Ep 193: 'Marathon Excellence for Everyone' with John Davis, PhD.

Welcome back to another episode of the Run Culture podcast today. I am super stoked to announce that John Davis is back on the show. Return guests through popular demand. Last year he was on the show for the first time and he covered the concept of full spectrum training, episode 52 of Season 2. And I got so much feedback from so many different people that they really enjoyed that episode and learned a lot. And I felt like I learned a lot and it really simplified and clarified how I go about the training process. And this episode is very similar. It's a great chat. John, as you know the amazing sort of author, scientist, coach/runner that he is, goes through his latest marathon training book, which is called Marathon Excellence for Everyone. He's just released it about a month ago. I was able to be fortunate enough to get an advanced copy of the book. I've had a good month to go over it. And I'll detail in the show notes if you're really interested to get a copy where to go to. I tried a beta version of one of the plans from the book for my ballerat marathon earlier this year and I felt like I really got fit from using it. So we go over that and we go over particularly chapter seven from the book, which is how to periodize training, how to come up with a training plan and the reasoning and the principles behind those decisions. So it's a great chat and I learned a lot and I'm sure many others will from this one. And that's enough from me. Let's get into this episode and yeah, here from John Davis himself again. Enjoy. Welcome back to another run culture episode. Today I'm very fortunate to have John Davis back on the show. So for those of you that will remember, I had John on the show about just over a year ago and it was episode 52 of season two. What is full spectrum training and it genuinely changed the way a lot of runners down here in Australia think about their running. So before we dive into our chat today, John, you've just come off a holiday. How was it? What'd you get up to? It was great. I was down in Georgia at a beautiful college town called Athens. It was my first real vacation since starting writing the book. So it was long overdue. One of my college friends and teammates lives down there and so I went to see him. One of my athletes is also in the area. So I got to watch him do a workout and very, very nice to be able to relax and unwind a little bit after over two years of really grinding on this book. With the book Marathon Excellence for everyone, you sent me a copy a month ago, which I'm very grateful for and I've been able to go through it and read it. And it's such a thorough read, any budding marathoner that wants to master the marathon, I thoroughly recommend it. And I can tell why you needed a holiday. When I read your website as well, running writings, you must spend a lot of time thinking about some of these works that you put out and it must take up a lot of time. That's what I just have in my head when I think of you. You've put a lot of thought into all this. Yeah, yeah, I want everything I put out to be like really useful and like high density information. And with the book in particular, you know, I feel like the marathon is one of those events where you really do want like a comprehensive authoritative source that you can go back to where you're like, OK, training is going well, but I'm having trouble getting fuel down or like I've got a new race and it's really really hilly or it's going to be really hot. But what do I do? And trying to get like every facet, you know, the marathon is a tricky race and trying to get every facet of that into one resource. It was certainly a lot of work, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. And you bookmarked one of the chapters specifically for me. It was chapter seven marathon periodization, how a training plan comes together. And today I specifically want to dive into this chapter and my personal experience using one of your plans earlier this year for the ballerat marathon and I really enjoyed using it. Just like you said, like I had a lot of trust in the plan because I know that you put a lot of thought into it. So I knew it was really nice using a plan knowing that someone had studiously thought about OK, this training supports this training and there was an order and a method behind it. And that was freeing for me because I didn't have to think about the training as such. I was like OK, it's well structured. I need a just on the fly if I'm not feeling up to it each week. And I feel experienced enough to do that and grounded enough to do that. But it was really nice to, yeah, to use one of your plans. I notice on the back of the book, you had the endorsement from Renata Canova. And that's that's really cool because you know the man himself said John has successfully brought the training principles of elite runners within reach of everyone. I thought this was a really cool endorsement from the man himself and how did this come about. It must have been a nice moment and did he have any other feedback. Yeah, yeah, that was really that was like a really huge. I felt like very grateful that yet that's so many kind of things to say about my book. That came about because he, he had reached out to me actually after I wrote, maybe you saw I wrote an article about Emil Keras's training back in 2023, I think, after he'd run to a six a London. And that article got pretty popular. And then Renata can over reach out to me the email and said, thank you for writing this up is like very thoughtful and insightful. And we emailed back and forth a few times since then. And I reached out about, you know, if all is obviously, you know, his training and that broader like Italian school of marathon training was usually influential to me. And anybody who's familiar with that tradition will look at these training plans and be like, oh, yeah, look, I see the strong influences here. And yeah, he said he was very happy to look at it. And, you know, he, the one, but he had one correction. And the correction was there's a part of the book where I talk about his athlete, Andre Moin training training for and running at 205, I think at that book. And I said it was Norwegian national record, which it was, but kind of said, actually, you should say it was European record because it was that's the more impressive fact. It wasn't just a national record. It was the European record. So I made that change. Hey, but if that's the only thing that he picked up and like he was pretty happy with how you got all the principles down in the book and. Yeah, I want to just for those listeners that haven't listened to episode 52 on full spectrum training, what's a quick one two minute overview of what full spectrum training is because I feel like that's an important aspect and then even just the idea of. Periodization in terms of general support events specific phases like what's a quick elevator pitch overview of that asked before we get into training plans. So the basic idea is for any event, the most important training you do is the training that's specific for the event. If you're training for the 800 meters, that's your 800 meter pace repeats. If you're training for the 5k, that's your 5k specific repeats workouts at 100% of race base. So the speed that you're going to run in the race and the more and the better quality workouts you can do in that direction, the better you're going to run. It's pretty pretty clear that if you can do, I don't know, like 8 by K in in 330, you're going to be able to run faster 5k, then if you can do 8 by K in 340, for example. So the question then becomes though, how do you become able to do more or higher quality specific work? And the answer in the full spectrum approach is you support that with on the endurance side, longer stronger workouts about 5% slower than race pace. And on the speed side with supportive workouts that are about 5% faster than race pace. And then you run that same script again, you say, well, OK, if I need to say it, say we're talking about the 5k. If you want to get better at workouts at 95% to 5k pace, it's about 10k pace for reference. You can say, well, how do I get better at those workouts? Well, similarly, you can support that from the endurance side at 90% of race pace. And you can say the same thing about the speed side at 10% faster than race pace. That helps support the speed for doing the 105% of race pace workouts. And then you can ask, OK, well, how do I get better at doing so we have specific workouts 100%. We have supportive speed at 105%, supportive endurance at 95%. Or sorry, I should have said specific speed at 105% specific endurance 95%. And then 90 and 110, you have supportive speed and supportive endurance. Then you ask, how do I get better at the sport of work? And the answer is a general base of a broad spectrum of speeds, easy mileage, moderate running, long easy runs. He'll work out shorter speed. That touches on the full spectrum of speeds that enhances each layer going upwards or going forwards. So you kind of start at the end and then work backwards. So it's very different from the approach of like, "Ab's going to run a bunch of miles and then I'm going to do a bunch of intervals and then I'm going to race." It almost like inverts the order in which you think about things. So when in Chapter 7 you talk about, "Oh, this is how you sort of engineer a training plan and you've got sort of, you sort of talk step by step about going through that model, like reverse engineering at." But then you've also got some pre-made plans for different levels of athletes, the breeze, gale, tornado and hurricane plans. I wanted to start off with like, if someone really wanted to try to like reverse engineer, like a 12 week, 18 week plan, they do just what you said, isn't it? They start at the race, put a taper period in, but then how do they know how long they should do each phase? And then you spoke really well in the chapter about coming up with progressive specific workouts and progressive supportive speed and endurance workouts and then some general workouts. So how do they sort of go about that? Yeah, so the story behind that chapter is interesting. It wasn't in the earliest drafts of the book, but I was having various people, including you, look at beta versions, early drafts of the book. And one of the people looked at it was a coach here in the United States up in Alaska. And he said, you know, I read through these chapters about like the three phases of training and I feel like I got all these puzzle pieces, but I don't quite know how to put them together if I'm making my own plan. I still have the plans in the book, but I feel like I want to know like how do they come together? So that's why I wrote that chapter and really explicitly like, okay, let's look at this plan and let's like deal it in from the blank calendar. So obviously the first thing that goes in calendar is the race and often like I have guidelines in the chapter about like how many how long each phase should be. But in practice, often you're kind of constrained by like whenever the race is right if you're going to run the city marathon like that is when it is and you've got like X number of weeks to prepare. And then the kind of a guiding principle over how you distribute those three phases of training, the general phase where you're building up that broad base, the supportive phase where you're kind of working in words with more focus on 90% to 110% and not no focus in the middle, but less. And then finally the specific phase where you're really focusing on 95 105% race base. But the key intuition here is the specific phase is the most important, but the longer you do specific training, the bigger the base, you need to support it. So if you only have 12 weeks or 10 weeks to train, you can't do as much of as long as a specific phase because you won't have the foundation underneath it. So just come a point around maybe six or seven, maybe eight weeks for really advanced runner where that's really all the longer the specific phase can be otherwise your abilities out on the far ends of the spectrum start deteriorating and your ability to maintain your fitness starts to deteriorate too. Even if you're like I've got 25 weeks to train still a disproportionate amount of that is going to be general training just because you can't just do specific training forever, particularly for the marathon because some of the specific workouts are so big. But basically within those constraints the idea is okay put the race on the counter then you put in if you're engineering your own schedule like whatever taper you feel like you need. In the schedules in the book I tend to be actually a little bit on the shorter taper end of not a big believer in like the long multi week tapers. But say you are say you're like I say you've got your taper dialed and you know you need a full two weeks on schedule that in and then you start putting in okay what are the big specific marathon pace workouts 100% of marathon pace in the schedules I like having them two weeks four weeks six weeks out. Put those in the schedule and then you ask yourself okay well how do I support my ability to do those workouts going to need 95% long fast runs and then some specific speed at 105% feel those in and then you work backwards and say okay well how am I going to support my ability to do that biggest long fast run. I'm going to have to do something in the same speed but a little bit shorter you know two weeks prior and then two weeks before that a little bit shorter a little bit slower and you're kind of working backwards for each like kind of thread of of the workout. And trying to ask yourself both how do I dial this back to make it like easier shorter lower volume lower intensity in the preceding weeks and then how do I sort of work horizontally to connect this workout to the other speeds. Because you have you have like workouts that are connected to each other so maybe you do maybe you do like 25k at 95% marathon pace 30k 95% and then your biggest workout is like 35k. So that those workouts are sort of connected like vertically if you're looking at a calendar you're not going like down week by week but workouts are also connected like horizontally across speeds. So that 95% of marathon pace workouts going to get easier if beforehand you've done some work at 90% of marathon pace and it's also going to get easier actually if you're 100% of marathon pace workouts get better because it makes that 95% feel easier. So you have these like connections across workouts and then kind of across time as well and that chapter goes through like okay a lot of work backwards backwards backwards and then by the time you get to the beginning of the schedule you're like oh like you know 10k strong at 85% of 5k pace like no problem easy. And it's not so bad because one of the things is like when you get the schedule you look at like the biggest workouts you're like that's 5 by 5k or you know 35k fast like that's a big session and so you've got to work backwards to get to a point ideally where you kind of I think in the chapter I say you're kind of like building a bridge from where you need to be for the marathon to where you are right now and you want that bridge to like connect on both ends. No, yeah well said I really experienced that with my personal experience with Ballarat. I don't think like I've done all the workouts before previously in other builds but they never really had hit the mark like I felt as effectively as they did in this build because at the start of the build I was fit but then like I had a rate a couple of races like I did a 10k race. And I was nowhere near the shape that I needed to be in but I felt like my fitness just came just sort of emergently organically just slowly slowly like and I couldn't really pinpoint what it was. I feel like it was the structure and the combination of the workouts all just quietly sort of you know causing adaptation in my body over time and and they're just well spaced. I think the progressions because I've since gone through the program and I just like you said like I could link that that workout supported that workout like this 95% marathon pace long run. I can see yeah I did a 21k a 25 and a 32k and they were like about three weeks apart and then there was he just did that with every every workout and there was a and I think the supportive training was the best I've ever done it like the most comprehensive and and spent the most time on that that phase. Before I got to the specific phase and I think I was the most prepared and and ready and then I think the specific workouts just started to hit the mark better because I was more prepared. Yeah so did any of them stand out as like instances where you felt like oh yeah now I'm like I really feel like I'm hit my stride in these kind of sessions. Yeah yeah I had like about 12 weeks out my first marathon pace session was 16k's at marathon pace and I remember doing it because of work commitments I had to do it two days after. I think it was 90% long 30k long run and so I was tired and I didn't perform very well and now that I reflect on it I was like yeah it was just because I was tired but I hit the 16k in a pace way slower than I wanted and I was a bit disappointed and I was like oh I'm not in that in good shape. I was doing a podcast about the whole build simultaneously I was talking to my friends that on the podcast about it and they're like oh don't worry like it's just one of those things like you just tired. And then I remember a few weeks later doing six by three kilometers at marathon pace with a 1k float and finding that particularly hard as well and I had a friend on the bike helping me and it was really hot in Melbourne at the time. And I just didn't know if that was just because it was my first time with doing that specific workout as well or it was the heat it was probably a combination of the above but then I also did a half marathon at marathon pace and it was a race it was hilly bit windy and I this was six weeks out from. [BLANK_AUDIO] the goal marathon and once again I sort of hit 72/50 and I was like oh I couldn't have held that for the whole marathon and so I still wasn't too sure but then something just happened a week or so later and everything started to just ooze out of me like easy runs became 30 seconds a cake quicker for the same effort and to be honest I got the most confidence out of that out of my easy runs. So my easy runs went from 5/15 to 5 minutes per cake to 4/15 to 4/30 per cake for the same perceived effort and then there was two really big sessions where I'm like oh yeah I'm I reckon I can do this now and my goal was to run 225 I just thought I could do that of previous form and so then I did the six five by 4k and it just came out so easily and I just felt so good one of those you know those runs where you're just like that's where you do the sport like it keeps you coming back for another four years and then I did an 8k at 105 percent marathon pace which was a great reference point compared to the 10k I did at the start of the build and I did it solo in the heat on the track at 317 per k and like I I just felt like I was training I wasn't racing it like I was just sort of ticking it off so yeah and then I was I was pretty much there so I kind of peaked right at the right time yeah so they were they were some of the ones where that's what I really remember from the build and then I also remember the the sessions that didn't go well but I remember when I when it just started to click and it wasn't it wasn't close of the workout I think it was because of this the whole collaborated sort of build yeah yeah yeah and once once those workouts like start kind of getting connected to each other and then you start being able to kind of integrate your fitness better and then the other thing that that happens in those last few weeks too is you start to get kind of more like kind of concentrate the intensity into like big days and then really focus on recovery afterwards and in that supportive phase your can is still like touching on a lot of different speeds and putting in more work generally during the week and it's not quite the you know doesn't quite have as much like modulation or like concentration of intensity into individual days too so I wonder if that was also part of why like you felt like things started coming together in those last few weeks I wouldn't be surprised like that's what I really liked about it as well was those canyon progression runs or like like even just different versions like I was doing 40 minute progression runs 60 minute progression runs and I felt so easy and but effective and worthwhile but I felt like they didn't add fuel onto the fire in terms of fatigue like I felt like they were a great gap filler that and the double threshold stuff in the specific phase like I like I've done that before here and there I've tried it the last year or two and so it wasn't new so and also it just felt nice to go quicker than marathon pace for these little 400 or 500 meter reps and 1k reps so get the leg turnover but then cause you were getting the regular recovery and rest felt like a bounce back from it really nicely as well so yeah there was a few workouts where I was really confident that I'm not going to get tired from this I can do this while I wait seven days or so before I do something a bit more meaty yeah yeah the the double threshold sessions are an interesting application because it's a little bit different than like what you kind of see like the 1500 5k guys doing now where they're like really loading them up the idea in the higher mileage they're obviously like the low mileage plans don't have these double threshold sessions but I have found that in the higher mileage plans it's really useful to be able to get a higher volume of quality in a way that like doesn't break your body down so if you do a big long run on Sunday and you come back and do like a moderate volume double threshold say on Wednesday it seems like that you can get more quality in and recover better after it then if you'd like packed it all into one you know 12 5k or something in the morning and then you can come back again on Saturday and then do another big big weekend session so it seems like it's a very it's a little bit unusual way of using it but I found it's like quite useful for exactly that reason yeah no I thought that were like that like you said in the book like low cost high benefit kind of workouts that you could just sort of squeeze in so that you'll still get getting some kind of stimulus but it was just a well played and then another part of the experience was I remember having to adjust a few things so those races particularly and you go over this in the book about making adjustments like when you've got a schedule like a predetermined schedule it's really important to know how to make adjustments and the two races I did that 10k race and the half marathon race just coincidentally that they looked exactly or very similar to some of the workouts that were planned in the schedule so it was pretty easy to just replace the workout with those races and so that worked pretty seamlessly and then I remember late in the piece actually changing one of the really specific long runs it was a long run where you had to do 6k at marathon pace 5 4 3 2 1 we've a 1k float at 90% marathon pace and I just already felt ready and in the past there's been a few marathons where I just was like I think I'm pre content I've already won like I already feel like I've improved so much that I just didn't want to do it felt like too much so that's where like that experience of knowing how your body and your general feel and not getting too greedy came into the piece of being able to like go no I'm going to steer clear I'm not going to be a slave to the program I followed 90% of it I'll make it my own so I took what was useful and and discarded what I felt like you know like as I got two kids and a business owner and I was squeezing it all in and so I just thought like oh no that's enough like I'm happy with where I'm at and so I just instead just ran over some hills locally and finished on this nice downhill so covered a lot of elevation over 3537 k's and I felt like that really calmed the legs but it was once again that low it was low cost lower cost because I was just running it for 05 to sort of 420 per k so it just felt a bit safer yeah I writing the book I wanted to make it really explicit that like I'm giving you permission to change this as as you need to particularly for people doing the higher mileage plans but but also for people doing the lower volume plans I think I see you and say somewhere in the book like even the one on one coaching that I do we if we even make 80% of the workouts as planned like that's like quite I'm like thrilled with that it's very very common to change things up swap things out you know have something come up with scheduling or just feel like you know like this workout is just not quite the right thing for me today not going to do it and so I want to like number one give people permission slip like yes like you you it's you don't have to do the exactly everything as written and then number two here's actual practical advice on how to do it or how to change things up if you feel like oh I you know I feel like I need more of this so I feel like I need you know I need I need something easier or I feel like I need to you know adjust the pacing having explicit guidelines and even like worked examples in several places in the book about like okay what if you get sick what if you get hurt what if you have a race what if you want to do an 18 week plan but you only have 15 weeks to train like really like like penciling out like here is how I would do it here's here's how to go about it so that people may understand both the rationale behind it and be understand that like it's totally normal thing to do that yeah you make that really clear like and I love that because in one of the summaries you said it is normal to adjust your training and I think a lot of people don't know that like they think that this is a blueprint this is the magic if I follow this it's going to work but you know you look at the best chefs and cooks in the world and and often they know how to go off script when needed yeah in terms of like picking the plan the right plan when I looked at the tornado plan I just felt like I could do it but it felt like the right level of challenge so I looked at and you gave a little summary of like this would be good for someone aiming for this level of performance and then I looked at the the weeks and I like yeah I think I can do this I can fit this in with life but then also I think it's going to challenge me as well like what's your advice in terms of when someone has to try to pick one of your plans like the breeze guy or tornado or hurricane plans like what do they think about? Yeah that's that's basically exactly how I would recommend going about it like the plans have mileage ranges so you can you can do the plans at like a low or a high end of the mileage range but mileage is only one piece of of how you would you know just like which which plan should I choose some it's also like what your marathon goals are how busy you are what level of ambition you have you know if you really want to like go for it or if you just want like safe control plan those are all things you want to keep in mind when you choose a plan and then also like how you make adjustments to or you can do the high end of the mileage range that you're gonna do the low end of the mileage range I actually just got an email this morning from somebody who was feeling like he was on the fence between doing the the breeze plan at 80k week or the wind plan at 90k week the wind plan might be a bit of a stretch it seems a little tough and when I tell them us look like just start the breeze plan and then it feels too easy after a few weeks you can just add some more easy volume and that's fine so that you're not like you don't want to pick something where you're going to be just like dig it in your fingernails and like hanging on for dear life but you also don't want to choose something that's like way below your level or too easy or that you've that you've done before and so I also not only designed the plans to be sort of like complimentary to each other in terms of like the level that you choose them but I also wanted to make them so that you could repeat the same plan the next training cycle but with a little bit higher mileage or you know do the high end of the workouts instead of the low end so that you can still increase you know your training stimulus over time and not have to sometimes you know the people will feel like oh like I did this 50 mile a week plan but the next one is a 70 mile week plan like it's still almost too big of a jump and so they get kind of stuck in between so I wanted to make it so that you you can kind of dial that volume and intensity to whatever it is that just like you said feels like it's doable for you but also feels like it'll be a challenge and we'll we'll stimulate your body to improve yeah nice like I've got a friend who I've recommended he does the gale plan but the time that he's shooting for would probably be like it's it's quicker than what's specified at the start but he's very easily injured and he's never done a proper marathon bill before let alone got through sort of you know 80 hundred K weeks consistently and so I feel like he's he's so talented that if you can just stay on the park doing the more conservative plan would be a good recommendation and and he'll just stay consistent yeah so it's it's like I'm interesting like how you got a factor you know sort of that injury resiliency and and component into it as well yeah that's why I mentioned like you're doing your tolerance for risk too we're like if you if you've if you've not had a successful marathon build for you know for injury or for whatever reason maybe you just like kind of burn yourself out and get demotivated you definitely want to start on the conservative end something else you know less than what you've done before because you can always like you if you have a successful build it's much easier to like build on that the next time around versus like getting five weeks in or six weeks in and getting hurt or or just feeling so overwhelmed because there's so much volume so much intensity it's way beyond what you've done before and then being like oh I can't do this so yeah it's it's it's I really try to make it clear that it's not just about mileage because I feel like sometimes people think volume and like oh I run a hundred k a week I should do with a hundred k a week plan like well you know it depends a little bit on some things outside of just what the volume is yeah exactly like a lot of those workouts are unique and different and you know you know it's how you do the mileage do like what what you know some of those workout progressions are and as well like it completely changes you know a hundred k a week just jogging versus a hundred k a week with a couple of supportive or specific marathon kind of workouts in there is completely different yeah yeah and I recommend for people who haven't done anything even remotely like this kind of training before like that's a great candidate for somebody who would start on the conservative end because also like one of the things you can just ask yourself when choosing a plan is how new and different is this for my body and if even just the the structuring of a plan itself and the types of workouts are very different like you said maybe you run a hundred k a week but you just you know run easy um doing something with more quality like that alone is kind of be quite a significant uh new stimulus for your body and so you don't need to be doing a hundred k a week or 110 k a week and like all the you know the highest end of all the workouts better on the plan you can you can dial the volume back and do some amount some amount of quality if it's going to be something new for your your body um from your experience with all the beta programs and and your learnings by making this book um what of what are some of the stories that come straight to mind in terms of um that have really filled your cup or have left the lasting impression um whether it's some of the athletes that have used your plan or or yeah what have been some of the even just some key takeaways for you just in this process of writing this book yeah I mean I think I had a really wonderful spring because every Sunday and Monday morning I would wake up to emails from people saying like oh I just ran like this time at this marathon with your with your plans um and a few of the standouts were I think the big theme across across that I was really happy to see was um the range of types of people that it worked for because there are some people like you who are pretty fast and pretty experienced and and ran well on it which I was really happy to see um there was a guy in uh in Italy who read I think his old PR was like two thirty eight or something uh he ran two twenty eight uh on uh on my plan and then I actually just got an email from him like last week saying he'd now run two twenty six flat doing the plan again and so that I was really really happy to see that but then also like in the summer um one of the people who was doing like the latest you know furthest into the summer marathons was somebody who his marathon PR was like four sixteen or four seventeen tried to break four hours for several years had not been successful did I think the breeze plan um and ran three fifty five and was like wow great like that's fantastic that this approach now obviously like he had a different actual plan than the the two twenty six guy but seeing that this strategy this approach to training actually works for this like people all the way across this um this like a range of ability levels was awesome there was a woman who had just given birth and was like getting back into marathon training uh she ran I think like two fifty or two fifty two like really surprised yourself um there was there's also a young guy in college I think like age like nineteen or twenty uh and he went uh I think he went from like two fifty something that two thirty seven I think and then subsequent again he was another one who are like emailed the again four months later saying oh I ran all right two thirty one now um so seeing you know like older runners younger runners uh men women faster runners slower runners high mileage runners low mileage runners seeing the general approach work for them was like just like really um uh really satisfying because like of course like I've coached a wide range of runners myself but you never no like is it some magic that I have or is it really just like you do the planning following instructions read the notes um and like things tend to go well and actually happily I'm just happy to discover that it's it's the latter it's not that like I have some magical motivational power um it's that the the structure of the training I've you know really works for a ride a run a range of people so that was that was by far the most exciting thing even more so than like seeing people who ran really fast was just just the range of uh individuals who were able to have success with them yeah no no that's that's so cool to hear actually um like I was just thinking like what like now like what a like if if um people were to get the book um uh what uh like what do you reckon just off the top of your head as some key principles like you know two or three key principles um uh like key takeaways that the book the voids that the book feels um that was missing prior to the book was out like like what the needs like um like yeah yeah i mean i think the biggest one is that it's that the basic idea of full spectrum training is a training is specific if you want to run 42k long and fast you have to do workouts that are long and fast as well and what i see a lot of people doing for the marathon is that they just run a lot of volume do some do some hill repeats or some special workouts do a couple long easy runs or a couple like you know short pickups at mario marathon pace during otherwise easy runs and then they think they're ready to run the marathon but they haven't done the exact thing that the marathon requires. They haven't run long and fast at marathon specific speeds. So the core idea of the book is number one, you need to do long and fast running at marathon specific speeds within five or ten percent of marathon pace and because those workouts are so big you need to recover well afterwards. So it's big stress, big recovery. And then you know you can work backwards from there to get back to this idea of like you know support of training, general training, but basically you know like I think I see in the book like our north star here. So yeah Australia you don't have the north star. So your core principle, your core goal here is 42k as fast as possible. That's the objective. Okay so break that down into its component pieces, gotta be able to run you know make it to 42k without your legs falling off. You gotta be able to run long and fast. You gotta be able to run at marathon pace and that's the most important part in training than everything else is figuring out a how do I get to the point where I'm able to do those workouts and be how do I recover well afterwards. Like it's relatively simple conceptually. Now it might look kind of like you see the schedule and like kind of has all these fancy you know different workouts but the core principle is very easy. Just try to run 42k as fast as you can. Now I totally agree that and that is a void that as a physio I see people trying to do a marathon off six weeks or off like and not have run before and so they're just not getting the principle of giving themselves like reverse engineering like give yourself enough time so that you can do those three phases of training so the specific support even general and you can build up to run a long run at pace within your capabilities in training. So you're as prepared as you can be and I feel like the book outlines that so essentially the book is getting people to respect the marathon and respect what goes into preparing for it really appropriately. Yeah and even you know one of the things this is less of an issue for you because you've done many marathons before but one of the other things that I really emphasize in the book is like having a plan. The other one of the other mistakes I see people do is like they just kind of show up they did it just like oh okay I'm just gonna show up and run the race and they don't have they haven't looked at the course map they haven't analyzed like okay there's a kill here they don't have a feeling plan they don't have a like a way they're mentally breaking down the race into like into pieces and how to think about that so yeah like having like not just having a plan for training but also having a plan for the race thing like how am I going to actually like you know how am I actually going to run this thing I think it's really important. Yeah and that's what your book covers like so well like there's like a whole section on the science of marathon training but then there's a whole like a chapter on the science of fueling and then there's also sections on the advanced training techniques as well so it's all sort of spelt out there as well just on that when it comes to like training like how much do you think when how much do you consider psychology when when you're sort of writing and prescribing your training for your athletes that you're coaching because obviously we've talked about training physiologically and preparing physiologically for the event but what about the psychology of it all like how much of that is embedded in in some of the training. Yeah I really think it's important not just what workouts you do but how you do them and like what your mentality is how like how hard subjective the workout is that's why the training plans to come with difficulty ratings for each workout where I'm trying to communicate like hey this is this is going to be a seven out of 10 should be like you know a decent workout but pretty chill you should feel like you should be able to keep going at the end or like a really big marathon specific session might be eight and a half or even nine where it's like okay this is going to be a really tough session like make sure you're you ready for it and then the other thing that that like I get in the book to try to get to try to do the same thing that I do for my athletes is every week has a big note section of like instructions for okay here's what here's how this workout should feel here's how to set it up you should you know do it on this kind of terrain here's how you might be feeling at this point in training like you were saying you know week eight week ten you might be feeling kind of just generally fatigued and I want to make people aware that it's okay that's a normal and expected or you know fast forward to like week 14 or 15 out of 18 very much the opposite it's like hey the focus here is big workout and then really recover well afterwards so you got to go slower than usual on your easy runs you got to go shorter than usual that's okay we want to get to those workouts on the weekend fresh ready to run well run well and then recover afterwards I just a couple days ago I published on my blog a an article about what I call psychological training load where it's these gets at that idea of like okay yes you have some some session you know 8k eight 105 percent marathon base for example but how do you how are there other ways you can adjust the psychological like difficulty at that you mentioned doing that workout like on the track you have checking your splits and like that that kind of dials it up to be more like you know really like a focus session but if you're doing that same session you know further out from the race and you want to be more like kind of chill you might do it over cross country or on dirt roads like not really check and you watch that much mostly go by you could call it like 105 percent of marathon effort for today so I really do try to like kind of communicate what the progression from effort based workouts to pace based workouts looks like because early on in training you really do want to keep things pretty effort based because you know I may not know exactly what kind of fitness you're you're in big conditions may be affecting you you know whatever maybe fatigue from training but the closer you get to to race day the more important for your biggest most important workouts the more important the actual pace is and so that that kind of focus on effort versus pace is like a big dimension of the psychological aspect that I try to that I try to bake into both the plans that I sent of my 101 athletes and also the the plans that are in the book because I don't think it's good one of the things I worry about when when people are like super super super scientific is that like if every single workout you do is like on the track checking your watch looking at your heart rate like every single split it becomes very psychologically demanding and you and it's like it's like the diabetic opposite of like what you're saying those Kenyan progression runs not only I think are those a great like like physical way to get some quality without stressing your body too much but also just psychologically you know their way that's way less stressful than like 10 by K on the track checking every split you know stressing if you're one or two seconds low because it's windy or you're tired or whatever so trying to get that balance right I think is really important especially when you have workouts on the weekends that are like you know it's going to be a big workout you know you're going to need to be like focused and push hard getting the balance right is really important yeah that's absolutely go that's actually my favorite part of the podcast like that is under talked about and I really did appreciate that part of the program I would actually look forward to reading the notes at the bottom of each week because it like obviously like you see all the prescribed pastes and the sessions and it can get it somewhat intimidating especially because you don't let you know there's other stresses in your week that week and you might be still 17 weeks out from the marathon so you're not you shouldn't be you know you might be a bit off in terms of where your your form is and you might not hit the paces and so when I did that 16k's at marathon pace and I was a bit fatigued the whole time I was kind of just like it's all right like this is this is actually at the effort that John was describing like this actually feels like like my marathon pace today so it is what it is and I kind of just let the pace take care of itself and and I think that's like a really important aspect to training the ability to to appreciate early in a build that you're not going to be you're probably not going to be hitting the paces or there's a high chance that at some part of the build you're not going to and and be okay with that and factor factor that in as long as the effort is there I don't know if you watched that Clayton Young or some of the Clayton Young documentaries but I think he was really good at it in early stages of some builds and and and then he sort of starts to look at his watcher fair bit towards the towards the end but at the start like he's okay with it not sort of being right on and yeah I know like what you said about the Kenyan progression runs been not intimidating in terms of like feeling like you have to hit a certain pace because you just run by feel and and that's a really important aspect to sort of foster on your path to becoming a better runner like just that ability to let go and and run to how you feel on the day. Yeah yeah and getting that balance of like making sure you're able to do the effort-based workouts is really important because like I'll be safe you want to run and save like four minutes per K for the marathon, like you do need to be hitting four minutes per K on race day. So like there does come a point where the pace is important, but a week two or a week eight to even in an 18 week plan, like you can't be so obsessed about it. And I think you kind of got to learn how to do that dance where like you focus on the effort and really get that right. And that's kind of how the fitness improvements come about is like you get the effort right day after day and then the fitness, you know, your fitness comes along and then eventually when you get to the workouts where it's like, okay, I'm trying to hit 3 30, 3 40 or whatever it is per K, then you have the fitness and you have a confidence to be able to do it. And that's yeah, it's it's kind of like, as you know, you mentioned Clayton Young, like the, I feel like in a lot of those videos, you know, you've got Ed Eistone there who's going to hit their coach like telling them like, okay, you know, hey, let's, you know, don't force it on this or hey, you're going to pick it up. And one of the problems with like a, you know, physical piece of paper is like, I can't be there, you know, when, when the athletes doing the workouts, but maybe I can, I can put in the notes section like what I would tell them if I were there, you know, based on how I think it probably is going to, going to go or or often in many cases, it's like actual personal experience for me coaching runners who've done that workout before. And I'm like, okay, like here's, here's the common failure modes here and watch out for them or like, you may feel like this, watch out for it. Yeah. And that's where like, I think you're a plan like cause it had that stuff in it, like RPA for each session and how it should feel, like as a general notes, like I think that said, it said a side because it's not just like do this workout and it should be, if it's not feeling like this, then make sure it feels like this and slow down or, so it, and I think that's where you're, you're trading that nice dance between the science and the art of training really well. And I like what you said, like so often when you're just sort of more feeling it out and running a bit more to how, how you feel like you shoot on the day, it just gradually sort of fitness just comes to you. And once you start to realize that that's how, how it works, rather than just trying to force it. And you sort of, yeah, it's kind of like you're more a sailboat sort of tacking with the wind. You're still trying to get from A to B, but you're not a robot just forcing it, you know, upstream. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny, like the, the, the notes section for each week of training, like I put that in the training plans. And then when I sent them out to the beta testers, I was like, I, you know, I don't know if like people are gonna feel like this is too much, like it's really, I was a little nervous because it's, it takes up quite a bit of space, like there's five plans, 18 weeks, and, and because there's like the schedule and the notes each week as a full page. And so it's like a hundred pages of the book is just the training plans. And so I was like, I don't know if I cut the notes section out, like I go cut that in half or more, but every single person was like, I love this. Like you have to keep this in the book. I, this is like, this is like so useful. And they would often like say, like it was really useful to have like this particular notes on this particular workout. And in some cases, people had comments, I share it, you know, you saw, I shared it as Google Doc, and people would like leave, you know, comment notes about how workouts went. And so there's some in the final version, there's some stuff that I actually learned from the people who were doing the beta training too. So it was, yeah, it was really, I was sort my confidence quite a bit to see how popular that was and the difficulty ratings too. That was another thing that like in retrospect now, I'm like, wow, I feel like I need to do this now for like every, every training plan I write in the future, like every workout should have some like indicator. Because sometimes you just see like, I don't know, you know, five by 1600 at some base. And you're like, gosh, that seems pretty hard. Like, is this supposed to be like, am I supposed to be like throwing up after this? Or is it supposed to be like a pretty controlled, like, you know, midweek session? And having some barometer for like, hey, like heads up, this is a really tough session. Or like, if this feels really hard, you're doing it too, too, too fast. Like, I think that's especially when you don't have a person there to like, you know, observe the workout. Just a lot of people found that really, really helpful. I certainly did like, I mean, at Ballarat, I ran a time that I never thought I'd run again. And, you know, ran 224 again. I hadn't run that for five years. I hadn't run that as a dad or having kids. And yeah, at 39, and then it restored my confidence. I was like, oh, maybe I can run even faster. Maybe I can attack that PV one day. So, like, I've really got you to thank for that. So yeah, thanks a lot, John. Yeah, well, you're welcome. I was, I was really thrilled to be able to help. And obviously that your email was one of those that, you know, I woke up and saw it and was just like, just like, beat my day. Yeah, yeah. I mean, as a coach, like, yeah, like, it's such a good feeling, isn't it? When you feel like, oh, yeah, far out, like, when someone who's been following my plan or I've had something to do with, like, they're having a win. Is there anything we haven't gone over, like today, like, that you feel like, oh, that's a glaring omission. Like, I'd love to go over that. Yeah. Yeah. Let me think. I think we've really, we've hit the, we've hit it good. Maybe, oh, I think maybe, we mentioned briefly the modulation idea. Maybe we can define what that is and, and, you know, talk about how to use it. So that, that, that, that term is coined by Canova at, you know, the literal meaning of modulation is, like, up and down. Yeah. And the idea is basically, like, I describe it in four words, big stress, big recovery. And so the idea is, like, early on in training, in general training, you kind of just distribute your intensity pretty evenly throughout the week. You know, you progression running to maybe do, like, 10 by 3 minutes, with a minute jog and you do, like, a longer run with a progressive finish. And, you know, you seem easy to moderate running in between. No day is really big. No day is really small. But as you progress through training, you, you concentrate the intensity into more individual days, but then if you do a big stress, you need a bigger recovery. So, like, you know, you mentioned doing 32k pretty fast. And then, you know, the day after that is either like, you know, a rest day or like 8k super easy. And then another easy day. And then in mid-work, week-workup, that's like not even that hard. Maybe a progression runner, just like some life, you know, far like pickups. Two more easy days. Then another big workout. So instead of just, like, you know, workout easy to moderate day. Another workout easy to moderate day. Workout. You've concentrated, you know, the stress into a big workout and you really recover well afterwards. One of the other mistakes I sometimes see people make is like, they see, they hear about these, like, nega, you know, they read about, like, Emile Carras or, or, you know, one of Moses Mossop, one of, kind of, his other guys. And they look at their schedules and they're like, "Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do 40k at 90% of marathon days." And then they, so they do this big hero workout. But then they just like go out and run, you know, 20 kilometers at the very next day. They don't treat it as like a gigantic stress in their body. And they don't get really gonna recover well afterwards afterwards. I think especially for people who are getting older and especially for runners who are more experienced, if you are trying to progress your training, you have to start adopting this bigger modulation idea. And sometimes like late, late in your career, actually, like, the best thing to do is bring your volume, your total weight from mileage down so that you can do the bigger workouts and then really, really recover well afterwards. There's a section in the book and I'm forgetting what chapter it's about. I think it's the high mileage chapter where unfortunately, I should have labeled this also as high mileage. And then also, like, how to think about moving beyond mileage in your career? Because that's what it's really about. Talks about one of, kind of, his other, you know, Italian coaching buddies, coaching elite marathoners running, you know, only like 120k a week, which is quite low for, you know, elite level marathoner. But the idea was basically, these are guys who are late in their career. How are they gonna be able to do even bigger, even more, like, you know, high quality workout? Well, like, we're not just gonna keep doing 200k a week. We gotta bring it down so that they can do a big stress and then really recover afterwards. And even if you're only running like 80k a week, same principle applies. So that's the, that's the idea of modulation, big stress, big recovery. And then progressing that, like, concentration of intensity over time. You can almost think about it as like the total amount of intensity in the weeks is the same. But you like, concentrate, it kind of gets like spiky over time, you know. No, that's, um, so good. Like, I think early on in my marathon career, like, I just was exactly like, um, that example where you see someone do something and you're like, oh, I want to do that. And you get all excited and you just try to squeeze so much stuff into your week or over two weeks. And there's no rhythm to it. And I think that was because I was following your plan. I think I followed the, I gave a no respect to some of those bigger workouts, and gave myself an extra day or two, other than that sort of early example, which I think was a really good learning experience for me, sort of 16 weeks out when I caused a work constraint, so I was like, "Oh, just do it on a Tuesday, even though Sunday I ran long," and I did that 16K's at Marathon Place, and I felt rubbish. I think that was a good learning, because I was like, "Well, I won't do that again," but I was sort of like, "Oh, well, you know, sometimes you have to, I mean, I'm training for something where you have to be fatigued resistance," so I was like, "Okay, it wasn't all bad, as long as I respect now that I maybe don't run hard until Saturday, but yeah, definitely in those last six weeks I was running less kilometres than I normally probably would, but I was sort of honing it in and focusing it in on some of those, that, you know, five by four K workout or some of those longer runs, long runs at 90%, or there was this one workout where I think I had to do like 11K, 9K, 8K and 5K at gradually higher pace percentages of Marathon Place, and that was a great workout, but it certainly needed respect and recovery from the idea of modulations, a really, really good one, because that's just another thing that it's so easy to get wrong. Yeah, I think that's the thing that I liked about that chapter where you actually specified like, "Oh, with these specific sessions, make sure you don't do them any closer than three weeks apart," or, and then suddenly like, you can go, "Oh, okay, well, I'll put one here at three weeks and one at, I don't know, five weeks and seven weeks," or something like that, and like it helped you workout where to place the workout, and so that you weren't placing them too close together. Yeah, yeah, my mental image for this is like, I don't know if you have these Australia, but here in the US I add like playgrounds for kids, there's like wheels in a row and you can like spin the wheels up. I kind of think about like the different workouts are kind of like on a wheel, so you spin the wheel and like kind of goes around and you know, two weeks later it's time to like, do that workout again, but in the meantime, you can be spinning the other wheels like waiting for it to come back. I think sometimes people get attached to this idea that they need like the magic week where it's like, "Okay, temple run on Monday and then you know, he'll repeat on Thursday and then long on Saturday," and I'm just going to like do that every single week, but different workouts you could do with like different frequencies. It's like some stuff like, you know, those big long fast runs, like you don't really need to do those every two or three weeks. It's totally fine. And in the general phase, like the long fast run, you can do it like once a month if you need to, whereas other stuff you want to do it more often. So understanding that like, "Hey, can these workouts kind of like come around on like a cyclical frequency is really useful?" And then the other thing kind of related to my relation to is I almost think about different kinds of workouts as like coming attached with a couple with however many days afterwards. So like you mentioned that 32k long run, I think about that run as like having three recovery days attached to it afterwards. So like wherever I put that on the schedule, I got to make sure that it's got that minimum three days recovery afterwards. And I'm not just like plopping that down, you know, and then 48 hours later, you don't get out and do like five by two thousand meters or something. So that I think yeah, both like kind of how often you do the workout and then how much recovery after the workout is one of those things that hopefully in that chapter I communicate that like different workouts have different requirements subsequently. Yeah, yeah, yeah associating the stress with the appropriate rest and that the stress full part, the training session is only 50% of the job done. And if you don't absorb it, then like you're shooting yourself in the foot. Yeah, like I think that's what you've inadvertently taught me a lot over the last year or two by reading your material and sort of summarising canovers work and that the body doesn't care about seven days. Like it cares about sort of the workout that you did and how much recovery that particular workout needs and it doesn't care that it's Monday and it's thought Tuesday and it's the usual day that you normally do a workout. Yeah, so I think that's a cool concept to sort of keep sort of reminding everyone because yeah, there is the concept of like the perfect week and just rinse and repeat that perfect week out there whereas I think training's a little bit more complex in that. Yeah, yeah, you want to think of your training as like kind of more organic, you know, so more like a plant that you're growing than like a, you know, algorithm that you're repeating. And you know, sometimes you can sometimes a plant needs a little more water, sometimes it needs a little more sunshine like and that's a lot better way of thinking about it than like I'm trying to maximise some like spreadsheet calculation, right? That's awesome, John. I've got like just a few fun questions to finish with. I'm interested because you've done so much research, so much reading. What would you say personally has been the biggest learning for you over the last ten years where you've really changed the way you think about distance running and and the training or just distance running in general? Yeah, I think one of the biggest things for me is kind of relate, I mentioned that psychological training load article. That's the third in a three part series I'd want a physiological load, one on biomechanical load. And one of the biggest things like changes for me in the last ten years as a consequence of going to grad school and doing biomechanics and physiology research was learning that and really clarifying that like the biomechanical load is, which is mostly related to injuries, that's different than the physiological load which you know, like you could think about it as like energetic expenditure or like trim or heart rate or like whatever you know physiology metrics you do. But just appreciate in like training we do as runners looks really different from the training that swimmers do or that cyclist do or even that like speed skaters do and the biomechanics of running are a big driver of that difference. So trying to be very conscious of biomechanical load in training, one of the things you may have noticed in the schedule you did is like there are workouts that progress over time from like eight by one K to five by sixteen hundred to four by two thousand meters to three two to one K. And I really like progressing workouts like that because it keeps the biomechanical load the same. Those obviously like three K two K two K one K is much more challenging workouts at the same pace than eight by one K. But both of them are 8,000 meters of running at approximately the same speed which means it's approximately the same biomechanical stress in your body. Sometimes people get themselves in trouble because they do like six by K and then seven by K and then eight by K and nine by K and then ten by K. Now that's quite a lot more stress in your body. So I wish I had like a like a conversion rate to say like okay here's how much. This is like a research project I'm hoping to tackle in the next few years is okay you run at you know three thirty per K versus four minutes versus four thirty versus five minutes how much stress in your body or each of those speeds like worth. I know it's more per kilometer than when you go faster but I don't know how much more yet. But just even the idea that like hey I need to think about biomechanical load and it's about more than just the number of kilometers you run a week. That's a better really big thing for me in the last several years. So when you say like those training positions like eight by K and then progressing to the miles and the two K's like the whole time it was eight K's of total work at that pace but the progression was just you having less rest like you're doing yeah. Yep and and I also kind of from like a specificity perspective too I like that way of progressing because you're getting closer and closer to running uninterrupted at that speed like that the all training kilometers you did as a great example is like you know you think about like okay you do sets of like three K one K well that's like 75% of of the running is at marathon pace and then you move to sets of four K one K well now that's that's basically 80% of the running you do some of the higher volume plans go to five K one K and like the workout you didn't do the like six four three two one you could say like well the the longest piece of it was six K of uninterrupted running and then like race day it's just you kind of take away those that last like you know 10 15 20% of of not marathon pace and you just kind of run it straight through so the the idea of like running a marathon a marathon pace is like the logical progression of where the workout goes and you can apply that to other paces too where like eventually you know maybe you start at eight by one K but eventually you want to get to a point where you could run that speed just like straight through in a race or in a you know long fast continuous run so to be independent of the biomechanical stuff like I also really like that way of progressing because it's getting now obviously there's no no rest in the race it's getting closer to being more race specific by virtue of running longer without a break yeah exactly and I even just love that simply because it has progression in it and progressive overload. because I mean I've come from a training system for a number of years for good six years where I was just doing the same training sessions every week and I wasn't progressing them like I was just I think relying on consistency and not getting injured over time for a while but there was no like method of like building on the workouts so like I love that about your work and I think that that's part of it. Yeah you probably noticed in the schedule I believe you never do the exact same workout. Yeah there are workouts of the same type that you do but like I think there's literally never a session on your plan that is exactly the same as the one you did before which so I like I like it from a progressing training approach. Some people like it kind of drives them crazy because they don't have a like a reference point but that's kind of goal for me is like the danger is if you did 8 by K last week and you date by K this week maybe last week you average like 325 and this week you average 327 you're gonna go oh no like getting slower like it's not so good but maybe you average 327 per K this week but you did it in like sets of like 1K 2K 1K 2K 1K and you can at least so hey well you know I ran longer at basically the same speed and so you know that's still progress. I think I think that's that's also another important aspect of you need to do something different you know this is something I learned from Kenova like if you do the same training if you get the same results and so you have to seek out some new stimulus for your body. It doesn't necessarily have to be more volume or going faster but it's got to be less recovery further without without stopping you need to seek out some new stimulus to to to change your body and make it make it better. Kenova says adaptation is the enemy once you become adapted training it no it's no longer helpful so you always have to be changing changing your schedule. Yeah yeah and purposefully as well like like you can see the embedded purpose you know you like oh I can see how this is like directing me to my goal. This is a bit of a curveful second last question. If you want to catch out with three marathoners Fadina who would they be and and why. Okay three marathoners I um when like when I was in in uh college like the the you know the guy at a big poster of my wall was Geverslossi and at the time he was you know 5k world record 10k world record marathon world record um like obviously he's a huge idol to me and also I think like just kind of hearing his uh his journey from you know rural Ethiopia to like elder statesmen of track and field I think he owns like 10 skyscrapers and add a stop up on now and so like just yeah like the the hearing about that like whole journey um would be would be fantastic so he would definitely be on the list and I think if um if you know if I got Geverslossi I I need Kipchoghi too so that he thought he'd be on the list. Very similarly there was a nice New York Times article about him recently uh you know stepping back from like you know competitive elite marathoning similarly kind of moving into this like elder statesmen of athletics role and of trying to mentor younger guys and think about like what can I do with uh what can I do with athletics on a global scale um in terms of me really making the world a better place um and then I would I would also say uh Polarad but uh I think because she was so good and so far uh beyond everybody else in women's marathoning for so long I think it would be it would be really fascinating to hear like what what that was like and what um like what so a fun fact that I love about her is there were years where she was the best uh marathoner in the UK of any gender so like there weren't even any men in the UK who could be in a marathon um so uh I think like when you're when you're so far away like how does that it's almost like it's almost like you're back to training like what back when you were a nobody you know because you're just like out there on your own there's like nobody yeah nobody to run with uh so those those would be my favorite ever-slicey uh keep jogging and and Polarad cliff that's that's awesome yeah uh I'd um love to be a fly at that table as well it's the fun dinner party and then uh what now uh what like you've written your book um you've got it out um uh yeah what's ahead for you like over the next year or two like where do you see yourself sort of focusing your energies and um what are you looking forward to yeah well the the next thing uh would be well I've got people hounding me about an ebook and an audio book version so i'll be doing those but in terms of like next projects like the obvious thing would be a half marathon book and i've had people ask about that um i think i would i will definitely do a half marathon book at some point i want to do it as i want to have some kind of like uh i don't know rapper around it i don't want it to just like kind of rehash the like the the marathon excellence just just basically the first half of the marathon excellent correct um so i'm thinking like i'll definitely do something kind of similar with what i had uh with the beta training group but it might also have like uh like some kind of a training camp that like i do in person um so i can like you know really see how workouts go and then kind of use that story as like the rapper who encapsulate the book and so i can make it i go really i there's i think i think hansen's uh i have a book on half marathon training but there's very few books that are like half marathon training specifically a lot of a books like and plans just kind of wrap it up into like oh it's like 10k training but you go a little bit further or like marathon training but you do a little bit less so half marathon would be uh would be one thing and then another project i'm kind of kicking around is like a uh a visual guide to uh the science of running because now there's a bunch of science probably a hundred pages of of science in marathon excellence uh and you know some of it is relatively dense uh and one of the one of the things i would love to do is make a like really visual guy where like every page has got a like a big full-color plot and really walk people through like okay here's what lt2 is here's what lt1's here's the critical speed model here's what view to maxes here's running economy here's how these things interact like very methodically go through this stuff for all distances in a way that's um a little bit more like uh visually driven so i've got some ideas on that i have a couple uh like web app type things i'm working on um during the process writing this book i made a the wind calculator a hill calculator a heat calculator those were great those were really fun i have a few other ideas on that front so we'll see i haven't i'm not like a hundred percent all in on uh oh this is going to be my next project but something i'm i think it'll be one of those things i mentioned nice um good luck exciting uh looking forward to all those projects and then what about um your own running like um uh have you got any goals or you still sort of um uh got got plans to do anything else yourself or um what about how how's you're running going yeah we'll see i um yeah right now i had a bit of a hamstring issue um then i'm working back into training from but uh i actually during the course of of writing this book really like early on and then relatively late only a few months before the book i came out um i ran marathons rent 229 in both of them um the funny thing is the uh one of the late additions to the book was the i think it might even be the last chapter on heat training um and i wrote that in like april and may of this past year and in june i ran a marathon and it was hot and because i i'd written the the chapters for the book i'd been testing out like okay like wearing extra layers when you do some of your runs and like taking a hot bath uh and it like i was really well prepared for the heat like it was you know i i didn't quite i compared to like what other people have ran versus their PRs are ran like way better so it's like okay yes this heat training really works that's awesome yeah what was your biggest takeaway from that like i've just got we we just bought a sauna uh about four months ago um like what um and i've started to use it um uh as well but as far as i've read that you know i'm even like using a sauna what say three times a week uh for 20 30 minutes um uh like for five weeks or so like you could almost expect like a small imaginable improvement um in any condition like is that that's the controversial that my read on the literature right now is it's kind of like early days on that there's some studies saying you do get a gain there's some studies saying you don't yeah but the good news is there's um so there's like basically there's there's still some uncertainty about whether this works but the um the uncertainty range is such that it excludes the possibility that um you will be slower so what my conclusion from that is like either it doesn't help or it does help somewhat that's kind of the range of the uncertainty right now uh so what that means is if you think there's even some chance that you'll be facing hot conditions on race day uh you should be doing some of this keep training, keep adaptation. stuff. Because worst case, it won't make any difference. You're not going to run slower assuming you do, you know, sometimes I see people doing like really crazy stuff out there in like a, you know, wrestler he suits doing like some insane, you know, on the verge of passing out. The good news also is that you don't need to do that. Like really to get the heat adaptations, you just need to do stuff that number one makes you sweat a decent amount and number two raises the core temperature. That's all. So pop-ass sauna training with like one or two extra layers on not a giant winter park out there in, you know, 25 C in humid. You don't need to do crazy stuff. Relatively moderate amounts of heat adaptation are really all you need to be ready for unexpected hot conditions or expected hot conditions on race day in some cases. No, that's great to hear from you. John, I've really enjoyed chatting to you. I always do. You've been so generous again with your time and I'm really happy about this chat like you covered some great territory like usual. And a lot of people down here in Australia will find it useful. That's for sure. And a lot of people, I'm not just saying is a lot of people reached out to me and said they really enjoyed your episode particularly. So a lot of people will be grateful that you're back on the show and if people were interested in finding this book and learning more about marathon training or just, you know, following your work, where can they find you? Well, yeah, first thank you. I really appreciate it. And as I said before, it was like, it was so so exciting to see your success with the beta training plan typos and all. I'm sure. So if people want to follow me, best place is my website running writings dot com. I have a email newsletter running writings dot com slash news. If you want to be the first to find out when I've got new articles, new web apps, new stuff coming out, that is the place to be. For people in Australia, there is a metric edition of the book that is got all the workouts natively in kilometers. Unlike the version you did, they don't have to be converting between like 16.1 and kids. So I've got a full metric edition of the book available. Everything's converted in metric, mileage workouts, paces, everything. And you can find that at marathon excellence dot com slash metric. Yep, beautiful. Okay, thanks for the chat, John. Yeah, thanks for having me on. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]