S2E1: Run Faster and Improve Your Marathon Time

(upbeat music) Hey everybody, welcome back to the second season of the Consistently Good Podcast. I am your host, Jeff Cunningham, and I can't tell you how joyful, how thankful, how fired up I am about being able to talk to you guys about my favorite thing in the world, and that's endurance sports specifically running. I'm really, really grateful because I felt like we had a really, really good time. I personally had an incredible time, with sort of the varied topics, with the various sort of approaches that I took to talking about this sport, from historical lessons, to philosophical lessons, to digging into the actual science of training, to digging into some other sciencey stuff. I mean, we talked about iron and anemia and neuromuscular fatigue and all the stuff that went into last season. And I'm really excited because we've got some twists and some turns and some cool things that we're gonna be able to get to you guys and do with you guys, right? In the second season. And so I'm just really grateful because without you guys, they're ain't of me, okay? And I get to sit here and pontificate and be overly verbose, sitting here with this microphone right in front of my face, but without you guys watching on the YouTube channel, if you haven't subscribed, go subscribe. Without you guys listening across all the platforms, I wouldn't be able to do this. You're interested in the sport, you're passionate for the sport. I hope can rise up to the level and match mine because I just love it so much. I love bringing content to you guys. And this is an honor and this is a privilege and I'm just, I'm fired up about season two. I'm super excited. I'm super excited about today's episode, which is how to run your fastest marathon ever. Now, this episode, I think is gonna be really, really instructive. I think it's gonna provide a lot of insight and perhaps maybe getting you guys thinking about your next marathon if you've already run a marathon. Now, if you've never run a marathon, I think there's gonna be a lot of tidbits. There's gonna be a lot of stuff for lack of a better way of putting it. That you're gonna be able to get out of this if you're coming out of a history of playing sports, running perhaps other distances, or even just getting into it. But if you want to sort of be focused a little bit more on like, okay, what are some considerations about running my first marathon? You can go back to the Nick Bear podcast that I did with him many moons ago where we actually did an entire episode and how to run your first marathon. And that could be super, super instructive and helpful in addition to listening to this episode. Now, when we talk about running your fastest marathon ever, there are so many considerations. There are so many thoughts that need to go into sort of your progression, so to speak. And we all know that progress isn't linear. We've heard it a thousand times that every single race isn't gonna be our, every single race isn't going, it's gonna be this rapturous experience. But it doesn't mean that we shouldn't still be striving for that, right? It doesn't mean that we shouldn't make the goal for the next race to be the best one that we've ever run. I don't know almost anybody. I mean, I could just occasionally be say, well, I'm just training through this race or I'm not really ready to race, but I'm gonna go and have some fun. But you know, most of the time, when we spend time with a concerted block, they concerted, shall we say, period of time, where we've really, really been diligent, very methodical. Our goal is to run the fastest race we've ever run at whatever distance it is when we go to that starting line. 5K, the mile, 10K or a marathon. And so what I'm striving to do here is take that next step with helping you analyze how to make that next marathon, which is your next step in your marathon journey. Let it be the best step you've ever taken, okay? Now, I think globally, sort of holistically, if I may, we have to look at sort of where you are situated in the, you know, sort of getting up in the stratosphere and sort of looking down and taking a broad sort of look at where you sit. And by that, I mean, I think there's sort of like three things for lack of a bearway putting it that I sort of like to, like to take a look at. In order to know where you want to go, you have to know where you've been. In order to know if you can go where you want to go, right? You have to know how you got, where you got, and why you are where you are. And then that way, we can say, okay, this is the direction we're going. And I have data and I have history and I have considerations that are all in play. One thing that I think a lot of people can look at is, well, you know, for instance, what is your injury history, right? If you have like a recurring problem, that you need to work around, that you need to cross train around, that you perhaps need to be thinking about, you know, how you train the frequency with which you train, all of these things. So, you know, do you have a history of bony injuries? Do you have a crackly Achilles tendon? It's just sort of a chronic problem. Do you have, you know, a plantar fasciitis that tends to rear its head repeatedly? Maybe you have a, you know, a janky sciatic nerve and you have a job where you sit on your sciatic notch a lot. And it's something that you always got to be watching. So what I tell people is sort of look back and globally just say, okay, what's my state of health right now as I try to launch into my next marathon block as it were, right? And what are the considerations for how I need to be thinking about the way I'm going to structure my training based around sort of my physical health? How is that Achilles tendon doing? Am I on top of it? How is that sciatic problem that's just sort of, you know, it's not just a hamstring ache, it's a headache globally, right? Am I doing nerve glides? Have I seen, you know, a physical therapist for this to make sure that I'm in good shape? You know, if I have a history of some osseous injuries, bone stress injuries, things like that, what surfaces am I running on? You know, what kind of equipment am I running in? These are things that we need to be thinking about. Comorbidities, right? Health conditions. I've coached diabetics. I've coached runners who have rheumatoid arthritis. I coached runners who have crones and celiacs, right? We need to be thinking about, you know, how we're working around these things, how you're managing everything. Do you have your body in as good a shape as you can get it? And things sort of quote unquote under control as best as we can before we sort of launch into this journey as we want to march toward that rapturously good marathon. The one that's going to set the standard, is going to be the best that you've ever run. And then let's look at work and family life. You know, I think for those of you who know me, for those of you who I coach, we talk about bandwidth, right? Are you traveling to Western Europe for work once every four weeks, right? Are you an influencer who has obligations to products into brands where they want you to go to certain social meet and greets to show up for photoshoots, go and run races or be part of projects that the brand, you know, is engaged in to promote whatever widgets they might sell or whatever services they might offer, right? And so you have time considerations. Are you a parent? Are you working 50 hours a week or are you working zero hours a week? Do you have three children who are in elementary school or do you have no children? You know, are you being asked to work the night shift if you're a nurse and you're working 12 hour shifts, right? I coach firefighters, I coach firefighters who, you know, may work 24 on and then have 48 off. And so we have to look at work and life and work, life balance and bandwidth issues and how to fit of us in. So be considerate these things. You know, your physical health, your comorbidities, your work, life balance, your bandwidth considerations as you start sort of gearing up and sort of prepping down at base camp, right? Before you start trying to climb the mountain and ascend to peak performance, right? Now all of that, all that aside, you know, there's just sort of four bullet pointed analysis where we start breaking down your training and then your racing and the structure of it and your performance on race day and your performance in those work, right? workouts where we need to analyze it. Okay? And what I like to say, we're diving in, you know? It is an acrimine, it's D-I-V-N. And let me show you where I'm going with this. So we have training density, which is how close together your hard efforts are. We have to look at I intensity, which is when you're doing those workouts and when you're out doing your day-to-day training, for lack of a better way of putting it, how hard are you running? How fast are you running? What paces are you using on certain days in an effort to ostensibly gain fitness? And then of course the byproduct of that, hopefully is to run a fast race. So what does your intensity look like, right? And then V is volume. We talk about it a lot. How much are you running? And not just, not just how much are you running per week. And we tend to really, really focus on that. How many miles a week do you run? And it's really, really helpful. And I think it's a good place to start in talking about how much you're running. But I like to talk about volume in a few other contexts, right? What is the volume of your intense days, okay? Whether it is repeat work on the track, whether it is tempo running on the road or the track or the treadmill, if you have to run on a treadmill, how much are you running on those quality days? Is what I call them, quality days, right? How long are your tempo runs? Are you running 14 times an 800? Or are you running six times an 800? Are you doing tempo runs or threshold workouts where you're getting in nine, 10 miles a work? Or are you getting in four or five miles a week? So the volume within a workout, not just the total volume of all the running you do in a week is also really important. Volume on your long runs. How much marathon pace are we doing, right? We're gonna look at all of that stuff, okay? And then the last thing is the end. DIVN is this bigger bucket of what I refer to as non-running related components, non-running related considerations. Now, I say non-running related only because it's actually just not running. I was probably ought to say non-running components because it is related to your running. And when I'm looking at those, I break those down into sort of four sort of big pieces and I will cover those for you, but just understand that we're looking at the stuff that can impact your running, right? That you're doing outside of the track or the roads when you actually have your foot in your shoe running down the road, okay? Now, and looking at density, but I would encourage everybody to do when we start looking at your density. It is understand that we are breakable. Also understand that sometimes more is not better when it comes to running fast and running hard. And then when we look at density, from my perspective, I only coach a couple of runners for whom running is essentially their sole obligation, right? There aren't very many people who have the ability, there aren't very many people who have what I might would refer to as the luxury of being able to wake up, train, go have breakfast, just go see their PT, take an afternoon nap, go for a second training session, eat dinner, go to sleep, right? That's a luxury that I think a lot of us would be happy to be afforded in order to go and chase our running dreams, to be able to go and chase that next great time. But the reality is most people have jobs, most people have careers, right? They can be really, really demanding. And so that affects sort of our ability to run lots of hard workouts close together. And then when we start looking at things like recovery between the workouts and our ability to really, really soak in the fitness from a big Tuesday or a big Wednesday session, right? We have to start looking at the detrimental consequences in the detrimental aspects of running too many hard workouts, too close together. And in a word, our training is too dense. Because sometimes what happens is you show up dead legged, you show up worn out, you show up, the word we hear a lot is fried or cooked, okay? In a state of distress neurologically, we show up with microfiber tears in our muscle tissue and our connective tissue and our fascia. And so we have to be cognizant of chronic fatigue, of unwittingly throwing up blocks or barriers to actual aerobic progression and fitness progression by associating all work is good work, all hard work is good work. We may be, we need to treat it a little bit more like cayenne pepper, treated a little bit more like cumin, which sometimes just a dash of it might be more productive than dumping the whole bottle in, right? Now, when we look at density, what I tend to look at is your bandwidth and your physical health, which were those global considerations that I talked about as a precursor, so sort of going into the four sort of four step acronym that I laid out for you, right? And fashion the workouts, structure the workouts, and more importantly, when we're talking about density, is timing the workouts, planning them on what day am I going to do X workout? On what day am I going to do Y run? And I get text messages all the time, I got one just today where this winner said, "Hey, I had to move my workout from Wednesday to Thursday. "I have a big long run workout set for Saturday. "Can I move my long run workout to Sunday "to create space between the hard workout on Thursday "and then the long run workout "where she has some fairly big segments "of marathon pace running in a 20 mile run on Sunday?" And I said, "Yes, of course. "This is thinking. "This is thinking about your training density. "Shubbing everything too close together, right? "Where we don't give our body enough time to absorb "from a physiologic standpoint, the fitness "that we seek to gain from the hard session, right? "In building in 48 hours recovery before we go "and we try to go and do a long run workout, "it's just a smart thing to do." She was thinking about her training density, okay? So go back and look at your workouts before your last marathon and ask yourself, was I really, really tired? And did I feel up feeling physically sort of jaded? Did I show up feeling like my battery power was at like 50, 60% or did I show up rested? Did I show up feeling like I'm rearing to go? Like you've seen those race horses, right? At the Kentucky Derby or the Preat and States where they're literally rattling around and there and then the minute that they open the starting gates, they just bust out. Just some degree you kind of want to be feeling that way. Sometimes when you show up for your workouts and a lot of that has to do with sort of lowering that training density so you build in plenty of rest, especially when you have a career and you have kids and you've got varied interests, you've got friendships to maintain. Just make sure that you're not trying to overdo it to get, well, if I run three hard workouts a week if I run four hard workouts a week, just think how good I'm gonna get. Doesn't work that way. We absorb the fitness by running lots of nice easy runs. It talks about it a lot, 100% easy conversational pace, zoned who we can call it what we want. Nice easy running needs to be the bulk of what you do in the neighborhood of 80%. As little as 70% as much as 90%, but you need to be in that range for how much of your runs are just completely easy and then build in your workouts and space them apart. Nice even spacing. And I would say that your considerations regarding density also need to play into when you take your rest day, right? I'm a fan of, you know, if you take Sunday off we can run easy Monday and Tuesday. We can do a hard workout Wednesday. Did you get run easy on Thursday? Maybe do a little bit of fun, you know, quick running, some baby fart like work. Maybe some light speed development stuff on a Thursday or Friday excuse me. Do a long run on Saturday, but then take on. on Sunday, right? Build in your off days and your easy days where your whole thought price is create spacing. All right, everybody. Let's talk about a fueling subject that's near and dear to my heart and is part and parcel of almost every conversation with the athletes I coach. What gel do you use is the one that I ask and why? Because it is the most difficult thing for people to nail down. Too sweet. They upset my stomach. I don't like the consistency. They don't have enough sodium. All those problems are solved by go gels. If you look on the back of this, you're not going to see any unrecognizable ingredients with 110 milligrams of sodium. They have some of the highest sodium content of any of the gels on the market. And with the 24 grams of carbohydrates, you get that nice balance that's going to be able to fuel you through your biggest workouts and your big races. We have a nice array of flavors. We've got Apple Cinnamon that tastes like Apple Pie. We have a nice tangy but not overly sweet mixed berry. And then we have Mango. We also have the best caffeinated gels on the market. We got Mixberry. We got Apple Cinnamon that just got launched. And I'm here to tell you, you need to go and buy boxes and boxes and boxes of these things. Low GI issues. You have a powerful punch of your sodium and your carbohydrates. And I'm telling you right now, you get into the game with the BPN go gels. You're not likely to go back. So don't the gels that have been giving you GI distress that have not been fueling you properly because you're not getting quite enough sodium. You're not really getting enough bang for your buck when it comes to your carbohydrates. Go buy box of BPN go gels. You will never go back. When we start talking about intensity, what I'm talking about is like how hard are you running? Right? And we need to be careful regarding running too hard, but we also need to be careful to not run too easy. It's so, you know, it's really interesting because I think that a lot of times what happens is we try to identify the deficits in our training, right? And couch it in terms of, did I do enough hard workouts or did I not do enough hard workouts? When we really need to be looking at within each hard workout was I running at some sort of physiologically predesignated or shall we say physiologically scientifically designed pace that's going to move my fitness needle, okay? And when we look at intensity, you have to be careful to not be overrunning your workouts, but you also really have to make sure that you dial in paces that are physiologically designed to help you meet your goal. Okay? Typically, if you're doing repeat work in Jeff Cunningham's world, you know, if you're running between three and four hours in a marathon, typically it would be good. If you could do repeat work, whether it's 800 meter reps, 1000 meter reps, 1200 meter reps, typically you'd have pace anywhere from 45 seconds to one minute per mile speed faster than goal marathon pace, right? So if you're trying to run a three hour marathon, break three, that'd be 650 pace, you probably need to be doing your repeat work at 555 to six minutes a mile, right? So you might go out and run 10, 12, 14 times an 800 and 255 to three flat, you know, if you're trying to run a three hour marathon, right? Trying to run a four hour marathon, 357 for the marathon is nine minute pace. You should be doing your track work, you know, around eight minute pace, probably. Now keep in mind that shrinks a little bit. We're talking about intensity, how hard are you running on your repeat work? I mean, if your goal marathon pace is five minute pace, which would be 211 in a marathon, you know, it's not realistic to do your repeat work at four minute mile speed. Okay, but you might be doing your repeat work at 430 pace. A lot of it, right? You might be doing your repeat work. You know, if you're a two 15 marathon or two 16 510 pace, you might be doing your workout, you know, your workouts at 440 pace, right? It's got to be faster than goal marathon pace. You let us be in the wheels. One one runner, I coach, who's running in the the profile of the Boston marathon, right? It came to me a few years ago, and she explained to me sort of what she was doing for repeat work. And I just said, listen, man, you've got to run faster than six minute pace if your goal is to run a marathon at 615 pace. And so what I did was as I says, hey, I appreciate the fact that you're doing that you're doing these workouts, but we actually have to increase the intensity of bit on these workouts and really start spinning the wheels and I just got big when I said, this is what I think we ought to do. These are the changes that we can make that I think is going to increase your what we refer to as running economy. So we increase the intensity, right? And then when we're looking at tempo pace and threshold pace is the same thing. Are you doing your work at paces that make sense for what your goal is? Right? You know, if you can't go out and run, you know, a seven mile tempo run at 640 pace, you know, and maybe throw in some repeats when you're done, right? You're probably not going to be able to hold 650 pace for 26 straight miles or 42.2 straight kilometers in a marathon, right? So you've got to be thinking about dialing in the intensity and making sure the intensity, AKA the paces, make sense for what you're trying to do. Don't try to overdo it to where you literally have nuts and bolts flying off your hips and your knees and you've got blood spurting out the corners of your eyes every rep. That's probably too hard, right? Consult with a coach, consult with a confidant about am I doing what I need to do from an intensity standpoint to be able to get where I want to get and I am, I do in those intense workouts too far apart or too close together based on my bandwidth, my physical health, everything. So you've got your density, you need to look at and then you need to look at the intensity of the individual workouts. And then we have volume. Volume is really interesting. And it's really interesting to me because there is still this ongoing push pull, there's this ongoing discussion even within the coaching fraternity as far as how much is too much, how much is not enough. And I tend, I tend to err on the side of telling you that as long as you're feeling good, you don't feel exhausted, you're not getting injured. And a lot of this is from testing it over time. And that's why I'm saying, you know, this podcast is really good. This episode is really good for people who have some experience and some significant experience where they can kind of look back and be fairly self-effacing about what they've done, be self-critical and be self-analytical in what has worked and what hasn't. And then make sure it's not confusing association and causation, right? Was it really the volume that got you injured or got you chronicled a fatigue? Or was it the fact that you were running X volume, but you had way way too much density and way way too much intensity. And you were just flat out flipping tired, man. Okay. But that said, generally speaking, when we're running marathons, the more volume that you can run and still feel good and feel okay and not be chronically sick, not be getting chronically injured, okay. That is far better than underdoing it on mileage, underdoing it on the number of kilometers per week that you're running the number of kilometers per month, the number of kilometers that you were massed during an entire training block. Okay. Listen, we're not running, we're not running the mile here. Okay. We're not running a race that is significantly anaerobic, meaning requiring lots of sprint work and sprint speed per se. Okay. We're running a race that requires intense control. We're running half marathons too that require intense control, but the marathon specifically is sort of this very, very controlled, sort of very moderately pace tempo run that gets increasingly more difficult as the minutes and then for most cases, the hours and the plural go by. The reality of it is the more time you spend on your legs, the reality is the more miles that you're able to prudently and relatively comfortably run, the better you're going to be at marathoning. The most extreme example of this to elucidate this is would you rather run 50 miles a week to train for the Jersey City marathon in April or the Boston Marathon in April or would you rather run zero miles and take your chances? Everybody to a part person would say, well, Jeff, I mean, obviously the 50 miles a week, I mean, if you're going to rent a marathon going on zero miles a week, isn't a good idea. And therein lies the point. Volume matters, right? If volume didn't matter, everybody would just show up not running at all or running 10 miles a week or 20 miles a week, but we all recognize that in order to be able to race, okay, not just jolly jog or run, which is fine. No crime committed there. But if you want to race a marathon, you want to run a marathon where you have a gold time, guys, we got to be able to be fit enough to endure the physiological requirements of the event that we just entered. We're talking about a marathon. Um, I'll never forget January, 2022. Um, I had a young, incredibly talented runner show up to practice and she had been running for, you know, 50, 55 miles per week, which is not bad, right? Um, but it's an elite level talent. And so I, you know, put her through the paces in the first workout. She says, Coach, that was a long workout. And I says, yes, I said, didn't you're the one who enters long races, sort of rolled her eyes and sort of playfully sort of exhaled sort of in an exasperated sense and stuck her foot into the ground and turn and stomp off, right? Well, you know, um, the marathon debut came up many months later and suffice it to say that um, um, 236 was probably a pretty good first marathon. But the reality of it is, is, you know, there was a bunch of 80 mile weeks that happened there. Now I'm not saying for all of you that that, you know, 80 miles a week is what you have to do to run well, right? Um, um, because well for you, you know, might be, you know, a path that looks different based on your bandwidth, your health and your experience and all that. But the point is this generally speaking, we want to get your volume up. Okay. Prudently and carefully within what makes sense in the overall context of your running career, let's adopt as much as we can. And I have to be careful. Okay. Let's adopt a maximalist approach rather than a minimalist approach because if you go through life with the goal to simply try for the bare minimum, how little can I get away with when you can imagine how that's a male that can be to your progress, to your results, to your advancement in your career, to your ability to maintain a quality marriage, um, to your ability to run fast marathons. I want to see how little I can get away with. Well, your GPA ain't going to look real good. Your relationships ain't going to look real good in your times in your races. Probably won't look real good either. Okay. That said, we got to be super careful. You have to analyze what has worked, what has not worked in the past. You have to analyze causation, right? Why was I so tired? Why did I get hurt? It could be that you were running too many miles. Okay. That is part of the analysis, right? But why you did not run well could be because you didn't run enough. And the vast majority of paces with people who come to me, that is the thing I find, I I would say that it's safe to say that 85 to 90% of the people who come to me and ask for coaching advice, typically I will look at it. I'm like, man, I think we got to get your volume a little bit. If we want to progress this, if we want to get to the next level, typically. Now, once again, when we're talking about volume, I've talked about it on other podcasts. And I've also talked about quote, speed work and the different kinds of training, whether it's max field two work, whether it's critical velocity work, whether it's lactate threshold work, or whether it's aerobic threshold work. I've also talked about how to gain volume. Listen, the 10% rule, as I talked about in a podcast in season one, and you can go back and you can listen to that, I think it's the, the Wileyhild axioms and rules and truisms, you know, in the sport that we just sort of, you know, take for granted that aren't really rules and aren't really things other than misconceptions. Okay. The 10% rule is okay, but I don't really ascribe to it. I'm kind of more of a three to five percent guy, kind of a five percent guy, maybe seven eight. 10% is a lot, once your volume gets higher, right? I mean, you know, going from 80 miles a week to 88 miles a week, I'm actually really not a fan of even that big of a jump because that's 10%. Right? Just maybe go for 84 miles, which is a five percent jump. I really like that a lot more. So building your volume doesn't mean that you need to go from a little bit to a lot of bit really fast. That is a recipe. That is a recipe for you getting banged up, chronically fatigued or suffering from maybe a bit of shall we say situational emotional burnout. Okay. Be thinking about your volume in the context of I need to try to adopt more of a maximalist approach when I am really, really progressing into sort of the stages of racing marathons at a faster rate at a higher level, whether it's I want to be able to get a qualifying time for the New York marathon, a qualifying time for the Boston marathon. I want to get my PR, I want to qualify for the Olympic trials, whatever your goal is, okay, it's going to require more work at the good stuff that's going to address whatever it is that you need to address to get better. Okay. Volume. Absolutely key. Listen, man, I've even addressed that even at the high school level. Okay. Even for my high school mylers and my high school two mylers, I typically find that people have plenty of speed to reach their goals. Okay. If you're trying to run a 10 minute two mile, that means you got to run 115 per lap for eight laps. Most teenagers can go out and run a 115 lap really easily. The same correlation can be made to running a three hour marathon. Okay. Almost everybody who has run down in the low three's marathon can run one mile and 650. How do we create a situation where you can run 26, 650s back to back? And usually, usually pure sprint speed isn't the problem. A lot of times it's lack of time spent on your legs through lack of voluminous training where we build out this aerobic system. Two things that I talk about a lot are distal capillarization and then building mitochondrial density. And then of course, you know, I think, you know, we add on to that. We can talk about heart stroke volume, blood plasma volume. All that stuff goes up by running a lot typically. Okay. But be careful with it. Make sure that you're very incremental and the way you go about increasing volume so you don't get yourself into a pickle where you're like, man, I did a little too much and I did it a little bit too quickly. And I am filled with regret right now because now I have that crackly Achilles, right? Now, I'm really, really tired. And when that alarm goes off, I wiggle my toes and flutter my eyelids and look at the ceiling and ask myself, why? You don't want to get yourself in that situation. So be kind to yourself. Be kind to yourself some grace. Adopt a patient approach. Well, get that volume up. My recommendation honestly is once you are over 45 to 50 miles a week, I wouldn't, I wouldn't ever increase your mileage more than about five, six percent a week. And even then I wouldn't do it every week. I would do it, you know, every second week, you know, go 50, 50, then 53, 53, then like 56, 57 for a couple of weeks. And only then do you get to 60 so you can see that that might take a month and a half, two months to go from 50 miles a week to 60. But that's a really, really careful, prudent way to do it. And you almost won't feel it, okay? Because if you add three miles a week, you're talking about adding about 25 minutes of running a week, split three ways. You're talking about eight minutes a day, three days a week and you, or, and you do that once every second or third week, your body will barely feel it. And then all of a sudden you're going to wake up and you might be running 70 miles a week when several months before you were only running 55 miles a week. And I've even had people tell me coach, this is really weird. I feel better. I feel better running six days a week instead of four. I feel better running 70 miles a week instead of 55 miles a week. Why is that? And I said, because you've got these calluses, you've got these calluses, okay? Your body is super resilient. Guys, your bodies are capable of so much. When you go into the weight room and you grab that barbell for the first time and you go and lift weights, your hands are sore, you could even get your skin ripped open, right? On your palms. But go into that weight room four days a week, five days a week for two years straight. you're going to get these calluses build up, right? Then you're not even going to feel it when you grab that barbell. You build up internal calluses that allow you to endure so much more without getting injured, allow you to endure so much more without getting overly fatigued. But if it happens incrementally and you introduce it a little bit at a time, it's almost imperceptible regarding, you know, sort of the way you feel, the way you add it. And instead of you wake up and you have the specificity, oh, wow, I'm changed. Get that volume. You get that volume. And then you use appropriate techniques to analyze your density, set your training programs up, and then really manage your intensity so that the pace is match. What it is, the physiological requirements are of your next marathon. You are well on your way to running the fastest marathon you've ever run. Now, let's look at the non-running aspects. We've gone through density, we've gone through intensity, we've talked about volume. Now let's look at the fourth thing that I think you need to analyze in your last training block or your last training blocks in the plural, non-running related items, specifically non-running items. First of all, let's look at diet. Okay. And typically, it's not that you're eating too much. In fact, almost never is it that you're eating too much. I think that we really vastly underestimate how much we need to fuel, especially when we're addressing the V part, which is the volume part of our running. If you're out there running 100 miles a week, okay, you cannot exist on iceberg lettuce in protein. You have got to eat carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are your friends. I saw a study that was quoted on the other day that showed that 76% of the diets for many East Africans is carbohydrates with a percentage of that, actually just being sugar. And so what I'm here to tell you is this, make sure that you address your diet. And I don't mean get all your carbs from candy and 12 spoons of white sugar, but you need to be eating sweet potato, potato, rice, and copious amounts to be able to fuel the requirements for going out and training as hard as you want to train. Okay. Because if you want to get to your goals, what you have to do is engage in goal-oriented fueling. Okay. Now that's between runs. Make sure you're eating plenty of carbs. You also need to eat plenty of protein, right? For muscle repair, protein is great for recovery. So we're carbohydrates, right? You got to replace that glycogen. You got to get those glycogen stores up, especially after a hard workout. I tell my athletes, you need to immediately within a half an hour to 45 minutes of finishing that hard workout, you need to be wolfing something down. Okay. And whether or not that's two big pieces of toast, slathered with peanut butter and some honey, you know, with a banana and then chase it with a fruit smoothie. Yeah, man, you're well on your way, right? Go and chug some chocolate milk in the car on the way home. You get this perfect balance of sugar and proteins. Okay. Right when you get done, right? Whatever it is, make sure that your diet matches what it is that you're trying to do. Carb heavy and protein heavy, heavy, eat your fruits and vegetables. Make sure you're getting plenty of iron. Okay. 80, you know, 85% of runners, typically in my experience, especially you ladies who have some special considerations are probably not getting quite enough iron in your diet. Cast iron skillets, red meat, bison, iron supplements, taught to your physician. Make sure you're getting your blood work done so you address it with your diet. Okay. Intra run fueling. It's sort of diet, right? It's because it's what we're eating. Guys, we need 500 to 700 milligrams of sodium per hour during long sessions in practice and during races. Okay. We need to be getting in 40, 50 up to 80 grams of carbohydrate per hour, right? During these marathon and a lot of people might bonk. You might have bonked in your last race. You might have been consistently bonking, slowing down, falling apart, crashing and burning. We could call it what we want. Long run workouts, long repeat sessions on the track and during your races. Sometimes people confuse. Sometimes people confuse that, right? For I didn't do enough tempo runs. I didn't run enough mileage. I didn't do enough repeat work. When maybe it's you didn't practice intra race and intra run fueling. And so you literally ran out of gas not because your body wasn't fit enough to hold the pace that you were running, but because nobody, nobody can physically go and run an automobile with no gasoline in it, even if the car itself was perfectly fit. You've got your inspections done. You don't have to do that in Texas anymore, actually. But you've changed your oil. You've monitored your transmission fluid. You have made sure that your exhaust system is in good working order. If you drive a diesel pickup like me, everything looks fine. Why won't my car run? Well, you being bad. You try to go on a cross country driving vacation with no fuel in your car. We would never do that. But then sometimes I fear that we do that with our bodies. And then we get frustrated that we quote, didn't feel good or we get frustrated that we crashed and that we burnt and we bombed when maybe what we need to do is is we need to flip our gels over whatever you're using. You should be using BPM go gels. You need to flip over the canister of whatever electrolyte replacement that you're using. Okay. And you need to be looking at milligrams of sodium and grams of carbohydrate because I can tell you there are fast differences between all the products on the market. Some of them have zero sodium. Some of them have over 100 milligrams of sodium in a gel. Some of them have x, y, z amount of carbohydrates. Other ones might have a B.C. amount of carbohydrate. It's simple math. Third grade, second grade math guys. We're not talking about having to do, you know, a rocket science here in understand the concepts of thermal dynamics and heat transfer and the mathematic calculations for that. Guys, this is addition. How many milligrams of sodium are in this? How many grams of carbohydrates in this? How frequently am I going to be in adjusting this and in what amounts? If you do the math, if you figure out, am I doing this enough and then we can control the controllables. Practice it in practice. Get your GI tract used to swallowing the gels, swallowing the electrolyte replacement, swallowing the carbohydrate fuel if you get your carbohydrates in liquid form. Okay. And get it down to literally a science, a reproducible routine, hydration and nutrition protocols that you literally know like the back of your hand and you simply execute that on race day. Okay. Sleep. It's a non-running thing because you literally are asleep. You are not running. Guys, sleep is so important. Like I've said before, when I was in college, I thought, well, if you don't sleep, you just sleep. Well, what we know now is that muscle recovery occurs. Recovery occurs while we sleep, both the physical, actual fibers in our muscles and then of course, neurologically. I think we understand the neurologic thing really, really well because that's why kindergarteners and preschoolers take naps at schools because neurologically, they just get fried and they can't be awake all day. That's why infants sometimes will sleep 15, 16, 17 hours a day, right? Because it's neurologic recharge. Well, we still as adults need to neurologically recharge. Okay. Seven, eight, nine, you know, hours of sleep at night if we can get that done is great. Trying to sustain a marathon block on three to four hours of sleep at night is virtually impossible. And I will tell you that it is empirically impossible for you to maximize your potential. Okay. Sleeping that amount. Now, Exit and C's prevail. We work night shift. We have busy schedules. Sometimes five and a half, six hours a night is all we can get for four or five days straight and then we can go and sleep nine hours a night for a couple of days over a weekend. Hey, that's okay. Sleep as much as you can within the confines of your life. Sleep is so finally important. It is better than normal tech boots. It is better than massage therapy. It is better than a scraping tool, it is better than a cold plunge. It's better than sauna. It's better than red light therapy. Sleep is better than all that stuff. I'm not saying don't do that stuff, but what I'm saying is, I like to joke around with people that coffee is just sleeping a cup, right? For me, I can sleep three hours a night and drink 36 ounces of coffee in the morning. Good as new, it's just like I slept eight hours. It's a sad joke because it's not true, okay? So your normateg boots in your cold plunge do not replace your lack of sleep. It does not cure sleep deprivation. Your neurologic rest and then the actual physical repair from damaged muscle fiber and connective tissue happens so well when you're lying flat on your back, so sleep, so really emphasize that. Strength training, be doing something, okay? Distance runners notoriously, a lot of times don't love to get in the way room. Don't love to lift weights. Ladies, I will repeat it over and over. Lifting weights isn't gonna make you look manly. Lifting weights is not gonna make you look bulky. Lifting weights is not going to make you look sort of unathletic. It is, and for you guys, lifting weights isn't just sort of this, whatever, it both prevents injury, okay? And it also is a performance enhancer. It increases your running economy, your running power, both on toe off, knee lift, everything. And it doesn't necessarily just have to be lifting weights. Body weight exercises, you can do lunges, you can do all kinds of stuff, even if it's just with some dumbbells in the floor of your bedroom, 30 minutes, twice a week, be doing something, okay? So focus on your diet, focus on your recovery, and your sleep, and focus on, okay? Some sort of strength training, and those three things, would you add that in, okay? With really, really monitoring your training density, the intensity with your training, and then the volume of your training at, you take all of these things combined, and you're gonna set yourself up to run the greatest marathon you've ever run. And we don't love comparing all the time, and comparisons can be the thief of joy, and we've heard all that, but the comparisons I do want you to do is compare what you're doing now, to what you were doing before, and ask yourself, am I on the right track, to then progress to that next step, and run the best marathon that I can. And so that is the gift of Strava, the gift of now where we can sort of memorialize our workouts in electronic format, and go in mind data in the past, and say, what was I doing? What can I do better? What paces was I running, how much was I running, how frequently was I doing it? And then let me be honest with myself, was I really doing my strength work? Was I really sleeping enough, or was I staying up way, way, way too not, playing Minecraft, or watching I love Lucy reruns, all right? Okay, and you do all that stuff for lack of a better way of putting it, and boy, I tell you what, you're really, really setting yourself up to have the greatest marathon of your life, and you're setting yourself up to have this incredibly, hmm, just fulfilling, coupling experience because you're being intentional, you're being meticulous in you're controlling the controllables, because as we know in this world, there are a lot of things that are not in our control. And so I'm super excited about this. If you guys just go back, do some thinking, do some analysis, run through the things that I've talked about here today, you're gonna be set up to really, really have that day that I'm gonna go ahead and say it, the D word, the day that you deserve. Okay, guys, I'm excited because we're about to do something new for season two, and we're gonna be doing this after every episode in this coaches mailbag. So I'm gonna dig into coaches mailbag. I'm gonna look at some questions that you guys have sent in, and I'm gonna look here and see what we've got. Hmm. SA Godfrey 6, I'm newer to running, and I'm slow. How do I not be discouraged? That's a really, really good question. And it's one to be honest with you guys that I get a lot and it's really, really important. Being slow is what happens before you get faster. Being slow in and of itself does not define who you are. Being slow does not make you less worthy of being out there on sharing the roads, sharing the tracks, and sharing the trails with people who just might be able to like ambulate slightly faster than you running in a straight line. You stick to it. You have confidence in yourself that you're doing something for you. Have confidence that you're out there doing more than what 99% of any of the other humans on Earth can do because you are running. Slow people are runners, joggers are runners, sprinters are runners, you are a runner. You are good enough. You will get better. Invest in the principles that I talk about, which is consistently good. Over a cave, occasionally great. Be consistently good. Day after day, week after week, month after month. You're gonna feel better and you're gonna get faster and don't worry about what somebody over here is doing. Okay, they might be faster than you and there's probably an equal number of people who are slower than you. You stick to it, you have faith in yourself, you patch yourself on the back for a job well done and you just understand you're a runner. You're capable and you're good enough, okay? Stick with it, you're gonna be just fine, I promise. Guys, I hope that you've enjoyed the first episode of season two. I can tell you that I'm so excited to be back. I'm looking forward to the rest of this season. And as usual, I want you guys to go be good. But more importantly, be consistently good, okay? Coach out. (upbeat music)