The Sevan Podcast - #354 - Zach Bitter

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

Zach Bitter - American Ultramarathon Runner, 100 Mile Treadmill Record Holder ------------------------- Partners: https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://www.barbelljobs.com/ - WORLD'S #1 JOB BOARD FOR THE CROSSFIT COMMUNITY https://thesevanpodcast.com/ - OUR WEBSITE https://sogosnacks.com/ - SAVE15 coupon code - the snacks my kids eat - tell them Sevan sent you! https://www.hybridathletics.com/p Support the show Partners: https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATION https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Very flavorful. Yodeling with them. Ooh, must be mating season and hiking with them. Is that a squirrel? Collect more moments with more ways to earn air miles. Bam. We're live and we're live solo but live oh i hate running but i'll listen all right fair enough fair enough i don't know if i hate running i remember when i was uh

34 and i found CrossFit. And one of the workouts, I think, is it Nicole? One of those workouts, you run as fast as you can around a 400 meter track and then you do some pull-ups. And I remember thinking to myself, I don't even know if I've ever run as fast as I can for 400 meters. I don't know if I had 34 years old. I don't know if I had 34 years old. I don't know if I had ever done that. And I just remember thinking how crazy it is that someone could be 34 years old and, and never in their life run as fast as they can for 400 meters. It was nuts, but that was me. Zach, what's up, dude? How's it going? Good. Wow. Hmm.

I almost always say amazing or something like I'm living the dream in someone else's nightmare. But I got sick two days ago. Like I had someone told me I have strep throat. I don't really care about being sick, but it's just that it jacks up your sleep. You know what I mean? Like you what you toss and turn and sleep. You got to have sleep. Did I lose you?

I lost you. Ladies and gentlemen, Zach Bitter. sleep. Did I lose you? I lost you. Ladies and gentlemen, Zach Bitter. Can you hear me, Zach? Yeah, loud and clear. Oh, okay. What a remarkable world we live in that any human being around the globe, planet Earth, has access to Zach Bitter and and what he did this is the kind of thing a hundred years ago if he did this one you wouldn't even know and think it's possible but you would

have no access to him and yet through these little boxes with these screens we have you can actually learn to do what he did is that exaggeration that they can learn to do what you did? Yeah. If you have internet, you can find quite a bit of content on that sort of stuff. I think, uh, one, one, uh, aspect of the sport that I really wanted to kind of showcase, I guess, when I got into it was just let's share everything that we're doing. And, uh, whether that be the nutrition strategy or the training, I like to make that stuff public and talk about it as much as possible for as long as people are curious about it. Because I think that's how people learn and how we kind of grow the sport and improve it. So I think that's been around for a while in certain aspects and other sports and things, too. But it's also been, you know, areas of endurance sport in the past, too, where it's very kind of secretive of like, I found out this way to go about things.

So I'm going to hide it. So my competitors don't find the type of mentality as well. And that didn't sit well with me. Ah, interesting. Um, look at this guys there. This guy,

Zach bitter teaches people. He has multiple courses on how to run a hundred miles. It's, it's absolutely. Was there ever a time in history when like, uh, when that was normal running a hundred miles? Yeah. Was there, was that, was that ever, um, you know, I, I've been to, I filmed movies in a hundred different countries and I spent a lot of time in Africa and play in, in a lot of time in India and places in Africa, I would see women walking with, you know, a baby strapped to them in the giant yellow bucket with 20 gallons of water, crazy amounts of water on their head, you know, not 20 gallons, whatever 47 pounds of water is. And they'd walk 10 miles each direction.

They'd walk 20 miles a day. Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of those things where I think ultramarathoning has been around essentially for survival purposes as long as humans have been kind of flourishing around the planet. And it's just now that we kind of document them and create this environment of I'm going to go this specific distance and try to do it in this specific time frame. Whereas, like you mentioned, a lot of it in the past was just, well, I actually need to get to this spot or, you know, tomorrow may not happen or, you know, like our right, right, right. Tomorrow may not happen. Yeah. So, so then it was just kind of

like a thing of like, well, we need to do this in a sustainable manner, which is going to be a little different. I think like if I had to move all day long with the anticipation that the next day I'm going to have to do that as well, I'm going to pace myself a little bit differently than I would for say a hundred mile race or a 50 mile race or any ultra marathon. Uh, but that same mindset and that same kind of human capability is there for sure. It's I, I wonder if it's, you know, 150 years ago, no one ate sugar, basically added sugar by sugar. I mean, added sugar and refined carbohydrates and now in my estimation it is the source of everything from type 2 diabetes coronary heart disease alzheimer's it is at the root of everything added sugar and refined carbohydrates i think you get to the 95 yard line

if you stop eating that shit but i wonder if 150 years ago it was it's the same thing with running because you and i know i mean you and i know people who haven't run a mile ever in their life like that's probably the majority of the people we know maybe not you you and i know since we're kind of in these weirds not even the people i know yeah that's yeah and i think i think a lot of that is just kind of the the environment we've placed ourself in because if i think of like well think of the people we were just talking about who had no choice yeah they don't remember the day they weren't moving around all day those days just don't exist so for them it's like it's as crazy to think about sitting in a desk all day long and not covering at least one mile as it is for us you know in a more

sedentary kind of environment to think of actually getting up and moving all day long or doing an ultra marathon or something like that. But, you know, the sport is filled with people who at one point in time said like, yeah, I'll never run a mile or I'll never do this. I'll never do that. And then they find themselves kind of chipping away at it, kind of almost subconsciously as they get curious about different elements of exercise and things. And then next thing they know, they find themselves running a hundred mile races. I mean, take me,

take me for example, when I spoke with my college cross country coach, he kind of laid out just the mileages that every year or student would could follow from freshmen through senior. And when he got to the juniors and seniors and mentioned that, you know, it wasn't uncommon that some of the higher volume athletes on the team would hit a hundred mile training weeks in the summer. I remember thinking I'll never run a hundred mile training. It just never won't happen. You know, this was me roughly four or five years before I was consistently running a hundred mile weeks and had done my first ultra marathon and things like that. So it's a lot of, it's just like a perceptional thing of just where you are currently and how much further along where this expectation is from where you're currently at.

And the thing I think is the valuable lesson in that is if you're someone who thinks, oh, I can't even go a mile, it's totally fine not to be thinking to yourself, I need to be running 100 miles and doing it as soon as possible. I think one of the reasons why I find myself at age 36 running ultra marathons for over a decade and still wanting to kind of keep doing it for at least another decade is because I kind of had that approach happen to me gradually. So I wasn't like, I didn't go from a non-runner to running a hundred milers the next year. in running to a little bit more interested in running a little bit more interested in running very interested in running and then kind of gradually doing the steps in order to get to the point where like physically and mentally normal was training on average 100 miles per week over the course of a year uh doing 100 mile races and maybe six plus ultra marathons in a

normal year and things like that god you're you're a dream guest. Has anyone ever told you that? You are a dream guest. Do you know who Josh Bridges is and Hunter McIntyre? Yeah. They know you. Okay. So I spoke to both of them yesterday and I told them that I would, and they are dream guests also.

And I told them that I asked both of them randomly, Hey, do you know Zach Bitter? And Josh was like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I know him. Him and I are sponsored by the same company endurance. And then Hunter, I just was talking to Hunter and he just said, savage, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know him and I are sponsored by the same company, Endurance. And then Hunter, I just was talking to Hunter, and he just said, savage, dude. The guy is a complete sack. But then I watched your podcast with Lex and Joe while riding the assault bike yesterday. And I remember thinking, wow, Zach is – and I'm so sick right now.

And I'm like, this is a dream guest. I mean, you just – you give it. You bring it. You do that on purpose? Do you know that you come on and you're like, okay, I'm going, this is a dream guest. I mean, you just, you give it, you bring it. You do that on purpose? Do you know that you come on and you're like, okay, I'm going to give it? No, I wouldn't say it's like intentional. I just try to come on and kind of like I said in the beginning, there's going to be questions that I'm pretty sure are going to get asked. And those I've more or less rehearsed just by doing tons of other podcasts. The way I like to tell it is like, you know, everyone angles, I guess, maybe if they like

podcasts or have a message they want to share to get on a podcast like Lex Friedman or Joe Rogan. And yeah, and I think, uh, and they have questions for me about that too. Cause it's like, I've been on there a couple of times and on Rogan and Lex on once. And they're like, well, how did you do it? It's like, well, really what I did was I got interested in podcasts at a very early age. Like I think when social media and online stuff started really getting much more like every day for folks around the same time I got an ultra marathon and I thought podcasts were a much more interesting platform than say like, you know,

the social media channels out there, the short form stuff. So I went on hundreds and hundreds of podcasts. And I think that's just kind of- You did. You did as guests, as a guest. Man, dude, there's a lot of really, really, really bad podcasts and a lot of really, really, really bad, and by that, I mean hosts, and a lot of really, really bad guests, man. Because I research people. I'm just a world-class plagiarizer. I'm like, as Bur william burroughs said there's nothing original here it's all just plagiarizing but man there's some bad dudes like there's people who expect their guests to carry it and then there's hosts that i would never want my guests to think that i'm uncomfortable and i'm uncomfortable the whole time right but i would never want them to know because then the viewer is going to know it and

no one wants to come and just watch two dudes be uncomfortable for an hour and a half. Yeah. Yeah. You get some that are kind of like, I mean, now I host my own podcast now too. So it's definitely a little bit of a different, a different experience coming from the host versus the guest. That was a, I would say when I first started doing that, it was, I knew there was going to be a difference and that's why I kind of waited a while to do it. But I was kind of surprised at how much of a difference it is. It just feels different sitting in that chair. Do you love people? Do you love people?

Yeah. Yeah, I love talking to people. I'm just curious about the how or the host side of things, it's just accepting like, okay, like if you do this enough, you just, by the nature of being human, you're going to be wrong, or you're going to say something stupid, or you're going to maybe like misquote something or have errors and stuff. And you just got to be comfortable with like being open to correcting that. And then I think when people realize, oh, if I approach so-and-so about a mistake they made

on a podcast or something they said, and they respond, oh, thanks for sharing that. I'll look into it. Or, oh, you're right. I didn't make a mistake there. I didn't even realize that. Here's what I really meant to say. Then they're not going to be quite as like critical

about your output or how you look or come across because they know you're an approachable person who's willing to like, you know, be wrong ideas. Yeah. Right. Right. So that's the key I think is not feeling like it has to be perfection. Uh, you know, it's, uh, there's nothing kind of the opposite. Be willing to be wrong at all times. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. If you, if you're going to stand your ground, you're going to go to war with people. I hate to invoke my mom, but my mom says, this is my house, treat people like guests. Yeah, that's a good way to go about it, I think. Even though some people need to be slapped around.

You get that every once in a while. Well, some people come about it in an absolutist way, and then they're the ones that make it kind of difficult because it's like, here's a person who is trying to present themselves as an immovable object and someone who knows everything already, even if the relative knowledge of said topic is pretty finite. Those are the people that make it a little more difficult because they create an environment where people expect error-free rhetoric, or they create an environment where people expect someone to be knowledgeable about everything when in reality they're an expert at one thing but potentially have years of people for other topics and and that's where i think it gets tricky is is that kind of environment getting created

uh i have the world record bench press and i also have the solution for uh the ukraine russia that's right yeah guys uh you are watching, um, because you know, I'm going to say something funny and you love me, but you're really watching because we have Zach bitter here who ran a hundred miles in 11 hours and 19 minutes. And he knows how many seconds and that's at a six 48 pace and when he did that um that was the world record yeah i said it you guys heard that 100 miles 11 hours 19 minutes at a 648 pace i don't think i've ever run a 648 mile um when you when you broke that record when was the previous time it had been broken it was yeah it had the previous time it had been broken?

Do you know? It was, yeah, it had, the previous world record had been broken, I believe it was 2001, and was 11 hours and 28 minutes and three seconds. So I took roughly nine minutes off of it. And then, and since you've done that, and what year was that that you broke it? 2019. Okay, so it had been 18 years. And since you've done that, what year was that that you broke it? 2019. Okay. So it had been 18 years.

And since you've done that, something has happened, right? You've re-energized the 100-mile thing. Yeah. I wouldn't say the 100-mile thing as much as just kind of maybe more road runnable environments. I think we're seeing – the interesting thing is like the sport's actually quite old. You can date ultra marathons back quite a ways. In fact,ison square garden used to host ultra marathons in the 1800s so uh there was all sorts of like pedestrian they call pedestrianism they call it where you're seeing like how far you could get in certain amounts of time and things like that and and there's like really old events to like the

spartathlon over in greece which is this 153 mile point to point race that goes, uh, uh, goes through all sorts of different areas. Uh, and so there's been, that stuff has been around for a while. And what ended up happening is, uh, in the, in like the eighties, there was a little bit of a surge for like, I guess like kind of fast merit, like relatively fast marathoners dipping their toe into like say 50 milers, a hundred milers, some 24 hour stuff. And, uh, the sport was really small still though. So it got about as much attention as you expect it to then around 2010, or maybe a little earlier, we saw this big upsurge in ultra marathon running, but it was born in the trails this time. So we've seen in the last 10 plus years now, this trail ultra marathon community just explode relative to what it had been before. And what didn't kind of happen at the same magnitude was some of these flat runnable,

like short loop type courses didn't get nearly as much kind of love and attention. And part of it was just because the draw into the sport was the antithesis of that. It was people who wanted to get away from monotony, get away from boredom and get out into nature was kind of the pull. So you'd see these guys like, uh, like Anton Kropitko was a big one where he was, uh, just a dude out there running crazy amount of miles, jumping in these trail hunter milers, and then like just writing blogs about it. And there just wasn't a lot of info around. So people poured over that stuff and got pulled out from his experiences and talking through it. And then, you know, living vicariously through him long enough where you finally decide, Hey, I'm going to do it too.

And, uh, there was definitely some interest still in kind of road and track and flat runnable stuff and the comrades ultra marathon in South Africa has routinely produced 20,000 plus participants every year. So that's kind of like the big one, but what's the name of that one in South Africa is routinely produced 20,000 plus participants every year. So that's kind of like the big one. But what's the name of that one in South Africa? The Comrade. They call it the Comrades marathon. It's actually about a 50, 54 to 56 mile race, depending on which direction they go.

They flip directions every year. So that changes the end point a little bit. And the one, the up, I think it's the up here is two kilometers longer or it's one or the other i'd have to double check but and that's one of the top three that you've mentioned in the world right the western states the comrade and the there was one other one yeah ultra trail mont blanc is another one which is okay little over 100 miles i would say right now most ultra runners would probably pinpoint that as being like the biggest one. From a competitive standpoint, it's a little bit of an apples and oranges comparison when you're comparing a

56 mile road race to a hundred and roughly five mile like mountain trail race. But historically UTMB in Western States, 100 from like the hundred ish mile distance have been the two big trail ones that are kind of like, if you win this, that's going to be a career maker type of a type of a position to have yourself in and and that side of the sport's grown a ton now where like if you find yourself winning one of those two chances are you're already a professional athlete you're not really breaking into the scene necessarily at that point any longer because it just takes quite a bit to get to the point where you're even in a position to win one of those two

uh but yeah i mean i think uh but but you broke that record it hadn't been broken in 18 or 19 years and then now since you broke it in 2019 it's been broken like three or four times right yeah so the 100 mile and 12 hour has gotten broken twice since i did by the same guy and he the he also broke the 24 hour world record which was considered one of the most stout if not the most stout world records that had been left standing. Can you define stout for me? Yeah. So it was roughly just under 189 miles for 24 hours.

And Alex Sorokin ran 192.5. So he bested it by like three and a half miles or so. And yeah, yeah. And he's also, he shortly there. So the way it kind of happened is in 2021, Alex Sorkin went to this race over in the UK called the Centurion 100 and broke my world record by a few minutes. He ran like 11, 14. And he'd been in the sport for a while, but, uh, he more or less

was like kind of half in half out. I would say he had like other priorities in life as well. Pandemic happened, all sorts of things went on and where he just was like, I think a lot more dialed into his training and kind of took it on as a little more of a priority and, uh, it worked well. So does he do this in Lithuania? This is the Lithuanian cat, right? Yeah, he's from Lithuania. I believe he does most of his training in Kenya now. He'll go to big training camps before his races and train out there. At least that's what he's been doing for the last few months.

And I want to say that started after he ran the 11-14 for 100 miles. And what really blew him up, though, I think think was a few months after that he towed the line for a 24-hour race and that's where he broke janice curis's 24-hour world record which on the road running side of ultra marathon that was by far the most stout you could even make an argument that was the most stout quote-unquote unbreakable records out there which clearly wasn't the case because he broke it but But you know how that always goes like that. So he did that. And then a few months later, turned around again and did another 100 mile 12 hour effort and broke his own world record and became the first human to break 11 hours and 100 miles, which has been kind of a benchmark that I've been excited to see come down

since I kind of got interested in flat 100 mile running. So he's been on a tear. He's right now in the middle of a massive buildup for another 100 mile, 12 hour, or I guess it's a hundred mile, but I'm guessing they'll let him go 12 hours. If he finds himself in a position to have the time to do it. My assumption is he definitely will, uh, and then see where he, if he can lower it further yet, but yeah, he seems to be able to make no mistakes right now. And, uh, it's fun to see, see that side of the sport kind of get some attention and, and other mistakes right now. And, uh, it's fun to see, see that side of the sport kind of get some attention and, and other people target it. So, uh, yeah. And I mean, outside of, uh, Sorican too, it's just been really kind of a cool part for me in terms of an experience with this

sport is, uh, I was, I wouldn't say I was like the person who brought back flat ultra marathon running. There were great guys and gals doing it far before me. And while I was doing it and same like that, but I definitely put a really big spotlight on it. So, I mean, you resurrected the a hundred mile, I mean,

to go 18 or 19 years and no one break a record and then you to come along and do it's pretty powerful. Yeah. You, you break the dam kind of a little bit, I think. And, and the cool thing is I think we're going to see this continue with like volume or like depth now, because I talked to guys who are, you know, I'm old enough now. I'm 36 where there's, there's guys coming into the sport who are a good decade younger than me and incredibly hungry and excited about say coming from a road track background.

Like I'm not exhausted from that. I want to just see what I can do at longer distances and explore like a hundred K a hundred mile, 24 hour stuff. So I think as that continues to be interesting to some of these guys, we'll just see more talent come in folks that are just, who are like legit Olympic trial qualifier marathoners coming in and seeing what they can do for flat 100 milers and we'll start to see you know some of these times get

get a little more defined as what it takes to say win a usatf national championship at the 100 mile distance on road or what is it going to take to run the fastest 100 miler in a calendar year you're going to see all these kind of trend downward over the next few years. And the guy who holds the record that we've been talking about Sorkin, he's got it at 10. 10 51, 10 51. So that's like a six 31 mile pace essentially for a hundred miles. So imagine he ended up going, I think about almost exactly 110 miles in 12 hours. So he's, you know, he's running like sub three hour marathon pace for over four marathons in a row is the way that kind of plays out on paper. What's the most you've ever weighed in your entire life, Zach? The most? I've been up until like the mid to high 150s in the past.

Usually I'm closer to like 140 when I'm in the kind of like racing shape. And how tall are you? Five foot nine. Wow. Okay. What do you? Five foot nine. Wow. Okay. What do you, what do you think about your body? What is your, both, both like on the, in the most superficial sense, when you look at it in your naked in the mirror, when you get out of the shower, you know what I mean?

Like I always look at my lats or, you know what I mean? Like there's these parts of these bodies I look at, or I turn around and look at my calves. It's like the only two muscles i have i think um yeah but but also in in a more um mechanistic think mechanistic way of thinking in spiritual way kind of tied together about your body what it's doing for you because you must have a relationship with your body and an appreciation that like most people don't have or shit. What do I know? Maybe you take that shit for granted. No, I think you're right. I think it's, uh, it's, it's weird. I S I think there's probably growth there. Cause like when I was in my twenties, it was, I'll quote my friend,

Matt Vincent, who said like, when you're in your twenties, you can just abuse the machine and it responds. So you can kind of just, you can do almost anything and you can see progress. Uh, in the more you do of the better, in some cases, you know, you get into like your early mid thirties and all of a sudden, you know, you start doing stupid stuff to the machine and it lets you know, you did stupid stuff to it. So can you give me an example? What would that be? Yeah. So I mean, stay up too late before race. Exactly. Something like that, where like, you know, you could, I, when I was in my twenties, I could like get like a few days, like, let's say I went on like a trip where, you know, maybe it's even a training trip where my main goal is to get a ton of training in.

And I ended up sleeping two hours a night less than I normally would for like three or four days, just because there's a lot of like, kind of like action and activity going on and you just blast right through it. You get back home, you maybe take an easy day and sleep an extra few hours and bam, you're right back to normal. Whereas now, like if, if I do that now, I feel like I'm really threatening like an injury to pop up or, you know, taking a quality workout off the table that isn't worth losing for the sake of, you know, a couple of days where I'm not quite getting to bed early enough and that sort of thing.

the sake of, you know, a couple of days where I'm not quite getting to bed early enough and that sort of thing. Uh, that sort of stuff I think is a little more obvious to me now, uh, than it was like in my mid twenties. So sometimes it's like you learn what your body has and what it takes to kind of get a certain response from it. And you map that and you get used to predicting it, but you have to be kind of open to kind of evolving with that as you get older. And you also have this scenario where like the advantage of being in your mid thirties, being able to be a little more careful is you also have an extra decade of foundational work kind of in place where, uh, I have both,

whether it's the psychological side of things or just like the physical adaptation, you know, I have some things I can get away with now that I wouldn't have been able to before. Like if we look at the psychological side of things, when I was in my mid twenties, I'd go to a race, I'd hit a hurdle somewhere in there that was like, went out, went off a script or off plan of what I envisioned to happen before the race. And what, and what does that look like? What does that look like?

So it could, yeah, no problem. It could be something as simple as like, i'm trying to hit this precise split range on a 400 meter loop and i don't what about like something else like you bring the wrong shoes or you made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead of a bologna sandwich like shit like that yeah those constitute as errors also yeah i would count those as maybe slightly smaller ones, although the shoes ones could possibly be an issue. That one's a little harder to make, I think, unless like there's some sort of like transit issue when you were like flying or something like that.

But at least I haven't had that issue in terms of, although I have had issues where I assumed a certain type of shoe was going to be the right shoe for a course, ended up not being, uh, could have had a better option that I had available to me, but just wasn't aware and didn't necessarily, but that kind of feeds into what I was saying too. It's like, now that I'm in my mid thirties, I've made a lot of those mistakes already. So when I'm running through kind of the Rolodex of what to look out for before a race, I have a lot of these experiences of like, Oh, I know if this happens, I do this, or if that happens, I do that. And you just know a lot more. So like when you do hit some of those, those rough patches or those, those errors in an event

or a race, you just have a real quick kind of more snap to like, Oh, this is the path forward here. I know this one already versus you kind of have to white knuckle your way through it a little bit when you're doing it for the first time, if you don't know, cause you're just like, well, there's this host of different things I could do here, which one's the right one. And you find yourself maybe debating your mind or debating with yourself, which one is the path forward versus just making that right decision right out the gate and not second thinking it again. An Indy car goes 200 miles an hour, right? But if that sucker hits a pothole it's toast yeah and so for its capabilities on one end it has to compromise some other shit i guess that's what i meant when you

when you when you see your body gotcha like um you you push you push you you've demanded so much for your body so you know i mean i don't know this for sure because i'm not a race fan but i'm assuming race cars don't have side mirrors, right? Because they would slow the car down. You want to at least win. So I'm guessing that there's things you've taken off of your car that other cars have. Yep. That like, whoa, this is risky.

Like, you know. No, that's a perfect one. And yeah, I get what you're saying here. Yeah. The best way I think to answer this is like when I get done running competitively, when like when I've decided I no longer want to run in order to try to find my best possible time when I've controlled for as many variables I can and taken everything as seriously as I can get away with, I'll probably try to put on a good 15 to 20 pounds of muscle. I think it would be much more convenient from a just functional lifestyle standpoint. If I was

155, 160 pounds versus 140 pounds, it's, uh, it's way more conducive for me, uh, to be racing at the weight I race at. Like you said, like there's just certain aspects of, uh, of either functional or vanity that, uh, are not necessary for running fast and probably get in the way. So you just avoid them. Right. I mean, I was, it's funny because when I was in high school, I was like a lot, I think guys where it's like, you eventually get around to thinking like, if I get myself in the weight room and get buff, it's just going to be much better like perspective for me across the board. And you know, so you get into strength work and things like that. And you know, I did all the,

like the bench pressing and things like that in high school and even a little bit in college. So like, those are activities I enjoy, but I also realized like, you know, a little bit goes a long ways for what I'm trying to do from a competitive running standpoint. So then you don't prioritize that as an activity that I'm doing, say like three times a week, like I would, if I was trying to peek out in the bench press or squat or something like that. I think that I heard this story. Kelly started to tell the story of Dean Karnasas coming into CrossFit San Francisco. And he was there for a couple of days, but he couldn't even squat below parallel. Yeah.

And I think he made the assessment that he didn't want to mess with it either. Like it's like he wasn't concerned. He was like, hey, there's no want to mess with it either like it's like he wasn't concerned he was like hey there's no reason to mess with that because this but but that is important to be able to squat below parallel in order to stay out of the nursing home right i mean you got to be able to sit on a toilet wipe your butt like yep yeah yeah there's i don't think people really probably realize unless how fine-tuned you are like do you weigh yourself before you before race starts no not usually like usually what i'll do because at that point there's nothing i can do about it too and i don't want to necessarily go down this like yeah i think you

got to be careful with like very specific numbers too because it's typically a range that you're probably going to race best at and whether you're on the high end or the low end of that range is a little less consequential than if say like i determine let's say i determine that 140 pounds to the ounce is where i need to be on that starting line and i weigh myself before i'm at 140.3 okay that 0.3 can just plant a seed of doubt in your head that doesn't need to be there and it's not even something that will actually negatively impact my performance. So like what I'll usually do actually is if I have a really good race after a really good training buildup, I'll sometimes weigh myself after and then say, oh, okay. So I was training and racing at roughly that weight. That's probably a good target for me to be at, or a good spot for me to be at when I'm,

cause I'm feeling strong and training. I'm right. Racing strong. Things are going well. And, and sometimes that's how I think, at least that's how I've come up with kind of like the, the ballpark figures of where I tend to, uh, be best at. And really like you can overcomplicate it too. Cause I think like if you start getting, even with that scenario, if I started getting fixated on say a specific number, it almost eliminates the opportunity to explore variances to a degree. So a lot of times I don't pay too close attention to like what the number

on the scale is while I'm training. I'm just like, if I feel like I need more energy, I eat more. If I'm not recovering as quickly as I'd like to, I eat more. And I find that balance of where I'm able to execute my workouts at the highest possible caliber that I've been able to historically. And if that's going well, then I just assume that the other stuff is working out right. And my body's kind of finding that perfect balance point for the activity I'm trying to put it through. You know, if that's 140 pounds for me, that's 140 pounds. That might be 130 for someone else, might be 150 for someone else.

And I think once you get into the, where a lot of the problems occur, I think is like someone listens to this and hears me say, Oh, five, 940 pounds. That becomes their target. When in reality, their target might be, you know, whatever their height is and 148 pounds or something like that. So, but that's part of it. You know, that's, that's also part of the fits into the training style too. Like where people hear about how I train and I think, okay, this is exactly the platform or the, the regimen I need to follow like step for step. And in reality, it's possible that that will be the right formula for them at some point. But if they're say a new runner, they may need to start where I was at when I was a

new runner, or if they're a very experienced runner, they may need to like look at, well, where's Zach's relative strengths and weaknesses and how is he implementing those into his training plan versus what my relative strengths and weaknesses are and what I need to kind of focus on in terms of structuring my plan and things like that. So I like the population level data and what it tells us, especially as like starting points for people to have like a baseline of what to do. Uh, but I really think, especially in the sport of ultra running, you have to take it to an individual level. Once you've kind of gotten some, some miles under your legs, so to speak, because there's just going to be a lot of variance in what works for one person and doesn't for the other and, and all that other stuff, because I mean, we're running all day.

It's like, there's just too many variables to control for there's there's, I like to think there's a lot more windows or doors open because of that you lower the intensity of a sport and open up the amount of like actual like thinking you can do during the events and like problem solving and mental games you can play then uh all of a sudden i think there's just a wider range of what would be what i would be what i would consider like uh peak uh like peak practice for the individual versus having like this is the one plat program that works follow this or you're gonna have a deficit or you're gonna have a failure totally different time domain right totally different time domain but if i was going to go

for a record of pull-ups or or muscle-ups ring muscle-ups or you know some sort of something that's in it like a sub one minute, I would, I would be training it. I'm five, five. So I'd be training at 160 pounds. And then like two days before I was going to go to my record, I've caused myself to lose 10 pounds. Okay. You know what I mean? And then I would go in the garage and let's say I was going to show up and I would be 150 pounds. And I, instead of doing 20, I would do 30 strict pull-ups just because, but I can't maintain that. Right. Like as soon as I'm done, I'm going to go in the house and I'm going to eat and I'm going to put on those 10 pounds. Yeah. Oh, that's a great example. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's like, it, it highlights that like peak performance is unsustainable year round. So like,

and it's like that in your sport too. Exactly. Yeah. Like when I'm, when I'm peaked for a hundred, like when I stepped on the line, the starting line uh that 100 mile pr i ran it all in 2019 i was at a fitness state that i could probably sustain for maybe a couple months after that but after that yeah and then after that though like i would have to pull back and let everything kind of like regress a little bit and let it, why would you get weaker? Like, like I can't stay, I couldn't stay at one 50 cause I couldn't keep building strength. But why, why can't you stay down? Why can't you maintain it as a 10 hour guy?

I think the, I think what happens is like the amount of like volume and just the stress you put on your body can be sustained for a few months at most before it becomes something that is going to be kind of a margin of diminishing returns. And you actually see like your body is no longer able to keep up. So the way I like to maybe describe is you can kind of overshoot sustainable for a little while in order to really sharpen the spear. Once that spear is really sharpened, you can only use it a few times before you need to set back and recalibrate. That's what I had done prior and what I had coming up and the distance and how I kind of structured my training and everything like that. Usually, if I'm hitting races as well as I did that year, there's going to be a point in time where I have to let things kind of slip back a little bit and let everything catch up. I think we'll see this with guys like Sorkin as well, where like you, you get in this idea of like,

okay, he's just, he can't do no wrong. He can't do no wrong. And, you know, he's definitely reaping the benefits of that from a record setting standpoint,

but there'll be a point where he's probably got to take a step back and let everything kind of settle in and, and take maybe a little bit more of an off season. But, you know, I say that without necessarily microanalyzing what he's doing outside of his, his kind of, uh, his, his day-to-day training and the, and his big races too. He may be a lot more, uh, uh, a lot more calculated around like doing events that would maybe beat you up a little bit, but aren't a races and things like that,

which I typically build into my plans. What do you, do you talk to your body? Uh, like in a workout, like get moving or anything like that. Or even weird or even just more weird shit. Like, like you're running, you're 20 miles in and like you catch yourself, like almost like you don't even know who's talking and you're like, let's say you're not, I don't know if you're a religious person or not, but you would be like, Hey God, thank you for this body. Oh my goodness, body. Thank you so much for allowing me to do this. And do you ever have moments like that? Like you're having these conversations and you're seeing stuff and you're like, and you don't stop it, but there are these

sort of like, you don't even recognize the speakers. Yeah. I would say like poetry almost. Yeah. The weird thing is I feel like when, when I'm in a race or even like a structured workout where I'm trying to hit specific splits, it becomes sort of like a conversation that feels like it's between your brain and your body. So it's like my mind is. And then who are you in that? Are you neither of those? You're kind of like the judge just watching those two figure shit out. I feel like it's almost maybe like a, yeah, a judge is actually a good way to put it. Cause it's almost like there's this conversation going on between your mind and your body. And then ultimately you're there making the decision as to whether you listen to one or the other. So like your mind says, you know, in a, in a positive scenario, your mind is

saying, all right, you're doing well in this workout. I think you can give it a little more. Let's push a little harder than we originally planned. And then that's like my mind talking to my body in a positive way. Then there's the, the, the, the opposite of that, where it's like, Oh, those first couple of splits were barely in range and they felt harder than they had to be. I don't think I have it today. You should just bail out on this one. And you know, that's kind of the negative side of your mind, trying to talk your body out of it. And, uh, you're out there to some degree, you're in control of kind of like what the next move is. There's definitely physiological things that happen sometimes where it's like, yeah, it doesn't really matter what you think in this kind of scenario, you totally depleted

yourself. And therefore you are only going to move at this pace at best. Right. You know, those sorts of things happen, or, you know, you get injured or something like that. And then all of a sudden your body's talking to you in a different manner of like, Hey, why are you doing this to me? This is like dangerous. And you're going to put yourself behind for your next project. If you keep pushing through this injury, that'll become much worse or something like that. You, when you describe, um, you and, um, I think it was Lex, we're talking about, um, Goggins versus Sam Harris's way of dealing with stuff. And I don't think Goggins' way is – I think there's something about it that's not – and I don't know him.

But you never think yourself out of a problem. There is no thinking. Thinking is the problem. But I wonder if you have thoughts. Have you ever had a thought that's like do you know what the heaviest thought you've ever had is like you're running with a 20 pound anvil and you're like this this fucker cannot come along for the ride this has you have to get off because they all have weight to them right so you might think a thought is a really good thought but in actuality it's just the lightest thought.

Yeah, and I think this is maybe where Goggins angles it in the sense that if you start thinking along the lines of, I have this issue that's preventing me from being what I want to be or where I want to be. I think the coping mechanism there is to default that problem onto something or someone else in the sense that you put yourself in a position where now it's out of my control, therefore there's nothing I can do about it. So I may as well just kind of stay somewhere in the moderate range of where I've been. Whereas Goggins says, you got to eliminate all of that stuff so that there's no one but yourself to answer to. So if you decide that you're not going out for that run today, it's because you were weak and you decided not to do it. And then you look to your left and you look to right and there's no one or no thing to blame other than yourself. And I think-

Extreme accountability. Yeah. So people have a lot harder time, I think coping with them being the problem or them being the fault of the situation. Right. So Goggins angle is then like, let's make that the only thing that could cause this. And if you go that route, you're going to, you're going to get out there when you should versus take a day off when you shouldn't a lot more frequently. And then over time, that's going to add up. I think Goggins message probably isn't necessarily technically get yourself out and work out every single day. And if you don't, you're a weak, you know, a weak pile of shit or something like

that. But I think his message is more like, if you put yourself in a position to be successful at a much higher frequency than you would, otherwise, that's going to be a net win in the, in the long run. Uh, and I think it works for a lot of people. And the thing I like about, you know, there's a lot of problems with internet and social media and what you can do with it and how it kind of creates the environments it creates. But there's also, I think a lot of opportunity there where there are people who are going to, who need a Goggins, a Goggins motivation type of thing. They can go and find them. There's people who don't need that message. They can unfollow him and go find someone else. They can be like

a Sam Harris, right? You know, I think that was the conversation I had with Lex was like, are you a Lex or are you a Sam Harris or David Goggins? And in my mind, I think those guys, not necessarily what they do for themselves, but what they do for you when you, when you observe them. I, okay. Okay. I totally missed that. I apologize. I get it now. Okay. No, it's totally cool. I think, uh, here's the way I look at it. If you're looking at someone else's template in order to implement what you want to do, you need to look at their template as a single tool, not the only path forward. It may be the only path forward for them. Like I truly believe that Goggins does what he does because he has to, in order to get out of himself, what he wants in

order to live the life he wants to do. So for him, that is the path forward for me or anyone who's not David Goggins, that is a tool. So if you need that Goggins tool, and there's times where I'm flipping open David Goggins, Instagram, and I'm listening to him talk about how, you know, how he stared at his shoes for 30 minutes before he went out for that run. And then he did it and he was so happy he did it. And I'm using that as motivation, but there's also times where I think like you, you don't, that for me personally, I don't necessarily need that side of the motivation thing. I need to be practical about like, all right, I just put in a big training week. My body's a little broken down. I maybe

have this little injury flaring up. This might be a really great spot for a rest day. I need to relax, let all that work set in, let everything kind of like recalibrate. And then when I go out for that next workout, it's going to be that much better than it would have been if I tried to force it today. So you just got to kind of know like when to pull the lever and when not to, uh, and that's how I kind of like that. And that at least that's my message to people it's like don't look at goggins as good or bad look at goggins as like an example of a specific tool you can use and start to recognize within yourself when you need that tool and pull it when you do it's um do you know akira the dawn the dj yeah the artist yeah like what he's done with

goggins and some of these guys and jordan peterson it's cool shit yeah flip on one of those songs and as you're putting on your shoes or whatever like right and use that to like he's like telling you hey stop being a pussy no there's no one but you here and you're like okay I got yeah yeah and I think sometimes you need that like especially like you know there's times when you're just like you're you have a lot of self-pity that doesn't really need to be there right and like at whether you were like like something was done to you that wasn't fair is almost besides the point at that time because you're an individual and like the individual behaviors are going to be different than like what we want to kind of make the norm at a population level uh so yeah i think like you get in those situations and some of those things can be real valuable, uh, motivators to kind of get you to say like, all right, time to take control

of this situation and feel like you're in the driver's seat. Um, what do you do any, um, weighted training, um, uh, um, ankle weights, weight vests, rucks, hold things in your hand, uh, chains around your neck, like the liver King. Do you do any weighted training? I don't usually blend that too often with the specific like running side of training. I will say this, like, I think there's good application for that, especially if you're doing like a lot more steep mountainous type courses. Like, so if you have like a race where you're going to have to carry a pack, uh, that has a significant amount of weight to it because aid stations are spread out or the weather is really bad on one end of the spectrum or the other.

It might be worth your while to take a weighted vest up a hike or something like that or carry a little bit extra weight while you're running so you get used to not just having nothing but body weight. For me, usually the races I'm peaking for are sort of like they are structured in a way that you eliminate that so from a specific standpoint i don't have a lot of like reason to do that but in terms of weighted stuff i'll definitely do weighted stuff in training as like strength work and like supplementary work and things but you never put like one pound balls in your hand and run with them or i'll do that sometimes but that's more for like a form technique thing because when you have like and it could be something as simple as just like a water

bottle too because i mean a lot of ultra marathon runners are going to be carrying water bottles during a race so like it's something that they can use as a tool as well to kind of help because when you think about it like your arm carriage in your arm swing is going to be a little bit more precise if it's got something in there if it's got more weight there so it's going to try to find that more that more precise spot the more efficient spot because you're carrying that weight with you even if it's a little bit of weight right take that out of there and you just might like sort of that pendulum momentum combination right yeah yeah yeah because if i have weight in my hands and my arms are flailing around aimlessly, that's going to choose a more direct path. You're going to tighten up. I'm going to be more likely to pop my elbows back and let them fall forward.

50 pound dumbbell. You don't got your arm way out here running. Definitely not. Definitely not. So what are the variables you specifically, Zach Bitter, have? You have time, distance, speed. You don't change the – what's this thing? Steepness? What's that? Oh, incline.

Yeah. So your primary tools are time, distance, and speed? I'll still use incline. Like if I'm doing like a trail race, I'll definitely use it a lot more heavily. Cause like the race may have like 15,000 feet of climbing or something like that. And so you do that. I didn't know you did that. Okay. Yeah. I haven't in a while. And some of that was pandemic related, but, uh, before in 2019, I actually spent the first half of the year kind of training for trail races. I did the San Diego a hundred. Uh, and that one is, I think that one's got around 15,000 feet of climbing and descending. So that one's much more

trail ask, uh, a little bit more mountain type trail running than certainly compared to the stuff that I typically do. So for those, like, for example, um, here's a good example. Like if I'm doing like say a hundred miler where I'm going to be on a track, like it was at the Pettit center in 2019, I'm doing my long runs on a track. Whereas when I did San Diego a hundred miler where i'm going to be on a track like it was at the pettit center in 2019 i'm doing my long runs on a track whereas when i did san diego hundred i was doing my long runs out at this place called mount ord where it was a seven and a half mile climb that had almost five thousand feet uh of elevation gain and then coming back down and then maybe doing that twice so it'd be like a 30 mile run with almost 10 000 feet of climbing and descending do you like running downhill yeah yeah i like fun right That's the only part I like.

Do you just let go? You just lean forward and let go like, like a little kid. If the, if the trail is tame enough, I will, or if I practice the technical downhill running enough to feel comfortable doing it, youically, my biggest weakness has been technical downhill. This episode is brought to you by Disney's Young Woman in the Sea, now streaming on Disney+. I've decided to swim the English Channel. A woman? I believe she'll die in that water. From producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Joachim Roening comes the must-see true story, Daisy Ridley. I go to England or die trying. Trudy, you don't have to do this. Don't let anyone take me out of the water.

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Check. Snacks, drinks, and everything we can win in a new game at Circle K. Check. Luggage? Check. Music? Check. Snacks, drinks, and everything we can win in a new game at Circle K? Check. With Circle K's summer road trip game, you can win over a million delicious instant prizes and a grand prize of $25,000. Play at games.circlek.com or at participating Circle K stores. So I can do it. What's that mean? Like there's rattlesnakes on the ground? Well, that would be an extra element for sure, but mostly just like loose rocks,

fixed rocks, roots, and things that are going to make it less likely that your footing is firm, that your footing is controllable and things like that. And it really is a skill set that I think like you just have to practice it. So like for San Diego hundred,

I spent a ton of time just out. We had the spot near our house at the time called the Phoenix mountain preserve, and it had a lot of loose technical rock there. So I just find a stretch out there that had a lot of that. And even on easy runs, I just run easy up and down it just to work on sight lines, foot placement, strengthening your ankles and getting the mobility and strength kind of in a balance with your ankles so that you were able to catch rolls and things like that. And, and then identifying which shoe is going to work best for you in that environment too, from a sustainability standpoint out there. And, you know, after about like four to six months of kind of preparing for that, I was a lot more confident, comfortable in those environments, but you know, you don't do it for a

year or something like that. Then also you kind of have to go back and practice it again. So I would say like, that's kind of where I'm at now. If I were to decide to do say a race like the San Diego a hundred, again, I would need to spend a fair, decent amount of time kind of just getting back out on that type of terrain and really working that skillset again. You mentioned, um, disassociating with your body. Is that, is that the word you used does that sound familiar yeah yeah there's definitely like especially in long races and i like to practice this on long runs too where you get yourself in a position where everything's kind of flowing along or feeling like it's hitting on all cylinders and you sort of just kind of like pull yourself outward and almost examine what's happening as a second person

uh watching what's happening and when those type of like states happen i feel like time passes quicker you just kind of ever go anywhere completely different to the like you're in a field of flowers like like a scene like you know what I usually do like that would be kind of closely related to that is if I'm in a spot in a race where I know I need to focus on a specific amount of distance and just kind of tackle that versus thinking about how I'm at whatever mile I'm at. And then I need to get to a hundred is I'll think of like, okay, here's this like six mile route that I do at home where I know like every step of the way. And I'll just visualize myself being on that route on a normal training run and just imagine where I am. And I

think that works well because it brings you to something that's consistent and predictable when you're in an environment that's unpredictable or you're trying to do something you've never done before. So it brings that kind of calming effect of, Hey, I've done this before, or, Hey, this is something I can do, or this is a relative point of experience that I have a lot of practice with. And that just brings kind of comfort and trust into what you're doing, I think. So that's the way I guess I could maybe describe that. This guy writes in the comments here, we're live by the way, this guy writes, when I, when I run long distance, I don't exist with my body. I have a separate existence. The reason why I brought that up is I had this lady on the show.

Her name's Kayla Harrison, and she's the greatest female fighter alive right now. She's 12-0. She's won the Professional Fighting League two years in a row, and she's the only American ever winning the gold medal in judo, and she's done it twice. And the reason why we don't know about her is because she's not in the UFC yet because she's making more money at this PFL. And the reason why we don't know about her is because she's not in the UFC yet because she's making more money at this PFL. But she trains with America's top team in Florida, and everyone knows that she's a bad girl. Anyway, so I had her on my show, and she – it's your typical story. So many ways to go with this.

But basically from 8 to 16, she was molested by her judo instructor and this is the guy that like made her great and also ruined her life right sure but she said that that when i had her i read her book and i had her on and i was like holy fuck like and she's like yeah you disassociate and i and i was like what do you mean and she's like, yeah, you disassociate. And I was like, what do you mean? And she's like, I would leave. While he was raping me, I would leave. And as a kid, I mean, I couldn't even fathom that. And I hadn't heard that. I mean, I knew the word disassociate, but when I heard you say it, I was wondering if it was as profound. Do you know what I mean? It's too crazy, two athletes who use that, but in two totally different situations. Right. I mean,

she's like fully escaping. Yeah. It's almost like she had to have a life experience that no one would ever ask for or want for themselves or anyone else in order to really refine a skillset that can be incredibly valuable given what it is she does so like it seems like that experience put her in a position where she probably had in order to deal with that sort of a scenario yeah there's no other option other than to disassociate but yeah i can't even imagine that i can't get my head wrapped around that right it's like it's like auschwitz shit you know what i mean i'm just like yeah what and it taught it taught her how to maybe do that on command a little more. So like what I learned, I have no stories nearly that, nearly that like tragic or. You were run over by a truck once. was when I'm out there training, doing like the race specific stuff. So like the long runs and

kind of like the final bill to the race, if I'm able to visualize or disassociate from that workout, but put myself where I would be in a race at the end stages. So if it's a 30 mile run, I'm at mile 70 from the start and I'm just visualizing like every step of the way for that. What that does is then on race day, when I get to that point of the race, it's no longer, okay, I'm doing something that I can maybe get away with doing a couple times a year. I'm in a position to have a race that I maybe will never have again. What do I do here? have that kind of mental groove cut already up to what to do and how to kind of like focus and stay in that moment or be able to, to, to move through the mental paces of it all. So I think like the more I do that in practice, the easier it is to call upon that in a race. Whereas earlier in my career, I just didn't have the, the foresight to really be doing that in

training even. So then I'd get to a race and I'd find myself at those like kind of difficult spots that you just don't get to training. So like mile 70 of a hundred miles, there's just no scenario in training where I'm going to be 70 miles into a long run and doing another 30 miles, that would be the race. So, uh, so then you get, you know, you don't have those experiences to pull from other than maybe the last time you did it, which can be quite a while ago at some, in some times. So that I think was maybe one of the bigger, like kind of mental processing breakthroughs that I've had. And it's sort of, I would say it's something that kind of maybe runs parallel with, with, with that, because it's a skillset I had to learn through like the hard training and stuff. And then just, did someone teach it to you

or, or it just, you, you see it and you nurture it. I think there's like, there's definitely elements of it that I probably picked up on from listening people who are like really in the know of like sports psychology and stuff like that, where they're just talking about things like visualization practices and like pretending like you've been there before. And like certain like talking points and like directives like that, I think all add up to the point where when you start doing it in training, you start recognizing what it is versus just thinking, Oh, that was cool. I hope that happens again, which is what would normally happen earlier in my career. I would have those experiences in a long run where I was like, I feel really good. You're kind of disassociated

and you just, you're imagining what it would be like to kind of like run really fast for the last five miles of a 50 miler or something like that. Or you imagine yourself like, you know, passing like another competitor, a world a hundred Ks or something like that. And like those things happened. They just weren't something where I was like, I went into the workout thinking, okay, I'm going to channel that today because I know that's going to prepare me for the race. Now I go into those workouts thinking, okay, here's some things I should think about, or here's the race strategy I should be thinking about, or the scenario I should be thinking about while I'm doing this so that I'm practicing it happening in real life. So when I get to that position where it's possible to do it, I don't feel like I'm removed from it or it's something new. I feel like it's something I've

rehearsed. Right. Have you been hit by a car? Yeah, more than once actually. Wow. So I've got a few, I was waiting for someone in the comments to say, dumb question. Wow. I've been hit by a car yeah more than once actually wow so i've got a few i was waiting for someone in the comments to say dumb question wow i've been hit by a car running and on my bike and i've actually hit myself with a car which is totally unrelated to were you drunk were you drunk oh i ran into a car drunk in college it was crazy oh yeah i've got some friends who have that story thankfully i haven't but uh it's bad my first car altercation was actually, I was really young. My dad and I were driving somewhere and he had to run in and get something. So he left me in the car.

I can't remember how old I was. I was probably like in like fourth or fifth grade. And I mean, it was a stick shift car. And so he has the- What kind? What kind? Volkswagen? Oh, gosh.

I don't even remember. I think it was a small little like uh like four door like five seat four cylinder i guess it'd be a speed or whatever speed it was um probably like i think it's like maybe like a toyota or something like that but like i pushed the emergency brake down thinking it was just some cool lever to pull in the car and all of a sudden the car starts rolling backwards. And like, I had no clue what was going on. So I just jumped out and left the door open and the door hit me and pinned me against the car behind me. And the door actually completely bent forward, which probably saved me from getting too badly hurt. But so that was kind of getting hit by a

car. Uh, that could, you could have been dead. Oh yeah. Yeah. I could have, that could have been much, you know, the crazy thing is we had bought that car used. The guy who sold it to us just happened to be driving by when it happened. And he jumped out of his car, jumped into this one and put the brakes on before it rolled all the way down the hill. Did you,

how does your dad respond to that? Is he scared or is he, is he yelling at you? Like how, how, how does he respond as a parent? Um, I think he,

I mean he he probably remember being a dumb little boy at one point in his life and realized like i wasn't trying to be an idiot i was just being an idiot yeah yeah and uh and there was a lesson to be told here versus like a scolding so i don't think i got in too much trouble do you have kids no oh because that would scare that that would i have three little boys and that shit scares they would scare the shit out of me and i know the thing would not to be to yell at them but it would be hard yeah yeah no i would i imagine like his first thought was like what is wrong with my yeah yeah yeah well you're just so stoked that they're not hurt right yeah there's a lot here

everything yeah is your dad still alive? Yeah. Okay. Let's hear more getting hit by car stories. What's next? Okay. Yeah. So let's get some more running ones. I went back to school when I was still in Wisconsin to the University of Oshkosh.

And I would do this route that was like, I think it was like 15 miles. But it had this, I'd go down this semi-busy street for just a little bit before turning off into like a little more like sane running area. But there's this roundabout that I would go around. So I would usually look to see if any cars come, if no one's coming, I just shoot right through it. If I had to stop and wait, I'd stop and wait. And one time Would you run in place if you had to stop and wait, like to run in place? Yeah, I usually would. Um, at least lightly just to kind of stay, stay kind of loose and not feeling like I'm completely stopping and starting. I like it when I see that people run into place. I'm like, yeah, that's that fucker's committed. Look at that. No stopping. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, one time I shot across and missed the guy coming

around the roundabout and I, they, they were going probably a little faster than needed to. And I, they, they were going probably a little faster than needed to. They saw me too late. And, uh, I actually looked up like right as they were like right up on me and just jumped. And I ended up like planting my foot on the hood of the car. And as the car kept moving, that kind of pushed me into an angle to my right side. And I ended up bouncing off the windshield, which pushed me back upright. Some magic shit. I love it. As I was kind of foot planting off the hood of the car. So like I actually landed on my feet.

I was like, I hadn't, I was like a shock as to what happened. Like, I think it took me like a couple seconds to realize what actually happened. I just kept running. I didn't even stop running. I like looked back briefly and, uh, saw them slow down and like probably were mortified. I'm not sure if like their windshield cracked or not, but like I, I, I had a nice bruise on my, on my right butt cheek and on like the, on like the palm of my hand where I kind of planted against the windshield. But I remember there was a gas station off to the left and there was a lady out there pumping gas who was like sightline in front of all of it.

And as I'm running by her, she's just like, just like looks at me she's like you just got hit by that car i remember just thinking i'm so glad someone saw it it's such a waste when that shit happens and like you know no one gets to see it you're like wait what did you see me crash or what yeah yeah so it's the i had a buddy who actually got hit by a car in the exact same spot too so it's just like probably a bad spot to be running if you're out in Oshkosh. But yeah, so that was one that really kind of stuck out and thankfully didn't end badly. I mean, it kind of- Have you had any end badly?

When you're on the road that- No, good. No, and I haven't been in any like real bad situations from car accident standpoint. I've been hit on my bike too but it was like a scenario where they like kind of they're turning as i'm going straight and they clipped my back tire and basically just like swept the bike out from under me so you fall and you get scratched up a little bit you're clipped in i wasn't clipped in that time i just had like a single speed so yeah thankfully i would just i Oh, so you have a fun life too. You write, you write a thing. Wow. Wow. Okay.

Yeah. I have a, I have a single speed that I'll use for like transportation a lot of times. When this happened, I actually had a little bit of a, of a, of an injury that was, that allowed me to bike, but not run. So I just hopped on this, the one speeder for a few, for a few workouts before getting back to running. And that one was where I ended up getting clipped by the car. So yeah, you do it long enough and there's usually at least a close call in there somewhere. Um, from, if I were to sum up how you eat, I was talking about you yesterday coming on the show and I was summing up how you eat that you clarify. But when you're training, you train with primarily a protein diet, meat and eggs and protein – or fat and protein diet. And when you race, you supercharge with 60 grams of carbs an hour. I know that's a pretty oversimplification but i

know people are going to be really excited to hear you talk about this go ahead sorry yeah let me kind of break it down uh and by the way and also the benefits of doing that as opposed to these people who just live off of goo packs and i bring this up and i i'm sorry i'm like a broken record but i've constantly said that no one healthy has died from COVID, 100%. And every once in a while, someone will be like, this person died over here who's healthy, and there'll be someone who's an ultra marathoner or like a super high-end bike rider, right? And I say, yeah, because they live off of carbs, and their T cells and their NK cells don't operate in a carb-rich environment.

So- Yeah. I think like maybe the way to think about that would be like healthy outwardly and inwardly would be a very resilient person to any sort of respiratory disease I would imagine. And then someone who's, you could be healthy outwardly, like what you maybe see with like a tour de France athlete, but maybe very unhealthy inwardly because you're just wringing your body out all that, that often and possibly doing things questionable and stuff like that. So like you have these kind of weird edge cases that on the surface look like, Oh, that was a perfectly healthy person. And they got,

you know, they, they had, they had a bad outcome in reality. It was probably something going on. If your bloodstream is, is crowded with hormones, insulin, leptinin your immune system can't operate i mean that's that's the primary people don't talk about it but that's the primary reason why added sugar is so bad for you because it's basically a traffic jam in your bloodstream and then and your nk cells and t cells have a lot of important shit to do and the leptin receptors which are also and i never hear anyone talk about this i've had some doctors on they're like holy shit the leptin receptors which basically tell you whether you're full or not they also have another they also have another job they notify your nk cells your nk and t cells those are the guys

that go around and kick ass like hey we have an intruder on level four but if they're busy dealing with like you just ate a candy bar or drank a gatorade they can't do the other stuff they can't do the other shit so they got they got more than one job and yeah, trippy jobs. Not even, yeah. They don't even seem related. They don't even seem related. Yeah. But, but sorry. So go ahead. So back, back to your diet. I always like to swerve off to the COVID thing. Make sure that people, people know. I would say that, uh, the, my diet, if you want to categorize it holistically i'm a low carbohydrate like that's my diet so like whether it be mostly from animal products or plant products or a combination of both they it usually fits within that category where my fats are going to be the highest

macronutrient that i consume followed by carbs and proteins and whether carbs or proteins are higher just depends on the time of year so when you say time of year you mean demands that you're putting whether you're doing a 20 mile training or a hundred mile race or that all that shit yeah so kind of have it broken down into like four stages is the way i describe it can people get this from your training plan that we looked at in the beginning if they go to zachbitter.com do you talk about can they buy your nutrition program too so the those plans right now are just like the training templates. Um, I'm probably going to put up like my nutritional strategy, like kind of like a course of just like kind of what I do and why I do it. So people have like much more detail as to what I'm about to say. Uh, right. As of now,

what I've done with those, when people are interested in it, they usually just sign up for a consultation and they'll, we'll go through whatever questions or concerns they have, or if they want, like just if they're completely new to it and they just want me to explain the hows and whys, then we'll do that sort of stuff. And that's how I've kind of addressed that historically, but there's been a big enough demand recently now where I think I need to have something that's a little more approachable than say like my hourly rate for consultation, where they can just get like a, like a tutorial of, and, and then decide whether they have more questions after that and then go to the consultation. So it's kind of like maybe like a one-on-one version of what I'm doing. Then if they want more information after that, then they kind of come straight to me for it

or wherever, but that I'm still kind of in the middle of putting that together. So that's not up yet, but that will be something I'll probably do at some point this year to have have available on my website as well um yeah i'm guessing people are clamoring to know that i mean the the environment the diet conversation is so rich right now it's so rich yeah and people are finding out they have options like people are finding out yeah well said that they don't have to look at some government mandated like like food program and be like, well, this is the only path forward to health. They're finding out that health comes when you find a dietary pattern that is sustainable for you long term, where I can do this relatively consistently. Like, I think there should be some wiggle room almost with anything like 100 application is almost never going to happen so like don't beat yourself up but aim for like you know being on point 90 of the time or something like that and then uh whatever that dietary pattern happens

to be is going to probably be the one that you can you're going to find the most success with because it's going to get you to a point where like you're at a good body weight, a good lean mass state. And then if you're implementing any sort of like training or workouts in there with it, you're just like doubling down on its application. So I think like people are finding out that there are more than one paths to victory with this. And really, it's about finding what's going to work for them versus what you know, their friend had success on or something like that. And, and that's the beauty of the internet because you have like all these resources of people doing like such a wide variety. I mean, you can, I could go online right now and find a detailed vegan approach, or I could go online and find a detailed carnivore approach, which are

like probably the two opposite ends of the spectrum and everything in between. So you can either look at that as like, Oh, there's just so much like nonsense out there. There's so many options out there. How do I pick something? Or you can be honest with yourself and decide what are the foods I like to eat? What are things that actually make me feel full, satisfied, give me energy, focus on those, find a dietary pattern within that. And there's going to be other people that are doing something similar that you can bounce ideas off of that. you can ask if they had certain experiences with this and things like that. And you can problem solve and troubleshoot with a group and stuff like that. So I think that part is really cool. Um, but yeah, so as far as mine goes, like I kind of

like off season, which is where I'm the strictest usually with carbohydrate, I'm much closer, if not at like a strict ketogenic diet during those phases, there's a lot less running is all low intensity. Uh, most of the exercises I do are going to be like any are going to be certain like movements that I just don't do when I'm in peak training. Cause I don't have the time or energy for them. Like what, like what would that be like hiking? I'm probably going to bike places more often. Like instead of like hopping in my car to go to the gym, because I just did a 20 mile run, I might hop on the bike and bike to the gym or something like that. Or maybe I'll go and do some paddle boarding or swimming or something like that just to get some energy out but not beat up my body the same way I would during – Do you have a stationary bike at home?

No, I don't. Not at home. Do you have a treadmill? I had a treadmill in Phoenix. My wife and I just moved to Austin. We got rid of it before we moved because we were trying to get rid of as much stuff as we could. So I might replace that at some point. Will it be a motorized one or like the assault one where you run it yourself?

You know what? I think I'd probably lean towards an assault or something, a manual-powered one, if I were to get another one at this point. Because for one, I have access to motorized ones at the gym if I want to use it. And two, I typically like to train outside if I can. So unless the weather is like really drastic or I'm training for a race where like jacking up incline on something is going to be in my best interest. And I need to get on a treadmill to do that. Cause I'm not close enough to a good training hill. You know, those would be times where I would maybe, uh, lean towards like a motorized treadmill versus either a manually powered one

or just going out and running on the streets or something like that. Okay. Sorry. I interrupted you when you were talking about diet. I really liked the way you explained it too. I can't remember if it was Lex or to Joe, but you kind of eat and I think you were getting there. You, you talk about eating and I guess it's kind of like wearing a weight vest. You, if you, you don't give yourself foods that translate to immediate like supercharged horsepower if you're going to be do lower intensity because there's no reason to make that um you said like if you're only going to run a two out of three out of a possible 10 in terms of difficulty you'll cut back your carbs and eat something that doesn't supercharge you in order and that's i guess it's kind of like a

nutritional weight vest right yeah like if i'm going to the grocery store to pick up groceries i don't need to hop in a ferrari to do that but if i want yeah but i want to get from zero to 60 as fast as possible maybe i do so like you look at it kind of the same way where like in off season i'm doing like super low intensity stuff if anything i'll do some strength work sometimes which can be high intensity but it's such a low amount of volume that I'm not strength work for a runner ultra marathon runner. So it's actually kind of surprising when done right. I think you're actually doing like more kind of traditional movements, uh, like squats, deadlifts, kettlebell swings, uh, that sort of stuff, like box steps. And you actually want want i think runners make the mistake sometimes of

thinking well i'm a repetitive like lightweight type of thing so they're just doing a lot of like you know high repetition low weight stuff when in reality they'd be better off sticking to kind of a you know three sets of five almost like type of would you do a body weight back squat like would you back squat i mean 150 pounds uh yeah i, I'll definitely do some squatting from time to time. It's like, I, I, I get a little cautious around that for, especially for runners who haven't done, here's what I say. Like if you're a runner and you're going to do some free weight squatting in your program, there's nothing wrong with that, but this is where getting a trainer would probably be in your best interest at least or at least consult some form tutorials on youtube for a while and videotape yourself and

throw it up on a message board and ask people like hey where am i making a mistake here because one of them put it on reddit let them just destroy you let them destroy you yeah and take that as like you know don't look at it as i'm picking on you look at it as they're keeping you from getting injured because really the biggest downside potentially to strength work with endurance athlete is the injury risk. Like if you get in there and you hurt yourself doing a supplementary activity, did you really do yourself any favors? And, and I mean, that's a reality people need to consider. And I just think like when you get into like, like, like free weighted back squats and things like that, you're starting to get to a point where a lot of people don't have the education to do it properly. that, you're starting to get to a point where a lot of people don't have the education to do it properly. Or you get a scenario where someone is like starting maybe a little too aggressively

where they should probably just start with no weight or just the bar and figure out the form and then add a little bit of weight before they go and put even 150 pounds on it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Body weight squat for, I mean, it's, it's like, like we're going back to the IndyCar thing. It's like trying to drive it up a driveway. You better know how to hit it at that perfect angle or you're going to ruin your, your fastest car in the world. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. So, so yeah, I do a lot of strength work and stuff. Uh, do you have a, do you have a coach? Do you have a personal trainer? No, I don't have a trainer, not at the moment in a way. I've worked with people in the past with form and things when I first got into strength work around endurance.

So I kind of had like the template put together. Recently, I've been following, do you know, do you follow Ben Patrick's knees over toes stuff at all? I mean, he's exploded. Yeah, he's exploded. I'll use some of his principles too. And those are the same thing. Like you have to be, you got to set your ego down to start because like, you know, for me, it was like, I'd never done Tibby Alice strength work, not directly before in my life. So he's, you know, I needed

to do to be Alice work and like, it would have been easy. He's in Austin too, right? You could probably call him. Yeah. He's, he's not in, he's still in Florida, I believe, but I think they're going to end up moving their, their headquarters headquarters to Austin at some point in the future. So he will be eventually. But he was in town for a while, a month or two ago, and I met up with him. So I got some good pointers from him and some directive as to what movements he thinks I should be focusing on. So things that I've added are sled pushes and pulls. Pulls, meaning walking backwards yep yeah

you like strap yourself onto the onto the sled so that you can pull it with uh with like the belt on or then when you're pushing you just kind of lean into it how's your body respond to that the backward one that one like i i actually really like that i don't feel like it's something that like deters my training in any meaningful way i think the ones where i have to be careful with is if I get and do like the squats and deadlifts, those are ones that got to be a little more careful to keeping to maybe like once or at most twice per week. Uh, cause then what do you deadlift with? Do you deadlift with a bar like rubbing against your shins or a trap bar where you grab on

the side? Oh, you should use a trap bar. Yeah. Yeah. Just to make sure that I'm not screwing anything up too drastic. Will you do body weight deadlifts? Will do 140 pounds 150 pounds yeah you know you mean like on the trap bar or just like yeah like on the trap bar like will you do like what will you do a set of 10 with i'll usually put like somewhere in the neighbor i'll put like a 45 on each side

start start with that and then uh depending on where i'm at in kind of the progression of season i'll add like increments of maybe 10 pounds if i feel like it's getting like relatively easy or i had no idea you were so strong yeah well i picture you as kind of like a praying manis like like i just can't believe how strong you are it's crazy can you do a pull-up too oh yeah uh-huh what yeah pull-ups uh, I just figured you're an arrow. You know what I mean? An arrow with a head on it. Zero upper body strength.

I think I'm getting just schooled. I'm probably a little more muscular than what. Excuse me. Excuse me. Uh, pipe down. It's relative a little, like if you, if you go and you pick out like an Olympic marathon medalist and you stand them up next to me, I'm going to look like I carry more muscle than they will in most cases. Now, if you set me up next to like, you know, even someone my height, who's a,

who's a lean 160 pounds, they're going to dwarf me the same way that, that I would maybe that, you know, five foot, and twenty pound Olympic marathoner so there's and then there's ranges in there too of just like I think what would be like like we talked about this before where it's like for me to like go one direction or the other too drastically for like where my frame and like just the way I feel comfortable is that is probably not going to be conducive to performance so at a certain point you have to accept kind of like this is what I have here's my sweet spot within. Now I got to get to work inside that framework. Um, but yeah, so like, it's, uh, you know, things like pulling like some weight off the ground and

things like that, aren't something that I am unable to do or don't, don't keep into my training and stuff like that. Uh, I just have to be, I just, I try to be a little careful about it. Like usually what I'll do is if I'm in a time of year where I'm doing like short intervals, a little more aggressively or targeting, then I'll implement a little more lower body stuff because then I'm in a scenario where I can do like the short interval session in the morning, then go out and go to the gym and do some like hex bar deadlifts, uh, or something like that. And then the next day, yeah, I'm going to be a little sore, but in that phase of training, I'm following those short, fast interval workouts with easy days where it doesn't really matter if my legs are sore, I might go out for an easy 60 minute

jog. And if I'm running minute, minute and a half per mile slower than I normally would, uh, what would that be? So, so eight minutes, you'd be doing like eight minute miles. Yeah. Something around there. I mean, cause so I've seen pictures of you do you know who jared lito is yeah i've seen some pictures of you where you look like jared lito on heroin i mean your hair's all long your cheeks are all pulled in yeah i used to have long hair uh-huh and then and then of course these guys are giants but look at look at simi's head compared to yours yeah yeah and sima and mark are definitely guys who are going to dwarf me yeah what's his name in sema or sema in sema in sema in yang he must always say his name wrong

yeah i love those guys he's when when in sema started co-hosting with mark it was uh pretty cool to see those guys there was a time when mark did it without in sema yeah i want to say he had you're like a podcast historian, like circling back to the beginning of this podcast. So you really have listened to a lot. Yeah. I got into podcasts probably in 2010, 2011, when they first started kind of popping up in any capacity. And, uh, you know, the, the reason I did it was I was, uh, I was teaching at the time. So I would work, you know, from seven till five or whatever the day ended up playing out to be. And I'd wake up, do like a two hour run in the morning before

work and sometimes run again after. So I, I got to a point during the school year where I was just like, God, I'm basically just working, eating, running and sleeping. How can I kind of add more to this lifestyle without compromising what I'm trying to do? And I need, I need input. I need intellectual input to get smarter. Yep. Yeah. So those two hour, those two hour easy runs in the morning, uh, made for a great content digestion from podcasts. And that's kind of how I got hooked on it. But yeah, Mark, I I'm blanking on what it might've just been like the Mark Bell podcast or something like that, but he had a different podcast, uh, before he renamed it to power project and brought in and Seema. And I think he even did power he had a different podcast before he renamed it to Power Project

and brought in Nsema. And I think he even did Power Project for a few episodes before Nsema came in. I want to say he came in maybe like, I think he was an early guest. And since he was from the Sacramento area, then Mark brought him on board. So I want to say maybe in the early, before it was at a hundred, I know, I think maybe around 60 or 70 is when Encima came in on that one. I steal their shit all the time. I steal everyone's shit, but like, they're great to listen to. Yeah. Like, like if someone's going to be on that, they're, they're usually, um, how did Lex Friedman get so popular? Do you know how he got so popular? Did he take the Avenue of Joe Rogan? Uh, not he, not he he got bigger because of joe rogan i would say but from being like a guest and and joe just really got into his podcast and would talk about it all the

time which is gonna send over a massive amount of listeners yeah but i think like his his style is a bit different and i think yeah he reminds me my kids watch these videos and there's this giant yellow toad it's like a famous toad on youtube have you seen this thing i don't think so and basically like they'll throw in like three huge scorpions and watch the toad fight the scorpions and then they'll throw in like 20 rats and they'll watch the toad fight the rats it's crazy this toad's impervious like it shows like score and he just eats he's just in every video has like 20 million and that's how i feel like when i watch lex friedman i'm just like I'm watching this creature that – like I'm watching it to watch this creature interact with other creatures.

He's so – it's so trippy hearing him talk. Yeah. Yeah, and I think his like perspective on things is just kind of unique enough or like specific enough to his own personality that you start – Is that what you call that that's a personality or you might or his robotic personality maybe i know there's he i'm just fucking with them but but i mean that's how popular i think was with all the artificial intelligence stuff it started out more specifically geared towards that and then oh he's smart as shit right yeah yeah because he. Cause he was MIT.

He was kind of part of those early guys with artificial intelligence. So I think he brought to market something that was a little more behind closed doors. Cause you remember like, I know for me anyway, maybe that maybe I was just ignorant, but I remember thinking like seeing a video of like this robotic dog or something doing these crazy tricks and then thinking like, oh, there like, oh, there's been a lot of innovation going on behind the closed doors that I wasn't privy to. Right. But it would be really interesting to know exactly how they got to that or what's going on there. And I think Lex maybe brought that to the public eye first.

So he got fairly popular within that avenue. And then he started, I mean, he's a curious guy. So he started branching out into like, uh, well, he's just, he's also a little bit of a Renaissance man where he's like a black belt jujitsu.

He likes to run. He likes to do body. Yeah. That's crazy that he's a black belt, huh? That's amazing. He's a pretty good guitar player. So like,

he's just has a lot of these, like a lot of these avenues of interests where I think at a certain point, when you get a platform as big as his, you just start saying start saying hey I've got access to the professionals in this world I'm going to bring them in and talk to them and find out what makes them them so I think whenever he gets maybe a little more interested in one area whether it be history whether it be guitar whether it be nutrition or training grappling running he just says well who's the person I want to talk to in this environment and likely can get him to come in people in the comments are like ask him about um uh ryan hall do you know ryan hall i don't know ryan hall personally i'm assuming they were talking about

the the the former runner now like strength strength athletes uh oh oh i thought they were talking about the jujitsu guy oh maybe they. I have no idea who you guys are talking about. I'm not going to stop. Since it came up with me, I'm guessing they're talking about Ryan Hall. So he's ran the fastest marathon time by an American and half marathon. Was he a fat guy? Because they're asking about his transformation. Was he a fat guy who got skinny?

No. So he was like my height, 130 pounds dripping wet. Wow. And in his early 30s, like age 30, 31, retired from distance running and just said, my testosterone's tanked. I have nothing left to give. Like I'm burnt out. Like I need to retire. Oh, he's all juiced up now.

He's jacked now. Yeah, he's a beast. If you do a before and after picture of him, it's pretty impressive. You would never – it's, it's so funny. Cause you see him now doing whatever workout he's doing and be like, Oh yeah, that's the half marathon American record holder. And it's like, it's like, he's almost twice as big. Yeah.

So he looks, he looks good, man. He's a handsome dude. All fucking buff and shit. Yeah. It's, it's funny because I think like people automatically think like, Oh, cause I mean, he's a naturally small guy. Like when he was in high school, there's a reason he got into running versus football, right? Like, you know, had I been just like naturally big and muscular, I may never even attempt distance running because I would have been good at the football contact sports and probably angled that direction at an early age so my guess is

ryan hall was a very tiny kid ended up in track and cross country and people look at him think like well that's just his reality like there's no way he'll ever be this jacked kind of crossfit looking character right no i mean you put in the time and the work and you it turned into hunter mcintyre you turned into hunter mcintyre uh-huh yeah yeah so it's uh you know with a little bit of purpose and some some dedication and uh in direction you can do a lot and he's shown that so he's an interesting guy for sure i haven't met him in in real life though but i know a lot about him there's um i i don't go there a lot. That's for sure. But, but there's this concept in CrossFit and probably in all sports called the pain cave. And, um, it's really easy to go there. If you just tell someone

like, Hey, I need you to run around that track as hard as you can. And I'll tell you when to stop. And you, you know, you let them go for four minutes. If they're not there, that means they didn't try. Right. They're not there in two minutes. They're not trying that they're 90 seconds. Same with burpees. I can be like, Hey,. They're not trying. They're not there in 90 seconds. Same with burpees. I can be like, Hey, I need you to do 50 burpees as fast as you can. And if you don't, I'm going to kill one of your family members. Like they'll end up in the pain cave. Yeah.

Do, do a hundred mile guys go in the pain cave? Like, like, where do you guys go? Yeah. Cause you don't really come back from the pain cave. So good. Like if you touch it, at least I don't, if I touch it, like there's, you know what I mean?

Like 20 minutes, like five minutes later, I'm not like, I'm not like, Oh, I'm getting up and eating a sandwich. I'm like, Oh,

this is bad. I need to lay down. The way I look at it is there's a pain cave on both sides of the intensity spectrum. The, on the spectrum I'm on with a hundred miling, it's just a very slow, long journey into it

but uh with that there's a way out too whereas i think when you get the high intensity stuff you hit like this like limit of just like your body just completely fails on you and it's like you're done like that's your day's over whereas with like 100 but you can okay sorry sorry go ahead sorry and maybe maybe i'm not thinking far enough or no you are you are you are i misunderstood you i know that i unfucked myself for for 100 miling it's like you might enter the pain cave say at mile 65 or something like that and think like it's just going to get progressively worse or this experience is going to be like a linear deterioration from here and And if it's this bad

now, how bad would it be in an hour and two hours and three hours? And I have, you know, five plus hours to go. And that can be very defeating and cause people to drop out or stop or take long sustained rests that they don't necessarily need and things like that. Whereas I think what you find out when you do enough of these is eventually you get to a point where you get into that pain cave and you just say, all right, this is where it's at. I'm just going to hunker down and deal with it. And then you kind of push through and you find yourself in a really great state later on, which is just a real easier said than done. I love the way you did that.

That is big. And I mean, I most people fail at it, myself included, more often than they succeed. Really? You do fail at that more than you succeed? Yeah. And I think the only way here's the most people fail at it, myself included more often than they succeed. Really? You do fail at that more than you succeed. Yeah. And I think the only way, here's the way I look at it. That's amazing to hear from someone who's as successful as you. Well, and here's the thing.

The way I look at it is like, anytime I have a race that I consider like better than the previous one at a specific distance, chances are during that effort, I pushed past some sort of like discomfort or some sort of a hurdle that historically I hadn't done before where I stopped, where I thought that's my limit. This is where I need to stop. This is where I have to start kind of damage control, keep the wheels on sort of a mentality. And every time you redefine that, you have to like, it feels great it feels great you're like wow that was really cool i just really like you know pushed through something that i've never pushed through before but eventually if you're really introspective you're going to come to the conclusion where

that means i didn't the other times so that means the other 10 times i didn't get to that point or i didn't push myself to the point where i technically could have now i know i can so then you have this like new bar new standard to kind of reach or achieve too. And the higher you get that, I think the higher the, the opportunities are to find yourself in a position where you fail at it, or it just is that much more difficult to push it to a whole nother level. Cause there, you know, whether it's dying as you cross the finish line or not, there's always probably a little more that someone can give when we're being honest with ourselves. And I think when you accept that, that's where you have this opportunity to not necessarily think of the times where you didn't get them as failures or poor indications of what you're capable of, but lessons that allow you to get to the point where you're now imagining, I can go another step further than this, or I can trigger this a little further and push further into that pain cave,

so to speak, or push through the outside of the other end, maybe is the better way to look at it. If I kind of give myself that opportunity. The pain cave in short duration is like, it's really oxygen deprivation centric and long distance. It's something else, huh? Yeah, I think for the most part, it's probably a couple things. I mean, there's definitely, there definitely can be some glycogen issues going on, which will make things more difficult. So I believe where the research is at at the moment is if you dip down to around 40% of your muscle glycogen, your body starts kind of creating what's that that's the sugar your body needs for fuel. Yeah, just like the sugar that's embedded into your muscles. And the reason

why that's faster acting is because it's right there. Your muscles can access it immediately. So there's less steps. So it becomes less oxygen expensive to use that. Or the, if the, if an activity is oxygen expensive enough, it requires that to do that activity quickly. So even in these long, slow hundred milers, you're out there long enough where even if you're tapping into a very small amount of muscle glycogen, if you're not replacing it, then you can dip down to where you start getting to that point where your body starts getting resistant because it's going to defend your muscle glycogen on its own. Like people think like, Oh, I just depleted my muscle glycogen. glycogen on its own. Like people think like, Oh, I just depleted my muscle glycogen. That's why I bought. No, you probably got like, you know, somewhere under 40% or something like that.

And your body started saying, you know what, we're not going to give your muscles. We're not going to let you, we're not going to let you access this the way you have been so far, because we want to preserve it because there's more important things for this that don't require you running a hundred mile race. It doesn't care that you want to run. And you just replenish it on the fly. Yeah. So that gets into kind of my fueling strategy then too, where like you have this scenario

where I like to put everyone on the same kind of like the same program, whether their diet is moderate, high carb, low carb, ketogenic, whatever it happens to be your goal on race days, defending muscle glycogen. That's going to be the fuel source that you can deplete body fat. Even the leanest endurance athletes are going to have enough body fat to get through a long single day endurance event. So you can replace that afterwards. You don't need to worry about replacing that during it. So whether you're someone like myself, who's lower carb or someone who's moderate high carb, your goal is defending that muscle glycogen. The question is going to be how much does it take to do that? So for someone

like myself who follows a low carbohydrate diet based on my fat oxidation rates, when they're paired up with my race intensities, I can get away with taking in somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to maybe 40 grams of carbohydrate per hour. Whereas if I heard you say 60 somewhere, has that changed? 60 is about what I would say you need to target if you're following a moderate to high carbohydrate diet. So if you're on a moderate carbohydrate skewing towards high 50 to 70 grams is probably a pretty good number that you should be aiming for. If you want to properly defend muscle, but you don't abuse carbohydrates in the training season, right? Yeah. I'll use them, but I'm using them much more strategically and at a much lower rate than someone who say getting 60 to 70% of their diet. I might have like off season as low as 5%.

There may be a few days where I'm doing just like huge workouts where I'll flex that up for a couple of days. It's like 20 to maybe 30% of my intake. Usually those types of days are followed by easy recovery days where I'm going back down quite low, like to like 5% again. So then if you look at like my average carbohydrate intake over the course of the year, depending on the races I'm doing and how I end up kind of training for them, you know, I'm probably closer to 10, 15 ish percent of my intake coming from carbohydrate. Does your wife eat like that too? You on the same she's so my wife eats like she eats more carbohydrates than i do but she's basically only eating them like an evening time so okay like when she eats food like during the day they're going to be kind of fats and proteins

and then like when she has dinner at night when all the work is done and everything that's when she'll start to do like eat the majority of her carbohydrates which is really interesting because like when i've tested her blood ketone levels she's usually like producing a fairly high number like i think last time we checked she had like 2.0 millimoles of blood ketones which most people following ketogenic diet would consider that like well into ketosis um but part of it just cause of the timing of what she, she trains. And she eats so little, right? I mean, yeah, I mean, she eats for, I mean, she's a small person. So like what she needs is going to be dictated more by what she's doing in training than what she would like typically get at a resting, like, yeah, resting. She's probably like maybe burning like 1500 calories a day or something like that. But then when she puts in the amount of training

she does, she's probably up like well above 3000 most days. Um, but yeah, if you back, and this is a really interesting concept too, that I think can work well. So what I tell people is like, whether you're like me and you're leaning into low carb or whether you're someone who's like, I really like carbohydrates, I want to be moderate to high carbohydrate. But the next question is like the real, the answer is, is performance something that you value to the point where you want to figure out where your, your fat oxidation rates are and what you need to do to fuel performance. So like some of these people that go into these exercise labs and get those things, these things tested. So they know my race intensity means I have to eat this number

of carbohydrates. That's essentially how I came up with my target is for my like best hundred mile performance. I was at that intensity. I was burning like somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 to 85% fat. So that left me with like 15 to 20% carbohydrate to defend. So I couldn't usually in the field, like when I was racing, if I stay below 40 grams of carbohydrate per hour, I don't have digestive issues from that in most cases. So like that was kind of my ceiling as to where I didn't want to necessarily go across. And 30 was about as low as I could go and still be confident that I'm defending that at that intensity. So that's how I got those targets. Someone who is moderate high carbohydrate might find out that they need to do like say 65 grams or something like that per hour. So then the next question becomes, can you actually do it?

Because one thing we notice with these single day ultra marathons, triathlons and things like that, digestive issues are something that over half the participants are going to experience in some shape or form. What does that mean? Shit your pants? It can be as drastic as shitting your pants or puking up your nutrition. It can be as light as something. Puking up, huh? Yeah. Yeah. So those are kind of the extremes what's that from anxiety uh it well i mean that can feed into it i'm sure like the nervousness and anxiety probably makes you more prone to kind of have those sort of like gastrointestinal issues just changing fuel and your body's like

yeah essentially essentially a lot of times what happens is there's like some sort of like combination of of dehydration and overshooting nutrition. So if you put a lot of these, some of these sports products, what I say is that they're almost too good at what they do. They process so quickly that you put in too much of it, your body feels like it needs to slow it down. And it does in order to actually process it.

So sometimes what will happen then is your body's going to pull fluid into your digestive tract, which can exasperate dehydration. Cause now it's like possibly pulling from what would be hydrating into your digestive tract. And now you have a bunch of water and liquid sloshing around in your digestive tract, which can become an issue, especially if it's hotter, if your electrolytes are off, if you're dehydrated and sometimes your body just doesn't know what to do with it at that point and just rejects it and you puke it or shit it out. And I mean, that's the extreme. I think, I don't think 50 plus percent of people are having those issues on a frequent basis. Most people have those experiences if they do enough of them, but there's going to be some digestive distress, whether it be just like an upset stomach to like

puking and using the bathroom and things like that, uh, for roughly half of the participants. And so that for me, that tells me there's a big enough percentage of the population that needs to improve the way they're fueling themselves. So they do not find themselves in a situation where it's a coin flips chance that this race that they spent four to six months preparing for spent possibly thousands of dollars to get to and participate in is up to their stomach rebelling on them. So there's different paths you can go. That sucks. Yeah. I mean, some people will train their gut. So they'll be eating a lot of this stuff and training in day-to-day life so that their body can tolerate taking in more of it. Uh, I don't see that as a universal practice that I would feel comfortable advocating for,

because there's just a lot of people who for health reasons are not going to be mainlining sports products, all like all their training and things like that in order to prepare their gut for a race. And they may not be doing the training to really supplement the, the like requirement to do that. Because, you know, you take someone who's like a super elite marathoner like eliot kipchagi who's got the world record who's definitely training his gut and he probably should be given what he's doing but he's also that guy's also putting out so much energy if he takes

in 800 calories thousand calories a day from like refined sources to train his gut he's gonna like double that in his training output from an energy standpoint. So he's still probably eating more than the average person at meals in order to maintain a very small frame. You know, you take the average person who's going to train for a marathon, maybe running four to five days per week, they're increasing their metabolic rate, but not by a drastic rate, like double or triple, like someone like me or Ilo Kipchagi is doing, that person might not want to spend 800 plus calories per day from refined sources trying to train their gut.

So for me, that's like, it's a, it's a practice that, Hey, if you're doing the training, if it works for you, great, more power to you, train your gut. If you want to go that route and you can logistically handle feeling that much during a race, but there's going to be enough people that either don't want to or physically don't feel like they can handle it that are going to want to be able to defend muscle glycogen without having to train their gut to do that. And that's where the individuality is going to come in.

There's going to be some people who they have higher than average fat oxidation rates, even on a moderate to high carbohydrate diet. There's going to be people who struggle and can manipulate that by reducing their carbohydrate intake in training, which is going to drastically increase your fat oxidation rates. You're going to get your fat oxidation rates slightly elevated from just the training itself. And you can get them elevated even higher if you're just strategic about your carbohydrates. So if you take someone, let's say we take a moderate carbohydrate athlete, endurance athlete, and they're eating their carbohydrates spread evenly out throughout the course of the day, that person will improve their fat oxidation rates. If they just take that

carbohydrate that they're eating and push it into the back half of the day, because they're forcing their body to be more efficient with fat during those timeframes where they're not eating it. So they can move the needle there. And what I'm getting at here is really, if you know what your fat oxidation rates are at the intensity you're going to race, you can start making educated decisions as to whether you're someone who should maybe train their gut, whether you're someone who should get a low carbohydrate approach like myself, or whether you're someone who should reposition where they're eating their carbohydrates and things like that. I think these are all options and tools that should

be available for people to consider, especially if, uh, especially as we get into like the, the average athlete versus like the Olympic athlete. Um, and then also, especially when you get into ultra marathoning, because like I kind of said in the beginning, it's almost incomparable when we're looking at the requirements from a metabolic standpoint, running a hundred miles versus running something like a marathon or a half marathon. That's so crazy to me. I heard you say that on another podcast too. I can't, you know, like just numb nuts like me. I can't even get my head wrapped in it. They all just seem long, right? Yeah. Well, and the marathon is so difficult because it's just long enough where you will deplete your muscle glycogen if you're pushing yourself to the limit.

But it's, it's, it's going to tap into glycogen at a heavy enough point, you just kind of have to be efficient at carbohydrate consumption to some degree. So it's like this weird gray area of like human intensity that kind of almost like disrupts the natural order of things, so to speak. Whereas with hundred milers, it's like the intensity is so much lower that the window of what you fuel with and what you need to do to like, to stay on top of muscle glycogen is just a different target. So I think that's what opens up the doors and windows for options for people. And then for me, then it's just like, well, now we just need to be, uh, we need to be working with the

individuals versus the population level. And if someone, I don't usually have a problem with people starting out with a moderate carbohydrate diet, because that's just what most people are probably going to have been doing most of their life. So if they find out that I feel great doing this, I'm not necessarily going to throw a wrench into it and try to change it. But if they start noticing challenges with it, and they're wanting to try something different, I think it's great that we have like tools and whether we find out what I'm doing or what someone else is doing is like the priority or the primary way to go about things for a hundred milers is anyone's guess. At this point, we just don't really have great research in this sport. Um, because it's almost impossible to get specific like research

on a hundred mile race. Cause it's like, how do you really like, how do you do that? How do you like study someone as they're pushing their limits through a hundred mile race? Uh, so maybe we have truth now before it gets all complicated by science. Well, I mean, I actually like that aspect of the sport where it seems to be, there's a little more kind of self-exploration. There's a lot less like formula of like, this is the only way to go about. If you can't make this work, you need to go through hell to make it work or find something else to do. I kind of like this, the, the, the nature of it being like, well, um, this didn't work for me, even though it worked magically for my, my friend, but there's this other option

I can try out. And then, you know, maybe it works as well for me as the thing that I couldn't get to work that did work for my friend worked for them. And I like that. I like that environment. I like that kind of problem solving that puzzle nature to the sport and things like that. So, um, right. I think I like to embrace it more or less. Zach, I started off the podcast saying how shitty podcasts are and how what a dream guest you are and um I know you're a very popular man um we're at an hour and 45 um not only is my bladder gonna explode but it's time to take the kids to get their skateboarding lessons I have pages and

pages of questions I have one final question for you and this is a just a lead up to try to get you to come on the show again um uh what are you are you working on breaking some sort of record right now or some sort of goal what what is your next goal because i want to try to use that to manipulate you to come on the show again after you do it like if you're trying are you trying to run i heard you were trying to run across the country are you doing that still or did you do that the cross-country project was something i was actually going to do last year. And I got, I've been really fortunate with injuries. I've had very few, but I managed to get one right before the start of that.

So I had to cancel it. Um, what I learned with that process is like, I feel, and we talked about this a little bit, it's like what makes, what makes my body operate well for single day, a hundred mile races may not be the same for something like a cross country run. Right. races may not be the same for something like a cross country run. So right now, once I get all everything kind of sorted and feel like I'm not managing kind of like the lingering effects of injury and stuff like that, I'll probably start considering putting it back on the calendar. But I think I'm going to go about a little differently. I may wait long enough so that

I can go through a process of like, just, you know, maybe putting on 10, 15 pounds of muscle or something like that. Wow. Wow. Cause across country, is that a sign that you're at the end of your career? Um, I think it would, I wouldn't say transformation. Yeah. Maybe a little bit. I think like, so the a hundred mile world records on both sides, men and women are by four year olds. It's like, if you start dating, if it's like, if you start dating another girl, but you're married, you're like, ah, this marriage might be on the rocks. Like if you can put on 10 or 15 pounds of muscle, you're dating another girl. Start putting the feelers out there. Yeah. You spend more time in the weight room than on the running course. Then you might know the transcon projects coming back on. Right. But I just think like that

project. And I sort of knew this going in just maybe not to the extent is it's all about just not getting hurt. Like there's nothing about it where you have to be moving fast. You just have to consistently be moving 12 to 14 hours a day. No questions asked, no excuses, no, like no problem big enough that you can't get through that sort of a mentality of that sort of fuel. You need to be able to get fuel for and not get injured. that sort of fuel you need to be able to get fuel for and and not get injured yep yep yeah so i think that i might just need to kind of redesign the way that i have my like my physique built for a project like that versus what i've been doing historically you know maybe i'm wrong about that but i think it's probably worth exploring in order to kind of put it back on the on the list to do so if you start seeing me looking like david goggins less like myself, then you'll know it's getting close. So, uh, ladies and gentlemen, um, Zach bitter at Zach bitter on, um, Instagram, we will find out if he enjoyed himself when I

circle back in six months and try to have him on with the next 10 pages of questions. Yeah. It was, it was such a pleasure hanging with you, dude. What, what a great pleasure. And, uh, you guys tomorrow, uh, holy cow, we have so many crazy guests. Tomorrow we have Matthew Semelsberger, welterweight, up-and-comer on the UFC. He'll be here at 7 a.m. And then we've got a ton of great guests. We'll be coming live from the Ukraine on Sunday. We do this show every Sunday for an hour.

I talk for a kid who's living in the Ukraine in the war zone. Pretty crazy. Yeah, it's nuts. All right. Well, thanks, dude. And I'm going to – I have your email address. I will send you my phone number. You can text whenever you want.

And it was truly a great pleasure meeting you. If there's anything ever I can do for you, just reach out. Awesome. Likewise, I'll be looking forward to coming back on in six months, but I'm happy that – Where's your book? Sorry. Where's your book? No book. Where's the Zach bitter, but okay. My excuse has always been that I feel like there's more chapters to add to it yet, but, uh, um, the reality is I think there's just a lot, there's a lot going on and it's like, you know, I feel like I'd have to put something else on the back burner to take the time to write the book and still train at the level I need to,

to be competitive. So part of me is just trying to not put the cart before the horse a little bit with that one. But I think that's probably something I would explore sooner. I want to read it. I want to read it. We didn't even get into your childhood. That'll be the next show.

I'm dying to know. You'll have to get the book, the pathology. I'm dying to know the pathology that makes the man Zach, Zach better. All right, brother. Thank you very much.

Yeah. Take care. Have fun.