Defying Convention with Low-Carb Performance | Zach Bitter

Transcript

[: 00:00

I think, you know, we're talking about ultra marathons, but this is very applicable to life.

[: 00:06

You know a lot of times what I'll do if I hit a dark spot, I'll think to myself, is this as bad as I'm perceiving it at the moment? Because what I'll try to do before a race is prep myself with... I'm further along than just starting this race. I just went through a huge training phase. I try to bring my mind back to ‘you're like 99% of the way there’.

[: 00:32

Welcome to the Dr. Gabrielle Lyon show, where cutting edge science meets innovation and practical application for everybody. You don't want to miss this conversation with Zach Bitter, 100-mile record holder. This guy, if you can run it, he does it. This guy is a champion and we're going to talk all about not just the mindset, but also the tactical application in nutrition to run a race, and so much more. Join me in conversation with world record holder, Zach Bitter. Zach Bitter, welcome to the show.

[: 01:09

Thanks so much for having me.

[: 01:10

There are many reasons why I wanted you to come on, but before I tell you about those reasons, let's talk about the fact that you are an ultra marathon athlete, and not just any ultra marathon athlete. You have multiple records. You have a hundred mile american record, your record holder 2019, and there's this six days in the dome event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and you ran a hundred miles in a total of 11 hours 19 minutes and 13 seconds. Bananas! 12-hour american record holder during the same event, and that covered a distance of 104.88 miles and I'm sure the point 88 miles.

[: 01:57

Every step counts, and then a hundred mile trail record holder, and that was 2018. The list goes on. Four time national champion, and you have secured titles in various ultra marathon distances, including 50 mile, 62 miles, which is a hundred kilometers and a hundred mile events. Treadmill world record, and one would ask, were you born to do this or not? And it looks like in college you were running track and field.

[: 02:36

Yeah, that sums it up.

[: 02:39

My first question to you is can anyone do this?

[: 02:44

Yeah, I think so. I think that's what's interesting about ultra marathoning is you get a pretty wide range of people that are coming into it and they're not all traditional. I have a pretty traditional running background for the most part, but a lot of people now are coming in from widely different disciplines.

[: 03:00

I actually had a former division one offense alignment reach out to me not too long ago about ‘Hey, I want to run a hundred mile race. Is this something I can do? How do I do it?’ So yeah, I mean you get all sorts of folks to the ones that may be popping people's mind, like Cam Haynes or David Goggins, not really look like what you would expect to see on the starting line of an Olympic marathon or anything like that, but those guys are doing 200 plus mile races and things like that. So I think it's really just about being realistic with yourself in terms of what your expectations are at the event and then giving yourself enough time to kind of prepare for the specifics of it so that your body is able to go through the gauntlet, so to speak.

[: 03:37

The gauntlet, do you find that… And you actually coach people, by the way, you coach my husband, Shane, who is not in it for the 100 miles. We'll just keep it marathon for a while because I cannot imagine how one would train for that just from a time commitment standpoint. You know, I always think about at what point is it 90% training and 10% mentality? Is it 50% training, 50% mentality? Do you have a thought how that kind of plays out?

[: 04:07

Yeah, it's a good question. I would say like it gets tough, because I think these things blend a lot, where you find yourself in a position where, if you're just training the physical and ignoring the mental, you hit a spot in the race where you just don't have a lot of good past experiences to know what to do or to feel confident about what to do, or to to play the mind games that are required to kind of stay focused. So one thing that I learned most specifically around like 2019 was you really have to take kind of the training that you're doing physically, but layer kind of visuals that you're going to use on race day into that, so you're actually working on kind of what you're going to be doing mentally during the event itself as well, when you're out there running. So, like an example that would be, if I'm out there doing a long run, maybe three, four hours or something like that, I'm going to be visualizing a section of the race and just kind of working through those paces of what I want to feel like, how it's likely going to be. I will pull from past experience to know, ‘Okay, there might be this hard spot at, say, mile 70. I'm going to pretend like I'm hitting that in this workout and then just visualize myself kind of pushing through it and having a successful outcome versus falling apart.’

[: 05:16

And then I find in the race itself you have these… you just get a little more intuitive about pulling from those experiences and doing the right thing versus wasting a bunch of mental energy worrying about what you did and if it was right or wrong. Because the way I like to look at it is kind of your physical battery and your mental battery. If you're in the best shape of your life but you're constantly overthinking things or fixating on something that went wrong or aiming for perfection when that's probably not technically on the table, you have to be ready to respond to stuff. You're just going to drain yourself mentally and then when it comes to the end of the race we really need to call on that. It's not there anymore. So the more things you can kind of do intuitively by rehearsing and training, the better off you're going to be able to kind of do that in the race itself without kind of over fixating on things too much.

[: 06:06

That's fascinating! You're practicing mental robustness and mental resilience before you actually need it. Do you find that… How could someone who, let's say, is not going to be running 100 miles they probably build up 200 miles, right? Individuals do a half marathon, do they? Then they do a marathon and then they do I don't know 50 miles?

[: 06:20

Yeah.

[: 06:21

Do you find that there are strategies? So you mentioned visualization and that seems like visualization when you're going out for a casual three to four hour run for most of us, I would be bitching and complaining by 60 minutes. What are some ways that people can mentally prepare themselves beyond visualization?

[: 06:41

Yeah, I think using your real life scenarios is helpful here, because most people, I think, do these things. They just don't necessarily connect them to ultra running or to anything else. But I think it can be applied where… When you think about it, let's say, you're at work and you get a work project and it's not going to be something you're just going to sit down one day and finish. It's going to be something where you've got steps to it and then by X date, you'll have the finished product at hand. So you know in the back of your mind, this is what the finished product needs to be looking like when it's there. But there's all these components that I need to do in order before I can get there.

[: 07:20

So eventually you kind of just scaffold that out in a way where it's like ‘okay, well, today I do this in order to do what I'm going to do the next day that has to get done. So I'm just going to focus on that and not really worry about those other things’, even though you know they're there waiting for you and that's kind of the same thing you want to do with an ultra marathon. Know that you're doing the distance you're doing, know what you need to be doing, but also breaking it into chunks, and I think those are… that's like an experience that people probably have built into their life somewhere, you know? Anytime you're going to do a long-term project. So I think, using those things and applying them the same way I would for like a hundred miles or whatever else you're trying to do can be helpful, because you sort of have that in your brain. You just need to apply it to a different circumstance essentially.

[: 08:04

And did someone teach you that? Did you read? Was there inspiration for that? Because that is a tough thing to learn.

[: 08:13

Uhum.

[: 08:13

I would say that if it was intuitive, everyone would already be doing that.

[: 08:19

Yeah, I think people… they just go through it mindlessly, essentially because they learn it maybe without thinking about it. So I think that's what running has taught me too is like how you kind of connect those things. So when I got into kind of collegiate running, there's a program there and I had to learn the program to kind of figure out ‘okay, well, what do I got to do, when do I have to do it, why am I doing it?’ And then you realize that none of these single pieces are really going to get you ready entirely, but it's the combination of all of them and you start to see that process work by just improvement, essentially, where you start to trust it. And then I think you can start applying that to other areas. I think for me it was probably unique too, because you know, I was in college for more than just the running side of things, so I'd also…

[: 09:00

What did you study?

[: 09:01

I did… so I kind of switched around a little bit but ultimately I ended up going into education with certifications for regular ed, for social studies and history, and then also special education certifications. So I was what they call dual certified. Yeah, so I kind of was all over with that.

[: 09:17

But what I learned from that too is at the beginning of the semester you'd always get the syllabus which basically outlined everything you'd have to do during the year, and then you had to kind of start figuring out ‘well, where do I put the pieces over the course of a semester to balance this properly so that I'm not doing too much too soon, saving too much for the end and creating like an imbalance and stress and expectations.’ So I sort of had that dual thought process going, both physically with the athletic side of things, but also kind of cognitively with the academic side of things. And having that same process applied to two very different things sort of taught me… well, this is just an application that you can put on basically anything, whether it's your career, sport, hobby, you name it.

[: 09:58

So that's a lot of emotional intelligence. It's really what that sounds like. You know, typically when people do things that are really hard, they are trying to work something out. Do you feel like you chose running and this kind of extreme distance to work something out?

[: 10:15

Yeah, yeah, I mean, when I got into running, originally it was just sort of exploratory in the sense that I had an expectation from my parents and that was that I'd be doing things and they didn't really care what it was, as long as it was ‘I was being involved.’ So, you know, there was the school structure stuff that was more or less mandatory, but then it was extracurricular activities, whether it be football, basketball, baseball, soccer, track and field and things like that. And in middle school we did the presidential physical fitness challenge and then you get kind of an idea of what you're actually good at and what you're not at that age, because there's not a whole lot of training input yet at that age…

[: 10:51

It's like a push-up, sit-ups, and a rope climb.

[: 10:54

I can't remember what the inputs were. I think it was pull-ups, v-sit reach like a shuttle run, which I guess is like sprinting basically, and then a one mile run. And that was the aha moment for me, where it was like ‘oh, you're not just good at sports or bad at sports or average at sports. You're probably good at one, bad at another.’ And when I got dusted by my classmates in the shuttle run and the v-sit reach, but then beat up all of them by a huge margin in the mile. I was like ‘oh, maybe there's something here.’ So that was when I started kind of getting interested in running.

[: 11:25

That's interesting. So that was in middle school and you know, when you say… Do you just dust them, do you just crush everybody?

[: 11:32

Yeah, I mean, I had a really small class so it wasn't like a huge feat by any stretch, but comparatively…

[: 11:36

More than 10 people?

[: 11:38

Yeah, more than more than 10. But, I mean it was more of a comparator to like ‘well, this kid who I beat by a huge margin the mild just smoked me in the sprint and it's like, why is that? Why would I be that much better than him at this and he'd be that much better than me at that?’ So I think I was starting to connect the dots at a pretty early age that there are likely kind of skills that ‘maybe if you lean into, you'll have a little more success than others.’ I still think you can work your way into being pretty good at other things, but to become a professional at a specific aspect, you probably need some kind of natural ability as well.

[: 12:12

What I'm hearing you say is that it really came from the first insight that you were actually… You had more acclimation to running and it was something that you're good at. Were you always competitive?

[: 12:23

Yeah, I mean, at that age it was all about just trying to… you know… I probably had a dual goal with it. It was like I wanted to place well when I could and see where I stacked up against my peers, but I also wanted to improve myself. So anytime I'd do a cross country or track season, it was like ‘yeah, I want to try to take another step in terms of where I finish at, say, the state cross country meet, or I want to try to be able to get onto the college cross country team or track team.’ So there was that kind of competitive side with other people. But then there was also the ‘well, this is the time I ran in this distance last year, how much faster can I get next year?’ So I sort of grew into the sport with that competitive mindset of self-improvement as well as how much can I improve comparatively?

[: 13:07

You know, I always have this conversation with my friends and family because I, you know, I have two little kids, three and five, and one would always ask themselves ‘is it nature or nurture? Are these attributes that individuals are born with, or are these things fostered?’ And I am telling you and I've read a lot of Rich Deviney's work that I think that there is a natural… someone is born a certain way. They maybe have more competitiveness than another or more courage than another, and it just sounds like from a very young age you were very courageous and competitive. Is that fair to say?

[: 13:47

Yeah, I love sports from a very early age and watching them, participating in them. That was a huge driver for me. I like being active. I was really curious about stuff like that too. So you know, sports were just a great outlet for all of that stuff.

[: 14:04

And I think that, you know, when the moments get really dark - I'm sure you have dark moments when you're running.

[: 14:10

Yeah.

[: 14:11

But see, now you're so seasoned that you expect them, right? I mean, would you say that the first five years, the dark moments, are they still as difficult as they were when you first experienced it?

[: 14:24

Yeah, it's interesting because I think it plays out the same way where you're going to hit… I probably had dark moments that were just as dark early on as the dark moments can be now. But now the difference is I can get further before they get to that. So it might be something where, if I look at just the ultra marathon side of my running career, I might hit a low and then kind of concede and then have a subpar finish to a race. Then I might have a race next year where I get to that point, push through, because the darkness wasn't quite as dark as it was the year prior, but I get that spot later on. You're sort of inching things along a little bit in a trajectory where you are able to kind of navigate more of those situations over the course of an event and that'll just get you to the finish line a little bit quicker. And then I think it compounds on itself to the degree to where, for me…

[: 15:20

I've got my best example is probably… I was in really good shape for 100 miles in 2015. And I had this goal of breaking the world record for 100 miles at the time, mainly just because in 2013 I had broke the 12-hour world record and the 100-mile American record and I was close enough to the world record, I was like ‘okay, that's a cool goal, that's something to chase’, and I was in good enough shape to break the world record that day. I paced it just maybe a little too aggressively in hindsight. So the last 20 miles was just… I was ahead of world record pace 20 miles to go and I just slowly saw it slip away and I broke my American record at the time that day still and lowered my 100-mile PR in the process. But I missed the world record by, I think, 11 and a half minutes or something like that.

[: 16:05

So that experience of just kind of seeing that kind of slip away and know that ‘okay, I got that far but I just didn't have quite what it took to stay on’, kind of stuck with me for the next five years while I kind of tried to figure out how to get past that and all of the attempts between then and then in 2019, when I eventually broke the a hundred mile world record and 12 hour world record at the time without those experiences of knowing, ‘okay, you are at this spot where you were last time, can you do it?’

[: 16:40

I don't know I would have necessarily been able to without those prior failures or prior dark points in order to do it. So, yeah, to some degree, I think in the moment you have these dark points or these bad races and things like that, but they end up becoming tools for you at a future race, if you can kind of leverage sort of the aversion of having the same process play out the same way again.

[: 17:05

I think we're talking about ultra marathons, but this is very applicable to life. Which is one of the reasons… Yes, we are talking about ultras and we're going to talk all about how someone would even consider structuring or thinking about that, and also, you've done it as a low carb athlete, which is crazy… But there's a lot of translation over to life. Doing hard things is what cultivates strength and kind of the mindset of a champion, which I do believe can be cultivated. When you're at these dark moments, what goes through your head? Is it about your family? Is it about friends? Is it about self-deprecation? What kind of thing does one think?

[: 17:47

Yeah, you know, a lot of times what I'll do if I hit a dark spot is I'll think to myself ‘is this as bad as I'm perceiving it at the moment?’ Because what I'll try to do before a race is prep myself with… I'm further along than just starting this race. I just went through a huge training phase where most of the time spent for this project is going to be done in those months leading into it. So if I hit a rough spot at, say, 60 miles into 100 miles, your mind wants to go to ‘this is impossible. There's no way I can do 40 more miles.’

[: 18:17

I try to bring my mind back to ‘you're 99% of the way there. You're not 60 miles into a hundred miler. You're a full training cycle which is hundreds of hours of training plus 60 miles. Do you really want to just scrap all of that and try to take another swing and start from the beginning again, or do you want to persevere through this point and then push through and get there?’

[: 18:41

And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I mean you you call on other things, like you mentioned too, where you're thinking of things of just, you know, sacrifices your parents made to give you opportunities when you were a kid and people that have reached out to you and said ‘hey, I saw your interview on Rogan and that got me into running and now I'm in the best shape of my life’ and stuff like that. You think ‘there's someone else watching this right now that is possibly going to be put in that same position if I can be successful here and show that there's a way to make it through the hard spots.

[: 19:15

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[: 20:58

And you did this all at some point in your career… low carb, I think you've been low carb for 13 years… 12 or 13 years. Can you talk to us about what inspired you? Because what we hear out there right now is that you need a tremendous amount of carbohydrates. There's various different recommendations. There's the traditional recommendation for ultra marathons, which, you know, I'd love to hear it, and then there's what you are doing.

[: 21:28

Yeah, yeah. So I got interested in it in around 2011, when I first kind of thought ‘okay, well, maybe there's something to this,’ and that was a lot of just… I was just getting into podcasts at the time, so it was funny because I was teaching full time at that point, so I would wake up at four in the morning, go for a two hour run, go to school, sometimes do a workout in the afternoon. After that, you know, have dinner, basically go to bed, rinse and repeat during the school year. It was pretty… I coach too sometimes, so you get some long days in there. So I started thinking to myself, I was like ‘there's gotta be something else I can do that's interesting inside of this without sacrificing any more sleep.’ And the first thing…

[: 22:04

How much sleep were you getting?

[: 22:07

I was actually sleeping fairly decently. I was probably getting seven to eight hours a night still at that point. You know, I'd have days that were a little bit worse than others and then some that were better, but I wasn't a terrible sleeper. I did have some stretches, though, before I switched to low carb, where I would wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to fall back asleep.

[: 22:27

Because you were hungry or…

[: 22:28

Probably yeah, who knows? Stress, lifestyle, probably unsustainable lifestyle, is most likely what was going on there and I was just young enough to tolerate it for the most part, you know you're in your early 20s, mid-20s, you can…

[: 22:42

You can do it. And how old are you now?

[: 22:43

38. I turned 39 in January.

[: 22:45

Congratulations. And how long is it… I mean, listen, I think Goggins is probably 40, in his mid forties. 47 or something.

[: 22:54

Yeah, he might even be 50 almost at this point.

[: 22:57

Age doesn't seem to be a barrier…

[: 23:02

Yeah, I mean, the current world records for a hundred miles are on the women's and men's side, are both in their early forties, so same with the 24 hour. I think it's something where the intensity of race day is low enough where what you're having, say, your top end of your aerobic system be fully peaked out, isn't as necessary and to some degree having, in my case, decades of running experience, both from a foundational physiological standpoint but also just ‘oh, I kind of know what to do in this situation’ and make less mistakes, I think lends itself to maybe having a little bit of a longer career than maybe what you would see in some of the more Olympic distance stuff. Whether that'll change when more competitive pressure comes into the sport or not is a big question, but I think, just based on intensity, you're probably going to see a longer, if you can stay healthy, a longer game.

[: 23:52

You know, it's interesting… and then I want to circle back to the low carb. When you say intensity, I'm just thinking ‘I don't even think my joints could handle that, right?’ Because, you know, I'm curious as to… if someone just starts running, right? I mean, the VO2 max or that cardiovascular output, I don't know. Your pace was six, six and a half, minutes per mile for 50 to 100 miles?

[: 24:21

Yeah, so for me that's probably… At the time I think I'd done some tests in optimal conditions and I was getting around the really low six, maybe occasionally popping into the high five minute mile pace, right at my aerobic threshold. So for me to do a hundred miles at a 6.47, which moving pace is probably closer to 6.40… You know, there's a buffer there between the intensity I'm going and my aerobic threshold. So I sort of have a sustainable energy system that I'm using for that. And then it's just about ‘how do I prepare my body to be able to tolerate the pounding and those variables long enough to be able to still be doing it at 100 miles, versus the wheels coming off at 80 or 70 or wherever they happen to do that?’

[: 25:08

Tell me about your nutrition before you went on a low-carb diet and then after.

[: 25:13

Okay, yeah. So I mean I was doing pretty traditional endurance fueling. I got into… I started taking nutrition a little more seriously in college where I thought to myself, ‘well, if I'm going to be doing all this work training and preparing, then I should probably focus on that side of things as well.’ So I did basic, moderate to high carbohydrate, lots of grains, fruits, vegetables, that sort of stuff.

[: 25:36

And is there one… Is there a certain gram per pound? Is it something like, I don't know, 10 calories from carbs or 10 grams of carbohydrates per…

[: 25:48

Yeah, there's recommendations for that. It's going to change from distance to distance to some degree. But yeah, it is a pretty wide range, but I mean it's up to 10 grams per pound is what the kind of higher end of what you'll usually see in a lot of those recommendations, per kilogram, usually always in kilograms. So yeah, I mean that puts you in a position where there's no way around moderate at that point. For carbohydrates you're either moderate or high, so…

[: 26:13

Do you remember the gram amount that you did?

[: 26:15

That I was doing at that time? That's a good question. I was probably getting at least, probably at least 2,000 to 2,500 calories of carbohydrate per day back in that phase where I was probably training between 70 to 100 miles per week. You know, that's probably consuming anywhere in the neighborhood with 3,500 calories per day.

[: 26:41

So that's about 600 grams of carbs.

[: 26:43

Yeah. And then I just transitioned that into ultra running when I kind of went that direction versus kind of the more standard distances, and that's when I decided to change, actually. I did about two years of ultra marathon running, following that kind of same principle, by just kind of extrapolating it out to ‘all right, I'm burning energy.’ It gets a little more polarizing when you get into ultra running because it's… or more imbalanced to some degree where you might have a day where you do back-to-back long runs and I burn four or five, maybe 6,000 calories in a day like that, and then I might have a rest day where I'm just at resting metabolic rate. So it gets a little goofier, I think, and I would usually… I mean I'd have days where I'd be well above that and then I'd have days where…

[: 27:33

Well above 600 grams of carbs? And that's what you were doing before you went low-carb or that stuff. And how did you… First of all, that's a lot of carbs… For let's say a non-exercising person, just in general, is 130 grams.

[: 27:47

Right.

[: 27:47

Average american eats 300. And Zach, you were topping off at least at the minimum. 2xing that, which is a lot. But if you look at your body composition, I'm curious, as if it changed. So how much do you weigh?

[: 28:04

I'm usually about 140, 145 pounds.

[: 28:07

And you're very lean. Have you always been this lean?

[: 28:17

Yeah, I mean I'm probably a little leaner in the last few years than I was in college or my first part of an ultra running, but not by a tremendous amount, maybe a percentage point or two.

[: 28:22

But the fascinating part is because, again, nutrition is very divisive and there's probably multiple ways to get something done, but there are, you know, a handful of ways to be healthy while doing it.

[: 28:36

For sure.

[: 28:37

How and why did you decide to go low carb? Did you crash and burn on a race, did you…

[: 28:45

Yeah, that's a good question. So, I was racing pretty well for the time period of where I was at in my career. I was only doing 50 milers at that point, though.

[: 28:52

Only 50 milers…

[: 28:53

Only 50, only an ultra running, can you say only 50 miles, right? But yeah, so I was doing kind of that standard approach and you know, on a race day that would be… I'd probably have somewhere around 400, maybe 500 calories worth of carbohydrate per hour on a race that would usually…

[: 29:08

Say that again…

[: 29:09

Four to 500 calories per hour, almost all carbohydrate, maybe trace amounts of protein and fat.

[: 29:14

And that's changed right? The recommendation now is… there's a two to one ratio. I think. Is that…

[: 29:21

Yeah, the ultra running position statement right now would suggest around… You know, it started out at 50 to 70 grams. I think it's starting to skew up, actually closer to 60 to 80 grams of carbohydrate.

[: 29:32

Okay.

[: 29:32

And then what they usually say for a single day ultra, you should probably have 75 to 85% of that be carbohydrate and then 15 to 25% of that be some blend of fats and proteins.

[: 29:43

Interesting. Because it seems like you would really be catabolic, that you have to maintain that tissue.

[: 29:49

Yeah, yeah, I think that's probably where the protein comes in where they're looking at ‘well, if you're gonna be out here for 24 plus hours, in some cases, you probably should have some protein,’ even though you're not necessarily asking everybody to burn the protein, you're eating necessarily.

[: 30:03

And is that just during the race day, or is that just throughout all of training?

[: 30:07

Yeah, that's just race day recommendations.

[: 30:10

So what happened? Why did you switch to a low carb diet initially?

[: 30:17

Yeah, it was kind of a perfect storm of things. So, like I was saying, I started looking for other things to do while I was running in the morning.

[: 30:21

Just bored…

[: 30:22

Yeah, so I started listening to podcasts and I came across Dr. Finney and Dr Volick's work and I was like, ‘okay, this is super interesting’. Because these guys aren't just… I was sort of familiar with low carbohydrate diet because my dad had played around with the Atkins diet when I was younger and I remember that. I remember him eating eggs and bacon and stuff instead of whatever else we would say…

[: 30:41

Well, you are from Wisconsin and it's kind of lots of cheese and stuff there.

[: 30:46

Yeah, no kidding, right? So I guess that was… I kind of passively knew of it, but I had… It was such an afterthought. I had never thought of it until I heard Finney and Volick talking about it again. And then they… the unique thing is at that point they had just published their book on... They had their low carbohydrate lifestyle book and then for performance book. So I was like, ‘okay, well, that's interesting for performance’. So I read that and was like ‘that's really interesting’. Uh, I was kind of curious about trying it out.

[: 31:13

At the same time, I just finished a race season where I'd done three 50 milers in the fall of slash winter of 2011. So I was entering an off-season and when I was looking back at the training, the racing and everything, I was noticing that I wasn't feeling super sustainable with it. My racing was going alright, my training was going well, but, you know, energy levels were pretty unpredictable, where I'd wake up in the morning, feel pretty good, get my workout in, but then during the day it was kind of a roller coaster of energy levels, starting to notice more sleep interruptions, like I was mentioning before, where I'd be ‘okay, I'm going to carve out extra sleep time just so I make sure I get close to eight hours,’ and that just didn't seem… I remember thinking at times ‘I got to figure something out.’ Maybe I need to change the way I'm training, maybe lifestyle or something. I was really enjoying it. I was new to it too. I'm young and resilient. So I was like ‘I don't really want to switch up the training inputs if I don't have to.’

[: 32:11

And were you designing these? Because ultras at that time people, I mean…

[: 32:16

It was a wild, wild west, yeah.

[: 32:18

Yeah, I mean it seems like back then you say you're doing an ultra… nobody knows what that is.

[: 32:23

Yeah it's pretty much anecdotes in terms of how to prepare, how to race and everything. There wasn't even a position statement at the time for fueling necessarily. It was a lot of curiosity, was kind of the name of the game back then, because you kind of had to. And I remember thinking like - I don't know where I heard this first -, it's like ‘you don't change something drastic in season, wait to do it in the off-season.’ So I was in an off-season like ‘well, now's the time to try this, if I'm going to’. And my mindset was just like ‘well, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work and I can always just go back and it won't be that big of a consequence.’ So I went pretty strict ketogenic for about a month during my off-season.

[: 33:05

And for the listener that's 70, is it 70 to 75% fat?

[: 33:13

Yeah, at the time I was just trying to get under 50 grams per day, but yeah, technically I was a four to one fat, protein ratio is a pretty good target for someone who wants to do kind of a strict therapeutic ketogenic diet.

[: 33:25

Yeah, so that was my first… I dove into that and I actually felt pretty good pretty soon, I didn't have a crazy transition phase like what you sometimes hear, and I think some of that's just because I probably had quite a bit higher than average fat oxidation rate capabilities from just the endurance training because that's a driver in and of itself. You can be on a high carbohydrate diet, introduce endurance training. You'll improve fat oxidation rates. In fact, that's one of the arguments against low carbohydrate. They'll say you don't need to do that because that lever is being pulled enough with training and the lifestyle. But at that time I was curious, wanted to try it. I did and I started feeling better in my day-to-day life pretty quick, within a week, started sleeping through the night. Some of that might have been because I was facing an off-season too, but it sort of continued into when I started training specifically again and adding the structure back.

[: 34:17

So what was… when you were doing the ketogenic diet, that was for a month? Were you still training? So was your off-season training just a random marathon type of situation?

[: 34:25

It was a little lighter. I basically just had no structure. So if I felt like running I'd go for a run and if it was no fun at a certain point I'd stop. I didn't force myself to do anything, so it was maybe a couple of weeks off of running entirely and a couple of weeks where I was running maybe at 50, 60% volume of what I normally would do.

[: 34:42

Which would be… what would be a normal volume? 75 miles?

[: 34:46

Yeah, the best way to probably think about it is over the course of a year, I probably average about a hundred miles per week, maybe a little over on big years, a little under on lower volume years.

[: 34:58

Did you ever worry about cardiomyopathy?

[: 35:00

No, I probably should have, but…

[: 35:04

I know a doctor for that. We can check because that's one of the biggest things that we hear, you know, is that… don't run more than X number of miles per week, but you don't, you don't worry about that, and do you guys hear about issues with that within the sport?

[: 35:19

Yeah, it's not something that's not talked about. I mean, there's a lot of debate around whether it's ‘okay, there's a risk factor here, but is it a risk factor above and beyond what a typical person is going to do?’

[: 35:33

A typical athlete.

[: 35:34

Yeah, a typical athlete is probably a better comparator. I mean, there's just so little research on ultra runners. It's like who knows?

[: 35:41

I know. So, again looking at the data here, there's just not a ton of data for ultra marathon…

[: 35:48

Right, there's much better data for marathon runners. So we tend to kind of extrapolate out to similar lifestyles when we can. Or triathlon is another one where they've had a lot of funding in the past. Pro cycling is another one they've had a lot of funding in the past. So I think we as a community, we usually pull from a lot of those areas when it comes to these things. And I think anytime you're gonna do something a little bit crazy, like run an ultra marathon, you're probably…

[: 36:14

Or have kids…

[: 36:15

Yeah, exactly. There's gonna be some risk factors involved. So the way I look at that is like I'm not of the mentality of ‘I'm going to try to live to be a hundred or whatever’. I'm not looking to die early if I can help it, but I'm also looking to enjoy what I'm doing while I'm here. So to a large degree it's like ‘how do I make this the… how do I lower all the other risk factors as much as possible in the presence of a lifestyle that is probably excessive?’ and wherever that trade-off lies, it lies, I guess.

[: 36:46

I mean, it sounds good to me because I think that you show me a life where someone has really felt that there's a ton of meaning. It's never easy. It just isn't. You can define your hard… whether it's physical, mental, whatever it is… I would say a life of meaning is definitely one with challenges, whether you take yourself to the challenge or the challenge comes to you it is about… I think the human spirit thrives on adversity, whether self-imposed or otherwise.

[: 37:15

I cope too, because there's 80-year-olds in the sport, so I'm just ‘oh well that's…’

[: 37:20

Are there really? There's only three, right? There's only three.

[: 37:22

The funny thing is, I did the 100 mile us road championships a few years ago, and one of the big storylines that year is because they have their age categories too, where you can compete outright and then you can compete for your age group, the age group for 80+ that year, there was four guys in it. So it's like you could finish a hundred miles at age 80 and not even be on the podium for your age group in that particular event.

[: 37:45

Unbelievable.

[: 37:46

So they're out there.

[: 37:48

So you transitioned the first month. You felt pretty good.

[: 37:51

Yeah.

[: 37:53

And then what happened? Because this is counter to…

[: 37:59

It's breaking all the rules, breaking all the rules. Yeah, so I introduced… Usually, what I'll do when I start adding structure back, it's low intensity and then I'll have strength work too, that I'm kind of weaving in there, but it's low intensity running for the most part for a while.

[: 38:10

Define low intensity.

[: 38:12

So, what most people call zone two or below your aerobic threshold, and I'm just reintegrating the volume into the running and just confirming kind of where I'm at from a fitness standpoint at that intensity…

[: 38:23

And is ultra - sorry to interrupt - is ultra… It seems like this would be much more scientific, that you have to get these numbers right and you have to put the pieces together rather than just going out and running it, right? Because, just from the distance perspective. Is that true?

[: 38:40

Yeah, to the degree that we can. I think even running in general, there's a lot of theory versus hard, firm facts in terms of proper ways to go about things. So there's things that I feel more comfortable or confident in, that's just been sort of standardized over the years, that I would be surprised if we find out like a decade down the road ‘oh, that was a terrible idea and you should be doing it completely differently’. I think some of that stuff is there, but there's a lot of wiggle room within it, and the way I usually look at it from a philosophy standpoint is: rule one is you want to be a very fit runner. You don't necessarily want to be like someone who has a speed or strength deficiency to a high degree at the expense of just going out and doing ultra marathon specific stuff all the time.

[: 39:24

What do you mean by that?

[: 39:25

So, if I were to prepare for a 5k, I would end that training phase by doing a lot of short intervals, kind of close to or around my VO2 max or close to like 5k performance.

[: 39:36

So let's discuss that, because zone two is having its moment where everybody loves zone two. But one of the best ways to train up zone two is somewhat high intensity. Yeah, let's talk about that.

[: 39:49

Yep, I think there's tools, and they tend to be specific intensities and they're all important. But what you want to do is you want to think of it kind of in two specific things. One is: what are you racing… What is the intensity that you're going to race at? And then ordering those intensities that you do in an order of least specific to most specific.

[: 40:17

Least specific to most specific. Okay, so give me an example.

[: 40:18

Yeah, so for 100 miles most specific would be kind of that zone two and below for the most part. So that's going to be your long runs that are done at kind of goal race intensity. And then least specific is going to be your traditional VO2 max workout, you know, maybe like a four minute by four minute or four minutes on, four minutes off at your VO2 max, something similar to that. So it's not that that is unimportant, it's just not specific to what you'll actually be doing on race day. At no point in a hundred miler will I be touching my VO2 max.

[: 40:46

At no point? Okay.

[: 40:49

At no point. But working my VO2 max early in the plan so that I'm in a position to get as much quality out of my zone to work when I get around to doing that as my primary focus is still valuable.

[: 41:02

Interesting.

[: 41:03

So I'll do a speed work development phase earlier on in training. Like maybe, I might finish a speed work development phase and I'm still eight to 10 weeks out from my race.

[: 41:12

What is a speed work development phase? And would every… so the person listening to this, for example, myself, who wants to improve VO2 max. Maybe it's not translatable, but are there sections of this that one could say, ‘okay, well, you should do this, because this component might be really healthy for everybody.’

[: 41:33

Yeah, yeah. I think that what you want to do is… there's kind of two things here. There's kind of population level recommendations in terms of ‘what do you need? What do you need to be kind of like a well-rounded runner or fit within your aerobic system?’ And then there's ‘where are your strengths and weaknesses?’ That may be somewhat genetic, but also probably training.

[: 41:53

I actually also believe that there's genetic capacity.

[: 41:57

We've got some good examples of, maybe, where training theory would diverge based on a person's genetic kind of makeup that are really interesting. But the way I look at it is like you're going to need everything from…. If we want to really simplify it, I would kind of look at training intensities as easy, moderate, hard. And easy is basically up to your aerobic threshold or this crossover point where now it's not something that you feel like, you just do forever and it's a little more of a challenge there, but it's still pretty sustainable. You can do it for an hour plus in a lot of cases and then you kind of get out of that moderate into hard. Now you're kind of in that VO2 max category where, ‘this is intensity, that's pretty sharp, sustain it for like maybe nine, 12, 15 minutes at the most’. So it's pretty short lasting.

[: 42:47

As far as the endurance world is concerned, effort and those are all going to be important to work on, but you want to work on them in a way that's going to be the best value for you and where you're at, and in an order that's going to be best positioning for you, for what you're trying to perform.

So if you're not doing an event, it actually simplifies things to some degree, because then you can just look at ‘well, where are my weaknesses here?’ Because I want to shore those up first and then I can start working on maybe a little more of a balanced approach or some of the strengths. So if someone comes to me and we look at their profile and it's like ‘oh, your low intensity category is huge…

[: 43:26

Let's take my husband for example. And then, again, we have to talk about the nutrition, because that was one of the reasons why I was just so fascinated in what you've accomplished because you've done it so much on the fringe.

[: 43:33

So if we take someone like my husband who has no time to train, I'm probably outing him because he's supposed to be training. This is a guy who probably can only train on the weekends for the most part, and I think a lot of the listeners would say’ you know what? I can get a couple hours in during the week’, but what is a beginner training person look like? Or someone who can only train on the weekends?

[: 44:00

Yeah. So I think you still want to start out with low intensity stuff, so they kind of have that foundation in place and then start layering the speed work on top of that. But for Shane, for example, he would… he didn't come to me with zero running experience either. So when you have someone who's not totally new to it, you might want to explore what they have already done so that you're not redoing things that don't necessarily need to be redone. Because, ultimately, when you shorten your volume, the volume at which you're able to train, you're probably going to benefit, at least in the short term, doing something that is going to be a little higher on the intensity spectrum between like those VO2 max or those moderate, which we call lactate threshold type training sessions. So for Shane, Shane's actually really unique because he's moving a lot at work. He's not sitting at a desk.

[: 44:44

So do you track movements? When you're working with clients, you want to figure out how much they're actually moving?

[: 44:51

Yeah, because you get some interesting ones. I had a guy once who… he would cover almost 60 miles a week just going back and forth between his truck and freezers and restaurants, because he was delivering stuff, and I was like ‘okay, well, we don't need to do a ton of zone two work for you, we're better off doing kind of long intervals and short intervals at moderate and high intensities, because that's what you're lacking, that's where we can actually improve you.’

[: 45:09

And that's probably where most people are at, right? Most people are getting up, walking around, and then, do you have them use modalities to track?

[: 45:23

Yeah, a lot of times it's just wearables like GPS watches and things like that, or Apple watches in a lot of cases, if they're not runners. Yeah, you can kind of figure out that stuff a lot easier nowadays than… In the past you just kind of had to explore, like ‘what does your lifestyle look like? What are you doing? Tell me what you do when you wake up.’

[: 45:32

How long have you been coaching now?

[: 45:34

I've been coaching for ultra since around 2015.

[: 45:37

Okay, so almost 10 years now.

[: 45:41

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[: 46:15

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[: 46:47

When you take someone who is… so go back to my husband chain, who is actually moving a lot, you would say that… and for the listener that they're already doing probably a lot of zone two but low volume.

[: 46:58

Yeah, so, and I get that a lot too, with ultra runners coming, because a lot of them are… they're running ultras for a reason. They like that workout, right? They like to go and run long on the weekends and just cruise forever.

[: 47:07

They definitely don't have kids, or jobs.

[: 47:09

They don't have kids or jobs, or they get a really nice stroller to push and bring the kids with them, but yeah… So a lot of times it is ‘we're going to improve you by not doubling down something they've already exhausted…’ because a lot of times they're out of time too. Like Shane's a fairly unique situation. But, say they're training 10 hours per week and it's all low intensity, I'm not going to likely be able to say, ‘okay, we can get you to improve by getting you to train that same intensity for 12 hours a week.’ That probably would improve them. But they don't have another two hours. So for them it's like ‘where's the opportunity cost for them: by doing more of the same or continuing to do what they're already adapted to versus adding a new stimulus that's going to improve them within that time frame they have?’

[: 47:51

So for them, I might have them do a speed work development phase where we do short intervals pinned to their VO2 max, long intervals pinned to their lactate threshold and kind of pull that whole system up. So then if we decide… Let's say, we do an eight to 12 week speed development phase, now we go back to them running those easy 10 hours per week, they're doing it faster but at the same intensity. So that run feels the same as it did prior but they're doing it quicker. So now we can improve their fitness by just doing that 10 hours of low intensity, if we want, because they're getting more quality out of it by essentially running it quicker.

[: 48:27

Is that the idea of the junk cardio where people do cardio?

[: 48:31

Yeah.

[: 48:32

When you say, you know, for the average person who's already kind of in the gym doing 10 hours a week of, say, cardiovascular activity, marathon, type things. I don't know if that would take 10 hours or if it would take longer, but adding in these short intervals. And then you said lactate threshold, so maybe…

[: 48:53

Definitions on this stuff?

[: 48:54

Yeah, for the listener, and then, you know, I'm not letting you off the hook. We got to talk even more about the diet because that's what everyone wants to know. Well, mostly me, because I've never even met someone who is an ultra marathon.

[: 49:09

Yeah, well, this will be important too because it'll kind of frame why I do with my diet. But yeah, so essentially, if we look at the way I like to do is I like to look at time-based intensities, because that sort of normalizes it for the person. It standardizes it because it gets a little messy when we're starting to look at physiological shifts. We want to get close. But at the end of the day, the intensity spectrum isn't just clear cutoff points. It's just if you increase your training load you're going to get adaptations.

[: 49:36

It's about maximizing the opportunity by not overdoing certain things and underdoing others or misapplying things. So it doesn't have to be this exact precise beat per minute or minute per mile in most cases. But people need to learn what it feels like to be running at specific intensities and then apply it properly so that they are stressing and recovering at the right rate. So when I talk about lactate threshold, I'm essentially talking about intensity a person could do about 60 minutes on a race day setting, and we'll do things like field tests to kind of identify that. Or if they've had a recent race, we can use that as well. VO2 max or short intervals that's going to be pinned to an intensity they can do for right around 12 minutes. Same thing, we can do some race experiences or some field tests…

[: 50:20

12 minutes at one time?

[: 50:21

Yep, yep, so good, hard push for 12 minutes. It's a pretty tough workout. Not a fun one.

[: 50:23

Oh terrible.

[: 50:26

Not a fun one, but really what I'm trying to do with that is, rather than getting super precise is let's identify what it feels like to work hard, work moderate and then work easy, and then let's apply those intensities at the right times, in the right places, at the right dosages so that we see your pace at any of those intensities get better, because that's really where the truth of the matter is. If the coaching is effective, they're going to get faster, and if they're not, then we need to change something so that that happens.

[: 50:55

And when you say - so, obviously the heart is the 12 minute and then the lactate threshold is moderate, and then easy would be just go have fun.

[: 51:02

Yeah. So the way I like to do it is like when I'm doing short intervals it's usually a one-to-one work to rest ratio. So that can be a lot of times between two to four minutes where it might be two minutes on two minutes off, four minutes on four minutes off. But they're doing that harder intensity at that 12 minute pace, and then they're taking a real easy in between that. So they're feeling ready for the next one. The long intervals, since it's a little bit lower on the intensity spectrum, we go two to one work to rest ratio. So for every two minutes of work, one minute of rest. So that might be eight minutes on four minutes off, eight minutes on four minutes off. It could be 12 minutes on six minutes off, 12 minutes on six minutes off. We're just trying to hit that intensity in that two to one work to rest ratio.

[: 51:39

And then, easy category is basically anything that is going to be below their aerobic threshold. So if they go into a lab and get a metabolic heart test done, we can actually look at a little more precision with these things and know ‘okay, here's your VO2 max intensity, here's your lactate threshold intensity, here's your aerobic threshold intensity and your heart rates that coincide with those things’, and kind of build a plan that way. If we don't have access to that, then we just use the field tests and then we kind of start working with it. There's things that we can figure out as we get into the training to identify if they're truly doing it at the right intensity or not. But realistically it's like ‘I'm gonna have to do the bulk of their training, likely in that lower intensity and then…’

[: 52:26

When you say bulk, would you say 80% of someone's training volume should be a zone two type of training and then 20% is some form or variation of the other type.

[: 52:29

Right, and then how you define what training is gets a little bit different from person to person. So someone like Shane, we could look at it and… he's probably got a higher percentage of modern high intensity then that would be when he's actually out there doing his runs. But then we look at his lifestyle as a whole. He's getting probably a lot of zone one work, going up and down stairs and moving around and stuff like that in his... So if we actually include that then it's probably closer to that 80 plus percent.

[: 52:54

And this is all cardiovascular activity. Is there room for weights and…?

[: 52:58

Yes.

[: 52:59

And where would someone begin to put that in and how would they think about? Are they lifting for hypertrophy? Are they lifting for strength? Are we just lifting to maintain their body weight?

[: 53:09

Yeah, I think most runners are going to benefit from doing heavier weight stuff, because a lot of times we're just doing more of the same. I think there's… if they have the time for it, there's some value in some single leg, more kind of just balance and coordination type movements that are going to be a little more in the higher rep range at times. But if someone came to me and was like, ‘hey, I want to do some strength training, that's going to really move the needle for me and running for performance. I've got like 30 minutes per week.’ Then we're going to do the heavier compound lifts and probably even a three to maybe up to 10 rep range.

[: 53:43

And do you feel like that really moves the needle? If you were to pick… so you have your foundation of running, and then you were to pick your next activity to improve performance and robustness. What would that be?

[: 53:52

Yeah, I think so. I think like if and this is where I like to use off-season a lot of times, because usually then you have a little more time because you're not doing as much running and then we can lay a foundation where they're going into their training stronger and with a little more power than they would if they didn't do it and then just probably be more durable. So then really, at the end of the day, consistency is probably the biggest indicator of improvement if you span out long enough from a timeline. So if I have them strong and more durable going into a training phase, even if we're not able to actually continue the addition of that during their training, at least we have them at a good spot to be able to tolerate it and be less injury prone, less inconsistent with their training, because they're not dealing with things popping up that could have been prevented with just strong, strong physique.

[: 54:37

How long is a training season?

[: 54:40

It can be as long as 24 weeks if they have a lot of upfront aerobic stuff to develop. But if they're already done that, if they've… ‘I've been running a ton and I just haven't done anything specific’, 16 weeks is usually enough to do a speed work development phase and then a peaking phase.

[: 54:56

And how many races would someone run? So it's different, right? If you're going to run an ultra marathon, how many ultras could one run in a year versus 50, versus a marathon?

[: 55:10

Yeah, I think realistically you could probably do two or three at a really high caliber, where you're really going to the well and just wringing yourself dry. But I do this. A lot of other entrepreneurs will do. This is… they'll do more than that. But they'll be like kind of lower goal tier races where they're not going to max out. We're not going to taper them nearly as much and our goal really is just to get them experience in the setting and get essentially a high quality long run in. So it might be something like ‘I'm training for a hundred miler in June but I'm starting the training in January.’ I might do… I'm going to do that 100 mile as the key race, but I might do two or three ultras in between there in place of a long run to kind of work my way up to that hundred mile distance.

[: 55:51

Sounds like fun. Tell me about how you think about, again, nutrition, because, to run that, there's a lot of skepticism, even right now, about low carbohydrate diets and maybe even low carb in performance and then, of course, low carb in health and wellness.

[: 56:08

Yeah, yeah. So when I got into it, it was very kind of stigmatized in the endurance world, like you didn't hardly see anybody doing it, not even in ultra running, barely. There was a guy who was actually really doing well at the time, Tim Olson, who was kind of skewing more lower carb. So there were some examples out there, but it was very rare. You certainly weren't seeing it at kind of Olympic distance stuff. You know carbo loading was all the rage, so I was definitely kind of out on an island to some degree with that. So at that point I was a lot more, a little more like an activist based with it, because I was like ‘okay, I found something that worked for me. I'm going to tell people about it, because people need to know about this, like whether it works for them or not, at least they'll hear about it and see an example where it worked.’

[: 56:53

And how many… again you were eating a lot of calories, right? Between four to 6,000 calories, so define low carb for the audience from an ultra perspective.

[: 57:05

Yeah, and this is where I shifted kind of my initial approach. So when I started I was pretty strictly ketogenic and it was just like…

[: 57:13

I can't even believe that because that's… That's 70 some percent fat. I don't care how many calories you're eating. That is, that's a lot of fat.

[: 57:21

I've actually found it kind of a little bit of a relief at the time, because at that point I was at my highest training volume of my life, so I was eating as much as I ever was. You get sick of eating. It's kind of like competitive eating at that point where it's like, you know… you lose the desire for it at a certain point.

[: 57:36

What were you eating? Were you just eating pizza or…?

[: 57:39

All sorts of stuff, yeah, yeah. A lot of… I mean I was relatively healthy with it. I wasn't trying to eat a lot of junk, but I mean, you know, a lot of grains, a lot of fruits…

[: 57:50

Even on the ketogenic diet?

[: 57:51

Oh no, on the ketogenic diet I wasn't eating any of that stuff, for the most part, at least early on. So on the ketogenic side of things it got a little easier actually, because now I'm dealing with nine kilocalories per gram. It just fits in your stomach better. So I was doing… I've had a ton of different inputs and this might be a fun topic too, just like what I put within the macronutrient targets I've had over the years.

[: 58:13

Let's hear it.

[: 58:13

Because… That's why that's ranged widely. But, you know, I've done everything from mostly animal-based to mostly plant-based and everything in between, in terms of what those inputs were, and I think that's why it's been sustainable for me is because, if I get kind of tired of a… I like consistency. So, once I kind of figure out like ‘okay, here's maybe 12 to 15 foods that I really am enjoying right now. How do I place them in here to fit my macronutrient target?’ And I'll run that for a training cycle, maybe two, maybe three, if it's really motivating and I'm enjoying it. But eventually I'll be like ‘okay, I'm ready for something different’, and then I'll pick different stuff to plug into there. So you know, over the years I've just gotten curious with where those have all come from. The consistency thing through all of it is like the way I target the different macronutrients during it though.

[: 58:58

So when I first started with strict keto for a while, once I added structure back to my training and got out of that kind of base development phase where it's all low intensity stuff, I started introducing a speeder development phase. What I found was what I thought was a flaw in the system. I feel really good on these easy runs but when I try to move up into the higher intensity stuff, I notice a bit of a fall off. It's not necessarily for one specific workout, but if I would try to stack the volume I would have in the past I would see like a limiter there. So, for example, if I went out and did one VO2 max workout, that one work to rest ratio, probably not a problem.

[: 59:36

Because that's only what? 12 minutes?

[: 59:38

Yeah, it's pretty short. Yeah, it might be. The workout itself might be something like five by three minutes, so it's not a tremendous amount of volume. I probably had plenty of reserves to just do it without introducing a carbohydrate source. But what I would find is, if I would continue to do that week after week, I would start running into lower quality anyway…

[: 59:56

And you would define that by just not being able to…

[: 59:59

…Not as fast at the given intensity. So it feels the same, but it feels like I'm just not moving quite as quick. So, maybe I go out to a track. One loop would take me 70 seconds typically. Now it's taken me like 73, 74 seconds, but it felt the same. So, that was the point where I was like ‘okay, well, maybe this isn't the path for at least for this phase of training.’ So I introduced some carbohydrates back and that cleared it up for me essentially.

[: 01:00:27

What did you introduce and how much?

[: 01:00:32

It was… So what I started to do is I just started bringing back kind of some of my race fuel, like what I would use in races, so just sports products basically, like your sports drinks, gels, that sort of stuff, and I would just introduce it kind of before and during those sessions, and then I would tend to perform better in them.

[: 01:00:46

So then it was sort of playing around with… Because I wasn't really necessarily looking to be doing sports products all the time. So I was like ‘well, maybe if I just introduced these products or carbohydrate based products at a little bit of a higher percentage kind of around those particular workouts, I'll be able to execute those workouts.’ So it kind of became this process of targeting the right fuel source at the right time and then it could kind of range the way my training would. My training will shift, so will my nutrition to some degree. So off-season: more strict, keto. Base building: I might introduce a little more carbohydrate, not a tremendous amount, but somewhere prior around 10% of my intake from carbohydrates.

[: 01:01:26

Is that a hundred grams of carbs?

[: 01:01:28

Usually 150 grams or so for a kind of a lower intensity phase of training. And then when I get into a speed work development phase, now I have a real polarizing schedule where I might have a rest day or an easy day, but then I might have a really higher intensity day or a couple of them, usually if I'm in a real speed work development phase. So then what I started doing is I would start borrowing carbohydrates from other days, so say I'm doing short intervals on Tuesdays…

[: 01:01:54

That's interesting. So you think about it from a week perspective?

[: 01:01:57

Yeah, multi-day. I sort of just got rid of the idea of like ‘this thing resets every 24 hours’ and started thinking of it as like ‘how do I maximize the fuel source for the work I'm doing?’ So if I had an easy run or a rest day, I might stick to that stricter ketogenic protocol and have very little to no carbohydrates on a day like that so that would be 50 or less, and then I might be doing short intervals on Tuesday and Thursday, and so I might have sometimes two… I've had days where I've had close to 300 grams of carbohydrates on days like that.

[: 01:02:25

What's the highest, now that you are still doing more of a… Are you now more animal based? Where are you at?

[: 01:02:34

I'm probably about 50/50 plants. I might skew a little higher from a calorie standpoint on animal based, just because that tends to be more calorically dense when you start getting into that world. But yeah, I mean, I started out mostly plant-based with a lot of oils, a lot of non-starchy vegetables and things like that as vehicles for the oils and stuff like that. And then I played around with like a few different iterations of that. Then I did a really, really high animal based approach for a few years where it was like 80, 90% animal products, very little plant product, and then…

[: 01:03:07

Give us an example of a day of that.

[: 01:03:09

For the animal-based side of things? Yeah, it'd be a lot of fatty meats, basically ribeyes, fatty ground beef. I find it works really well, because you can always just add fat to that too. You can add butter to it or things like that and just raise the fat content quite a bit. I mean, it was like… it's pretty cut and dry with that stuff. It was just a lot of red meats, a lot of butters. So I do okay with dairy, so I would do like heavy creams and things like that, cheeses and stuff.

[: 01:03:38

And was the argument… Did you get pushbacks saying ‘okay, well, how are you going to actually perform on that?’

[: 01:03:45

I didn't get as much pushback at that point because at that point I'd been doing low carb for probably almost six or seven years, so people had already run all the 'this isn't going to work for you’ arguments past me.

[: 01:03:58

There's my world record…

[: 01:04:01

Right, right. Yeah, so it was like one of those things where I wasn't a strict carnivore. You know, I did still have like my low… the easy way to maybe describe it is like: my carbohydrate intake probably ranges from maybe five percent to upwards to maybe 20 percent, depending on what phase of training I'm in and I still maintained that during the animal based side of things, I was just kind of supplementing the remainder with things like potatoes or fruit and stuff like that. So, I wasn't strict. I've never been a strict carnivore for more than a couple of weeks in an off-season, but I've been like most of my energy coming from animal based products, with just small supplementation of carbohydrate sources to kind of hit those macronutrient ratios.

[: 01:04:44

I was looking for that to fit the mold, because by the time I got around to even trying animal-based, I had already rinsed and repeated the whole… ‘This is what I do in my off-season. This is what I do during speed development phase. This is what I do during my long-run peaking phase’, to the degree that I was very confident in my targets from a macronutrient standpoint and I wasn't really looking to change those but the inputs I was very open to. So there just wasn't really a good way to meet the carbohydrate arm of that through strict carnivore, so I never really explored that.

[: 01:05:14

And what are your macros now? Where have you landed?

[: 01:05:17

They're pretty similar. I'll still do kind of… off-season will be that stricter keto, maybe 5% or less. I'll get in kind of a base development phase. I'll maybe up to 10% do speed work development phase that may go up closer to 15, 20%.

[: 01:05:31

And do you have an idea of grams?

[: 01:05:34

It ranges so much from day to day because it's more based on what I'm doing, because if it's a rest day, then it's going to be very low grams across the board.

[: 01:05:42

Let's pretend it's a ‘Get ready to run 100 miles’ day.

[: 01:05:46

Okay. So a long run day. So that day I'm probably going to eat somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,500, 5,000 calories on average, maybe more on a really big day, less on a smaller day. So for that type of day I'm probably going to get around maybe 200 grams of carbohydrate, maybe less if I'm not doing any... If I'm doing a long run where I'm going to try to fuel to test what I'm going to do on a race, it'll maybe get a little higher because I'm going to be using carbohydrates during the race itself.

[: 01:06:16

But that's not much at all.

[: 01:06:18

No, not for that workload.

[: 01:06:20

And how… When you say long training day, is that a day where you're just…

[: 01:06:23

It could be like a 30 mile, 30 mile long run.

[: 01:06:26

And you're doing that - a casual 30 mile run - on a 200 grams roughly?

[: 01:06:32

Yeah 200. I mean, there might be a few where it's higher. I've done some tests. I did a three week phase where I tested a little more strictly with just blood, ketones and things like that where I also track the macros to try to figure out where these points of dropping my blood ketones would occur and things like that within the lifestyle. And I mean I'd have… I had a couple of days there where I was up to two, 300 grams of carbohydrate in my blood ketones. I was testing them two to three times a day for three weeks. I only had two data points that were below 0.5 millimoles and a bunch that were at the like 1.5 to 2.0 range.

[: 01:07:05

So you still had… so basically what you're saying is you were still in… You're not in a fasted state, but you were still ketogenic?

[: 01:07:15

Right, yeah, and we see this even with high carbohydrate athletes too. If we get a high carbohydrate athlete in the right context, we're going to see blood ketones in their profile as well. Mine are just probably going to be higher.

[: 01:07:23

And then what about the protein? What roughly are your grams of protein that you're using to maintain?

[: 01:07:28

Protein stays a little more constant, where I'm usually trying to get about a gram per pound of body weight.

[: 01:07:33

I would have guessed that. So 150 or so?

[: 01:07:36

Yeah, and sometimes that's actually… sometimes the harder part to some degree, when you're doing the animal base - because it's almost too easy to get more than you need - when you're doing what I'm doing… Because most people that are doing the gram per pound approach, that are getting up to… that are consuming four or five thousand calories a day, are going to be bodybuilders and powerlifters. So, you know, they probably weigh twice as much as I do.

[: 01:07:58

So, their protein targets are twice as much as mine. Whereas I have the same energy expenditure as them, but half the size. So I have to be a little more mindful not to overeat protein in some of those phases.

[: 01:08:11

Because it crowds out the macronutrient requirement from other things… And then fat. Do you find that you need a certain amount of fat, I mean, obviously, to hit the target, and do you care where your fat comes from?

[: 01:08:18

Yeah, that's a good question. I don't care so much where it comes from. I mean, I'm aware of the risks, the pros and cons of all of it. The way I usually look at it is if you take any fat source or any food for that matter, there's going to be things that it's probably better at than others and there's going to be things that are going to be a risk for those. But at the end of the day you gotta eat something. So for me, with fats, I call myself kind of an equal opportunity fat consumer, where poly, mono, saturated I eat them all, and usually it just depends on the preferences that I'm building into, the kind of what I'm gravitating toward for that particular training cycle. So, obviously during the animal-based phase it was very high saturated fat. During the more plant- predominant times it was very, very high, like mono and poly and saturated fatty acids.

[: 01:09:08

And did you get any pushback? I mean, I know, maybe not, but say, ‘well, listen, what about your glycogen stores? How do you replenish your glycogen stores, which is the storage form of carbohydrate, to go out and perform any kind of endurance activity?’

[: 01:09:23

Yeah, yeah, I mean I just usually say, ‘look, if I'm hitting the workouts, I don't really care about what's going on inside’, because we don't necessarily know… we do, to some degree… I mean I was part of the faster study.

[: 01:09:37

Tell me about that. What's that?

[: 01:09:37

Yeah, so it was a study where they took 10 ultra marathon athletes that were low carb ketogenic and 10 that were high carb and they sort of ran them through the same testing protocol to just tease out what was going on differently. And what they noticed with that was that when they tested the low carb ketogenic diet athletes, they just… we all kind of arrived at the same glycogen stores at the end of the training sessions. It was just… the high carb were burning through a lot more of it, weren't there during the workout and the low carb was burning through way less of it. So the relative dip was pretty similar. I have some, I don't think it's problems with the methodology of the study, I have problems with extrapolating that out as holistically because by that logic I wouldn't have to come off of a ketogenic diet. I could just always stay ketogenic. I don't think that's necessarily the path to optimal performance for what I'm doing.

[: 01:10:26

Do you think that there's one diet that works great for everybody, based on what you've seen, because you've been coaching for almost 10 years?

[: 01:10:34

No, I don't.

[: 01:10:40

So, Matt, my producer's twinkie diet… There's potential there.

[: 01:10:42

He's on there. If you can burn it, you can tolerate it.

[: 01:10:43

There's potential there, yeah.

[: 01:10:45

Here's what I think. I think there's going to be... I think lifestyle is going to play a huge factor here, so the way I look at it is, if I wanted to maximize my potential as a 10K runner or a marathoner, I would have to probably change my diet.

[: 01:10:58

In what way?

[: 01:11:02

I'd probably need more carbohydrates.

[: 01:11:03

And why?

[: 01:11:04

Just because at that point my race day focus is going to be really high glycolysis.

[: 01:11:08

I see. So you have to put out... Basically, you're running faster.

[: 01:11:11

Yeah, and at that point I'm going to… So when I say my low carb diet works for me, I don't mean there aren't any trade-offs. There are trade-offs. I just think the trade-offs are smaller than the benefits for me. So the trade-off might be like if I wanted to really maximize my speed work development phase, if I wanted every last ounce out of that development, I would increase my carbohydrate during that phase higher than I probably do now. I'd probably go back to what I would typically do during college.

[: 01:11:38

Which is 600 grams.

[: 01:11:40

Right. Yeah, you know, maybe 60, 70% carbohydrate, something like that. But, I think that, given that the race intensity that I'm doing is much lower than that, I'm willing to accept that trade-off because I don't think it's as acute that is at its maximum peak on race day as it would be if I were trying to do like a 5k, where I'm actually racing at that intensity and it's going to compromise not just maybe my race day strategy or capability, but also my capability of what I'm doing in training that's specific to it. And that's why I don't think you see a lot of Olympic runners doing what I'm doing, because they're sort of in that spot where there are… Here's another way to think about it: I think there are people who are listening to this podcast who will run their fastest 5k, 10k marathon on a low carbohydrate diet. But it's because for them, when you add up all their unique variables, the variables that improve when they're on a low carbohydrate diet outweigh the variables that would be detrimental to their performance improvement.

[: 01:12:42

What would be? Give me examples of that.

[: 01:12:44

I think a lot of it's probably just in sustainability of the diet approach. So I think for most people the biggest question they should be asking themselves is which diet is… Am I able to pretty easily stick to it? Where I don't feel like I'm forcing this, I enjoy it, I don't get weird hunger pangs, like I'm sleeping and recovering well with it, all those things that go into just making sure you can continue to do it for as long as I have.

[: 01:13:09

So you don't think that… So, for example, if someone is like, ‘okay, well, I'm going to run a 5K or a marathon’, in your mind, it's just as long as they're consistent, or they need to hit a… I don't know 300 grams of carbs a day, based on their size, and if they can do that, they'll, you know, perform at their peak, or is that what you're saying?

[: 01:13:31

Yeah, to some degree. I think there's going to be a couple questions to ask with that. One would be: can they stick to that approach? If they employ that, do they maintain optimal body composition?

[: 01:13:44

What is the optimal body composition for…

[: 01:13:47

An endurance athlete?

[: 01:13:50

I guess… Yeah, for an endurance athlete. I mean that would be a difficult question because 100 miles...

[: 01:13:53

Right, there's going to be a range, but for men, it's probably going to be like 5% to 10% body fat or something like that, maybe even a little higher.

[: 01:13:59

What about women?

[: 01:14:00

Women is probably more like eight to 15 or 18. Yeah, it's pretty low. I mean you're dealing at the top end of the sport. You're dealing with such precise things where, I mean, competitive pressure teases out the extremes usually.

[: 01:14:16

What do you mean by that?

[: 01:14:17

So, if we take… The reason you're not going to see a strict ketogenic Olympic marathoner is because for whatever number of people, a strict ketogenic diet is going to improve their marathon time, it's going to be a variable of too much consequence. So because these people that are at the starting line of the Olympic marathon, they've got all those… They've been selected for through competitive pressure to be able to tolerate a high carbohydrate diet successfully. So the person who can't tolerate that will get weeded out through the competitive pressure. It doesn't mean that they won't run their fastest marathon, they just won't be in the olympics.

[: 01:14:56

Right, so that makes sense.

[: 01:14:57

I think there's more opportunity with it when you get into an ultra marathon because race day intensity is lower.

[: 01:15:02

So I think there's an argument to be made about… for a specific… I think you can have top people in the world running these day-long or multi-day-long things on lower carbohydrate diets because it's not a variable of that much consequence to the degree where competitive pressure is going to push them out if they can't, say, consume 600 grams of carbohydrate per day or be able to take in 100 grams of carbohydrate per hour or something like that.

[: 01:15:38

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[: 01:17:28

What about supplementation? And I asked this because every time a package arrives in our mail and it has Shane Kronstadt on the box, I know it's either another pair of shoes, or ketone or creatine. What are some of the supplements that you think are really… And again, Shane isn't running ultra marathons, but he's running marathons.

[: 01:17:51

Yeah.

[: 01:17:52

Which I should blame you for, but it's ok, we're still friends.

[: 01:17:53

Yeah, I mean, I think the way I look at it is step one for people, or a good strategy, I would say, is: pick a diet that you can stick to, with the foods that you like, so that you know that you're not going to feel you're just restricting all the time, which will ultimately lead to failure, in my opinion, in most cases. So, whatever that happens to be, run that through like Chronometer or any of these apps.

[: 01:18:20

We actually use Carbon.

[: 01:18:23

So get Carbon, run it through Carbon, and just see where you're landing.

[: 01:18:27

And we'll give you guys a code for it. They're amazing.

[: 01:18:38

Perfect, and back that up with a blood panel. You know, that'll be even more specific, so that you kind of see… I don't try to deviate people from the dietary inputs that they… because I think we've got enough resources to counter that if we need to. I mean, the vegans have been doing this for decades now, right? They know that they're going to have deficiencies if they continue that way of eating, so they supplement for it.

[: 01:18:58

So I think supplements play a role in that. Where it's like once you find an input that works for you, don't fight that if it's going to make... If the new inputs are going to check your micronutrients but make the diet less appealing to you, get as close as you can with the inputs you enjoy and then back it up with the supplements where you need to.

[: 01:19:18

And what kind of supplements do you… So basically, what I'm hearing you say is your thoughts on supplements are really the micronutrients or do you think there's… creatine or urolithin A or omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, what are your go-to?

[: 01:19:33

Yeah, I mean creatine is probably the most proven in research.

[: 01:19:37

So do you recommend that, or are you…

[: 01:19:39

Yeah, I'm actually testing. I mean, I've done creatine and I've come off of it in the past just to kind of see and right now I'm trying it again.

[: 01:19:47

So what grams…

[: 01:19:49

I started at 10 grams and I just pulled back to five grams because 10 seemed like a little too much. I did like I got to day four and then I had a digestive issue. So I was like, ‘okay, 10 grams is…’

[: 01:19:59

And he was on a plane. That was the end of his creatine experiment.

[: 01:20:03

So I pulled back to five, but I just did a podcast on this with… Do you know Brady Homer?

[: 01:20:08

I don't.

[: 01:20:09

He's great, he's got a really good sub stack and he gets into all of the weeds with this stuff. And we were talking about creatine, because there's some new research on it too, for things outside of just what we would traditionally see it used for.

[: 01:20:20

Yeah, we actually had Darren Kandow on.

[: 01:20:22

Okay, that is...

[: 01:20:23

He's world-class, so we should link the podcast episode. And he covered all these neurological benefits.

[: 01:20:29

Yeah, women, all kinds of things, cognitive stuff, and one of the more recent ones now is sleep deprivation.

[: 01:20:35

Yes, I wouldn't know anything about that.

[: 01:20:35

For the world of ultramarathon is… could be a game changer if you can tolerate the dosage they'd be looking for that.

[: 01:20:44

Wait, why? Because you guys go through… I mean, you're running hours and hours in 11 hours, right? You're running 100 miles…

[: 01:20:53

For me maybe not so, but if someone is doing most... A big goal in the ultrarunning community is to break or to get 100 miles done under 24 hours. So they're losing at least one night of sleep with that approach. And then you get into these multi-day events too where sleep deprivation is going to be a huge component or variable that you're going to have to tolerate. So if creatine can help navigate that…

[: 01:21:22

How come you could do it, how come you could run a hundred miles in 11 hours?

[: 01:21:26

Probably two decades of running.

[: 01:21:30

Okay, I mean, it's extraordinary. I bet if we… You know, I interviewed Allison Breger. Do you know who she is? She is a military and she believes at least the data that they're seeing that there are certain genes, so they sure select group of rangers and it was those rangers, all had the same… There was a particular gene profile.

[: 01:21:40

Sure.

[: 01:21:41

I would be shocked if you had something different.

[: 01:21:43

There's an ultra runner gene. I'd probably skew heavily towards it, if there is…

[: 01:21:47

Yeah, I mean it would just be, it would be amazing. So creatine…

[: 01:21:53

I mean, caffeine is another one. That's pretty basic, that most people are probably already doing, but I think just learning about the dosages and how they're applied in race day settings and workout settings and things like that are…

[: 01:22:03

What's your daily caffeine intake?

[: 01:22:05

I'll usually have probably around 200 milligrams, maybe a little more, if it's a big workout day or something like that.

[: 01:22:11

What about on a race day?

[: 01:22:13

Race day. I mean, I've gotten up to a thousand milligrams or a gram of caffeine. That was probably a little too much for me. But I mean, there's anecdotal evidence of people going higher than that. I think safely probably play around with four to 600 milligrams maybe, and then see. It's just tough to know, because it's like when you're out there, I mean… when you're sitting around just going about your day, four to 600 milligrams is a ton.

[: 01:22:33

A minor episode of tachycardia, no problem, yeah.

[: 01:22:38

But if you're out there running for 24 hours or moving for 24 hours, it's like who knows how that's being metabolized quicker? And if you can tolerate more in that setting versus not, I think there's probably some evidence suggesting you can. But, I mean, just kind of learning how your body responds to that and when you can kind of pull that lever. And that's why I'm interested in other… like sleep deprivation type supplements, because caffeine has a ceiling to it, so I can't be hitting caffeine every hour for 24 hours necessarily. Eventually I've got to not do that and then, if there's… But there's something else like creatine where I can sort of fill the gaps with that and also get some advantage from that, then I think that's an interesting input there.

[: 01:23:22

You know other supplements for me. I think for someone who's doing what I'm doing, I'll usually have some sort of multivitamin type thing that kind of covers your bases more or less. Especially if I'm traveling, I'm maybe a little bit off my normal eating patterns where I kind of have a better idea of what the micronutrient compounds of my diet are looking like. So I think, I mean, again, I think if someone really wants to know, rather than throwing all their money at all the supplements, get a blood test and see where they can optimize on.

[: 01:23:53

So when I get blood tests, things they'll show up, or I could maybe improve this, so then usually I'll add a supplement around that. So like magnesium is what I'm doing right now.

[: 01:24:01

Amazing. So you don't guess, you go ‘okay, I'm gonna get my blood work and I'm gonna see where my vitamin D, my omega-3 status is… iron probably… various compounds like that.’ I think that's a great idea.

[: 01:24:14

Yeah, and electrolytes are another one too, where, especially if you're running in Houston or Austin like we would be in the summer, I know that I lose 614 milligrams of electrolyte for every liter of sweat. So if I go and I do a run for one hour in the summer and I weigh myself before and after and figure out about how many liters of fluid I'm going to lose, I can kind of pair that with the electrolytes diet too and make sure I'm staying on top of that. So that's another one. Where… you can hack that diet to some degree by just eating a lot more salt, but eventually, there is a timing side of that too, to some degree, where I don't necessarily want to be loading up on sodium for a meal before a run versus spreading it out more evenly with fluids I'm taking in during the run itself.

[: 01:25:00

Yeah, I think that's a really good point, and we always use electrolytes in this family. This is actually what I'm drinking. I'm drinking LMNT.

[: 01:25:07

Yeah, I use that too.

[: 01:25:08

I don't know if you've tasted their cans. It's so good.

[: 01:25:12

Yeah, this year I ran… My peak event was in June. I ran 100 miler, not my fastest, but the fourth fastest american time and my fourth fastest and I think it was 11.52 and my training built up for that. I was using all the LMNT sparkles for my electrolytes because it just hits the spot.

[: 01:25:30

You just… you can't travel with it, but it tastes great. That is unbelievable. What about… and then exogenous ketones? Are you interested in that?

[: 01:25:40

Very much so, yeah. And I think this is one where I think… You listen to this podcast in a year and maybe things have changed, but where I see its application right now is in the recovery side of things and in the cognitive side of things, especially for what I'm doing. So if I were to try to do a really fast short workout, I probably wouldn't take exogenous ketones before that. Or if I was going to try to race something that was a little higher intensity, I wouldn't take exogenous ketones.

[: 01:26:05

Would there be anything harmful? Would it slow you down?

[: 01:26:10

Possibly the research is leaning more in that direction. Yeah, where if you want a PR in the 5K, you could compromise your ability to do that by taking an exogenous ketone?

[: 01:26:20

I swear… So, I love exogenous ketones. I use them almost every day and I am telling you, I feel like if I take ketones and then try to perform something quick and fast, I can't. I don't know the science behind it. I don't know if it drops my blood sugar or what…

[: 01:26:37

I've noticed… I've played around with the strategy for this, but so, I start my first… My original strategy is I would take some before a long run and I noticed it kind of felt a little awkward in the beginning, like I had to kind of… it took me longer to warm up. So I stopped doing it that way and I started introducing it like maybe 45, 60 minutes in and that seemed to be a lot better of a strategy for me. So if I'm doing something in the easier intensity category, I'll have exogenous ketones during it.

[: 01:27:05

During? Okay.

[: 01:27:07

Yeah, and for some, I think the research is suggestive, at least that it's going to be. It can be helped with the cognitive side of things….

[: 01:27:14

When you're cognitive fatigue or…

[: 01:27:16

Yeah, and just the ability to kind of focus versus having your mind be fluttering in all sorts of different directions and burning a lot of cognitive energy. So, yeah, I do a lot of these races on a short loop, sometimes as short as a 400 meter track. So if I'm going to prepare for that race I'm going to be out on a track doing long runs. So I might be out on a track for three, four hours just going around in circles and if I'm sitting there just constantly thinking, ‘okay, I'm a hundred laps I got to do today, and now I've got 99.’ That's just not a great headspace to be in. So if I can kind of drive my focus towards something away from the track, it gets easier.

[: 01:27:54

And what do you think about?

[: 01:27:54

Usually I'm kind of doing what we're talking about at the beginning. I'm trying to visualize race day settings so that when I get to the race itself I've got kind of an arsenal of different visualization things that I can call upon. That I was already working on. It's essentially like a simulation at that point.

[: 01:28:12

You said that you visualize the race day, the track. You know kind of where you're at. Do you ever visualize winning or visualize the feeling of winning or what that accomplishment is like?

[: 01:28:23

Yeah, one thing I think worked really well for me was when I ran my fastest hundred mile. When I was doing these long runs, I would do a slight progression at the end where I would cut the pace down a little bit and that entire long run block, I was basically visualizing the end of the race where I was telling myself, ‘as I get further, I can go faster’. And you're just trying to convince yourself that both physically and mentally… that that's possible. So you're running on fatigue legs, I can still push harder.

[: 01:28:49

And is that what you say to yourself? Do you have a mantra? Do you have something that you say, like, ‘don't be a quitter’? There's something that my husband says I'm not going to share here because there's a terrible swear word in there, but yeah.

[: 01:29:02

I don't do as many mantras as… I just visualize how it would feel if this was actually playing out, where, for example, say, I'm running a race and I'm averaging seven minute mile pace and then all of a sudden, the next two miles, I get down to six, 55 and then down to six. So I'm picturing myself closing in on that and thinking about that happening, and then actually doing it in the training too, actually having that downward trajectory of the pace. But yeah, I mean, it worked well for that race and I ran my fastest miles at the end of that one. So it was… part of it might've been just… Cognitively, I had more tolerance because I had ingrained it in my head so thoroughly that I didn't even have to really call upon it. It was just kind of the natural order of the way my mind was working at the time.

[: 01:29:49

Have you ever quit a race?

[: 01:29:50

Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, it's like you have to fail a ton of these, I think, to find where your true potential is, because there's just really no great way of predicting a goal time. So crashing and burning is a way to kind of figure out ‘well, that was too aggressive.’ And then you can kind of scale back a little bit or adjust a little bit and then try to inch your way forward. So I mean, for every good race I've had, I've had multiples that went backwards where I dropped out or just finished at a really, really slow pace relative to what I started out at.

[: 01:30:22

How long do you beat yourself up for when that happens?

[: 01:30:25

Not long at all. That's actually probably a strength of mine. For me, you know, a huge driver for me in this is the exploration of the process and then what it produced. So, I don't get beat up if I run a process that I'm curious about and it doesn't work. I just look at that as ‘okay, well, that wasn't the answer, why and what do I change to, kind of to remedy it?’ So for me, it's kind of always this constant build of… The really good races are actually, they're satisfying, but they also leave you with less to explore afterwards, because now you have fewer things to maybe potentially try to improve upon. And yeah, I mean it's... I kind of like that aspect of it, of the adjusting thing.

[: 01:31:12

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[: 01:32:42

You know, it also sounds like there's a certain level of neutrality that you have going into the race.

[: 01:32:47

Yeah, uh-huh. And some of that, I think, is because the race results I've had far exceed the expectations I ever had for myself when I first got into running. Because, I mean, I was a good runner but I wasn't winning national championships, I wasn't the top on my team in college and things like that. So I always had peers around me that were just way better than I was, and so, when I learned to love running, it was for reasons outside of just ‘okay, I'm doing this because I want to be the best in the world someday.’ And it wasn't until ultra running came around where I realized I can win things, I can participate at the world stage, I can break world records and things like that. So part of me, I think, just identifies with that earlier version of myself where ‘this is something I really enjoy, this is what I like to do, this is where I want to spend my time and energy and you know I'm going to get the value out of it, whether I'm winning races or not.’

[: 01:33:43

Do you still feel… And this is what you do as a profession? And how many hours a week do you train in season?

[: 01:33:51

In season it is probably about 20, on average, and that will flare up during certain phases and be a little under during others.

[: 01:33:57

And then how much of that is recovery? I guess where I'm going with this is: to be the best in the world, is it a full-time job?

[: 01:34:04

Yeah, I think so. It has to be the primary focus, meaning that, you can do… I think you should do other things, but they need to be around, they need to be centered around that, versus them being in the center, and the training is centered or sprinkled in, as filling the gaps. So I think, to be your best at a sport like ultra running, you have to be looking at it like ‘okay, I'm going to build out the training that I want, that I know I need to do, to do this right, and then I can use the remainder time for these other things. But they have to fit that schedule first. So if I sit and I have a blank calendar, the first thing I'm putting on there is the training plan, and then I'm looking at it as like ‘well, what else do I have room for?’

[: 01:34:48

It was like ‘well, okay, I've got time to do some podcasting, I got some time to do some coaching, got some time to be, you know, doing everything else and stuff like that that I want to be doing.’ So the other things are filling in the gap mostly and it's just about figuring out, kind of, how that rhythm works, and sometimes it's seasonal too. So it's like I don't want to take on too many coaching clients during… when I know I'm going to be peaking for a big race and things like that. Or, yeah, I do consultations as often when I'm, you know, in a higher volume training phase, or things like that.

[: 01:35:19

And it probably helps that your wife is also...

[: 01:35:21

Right, she's equally as or more crazy than I am. Yeah.

[: 01:35:25

So you guys get to spend time together running and probably talking and hanging out.

[: 01:35:30

Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, I'm fortunate to… I've been able to make the running portion of all turning part of my career to the point where I can rely on that from an income standpoint to some degree, and that's helpful in that I don't have to take on as many other things as I maybe would otherwise.

[: 01:35:48

And when, you know, as you're getting more mature, there's a lot of discussion on hormone replacement in general. So I have a medical practice. We still see patients. I have a great team and one of the things that we do routinely is hormone replacement. So, as guys getting in there, you know, mid to late thirties, but you have certain restrictions, right? Is hormone replacement something that… I mean, because, think about it. You've got… by the time you're in your 40s…

[: 01:36:18

It would make me better.

[: 01:36:21

But is that allowed in sport, which it's crazy, that… is it allowed if it's normal physiological levels? How does that play out?

[: 01:36:29

It's basically entirely banned for anybody who's looking to produce a result that would be of award caliber or…

[: 01:36:39

Isn't that crazy, though? Think about it.

[: 01:36:40

It is weird, yeah.

[: 01:36:41

Right? And I just want to frame this up because I have very strong opinions on this, is that… let's say, a guy is training and maybe they're training 20 to 40 hours and they're sleeping six, and they're supporting a family and they're doing all these other things and their testosterone is, their free testosterone is five.

[: 01:36:58

Right, yeah.

[: 01:36:58

But they still are mentally tough and they want to go do this and their, I don't know, their free testosterone is or their total testosterone is 305. I mean they are… I suppose that would be low, but you can't even… Could you even replace that? Just to bring them up to a normal level.

[: 01:37:14

Yeah, there's the World Athletics. They've got the World Anti-Doping Agency. That kind of draws the line as to what you can and cannot have both in competition and out of competition is usually the way it gets divided. So there are things that I can take just in my day-to-day, but within like a 24-hour time period of competing I can't have in my system. And then there's things that you just outright can't have, which are basically all the hormone replacement type stuff.

[: 01:37:39

What about a woman in menopause? She has to choose whether she wants to run a race, or you know…

[: 01:37:48

Yeah, and there is… They call a therapeutic use exemption. So if you can get there, there are…

[: 01:37:52

And I've submitted for those.

[: 01:37:53

Have you? Okay.

[: 01:37:54

And it's not always successful. And then the athletes are concerned that even if you… So, let's say, you submit a therapeutic use and it gets accepted, now they're going to be… They're concerned that they're going to get in trouble.

[: 01:38:07

Right. Or they're going to be looked at as trying to skirt the rules because it gets abused a lot too.

[: 01:38:11

So that's exactly right.

[: 01:38:12

Yeah, that was a big one with asthma inhalers for a while in endurance sport where it was like ‘oh, I can just have this athlete run up the stairs a few times. Go get their asthma tested. It's going to be tanked and then they'll get an inhaler. We'll get the therapeutic use exemption.’ They have the long steroids for the remainder of their training and racing.

[: 01:38:27

It's crazy.

[: 01:38:29

It is, and, I mean, If we see a change in the future when it comes to this sort of stuff it will be something where it's more of a… ‘you can be within a range’ versus ‘do you have a synthetic in you or not?’ and I think that would probably actually just level the playing field a little bit to some degree, where it's like, you know, I don't know that we need to eliminate all the natural things that make someone great, because I think that's part of the fun of it, is figuring out what you specifically have from a gift standpoint and applying it properly. But to some degree it's going to get too hard to police at a certain point. If we get into the world of genetic engineering at some point it's like ‘how do we even know that the person wasn't given some sort of advantage from the outright?’

[: 01:39:16

There's all sorts of weird conversations around that. So I think we'll eventually get to a point where, just for the sport to stay compelling and interesting, they'll probably have something where you can… if your testosterone is 200, well, we accept anything from the low… If you're below… There's a ceiling, essentially. You can't go above this, although I don't know what is the highest natural testosterone that people see?

[: 01:39:44

I mean, it varies from range, but I would say a high end would be 900.

[: 01:39:49

Okay.

[: 01:39:49

Naturally, again, it depends. It depends on these things called CAG repeats. It's not just the number of testosterone, the amount of testosterone, but it's… There's androgen receptor densities and all sorts of things, but I just think about, you know, in my mind people doing what they love. And then I just think of a woman who is running and doing what she loves, wants to keep competing but is going through menopause. These changes, these changes in bone, changes in the brain... There's all these various changes that at some point are going to happen.

[: 01:40:21

Yeah, and that's a bigger concern, I think, for ultra running, because we do have very successful older women in the sport. I mean my wife Nicole's 42, and she still competes at a high level. Like I was saying before, the world records with 100 miles in the 24 hour were set by 40 plus year olds. So, you have that scenario potentially occurring where, you know, maybe your world record holder is going through pre-menopause and, what do they do?

[: 01:40:47

You know they have to tough it out, apparently, I mean… but at some point wouldn't it be amazing? If they could, if we could just kind of rethink some of these human experiences?

[: 01:40:58

Yeah.

[: 01:40:59

When it comes to, let's say, one supplement that you truly believe in. So right now we've covered creatine, electrolytes, caffeine, a multivitamin, and then test your blood to see if you need something, and then exogenous ketones.

[: 01:41:14

Yeah.

[: 01:41:14

Is there anything else that you love, or does that pretty much sum it up?

[: 01:41:18

That is pretty much the constants, or the ones that are pretty well implemented. I mean, I'll do protein powders and stuff from time to time depending on what my dietary inputs are looking like, but usually I'm fairly good at that. I don't have to do as much protein powders as maybe someone who is targeting a higher amount of protein than I would be. But yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it. I don't have a whole lot of extras other than that.

[: 01:41:43

And then recovery. There's a lot of discussion of red light sauna, cold plunge sleep. I'm sure you probably track heart rate variability. I don't know if you do. What do you think about recovery? What are the keys?

[: 01:42:00

Yeah, I think recovery is obviously one of the main pillars. I think nutrition, training input, recovery… three main pillars. So, then with recovery it becomes a question of ‘what are the big movers there?’ So, I mean, the easy kind of cop out there is well, sleep is way better than everything, right? Sleep is… quality sleep is going to move the needle way more than any red light, any cold plunging, any sauna or anything like that. And it's true. But the big question I always have is what is the path forward to quality sleep? Because it's one thing to say just sleep more and get better results. It's a whole other thing to actually do that. So this is where I think some of those tertiary inputs can be very important, where, if you have something where sleep is… we know you want to get good sleep. So let's anchor that. But then let's figure out what we can do between circadian rhythm lighting with red lights and stuff like that.

[: 01:42:49

What about outside early in the morning?

[: 01:42:50

Yeah, yeah, if you can get real sunlight, that's even better. I mean when it's… I try to get out and do my run like around sunrise, if I can.

[: 01:42:57

No sunglasses…

[: 01:42:59

Right. Yeah, get that exposure right away and that's a good… I'll do red light stuff. I got a little red light lamp that I'll sit in front of in the morning, sometimes if it's dark this time of year doesn't get light until like 7:15 or something like that.

[: 01:43:14

So you don't get that 5:30 morning sun that we get in the summer, and I tend to be a little more of an early person anyway, so I'd like to get out sooner rather than later, especially if it's going to get hot. And then I think, other things too. Depending how you respond to it. I know… Nicole, if she does a cold hot contrast, so cold plunge, hot plunge, cold… like 15 minutes of that… she gets really relaxed and really sleepy. So for her, if she's having a hard time falling asleep or something like that, having some of that in her protocol so that she improves her sleep quality even though it's maybe not that that's improving her recovery, it's the fact that it's allowing her to sleep better which is improving her recovery are where I think those tools get really interesting.

[: 01:44:01

Yeah, I think that's a great perspective. It might not be the thing, but it's the thing that leads to the next important pillar which is sleep. So I have one more question for you, and then I'm going to let you go, go for a run.

[: 01:44:08

Yeah, right on.

[: 01:44:10

What is next for you?

[: 01:44:12

Yeah, I've got some fun stuff coming up. I think I am still really excited about the 100 mile and the kind of like these, inside a 24 hour type events, because I think there's still potential for me to run faster than I have. There's been new technologies in the sport, like super shoes, where one of my claims to fame, I think, is when I wrote the 100 mile world record, I think that was the only running world record that was done in a non-super shoe.

[: 01:44:37

And the super shoe has some kind of spring or something…

[: 01:44:39

It's like an efficiency thing where it'll improve your efficiency. So, there's going to be less breakdown. You're going to… essentially you'll carry a faster pace at your VO2 max or any intensity, for the most part, yeah. So, you know, I've got some targets in the future, the short-term future, to try to run some fast hundred milers. There's some trail races I really want to do, like the Vermont 100. I haven't done that before. I'd like to do that one, and then after that I'd like to get into some longer stuff too, like I'd really like to… I've done some 24 hour races, but I've just failed terribly at them every time.

[: 01:45:12

So that would be what? 200 miles?

[: 01:45:13

The world record is 198.6 for that, right now. So it's, if I wanted to chase that, it would be close to 200. So, the guy who's got the world record for that is head and shoulders above everyone right now. So that's a really high ceiling at the moment. But yeah, just figuring it out, just being able to walk away saying ‘okay, I executed that 24-hour rate’ would be what I wanted to get there and the number would be a driver for me, but it probably wouldn't be the primary objective and I'd like to do some of these multi-day things at some point too. Like we were chatting a little bit before I hit record. There's this event, the six-day, and it used to be the most popular ultramarathon. People think ultramarathon is something relatively new.

[: 01:46:02

They did back into the 1700s, Madison Wood Garden used to host six-day events. Those were the peak runners back then.

[: 01:46:02

How many, how many miles did they run?

[: 01:46:03

Oh, that's a good question. It was… the world record back then, I think, got into the 600s.

[: 01:46:10

600 miles? No wonder they'd shut that down.

[: 01:46:15

Right, so they made it illegal I think in the early 1920s.

[: 01:46:17

Did people die from that?

[: 01:46:19

Oh, I'm sure people did. I mean it was wild back then. There was like… we're talking about performance enhancing. People were doing cocaine, all sorts of stuff, like you know, painkillers, everything… you name it. It was wild. There was betting, there was sabotaging people, people trying to poison the competition and stuff like that.

[: 01:46:37

What is… Because there was so much money to be made?

[: 01:46:38

There was, yeah, at the time. If you were like one of the better six-day runners back then, they could make equivalent of half a million dollars as a professional ultra marathoner back then, which is sort of the peak of the sport right now and people think of the sport as being as big as ever right now. So, knowing, the late 1800s, early 1900s, these guys were… guys and gals were rock stars and of the sporting world.

[: 01:47:05

Oh my god, we got to look that up just to see what they looked like. And so they made it, eventually, illegal.

[: 01:47:08

Yeah, it was actually kind of funny because people… it was a spectator sport back then. People would go and watch because there'd be prop betting and stuff and there'd be heckling and all sorts of stuff. So people would go and watch these things and it would… It took business away from theater and it also wasn't viewed highly by the churches because these people would be out there doing that versus going to church, I guess, or coming… or getting just like plastered and not obeying their commandments, so to speak.

[: 01:47:40

So, eventually it just got one of those things where, you know, the bureaucrats essentially went and got it lobbied out and got a law against it. If I remember correctly, it didn't outright ban it, but they said you can do these events but you have to limit it to 12 hours per day. So basically… no one's running their furthest distance in six days when they can only operate on half that time throughout the course of the six days. So it basically killed the event as it was and then it faded off into nothing for a while there and…

[: 01:48:11

It's back?

[: 01:48:12

It's climbing back up now. So if you look at how long world records have been held, the six-day world records had a stretch where the people who held them, held them for over 100 years and they just recently got broken so…

[: 01:48:26

And you have an event picked out that was…

[: 01:48:29

I haven't. I mean this one might be a little bit… so I've got a few other projects. I want to run across the country at some point. I was actually going to do that earlier in, I think 2021 or 2022, but I got injured right before it, so I had to bail out on that and I sort of re-imagined how I'll prepare for it when I do it again, which will just include doing some more gap filling type things between that, whether it be like a six day event or…

[: 01:48:53

How long is it going to take you to run across the country? You're pretty fast.

[: 01:48:55

The world record is 42 days. So six weeks.

[: 01:48:57

Oh my god, good lord. And obviously someone will be following you on it.

[: 01:49:05

Yeah, you take an RV. Yeah, you have an RV and a chase vehicle. So the chase vehicle kind of cruises you while you're out there and then the RV just parks where you stop that day and you sleep and then get up and do it again and keep going until you get there.

[: 01:49:16

I mean, it sounds fun, entertaining. It sounds really like the exploration of the process.

[: 01:49:22

It is yeah, yeah, so someday.

[: 01:49:25

Zach Bitter. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

[: 01:49:28

I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.