#18 Lace Up Your Shoes - It's Marathon Trainig Time!

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome. I'm Dr Moose Herring, Orthopedic Sports Medicine Specialist.

Speaker 2: 0:06

I'm Dr Rob Green, Sports Chiropractor, Coach, Trustee Sidekick. We are Lifetime Endurance Athletes. We are Eager Lab Rats.

Speaker 1: 0:13

We are Maker of Many Mistakes. We are Family-focused sports medicine docs that are balancing family work and fitness and are enjoying the ride While we are sports medicine professionals. This podcast is not part of our professional responsibilities. No doctor, patient or coach-athlete relationship developed this podcast. We have no financial support from any outside resources. The only support we get is from our fantastic wives that sit back and look at us in complete dismay.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Welcome to HubLife. Enjoy the show. All right, we're back. For what number is this? Now it's 18, I think 18.

Speaker 1: 0:53

18. So, like fine wine, getting better with age.

Speaker 2: 0:56

Man, yeah, it really is.

Speaker 1: 0:57

Super fun.

Speaker 2: 0:59

What's going on with you, man? How's things with you?

Speaker 1: 1:01

Nothing good solid week trying to be consistent after being down for a little bit consistency and no heroics every day.

Speaker 2: 1:10

It's the key. It's funny, just before we got this started I had a house full of eight to 10-year-old girls. So I'm a little frazzled today. So if I seem a little bit, a little scattered, that's on me. So hopefully you can be the steady ship today, man. So you're telling me about some cool current events going on.

Speaker 1: 1:28

Yeah, a couple of cool current events. You guys made me out in the 70.3 World Chance. We're in Finland this past weekend and the girls put on a show. American Taylor Nib took it out at 353, but swam off the front, rode 207, then ran 118. Off the front. And then Kat Matthews was second Kind of a breakthrough performance for her. She swam incredible, rode 211, and then ran 116.

Speaker 2: 2:02

Wow, that's amazing. It seems like there's a change in the guard going on.

Speaker 1: 2:06

Seems like there's some fresher names, some newer faces, some blazing fast times Blazing fast times and I may have been out of it for a while, but they're racing it different. I mean, if you look at interviews from Taylor Nib and Kat Matthews, their whole idea of the way they race 70.3 is like I'm going all out in the first buoy, I'm going to settle where I am and then race. And on the bike I'm going all out the first 555K, settle where I am and then race, and on the run they're just hanging on for dear life. So you saw it in the women's race and the men's race, where it's not that I'm going to hold and even pace the whole time. I mean these people are going out all out to get their group because now the swim drafting is the swim. Some drafting and getting in that front group is crucial. The bike relative drafting you know it's crucial because if you come out of the swim two, two and a half minutes back you're probably not going to make that up anymore.

Speaker 2: 3:21

Yeah, it's amazing there's so much more tactics than ever with the classic saying of you can. You can't win in the swim, but you can lose it in the swim, and it's showing even at the pro level.

Speaker 1: 3:30

But just looking at, you know, the overall top 10 in the female races. I was looking at some of the times you had to be top 10 in the world. You had to swim between 24 and 26 minutes, you had to ride between 207 and 210 in on a hilly course and you had to run a 116 to 120 run. And so I mean and the and these girls, you know there's, there's, there's, there's strides, beautiful, their bike pit looks great. I mean they're killing it. And then the guys race was a shocker. I mean they said it was Christian Bloemann, felt you know against, you know against Lionel, and it was complete newcomers. This guy, rick Bogan from Germany, I'd never heard of him before, 22 years old, jeez 22 years old.

Speaker 2: 4:28

He's supposed to be doing ITU 22.

Speaker 1: 4:31

Swam 22. He rode 156 and then ran a 110. Geez, altar front, he would. You could see. I mean, I watched he was suffering. And then top three were all Germans, right, and for the top three you had to swim, you know, 22, 23. You had to ride a 150, 50 low and run between 110 and 112. Different beast, the different beast, yeah, and and um, you know Sam, I think, since Sam Long was 12th or 14th.

Speaker 1: 5:07

Well, lionel Sanders got, got, got disqualified and this is going to be another black eye for Ironman.

Speaker 1: 5:14

He did an interview after the race where he was five to seven kate and finished, and he was on some narrow mountain road and he was being very cautious about the passing rules and he was having to work his way up because he's not, he's not, he wasn't swimming 22, 24.

Speaker 1: 5:34

He was working his way up and the the Marshall road to him and blew a whistle and said and Lionel said you know, you know what I do. He said you went across this center line and a lot down there was no line. And and the officials said it's some imaginary line. You, you went and went across the center road. It was a closed section of road, mountain, narrow, with no, you know, with no line. Then, probably an hour later, there was post of a lot of cyclists going left center because there were, there were a lot of people. So while Lionel stated, he said he will never do Ironman races again and he's such a spokesman in his, his, his usual he too to to channel he's honest um, whether he does that or not he's also very, very emotional, so he is emotional, so that.

Speaker 1: 6:26

But I think that's another black eye for Ironman. Yeah, you know, I never thought of that for like, especially those narrow mountain roads.

Speaker 2: 6:33

I know that rule, but I kind of always thought that was just a double yellow line. If you ever go across that yellow line, that's a safety problem as opposed to your professional race. You're going through God knows what traffic and it's narrow, and if you go over the center line, well, good Lord. If you looked at an average sort of road, I imagine the center line is practically like one lane as it is. So yeah, I'd be really irritated if. I were him.

Speaker 2: 6:55

And and and even if an official did that to like somebody just override, say no, no, no, no, no, not not here. You got the letter of the law, but not the spirit of the law on this one.

Speaker 1: 7:04

So it's not okay. And then I don't know if you guys have been watching about. The world track and field championships have been in Budapest and talent is insane. I mean the, the, the times that are being run. I mean we have a local, local superstar here. He's actually you know, you know, you know, you know very well who was 17th in the marathon and ran 231.

Speaker 2: 7:31

That's you know what and that's amazingly fast. And for Kira that's a bad day. I mean, you know she was not a to her standard. You know she's even tremendously faster than that. And boy she. You'd seen what she'd written about that and just own it and just be like, hey, you know what, look around, look where you are, look what you've accomplished and look what you're doing. And but he had no. Those times are insane. And Kira is just a rock star man. Not only is she an incredible athlete that runs exceptionally fast. And and what a cool story If you, if you don't know, look it up, kira DeMotto. She ran in college. She took time away from running, had a family, a really successful real estate career. Pick back up running just to be the fastest marathoner in the house because her husband's a rock star marathoner too. He's like a 232 guy or something like that and and then picked it up and just skyrocketed to where now she's one of America's top female runners. She's got a female records, records for for.

Speaker 1: 8:26

Americans. So yeah, cool story. I think it's a fan attack the thing when you look and see what she wrote about her day. She could have made it. We've talked to some of the other athletes. She could have made excuses. This nap she said this what my day? And she can Gradually Lindsay, lindsay Flanagan, who was a young American, top American who ran to 227.

Speaker 2: 8:50

Yeah, it was like Kapoji right that you had said after Boston, where it was like, dude, you tell the line it's running as long course. Anything can happen any day and no, excuses no excuses, right, you know that's fantastic right. So there might be explanations of what happened and he was a brutal thing, but at the end of the day, like you know, kudos that that put on that day and congratulated me, holds her head high. We're in American Jersey. It's pretty spectacular.

Speaker 1: 9:13

And then the last major event of the week. You know we talked a little bit about reset last week and Robin our run trails yesterday and I've got a little bit of a hamstring issue going on was determined to bite my tongue and he said no, no, no, gear down. So and we did, run was great, there were no issues. So we're getting smarter.

Speaker 2: 9:35

Yeah, well, it's because somebody was there. I love it. We were, we were at, we were kind of deeper into the trail run and it wasn't bad, but it was also not going in the right direction and and there was this hilly, harder section. You're like no, no, we can go back. And there's this flatter way that is a little bit shorter, it's flatter, it's just sort of getting back. It's like no, we're, I've taken this road enough times, I've been in that spot and I've taken the other road because I've been in the spot and that road did not go very well. So don't do the undulation hard stuff.

Speaker 1: 10:01

We know you're a warrior, we know you're strong enough to do it, but but the road that the, the road diverged and actually took the easier road, so that's a major accomplishment.

Speaker 2: 10:13

That is a major accomplishment. Yeah, so maybe at the end of this podcast, when you come to a fork in the road, if you got an issue, they flat road, flat road.

Speaker 1: 10:22

Yes, I thought so. You know, you got world, world championships going on Budapest and Latifenland and you have old dogs learning new tricks, because longevity is key.

Speaker 2: 10:34

It's all about. So next time you're dealing with something, you can absolutely do the hard one, and then you got to make a choice. You get a fork in the road, you go. I can either make this session one that I grind through and I feel proud of, and I can't run for several weeks, or I'll take the easier one and I recover, and it's a 48 hour issue as opposed to a six-week issue. So tough decisions, tough decisions live and learn.

Speaker 2: 10:57

And one last thing we'll do after our topic is we I forgot to put that interview in With Vince she hand and his son and team, ryan so we'll get that interview in, show those guys story. So listen to that at after our main topic and Donate to those guys, take a look at them and give them lots of love, right? So this week's main topic builds off a last week. We're gonna be turning to all things running for a little while and we're really excited about Some new things that we're gonna be doing here at hub, something that we've planned on doing and now we're gonna start to launch, and that's gonna be programs, a holistic program.

Speaker 2: 11:37

We do one-on-one coaching, that deep or dive, which is just fantastic, but a lot of us are very time-poor and just sort of need a plan to to get us to Arrays or whether that's to check a box or whether that's to perform at a very high level, and how can we do it in a really holistic way? So how can we not only train for it? We all kind of know essentially what training looks like, but how do you do it with with Mobility in mind, with strength and stability in mind, with durability as a runner, with structured training that's catered to you and is around the things that we talk about, which is test, don't guess, know where you are and be able to Adapt your running and understand you know what you're trying to get to and build towards it. So that's what I think we'd like to do today. So we'll have a discussion and, as we think about it, like, let's talk about the things that we know that are really important.

Speaker 2: 12:34

A lot of people neglect, a lot of people don't know the you know necessarily. They know the, the tactics, but they don't know the strategy. What's on your mind? What are you thinking? So?

Speaker 1: 12:46

you know it, hub, we're basically looking for Lifetime fitness and you and I CC people Every single death. They are clinics. Is that set a goal, they want to run a marathon. They don't know how to build to that 26.2 mile finish. A lot of mistakes are made and a lot of the Programs are run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, and what that leads to is injury, and so you have a great analogy of toast Burning on one side and it not being cooked on the other side.

Speaker 1: 13:23

And I think what you and I talked about, our goal, would be to create a plan that Anyone, regardless of your level, could drop into in over 12 weeks build to Marathon, half marathon, whatever your distance is, in a holistic approach where we're focusing on running. That's the race. But to be a good runner, you need to know running efficiency Mechanics, you need to know where you're weak and not weak, you need to know New trish and strategy. So when you finish that marathon, there's some excitement. So you still want to go run or you still want to do races or you still want fitness long-term.

Speaker 2: 14:08

Yeah, yeah, there's that sort of like common not what I think routes of the common knowledge of sports specificity. Right, runners run, bikers, bike golfers, golf, tennis players play tennis. That's how you get better at the sport. But reality is there's a, there's an imbalance to to one specific movement and that's not a bad thing, I mean you need to be able to do it. But right, that burnt toast, raw toast analogy want something's getting scorched right and the others, the opposite side of that, is usually undercooked relative to it. So you over condition one part of your body relative to another, you get uneven. So that has a way to catch up with you and some we see in clinic all the time one of my favorite things to tell runners because it you know, right, there's never a time to, never a good time to be injured. It always gets in the way of something and so you know what you. Okay, you can continue this pattern. It's gonna continue to break you down and you're not gonna perform well, it's gonna hurt. And, quite honestly, what are we training for? We're trained for the eighth decade of life and beyond, right, and you're taking away your longevity. You're taking away, you can do it now. What's life gonna look like in the seventh decade of life? What's life gonna look like in the sixth decade of life with the way you're doing it? And so you're not even like. It's not this give and take where you, you push your body and you perform well, you're gonna pay for it later. It's a lose lose, you break down and you underperform, as opposed to doing it in a way that we know, because it's it's, it's not this cookie cutter approach, and it's not just runners run, but yeah, no, you got to be able to run, you got to be able to train, but how do you counterbalance that and how do you mix it in a way that keeps you able to do this for a long period of time? And oh, by the way, when you do that, you happen to be the best version of yourself, you happen to perform at your, at your highest level.

Speaker 2: 15:45

Right and and another concept that we always talk about, too, is is it's not only the ingredients, it's the timing of the ingredients. I use the analogy I do this all the time, mary Beth, when, when we moved to Virginia, we had left graduate school and she left home, and you know we're a little homesick and, and every year her mom made her this amazing chocolate cake and this is back before YouTube and everything and so I thought, surprise her didn't even let her know anything and her mom sent me the recipe Senate, as all good recipes are, and sort of a sheet of paper that's just kind of handwritten out with no real directions. So, yeah, I'm gonna do it. I put all those ingredients in together and I shoved it in the oven and guess what? A Chocolate cake did not come out right. It was the nastiest thing ever. It was all the right ingredients and I shoved it in and it and it the I. Here's the thing. I even threw it out because nobody would eat it. I threw it outside. The animals didn't even. It was out there for like three months Because it was all the right ingredients but the wrong time. You those ingredients.

Speaker 2: 16:43

So, as we look at it and we create plans, they're not only to help you to run the marathon.

Speaker 2: 16:47

Do it in a great way.

Speaker 2: 16:48

Yes, it's going to do that, but it's gonna do it in a way that keeps you empowered by feeling good and feeling strong and be able to do this stuff for life, because it's a healthy outlet and and we're competitive I know you and I are competitors can be man.

Speaker 2: 17:02

So it's not this like hey, here's a plan that's holistic in nature and you can't reach your best and but you're gonna love it, you're gonna last a long time, like no, do get the best of both worlds, man, total line being a good spot, and you'll be shocked. I remember that's the thing that first got me to buy into the, to the way we were doing things when we were developing it as early on and in Educational, come in learning all this stuff and coming out and going, why better walk the walk? And and you kind of feel like maybe under Did things. All of a sudden you start performing at a higher level. So I think a lot of people Know the right thing but have the right ingredients, but I don't know if they know the right time, you the ingredients, and that really matters because you can, you could put it all in and the chocolate cake is not coming out. So I think that's an important component of these programs.

Speaker 1: 17:45

That's one thing that's very exciting is is, as we look through this and as we develop these, these programs, and make them available, we're gonna have specific phases and each phase is gonna have certain Components that build on each other right and if you skip we've talked before if you skip phase one, phase two is not gonna go Well. If you try to go from phase one to phase three is gonna fail. So we're hopefully gonna give you some, some guidelines how to progress to a specific race and Do your and do well now, healthy in a healthy way.

Speaker 2: 18:20

And so in our world, I think we right keep, let's go by the kiss method, keep it simple and we're really looking at and really three phases. What are those three phases?

Speaker 1: 18:30

So the three phases the first phase has been defined as kind of a base phase, and that's, I think, in the hub world is Understanding what's important, right, and we're talking about running. So in that we call it phase one, which is the base phase. You're basically gonna build a foundation, and the way we put these three phases together you should think about like a pyramid. So phase one is the foundation or base phase, and then phase two is your build phase and then phase three is your race phase and you and again you have to hit each stair on your way up to make sure you're successful or you got the best chance of success.

Speaker 2: 19:18

Yeah, and each stage has got its sort of set goals within, and so if we take it each phase at a time, so we're gonna go from a base, we're gonna get into a build, then we're gonna get into a race prep, leading us into the race itself. So so let's start with phase one, base phase.

Speaker 1: 19:36

So You're trying to build a foundation. Step number one and we've talked about this before is an honest Evaluation of where you are now, okay, and then you set your goal where you wanna be. So in that base phase you have to have a serious conversation with yourself when am I now, what's my fitness level and what's my goal gonna be? And you said over and over we test, we don't guess. You need to test and know what your heart rate zones are. You need to test and know what your pacing zones are, so that way, when you train, your sessions can have a purpose. And the way those sessions have a specific purpose is if you're training in a certain zone that's been brought out in the literature over and over and over. That's effective, efficient training.

Speaker 2: 20:37

Yeah, and, like you said, starting with setting a goal we've had podcasts on that before and not just like I wanna have a good marathon Like set some defined goals and the test will help. You have know what your stretch goals are and we've got zone calculators. So we've got field tests built into the program so that way we can have you do and field tests are really quite good. We do lab tests, but field tests are very, very good and then, based on that data, we've got specific zones that we use.

Speaker 2: 21:06

Now I've seen funny thing about zones. As you hear zones, people think there's one set of zones. As you can see, there's all kinds of. In fact, I've worked really, really hard. We've worked together on this, on setting up our zones and percentages. We've have formulas and we have outlines of what those look like and that's so that we've got five of them easy or not easy, I'm sorry recovery. Zone one We've got easy to study, which is our zone. Two, we've got mod hard. Zone three We've got hard, which is zone five, where your threshold is. And then zone six is your very hard, which is over your threshold.

Speaker 1: 21:40

So how do those zones relate to your half marathon pace, 10K pace or marathon pace?

Speaker 2: 21:48

So your marathon pace is like the low mod hard and your half marathon pace is like the high mod hard.

Speaker 3: 21:53

And it depends on fitness.

Speaker 2: 21:54

It depends on background Depends, if you're like. So it sort of depends on the athlete. But I would say it lives in that mod hard world. Your 10K, your threshold right is the top part of hard, that's right at your threshold. So if you're a triathlete, sort of that study, is your iron man mod hard, your half iron man hard, your Olympic? In the upper portion of that it's your sprint. So it just kind of keeps it really pretty easy and we like having those names for them too. So zone two so easy to study, kind of depending on where you are.

Speaker 1: 22:27

And so another very important aspect of phase one is building consistency, and consistency does not have to mean you run every day. The consistency could be three runs a week, it could be four times a week, as long as you're starting to build the consistency, to build the durability. That's very important and in this foundation or base phase, most of those runs are gonna be steady, and the easiest way to find steady is run with somebody and make sure you can talk. So it's easy to define how you can be rerunning in phase one. Run with a friend or talk to yourself if you don't mind people talking about you, but most of your runs should be that steady. So you're just building consistency and durability.

Speaker 2: 23:19

And so that way you're building that intuition and then, on these programs as well, you'll be able to see how you can put all the data in your training piece as well, so you know where those are, because afterwards you can go by field and then you can upload the data and you can see on your graphs hey, was I in zone two? Was I in study? Was I not in study? So you can start to develop that Maybe you're not running hard enough on your steady days, maybe you're running too hard. A lot of people are running mod hard and they think it's steady. So it's not just only your perception, so there's a way to couple those together. And yeah, but as you said, consistency is king. I mean, that's the biggest thing. You wanna just layer it and layer it and layer it.

Speaker 1: 23:57

And then one of the differentiators between the hub programs that Rob and I have vision for is building in strength and mobility at the appropriate time. So we're gonna have some videos, we're gonna have some programs that they're gonna show you some leg strengthening exercises that are gonna burn the other side of your toast but also help you with your run strength work on some run balance stuff and also some running drill stuff. Running efficiency is one of the most important things and if you're fighting tight hip flexors because you ride the bike a lot, you're not being efficiency. So what we're excited about it's not just a run program, it's not just running 80 miles a week. We're gonna incorporate in strength, mobility and running drills to help you with your running efficiency.

Speaker 2: 24:58

Yeah, in that first phase it can't stress that enough You're not running crazy hard now. You're not starting to like, you're just layering that consistency and I'll go in a little bit of a tangent on that to start because tie those three in together right Strength, mobility and efficiency or your mechanics right and you're as good as your limiting factor. So that's what I think is a big differentiator with this is I see a lot of people working drills, and if you're blocked because you don't have the correct mobility, drills are gonna work so well you can do tons of strength. But if you can't, if your smart brain is operating the dumb meat awkwardly because you don't have the required motion or the even muscle balance with everything, balance is gonna be off. So you need the appropriate amount right. At the end of the day, runners run, we wanna run, and so strength doesn't make you a better runner, mobility doesn't make you a better runner, efficiency doesn't. I mean they do, but they do indirectly in the fact that, like, if you can get your mobility the way it's designed so that we are not blocking yourself, you can make sure that your muscle balance is even, so that when you strike the ground, and especially as you get tired, you don't start to cave in and collapse and lose efficiency. Then your balance can start to work back together. So you see a lot of runners that think that strength's gotta go up. They strength train as if they're doing strength training as opposed to strength training for a runner. So it's totally different.

Speaker 2: 26:19

I've got a very sort of bias background, especially as a pitcher. Pitchers and runners are very much the same. It's this overuse, repetitive use that doesn't have a ton to do with power. It has a lot to do with how healthy the body is and how it's working and how you can actually perform the sport. So you wanna I look at strength kind of like salt in running. Right, you just want enough to make it a little bit better. You don't wanna over salt it, and over salting a little bit actually does more damage than good.

Speaker 2: 26:50

So that's a really important part of this program is to make sure that we do the right amount and the right way that's balanced and catered to. It's that way you can continue to run and as you get into your next phase that we'll talk about the build phase. You've done the prep work right. If you're gonna get ready for that storm, build the house and the foundation because the storm's about to hit, so don't play in the yard when the storm is here.

Speaker 2: 27:11

So in preparation, right that phase one I kind of see the clouds are getting a little bit starting to get a little bit cloudy or getting ready for the big hurricane about to hit and phase two is really important, so don't downplay that in phase one. It's put in there for a purpose and it's not an overwhelming amount of time. Right, you have a single leg support day, you have a core day, you have a couple of key mobility days that don't take much time, so don't worry about it being like this. 90 minutes of stretch, strengthening, sort of things that usually most runners don't do, right?

Speaker 1: 27:42

So you have to have a foundation before we can start race specific training. That's the goal of phase one and that's the way the program will be outlined. So you're gonna set your goal, we're gonna figure out your zones, heart rate and pace. We're gonna help you with efficiency, strength, mobility and you're gonna build consistency. And that consistency is gonna come in steady state running talking to a friend that's the appropriate pace.

Speaker 2: 28:18

Yeah, easy, easy easy, easy, easy.

Speaker 1: 28:21

And if you look at the outlines of the programs, they're spread out in the week and there'll be crucial workouts and not gonna. There'll be some active rest days. And if you're a person who likes elliptical, that's active rest. If you're somebody who can swim, that's active rest. If you have a peloton or a trainer at home you can ride easy, that's active rest.

Speaker 2: 28:47

Yeah, but I get this a lot cross train, right? So then I must be able to do cross fit on those days, right? No, you can't do cross fit. That's like high intensity interval training. You're smashing your body. So be careful with what you do on your off days.

Speaker 1: 29:01

You're burning your toes more Smashing it, smashing it.

Speaker 2: 29:04

But it's got the word cross in it. If I do cross training, it's cross fit, and I did wads for 45 minutes.

Speaker 1: 29:12

But the purpose of the workout and hopefully in these plans you'll see purpose of the workout is active recovery. So if you do an hour all in and you're laying on the ground or you've thrown thumb from the garbage can, you've not been recovered so you can't get upset your steady state. Run feels like crap the next day.

Speaker 2: 29:34

Yeah, yeah, gotta protect you from you Right.

Speaker 1: 29:37

So that's phase one, and so the program is gonna be a little bit shortened for the Richmond Marathon because we're only 11 weeks out. But the way these programs are gonna be written is you're gonna be able to find your own race and it's gonna be defined as a 12 week program. And then phase two is a build phase, and what I see as a build phase is you're progressing your miles, you're starting to add in some intensity and you're gonna increase the distance of your long run. Also Important to that is going to practice nutrition. So that's going to be your phase two, which we basically call the build phase.

Speaker 2: 30:18

It's gonna be important to learn about, you know, active recovery. Active recovery that we were just talking about is even more important in this because the workload's gonna go up and again going back to that time of ingredients, that cake analogy as you start to put in some odd hard and maybe harder efforts, it's gonna be important that you you know where the timing of that goes, where the recovery goes, where the strength is sprinkled in, where the mobility is maximized, but your recovery needs are gonna go up right.

Speaker 1: 30:43

So Nutrition is gonna be important, recovery is gonna go up and and that's a really important factor here- and one of the Podcasts we covered several ago was it doesn't matter how old you are, it's understanding the recovery you need. So you, so you. You know you can go do hard, moderate hard efforts at the age of 55 and need more rest than at the age of 25. We need, let me, nearly left for us. So we need those hard, we need those hard efforts. But the key component here is is making sure that that has that schedule is laid out so you have adequate recovery.

Speaker 2: 31:25

Yeah, the book. If you're ever looking into reading in his fast after 50, I think it was a great book and if you want a quick summary, you can still do the same things. You just need a little bit longer recovery. So that means more steady-state work and where you could do Two or three hard sessions in a week. As we get older, they might be one or two, they might be one. Consistency is still king and doing the aerobic base is super important, but you know the 50 year old needs is different than the 40 year olds, which is different than the 60 year olds, and right is different than the 20 year olds. So make sure that that you're smart about it and and Follow a structured plan so that way you know what you're doing.

Speaker 1: 32:03

So in this. So there's some. There's some confusion there about relationship of tempo runs versus mod, hard versus hard. What's your sense on that?

Speaker 2: 32:16

Good so that you know it's always so hard. It's sense of it is to like give one answer. I've got sort of a Maybe I lean towards this sort of general philosophy. For the most part is that you know whatever distance you're doing like marathon, I like to do a lot. So marathon is is Is the race pace and we want to do some race pacing and that and some of the longer runs of a certain phase. But I go one click above that and go, hey, a lot of your interval running so like mile repeats at half marathon pace. So you're gonna go one race pace above that. You don't have to be plowing down the Track at like threshold and above. But usually early in that build phase I like to do, you know, half marathon pacing and then as you get closer in the race prep now I actually, you know, like to have more marathon pacing on the long run and then more threshold work at shorter intervals that maybe Half mile, maybe a mile or so at threshold. So that way you're sort of like priming everything and working on.

Speaker 2: 33:14

I tend to see most people Respond well to that. There's other people that you have different responses. It kind of depends on whether they're getting better. They're not getting better. But for marathon, doing a bunch of high intensity stuff is silly to me. I mean it's high risk, little reward. People think they got to run really, really hard, they've got their mileage up, they got a long run and they get hurt all the time. I know, I know professionals that that teach this, that guide other people into this sort of structured training, into this polarized training, and it's. It's maybe okay for, like, youth athletes, but when it starts to become to, you know, the everyday age group, or especially the aging age groupers, just there's more harm than good. So I like to go one distance above that and do a lot of the pacing work there and then it's get a little bit closer. Then you can go. You can go more threshold at shorter distances.

Speaker 1: 34:04

So one notch up, not all in not all in, no, no, and that's.

Speaker 2: 34:08

And then, like I said so, in that sort of build phase, right one notch up, you're staying there and then, as you're tapering down, you're just working on some leg speed and then you're doing some threshold stuff at shorter durations, but you're still doing your. So, instead of dropping, you're dropping off that half pace for a marathon, and now you're bringing that in and when you go to a marathon or you do your marathon pacing, it suddenly feels a little bit easier because you've been running at this like half pace and begin getting the benefits of it. So so it's um, yeah, I don't know if that, maybe that comes off confusing, but but it's just sort of going one notch above and then coming back down.

Speaker 1: 34:41

So you would. You would in this be billed phase, you would train slightly faster than your marathon thumb pace One mile, two mile, three mil for my intervals, with some rest.

Speaker 2: 34:51

Yeah, I would aim towards the half what your, what your half marathon pace would be.

Speaker 1: 34:56

I don't think that's confusing, I think that's good. And then another and another key component about phase two is Progressing, your long run. What do you think your long run needs to be?

Speaker 2: 35:10

I mean, yeah, depends on who the athlete is right with their, with their background, everything is. It depends on what their steady state Paces to, how long they're going through, and I generally I don't like to see anything more Than three hours, okay, and I don't know that athletes have to go three hours. But you know, you, I've seen some stuff before like every 15 minutes after like a 90 minute run is significantly more damaging to you, right? So not just it's 15 minutes more damaging, because your muscles get tired. That eccentric load goes up at that eccentric Damage goes up a lot.

Speaker 1: 35:38

So, after phase one and after phase two, what do you think you would need to be Distance or time to say I've got a good chance of finishing the marathon in, in this, in this, a lot minute well, I'll tell you what.

Speaker 2: 35:55

I'll give you these. I'll give you these guys, and it's not to say these are firm, but I would say the minimum is to have an 18 mile. Run it to me in order to run a marathon. I'd like to see somebody have built up to be able to run 18 miles. He's having an injured athlete and they think that they want to do a marathon. We're like, hey, if you can get to an 18 mile, run you steady, without any pain, then the marathon is a reason. That, to me, was always a benchmark for injured athletes. It gave them a goal, yeah, and then I would say that there's really so no purpose in running over three hours. Okay, I think three hours. So somewhere between like a 220 to three hours, and with the right athlete who's been able to do it and show in durability, I like to get them to three hours three weeks to potentially two weeks before the marathon so after phase one we get to approximately two hours after and During phase two and three you think you need to get.

Speaker 1: 36:45

Most people need to get to around Three hours.

Speaker 2: 36:47

I'd like to see them get to three hours, yeah, and if they, if they don't like, if it's sort of the newer, they've got the race prep to build up to that, so they don't have to have it. But if you have somebody who sees and they get that three hours up, then we get in the race prep. We can bring it down to like 240 and we start doing marathon pacing on the back end, right, okay.

Speaker 1: 37:04

Great, and so one helpful hint in here that I think Rob and I both use is, if you can use the walk run there.

Speaker 1: 37:14

Yeah and the great way to progress your long run is if you're running steady for nine minutes and you walk riskily fast-paced walk for one minute. So that would be the way you would define your long run, so you so. So if you did that, this is some high level. How to level level math? Now? I mean, you have to take off my shoes to use my toes, but so if you did 12 times nine, one, that's two hours, yeah, and then a way to build through the four weeks of phase two, we would be to add one nine, one every single week, yeah, so so by the end of week eight you would be to 240.

Speaker 2: 38:01

Yeah, let's talk, if it's okay. Let's talk about this run walk for just a brief second, because a lot of people will associate with the Galloway method, right? So the Galloway method was initially created for people who wouldn't be able to make the run Totally, to be able to to proactively create this run walk program. When we're talking about a nine one run walk program, it's, it's totally different, right? Bobby McGee has done a ton of great work on this and if you do a podcast search or Google search and you can read a lot of the groundwork that he's done with it, because it's, it's. This is now used for performance. I know somebody who's running 238 using a run walk, right, right, one of my favorite, and I'll Maybe Remind you of this. We were, we were out of, I think we had you might have been having a party.

Speaker 2: 38:44

It was after marathon and this yeah, after was after was a shamrock. I was single Richmond and and there was this guy at the party who's like, just like, I ran man race once, so every time you can hear him like Five conversations down the way and he was just so thrilled I ran the whole way, I didn't stop. It was amazing and it was a huge accomplished for him, which is great, right. But the funny part was like he was talking to you and he's like I ran there, how'd you do? He's like oh, I did a run walk and he looked at you. He's like oh, that's you know, I was like that too and but I really did this whole way.

Speaker 2: 39:17

You keep up at it and you'll be able to run the whole thing, you know, like a typical moose. Thanks, man, that's really nice. I appreciate that. He's like would you run? And I think you ran like under three hours or right at three hours, something like that, and he stopped and he looked at you and he stopped totally. He's like I thought you said you walked and he's like I did. I do this nine one run walk because the guy ran like, I think, 410 or something like that, and so it's for performance, it's not just this walk, our egos get in the way. But there's a lot of cool physiological benefits. Your cardiac drift goes down. You can actually run a little bit Faster. So as you write, as you run steady state and you go longer at that same effort, right, your heart naturally raises so it might be in steady and by the time it goes along, your heart.

Speaker 2: 39:58

Yeah and and instead that you don't see that drift and and you know, I've seen some stuff where it said if you did a run run and you nailed it, it would be really really close to if you did the run walk and nailed it. It's just that it's easier to nail the run walk than it is to run run. So so you know, we're not talking run walk for people who can't run the whole way, and you can expand on this because you've used a Lot. I use it in hot races but you can run really really well. I use it in training because I recover faster for the next workout session.

Speaker 1: 40:28

So there's, there's powerful places to put it yeah, and, and so I. I've adopted the run walk from earth on training a couple years ago because I was really having a hard time getting past 16, 17 miles and I was sore the next day, so sore, and so I had done some research and I'd like looked into it some, and some folks that give me some comments about Try it. I'm like I'm not gonna walk, this is crap. But then so my Changed my long, all my long runs, to nine, one and so nine minutes running at slightly faster than marathon, on pace, one minute walk times whatever. And it was remarkable, the, the, the the length. I could go longer, timing wise and pacing was better at 18, 19, 20 miles. And it served the purpose of the run, because a long run at steady state is supposed to be building mitochondria.

Speaker 1: 41:32

Yeah, did you dealing with some? Some lacked it. But you say it's good to stay in that steady zone. And so when I was trying to run, run, run and suspecting the red, red, red, red, red, red heat, my heart rate was going through the roof and I was out of my steady zone and I was not able to get the length of time I said dramatically changed the way I did. And so I started racing marathons that way, where I would run solid for an hour because it's hard to get in the mix with all the people, and I would run solid for an hour and then at that point I would start my 911. And it's amazing at races You're running solid and all of a sudden you stop and everybody looks at you like, ah, you poor bastard. But then at 18, 19, 20, you run by them and say, ah, you poor bastard. But it's worked for me. It doesn't work for everybody, but it's a way to build your long run. It's when you get into phase two. It's an easy choice to add 191 per week.

Speaker 2: 42:42

Yeah, and having done it as well as the data geek that I am is amazing and I can. I put them right side by side. And if I did a three hour run steady run run and I did a three hour run walk, the overall pace almost always came out to be the exact same and the heart rate stayed in my mid to low, steady and the run walk where my run run started low, steady and ended low mod, hard by the end of it and it felt more laborsome. So the physiology metric showed more work to my body and the perceived exertion felt more work to my body. But the overall pace the point A to point B show the equal amount. So there's amazing efficiency factors behind it.

Speaker 2: 43:29

And then you get to the last. It depends on who you are and what. If you've been working with you at the last 10K or get the last 5K and then you don't walk anymore because anybody who's done it that last like 30 minutes. If you start to walk and start to start up, it becomes more challenging, but you're blowing by everybody. It's magical right.

Speaker 1: 43:47

Because now they're plodding along and it's a mental lift to feel great with a half hour to go right.

Speaker 2: 43:55

So if run walk makes a cringe and it made us cringe and anytime I walked in the neighbors out there I was like no, no part of the plan. It's like point in my watch. They have no idea what I'm doing, but the ego wants me to let them know I'm not walking. But once you check that, if you compare it to some like, do it on one of your long runs, try it out, watch what happens, because there's really some pretty powerful things there. So don't just poo poo it right away because you heard somebody say walk.

Speaker 1: 44:19

One of my favorite race stories. We were in challenge wrote 2016, I think, and I was doing a run walk, like I always did, and I was in the woods and I was running in this pathway. This guy with the bullhorn my name was across. You know your name's on your racing number and I was feeling pretty good and my name was on my race number and in this bullhorn for everybody here. He said Marion, those are not walking shoes, those are running shoes. I looked at him and said it's part of the plan, it's part of the plan.

Speaker 1: 44:57

But he was convinced I was. I was at mid then. I was walking out of the exasperation. But those are not walking shoes, those are running shoes.

Speaker 2: 45:06

Yep, totally man. And if you want to take a deeper dive, take a look at some of Bobby McGee's work. He's done some really cool stuff with it.

Speaker 1: 45:11

So that's through phase two. So you've done phase one, you got a great foundation. You understand what you're trying to do. You've gone through phase two. You've had a slow, steady build and then phase three is our race prep, and race prep's going to be very individual to what you need. Rob, what do you think about race prep as a coach?

Speaker 2: 45:33

It's weird. You really you're getting closer to the race, right. So now, now you what, you had your goals. You set them early in this program. You had an idea what you were looking for. Now reality hits. Right now reality is like, okay, what? And because of the training you've done and the numbers you've been able to hit, you should start to have an idea of what maybe a stretch goal is, and as runners, we all usually know this. There's that like B goal we tell everybody, and then there's that super secret, a goal that we don't want to tell anybody. And then there's that like sort of quiet C goal that we are afraid may happen. Right, so you start to have an idea of what that is and your mod hard work that we talked about, that you were doing in your build phase. It actually makes spike up a little bit now and increase the intensity a little bit and take the duration of it down, and one of the reasons why is because that's gonna pepper you a little bit, get some of those faster twitch fibers going and, in your long run depending, this is where maybe differentiate the beginner from the more advanced.

Speaker 2: 46:29

Somewhere along there on your long run, let's say, you were able to get that long run up to maybe that three hour mark. Now we're gonna take it down a little bit and let's say the first half of the run is gonna be steady and you're gonna be maybe kind of fatiguing the legs out. And then the back half of that run or last hour of that run now you're gonna be trying to do some race pacing stuff and based on those stretch goals and that's. I don't know about you, but anytime I've done that it's a little bit of a bad for the self esteem because you're like how am I gonna do that on race day? You'd be surprised on race day when you show up and you do this the way that we're talking about that. Your best long run should not happen in any of these training sessions. Your best long run should happen race day. So if you're a little bit more advanced, we're gonna take that long run and we're gonna start to do some marathon pacing in it and that's gonna take some of your quality run and take the intensity up in the duration of those down. Again, emphasizing making sure that recovery right Now you're deeper into this training. Hopefully you've emphasized really good recovery because if you haven't, it's gonna probably start to catch up with you here.

Speaker 2: 47:30

And how many times do we see somebody like something starts to build up, become a problem five weeks off from their A race and they go. What happened? You go. What's cumulative, man? It's all the stuff you did early, so hopefully you behaved earlier.

Speaker 2: 47:42

But you should have an idea of what that is. You know I think you've said this and I thought it was brilliant no panic training, right, if you weren't consistent in the beginning, there's no making up for that now. So if you weren't consistent, don't panic train. And the other part too, is you might've been really consistent. But now you're starting to get sort of insecure about the race day because you just don't know what's gonna be there. And you start to put extra in and that's a kiss of death. I mean no extra right, you don't get. That's not how this stuff works. You know trust in the process. That's why it's nice to have a program, that's why it's nice to have something that has been done for you, so that way maybe you can wear the shock hollers we like to think of and like just protect you from you.

Speaker 2: 48:23

And then nutrition, again, is consistently important, not only outside of running. But you really should be dialing in what's gonna work on race day. I think you had said you know, richmond was, you know, great race. It's the US's friendliest marathon, but their nutrition aid stations aren't the best. So what do you like? What do you not like? What works for you? Do you have that nutrition practice Nothing new on race day?

Speaker 2: 48:47

How many calories an hour can you take and feel comfortable with, and what do those calories look like? What's your hydration look like? And then you know and I'll pass this back to you because you asked me and I'll be curious to your question how long is too long? Right, like, how long do you like to see, you know, long run? I see a lot of people trying to get that long run up. They may be planning for a four and a half hour marathon and so they think they've gotta go out and do four and a half hours of running. And that's violent on the body right and that's that delays recovery, which then takes your consistency away, which then takes away from your overall fitness. So but the brain wants to know it can do it. It doesn't know it can't do it, so they tend to go too long. How long is that for you? What's too long for you, man? I think if I can get to 20,.

Speaker 1: 49:34

I'm happy.

Speaker 1: 49:35

And so I feel and that's part experience where I know if I can get to 20, I can complete the 10K right. And so if I can get to 20, I'm happy. But I still use RunWalk and it's much easier for me to get to 20 RunWalking with the same pep-haces and much less impact than running 17 and being miserable. Yeah, totally, I think that's important. So those key points you mentioned through FaceFear are super important. You know, race prep means knowing what your pace is, what your realistic pace is.

Speaker 1: 50:19

Nutrition and you know Richmond has noon on the course, which is a little bit spicy for some people it's, you know, it's carbonated and they use goo gels which don't sit well with me. So you have to, you know, you know proper your race prep and we're lucky in Richmond because we can actually go out and run each segment of the course, right. But you gotta know what nutrition is, and it's a little bit different nutrition for a marathon than nutrition for an Ironman, right. So if you're nutrition for a marathon, if you eat certain calories before, that should take you into the first hour to an hour and a half, but if you take nothing else past that point, then you get to the two hour mark two and a half hour mark, the hour mark right. Your glucose levels goes down, down, down. So you need to have trained that.

Speaker 1: 51:16

When I was wearing the glucose monitor for a while I used a bunch of gels and found what worked for me and looked at timing and I knew I use UCan a ton and the UCan drink double loaded but before lasts me about an hour at marathon effort, right. And if I waited to an hour and 20 minutes to take that first goo, there was a huge drop and then there was a spike. If I took it before that time and the gel that I was using there was a nice steady state. So you need to figure out for yourself what your morning, what your morning pre-race nutrition is gonna be, how long that's gonna last you in your run and when you start loading up.

Speaker 2: 52:01

And that comes on your long runs. That comes on your long runs, simulating that and doing it and getting up and trying that in the morning and trying different things. That's the time to dial that in. Yeah, totally.

Speaker 1: 52:13

So the last thing about nutrition is caffeine.

Speaker 2: 52:15

Yeah, thoughts to. It's a ergo genetic drug. I mean it truly is. There's, um, you know, I wrote something a gosh, I want to say, maybe almost 15 years ago on that, and I got to look back at the specifics. But the you know the amount per Kg of body weight and then the half-life of eight hours. And here's the thing I run into is a little bit of a problem in caffeine, and I think maybe we can do a podcast on caffeine and get more in-depth on that, because it's an ergo genetic a, which means it makes you faster. It's a performance enhancing drug. It truly is.

Speaker 2: 52:49

But at a certain level it starts to become counteractive. So caffeine's got got definite benefits to it, and nowadays, because of that, a lot of Products have caffeine in it. The problem with that is you're gonna overdo caffeine and as soon as you overdo caffeine, it's it's it's detrimental to your actual performance. So so I get irritated because I'm like can I just find something without caffeine? I've got enough caffeine and now so? So no, it there's, and now different people react differently to it. There's ways to come off. If you're a coffee drinker, you drink a ton to come off of it for a week before the race so you're more sensitive to it. On race day it's. It's definitely got a home for it, but when I see people taking nothing but caffeinated stuff a lot of times that they don't know that they're doing themselves harm, right, how about you? What do you?

Speaker 1: 53:37

think no, I use less caffeine and had some heart issues and you know, in the past I got kind of backed off of it at first. And you know, and I know you and another one of our training partners, you guys go to Coke immediately. Yeah, on the half run, sugar and caffeine, baby sugar and caffeine. But yeah, my gut doesn't, it doesn't handle that. And then so I usually wait, wait, wait to the back half of the run to go to caffeine, yeah. So if you are Tramp but the whole point here is, you got to you got to practice your race in that day. Nutrition On your long run yeah, you got to. If you're doing a long run in the neighborhood, you got to stick your stuff out there and use the same thing. If you want to use the core stuff for Richmond, it's noon and goo gels, yeah, you got to practice that, because all Gels and all extra light drinks are not created.

Speaker 2: 54:28

Well, that, and you know what this is bringing up. A great thing, because you, as similar as you and I are, and what you're hearing from us is we've come up and how do we know? Because we've done it wrong enough times to learn to write. But we practice with it. We know how our body responds and so we sort of crack that code a little bit. As far as how it works, moose Dr Harry uses Caffeine. How I use caffeine, the science is clear. As far as there are some performance enhancing things, some people, their stomach, does right. If You're puking up in the trash can during a run, I don't care what science says. That's not me helping you perform any better. So it depends on your body responds to it.

Speaker 2: 55:00

And here's the frustrating thing, and we've raised long enough for this and this is, trust me, a little crazy I'm. So I got the nutrition plan for you. You got to be able to do it. What works for me now is not what worked for me three years ago, isn't what worked for me eight years ago. It evolves and sometimes my stomach and things to sort of change. And I've changed products and I've loved products and then I've had to evolve from them. So, just because you know, somebody told you what this nutrition plan is and you work, so great for them and they've nailed it and you got to do this, listen to them and steal from it and, kind of like, test out some things that you think resonate with you, but change it and then, once you got it, don't be a fool to not enough to know that you can change it again. Every athlete's different and that athlete is different at different times. So know that you need to evolve and test.

Speaker 2: 55:47

What I think is really important is like, well, how many calories per hour am I having? How many grams of carbohydrate I'm I have an per hour? Whatever that nutrition works for you, whether it's food, whether it's fluid, you need to factor in hydration electrolytes with it as well. So it's complicated. But again, an environment matters, right. Was it a hot race? Was a cool race with those? Things really matter with it.

Speaker 2: 56:07

So, on your long days, when it's like in our programming, when you have a program from us, it's long day, it says practice, race day, nutrition, and that doesn't mean like, just think about it. That means literally have the calories, create some pit stops and and try to the best of your ability replicate what you're gonna do on race day, because you can do all the training and you're in a great spot. And then you have that noon instead because you're like, oh, it tastes it alright, and then you're throwing up by like 18 because it's brand new. That'll ruin, that'll ruin the day. So, so understand that nutrition is incredibly important. We give you guidelines with it, but we also give you the awareness of like practice with it right.

Speaker 1: 56:43

So run through phase three again. It's your race prep phase. You're gonna know your pace, gonna practice new nutrition, don't panic train, and you're gonna hopefully get up to your long run. How much time do you need during that race prep phase to rest? Because if you go into your race Smoked it's not gonna go so well, so that last in I would have. I would argue, if you're racing a marathon, perfor performance that lasts. A little bit of time is crucial and we're not always Great at that, and that's when the panic training comes in.

Speaker 2: 57:22

Yeah, and you got to do the exact opposite. I actually right, it's the hardest. How many times that we've not done that and then you finally do it. You're like, oh my gosh, I raised so well. You got to err on the side of caution. And those last two weeks, always leave something on the table, right If you're not sure whether you're working too hard or you should push something. Always err on the side of doing less Consistency super key. So keep up your frequency.

Speaker 2: 57:46

But if you sort of feel any sort of tired and then also like part of this program is like that's not when you're resting. You should have been resting intermittently throughout the different phases at the right time, it's not feel abnormal. You should not feel abnormal and I kind of go by the three strike rule, which is like there's days when you train and you just don't feel it, it's off, and it's just one of those days where it's like it's just off a little bit. There's other ones. We get those surprise good ones. But if you get three training sessions in a row that are Decoupled, where you sort of just don't feel good and it didn't go the way you were supposed to do, that's usually when your body scream for like an extra 48 to 72 hours. So they're built into your program. But at the same time there's also educational Post in there too, about like hey, pay attention, how do you, would you self modify something if you get three strikes? I would tell you, for the next 72 hours, take your intensity down, your body screaming for a break. But what does the athlete do if I'm putting the work in and I'm getting less than I expected for results? The first part, the reaction, the first reaction for most people is I must need to work harder. Right, I'm doing all this work and I'm getting less fit. I'm gonna work harder. And when they do, they dig the hole deeper. When reality is, if you start to learn that three strike rule and you give yourself this sort of buffer, and it's scary because now you, you feel less fit than you did and now you're gonna rest, guess, when you buy into this after that three-day recovery and you go out for a run and you feel like somebody gave, like your pop, I that just got spinach. So so rest is built in. And then on that, that last little bit, it's crazy, important the ever.

Speaker 2: 59:14

How many times have you seen Racers that have bad races because they were over trained. I saw a stat one time and it's, I think it's it. I don't know how. It sounds very accurate but I don't know the validity of it. But think of how many racers you go to and they say, hey, over half the people are either Over trained or injured. You're like, wow, that seems like actually a conservative stat, because most marathoners are Trying to keep all that fitness that they've built this hard. I bet you, it's why I bet, just like 75, I think. I think maybe you say it's over 50, that way you can your people at least believe it at first.

Speaker 1: 59:47

But I wouldn't be shocked if you hear like 80% of the people are like that and I think it takes true experience to get to a race, receding fresh and trusting whole process, because we All, we've all gone into races, we have certain goals and we're, like it says, not going well, I'm not gonna reach my goal. More is better, right, and usually more Ends up stuff in Imploding it was hard.

Speaker 2: 1:00:16

I mean I still find it hard. I mean I it's still subconsciously hard because my, your brain will play tricks on you. But when you've done it enough times, you know that that's just a trick. It's your, it's your insecurity, your, your, your, your fears of what's coming because you think you did all this work. But if you trust in the process, it's that first race, when you've done it that way, that's when you really start to buy in.

Speaker 2: 1:00:37

But I don't know about you, but as I go into a big race, I still go through that. I can talk myself down from it. But and I know, I know the science behind it, I know everything but you feel like crap, your body feels sludgy, you feel slow, you're like man. My last long run was like three weeks ago, right, I was. The thing that gets me the most is a time we go to a race and I walk up two flights of stairs. I get to the top of the stairs. I'm how many to run a marathon? Do the stairs killed me, right? So it'll play tricks on you and it's it's. It's so hard yet it's so important.

Speaker 1: 1:01:08

But if you have a plan, you've got some accountability built into there of somebody to kind of help walk you through that, and then at the finality of the of the race phase comes an evaluation how that race went, and I hate seeing folks that doing Iron man or do to do a marathon or Do some race a built toward and like I'm done, never running again, I'm never racing again, I it was. That means you didn't have a balanced build, it took too much of your life. If you don't enjoy it, great and that's okay, but but fitness should be a lifestyle, you know, for long-term health, and it bothered me a little bit the people that do they train and do one marathon and are done. That to me means they probably didn't do it exactly right and it wasn't enjoyable.

Speaker 2: 1:02:06

Yeah, yeah, you say that, but there's a couple races afterwards I'm like I don't know if I'm doing that again. But all joking aside, but no, I mean, you're right, you got it. It's a luxury to be able to do this huge remember that's one every time before you get. I love to what. I don't think it's on here. One of the things we love to do with our athletes is like what's your? Why? Like, why are you doing right? And I don't mean like I want to run a marathon. No, okay, you want.

Speaker 2: 1:02:29

So that's why ask like four or five layers more of why? Why do you want to run a marathon? Well, I wanted to challenge myself. Why do you want to challenge yourself? Well, I don't know if I've been living to the best of what I've been trying to do, and I thought maybe if I had a stretch goal, it would give me some target. And you know what?

Speaker 2: 1:02:45

And you keep going a little bit later and then you get to this deeper reason why why you did it. And so when you cross a finish line or when things get hard, you go back to that why right? And that drives you. And then you know, you realize towards the end, like you're put up a beautiful post about, you know, chasing something and being there and, and she wanted to at some point give up. But you know what she wanted to teach her kids? That like when you want to give up and there's something hard in front of you and it seems insurmountable that you can still get through it, right and and so those are really important. I think that'll help you a ton, and that way, when you cross the finish line, you're not. You're not In a negative place bitter.

Speaker 2: 1:03:20

You're not bitter about it. Yeah, that would. That would really stink. You know one one other thing that, and I would say you start from the beginning of this but then it gets more course specific as you get in closer to the race prep phase. But you know your terrain like what? The what terrain? Is it a flat race? Is a hilly race? Hey, is there a hard hill? One of my things favorite things to do is, if it's a race where, let's say, it's Boston and the hard hills at mile 18, one your long run, try to make sure you set yourself up for a hard hill at mile 18 so you can replicate course specificity. Right, I think that's that's better for you.

Speaker 1: 1:03:55

The first 10k at Boston destroyed me. The downhill yeah, dude, that's the six miles downhill, yeah, and I was.

Speaker 2: 1:04:03

I was not prepared for that's the rope of dope it was amazing.

Speaker 2: 1:04:07

Yeah, especially at first, that first mile is a grussely downhill. We've got a podcast that we've got I can't remember the number, but it's on their Boston marathon. It takes you through the race and how to race well, and that's a pretty cool one to listen to. But but, yeah, course specificity, man, and you don't feel it in that first 10k, right you? That's why they caught. Heartbreak hill is mile 18 and it's not that bad of a hill, but you have pummeled your quads and then, yeah, so so know your course.

Speaker 2: 1:04:37

Obviously, early on it's, it's good to kind of start to think about the terrain. But as you start to get into like race pacing on some of those long runs in the race prep side, you want to try to replicate that. If it's a flat course, again, that's also something that matters, because you're gonna be going at a faster clip for a longer period of time. Hills, I mean I don't, everybody's done it. A flat course sounds great. When you do it, it's relentless on the body as opposed to a little bit of undulation. To break it up a bit is actually a little bit nicer, I think I agree. But but yeah, I think that, um, you know that's, we're really excited about this. I mean, I'm really excited about this. How about you? Absolutely, it's something we've done for a long time.

Speaker 2: 1:05:12

But then, to structure it right, we do it by a patient, by patient basis, right? So when patients come in and I can't even get in there and give them their, their trade place, but I see a lot of injuries that are self-inflicted, right, everyone wants to come in and go, hey, what's, what shoes do I need to get? So I don't get this injury. Like it's not your shoes, man, it's not your shoes. Like, go buy whatever you want, because they've been through. They'll bring in 10 pairs of shoes. I wonder which shoes hurt their leg. And then that has to do with muscle balance. It has to do with what mobility they have, what strength and stability they have, how uneven they are, what their training is like, what you're they got doing to your body.

Speaker 2: 1:05:46

They got burnt toast man, and then they're blaming it on it, right, so that burnt area is getting burnt and they're like what happened? And then they fix it and they shove it right back under the oven again and they burn it again. So so this is a really holistic approach and, like I said, it's, it's this win-win. You not only get to reduce the likelihood of injury I mean, we're doing a pet of strain sports, not to say you can't injure yourself but you get to reduce injury, you get to increase your recovery, you get to have a holistic way of doing it, to increase your mobility, your strength, your stability. It's not an overwhelming time commitment, in fact, usually by time.

Speaker 2: 1:06:19

If you do it this way, what I hear way more than I don't, is you get to that first race and you're like I don't think I'm ready for cuz. You don't think you did enough work because, yes, there's hard days, but realities, you're not throttling yourself every day, you're not in this deep overtraining syndrome and you feel like you didn't do enough. And then you go to that race and you PR and then you bought in. You're like I don't know what that was, I don't know what y'all are doing, but that's what this plan is, and so there's a lot of years of work that go behind there, so there's a lot of personal experience, there's a lot of professional experience, a lot of error.

Speaker 1: 1:06:50

There's a lot of error.

Speaker 2: 1:06:51

Dude, that's a personal experience man Right, that's um.

Speaker 1: 1:06:54

we made some major mistakes.

Speaker 2: 1:06:56

We put in the sweat equity. I mean you do. It's one thing to learn it, but there's another thing to experience it and I think that's given us a lot of humility about. Like we've got some pretty good guidelines we can help guide you right. We're Yoda, your Luke Skywalker, you're gonna beat the Death Star. We can give you the information that we've accumulated, we've we've systemized it and we're gonna be building out a lot of programs. I mean it's gonna start with a marathon 12 week program. We're to get into Ironman, olympic and and halves and and we're gonna do it in a way that, you know we offer one-on-one coaching and that's fantastic.

Speaker 2: 1:07:29

I love being in the in the mix of it. But some people, you know, don't necessarily want to do that deep dive and they want programs that they can look at and they can still. Right what's our priorities? Family work and training. And while we love to train and we'd love to perform really, really well, how can I make it easier in my life? How can I spend more time with my family? I'm not looking to spend, you know, $400 a month, $350 a month, on one-on-one coaching. Can I spend a little bit on a training plan that's been structured for me that's been guided for me. We've got training zones and calculators and training tests so you can get the test. Don't guess data in there. You can have videos to be able to see the mobility that you should do, that you should see the strength that you're gonna do. You can have tips from from us knuckleheads and then guess what it's gonna evolve. We, we're students of this just as much as we're experts of it. It's gonna evolve. And then you got the support.

Speaker 2: 1:08:23

And then what do we do? Let's build a community, right. Let's build a community of like-minded people who have the same priorities in life, or at least you know what, strive for the same priorities. There's plenty of times and I can't argue and say I've been in mixes of both of them, but it's early on to set detection of, of being out of order and guess what? The people around me that have the same core values of me Bring me out of it. So can we foster in a community like that's what we're doing a hub training center? So we'll have plans up here in the very near future. We'll link something to it at hub training center. Calm, we've got Facebook hub training center and then same thing on Instagram as well, and you know we're just gonna show his passion. We've had this big vision of hub training center Dot com having lots of content that are useful for you to be the best. You right not to listen to us and say we've got all the answers, as much as saying, hey, we've got some really cool things that you may have. Find a value that can make you the best you that can enjoy this process. I can keep you training and get you to the 8th decade of life and still moving forward, right, rather than just Pumbling yourself into the ground.

Speaker 2: 1:09:32

Lessons from a knuckleheads All right, I've a I think is a good lessons from knuckleheads, just because I there's a part of me as we went into this Phase approach of what we're doing with our plans, we bring up strength training. What always happens as soon as we do that, the person's like okay, they said strength training super important and they dial up their strength training. And if there's one lessons from knuckleheads I can say is is like don't do that, right? So, number one start to understand what you're trying to do. We're trying to invert this wear pattern, but more strength doesn't equal a better runner being a durable runner, right? So it helps you keep your strength, and so we look at it more like being like strength, like being salt.

Speaker 2: 1:10:14

Just a little bit goes a long way. So if you're gonna introduce strength, look at run specific and even, as I say that, try to make sure you're not just burning more of the same toast your quads and your calves, but introduce it slowly and try to know that, like, when the run volume goes up, the strength load should go down and when the run goes down, the strength should go up. So I think a really important lesson from Knuckleheads is like don't do both at a high level. Don't try to strength train aggressively while you marathon train. It's gotta match what's going on. You don't wanna get in the way of being able to recover from the running. So I see that a lot. You see that a decent amount.

Speaker 1: 1:10:50

Yeah, I see it a ton and I see folks that do strength training as an endurance session. So they'll run through three sets of 15 reps with a whole bunch of exercise and it's lighter weight and they don't ever stop. So it's more of an endurance session, the strength session. Now it takes in my opinion it takes several weeks to do muscle prep work to be able to do strength stuff.

Speaker 2: 1:11:18

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1: 1:11:21

So if you've not done strength training, we are not saying now's the time to start doing squats and deadlifts, heavy sets of six. Right, there's two or three weeks of muscle prep higher reps, lower weight. But strength training means lower reps, higher weight.

Speaker 2: 1:11:42

Yeah, well, it's funny, right? If you wanna endurance athlete to do strength, they pick up small weight and do it aerobically. And if you get a power person to run, they do like sled pushes or they do sprints. So we always make it into kind of what we gravitate to. But that's really important. We'll have more actual programs. That's what we're building out. So we're very opinionated on this and I see a lot of people get hurt because they're trying to do two things really well and it sort of doesn't work like that. So lessons from Knuckleheads if that stimulated something about adding some strength in your world, well, that's sort of good, but in a way that, like, don't hurt yourself. You definitely need a couple of weeks of adaptation. You need to make sure that form is good. You need to make sure that you're training the right muscles.

Speaker 2: 1:12:25

Right Runner's knee we see a lot of that all the time. So this is a generic term for insular knee pain and that's because you're overusing the front of that leg so much eccentrically and beating it up. And then what do we see? People do a lot. We see them do a lot of like really crappy squats, driving their quad and their patella their knee cap into or their knee caps won't a lot of stress. We see them doing lunges and we see them doing forward lunges, which is slamming the front of their leg forward. We love lunges. We love reverse lunges. Right, we're trying to invert that wear pattern. So just be really smart about it. Now, that's a loaded term, kind of depends what you define as smart, but if there's anything from less than some knuckleheads like, just be careful, go slowly with it, seek out some help, make sure form is good and only do a little bit depending on where your training is Right.

Speaker 2: 1:13:12

All right, as mentioned, this is the interview with Vince that we did. Have a listen, support him. He's off to doing some really cool things with his son. I'm here with Vince at Hub Training Center's open house and, man, what a cool thing to run across. It's first time I met Vince. Vince, nice to meet you, man. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background in triathlon.

Speaker 3: 1:13:39

Hey, how's it going? Yeah, so I got into triathlons in 2015. I started running due to my son, who was born with Down syndrome, in 2011. And we went to the local Down syndrome 5K and so, yeah, we had a lot of support that day and had family and friends come out and I decided to run half of the 5K back and I couldn't. So I decided, hey, I'm gonna get into running, getting into shape. Had a little bit of an ankle issue a couple of years later and they told me to stay off of it. So I had a buddy who recently at the time, did Ironman Chattanooga, so he was trying to convince me to do it. Oh right, get into triathlons. He was like you're running is fantastic. And I was like, man, I don't know how to swim.

Speaker 2: 1:14:30

Well, chattanooga's a good one, because at least it's.

Speaker 3: 1:14:31

Down current. So yeah, yeah, so I didn't do Chattanooga, but so learn how to swim in 2015. Oh wow. Yeah and rest his history and love it. Yeah did Ironman Florida back in November. It was my first full, oh cool congrats. Yes, thanks. Did several halves and tons of sprints over the years and I do race with my son.

Speaker 2: 1:14:58

We've done marathons and everything from 5Ks to up to the marathons and sprinterathlons and so forth, so yeah, Dude, that's awesome, and one of the things I was excited to get you on the podcast too is you were telling me a little bit you got a big plans for 2024. Tell us a little bit about that.

Speaker 3: 1:15:14

Yeah, so I talked to Ironman Foundation and yeah, so I decided to pull the trigger on raising money to get an entry into Kona 2024, with some inspiration, with my son and trying to get people with special needs into the sport of triathlon or just swimming, biking or running.

Speaker 2: 1:15:39

Dude, that's powerful man and we were talking about Chris and what's Chris's last name? Chris, nickage, nickage, right, we saw him at Ohio 70.3. And then we were Dr Harry and I and Justin were out in Kona this year and got to see him accomplish an Ironman first Ironman finisher with Down syndrome and inspired others. And look what it inspired and look what you're doing. Now you're going out there and your son's gonna continue to be inspired by Chris and by you and man that's powerful.

Speaker 3: 1:16:08

Yeah, so anytime we watch all kinds of videos of him, he's awesome and so, yeah, my son gets excited seeing him on the screen and hopefully we get to meet him sometime.

Speaker 2: 1:16:18

Isn't that cool your son to see that and be like, hey, look what he's doing, look what's ahead, and then man. So tell us a little bit about fundraising. How can we support you?

Speaker 3: 1:16:29

Yeah, so you can go to the Ironman Foundation website and there is a link to the entries. I don't know the website right off hand, the direct link, but you can see the entries into the 2024 Kona and you could see the teams who are fundraising. And yeah, just try to make it through there. Yeah, sorry, I don't have the actual address to it.

Speaker 2: 1:16:54

Well, you know what? I'll tell you what? I never know that stuff on me, but I'll get that info from you and we'll put it in the show notes and we'll make sure we make mention of that, because that's the beauty of this sport If we can transcend the sport and we can continue to inspire others and we can open doors for others. Chris opened doors for others. It opened doors for you. Now you're gonna open doors for other people and other athletes and man, it's just something that it's just easy to get behind and, honestly, everybody should get behind.

Speaker 3: 1:17:25

Yeah, so yeah, my son loves to swim, he loves to run and he likes to bike. But, like I said, he had a little bit of a spill on the bike, so we're trying to get him back on it.

Speaker 2: 1:17:34

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:17:36

Yeah, so yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:17:37

Good life lessons. And then I got one last question for you Are you ready for the heat?

Speaker 3: 1:17:43

I know it's gonna be hot, but man, it's a dream race.

Speaker 2: 1:17:48

Yeah, it really is.

Speaker 3: 1:17:50

It's gonna be super exciting, yeah. So my plan is yeah, whoever makes any donations to our charity man, I'm gonna put, I'm gonna have everybody's name on the race card.

Speaker 2: 1:18:06

Man race is something bigger than yourself. Man, I can't wait to see you go through this journey and, here at HubLife, anything that we can do to support, and I'm glad our paths crossed today.

Speaker 3: 1:18:16

How have you liked?

Speaker 2: 1:18:16

the open house Everything going okay.

Speaker 3: 1:18:18

Yeah, it's pretty cool. So far Cool. Yeah, first time here.

Speaker 2: 1:18:19

so yeah, right on, it's tri-geek paradise, man. We got all kinds of cool stuff and I appreciate you being here and we'll make sure we get that in the show notes and man, it'll be a fun year and thanks for stepping up and thanks for inspiring others.

Speaker 3: 1:18:34

Yeah, sure appreciate it. ["side Story"].

Speaker 2: 1:18:40

That does it. I don't know about you, man, Dude, I'm excited about this. We're really kind of I'm really excited about the program we've designed that we're putting out there and the programs to come out. What are your?

Speaker 1: 1:18:52

thoughts. The thing is not the end, but it's the beginning of trying to fulfill our vision of training in a well-controlled, balanced fashion.

Speaker 2: 1:19:03

Yeah, and then supported by a lot of knowledge, a lot of content for you to ride along with it as well. It's different than different plans that you may be offered or you've seen in the past and they're not bad. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just this big picture, holistic view that we've got Right clinically. We're trying to work ourselves out of a job man. Long-term equity yeah, I mean, that's what motivates us stuff. We want you to be the best you. We want you to be doing this stuff for life.

Speaker 2: 1:19:31

A lot of things that we see in clinic are self-inflicted and it's training. We're not revolutionizing it, it's just and you're not flipping it 180 degrees, you're just adding a little bit of refinements to it. Again, going back to the ingredients, you're not changing the ingredients, it's the timing of the ingredients. I mean, it has everything to do with it. So there's a lot of restaurants that make the same dish and they all taste a little bit different and there's a reason why some tastes significantly better than others and it has to do with how they use those ingredients. So I think we've got a lot of just professional, personal experience that we're excited to bring to people and just foster that hub life community, man, because it's a lot of fun, it makes us better. Hopefully we can make you better and that's the hub way. Thank you. Any other words of wisdom?

Speaker 1: 1:24:35

Nope, that was great.

Speaker 2: 1:24:36

You always got the best wisdom man, because when you get to a fork in the road, sometimes you gotta take the easier one to protect your longevity. So that way, the next time you can go uphill, go big.