CHINESE RUNNING SHOES, VIEWERS QUESTIONS, TRAINING UPDATE AND MORE! | FOD Runner x SIRPOC Podcast

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Most locations are independently owned, product services, prices, and hours of operation may vary. See store for details. So welcome back to another podcast, episode number 16. I do know that for a fact, I counted before we came on stream. Back with James today, we have literally got our podcast list pretty much booked up until Christmas now. We know who is coming on. When we do an episode, it's going to be a good end to the year, but today is back with us. We've got a few topics to cover. Yeah, you guys know the usual intro. If you're on Spotify, yes, there's a video, but there's also a YouTube. Please do drop a comment on YouTube. I've got a few of them that I picked out today that will cover, but we've got a lot to talk about. First of all, James, how are you doing, mate? Yeah, all right, how are you? All good. We use this as a catch up, though, it's without a messy catch up and stuff. We just, it's like, it's just our benefit, really. Just to have a chat, a catch up, really. We're literally just chatting, and then just putting it out there and seeing what happens. But I was good, I was actually going to lead in with what the hell are we doing with our lives? Because this is like number four on the bounce weekly. This is, this is pretty, we're getting into a bit of a rhythm now. What are you drinking? I am drinking. I said this, you're all drinking. I mean, this sounds, this doesn't really make me sound very good. It's a touch of mango passion sparkling volvic. Oh, brilliant. They're 9p at farm foods in my defence, so I filled up the old trolley and the boot my car than the other day. You can't beat farm foods. I'll go there every now and again and stock up on stuff like that, it's brilliant. Flat jacks, flat jacks from farm food are a fantastic source of, for anyone in the UK, fantastic source of, like, just cheap, easy, quick, digestible carbs. I think they're like, you get three for a pair, or they've gone up the 110 now, three for one. That's inflation for you. But yeah, fantastic, because they're just basically, I don't know, there's like 50, 60 grams of carbs per flat jacks. I've shown them a spot before, funny. We had on last week and he's like, what is that shit? That's murder. That's a good segue actually. I thought Scott was really good last week. He was, he really, especially towards the end of the pod, he had some great insights, especially when we really got stuck. I know we started with you in Great South Run and we had to ask that first, but everyone missed the best bit afterwards. The art party. It was great to chat afterwards, but no, I just thought he was such a good guest and we've had some great comments. Again, just mentioning it again. We'll go through a few of the comments from the previous three pods, actually, because I realised that a lot of the pods, a lot of the comments are coming in on YouTube, and I do read them all. I haven't reacted to them, but I am reading them all. I've picked out a few today and the amount of comments and the last one floats a bad was insane. We context, if you missed last week's episode, it went on for like an hour, 14, basically said like after like one hour, 35, if you're still listening, just comment floats a bad and there was a lot of them. So yeah, where should we start today? Let's start with training. Let's dive into training and then I will share, so we're going to be talking about shoes, two-part shoes, first of all, what we're both using at the moment, second of all, something that James enlightened me of about how we are being ripped off by the Western market. I've got to share that with you, absolutely fascinating stuff, treadmill training. That's going to be another one, because we've just seen your scene smash. Although he represents Sudan, he's you know, he's run quicker than the American record, 59-12. I follow this guy, fascinating stuff, obviously Vinny Marry as well, and group training. We'll talk about group training at the end and how we've been talking to a group of great guys who have really made NSM work for them in a group. So we'll cover all of that, plus a couple of other bits, training since Great South Run. Actually, someone asked on one of the questions that I highlighted, what shoes did you wear for Great South? Well, that's a good place to start, because my training was probably, I'd take it a bit easy last week, I actually had a day off or I just cycle twice, because I'm telling you mate, it's those fastars, they're obviously, I think we both probably agreed at a fastest shoe, or there's not really anything like, I'd say those doing PB pros are close and probably more comfortable. I think probably most people would agree to fast ars and the fastest, but my god, did they smash you up, don't they? So I was sort of recovering for that, but maybe, maybe the same amount of time as I was sort of recovering and coming off London, to be honest, it was hard for three or four days, and usually that sort of 10 mile even up to a half, I'm usually quite good, quite quickly, but mate, those shoes, they're absolute rockets, but they really beat me up. They do, they wreck you, I think I've said this on the poll before, if not, I've said it to you. I think if you can hold form, they're absolutely fine, but like when I found, like I've had issues with them, sometimes I come off a race and be fine, sometimes I won't, and it's the times when I won't wear, I've either overcooked it, something's gone wrong, forms gone, I've overstried it, and then they're not friendly at all, so they're not like, you know, towards the end of a marathon, if you sink back into your hips, or if your form starts changing, they will screw you over massively. If you can hold form, then. Well, I've fought crap enough to begin with, so they're the last thing that I need. I just grab them quick, now look, if you ever look, I mean, there's so much wear, that's just from the one race that I've fresh, but you can't see very well, but look at that, on the heel, on the heel already, so they're getting chewed up, so that's just on the warm up and the 10 mile race, but that's me going back onto the heel, and they're not very, I mean, they're still fast, I've heard people say they're not very fast for heel strikers, but I'm as as heel striker as it can get, and they're still the fastest shoe for me, but like you say, I think, once you go back on them, and you're all your weight, and you're sort of, you're not putting it through the forefoot, you're not toeing off properly, I think they just sort of start to, it's my thighs actually, I haven't had that before, I've had it with those before, and they're the only, it's just sort of the quads or the thighs, would just really, really hurt, so I actually took the chew, I think I ran easy on the Monday and took the chew's day off, but by the weekend, that they gone, I was fine, and I'm just sort of back into the routine, but yeah, I think they're the fastest shoe, but they affected my, you know, my training and my LFS score as the week went on, so it is a compromise, I do think that's a compromise, people need to be aware of, I do think, if you're going for like a far more 10k PB, I do think they're probably, if you can get a pair, they've come down in price a bit, I've seen them on offer, these ones were, I wouldn't have paid probably full price again from, but yeah, I don't know, I don't know what you think, but maybe full, I know you ran full in it, I mean, you just, that's heroic to me. The my calf went, but it was interesting because I've come off the back of short races, much worse off the London, but again, London, just, I held form, and so it wasn't too bad, but at 24 and a half, when I cranked it down a bit with the pace, my calf tightened, and cramped, or was on the verge of cramping, and I was like, right, it's now damage limitation, now whether that was a shoe, I expect it was a shoes, last couple of marathons, I haven't had cramp at that point, I've got through cramp free, so I expect it was probably the shoe, so I just had to dial it back a little bit to get through to the end, but yeah, they're unforgiving, but I agree mate, they are, they are by far the fastest, I think, I need a fresh pair now, because I've got, I've got three pairs, the first pair basically just died after 100 miles, and then my other pair, training pair now has got over 100, and my racing pair has got like 16, and you can notice the difference, you can really notice the difference, so you're going to see, in the bin, but for the original ones, got like a weird dent in this area here, yeah, they like it like it had sunk in on itself or something, and that was only after maybe about 90 or 100 K, so I'd pick these up, and if I'd get to be fair, if I could have got another pair of the, they're doing PB pros, I'd have probably ran in those, but, yeah, I think they're thinking of the radar, haven't they? Yeah, they just sort of, they brought the two out, which is just like, honestly, they're like, even for a Chinese shoe, they're like 300 K, at the moment, so that's a lot of pain, yes, it's crazy, so won't be paying that, so I think, I'll probably, the other option is the, I could have worn the, um, the Phenium 6, the leaning, yeah, they could have been more, I think they're virtually just below this, but I don't, yeah, maybe a bit more forgiving, those are a bit wobbly, but they're a bit more forgiving, I think, probably like it to a race. If you've got no tight turns, the Phenium's a fine, when you're, when you've got tight turns, they're a bit sketchy, what about, over the last two or three weeks, I'd say. What have been your go-to shoes? Because I've seen in the WhatsApp chat, you've pinged off a couple of shoes that you've been really, really enjoying at the moment. What are your go-to's? I've bought, I've got a new box, my yearly ship of, I did it at the same time, sort of last year, a bit late last year, or sort of got a new box of ones I hadn't tried before. So yeah, I mean the mega pro, we spoke about them, I'd stocked up on them, I've got like three pairs of them now. But I'll tell you what, there's a shoe here, actually I need to talk about this, because this is an insane shoe. It's quite old, it's the X-Tep, X-Tep, it's not X-Tep, it's X-Tep, isn't it? But you can't understand. I've got no idea mate. Anyway, the 3.5 pro, it's 160X, now these are not legendary in like the Chinese market. These might be maybe the fastest shoes I've ever run in, but they are insane. If you want to give them a go, give them a go, I wouldn't recommend them to anyone, they're just going, if you think like this is harsh, this is like next level. If you google it online, there's like, what's his name? The Australian Lads got a good name. We speak to him again in the new year or something, like things have come through, but they are harsh, they are just as harsh as the plumers, but they've got this crazy boom off the forefoot. So that might be, you can pick these up for pretty cheap, I think I've paid about 45, 50 quid for them, so it's nothing really, if you want to give it a go. So yeah, it's worth thinking about, but they might be something I might even wear for a 5K or something, they're that fast, they're heavy as well, it's a very strange shoe. Yeah, people have said that, they're heavy, but they don't know how they run so fast in them. It's like UK 9, UK 9, they're like 335 grams or something like that, I think, so it's pretty heavy. Yeah, yeah, this is like what, I'm 70 or something like that. I'm trying to find in the group chat quickly, you posted a photo of another shoe when you were talking to. Yeah, let me go and get them, like this isn't going to work particularly well, but it doesn't matter if. No, go for it mate, I wanted to highlight it, because you said you have, you ran in them and your mind was blown. Yeah, these as well, they're, I mean, I don't even really know what the brand is, they're called High Wings, they're, it's like helps that kind of something like that. That's what it translates to unlike Ali Express and places like that. These are amazing as well. These are, most people would like these, the only problem is they're like insanely narrow, they're like incredibly narrow, like I'm not sure. Like torpedoes? Yeah, I'm not sure a lot of people are going to be able to get in, you can say, I don't know, you can't, it's not really good. Yeah, actually, yeah. That midfoot is very thin. Sort of thin, but they just tested these on run repeat and Anton, one of the guys, they've spoken to a for a while actually about Chinese shoes, he just happened to say to me, look, they're on there, they've actually got the highest energy return run repeat ever tested in the forefoot. Wow. It's like more, more than, more than the Puma, more than any of the Adios, they're literally the highest energy return they've ever had in a shoe in the forefoot, and you can really feel it when you're running it, running it. But again, it's one, it's hard to recommend because they're just so narrow, but again, you can probably, if you shop around and you're quite confident about, you know, using shipping agents, I think they cost me about 55 quid, you know, it could be a risk worth taking sort of thing. I don't think they're doing much bigger sizes than EU 44, 45 maybe, which is like a nine or a 10, isn't it, a 10's usually a 45? Yeah, there's some great, there's some great shoes out there to try, but going back to sort of racing, I don't, it's pretty safe this for five or 10 K, and then you've got to be a bit brave to go longer in it, I think, then maybe some like the Fedia, or even the Adios Pro 4 is still a great shoe, and now I think for a lot of stuff. Do you know what, speaking of the Adios, did you think my video about the Adios Pro 5, or you didn't know what you were going to do? Did you show me the photos for it though? Yeah. So basically, Adidas have come out and said that they are going to adjust the Pro 5 now and put extra light traction on that area. The statement was hilarious, the statement was something like, we've noticed a small number of people have had some cosmetic issues with the shoe, which is just, it's ridiculous, I just want to say shake them and say, take some accountability, you've produced a shoe which is not okay, the small number of runners is ridiculous, because the photos online is insane, but anyway, they've listened and they're updating it, so I thought that was pretty wicked, although I will still say, it's still a, I'm not going to say bang average, super shoe, it was good, but it's not top tier, so. I've heard a few people say it's worse than the 4, and Ron repeat again, I know they're not the good reviews of everything, but again, they measured the energy return of it, I think it's worse than the 4, so. Yeah, I never tried the 4, they didn't quite do my size, but they did it in the 5s, I mean, 4, because I used places shoes like you in training, like they would have been a decent plated option for work, for sub-fresh, I'll work out throughout winter, you know, they'd be good, but there are better ones out there, I know you haven't tried them, but the Mizuno ones, the Hyperwalk Pure and Elite, they have been amazing, honestly amazing, I'd recommend them, they're a bit more like racing flats, they are on offer, you can pick them up for like 110, 115 quid, which is decent for a super shoe, so they do feel a bit more like racing flats, but I don't know, they're just, there's something about them, I did 19 miles in them this morning, and they're just, they're magic, honestly, absolutely magic, I've had the way for Barely and Pro 2 before, they were just nuts, oh they're wild, man, I've had a few pairs of the Neo Zen, the original ones, they were great shoes as well, so maybe I'll give them a guy, because there's no tend to go on off for a bit as well, you can tend to pick them up for a little bit cheaper, a lot of the shops now online, I've got them advertised for 140, and then you put the 15% discount on whatever it might be, and you can get it for like 115 or something, well worth trying, mate, the Hyperwalk Elite, they're not like the Waverly and Pro at all, just very much like a normal set, just insane, yeah, they looked it, they looked it, but that's, that's a good option, I think, yeah, the 361, actually 361 emailed me, and just classic case of Chinese shoes, but I can't expect any different, because you know, they are a nation of slightly shorter people with slightly smaller shoe sizes, but they reached out and they said hey, we've got this shoe, this shoe, and this shoe, I'll tell you what shoes that they offered, because I don't know if you've tried any of the other ones, but I said you won't do my size, I've had the flying, that was absolute dog shit, that was, okay, where is it, come on, and basically I said you won't have my size, and she said oh, let me check, and came back and went, no, we don't have your size, it was the Mega 3 Pro, which obviously we just talked about the Miro SL, and yeah, I've got that, I've not worn it, that was in the package, I've got, yeah, so I've got, oh nice, yeah, it's like, it's the 1.4, the original apparently had a really shit tongue, so, okay, it's probably improved, maybe the Mega 4 still release a shoe one day, it doesn't have a shit upper for me, and the Boundi 6, Boundi 6, Boundi 6, I don't know, every day come for that, looks like there, I went on to their website to have a look at it, it looked big and bulky, a bit like of a Miro plus type of thing, but the other two shoes looked, obviously, I went back to them, I said look, I've checked your sizing chart, I'm usually UK 13, but judging by your sizing, if you can get a US 13, a UK 12, it looks like I should be able to fit into that, that was 310 millimeters or 31 centimeters, which I can fit in, that's the same as the B-my shoes, and it's actually the same as the Child Am, Lely, two which I've ordered and the GT, so the two, the original two, I'm taking a risk, so everyone keeps saying get the played three, and I keep saying to them, I will, but let me get, so the EU 47 and a half is 310 mil, and that should fit, and that's coming next week, and that was 67 quid, I've said to share that with you, 69, 67 quid on that express, so we'll try that one, I had to pay top dollar for the just over 100 quid for the GT, because the only got my size on their website, I just wanted to try it, and then if they fit, and that sizing's all right, I'll get the played, if you've got the played three, you have, I've got the played one, I've got the played 1.5, that's quite an older version, but a lot of people, a bit like this, the X-TEP, a lot of people say that that's the best one, the original one, and they updated the aperture, it's all right, it's like a really wide alpha fly, it's how I'll describe it, it's got a massive base, it's a nice shoe, it's really comfortable, really good for reps, yeah yeah, I don't mean it's anything special, what's morning fun enough but yeah I don't think it's like outrageous it's good show I'll quite enjoy it but I don't think it's it might be one if you're just sort of looking to like maybe finish it a slower marathon maybe we're just looking to finish a really long run or something it could be quite good for that but I don't think it's it's quite a democratic shoe and that a lot of people will like it but I don't think it's like that one that you risk like this on you know like your puver on race day and you just suck it up for the extra couple of seconds a mile or whatever. That's interesting because there's a lot of people that are always looking for a democratic shoe because I get so many comments of like which super shoe you tested that you think is a good round yeah go grab it because you can still get them I think I only paid like 45 quid right that's a bargain 45 quid yeah 45 quid but that was that's like direct from the Chinese websites yeah here it is running this morning it's it's a nice yeah nice oh that's a big cut out in the middle yeah it's big it's really the actions on the court and as the official beer sponsor of the NBA Mika Lobe Ultra is getting fans closer to the game with a chance to win court side seats merch and more visit mika Lobe Ultra dot com slash court side to enter Mika Lobe Ultra court side 26 to 27 no purchase necessary open to US residents 21 plus begins on October 1st 2026 and ends on June 30 of 2027 multiple entry periods see official rules at mika Lobe Ultra dot com slash court side for free entry entry deadlines prizes and details it's officially the holiday season and Abercrombie's new collection has outfits for everything on your calendar it's the busiest time of year between shopping and party invites I don't have time to plan every look but Abercrombie's always got me covered their sweaters are the perfect easy layer for low key plans known a nice night out I'm reaching for their classic trousers fill your closet with the pieces you'll need all season long have a very Abercrombie holiday shop in the app online and in stores wide it's really I don't think you're not gonna be breaking records in it but it was really nice to run it and it's got a really nice I think it's a tp phone so yeah really nice shoe that but right let's get along I have saying that the boomers beat me up and I've only really got back the training properly since the weekend we'll talk about we'll talk about that a bit more in a second I want to share something with the general public because you said to me oh god see if I can find it I'm not gonna quote you exactly but I thought it was really interesting you were like on okay so you use pin duo duo the action that the last couple of orders that have done which is kind of like towel bow but yeah it's it's kind of easy I think it's easier to navigate and it has a lot of the official stores on there so you can guarantee like they'll guarantee they'll pay you back ten times you know big statements like we'll pay you with ten buttons back if it's fake and stuff but you can get a lot of western shoes on there as well so we come into mate that's all we come into so the soup so basically you said to me the assets have a shop on there and you can get I won't show screenshots because it's got your it's got some of your details on it but you've sent me a picture of the superblast and the mega blast the superblast is 861 yen which is about 90 pounds yeah 90 pounds roughly just take the last digit off and it's roughly sort of that yeah and then the mega blasts 1193 so again 115 1920 quid so you can get these shoes from the official resellers or from the official stores in China for is that half it's not quite the superblast that is half price yeah that's 90 quid yeah funny enough I logged on there earlier not it just come down to 800 actually in Chinese yeah no way that is so you can so people can see so I just thought I mentioned that because it's about a tenor to ship it so each pair let's just call it roughly a tenor if you go through the shipping agent but if you really want no shoes you don't actually need to go to you know assets euro website and spend 200 quid or whatever it is I mean I think I paid thing I paid I had an offer for sports shoes for the mega blast I think I paid like 180 but it's still yeah oh yeah consider I've just I think I just took stock of like ten shoes and I basically have the 400 quid so you so what you do is you for people and for people that don't know you'll use this app and then you download it in Chinese but you just change the language you can use AI to take screenshots and it will direct you change a language use a shipping agent you can get a certain amount of shoes shipped not in their boxes they'll just chuck them all in one box yeah yeah I think I've got ten shoes the last package was ten shoes in it ten what 10 pairs but without the boxes it was just under six kilos which was about 61 62 quid or something like that with insurance as well so you know let's just call it you know there's a little bit when you pay there's a little bit of cost they add to like you know you you put in an exchange rate so you're probably paying up to an extra five or whatever overall I just sort of think of it as I'm adding each each pair that I buy I think add on ten pounds yeah that's a great great idea but I think this this is the thing when you send that to me I was like I appreciate their shipping that we have to take into consideration and stuff that goes into the shops and stuff that get paid over here etc that's an argument that always comes up but I will say if you can get to grips with these Chinese apps you can purchase these Western brand shoes for so much I mean 90 pounds for the superblast and then obviously out of ten so 100 quid that's half price right cuz they're 200 quid here and the mega blast again it's about half price maybe just under which is wild and so yeah a people if you download pin duo duo get on AI take the screenshots ask it where to direct you or just put in to check if you're something if all I can do it anyone can I'm not going with that sort of thing like I'm not I'm real it's unreal we get we get we don't get ripped off I understand there's other things here in the Western market but you can get these things a lot cheaper is what we're trying to say so I thought I'd share that because I thought that was that was really interesting but in general I this great segue because we talked about training a long way round of the pumors knocking you off-kilt until the weekend training let's dive into winter training going into winter it's another thing that we mentioned that we could talk about so you've obviously in the last couple of pods talked about how you've been using the bike a little bit more and your volume's gone up been doing some double days etc etc we've covered all of that are you going to be changing anything going into winter do you have any thing that you'll be doing differently over winter is it's dark in the mornings and at night etc yeah I think this was just worth talking about in general about just how our habits change you got you know just talking about from a planning perspective just how much the pain in the ass this time of year becomes you know if you just work at four half four and you're doing a dark run outside so it might mean using the treadmill a bit more it might be doing the run in the morning and the cycle in the evening if that's how I do it when you can get a bit more light and it doesn't I don't know I just think it's an interesting thing about how we've it sort of just switches doesn't it and suddenly the dark morning's dark evenings and I think it does it shifts you mentality of it as well I think it becomes sort of harder from a motivational standpoint as well at this time of year I don't know about anyone else but I find I start to get a bit okay like really I'm a bit I'm a must admit mate I'm a bit of a worse when it comes to this time of year my mileage tends to drop a bit yeah and I just kind of one of those things like when I'm in bigger mileage throughout the summer my easy runs drop pace and I they're well under that 70% you know in the well-inns of the 60s and I'm just you know doing it that way and then when I get into winter my mileage might shrink down into the like 50s or 60s although I do planties a treadmill a bit more this winter and so therefore like because I'm a lot fresher all the time my my easy runs might creep up to 72 73% and everything gets condensed a bit more and and I thought something that you were doing back in the year was quite interesting and just encourage other people to do I remember you getting a lot of questions about why you were doing like eight hundred and not K's and you basically said it's just a stretch of road that's that's near me and easy to access and local like for people that are listening don't think like you have to do these reps all through winter if you've got something that's more easily accessible that's a bit safer that's lighter and it's just a bit of a shorter stretch don't go by bloody distance just go by time and just run the stretch of road and it really doesn't matter so no I don't think it matters as much and that is literally I'll probably will go back to if I'm running sort of after work I'll probably go back to some eight hundred just because it's a nice stretch of road don't need to cross any road and it's well lit so that's just a little subtle change it just the weather and the light and just the seasons bring and you know you know the places you know the places are only like the top end target anyway so if you if you run obviously slower than them that's fine I'd much rather you ran slower than you know you might have your jacket on you've got gloves, you've got a hat on, and suddenly everything gets slower. It's a bit like the summer in reverse, isn't it, where you can't sort of cool down and I find I can't warm up as much and those extra layers just slow you down. So it's just another little factor, another little thing that we sort of probably haven't spoken about much before, but just shifts how you think about it. And let you say don't worry, just find somewhere, if you're going to run outside in the dark, get a good light maybe, some it with decent reflection on it. And yeah, for me that would be the 800's in, you'll probably see a lot of those just because I'm up the road, 800 meters, stop, have a quick break and then turn around and go back the other way and just keep doing that for 10, 12 repeats. Yeah, we've got what we've got. Seven, you have seven months of of BST, British summer time and then five months of GMT, I think that's the way around it. So it's just for five months, I mean at the moment we've got optimal weather right now. So just enjoy it because when we hit the end of November, early December, that's when it's really going to be drawing in and then yeah, like you're 800's and my 400's, like I've got a good stretch, I don't have many flat areas around here, but a good stretch, it's well lit for 400 meters, that's just nice and easy. I could just go out there and do 400's and I tend to, tend to fall back on those a little bit in the winter just because of that, it was exactly that and just don't stress about anything else. But do you have any Gore-Tech shoes? Do you go that far? Do you, why would you prove shoes on the bottom? I did when I first started running out a pair of supernova Gore-Tech, they're quite good actually, they're quite good, but I don't know, I'm just, just, just waiting if you're going to get wet and I've got a treadmill when I moved as well, I've got a treadmill, so if I'm really, I still prefer running outside if I can, but if it's like drastic, I'm just going on the treadmill now, that does make it easier to, you know, I know some people who just join a gym for the winter, I know a couple of people who do that just so they can do their sessions on, I'm lucky, I've got a treadmill, this, you know, my partner, she doesn't feel like it's a good thing we've got a treadmill necessarily, but it's good for me anyway, but yes, you could join a gym or something like that, just to make it a bit more, more stress-free, because it is dark, it is cold, it isn't rainy, for us anyway, northern, northern, European, we're in mind about anything mate, we were, my, when it was hot, I can remember sitting here doing a podcast, you know, it was like the hottest, I was like, oh my, I was like, James, can you shut the window mate? Yeah, you're all turning fan off and you were like, you want, but yeah, I do think it changes, the seasons change, you sort of want to train the same way the whole year round, or I do it mate, just to keep going, keep it ticking over, but I do think it does become a little bit more difficult, obviously you've got to work around the heat in the summer, and that is pretty stressful when it's really hot, but I hate just as much the putting the gloves on, putting the jacket on, going out and, uh, give me some a all day long mate, I don't mind what, again, I'm quite lucky here, I've got the cycle track, it's quite shaded, so even if it's 30 degrees, although it's a bit like a greenhouse in there and it traps the heat in, it's hotter, the trees shade you from the diaries, and then there's probably in an eight mile loop, even though it's not an ideal loop, there's probably a mile in total that's exposed, the rest is covered, so I don't mind running in 30 plus degrees, to be honest, over this any day, I hate it, so I hate it, I dread it, but I'm going to be getting a treadmill too, so I have a treadmill, and it's a really good treadmill, but it's a big treadmill, and it's at my mother-in-law's, because I don't have space for it at home, so I'm going to get a fold-up treadmill just for this season, and, um, just use it a little bit more, that'll be a nice segue into treadmill training, because, um, yeah, as I mentioned earlier, Vinny Maureen has been training incredibly well, ran 206 at Chicago, um, we've just seen, you've seen, he's a YouTuber, I know you don't know much about him, but he's, he's a character, to say the least, but I've followed him for ages, and he's, he's just, I like him, he's a bit of a maverick, I appreciate his takes on running, and what he says is just run 5912, he's running 150 something mile weeks, back to back to back to back to back, which in kilometres is. I've got 220, 230, and it's 15240, so he's, yeah, he's knocking out 240, I mean, I mean, it's big mileage, but he's doing most of it on the treadmill, and we know Jakob uses the treadmill a lot, and I think people's opinions are slowly changing on treadmill training, um, you've got a treadmill, you mentioned it, but we also talked with Scott last week, we touched on it slightly with these, like, step-up tests and stuff, and how you felt like it wasn't as beneficial to go to a lab, because it's an unusual environment, et cetera, et cetera, but when you have your own treadmill, and you can train on your own treadmill regularly, it's so good for that. Different ball games, so from your perspective, you live down on the South Coast, it's going to be windy a lot, it's windy a lot anyway, isn't it, but you're going to be using the treadmill a fair bit more this winter? Oh, definitely, just because, like I say, if I can avoid, I do like to run outside, because again, you know, I do like to repeat the conditions you're going to be in as much as you can, and I don't, my form isn't the same, I definitely don't run the same on the stretch, I can replicate the efforts, but the pace is quite the same, the gaps, you find it slower? Yes, so I'm slower on the treadmill, you know, I've had all sorts, trying to work out why and was thinking it wasn't level, I've had the laser level on here, I've had the building, anything you can think of, I'm just slower on the treadmill, Neil's the same who we've had on, he's, he's quite a bit, he's slower on the treadmill, and he was, went into the stages of being really worried about it, the gaps closing a bit, but it was always the same for me on the bike as well, I ended up doing a lot, obviously, in the winter, on the indoor, on the turbo, trainer on the bike, power was always a little bit less, and it doesn't really matter, you replicate in the same effort anyway, I don't think pace necessarily massively matters, I've heard of some pros who have used it, I think Vinny was using it, I think he was putting a thing over the screen, he wasn't even looking or something, he said about what pace he was doing, but you can get a really good gauge for effort, you know, I think we said before if you used maybe the same fan, or it's roughly the same temperature in your house, or your basement, or your shed, or wherever you do it, you can get quite a good gauge, and if you've been training for a while, and you understand what the efforts, whether it's some fresh old, or however you're training, it's reasonably easy to I think to replicate pound for pound the effort, and don't necessarily worry about what the pace is, you know, my heart rate's a little bit less as well, but I've measured lactate, and I've measured breathing, and I've measured, or anything you can think of, and you know, alpha-HRV, and all of that, DFA, the lot, and I'm just slow on the treadmill, and that's just how it is for a same effort, and my heart rate's a little bit less as well, it doesn't seem to have really mattered to be honest, just do what you can on it. Yeah, I think, and what a lot of people have to remember is it's only, well, it's not only for a short period of time, you can integrate the treadmill into it, into into your regular routine, but like if you just want to use it this winter, and the message we're trying to say is like we've seen some really, you know, we've seen now people using it to great effect, and having incredible results. If you're worried this winter, or you live somewhere where the conditions are really bad, and it's going to be quite stormy, or super cold, you haven't got the motivation, the treadmill's going to help with that, and you can do just as good a job. Like I remember, exactly, it's actually really reassuring to hear you say that, because I did 10 by K on my treadmill, and where I was running, I was about 10 seconds and miles slower, on the treadmill, for the same heart rate, but for me, my issue on the treadmill is like, because I'm so big, trying to stay on the belt, is a challenge in itself, but I was slower, same heart rate, but to be honest with you, like the next week I went out and ran one of the workouts of my life, I know it's no, probably no correlation whatsoever, but I felt fresher coming off the treadmill, like I always go on. No, I was just going to say I think that's the major thing, I could do the same effort, the same RPE sort of, let's just say, between that four and six out of ten, but the next day, I feel a lot better if I've used the treadmill, but then there must be something going on there that's not looks quite the same adaptations, and I definitely I definitely run slightly different, the mechanics are a little bit different, you know, the ground contact times a bit better, so maybe I don't shuffle or I'll push off a bit, I don't know, there's all sorts going on there, but you know, I've used a lot of say, I've used a run sensor on it to try and make sure it's exactly the speed, the console says it is, which is virtually dead on, and I think like I say, you can just do your head in and think in this and that, that someone posted on it about Reddit the other day, and I was like, just don't worry about it, if you roughly are doing the same effort, you'll soon know about it anyway. And I think if you use it loads, the gap will close between what you run inside and outside anyway, and I think if you sort of exclusively use it, I think people have proven even if you exclusively use it, it's very good at controlling the sessions better than outside, and then they're going and running outside fine anyway, you know, so I've used the bike for an entire winter inside before, and I don't think I'd ridden my bike outside in three months when outside smashed one of the fastest time trials I've ever done and people are starting to do that coming up. off the treadmill into real world running or whatever we want to call it. It's all running really at the end of the day, but people might be slightly different. Like you'd like to say, you're big, you're heavier, you're much taller, you're stride, different, probably. There's a lot going on there. I don't think you're ever going to get exactly one to one, but close enough that if you can just replicate the efforts, just set and forget it sort of thing. Yeah, it's nice, nice to numb the mind a little bit on there. I did actually really enjoy it. I thought I wouldn't be talking about it, but I actually really enjoyed it. And as I said, came off the back of it, feeling super fresh, but I've already done a couple of sessions on there. I'll tell you what talk to you on it, mate. I'll watch Sunderland against Leeds on it the other day, which was on Sunday. Now that is how to not make the treadmill go fast. We haven't talked about spurs this week, haven't we? Well, that's something. I only bring it up when you're absolutely showing. That's a good result in a weekend, to be fair. Well, to be fair, mate, we're both not in a good place, but we were the less of the shit teams on the day. And I've said to everyone that's asked, given 10 games, let them start to gel. And actually, to be fair, the last couple of games, even when we weren't winning, I could see that we were starting to play better. And the last two games, I was like, yeah, okay, I can see things are starting to click, but this is a running podcast. Spurs a back. Spam the comments for that. Spurs a back. Spurs a back. There you go. Flows a back last week. Spurs a back this week. Someone did actually comment on last week's pod saying you should have recorded the pod after the Chelsea game. But yeah, there's some more bits and bobs that we can go through. But first, a quick interlude, a question for the listeners. So, me and James have been talking. We have, obviously, been putting out some weekly podcasts recently. And obviously, we really enjoy it. We love it. And we'll, you know, we'll do it as much as we can, as much as time constraints allow. And we've just been getting some really good feedback, which is really nice. But I think from, I think from weekly can be a bit of a tricky thing. And so, we have been potentially talking between us about, maybe we look at trying to get a sponsor, because it does eat into, obviously, our time doing it. We love doing it. But we have to remember that we both have five reasons. Really? For you, this is taking up a lot more, you know what I mean, you could easily go make a video on something. And it would be much more beneficial to you than doing this sort of thing. But we just kind of have fun doing it. Flush, mate, I love it. It's so good. But, you know, it does come with the fact that maybe we spoke about sponsor. But the problem with sponsors is we can't then really necessarily be honest about, you know, we can't get a shoe sponsor and then we can't say to go buy this sort of thing. So the question to the viewer, the question to the viewers is, would you, would anyone object or would anyone be happy to support if we set up some kind of maybe Patreon or something like that where we haven't thought about it yet, but people could access exclusive content or maybe what we can do. I mean, there's been a few ideas batted around, but potentially something. Well, someone message you about it, didn't they? Really? Yeah. That's where the idea came from sort of thing because they'd heard us speaking about sponsors and rather than being like, the trouble is we don't want to go down that we said before. I'm not joking. We don't want to go down the route of, you know, AG1 and pretending that we take that every morning and to bullshit people sort of thing. No, exactly. On the flip side, there's only so much we can do, I think, especially from your perspective, because you've got already, you've got to do this, you've got to do that. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I did a video on AG1 mate about, I can't remember as a year ago, I didn't expose them as such, but I said, look, just be aware of what what these sponsors are doing. And I think I said on the video, like, AG1 offer 50% commission per sale, which is the highest I've ever seen in my life. And I just sit and again, someone commented on the last video one before when we mentioned it. And they said, just eat a salad. And it's like, AG1 has already been proven that there's not enough stuff in it of the items that they're listing. It's got everything you need apparently, but the dosage of it is nowhere near what you need from a daily basis. It's been exposed a million times over. I just never go down that route. And only would, if we had some kind of sponsor, it would be someone like say, sky a kit sponsor or someone that, you know, like I've worked within the past, whatever, but I think from a neutral perspective, if people would be interested in something like a picture on the mean James can then start talking about maybe like what we can offer extra. So whether that's kind of like a personal discord that we can invite you into and we can all chat, whether it's some kind of extra content. So we record for an hour and then, you know, we save some of the viewers questions for an extra half an hour and you get that exclusive or you get a full extra episode a month that, you know, we put on there. Like whatever it is, would people be interested? And if you would be, it'd be great to hear from you in the comments because ultimately, I'm not fussed about from a many perspective, but I'm just very conscious that I would like James to get some, because you give so much. Well, no, I'm obviously getting more from your perspective, but and just keep it going. Just keep it on a, you know, maybe we can do some stuff where we can meet up, go to races and those sort of things make, make some stuff like that way. It's not for, you know, nothing really for more than just maybe to put it back into the channel a little bit of or this or whatever this has become. You know, I think I said just a couple of really like my favourite podcasts, a couple of podcasts, you know, football cliches and the sweeper podcasts, football podcasts, and they've sort of got the same model. It's basically free, but there's like Patreon stuff that you get, like you say, like a discord channel or something like that, and I'm more than happy. I subscribe to both of those and I'm more than happy, but I wouldn't want to anger people and put them off the other way either, because we can still just do this whatever, can't we, but we're just more thinking of ways that if people are enjoying this, how can we maybe work it out, where we can do it more, less ad hoc, maybe, and more of that regular thing? Because I think, and enough to put petrol in the tank for me to drive down to you and we do a session along windy portsmith from together. Yeah, it's just stuff like that really, it's just and it might come to nothing, but yeah, I think we're quite honest with people and just thinking it from that point of view. We're probably negative in terms of the amount of coffee we've spent on this and electrics and all of that. You know what I mean? We're probably negative equity for all we've done. Yeah, he's not absolutely lovely, but it's good fun. So yeah, if you could drop in the comments, whether it's Spotify, the amount of floats are bad that we had last, it was ridiculous. So if you could just drop a comment and say spurs are on the up and then also like whether you think it's a bad idea, there's a back, spurs a back baby, and whether you mind a sponsor or whether you would mind a patron, I think Patreon would be my preferred just because it keeps having been neutral, but I don't know how that works. I don't have one for myself and yeah, it's a subscription model isn't it? So just let us know. It'd be great to hear and speaking of viewers questions and stuff, I've picked a few from the last three episodes because I'm conscious that people are commenting and either I'm not getting back to them or we're just literally jumping from one episode to the next because for context, and again, I've had a few comments on this. Obviously, the next one I'd love to do is going to be the big round table or some kind of big, big podcast of all the guests we've had so far. I think that'd be great. I'm still trying to work out how we do it. And then someone mentioned I mentioned Paul, a serious hobby jogger. I've had a few comments saying yes, get Paul on. We'd love to hear like how he felt because he went stagnant, would he do things differently, et cetera, et cetera. We've got Jimmy who's back, he's producing videos, again, would love to catch up with Jimmy. Jimmy's back. For that in the comments. Jimmy's back. So two, two Aussies there that would be great to chat to plus also, I'd love, genuinely, love to cycle through all the guests again. I would love to get on. I've mentioned this to you. I haven't messaged him yet, but I'd love to get Jimmy Wheeling on. I'd love to ask Jimmy because I just feel like with Jimmy like being an ex-cyclist and you're an ex-cyclist as well. I think we could, you know, I know Jimmy's been on a few podcasts, but I think in particular with yourself and your knowledge of cycling, you could extract some good information out of him. He just seems like it's such a cool guy. There's a few people that we look, so our list is already as long as our arm. But just aware of like the questions, so I'm just going to click away and hopefully I continue to record. So should we rattle through a few of these and then we'll talk back through what's coming. So let's just, yeah, this is a surprise thing. That's another reason to maybe get a few people back because, you know, with Asia and Nathan, there were so many questions and comments. So that's a definite go back to because again, there's stuff that, you know, that was directed towards Nathan, which actually it's got such a vast knowledge of everything running. But there was a lot of ultra stuff that again, we would just be doing a disservice, I think, if we didn't bring him back so, poke him on that rather than us guessing. I think that podcast from just, well, I'll have a look in a second, but that had the most comments on it so far. So there's definitely, definitely something. But this is from, username DariusJS70. He's been a regular commenter on my channel. Actually, a question for a future podcast. I've adapted the time-based marathon framework from the book for a debut 330 marathon. For a slower runner, is the advice still to avoid going above three hours for the long runs as part of the block? Hold on, my thing is, I came a bit short at 3.38. still happy with it, but wondering what other tweaks one should consider. Scott sort of briefly mentions it at 52 minutes, but I really wonder if it applies for turtles like me. But first of all, you're not a turtle, 3.30, it's bloody amazing. But what I mean, I've made my thoughts clear on three hours, what are your thoughts? I just think it's such a difficult one because obviously I completely appreciate when some people say, yeah, but I'm going to be out there three and a half hours, but I'm not sure there's enough adaptability going on or adaptations really, but versus the extra risk of even 245, three hours, I just don't know what you would be potentially getting out of it in terms of, yes, there are going to be extra things that, you know, even a psychological factor of being like, do you know what, right, I've been out there three and a half hours for the bottom, but I think the injury risk just is like there's decent research on it and once that you go past that three hours, maybe that's when you can potentially just maybe do some quality work in the long run if that really makes you sort of confident to be able to do it rather than just plodding around for three hours. I don't know, but I've seen people, I know a couple of people, I know someone like quite well actually who's done, went for some four hours and went 347 and they only went out, I think two hours 48, two hours 50 was their longest long run, so there's so much going on in marathon training there, it's hard to just say that he's disappointed for a result just because the long run was capped at whatever it was. I don't think it'll make a huge amount of difference, other people might feel differently about that, but I don't think that I don't think the long run is the absolute like final piece of the puzzle for how it's laid out in the book for example for marathon training. Yeah, yeah, I think I agree with you completely, there's enough research out there that it's when you get over the three hours you're putting at risk your next week's training because of the recovery time from that long run, so you just have to take that into consideration, I'd say to you that basically as into you, Darius, that if you have nailed a marathon block, that's fantastic, that's in the system, you can go again and you know if you rinse and repeat, lifetime miles makes a big difference, you'll harden up to the distance, you'll get quicker overall anyway, and so you'll start to gently cover more distance anyway, but like James said, pulling a bit of quality in the long run is definitely something that I would recommend from just from I guess how I train, because I do it every single week, I just because of I only run five days a week and have to convince it, that's not how I would do it, but if you want that extra confidence boost, maybe you are a bit slur and you want to just not plot around, that might be a way to do it, but like I say the flip side of that is I have seen people sort of in that three and a half, four hour target range, I have seen people and spoken to a few people who have done nothing different, and you got you got to remember people do their head in and they just sort of absolutely like look back on marathon, and just sometimes it just is what it is, the marathon, there's so many things that can go wrong, if you might if you might not meet a target, you know, 330 might have been a target, but this is still happy with it to be fair, there's a million and one reasons that could be picked apart of why, why you had it, and it doesn't necessarily, it's very hard to isolate it just because you didn't do long runs, long runs. Yeah, totally agree, mate, totally agree, there's options for people to tinker with, I mean, as I said, for a lot of my athletes that I coach, I basically alternate week and week, I mean, alternate weeks, so like one week they have an easy long, and then the next week I might just put it, put one of their workouts into a long run, but nothing changes, like the workout still the same intensity, it just whack a 30 minute warm up and cool down on just to get them used to a bit of quality, and then maybe as they progress, maybe make it like 45 at the start and 15 at the end to replicate doing some work in the latter stages of the run, but nothing changes, and that seems to work out quite well, so maybe alternate weeks, but like James said, it's not, it's not the be all an end all, if you stacked up a marathon block, and it's gone well, and yes, you've fallen a touch short of your goal, but you're healthy, and you've got those miles in the system, you'll be quicker next time realistically, so you're definitely not a turtle, but I thought that was a great question, this is a good one, my current NSA schedule is short subthreshold on Monday, long subthreshold on Wednesday, medium subthreshold session on Friday, I don't know if that means like the three minute reps of 10 and the six, or I don't know, but then he's put everything else is easy, Saturday long, I'm going to assume easy, Sunday rest, yeah all of a day is easy, how should I structure the rest of the week when I have a 5K time trial on the Sunday? So what's he doing Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday? Yeah, Monday was a Friday, Sunday, well no, Sunday's usually a rest day, but he's going to do a time trial, so how would you adapt a week? What for that particular week? Yeah, for that particular week. I think, well if you can, I'll just maybe shift everything, sort of maybe up a day, then for the thingy, for the next week if that makes sense, so maybe do the last Tuesday, Saturday? Yeah, like a slightly, yeah exactly, so then you can finish the next week on a Thursday, couldn't you? Yeah, so yeah, you could do that, that's tends to be how I've done it, sort of where you sort of think in the book it's sort of like, it's what a nose dive taper into it, where you do the first session of the week is kind of normal and then the second session of the week becomes, I don't know, sort of like maybe 80% of the normal volume that you would do and then the third session of the week is effectively the race. Yeah, yeah, I think that's what he's after actually, so maybe the Tuesday and Thursday and then you can have the two easy days, Friday and a Saturday just to get the legs going and then jump into it on the Sunday, so maybe leave the Tuesday, maybe just structure it that week where the Tuesday does is whatever his normal workout is on the Monday and Tuesday, you know, so for me, what I tend to do is, if I'm, if I'm going to race, it's quite predictable, I'll do sort of either three men or one K reps, but I'll only do eight of them on the Thursday, if I'm racing on the Sunday and then maybe I'll just push the last one a little bit harder, the rest would be maybe slightly easier than normal and I might just stretch the last one just to just to get the legs going and then just an easy Friday, easy Saturday and then straight into whatever you're going to do Sunday. If I was doing a part run or a Saturday race, I might do the Thursday, do it still up on the Thursday, but really early in the morning on the Thursday, but I'm probably still here every time. Yeah, I'd probably, yeah, exactly and just do it that way and that's tends to have worked out well as well. But yeah, I think if he goes there Monday, so he's got, did he say he's got Sunday off usually. Yeah, Sunday really well. So just do then Monday, easy, Tuesday workout, Wednesday, easy, Thursday, slightly less work out, slightly less reps than usually do Friday Saturday, easy or one rest day like he's usually got straight into it Sunday, boom, go, boom, go, love it. And this is just, before we get to the next question, just a bit of feedback actually. I thought this is pretty cool. Just run my auto marathon yesterday, guys, almost 25 minutes PB, fourth marathon and never felt so fresh a day after. What in the actual had some tummy issues at the start, but still amazed how I could start to cruise from kilometre 37 on winds and pass people left and right, felt like I was just doing a sub-t session at the end, thanks James and Andy, seven months vanilla with two sessions a week and then the time-adapted block. So yeah, another success story there, 25 minute PB's phenomenal and sounds like I came together like dream day by the sound. Yeah, absolutely, that's one of those 10 out of 10 stars of aligned. I smashed it, this is a, yeah, this is a good question and I think you've kind of talked on this before. So we are covering the same ground to a degree, but again, it's always worth reiterating because I know people pick up this podcast in later episodes. So not sure if this is something you can answer in this video or whether it's a question for next time, time-wise in cross-training, how much time do you need to cycle to get a similar exercise effect to running? Is it less with, is it less with an elliptical machine because it more closely represents running? I, when I was doing it, again, this we should have gone really deep into this with Nathan because he's done so much on the elliptical where he did it. Yeah, yes. I always sort of bike an elliptical is roughly the same, that they are easier than running in terms of like impact and stress. I always sort of try and put maybe 20, 25% extra on. So, you know, a really simple way of looking at it, a 30-minute session, you know, 30 minutes of running becomes 40 minutes of cycling or elliptical. That's a rough starting point and that's what I tend to use or have used in the past. Like, I think that will roughly work out somewhere as a good starting point. Yeah, absolutely, no, that's, that's good mate. I am yeah the reason I wanted to ask sorry I'm just scared for other questions because it was one other but I can't bloody find it now because I've got three tabs open of the different episodes but the one thing that I thought the reason to ask that is because we've had a lot of questions and you have said in the past something like if you're just going to hop on the bike for like an hour easy spin then it's not it's often not worth bothering with you need to like maybe commit to something a bit longer on the bike to make it worthwhile. It's a tricky one that because yeah I'm not sure I'm not sure for using cross train in and the only yeah I'm not sure I like the easy stuff on the cross trainer or the bike or the elliptical or whatever you're using whatever mode I think yeah I think just keep it the workout to make mainly unless you're like really like baby in on nursing an injury or something like that where you've got no choice or maybe something we spoke about last time where you might do you know what I mean you've just done a marathon you're a bit burned out and you think I'm just going to do it just a couple of weeks across training obviously then every single session isn't going to be a session sort of thing but I've really only used it for workouts to be honest just topping up those workouts rather than you know I have done a few but not like it just a 60 minute easy ride yeah yeah that's interesting it's just something that I've heard you mentioned a few times and I think as I said we have we have quite a lot of new people the stats show especially in Spotify that we pick up new people every single week and so although we might be regurgitating a bit to the people that have listened since the first episode I think it's just important to cover these things yeah I think there's no right or wrong answers to that but I think I think if you fall into the trap of doing too much easy for example in cross training and then maybe you start to lose that balance or we spoke about it with Scott where there's probably like a floor yeah like in terms of you probably need to run a certain amount and you can obviously only run certain amount of workouts a week because with that you know that's why we're sort of controlling everything so you're probably gonna have to you know make sure you at least keep a decent amount of the easy running in so that top up where it's almost like a free hit you may as well use that I feel anyway for as a as an extra you know LT1 and above that sort of sort of zones we're talking about anywhere between LT1 LT2 sort of anywhere in there you might as well use that as what you're using for the cross training because it's a free hit so if you're going to take a free hit you may as well use it for something more productive than just zone 2 or whatever it may be that you choose to do not say that's a golden rule but yeah I think you just fall into the trap of you just end up doing too much cross training and at the expense of running which still needs to be the like the priority most of the time I know we sort of spoke about last time about yeah enforced injury breaks sort of thing like you do on per but even then you're not going to do it for a while and that's kind of only sort of like spitball them of Scott in terms of mainly when you've just come off the end of a marathon block you might do two three four weeks where you just do cross training and then get back to running maybe a way of stopping you more mentally rather than anything else I remember what the other question is now and but I can't find it but it was to do as with because obviously Scott mentioned it was on the latest episode actually the comments they all say float is bad and I can't decipher the comments but effectively yeah it was about Zwift I think the question was Andy you don't seem to like have you ever tried Zwift well the answer to that is yes on the treadmill so I've used it on the treadmill but actually the last two or three times I haven't bothered I don't I don't see the point in it James when why do you because I think you mentioned you prefer to stare at blank wall when you do it or watch something else rather than get involved in Zwift this person basically said something along the lines of they find Zwift racing to actually be quite useful is there a reason you don't use Zwift I think if you if you do it more cycling it probably would but I'm only cycling maybe two three maximum times a week and if you get you know Scott does a lot of racing on Zwift which is fine it's great like it is I can honestly see the appeal but I just stick to you know three times four times ten minutes or something like that I don't need any of that I can just put a put the sweeper podcast all the football police cliches podcast in front of me listen to that stare at my hand or bars it's done job done but I do see the appeal of it and I think if my you know send us someone every day if my my old crap road bike finally bites the dust or my power meter dies I'll probably get as with bike because I'm not going to cycle outside these days and it's pretty much as cheap as a bike these days but yeah the downside of it is you get into like you may be doing quite a lot of racing and stuff which is great which is absolutely great if you're maybe looking to be you know a cat two cat three road racer or something like that but that doesn't necessarily translate well to the type of training we're looking at sort of it funny enough I was reading something in I was rereading Hunter Allen and Koggen's book actually this week and they were sort of saying something about like that you know this type of tragedy you know this is going back 20 years some first shell training is absolutely great for just maintaining like high level aerobic fitness but it's not going to make you good at you know criteriums or hill sprints in intern this is in terms of cycling but that's fine we don't really care about stuff like that we just want to be as aerobically strong as we can and actually gave him going back to that book which is 20 years ago just doing absolute clinically subthreshold work is going to do the job for what we need for the type of running that most of us are doing which is just maintaining a direct pace from A to B yeah yeah and I think we talked about it as well in the fact that like you can just pivot off from it so nicely like if people want to do specific stuff and again that's a different topic but if they want to do it or they've got a half marathon like they see something advertised oh they're still spaces for a half in four weeks like you're pretty matching as good a shape as you're going to be if you want to do a couple of half marathon specific workouts you've got time but the subthreshold workers allowed you to be in decent enough shape to go and give that race a good go like white for a 10k and a 5k obviously slightly different from marathon but for the most part for most of the races that we can all drop into it's very easy to pivot off from but again speaking of pivots that conversation came from a chat that we've been having with a group of guys about group training so we'll wrap the podcast up on this because I think it's been fascinating to watch us know to three there's three lads isn't it or four lads that have had great success yeah I think there's a couple of there's four we've spoke to so far oh yeah sorry four yeah I think there's a fifth and a sixth but I'm not sure we haven't really got to like the whole story but there's basically this group of lads up at the Scottish barbaric I think so someone in the Scottish border who have basically been sort of training you know scrolling away like a secret club and they've all basically knocked you know some of them knocked off like 10 15 minutes of their marathon times and they've all been running and ran marathons before and they've essentially just been just training like this as a group but what the reason I find it really really fascinating and it's one of them posted in the let's run thread it's just because I've always seen this as quite an individual activity rather than you know something you can do with your friends or your mates and it spoils long runs because you do them a particular pace and someone might be doing it you know so I don't have never seen it but they've obviously massively massively made it made it work for them and all running crazily improved times all seem like really lovely boats was so we can maybe I think it's really worth maybe getting a couple of them on for us to share because there's going to be other people out there have been offspot to so many people before I put off with the type of train and we generally talk about here just because it's quite so like and they like the social aspect of everything and you know let's get them on and maybe have a chat about how you could make this and turn this into okay I think they were saying maybe the three minute repeats were the ones that were a bit more friendly to do as a as a group sort of thing the long run you might go to you know the slowest runners pace or something because you can't have just plotting around anywhere but yeah I think that might be some people are really genuinely interested in because it you know you might be there might be someone out there listening to this who's maybe like a de facto coach the or they've just been made like the the goals in charge of 10 or 12 runners or something you know what I mean and thinking well how can I make this work for this group of people so yeah well let's we'll dive into it properly I think that definitely definitely deserves an episode because I think there's there'd be so much stuff we can pull out of that that might work yeah groups of runners rather than sort of just talking about you and on an individual basis they were saying in the three minute reps weren't they that they can all kind of like go off and do their their thing but then when they finish the rep they can kind of like just drop back yeah two to the slowest runner and then they go again so everyone feels included and it's not kind of like everyone's galloping off and away when they finish the rep what does it take like if I mean we're talking about runners here in the rounds of like a low 230 marathon was it up to like a 245 or yeah a lot of them have dropped a lot off that so you know they're coming down sort of 10 15 minutes I think the yeah - Yeah, one of them is at 230 at London, so. - Yeah, so it's quite, it's not a compact range, but it's well within the range that they'll be doing the three-minute reps, where it's very feasible, that they're probably like 10, 12 seconds apart. - Yeah, so I'm not gonna be finished. - They're a good 15 meters at least down the road, sort of thing, probably. - Yeah, and they can just spin, drop back to them, go again. And he seems to work really well, and they've made a, they've done a great fit. So obviously, you know, for context, we've been chatting to them, both me and James, James have been asking some good questions and now I've been reading a lot, and. - Yeah, I've been able to do that, it's a great job. - Yeah, I've been just genuinely interested, 'cause it's not really, I've spoke to a couple of college coaches before. Obviously, Gabe's done a bit of, we've had on this college, I've spoke to a couple of high school coaches, there was a guy who I gave some schedules for for, you know, a high school girls team. - Yeah. - That went really well, they were really small school and did really well compared to what the expectations for that size of school would be. - He found that, you know, the range of paces was difficult as well, but did something similar. He did the shorter reps were a lot easier to control. - Yeah. - At the track and, you know, the sessions that they did on their own, for example, you know, they sort of became quite measured and the girls that were running sort of got a good handle of it, but they did about half of the week together or in the same place or wherever they ran sort of thing. So it can work, but it is probably quite complicated, but so it'd be interesting that anyone who's done that sort of thing, we'd love to hear from how you've made it work for-- - Absolutely. Drop a comment and let us know, because it's definitely seems to be the times turning a little bit in the world, regardless of if you do subthreshold, double threshold, or whatever, a lot of people are starting to take a lot more of a measured approach to training. So you can put whatever label on it you want, where a lot of people are going, or used to go, you know, into the workout, tempo, long run, or whatever, and now a lot of people are just gently incorporating some more controlled-- let's just call it controlled threshold work. - Yeah, controlled, controlled work. - Because that's what it is they're going right. Well, I would normally run it at like an eight out of 10 or a nine out of 10. I'm going to rain it back to a six or a seven. And even if they're just doing it once in a week, they're just noticing such a big difference. There's always going to be-- I mean, we were talking about it in the group chat, Steve Magnus put a video out. And as Scott or Neil said, the biggest flex is you have no idea who he is, which is great. - I just don't watch enough stuff. My only contact with him was when he turned up in the Let's Run thread, like I don't see people really appreciate how out of touch I am with anything that goes like social media running. It's only what people like you or Scott, whoever shares with me, I'm just not going out of my way to find any of this stuff. - That's why you mate. That's why you mate. Well, obviously Steve has a very, very good reputation, very successful coach and your athlete. And yeah, he's producing some good informative videos. But I think what he always tends to touch on in his videos, basically, and he's done a few around threshold in general. He's very good at explaining everything. They're very good watch. And he'll always kind of come back to the crux of the point, which is, look, if you're going to train in this way, just remember whatever way that is, just remember that you'll get X stimulus from it. But effectively to maximize your potential, you might want to think about dropping a bit of this in a bit of that in. And it doesn't matter what we're talking about here, you can be talking about VO2 max threshold, steady state runs, whatever it is. He'll always come back to that point where, if you're going to train just sub threshold, yeah, you get a great bang for your buck, aerobically strong, but you're going to find that if you just drop in every other week, every 10 days, a small VO2 max workout, that's going to move the needle enough. And that's kind of the crux of everything. And he did a big old video this week. I've watched about two thirds of it so far. And again, that was the point. He was very complimentary about Norwegian singles and that sort of thing and saying, people getting great shape with it. But as always, I think a lot of people will always come back to the fact that you want to move the needle by doing something else and then the question comes back to, well, what's your demographic of people you're talking to, Steve, are you talking to like a group of young kids in their 20s that have scope that aren't? Maybe parents full-time workers that have to fit this in and around their training that can afford to go and maybe just move the needle in other ways, or are you trying to talk to people like us who are maybe in their 30s, 40s, even 50s, 60s, who are just trying to maximise the training in a week-by-week basis, trying to stay injury free, trying to just get strong. And I think it always boils down to like, what's your target audience and who are you talking to? Because for us, we know that this type of training is safe, sensible and we can stack it year round and the injury risk is lower. So. - It depends how much head room you've got to grow as well. I still think, if you think about, there's a top line, if you think of fitness, I don't know, as a water tank. The aerobic volume is a huge amount of the tank. If I've still got some of that water tank that I can fill and push up from below, then obviously our mayors will continue to do that in a safe manner. If I've obviously reached that whichever the capacity is that you can fill, you know, from below and pushing it up, then obviously it makes absolute sense to, you know, pull it up from above or fill the last bit with that magic or whatever we want to call it. But I think the difficult thing is, is where do you realise when you get to that point? That's maybe what, you know, we spoke about coaching before. That's maybe what a coach can help you with. That's maybe what, you know, your own experience of, you know, how much you've done before when you hit start to hit a plateau. I don't know, but my view is always, if I can safely just continue to just fill that tank a little bit from the safe end sort of thing, I'm going to continue to do that. But I don't think I can only speak for me and where I got to in, you know, maybe cycling. I'm pretty sure I've still got a little bit more headroom to grow a few percent, maybe, rather than sprinkling on that top one percent yet, but there's different ways to skin the cat. There's a million away, handy, there's a million and one pet ways to train this, you know, the way I train is not the only way to train, you know, saying earlier, the way I look at the marathon is the way I look at the marathon. I probably wouldn't do any quality in the long run. Other people have done it and it's absolutely fine. It's the same we're thinking about sprinkling that stuff on from the top, there's no right or wrong with that. You've just got to judge where you're at, I think. And I think people are looking for definite answers or you must do this or you must do that. And I don't want to ever fall into the trapper saying you must do this or your legs will laugh or whatever. But I've said that if they go with something, they'll die. Exactly. But I just know what I can. Yeah. Maybe, you know, I've got quite quick, have got quite quick. But in general, you know, I've got to work every day. I'm facing the same problems as most people probably listened to this. And I think the problems that we face maybe get, you know, exasperated and all made worse by intensity before we're ready for it, or too much of it. And I'm of the school still wears. I'd rather just not risk any of it at the moment for the sake of a gamble. And I've said before, if I get to a point where I don't think I'm improving, that's what I'm going to do. I'm just going to absolutely just spam some sprints of heels and some 200s, and I'll rip my hamstrings the shreds, and I'll tell you I told you so. But I don't think I'm there yet. And that doesn't mean other people aren't. But I think people underestimate how much headroom they've probably still got to cry with some of the easy stuff. Huge. I've said it on plenty of podcasts before. People, us hobby joggers, for the most part, are massively underdeveloped when it comes to their aerobic system, massively, and there's so much they can grow. And I always think of it this way now. If I've run X time on X race by training this way, then I have to think and go, well, I've done, depending on what it is, no specific work, limited specific work. And all I'm doing is aerobic work. And I've run this time. So imagine what you can do when you do other type of stuff. And also, I'm not going to put a specific time on this. But we've talked about in the past. And we've mentioned Dan Nash from the Physiology podcast. I know you spoke to him before. He's got to the realms now where he is starting to add a bit of spice into his training, to try and bring that 5K time down. But I mean, he got his well into the 14s. And you've mentioned before, like you think you could probably get well into the 14s before needing, like to do any of that tweaking. Plus the other thing, sorry, just very quickly, the other thing is you and I have got, whether we can handle it or not, but it got so much more scope for more head training time. Like, I'm not going to say mileage on the say training time. When you look at what other people do, that are mileage, mine in particular. But yours as well, for the times you're running in particular, you've got so much more headroom to grow. Or you could if you wanted to. Yeah, I think Dan, I remember speaking to Dan. And his point was he gets to a certain point where you've just got to be able to run a 400 lap at a certain pace to get down under 14. He can't even do that. So he's got no choice. Yep. You've got a main set that comes up. where there's obviously a pivotal moment. - Yeah, a pivotal moment, but I've said before, obviously if you're an elite runner or you're a high level college runner even, if you're trained like I did, and who goes to work eight hours a day, that would probably be quite stupid. But the flip side of that is, if I'm looking at, you know, Josh, you know, I've looked into it, fascinated by it, but if I tried to train like Josh Kerr, I think my looks probably would fall off. - Yeah, that's the thing, isn't it? It's all individual. It's all individual. It's what you can handle. Like I said, it's about making sure you just don't rip a hammy at the end of the day. And I think that's what a lot of people, but again, you have to remember, well, wrap it here, but what you have to remember, or for a lot of people listening, we have a lot of audience members, and I do as in particular, a lot of just people that are just regular people out there. Some people come from a sporty background, some people don't. The people that come from a more sporty background tends to be a bit more durable. The people that have gone right, I'm gonna get myself into shape, I'm gonna run couch to 5K, and have not necessarily been a sporty in their past. They're muscles and tendons and all of that stuff. They're adapting to this new way of life. And so they're not necessarily going to be as what's the word, maybe pliable as some other people, and maybe as more resilient, durable. And so we have to remember that if you say to a brand new runner, right, six by 400, and I want you to run him hard, that is gonna put one heck of a strain on them. And we can say, yeah, but it's only just a tiny bit of VO2 work, but the cost of what it's doing to someone that is not necessarily sporty, and again, it's all context, but the cost of what it's gonna do to them is probably gonna be extremely high as to whether someone that does have a sporty background that probably can handle it better. So everything has context. - Even me coming from running, hadn't done any sport to be fair for like five, four or five years. But even having, I can go back and isolate. I was doing at least one VO2 session most weeks. I'm looking back when I first started running. That was stunting my growth effectively. That is what caused, we spoke about before that boom and bust cycle sort of thing. Okay, I'll improve it. Okay, I need a down week and stuff like that, because I just couldn't, I wasn't absorbing it, I wasn't adapting to it, I was handling it. Obviously I was doing too much of it. I'd go about saying, you know, you shouldn't be doing it every week when you're a relatively new young runner. But, you know, that's the book that I picked up, and that was the plan that was in it, and that's what I assumed runners did. So that's what I did. And I did that for a while as well. So yeah. - There we go, what a great place to end it. Well, we said that this one might be a short episode, but we're here still at 80 minutes. So that's a crappy match, rather than a football match, didn't it? - Yeah, we haven't gone into extra time. - Yeah, exactly. - But that was great, mate. We covered quite a lot there. So for anyone listening, yeah, thank you. It's been another great discussion today. Lots more great episodes to come, as I mentioned earlier. Please do drop a comment, spurs a back, and all that. - Give me his back. - Jimmy will tell us how he's gonna run to 20, I think it is, he said to me. - I thought just 2.19, what's that? - Yeah, whatever it is, he says he doesn't care. And he doesn't care what they think, he's gonna run. - No, just go for it. He's come back from the dead and he's gonna go to 2.19. No, it'd be great to have Jimmy, but plenty of other great guests. - Jimmy and a kangaroo story. - Yeah, and we got to drag that one out of him as well. - That would be great. What greatest thing I've heard about the last month or so? - It was unreal, but we'll save that for a future episode. Yeah, and anything else to say? - I don't think so. - I don't think so, just this. - You've done well on me. - Yeah, I've ran, I've done a podcast with you, and I'm gonna go and run again and hope my legs don't fall off. My bike's broken, so I've got no choice. I'm double running or weak, so I've got so much power, I snap my chain, so there we go. - Bloody hell, right, fair enough. I'll let you go and double run. Yeah, thanks everyone for listening. Really appreciate it, another great episode. Yeah, plenty more to come as I said, leading up to Christmas, loads of great guests, loads of good stuff come in. So yeah, that'll be it, we'll leave it there, and we will speak to you guys again on in the next one. - See you guys.