become the goal. I have to hit X amount of miles for this week. Well, how's that developmental? How is that getting you to where you want to be? The goal has to be kicking ass on race day.

The goal can't be, well, I decided I'm running 100 miles this week. I'm going to do it even though I can't even walk up the damn stairs. Well, then maybe we shouldn't try to run 100 miles. I mean, maybe 85 is going to be far more developmental in your quest to kick ass on race day. So what we'll do is, is you may run more mileage, but the mileage won't be the goal. It's going to be the means to the end. Does that make some sense? It makes sense.

Yeah, it has to be. Now, what's going to be even more fun about this race is, now for the listener or the viewer, we're documenting this like we documented Iron Man Prep Season 2. So Jeff and I will be, the goal with the series is that someone should be able to watch this marathon series and PR their next marathon. Whether that be you want to run sub 4, sub 330, or if you want to take the formula and run sub 3, here's the time to do it. We're going to be providing for free these training programs and they can follow along. and the goal is that I want 10,000 PRs this year. I want 10,000 people to PR their next race.

Absolutely. It doesn't have to be a marathon, but just PR your next race. And I think we're going to provide the resources, the tools, the information to let people do that. Right. The key is, is if you're at four hours, let's get to 340, man. Right? If 329 is 8 minute pace, that's running. That is running.

Let's get there and let's figure out how to do it. And I think that one of the things is people say, well, I don't know if I have time for that. I don't know if I want to be like all those other crazy people. And I think that what I see is, is there's confusion about the difference between being all consumed and all in. All consumed isn't healthy. because all consumed means that it actually defines who you are. All in means that you're taking who you already are and investing who you are into a process that's going to allow you to achieve something

that's incredibly fulfilling all the while being the best husband, mother, father, son, pastor, guidance counselor, you can be in your other endeavors. Let's all, let's all be committed to being all in, but let's not ever get all consumed and everybody can do this. You can go from four hours to 340.

You can go from 320 to 259. Some of you are going to go from 335 to 255 because I've seen it happen, for sure. I think people realizing that what they're doing right now is not the end. No. It's funny.

I all related to business, but a few years ago, it's probably 2017, we were in the warehouse. There was me, Preston, probably Joe at that point, just three of us. And one of my old soldiers in the Army came to see what we were doing. And at the time, we were a small business, really small. and they said, you know, this is great. Do you think you've reached your capacity? Because this is as big as you'll ever get.

And I said, not at all. We're not even scratching the surface yet. Too many people think that where they're at right now, no matter where they're at in their life, is that's as good as it's going to get. I have reached my capacity. I've reached my best. I think when you just break that down,

you go all in on yourself and your goals. There you go. You realize. Holy shit, I can do whatever I want to do. The possibilities, they're endless. You just got to believe in that mission and that goal and just fucking work. Yeah, absolutely. And there's one thing that we do really, really well is we work.

Investment in process. Faith in the process. You know, and I think that that's really, really important is faith. faith in the process faith in yourself believe in yourself you know we're all pretty badass if you think about it you know but we have to believe that and then let's go be all in on taking who we are and investing it in this process and get to the end you know but listen you know uh uh it's not always obvious what needs to be done um and i always take for granted not always sometimes take for granted that things are just obvious, right?

And then I've come to find out that there's no stupid questions if you're asking that, because you're invested in a process to get where you want to go, there's nothing to be embarrassed about not knowing. The ultimate embarrassment is not doing what it takes to fix it so that you can get where you want to go. I've been there before. I've been there where I had ego

and I didn't want to ask for help. I figured I'd figure out of my, own. And I learned this lesson. I'll never forget the story, but I was in the Army and we were learning how to tie knots. And the instructor asked me, do you know how to tie this knot? I said, of course I do. I didn't know how. And he said, well, show me. I looked like an idiot. I was like, I actually don't know how to tie it. He's like, why would you not, let me help you. Why would you lie about that?

There's no point because I didn't want to look foolish. I didn't want to look like I didn't know what I was doing. And ever since that moment, that was probably 2014, ever since that moment, I've realized if I don't know something, I could ask or try to find the answer. But just trying to act like you know something and go along for that journey, It's foolish. Right.

And it's sort of the, uh, the, uh, what follows with that type of thing too is that I'm finding that the longer I do this, I run across these immensely talented people who actually do not know the raw materials talent wise that they bring to the table.

Because sometimes you've got to get in the process before even you realize what your actual talent is. You got passion. You got commitment. but you may not realize what your talent is, right? And there are some of these people where they say, I want you to get me here, and then they actually get farther past that,

and I always tell them, no, no, no, no, no. I didn't do anything for you. You just made me look a lot smarter than I actually am. That's true. Amazing stuff. I mean, Mariah running 252 in the marathon in Indianapolis on November 7th. It's like, wow, okay.

Nothing is impossible. Nope. And, you know, when I interviewed Matthew McConaughey, he said his least favorite word is unbelievable. It's like when someone crosses a finish line of a marathon, if someone crosses at 255 and a spectator says, that's unbelievable. No, it's not. They just did it. Right. It's empirically believable because you just saw it.

It's right in front of you. That's right. Nothing is unbelievable. We go into these thinking, that's unbelievable. That happened. That's unbelievable that I could actually ever do that. It's not. Take something that you think is unbelievable and make it believable.

Do something that you think is unthinkable and just dare to think it. And then slowly and methodically wear the rubber off of the bottom of your shoes and just get damn there. You'll get there. Yeah. And if you don't, you're going to get damn close and rejoice in the process. For gosh sakes, guys, you know, there's a lot of people out there who can't go and run one foot and the other down the street. I can't, as in a don't have the ability. So let's always rejoice in the process.

But along the way, if you're rejoicing in the process and it's joyful, you're going to end up racing that marathon, not just running that marathon. For sure. Well, Jeff, I appreciate it. Are you currently taking on more athletes at Bat City Track Club? Well, in Bat City, we have basically, it's a regionally elite team here in Austin, Texas. And mostly, yes, we are. There are some loose qualifying standards for that. Typically, you know, in looking at it, it's, you know, for the women, you know, if you're able to run in the 310.

and range in the marathon with the ability to run under that. That's sort of what we look at. Maybe, you know, sub-130 for the half marathon. And then in the Austin area, we're looking at, you know, as far as men, most of the men run under 240 or right there, you know, all the way down to the high two teens is where we are in the marathon with that group. But it doesn't mean that I don't coach other people outside of Bat City. and I think there's a lot of people

that may either be may listen to this podcast or see it. It's like, oh yeah, he's helping me and I live in Memphis, Tennessee. I do have somebody

in Memphis, Tennessee. I had a guy in Des Moines, Iowa earlier this fall. He ran 257 as well, you know? How do you want them to reach out to you if someone's looking for coaching? You can find me on Instagram

at JD Cunningham 97. We'll place all the contact info in the show notes. Yeah. but sub 250 the journey is coming up end of May we want 10,000 plus PRs and we will be sharing

the sub three hour formula where's the over under 10,000 plus PRs or 10,000 plus embarrassing one liners from Jeff oh man that's a close one I want to say embarrassing I would say 10,000 plus amazing sound bites from Jeff

Oh, well. That's microcontent for years. You've mastered hyperbole if you're going to refer to the one-liners as that. I appreciate it. We'll make it happen. I appreciate it, Jeff. All right, man. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Bear Performance Podcast.

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