Justin Rinaldi - The 800m Expert

Hello and welcome to the Endurance Lab podcast. My name is Dr. Bill Evans, Professor of Exercise Science, and this podcast covers the physiology of some of the best athletes on the planet, as well as talking to their coaches and sports scientists. Today's guest is Justin Ranaldi, one of the best 800 meter coaches in the world. Justin is the founder and head coach of fast eight track club. He's coached numerous athletes to under 135 and 800 multiple national record holders, Olympic and World Championship finalists and a world indoor champion. He's also coached Mark English this past year who's had a wonderful season at the ripe age of 33 years old. Before becoming a coach, Justin was a pretty incredible runner himself. He won the Australian 800 meter title, and he won it a decade later at the old age of 35. I can say that because we had a great talk and I know that he can handle a joke. Today we also talked about how he develops his world class 800 meter runners and balances speed and endurance with the individualized needs of his different athletes. It was a great chat with Justin on the podcast. I thoroughly enjoyed it. For those of you who are listening to the podcast for the first time, welcome, come one, come all. We'd love to have new listeners. If you haven't done so already, subscribe to our podcast, check out our newsletter so we can stay in touch with you. If you're coming back to the podcast, thank you as always. It's a pleasure to have you, and I think you'll find that this is one of the best podcasts I've recorded to date. Justin is a wealth of knowledge and a lot of the things that he says are rooted in very real science, including the sprint work that he does, where he's very specific about his work to rest ratios and how much volume his athletes do. Justin was incredibly detailed about his training and pulled no punches when describing it. So if you're a coach or an athlete interested in 800 or the mile, you need to listen to this podcast. It is by far one of the most detailed and explanatory podcasts that we've recorded to date. As always, if you're interested in being coached by us at the Endurance Lab, you need to apply online. We've had some fantastic performances lately. Recently, we had one of our athletes, Tyler, who ran a half marathon, EPRed by over four minutes. We had another athlete who opened up the 8K in cross country this year and ran sub 26 for their opener and held their 8K pace, or sorry, their 6K pace for their entire 8K. We had another guy go 25 low in the 8K. We had Eli Anderson, who's always running well. He ran sub 15 minutes in his three mile race in some warmer weather. And we've also got a few athletes who are trying to crack their way into the D1 ranks, who are about to race this coming week or next week, looking forward to Paul Short and Great American, where we've got a lot of big performances coming. Shout out to Boyd, he had a fantastic race this week. He ran over a minute faster than he did last year at the exact same race. So that was fantastic by him. And then we've just had some great progressions by our athletes. I was asked this week what my philosophy was on training, and that's hard to say because I need things to be asked about which piece of training. For example, if we're talking about VO2 max or threshold or easy miles, I have different philosophies on each of those. And it depends on where you're at, where you're deficient, and where you're strong, and where you're at in your season. Because my answer to that question changes depending on each of those things. Which is why I don't ask that question to coaches anymore, it's too broad. Also be sure to check out our newsletter. Not sure what I'm going to write about this week, but I'll get it done. Still waiting for Cam Myers and Marco Languity come on the pod. They've been a bit delayed recently finishing up their seasons, but they did verbally agree. So I promised Justin Ranaldi, and as promised, he's finally back, he even agreed to do a part two if we get the time. Took a while to get him, but I'm glad that we got him. So thank you to the people who checked in with us and are listening regularly. Super grateful for that. I don't take it for granted. And I hope you guys enjoy this podcast. Thanks for listening. - Hello and welcome back to the intern side podcast. My name is Dr. Bill Evans, professor of exercise science. And today I am joined by Mr. 800 himself, Justin Ranaldi, who coaches some of the best 800 runners in the world in Australia. Justin, thank you for joining me today. What time is it where you're at? - It's just gone past 10 pm on Friday night. So I know it's Friday morning there, so I'm slightly in the future. - All right, how's it looking? What do I have to look forward to? - I don't have the lot of numbers for you. I think that would be really handy if I did. (laughing) - It's looking good. - Will arrange that next time. - Yeah. - So Justin, you just came off of a massive outdoor season. I feel like you've been training and racing guys since like, I don't know, like October. So for those of the people who don't know, first things first, who are you? Tell me a little bit about yourself and your background with running. - Yeah, so I'm Justin Ranaldi. I'm based in Australia, 800 meter coach. Some people find that weird that I specialize in just one event that if I was a hurdle coach, no one would question it. So I'm happy to be a specialist 800 meter coach. Yeah, I was a former athlete around 147 and 340 and won a national title in the 90s. Typical overtrainers, so I trained very well but never formed very well. And then I started a career in finance. I was working in a bank for 25 years. So it was a long period time. I had large operational teams of up to 300 staff and then started coaching in the background and just coaching one athlete who was 15. And he had some success and went on to run 144. 4-0 and it couldn't act at all. - Did you just say he had some success? - Yeah, yeah, well, he never won a medal or won another big so he had some success. But that was my introduction to coaching. I learned a lot as being an athlete and made a lot of mistakes in the training I made and I was coaching myself towards the end of my career and made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot from them. But when I had this athlete, Alex, I originally agreed to coaching for six months and that lasted 10 years 'cause we progressed really well. He went from 154, as a 15 year old and then 144 when he was 21. So it was a good progression. - Wow. And right now, where are you at? And let's say I'm an athlete and I want to work with Justin and Aldi. How do I do it? - Yeah, it's really difficult. So I'm back home in Australia. I spent three months in Europe with my athletes. So I left work two years ago to try to be a full-time coach and make your career out of it. It's easy to coach, it's hard to make money out of it. So I'm still trying to unlock that thing so I can still pay them all each 'cause as you can imagine working a bank it is quite rewarding financially and it's not so much when you're coaching. But yeah, I'm coaching full-time. I've got a small group. It's actually about 12 athletes and they're all based some here in Australia and then dotted around the world, New Zealand, Ireland, the Netherlands, Qatar and the US and the Cook Islands. So we're covering the globe. - Dude, so what did your wife say to you when you said, "Hey, honey, by the way, I'm gonna quit my massive finance job making hundreds and thousands of dollars to have people run two laps around the track?" - Yeah, she is so supportive and without her and her blessing. I think she could see that I was yearning to be a coach and wanted to do it full-time. The benefit of being full-time is that I spend more time with my family. So I'm not going to work all day and then going and coaching after work. So I'm not leaving home at 7am and getting home at 8pm. I'm actually at home more. So it's good that I get to spend more time with my family. It's just I've got to work at the income part to take some of the pressure off there. - Well, have you been working with any brands recently? I mean, I know you have athletes that run for Nike and other brands, I believe, but have anything in the works with any big brands? - No, not the moment. Like, I'd love to work with a brand. It's kind of a positive and negative working with a brand. I think when you're working with a brand then you kind of handcuff to what athletes you can accept. So I've got a lottery an hour and I was speaking to some of the OAC coaches in Europe and stuff like that. I said, I'm lucky I'm not working with a brand because I can choose the athletes I want, but I'm also not having an income. So it's not that lucky. - So yeah, because a brand out there, I'm open to work with you and see what we can do. But the moment it's just me and the athletes that come to me or reach out to me. - Yeah, that's kind of nice because like you said, you've had a plethora of different athletes and you're almost like an independent contractor where you can kind of do whatever you want. You're not really beholden to anyone which is kind of nice. - No, it's good. - Yeah, so Justin, now we get down to the meet and potatoes. You already said something, excuse me, that I want to ask you about. You mentioned that you were kind of a classic overtrainer and you said you made a lot of mistakes. So elaborate on what you mean by a classic overtrainer and what some of those mistakes were. - Yeah, so I think when, particularly when you know, I had a coach who was really my first coach who's really obsessed with the average, you know, your average performance for each workout that you did. So this is your best, this is your best average for this session. And I really like numbers, probably coming from the finance stuff. And I got obsessed with beating my average for each of these workouts. So for example, a workout of five, three hundreds of four minutes rest, which we did a lot. You know, I remember starting those when I was a younger athlete and averaging 40 point. And then I eventually got down to 3687 was my best average. So that workout. And that's a workout that, you know, only three of my athletes have been out to beat. And they're in super shoes and had bike hubs. So I still think that I could do that workout better than anyone. But at the end of the day, that means nothing. You know, the performance in a race is all that matters. So I got really good at doing workouts and public became a bit obsessive with the actual workout and not the racing sets. You know, one of the mistakes, I made. And then when I was coaching myself, I just experimented way too much. You know, I was there was once there where I was running 100 miles a week, but still doing the intensity of an athlete doing, you know, 30 or 40 miles a week. And it was this way too much. And I ended up with, you know, three stretch factors and compartment syndrome in both, both carbs. So, and I think the benefit there is when I was coaching Josh Hoey, that I could see exactly what Josh was like. And I knew, like, I saw a lot of similarities between Josh and myself. And that's why I think we worked so well because I knew how to hold him back at the right time because I wanted to do what Josh wanted to do when I was an athlete. So, you know, we were like kindred spirits really. Oh gosh. So with that workout, five by 300 with four minutes, do you think, do you think you're, I mean, phrases, I'm going to backtrack a little. So you said you were, your coach was obsessed with kind of hitting these averages. And then you wanted to beat the next workout. To me, that screams progressive overload, right? You're ensuring that the workouts are getting faster and faster. And intensity is rising so that you can obtain like a better peak. Like Jack Daniels talks about this. And this is kind of a main tenant of training. If you could go back, would you still do that? And how would you adjust your training so that that would have meant something? Yeah, I would, but we repeated that workout a lot. So, you know, I had a look at a diary. It's actually actually right here, an old diary behind your, your leather jacket there. Yeah. That's my worst leather jacket. It looks great on me though. Don't let him lie. But we repeat that workout. Like I saw once there, we did it four times in a three week period. Oh, yeah. So we repeat that a lot. And one of the velocities I have is that we don't repeat workouts a lot. So we don't do, you know, we've done that five by five by 300 workout twice in the last eight years, my group. So I don't like to repeat workouts. We have some that we repeat. Obviously, if you're doing threshold and you're doing six by five minutes, you're repeating that. But that's a different stimulus. Yeah. And it's easy to repeat that for those hard workouts. I just don't like to repeat. And I found that the pace was getting so far ahead of race pace, there's becoming non-productive. So I feel that we've been better off reducing the recoveries. So, you know, working down to three minutes or two minutes and keeping at race pace rather than getting, you know, basic seconds is, you don't even go through the first three hundred and 36 seconds in a, in a fast one, 42 race, you know, you're probably going 37, one to fit 375. So it was so much faster than race pace that it became irrelevant to the Ahermaids in my opinion. So, man, you're opening so many cans of worms for me. You mentioned that, you know, you, you're going through too fast. And I know that in your training, you're really big on doing speed development, particularly on Mondays from what I can tell. So it, to me, someone might see this and say, Oh, wait, those two things can flick just around all these big speed guys. And yet he's saying, wait, this is too fast for 800 pace. I have a suspicion as to why you're saying that. But could you help maybe clear that up for people who don't get it? Yeah. I mean, the, the speed work we do, typically we do on Monday, so I call this speed Monday. And we work on, you know, acceleration and max velocity. So we keep the reps typically between 30 and 60 meters. You know, when we work on the acceleration phase, we're always doing those 30 meter reps with the staying start. And the max velocity is, you know, flying 30. So you might have a 20 meter build up into the, you know, a 30 meter fly. So we're doing that on Mondays with a long rest, but that's pure speed work. It's not speed endurance, which the five 300s are. Yeah, five 300s, that's what I said. And you, you're, that's more newly fatiguing that it is muscular fatiguing. Those like those five 300 workouts, you really have to go to the well and I drain you and it takes a few days to recover from them. The speed workouts, when you first do them, like when you go to the gym for the first time, of course, you pop saw when you go to the gym, but I find that we do it every Monday and the injury risk is greatly reduced. And the athletes don't pop saw from the workout. So, you know, we might have a two week break at the end of the season and we're back into the speed work. And so we might do it, you know, 50 or 49 times a year. So we're really callous to that kind of speed work. Well, yeah. And I think one of the things that occurred to me in addition to the different fatiguing stimuli and how our body responds to those is that, and I'm curious to who you take on this, when I see people running faster than 800 pace for races that are, or sorry, running faster than 800 pace for like speed endurance, like a 300 or 400 or 500. And I mean, I mean faster, right? Faster than their first lap. I tend to think that it does not generalize well to running economy and how they're actually going to run the race because, you know, in my experience and from what I've seen, when you get people trying to run faster than 800 pace, they start to change their mechanics, right? They start to drive their arms too much. They get too much knee lift. And when you watch a good 800 runner, Radish always comes to mind. It has to look smooth, right? It has to feel smooth, less you blow up at 500 meters. And so it's always been my thought that the mechanics of running faster than 800 pace when you're doing it for a long time are almost counterproductive. So I'm curious, is that kind of what you mean by that? Like, oh, it's just, it doesn't do what you want it to do. And I agree because you bring up Radish and it's interesting because you look at Radish as a results. I mean, he ran 400s, but he typically ran them earlier on the season. He used to come out to Australia, actually, I'm run a 400 and some 800s, but during his peak sort of 800 meter season, he never ran a 400. And he probably would have run 44 low. I think he ran 400 at Kenyon chance, but typically he didn't because he felt that it messed with his rhythm. So he was a big rhythm runner. And he liked, even when you watch him race with his pacemaker, he'd sit eight meters off the pacemaker. So he'd be in his own rhythm and just wanted to get into a rhythm. So I agree with you that there is a rhythm to the 800 and we do 100 meter strides at eight meter pace to keep that rhythm going throughout the year. But yeah, I agree with you. If you go too much faster, then you just, you're running mechanically different. You're not in the right rhythm. And it's not practicing what you want to do in a race. Yeah. How do you, how do you cue that into your runners that they need to be running the right way? Because it's easy to tell someone, hey, run this pace. But I think it's almost a little bit more tactical or challenging to cue someone to run like an 800 runner, so to speak. Yeah. So, you know, we talk about that speed workout we do on Monday. You know, we also finish that workout with say 10 by 100 meters with 90 seconds rest and run them between 12, 5 and 13 seconds. So it's that first lap sort of pace. And we work because it's only 100 meters, and it's not too fatiguing. Well, that's when we really work on rhythm and form and getting the feeling of it. So then when we come to the summer period or the precomp period and we're doing those 800 meter type workouts, it's kind of ingrained in the head already what that rhythm feels like. And because they're really quick and we and I say come, let's go out and run 26 second 200s. It's a piece of cake for them because they know they can run 22 for 200 because they got really good speed and they know that rhythm. So I always found it strange that you spent all summer trying to get to, you know, this, this fast and this quick. And then you go back in the base period and you go totally away from it. And then you start the preseason or the precomp period and a 26 second or 25 second 200 felt so hard. I just never wanted my athletes to be scared of race pace and felt that they could do it all year round. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting and compelling because I can tell that you coach from the lens of your own experiences and people asking all the time, you know, Bill, why do you keep training? And I'm like, because it helps me coach. Like when I do a workout and I know how that it feels, it's easy for me to kind of cue my athletes appropriately or prepare them in the right ways. And you, I think you hit the nail on the head. Athletes get afraid of fast stuff when they get away from it. But if you have them do it, they're like, oh, that's no, no problem. So another follow up question here. How do you keep them healthy when you're doing that? And a second part is, why 90 seconds for the rest? Why not more? 90 seconds. Sometimes we're doing this in winter. So if you're doing a longer than 90 seconds, it's just staying there. And the workout becomes so long because we've done these speed sort of reps to start with, you know, three to six minute recovery. And it's just a finishing thing. It's just a rhythm thing. Am I fine? The athletes can recover in that 90 seconds because we would do a bit of a aerobic work in another workout during the week. Yeah. I was, when I started coaching Alex Rojo, he was 15, 16, and I was 37, 38. So I was still running. And I could do most of workouts with him. When, even when I was 40, I remember, and this is when I decided to stop doing the workouts with my athletes because we did a workout and we finished with a fast 400 at the end. And he sat on me the whole way in round 47, nine, and I ran 47, eight, no, 48 seven at 40 years of eight. And I was so pissed off that he sat on me and went past me and I went home in a bad mood. And my wife said to me, "This kid can run on 45." And he's just won a national title and you're upset that he's beating and training. I think you need to let it go. That's where I stopped training the athletes because I realized I was so competitive that it was impacting my coaching because I was in my head. I was thinking about how I can beat him in the next workout, not what was best for him in the next workout. So that is so awesome. And honestly, I wish you would have run an 800 at that age. Did you get to race that year? I was racing and the, you know, I think I ran like 156 or something, but what happened is I was training well above my standard because I was working out with him and leading all the reps that I was just killing myself, which I loved because that's my background is killing myself and training and over training. But I couldn't race well. I could do the workouts, but I was gone for days. And I found it was really hard to do the runs in between. the workouts, so I was just doing the workouts, not doing any of the runs, just suck a train with it. To master's athletes listening to this or those of you who want to train into your 30s and 40s, this Justin has just hit the nail on the head of what it's like to try and train for the 800 above the age of 27, I would say. You just feel banged up and that the easy runs you're just surviving to the next workout. So I interrupted you though. Tell me why or how you can keep people healthy doing that level of speed work, particularly something comes to mind is the Achilles, right? Like a lot of people have issues with Achilles. So are you doing something with strength work or shoes where like, hey, guys, we're not going to wear spikes or how are you mitigating those things? Yeah, well, we probably start the first four weeks of the new season doing the speed work in flats or racing flats, but then we're in spikes. So it's only really three to four weeks, not in spikes. We're doing gym on Monday afternoon and Wednesday. We do a long warm up with lots of drills and employers and band activations and hurdle walkovers. I think one of the other keys is that when we're doing these sprints, we do them individually. So we're not lined up in a group of six people or doing 30-meter sprints against each other. Each athlete is going visually. So they're concentrating on themselves. They're not overextending because they're trying to beat the person next to them. Because we've got plenty of workouts during the week where they can do that up the hill or when it comes to a race. So Mondays is all about working on your own form and running within yourself. Obviously, we want to go close to 100%, but 95%. And like I said, because we do it every week, your body gets used to it. It's not like, even if you speak to a person the first time they do a two-hour run, it's horrible. You were so sore the next day. But you never say, I'm not doing a two-hour run ever again because I was sore the next day. You think, okay, I've got to get used to this. So it's the same as this big work. You know, sprinters, sprints, flat out all year round. So we should be able to do it too. Yeah. Who's the fastest runner you've ever had? What's the fastest flying 30? You've ever recorded. Yeah, so totally. And ideally, ideally laser. But yeah, yeah. So Tony Van Depends the quickest eight-hour guide. But he's also split 44-11 at the World Realize and won a civil medal in the Olympics in the fall by four. So he's an eight-hour runner who can run a very quick 400 and he can go sub three in a flying 30. So he's very, yeah, he's very quickly. But it's also a bit of a Achilles heel because his ankles and he's so stiff through that that when we tried to do the longest stuff, it actually impacts his Achilles and we have to work through that. So he's very fast. But even in Mark English, you know, he's run 20.6 for a flying 200 in a training session with a low. And also he's split 44-8 on a real eight before at the World Chat. So those guys are really quick. And then, you know, other guys like Peter Boyle, who's more, his quick, but more of an eight sort of 15 type. But can still run-- Yeah, who's the sub 22? He can still run sub 22 for 200. Holy cow. Who's your slowest 30-meter fly guy? If you don't have to out them, but-- No, no. I had an athlete who I used to race when I was like towards the end of my career. So when I was 35 and he was 18, Jeff Reisley. And he went on to be a really good runner around 146. Sorry, 144 and 331. He came to me towards the end of his career when he was 34. And he hadn't run 144 for nine years. And, you know, I was thinking about giving it up. But it was so close to the Olympics. And I really wanted him to make his fourth Olympic team. So he joined me, but he'd never done this type of speedwork before. And he was really, really terrible at it. It took six months of him getting used to it. And him getting used to three or four minute recoveries. He would do the sprint, want a job back and go again. I said, "No, no, we're going to focus on doing it." So it took him a while to get used to it. So he was probably my slowest. But he's still around 144-8. I think it was two months before his 35th birthday and made Olympics in the final in 2020. What were his, what were his 30-meter flies? So with him, we didn't do it with a radar. So it was just me, me timing it. And he was close to the 3.5 on the hand watch. So it wasn't that quick. Still quick. Totally. Now, there's still quick these guys, but they're not elite. You know, Femke Cabal can break three seconds for a flying 30. So, you know, when we think of the elite level, that's what we're going to think about when we're talking about those times. Do you ever do like a two or three meter lead in into a 30, like a basically an A-cell 30? Yeah, two or three. Now, when we're doing the flying 30, we have like a 20-meter buildup into it. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like, do you ever do like a standing start 30 and get their standing 30 split? No, no, we do standing. So when we do the stuff, we do the standing start 50 meters. I can't remember the time stuff at the top of my head, yeah. But we don't do a lot of that because we, you need the lasers to get that accurate. It's just normally me there with my stopwatch time in these guys, but it's the same person timing. So, I can get a, you know, continuous improvement from them. But you know, we don't have the laser out. We're pretty low tech our group. We're not a professional group. So it's just me and a stopwatch most of the time. I would argue that you are a professional group. Yeah. Well, you know, as a scientist, as long as you're consistent, it doesn't really matter. If you do the same thing every time, then it's reliable and that's more important. So take me through a week in the life of working with Justin Renaldi. Let's say I'm, you know, a one forty eight person. And I want to, I want to get down to one forty five or one forty four. And it is, let's say pre comp, let's say November, take me through a week in the life. Yeah. So November. So we're kind of lucky in Australia because we have our outdoor season when the US or European athletes are having their indoor season. So when I'm coaching these giants or the Europeans or the US athletes, we can follow the same program because we're going to end up racing in the same period of time. So November typically looks like Monday, we do the speed session every Monday. So I speed Monday. So it might be three by 30 standing, start three by 30 flying. And then we might finish with 10 by 100 with no seconds rest, like I said. Or we might sometimes do, you know, a standing start 200 and just see wherever we're at or a standing start 300. So those guys can run, you know, like I said, marks run 20.6 for the fly start, but peep balls run 21 seven. The standing start and, you know, 3334 for 300s. And even Josh Harvey can run, you know, when he first started me was running 23 throws reps and then got down to 21, you know, towards the end when he got raised around 142. So we do that every Monday. And then we'll do it. But it's a low volume day because we only really do, you know, a five or six minute warm-up and then we do a bunch of drills. You know, they take up 50 minutes to get through all the drills. Oh my gosh. Fifty minutes. Yeah, it's long because it's a long process. And then we start sprinting and then they might do a five or 10 minute cool down. So that day might only be like two miles total volume. And then we might do it. So I go, yeah, I started to interrupt. I'm going to have to raise my hand because I'll forget my question. What do you cap that sprint volume at? Yeah. So it's the pure sprint volume is probably, well, it depends if we do a rep at the end. So not including the rep at the end, but just. Yeah, ignore that. Yeah. We're lucky to go over 300 meters or even 200 meters in that sprint volume. It's really low, you know, sometimes it's not a lot. It's a real sprint session. It's what, you know, I remember when she carried Richardson and Cushion Coleman out here in Australia for the stall gift. They were there doing this speed session of Santa was us. And we were basically doing the same workout as those guys. Where did you sorry? Where'd you learn this though? Like the reason I ask is there are so many distance coaches that are so good at programming distance, right? There are so many good 800 coaches that can coach the the five K down to the 800. But in from what I've seen, when it comes to sprint coaching, even some of the simple things they might have some variance that I wouldn't probably do. For example, you already mentioned that when you're doing 30 meter sprints, you're taking three to four minutes rest. A general rule of thumb is for every 10 meters of sprint, you take at least one meter of rest. That's true sprint coaching. The only reason I know that is because my identical twin brother worked with Dan Paff and he's my brother. He's a great sprint jumps coach. I just happen to have that. Where did you learn this? Yeah, so funny you mentioned Dan Paff. So in, so it all comes from racing and watching races and and and thinking about how I can improve my athlete. So in 2013, I had an athlete Alex Rowe who was running 145s in Europe. But in the first year 100, he was finding himself when you're in those lower grade races, there's like 13 or 15 athletes in them. So he's finding himself towards the back of the pack and then finishing fourth in these races, but he just couldn't get to the front in the first 200. So I wanted to work on his speed. So we had a pole vault of Steve Hooker, who was Olympic champion, World Champion, Commonwealth Games Champion, 607, I think he jumped and I rescheduled to him and said, hey, can you help me with the speed workouts? And he was coached by Dan Paff towards the end of his career. So everything, go, everything goes back to Dan Paff. So it always comes back to Dan. Yeah, so our drills are all Dan Paff drills. The workouts are similar to what Dan Paff would do. So I just spoke to Steve Hooker and he came down for a year and basically ran our Mondays for a year and that's where I learned it all from. So I had the idea, but Steve was the architect of our speed Mondays and gave me everything I needed to know how we implement it. And then we, I mean, that was 2013, you know, and we're still doing it now, what, 13 years later. So yeah. People are going to think I'm sponsored by all tests or something because I end up coming up on this podcast so often. I swear I'm not. I wish they would pay me. But Dan is Dan's grade and he's, he's such a phenomenal coach. That guy is, he's a brainiac. Okay, so I interrupted you. So Mondays or speed Mondays, two to three hundred meters. You're, you're finishing with maybe a flying 200 or you're doing some 100 meter runs at 800 meters. with 90 seconds, maybe 10. And then Tuesday, take me through the rest of the week. - Yeah, so Tuesday is a threshold day. So just the standard what everyone's doing now, threshold, we try to get about 10k worth of volume or six miles. It might be 10,000, five or six by six minutes. So we just broke it up there, but we try to get 10k worth of volume. It's probably, I know we've got LT1 and LT2. I'm gonna say LT1.5. So it's sort of in the middle, because we're not doing as much volume as those distance 5k runners. So we can push it a little bit, but that's what we try to do. And over the years, that's increased from six kilometers worth of volume up to 10 kilometers worth of volume. And it's just typical threshold stuff. You try to do it within yourself. And it's the easiest workout of the week, even though it's got a lot of volume. As a good backup from the speed workout the day before, because you come here and you're a little bit fatigued, but thresholds, thresholds, they should be like it throughout. - Yeah, are you taking lactates at all, or just kind of like, hey, guys, keep it down. - Yeah, some athletes are taking lactates. I don't take lactates myself, but sometimes we have an excise fuselage that's come down. Mark English is really good at taking these lactates. He's a doctor, so he's into that stuff. When I was coaching Josh, they definitely did the lactates. One of my athletes yesterday, I guessed to me, he's lactate threshold paces, and he took lactates and he was 2.4. So we're pretty close off my guess. - Yeah. - But you know, what I'm doing is, yes, I think it's important to take blood lactates, so don't shoot me down everyone. But we're not doing so much volume. It's not like the Ingebritzons, but they're doing a massive amount of threshold volume that needs to be dialled in 100% to make sure they're in the right ranges. For the A-Hero guys, if we're just there or there about, I'm comfortable with it. You can tell, if an athlete can talk to you in the one-minute recovery between 1,000 made of repaid, I know they're good. So it's okay. - So all right, here's my hot take Tuesday, except it's Friday. I don't think it matters that much. I think the lactates are more of a red light than a red light green light instead of like a gradient. And I think people get far too obsessed with being between 2.5 and 3.5 and all this stuff. And there's no evidence, not a shred of evidence to suggest that having that level of granularity with your lactates improves performance. Do I think it's helpful? Yeah, I use it. However, I use it as a red light green light and as a means of knowing if I'm getting more fit, far more than trying to say, well, if I don't hit this, then I'm doomed. And that's my hot take of the day. The second thing I was gonna say there is that one proxy that I use is like, I'll just give 'em a 25-minute tempo run. And if they, whatever pace they hit for that, there's a nine out of 10 chance that if I give 'em three minute reps with one minute rest at that pace, it'll float 'em right around there, actually, threshold. So I think those are good rules of thumb, the talking rule and then kind of giving 'em like a tempo. It generally works. So I digress, that's Tuesday, good, Wednesday. And so just to go back to that, like the volume and the length of the rep will vary between, you know, whether it's a 48 runner or an 8-15 runner, I find that if you're a 48 runner and I try to get you to do 10 by 1000 meters or five by six minutes, you'll like take this goes to the root because you're not efficient at that pace. So we might do 30 by a minute with 30 seconds rest, for example, instead. So we're getting the volume, we're getting 30 minutes worth of threshold, but just in minute chunks. And I find the 48 guys handle that a lot better and can get the volume in that way, whereas, you know, 800 or 8-15 die can handle those six minute reps or 1k reps. So that's probably the change. But they all do threshold and I'll choose that. So it doesn't matter whether you're a 48, or 8-15 guy, you're doing threshold about 30. - What are the 48 guys see to you when you give them threshold work? Do they try and punch you in the gut? - Yeah, they do push back a little bit, but you just sell them the benefits and say, this is going to actually make you a better athlete and, you know, use your speed at the end of the race and set the style of race because, you know, it's not always the fastest guys got the best kick at the end. It's typically the guys got the most aerobic ability. So we want to make sure they can use their strength at the right time of the race. - Yeah, so let they buy in. Wednesday is just a recovery run. So it might be anywhere between 30 to 45 minutes, sometimes 50 minutes and gym in the afternoon. Thursday, everyone this period, so winter it's always hills. So we do about 6k volume. I'm including the job down. So 6k and they vary between 100 meters. So we might do 40 times 100 meters hills. - Oh my God. - It's true. - But that's a set of co-session that I stole off him. The one change we make is we do four easy. So 15 hundred meters sort of effort and one hard. So eight hundred meter effort. And we repeat that to get to 40. And the reason we do that is because when I was doing on my own, and I didn't have the GPS watch, it was hard to count 40 reps. So if I knew I did every fifth, if I did every fifth one hard, it'd be easier for me to count. So there's no science to it. It's literally just because it made it easier for me to count. Now the guys do that. But we do that through all our hill workouts. We might vary between easy and hard or vary the pace. And so the hills between 100 meters, sometimes we do five or a meter hills, but the volume stays the same regardless of the distance of the hill each week. - So two things. One, what's the grade of the hill? And two, are you timing the recovery down? - Yeah, so we try to keep the recovery really consistent. So I'll give a ballpark figure. So within 15 seconds, what they need to be at. And I'm really strict that doesn't blow out. So if I say we're going to do this jog down in a minute 15, if they're blowing out past a minute 30, I'll say, hey, hey, hey, we need to speed it up because anyone can run fast with lots of recovery. So I'm really strict on the recovery. But the gradient's probably about 5%, so it's not too steep because I feel that if you're running at 5%, you're still running with the same mechanics that you normally would. I don't like seeing people run up a really steep hill and they've got such a short stride and really struggling to get up it. So we really work on form on these hills. So we try, you know, I've seen guys run, you know, 300 hill in 39 seconds on a 5% gradient. So they can run quite quick. - Holy moly. - That's fresh. - That's fresh all out, right? - Yeah, yeah, so, you know, when we're starting in this period, it's, you know, six to eight K volume or was that five miles worth of volume? When we get closer towards the summer period, so we do, we do hills all the way up in two or about two weeks before the first race. But those hill workouts towards the summer season look more like a track workout. So we might do, you know, six, 300s up the hill with a, you know, a walk jog back, you know, in three minutes and just try run them hard. So you're puking as the end of that workout rather than just getting aerobically all. So it goes from more of a VO2 max type workout to a pure 8-meter-speed endurance workout on the hills. - Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up the VO2 because one of the things I noticed about your training from a bird's eye view is that you hit all the systems all year. You hit speed on Mondays, that's neuromuscular. You hit threshold on what? Tuesdays, that's obviously metabolic. And then you have VO2 max on Thursdays with these hillsprints. And one could say maybe even neuromuscular development, depending on like how intense they're going. - It's quite metric too, isn't it? - Yeah, right. - And you call me yeah. - Yeah, and especially too, 'cause like, this is maybe in the weeds I don't care. But when you're running uphill, let's say uphill versus downhill, your eccentric load is actually lower because you don't have as much flight time, right? Like if you're running downhill, you're actually gaining potential energy or kinetic energy from the potential energy of the hill. When you're on uphill, it's opposite. So you get higher concentric loading but lower eccentric loading. And it's also what we see usually is a longer ground to contact time and lower impulses. So basically, and I hate hill sprints 'cause I have Achilles issues. But I've actually found that they don't bother my Achilles that much anymore. I don't know why, I can't figure it out. Don't care enough to think about it. But you know, it's nice because you get a higher internal load for a different type of external load, like lower peak forces. And that's actually why, though I hate doing them, I think they're fantastic. And you mentioned you stopped doing them early in, or just like two weeks before racing. So you want Touch Hills during the season? - No, no, so typically they will do hills in the base period and just almost in the pre-comp period. Then they'll start racing. So like Peta bowl, for example, round 143, 88. I think first race this year. And we did hills, I was three weeks before that race. So we did the hills on the Thursday and then we raced three Saturdays later. But you know, and we only did one real track later on we had to work out before that race. So the hills replaced the track workout. And then after our season, so the summer season, here in Australia, all the indoor season, then we go back to another six to eight week block of hills before we go to the European sort of, or American summer. So we introduced the hills again. But yeah, we leave them out. Sometimes, you know, if we get kicked off the track 'cause we use a public track and we don't have access. On a Monday and we're supposed to do a speed workout, we may go to a short 30 meter hill and sprint up the hill to mimic the track session. And we've done that a few times when we don't have access to the track. Which happens quite a lot, unfortunately. But yeah. - Yeah, I was gonna say, I've seen you, especially when you're traveling, you get creative. And I'm always like, man, if these people knew who was in their backyard, they might let them on the track. I feel like we need to get like a massive sign that was like, this is who I am. Please let me use your track. - Yeah, I always ask my family. It's a real bummer. Yeah. I can't imagine you asking unkindly. So Thursday, that's Thursday. Friday's easy, right? Friday's easy. So typically the rest day. Some guys who don't do the gym session on Monday, because some of them are studying or some of our athletes have to work, they might do that gym session on a Friday. And then Saturday, again, during this period, there's a bit of a mix between some threshold via two max work, you know, whether that's three K pace or touching on some 15-hour-hour pace. But like the workout we've got on Saturday's 3K tempo, so they'll run 9 minutes, so it's 72 seconds a lap. And then we'll. These poor 400 guys, they're going to kill you. Yeah. Sometimes they go faster. They might, they may run 8-40 or something if they're feeling good. And then we have 5 minutes rest and they'll do 10 times 200 with 20 seconds rest. And we try run them in 31 to 33. So that, it's kind of 3K pace, those 200s. And then as we gain closer to the summer season, they will become more 50-hour-hour-minute type pace, efforts with a bit longer rest, say 30 seconds. That's on Saturday days? On Saturday, yeah. So yeah, so we work out Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and then we do a long run, which is 45 to 60 minutes on a Sunday. We also, sorry, on Saturday, we back up with a threshold session in the afternoon. Between 16. I was hoping you'd say that, yeah. Yeah, so 16 to 24 minutes worth of threshold, and it's typically one minute to no second repeats. And we do them on the treadmill. So it's not, it's not too much, but it's a big day again, because somewhere athletes work full time or studying. The Saturdays will be, we chunk a lot of volume in because that's when it fits. So when you're doing your 800 spec sessions, is that you just wait and hold those until season? Yeah, yeah. So during the indoor and our Australian summer season, we try to get away with only doing four of them during the season, because I want them to peak. Yeah, I want them to peak in the European summer or the American summer. So over the years, I've reduced that. So you know, we used to do 15 or 16 of them. And now I'm just trying to get away with the least, the least amount of those workouts as possible. Having said that, the hill workouts are 800 type workouts. So I say, I say three or four, that's on the track. But some of those hill workouts are harder than any other intermediate workout you do during the year. So in a year, how many 800 meter workouts are you giving to someone? Really hard ones, I probably do 10 to 12. That's a lot. Wow. Yeah. And you're, I'm assuming you're giving them at least 10 days. I'm assuming you're not putting those so close to a race because you're trying to, because you've already mentioned over training, but you're trying to ensure that they stay fresh on race day, right? Yeah, well, it depends to what race it is. So if we're coming up to a major championship, and I know that we have to do three races in four days, we'll practice that. We'll practice that before races earlier on the season, or we'll do two hard workouts and then have a race on the Saturday. So they might go hard Tuesday, sorry, Monday, Wednesday, and then we'll do pre-race on Friday and then race on Saturday. So I want them to get one of one of those sessions might be an 800 spec session then. Yeah. Yeah. So they're going to get used to doing, you know, knowing that they can do three hard races or three hard sessions or two hard sessions and a race in that period of time. So when we come to a major championship, it's not much of an ask. Well, yeah. When, when you got them sprinting on Monday, threshold Tuesday, hill sprints Thursday, double threshold Saturday with VO2 max, I think they're going to be ready. Yeah. Yeah. But it's important that we're working out so often that it's important that we keep this all controlled because if you get out of hat and get injured really easily. So that's exactly the motto is just try to get better each week. Doesn't have to be each workout. Each week try to get a little bit better and you'll pick at the right time. Yeah. I mean, this is awesome. I love this. Two questions. Three really. What do you think you could get someone to run? All right. So of all the pieces of your puzzle, right? Yeah. If you could only do one of them to build an 800 runner and you can only do this one thing. I have a guess of what I would do. To me, it'd be hills. What would you do to say, like, hey, I've only got one piece of this puzzle. And if I've got to just craft any 100 runner using this, one thing, this is the thing I would do. What would it be for you? Yeah. It would, it would be hills. You know, I'd tell them to play with the off day runs and turn the last bit into a threshold type effort. So you could be a bit creative. But if it was only one real workout, yeah, I'd use the hills and, and yeah, I mean, it'd be tough. Like like Tony Van Dipenlasty had a really sore killies and we could only workout twice a week. And we were doing, we weren't doing hills because it was hurting his killies, we were doing the speed session and a hermitotype, but really low volume. And here I'm 144 seven of that of two workouts a week. But it's not ideal. You know, sometimes you just got to get creative and play with the cards you dealt, but it sounds impressive. But you look at it, the guys are running 141, 142. So 144 is not that good where we want to be, but you can't do that with two sessions a week. You're pissing off all the listeners, Justin. No. No, you're working with the best of the best, man. It's true. So in that same respect, you give away all of your training. You post all of it online. You don't stop any of your athletes from posting Grant, Grant, Graves, Gravesner. I don't know if I said this to his last name. He posts everything, like you post everything on your story. Why do you do that? Because there are some coaches that are like a little bit more proprietary and protective of their coaching. Why do you do that? And how do you, how do you convince someone to work with you? And they could be like, oh, I'll just look online. Yeah, I mean, you can look on it. It's like, you know, sometimes you look at a chef who follows a cookbook to the letter and does everything right. And there's other chefs who just cook by feel. So just because you know what the workouts are, like there's some, you know, what I have, what I'm saying to the athletes in between each, each repeat, when I know and to pull off and back off. So for example, I remember a workout where Peter bowl and Joseph Deng, so they've run 142 and 143. The plan workout was two 200s of 400 and two 200s. And they ran 22 22 for the 200s. They ran 46 9 47 1 for the 400. And they were looking so good and so relaxed that I thought there's nothing more to be gained from doing those last two 200s. So I just called, called the workout then and there. And they're the things that you can only learn, you can only learn through coaching. So not reading books and, and following someone else's program, you're going to be there and just look at the athletes and know that that's enough for today. You ever cheese everything or what? Or you know when to push them. So the reason I give it away is because you look at my workouts, they just borrowed stolen, slightly changed from someone else who's done it before. There's nothing revolutionally here. Double threshold. I mean, I stole the off Ingebritz and yeah. So I share it because it's not my, my information. It's stuff that I've got from other people. I know when I was an athlete and coming through, I used to ask a lot of athletes a lot of questions and some of them were kind enough to give me some information. So I feel like it's, it's only, you know, my job to give it back to people things. But like, my strength as a coach is more in the racing and the tactics, which we don't talk about on Instagram or, or share or about to. Yeah. Oh, you're not going to talk about it. No, no, I can talk about, but I spend a lot of time before each race preparing, you know, much like a football coach or basketball coach would do when they're looking at a team they're about to play. I spend a lot of time doing that. And that's not stuff, you know, that's on Instagram or so that's the stuff that makes a difference, come race day, not the training stuff in my opinion. Everyone trains. So, right. And I think they do. There are some interesting things I've heard like in the marathon, people do some crazy things. And I've got some, I'll tell you my three outlander series. One is downhill running for the marathon or heavy lifting prior to marathon work. Two is using a lever or an alter G with overspeed training to build the economy. And some would say you can't build economy and conversation elsewhere. But to build economy for faster running, that's something I'm interested in. Another is using blood flow restriction for certain, certain sessions to increase the metabolic load without the mechanical load. Those are kind of my three. Oh, I'm interested in this. I want to try this and I'm definitely going to experiment on myself. I'm also going to try your training block and see if I blow up. I'm 33. So it's going to go poorly, but I'm going to see what happens. You know, my English is the three and he has best season ever. So I don't think he's I can't let you off the hook there. Sorry. Well, Mark English is far more talented than me. But I wanted to ask about him. We're going to run out of time. It's going to piss me off. But tell me about Mark, man. This guy is setting the world on fire. He's 33. You said he's a doctor. He's been doing this for his whole life. And all of a sudden, he runs as fast as he's ever run at 33 inevitably. People are sitting there saying, like, Hey, Justin, what are you doing? Like, this is fishy blah, blah, blah. But like, he's crushing it. And obviously, he's got immense speed. And I think that's going to be the answer. But like, tell me about Mark English. Yeah. So here, I mean, Mark made board juniors a long time ago. So he's 33 now. So about 40 years ago, and was a very talented athlete, but also went to med school and was working as a doctor and trying to run fast. So he's running 144 when he's working as a doctor full time. So naturally, you take that away. He's going to run fast, even without me. Like, I'd love to take all the credit, but you start working full time and you focus on your, your athletics solely, you're going to improve. And also, everyone, it's funny, because everyone says super shoes improve you by this, you know, two seconds and all this kind and stuff. But then I thought you'd come. comes through that period where there's no super shoes. And now they're wearing super shoes, improves by two seconds. Everyone says they're taking drugs. So, I don't know, you can't have your cake in either. But with Mark, you know, the things we've changed is he's doing more volume than he's ever done before. So, you know, he's gone from doing, you know, 30 to 40 miles a week. And now he's doing 75 to 80 miles a week. But he's at the end of his career and he was willing to take some risks on doing more volume and seeing it worked before he retired. So, I wouldn't always suggest that someone jumped from 30 to 40 miles a week up at a high 'cause it's ridiculous, you know, it just throws the textbook out the window. But when you're at the end of your career, you can take a risk 'cause if it doesn't work, at least you can retire knowing it doesn't work. And also, he's spent a lot more time at altitude. The last 18 to 20 months to two years than he ever has in those previous 12 years. So, this year he spent about 21 weeks in three to five week blocks up at altitude training. And so, you know, increasing volume and altitude training has yielded these results. It's not my coaching. It's just those things that we've done. And it's been Mark willing to do those things that's made the difference. - Yeah. - You saw yourself short, but I'll allow it. So, in summary, he got far more aerobic work. You increased his, yeah, okay. - So, like I said, we're studying the speed. So, I still think he can run 45-6. You know, we did the split 250, one minute rest, one 50, we've done those kind of split 400 sessions before. As shown as me, he's in about 45-6 shape. So, he's still really quick. But he's just so much more aerobically fit. You know, he's VO2 max, went from 63. So, he's best ever VO2 max score was 63 over those three. - That's hilarious. - Yeah, it's quite low. But then within one year of working with me and doing the extra volume, we went up to 70. So, he improved it, he's VO2 max from 63 to 70 at 32 years of age, and his performance improved. So, the volume, you know, Mark and I say altitude works. Every time he runs fast, we just say altitude works. - Well, you know my motto, right? It's training works. So, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to copy right now. - Yeah, training does work. If it's done right. - Yeah, it's funny, you say that. And then it's like, yeah, but work is work. You know, it's like a, it's like a give and take. Now, with Mark in particular, you mentioned his VO2. Is that something that you guys are testing or is that something that Mark did 'cause he's a doctor in a nerd? - We tested, so. Well, champs last year, you know, Mark drew an incredibly tough semi-final. So, he had Shijadi and A-Rob, you know, the first semi, it was the first semi. So, it's always typically slow. And he came 30 semi-final and did make the final. And it was devastating. And then the top things off in the next semi-final, you know, Kim McPhillips broke Mark's national record and made the final. And then the next day or the two days lay in the final, he smashed the national record again. And so, Mark was like, that's it, I'm done. I'm retiring. And it was, it was like, I can understand where he's going. And I just said to him, you know, we've done a lot of work this year, but we don't know if the work we've done has actually made an impact. Do you mind doing a VO2 max test next week? So, he's telling me he's retiring. And I'm asking him to do a VO2 max test next week. And so, he did. He did it and we did the week and we saw that improvement. And I had to tell him, hey, what we're doing is working. So, let's stick with it for another year. And so, we stayed for another year and paid off. He won European champs, made ultimate finals and ran one, four, two, twice. So, he's gone from almost retiring to chucking himself in the lab and seeing the results, the effort he's putting is working and run well. - Mark English is my inspiration. I'm not gonna lie. I look at that guy and I'm like, now he's far more talented than me, but I still look at him and Grant. And I'm just like, if these guys are doing it, then there's hope in the 800 for us old folk. What is the highest? - Look at Grant. Grant, Ramon 47, when he was in college, had five years out of the sport, came back when he was early 30s and now he's 34, almost 35. And he runs a one second PR over 800, breaks four minutes of the mile, runs two ed in for the K, four of that age. And he's not a professional athlete. He's like, you know, bootstrapping his way around Australia. - We know. - So it just shows you though that, you know, I often find that particularly in the US, there's guys get the end of the collegiate career and then go off and work. And they may leave some of their best running on the table because they may have racing in college. And if they just spent another year or two working away, they might improve from 145 down to 143, possibly 142. But they never try, it's just hard. So my good friend Riley Whitt. He's, I think you guys have connected once before. - Yeah. - He runs by-carb shop. If you guys need anybody sponsored, I'm sure you'd love to. - We're gonna reach out to you. - I know you're a fly carb, guys, but. - No, no, no, I'm just using the best product, so. - Well, I'll put him in touch with you. He does need an 800 meter coach. So he's, he's using your programming either way and I've been consulting with him. But maybe this will be the formal connection because he ran 145 and, you know, Riley's not particularly fast. He's, you know, if you tell him to do a rolling 200, he's gonna run 23 low and he's gonna struggle. So I always tell him like, and he's broken four in the mile. So he's playing strong. He's like a 2438k guy. But I always tell him like, you've got more speed in the tank. And typically his issue has been, he doesn't take enough rest on his speed days. So, you know, what I tell him is like, you've got to- - We've got this system. - Yeah, you've, and I find that that is the biggest issue with a lot of speed development in where a lot of coaches go wrong with speed development is they just cut the rest. And they'll be like, all right, you're gonna rip, we're gonna do speed on Mondays, you're gonna do eight by 200 and you're gonna run them at 800 pace. I'm like, that's great, but that's a speed and during session. - Yeah, that's all right. - And especially when you're doing 200 meter jog and that can be helpful and useful. But I'd rather see someone do like, heck dude, 20, 30, 40 meter sprints and rip spike up, get the stiffest material you can find and go as fast as you can instead of, you know, doing a bit more speed endurance and taking long rest. Heck dude, take five minutes rest, I don't care. Like, it doesn't matter. So, that's one thing that when I saw, when I first came across your stuff, 'cause I was out of the sport for a while and you know, really within the past year and a half, my love of physiology has got me deep into the coaching elements and stuff like that. And when I saw your stuff with your rest and recover your sprinting, I was like, this is a guy that knows what he's doing. Like, he's not just winging it. Like, this is very intentional. He's following prescriptions that are known in the field. So, it's funny when you're like, oh, I don't know anything about physiology. And then you talk about VO2 max and neural fatigue and metabolic fatigue. I'm like, yeah, okay, you're phony. - No, no, but this is 'cause I've reached, like, I watched stuff on your Instagram or I reached out to people. The best thing you do is you surround yourself with people who do know the information and then you just blink up there and that makes you look good. They're like, very basically, I think, if your athlete is really fast, so fast over 30 meters and incredibly strong because they're doing this threshold stuff, the stuff in the middle should take care of itself. I know that's very basically basic thinking, but I just don't think it is basic thinking. I don't think people realize that 'cause this is one thing I was gonna ask you, if you had someone do no 800 work and just your kind of VO2 sessions on Saturday, your threshold, your hillworks, your sprints, what do you think, how far off their PR do you think you could get them in the 800? - Like I said, Peter Ball ran 1.43, 88, the first race this year, three weeks off doing hills. So we did one every meter workout. So, and his PB is 1.42, 55. So that was his third fastest 800, he's ever ran off that stuff. So I think you should be able to get to within one second of your personal best, just off doing that. So it's not, but again, you know, like I said, we don't do a massive base. So we're not that far away from being a good shape, but just do enough to keep it. You know, mentally, you've got to keep things going, yeah, like you can't be on the track all year round, I say we were there on Mondays, but you know, you're just the sky's things, like we're doing hills, but we're really doing everything. - That's a need to try to work out. - Yeah, yeah. - But it's on a hill, so mentally it's different. So yeah, yeah. - You've talked about this several times, and I have a good friend of mine, Stephanie Brown, Stephanie Broekhan now, and she helps me coach, and she says so many, so many similar things to about like the art of coaching. I come in at it from a very scientific perspective. I love repeating workouts. We can talk about that later as to why, but you know, she'll say things like that that I won't even process. You know, she'll be like, "Uh, why don't you run a 650?" I'm like a 650, that's weird. Why would I run a 650? Why would I do a 650 time trial? And she's like, because it's not a 600, it's not an 800, you don't have any concept of what that means, and it's gonna get you out of your own head. Or she'll have me do people do like 1K time trials for a 1500 or a 1200 or something weird, not even a 1K, a 1200, and she's like, you don't run that, so it doesn't matter. So who cares? Just go around. And you've said a few of these things, and I think it answers the question why you can put your training so publicly, because there's such an art to coaching that comes with experience and stuff, and it's, you know, you've got that nailed down by this point, and brings me to my second point, which was surround yourself with good people. I'm doing that right now. Why do you think I wanted you on the pod, Justin? I just want to pick your brain. I want to get inside of there, see what's going on. So I do want to thank you for coming on, and I do have more questions, and I will ask them at a later date, but I want to wrap the put. - We just have podcast version too, so we can do that. - I mean, hey, if you're willing to do it, I would be honored, oh heck yeah. Well, because it took me a year to get you on the first time, that's why. Boom roasted. Anyways, so Justin, last question. - Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] done, right? You've got these greatest athletes on the planet. If you listen to the podcast, you know what I'm going to ask you. It's all said and done. Crews over as a coach, as an athlete, whatever. What do you want to be your crowning achievement? My goal as a coach is I want to coach a world record holder and Olympic gold medalist of 800. That's all I want to do. So that's that that will be my goal. But my crowning achievement would just be to see athletes in a better position in life. When they started with me, it's where they finished. A bit out through the family they're raising now. So you look at Peter Bowel, he moved from Western Australia all the way over to Melbourne, didn't know anyone here. And now he's got a wife and two kids and it's got a great life outside of athletics. And I'm more proud of that than I am him running 142 or coming forth in Olympic games. Because that's more important. Alex Rose, a doctor and doing great things in the medical world. That's more important than running 144 at the end of the day. So see how the athletes progress after athletics or track and field is probably what I'm more proud of. But personally, I want to win a Olympic gold medal. Because I'm so competitive. I usually caveat that question by saying outside of a world record or a gold medal. But you know, because I know that that's going to be most people's answers. But I was like, you know, I'll let them have it. Yeah. Like I know you had Danny Mackey on your podcast a few weeks ago a month ago. And I'm so jealous that he's coached a world record holder. Like I'm envious of coaches like that. Danny is a great coach and a great human. And he's also coached a world record holder. And I'd love to be able to say that. Well, you're not you're not far off. You've got, you know, 15 to 20 people chomping at the bit to work with you. And I consider you one of if not the greatest 800 runner 800 meter coach on the planet right now. So I've talked to a lot of coaches and you know, informally and formally on the pod. And the stuff that you do is very unique. And it's also it's grounded in a lot of real legitimate science. And it's interesting to see scientists actually look at what you're doing. See that it's real and say, I need to figure out scientifically why that's working, which is why Gareth Sanford has has done some stuff with you guys. And for those of you listening, great 800 meter papers written by Gareth Sanford. So go check those out. We're over an hour. And I want to respect your time. So Justin, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a total pleasure. Where can people find you on the internet? Yeah, just how you can follow me on Instagram. I think it's just a run out. You'll find that it's all a homemade stuff. So don't sometimes have my kids appear on there. But if you don't like HTML running, don't follow me on Instagram. And Twitter, I think it's fasting track club. Oh, sometimes on the let's run boards. I'm always pussy under my name, my own name J Rinaldi. So I don't hide it anywhere. Unfortunately. Oh, wow. I didn't know you're on the let's run board. Yeah. I must check this out. I'm a sucker. And I respond when people ask me questions. Don't I'm too transparent. That's probably my downfall. Nah. There's nothing wrong with that. It makes you, it makes you credible and likeable. So it's all the listeners just to run all the one of the greatest 800 meter coaches ever in my opinion. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to check out some other episodes we have coming out. I'm trying to get Kim Myers on the podcast. Maybe I'll see if I can link up these two Australians at the same time. But thanks for listening and Justin, thank you for coming on. Thank you. Bye guys. All right.