151. Blood Volume Science, Emotions and Performance, and Double Doctor Celebration!

Welcome to the Some Work All Play podcast. We are so happy to be with you today. Happy Tuesday. It's Tuesday. I'm feeling so free and rejuvenated and ready to go, David. It's great. You're feeling free, Megan. Why is that? Because something really cool happened last week. We got that PhD, big high five. It was so much fun. I like that you're including me in this process. All I did was hold a baby, watch you absolutely crush your dissertation defense. You did so amazingly, but that was the extent of my contribution. You've done a lot. You reviewed my dissertation. You've been there. We've talked through this research over many a dinner table conversations. You sat in the front row of the defense and you were nodding vigorously. Leo was kicking his legs furiously. It was like the best vibes for a defense. That's how I knew you were crushing it though, is because I was there in the front row in the very first seat just so I could be the nod guy. As we saw in this podcast, the nod guy is the best guy in the world. You never looked at me once. You just would glance at me just like you did everyone else in the audience. It's like, I don't need nod guy today. I got nod audience. Everyone's stepping into this game and all about my female athlete research. Well, do you want to know the real reason why that happened? Actually, it was because I glanced at you once. I glanced at you in Leo and Leo just spit up. It was quite a vigorous amount of spit up too and it was distracting. I was like, oh, I probably shouldn't look there again. Yes, that actually happened because I guess the reason I couldn't tell is because I was holding Leo to face you because I went in him to get this experience at five months old of seeing his mom take on the world in such special fashion. I didn't get to know that, but I did see his shirt was quite wet. How big was it? It was pretty big. I feel like you just got so excited about female athlete health and research. I'm just going to project all of them and it out there. It wasn't quite projectile. It was a nice forceful spit up. Yes, at one time he also threw the pacifier. Leo was getting really into it and actually at the end of your presentation you asked, does Leo have any questions? You came up with a question for him on the spot. I actually felt comfortable. I felt bad singling you out. I was like, this is podcast swag. We do this every single week. Essentially, my question was one of those interview questions. You know how they're always like, oh, well, do you have any weaknesses or whatever? Sometimes I work too hard. My question was essentially, how can we get this research to the masses, especially the video project that you did? It was so cool. In the dissertation defense, you looked at five different publications you've had over the last four years. It was such a cool reflection to get to see it in practice because I think everybody in that audience learned a ton, even about studies they were participants in or researchers on. The way you brought it all together was magnificent. I don't know. It's such a cool reflection, especially thinking about how you used to have a little bit of a phobia about public speaking. You got up there and just dropped the freaking mic, Megan. It was so cool. It was strange. I've never liked public speaking. That's been something that I've struggled with. I've talked about this very openly in the podcast, but I was calm, cool, collected heading in. I felt like Michael Jordan now is like, bring it on, buddy, which is the opposite of my mentality. I don't know where that came from. I think it's just been a learned practice thing over time. It felt like a race. The four years of training had gone into this moment. I was like, it's time to celebrate. It really seemed like the training was the test and the presentation was the celebration. It's very cool. I imagine the podcast played a role in that. I don't know. Seeing that in the past, you would have a presentation six months away and wake up in the middle of the night worried about it. That's not an over-exaggeration. Yeah, and by worried about it, I mean, you projectile crying. I was calling it. Yeah, projectile vomiting. But some tears were going out in various directions. And now, the distillation defense is an objectively sexual, stressful situation. That was a really bad Freudian slip. And not only did that not happen, yours genuinely enjoyed every second of it. It seemed, at least from the outside. Yeah. Well, I was trying not to actively think about the idea. I mean, it was like a training block heading into a race, except it was four years of training heading into this moment. And of course, there's been manuscripts and conferences and other things that have gone into those. So it wasn't like this was the only race. But I was trying not to channel that energy because that's a really long training block. But I think what helped was it was for me. I stood up there and I was like, I'm pretty sure I'm going to get this speech. I have a whole dissertation defense. There's five manuscripts in there. And I was like, I just want to close this out for me. And I think so often when I present, I think about the judgment of other people or what other people are thinking. And I stood up there and I was like, this is purely for me. Sorry, guys. All the other people sitting there in the audience. But right now, as a matter of fear, it's just it's flow state. That's a great idea for racing and that sort of thing too. So you are now Dr. Dr. You have an MD and a PhD from Stanford, Megan. I don't know though. Can you, after you do, I haven't looked into the mechanics of this. After you do the dissertation defense, can you fully claim that PhD or do I have to wait to graduation? I don't know. At this point, unless a meteor strikes, I think you've got it because their deliberation lasted maybe five seconds when you have to remove. It was a very odd situation. I've never actually seen the mechanics of one behind the scenes. I've gone on zooms to watch people do it. But it's kind of weird because I imagine the 1800s, this involved people, this isn't robes, lighting candles and signaling almost like they do when there's a new pope. And for you, it was very chill in an auditorium where basically these people that loved you, your committee that has seen you work so hard got to celebrate you. So that was fun. But I am excited. We can no longer call you just Dr. Roach. We need to call you Dr. Dr. Roach. That's overwhelming. That's a lot. But actually, after the deliberation, I had this moment where I was like, should it be harder? You know, like sometimes when you finish racing, you're like, did I push harder? Did I actually send this hard enough? And then I thought all the way back to four years ago and it's been a lot of class, a lot of coding, a lot of writing. And even though the actual defense felt like a celebration, the whole process has been pretty arduous. So I was like, OK, Megan, I can remember that. Yeah. And I mean, as it relates to our podcast specifically, the research you did is so important and so cool. And I think maybe over the next couple of weeks, we can talk about some of the studies that you've led. One of my favorites is it brought so the first big study you did, and I'm just going to summarize it briefly, is this partnership with two Pac-12 institutions trying to change teen culture as it related to fueling, tracking in a prospective way, seven years in the future, how that relates to injury rates. But then seeing what you saw with like relatively high injury rates and young athletes coming into the programs, you created these video programs that were featured some of the best athletes in the world, but then also the science presented in this really cool way, and then tracked how much high school athletes could learn from them. And I'm like, wow, this is the coolest shit. It needs to get out to the world, Megan. But it was just so fun to see you present it in this setting where I'm like, OK, this isn't just research for research sake. This is research that can change the freaking world. Oh, thank you. Well, I think the big thing in the research process is just figuring out how to iterate and adjust. So in that seven-year prospective study, we did it at Stanford in UCLA to reduce bone stress injury incidents. We had a tough time rolling out the intervention, and it's funny how sometimes those struggles can inform the next studies. So in the next study, we're like, this intervention in terms of talking about low energy availability and fueling can't come solely from experts. It has to come from athletes. It has to be translatable. It has to be fun. And I think it was fun to put together my dissertation and think about how do we, I mean, every study has its limitations in epidemiology. We think so much about limitations. And it's like, how do we build and learn from that? And I think it's much like racing. It's like doing one race and figuring out how to iterate and grow from it. Yeah. Well, I'm reading this book right now in the sauna as I prepare for candidates around Joke, and we're going to talk a little bit about some of the heat cramming and some of the principles behind it. It was the only book I could find at Target, and it's called Rethinking or Rethink by Adam Grant. And I think it actually explains a lot of the magic of your intellect. So your processing power is insane. You have a supercomputer in your brain. But lots of people have supercomputers in their brain. I think what sets you apart for me is that you have this openness and curiosity about everything you do. You never assume that you're the only one that has answers. And as a result, you become the person with all the answers because you're incorporating all this information from all these different sides. So I've been so inspired, and I think our listeners have been too. So I just wanted to take this moment to fully celebrate Dr. Dr. Megan Roach. Oh, thank you. Well, as you're talking about that and talking about supercomputers and things like that, there's actually a wild touch of imposter syndrome as well going on. I think once you go through the defense process, you're like, do I actually know? Am I actually cut out for the next level and the next thing? I think sometimes in a PhD, you have your training wheels on. And then as you grow beyond in science, it's like the training wheels start to come off. There's always that little bit of an oh shit moment. Like, am I ready for the training wheels to come off? You are. That's the answer. You're like Mario Andretti in terms of formula one driving. So that brings us to a question from a listener actually. And it says this, hi there. I've recently started a PhD program and I'm wondering what advice Megan has for not only surviving, but thriving through these next four years. Well, I love this question because we do Patreon podcasts every week on Friday as we talk about we have an amazing Patreon community online. But this week, Leo was having a little bit of a connption during our Patreon Friday podcast. So I had to tend to him and you finished the podcast solo. And I heard you read this question and attempt to answer it from my perspective. And I thought that was really cool. I think what I said is I got a little bit higher pitch voice just slightly. It's like, because you just got to be sexy and own that you're sexy and just admit that you're sexy. But yeah, it was actually really concerning to do a podcast solo for 20 minutes on Patreon. Because I was like, yeah, as soon as there's one dude talking to a mic, it borders on manifesto territory. Like, I start to worry that I'm like scrolling my thoughts on the wall in feces at this point. So that was a really disconcerting moment in my life trajectory. Well, I've always showed up for this Patreon Friday podcast. We've had some like life stuff happen and I always want to be there because I have this deep seated anxiety that if you do a podcast solo, everyone's going to be like, yeah, let's fire Megan. Like, you know, you're so good at talking that I don't want to be this like ancillary subject. But listening to you is like, yeah, that sounds a little awkward. Because if you were laughing at your own jokes, something like that, I was like, oh, that's a little tough. In fact, one listener comment is something like, Megan has said in the past that she's worried about this. Megan, you have nothing to worry about. It was said in a more loving way than that. But I get it. So patreon.com slash swap SWP there. We do bonus podcasts every week where we answer a bunch of questions. We do sexy science corner posts. We answer messages and it's a way to support the podcast. So and you almost every time you get both Megan and I and then in one episode out of 52, there's already like that many on there that you can go listen to. It's just me, which is a collector's edition kind of like when they make one baseball card that has a defect in it. Like, it's a bad baseball card, but as a result, it's worth a million dollars. That's kind of how I think about that podcast. I need to go back and listen to it actually because I was getting a feel from it as Leo is freaking out in the other room. I was getting a feel for what was going on and it was quite fun. I need to go back and like actually marinate in it. Yeah. Okay. So what would you say to this listener about PhDs? And I think that this probably applies to a lot of really big scary things that are associated with, you know, somewhat negative mental health outcomes for people that pursue them. Yeah, I'm really glad this question got asked because I feel like there's it's so relevant to all of life. I think for me, there's a few things. The first thing is asking for help. Like, I was not afraid to ask for help and not to feel like sometimes when you ask for help, I feel like there's an amount of self reflection that goes into that like, you know, am I cut out for this? Do I, you know, why don't I have these answers? But I also think like as you ask for help, I think there's very certain situations where you should just do things without question. And I think that's how I was throughout my PhD is like asking a lot of questions, but then also understanding when I wanted that level of autonomy and be like, well, question me. Like, you know, if I'm going to go ahead and do this. And my dissertation, for example, I just changed it to female athletes, like most of my research is on female athletes, not all of it. But I really wanted that title and the dissertation structure to be a reflection of my four years. And I was like, I'm just going to change this to female athletes and no question to me. Yeah, one of the things you said is that you advise people to act like a CEO of your own future. Yes. And I thought it was so powerful, because you're taking the power and giving it to yourself in that journey, rather than to an advisor or someone else that, yes, they probably have your best interests at heart. But also, they don't really know you at the full deep level. And like, they're not the ones that are going to live your future. It's just you. And you did that at every turn, whether it was with classes, your research projects and all that. And I think the reason that you have so many first author publications that essentially you took the second part of, okay, I'm going to ask for forgiveness, not for permission as it relates to designing studies and then getting approval after that. But you're going to take the initiative as if you're designing a strategic vision for your own future. I'm so glad to use the word strategic. That's exactly where I was going is that I feel like a good CEO has a strategy for year one, but also for year four or two. And I think sometimes, if you have a strategy for your foreign PhD program, you get bogged down. But I do think it's helpful to think about that. And I think a good CEO would think about who they put on their PhD committee. So for people that don't have haven't been through the PhD process before, you have a committee and usually it's like four to five people and they deliberate on your dissertation defense. It's kind of like the Lord of the Rings, the fellowship of the ring. You have like one elf, Gandalf is there. It's basically like that. How much different creatures and characters can sometimes go into these? I think it's important to think about who you have on your PhD committee. So I very strategically thought about this. And I was like, you know, I want people, I'm pretty chill when it comes in research. And I want people who are going to elevate the research, but be pretty chill in this process. And chillness was like the primary selector for who is going to be on my PhD committee. So I think, I think think heavily about that. And I think it's actually good advice for anyone that you're working with. What a good example is a coach, like a running coach. It's a relationship. Not a transaction. And so make sure that the person, people that you align with are people that you have good relationships with, who you align with personality wise. Like there is benefit in differing perspectives. But if you're not at some level friends, or at least like work friends, I think any of these situations can become a shit show because you end up changing yourself for someone who doesn't even like you. And that becomes a kind of a nightmare. After I presented my dissertation and my committee was convening, they shared a story about a physics student here at Stanford who was stuck in a PhD program for 11 years because he had this kind of deranged mentor who wouldn't let him graduate. And he wound up shooting his like he fully shot and killed his PhD mentor, which is wild. But I think it gets to show the idea that like people like people in your PhD committee have an outsides level of power on you. And before you give someone that power, you should check their credibility, their psyche, their level of chillness and their track record with prior students. Yeah. Yeah. Do you recommend that intervention? Yeah, probably not. Probably not. Yeah. And I think that that story actually underscores a lot of people going through these types of things where it can be extremely mentally difficult. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I think that's any long term process that can feel insurmountable, including training. Like when we talk about embracing your potential over 10, 20, 30 years, it's like if you think about all that at once becomes a shit show. And so I think the final message that I've seen you embrace is that life is lived by the day, not by the year. And so you really found the fun, I think, in all these projects, like I remember hearing you laugh so hard on so many of your research calls and like, what the fuck are they doing up there? And then seeing the research that amounts from it, I'm like, oh, well, it makes sense because I think that joy in the process actually comes through in these early scientific papers. Well, I think joy is the best way to like push back and to literally take a shotgun and like be like uncertainty. Instead of your PhD vibe, it's like uncertainty. Yeah. So you're saying shoot the negative emotions. Yes. No shooting people. We do not support that on the Swat podcast. With metaphorical guns. Yes. Yes. Exactly. But I mean, I feel like uncertainty is the hardest part of any PhD program. So I've done an MD at this point. I've done a PhD. And I think the MD logistically and time wise was so much harder than a PhD. But I think the PhD, the level of uncertainty and at times mental struggle was much harder. And I think uncertainty as a runner, as a student, is like the hardest emotion. So pushing back against that with joy was like the biggest thing that I found. Yeah, because I guess that's the only thing you might be able to grasp on to in an uncertain world. Yeah. And also to, I think, diversifying life, like heading into this, I was like, oh my God, this is four years of research boiling down into one defense. But it's been some of the best four years of our life, like Leo and running and all these other things out at the PhD, the podcast. And you know, I would do it all over again, even if I didn't get that degree. Yeah. And I still might not, you know, who I always had these like stress dreams about like, did I take all the classes I was supposed to? Like what happens if they won't let me walk? So until I like walk across the stage, I don't think I'll believe it. Okay, I like that very much. And then a final, a final thing on these programs, I think, is like adding some of the fun to it. We had a listener send in this amazing sub stack post from Rob Manuel that was called searching 32 million academic papers for obscene acronyms hidden in the titles. And they used AI to do this. And so they created, they created coded to do this. And they like mined all these different papers. And some of them, it's like, I never would have concocted this. It was wildly impressive. Yeah. One was colorectal anal physiology. For crap. Crap. Which is actually like physiologically fitting. Yeah. It's perfect. Yeah. It's the colorectal system. Yeah. I think they probably did it intentionally. The one that wasn't intentional was knowing savagery, savagery, humanity in the circuits of colonial knowledge, which equated to K shitcock, which I love. Which also, we would take, when I read that title, I wouldn't necessarily think about that. But now I can't unsee this. I actually went back to all my manuscripts and I was like, I need to make sure that everything cannot be translated into one of these acronyms. Or maybe that should, because that'd be fun. You got to watch the acronyms. Because as we talked about before, female athlete triad, which has been, which goes side and side with Red S, relative energy deficiency in sport, female athlete triad, the acronym for it is FAT, which is extremely inappropriate for the concept, which basically female athlete triad indicates we need to eat enough always. Maybe they're reclaiming it. Yeah. It's like Beyonce. Like, yeah. We're just reclaiming it so that it feels fucking good. Yeah. We need to have a acronym for Reds. We need to somehow change it to booty-licious. Yeah, exactly. Because that's what we're aiming for, as an athlete, like out there, you need to find your booty-licious swag. And then finally, finishing up the celebration of Megan Episid. Okay. This is awkward. No, no, Megan, all of our listeners, we have gotten so many fucking messages. I think it's also really important because everyone's been there for the journey. This program started, or was getting started right as the podcast started, is you did your first race on Sunday, just the other day, since your heart issues, which you were told that you might never run again, Leo. And then Leo, combining with your heart issues to create this stew where it's like, you went through talking about uncertainty, period of time where you were never sure you were going to put a bib on again. Well, it's been a wild four days because I defended my dissertation, then I went out and did this race. And I felt like there were times, as I was navigating this heart journey, where I felt like I was on this infinite time loop for four months straight. Like, my day was the same lived experience because I wasn't training. Like, I was pregnant. It was just cranking out research. And to have this like wild four days is kind of a fun reflection on like the different seasons of life. Like sometimes life is infinite time loops. And I actually look back at that time within nostalgia. And then sometimes you defend a dissertation and race within four days. And it's like, what is happening right now? It was so fun. So I got to be out on the course a bunch of different times to see you. I was actually incredibly impressed with myself, because I was taking baby Leo in a combination of the stroller and the carrier. And I got out to mile four, mile six and a half, mile nine, and they're also at mile one, the mile 12. It was pretty impressive. You had magical powers out there. You're not going to understand this reference, but in Harry Potter, they do something called operation. So they operate. Which is when they just like, translocate themselves to different places. And that was you. I'm like, how are you doing this right now? There's all these types of like wild trails. You cover ground so fast. You're operating. You said the word translocate. Yeah. In the context of a JK Rowling book. Yeah. And the association of trans and JK Rowling really scares me. Let's avoid that. Actually, yeah. I've been so frustrated with JK Rowling. I don't know if I can reread Harry Potter books after, yeah, the stuff kind of stuff that she's stood for. Yeah. It's so fresh trading. But what wasn't frustrating was getting to see you on the course. And the funniest moment I've ever had every single time I saw you, you were absolutely crushing it except once, which is at mile nine. And I didn't realize that I was right next to the steepest downhill. So I saw you way off in the distance in the forest going down the steep downhill. And I got to be honest, you were a noob in the forest. I was going so slow. I was a total noob in the forest. I had no idea that you could see me. So this is like a 30% downhill. There was this one stretch. It was maybe like 0.1, 0.2 miles long. And it was an out and back. So I went up it and I was like, oh Lord, I'm going to have to walk down this. Just because I'm being really cautious right now from my pelvis. I haven't done anything like that. My ABC and D goals for this race was like, don't break my body. And I was tiptoeing down it. And I could hear you shouting. And I was like, oh my God, I'm being watched. This is so embarrassing. I'm a total noob. It was so amazing. But you came out healthy. And she won. And she ran a blazing fast time. She got so many Strava crowns, which might be the biggest thing of all. It's getting those fucking Strava crowns. It's been a long time since I've gotten a Strava crown. It was fun. Yeah. It was cool from a training perspective, because you really haven't done hard running workouts. Oh, I was very aware of that out there. Yeah. I got like three miles in and I was like, what am I doing right now? I haven't done anything remotely like this in a long time. Well, essentially equated to 13 by one mile repeats without rest. And you have done zero one mile repeats. Yeah. I like threshold. So that was incredibly impressive. And I just like the reflection of seeing you on the hospital bed, thinking that you might be dead within a few days, which is what we were concerned about with some of the things the doctors told us to now in a year and a half with a baby napping in the other room in our Airbnb, which you might hear background noise. Sorry about that. That's just some cars. Cars are everywhere in California. I mean, it makes me so fucking emotional. And I thank you for sharing this journey with us, with the audience, because I know for me, whatever happens to cadence, 100k, I'm going to be channeling your ability to adapt, to iterate, to rethink, and continue growing in the process. Oh, well, thank you. That means I'm over here getting goosebumps. But I think a lot of that led to this peaceful calm heading into the race where I just was excited to be out there. And it was total flow state, actually. I felt like I clicked right back into that race day mentality after the first three miles where it was kind of a mind fuck. I was like, this is fast. This is hard. Good reminder for everybody. It's like racing can be a very mentally challenging thing. And working through that is kind of the magic of racing, the experience of it, rather than the winning a race part of it. But I felt like I just kept coming back to that race day with flow state and the peacefulness and the joy of being out there. I was out racing a bunch of men and I find myself being competitive with the men, which is frustrating. Megan, they have testosterone. I'm like, I must beat them. I must catch them. So many guys go out way too fast at a troy. So this is kind of interesting. But I was like pushing back against that with the joy and gratitude for being out there. And it was like really helpful mental exercise just to like stay in the flow state. I love it so much. So so proud of you. And let's go to a question now. And this is from a listener. You know, you shared a lot of emotions on this journey. So we wanted to get to some interesting science here. And I'll read this one. Megan's theory moment on a recent podcast a few weeks ago brought up something I've always wanted to ask you. What is the impact of sadness on performance for context in the past few weeks? I had two especially sad days. One sad event was because a patient of mine was in a really tough situation, medically, and in terms of approaching end of life decisions. I felt like I was just carrying this huge weight in a little low on motivation during my group run. The other sad event was involved with something that brought up my past experiences with sexual assault. This one involved anger, frustration, sadness, everything you could expect. This was also on the day where I had a speed workout planned. I got through the workout, but it took a lot of cognitive effort to get through it. I was fine, but if I let my mind go too far, I would have easily started bawling mid-workout. So is there any literature on the impact of sadness on exercise and performance? Is there increased cortisol with sadness related to grief? Does sadness significantly lower my testosterone? How does serotonin play into performance? Sorry, that was a bit long-winded, but I would love to hear your thoughts based on your experiences as coaches and as science nerds. This is a fascinating question. And I totally understand the idea of feeling like you're carrying around weight. For me, this week, I felt peaceful and calm, but I think on the cellular level, I was actually having a lot of stress and just not necessarily manifesting that or feeling that. And on some of my runs this week, I felt like my upper body was so heavy. I haven't done strength training in a while, but this feels like strength training, just running with a really heavy, heavy, upper body. And those are like acute stresses. And then you think about this athlete who's dealt with trauma and probably has some manifestation of something like PTSD. It reminds me of that book, The Body Keeps the Score. Oh, that's such a good book. If you haven't read that yet, read that now. Yeah, so there's like these physical manifestations of emotional experiences, particularly trauma. So that will definitely have an impact. And then we think about how this relates to your hormonal state. So we've talked about this study before, but there's one that was done on rugby players that found that giving them negative feedback after a performance reduces their testosterone and increases their cortisol. Whereas in giving them positive feedback to their verse, we've always used that to say, hey, you should probably try to recontextualize your own evaluation of yourself in a positive light, even as you try to learn, given the role that can play an adaptation. But that also relates to your emotional state generally, because if you're having these negative thought cycles, you're probably going to go down the same path with cortisol with reduced hormonal status, things like that. And I think actually, as you think about, I love the word recontextualize it, because I think every emotion that might be potentially negative for performance is perhaps linked to emotion. Like if you could draw an arrow, it might be linked to an emotion that could be harnessed in some way. I feel like I could almost draw an arrow between sadness and anger. And I think anger actually has probably a nice performance benefit compared to sadness or anxiety. I could probably draw an arrow to excitement. And how can you harness and leverage if you really are in this time of you need to perform well, how can you harness some of the adjacent emotions to recontextualize? And that's one of the powers of athletics, is it gives you this context when maybe you can take some emotions you have and direct them in a way that's more productive for you. Obviously, it helps to do it with an expert. But thankfully, we have a study that can guide you a little bit on this. It's from the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology. And it had all the participants take part in five emotion induction conditions. These were involved happiness, anger, anxiety, sadness, and emotion neutral state. They did this via videos. I didn't look at what the videos were, but I imagine that's pretty interesting. Yeah, how do you get like, I imagine like an emotionally neutral video is interesting. I don't know. I'm trying to think of like, I don't know, I think like anger would come from watching the New England Patriots or something. Just some terrible team. Fox News. Yeah, exactly. JK Rowling. And we investigated the researchers, investigated their influence on the force of the finger musculature, which is kind of interesting. Yeah, that's interesting. A finger curl, I imagine. The jump height of a counter movement jump. And then the velocity of a thrown ball. And I think those are all interesting because they're not necessarily like endurance exercises. But I imagine the magnitude intensifies. So like, you know, if we're seeing impacts on finger musculature, imagine like the more global broader impacts on endurance exercise and I imagine the magnitude gets higher. Definitely. And so it found that anger and happiness were performance enhancing, much like you would expect, empowering emotions, sadness and anxiety were performance decreasing. And that essentially, in the neutral was neutral. So basically lines of what you'd think. So I always started framing it in the terms of power emotions. So for this listener, your sadness is fully valid and it's fully validated. And especially as you think about this, try as much as possible to, you know, use your exercise as an opportunity to just slightly reframe the sadness. Like, so it can still be sadness, but tinge it with just a little bit of some empowering empowerment with it, whether that's of your trauma or of the fact that you're a badass doctor, helping your patients or whatever it is. And that can give you a little bit more power with the understanding that it's just going to be hard sometimes. And I think like as you do that, you don't have to, I mean, I think it's important to feel what you're going to feel because you have to do that to be able to process things. But like, in that one time of running, that's when you can harness these different types of emotions to help work through things. But I think it's really important to like, still feel what you're going to feel. But I think for me, it gets to the idea that sometimes when I'm in these states, it's almost like I have this layer of judgment on top. It's like, for me, when I was out running this week and running felt so bad, it's like, I wanted to judge that and like layer in all these other emotions, like, Oh my God, why does my body feel so horrible? And I feel like avoiding the judgment as you're in this to is really helpful. Yeah. The story that we've told in the podcast before, but is my most powerful example of this is when in 2012, we had been dating for a couple years and you broke up with me. And it's kind of a soft break. I was kind of hard to determine what you were trying to communicate to me. Yeah, I realized I'm really not good at saying goodbye. Yeah. It's a good thing in the context of our relationship because I was like, I really struggled. So it was a very soft goodbye. And I'm like the stray dog that keeps showing up the door. Any scraps. So I think you broke up with me. It's what you did. And so the night before the 10k national championships in 2012, I wrote a letter to you and I delivered it to you. And I think we have that somewhere. Yeah. It's essentially just saying, it was beautiful. I love you. Yeah. And no pressure. But like as we now, you know, if you want to navigate this, I'm here. But that contextualizing for me turned my sadness into like an anger, not that I expressed to you, but an anger that I decided to harness. Was it at me or was it at the situation or both? It's okay if you say it was at me. Yeah. Yeah. It was it was at the bitch. It's a bad bitch. Yeah. That's the thing. You went from a, like, you know how they say, there's a very different definition between bitch boss. That's what you or boss bitch. Now you're a boss bitch. Back then you were a bitch bitch boss. And you know, I went into that race in the 10k championships and would have probably been picked 20th or 15th. You know, I had no national results. I had a few local races in North Carolina that I had done well at, but that was it. And on the start line was the world or the US cross country champion who was going to go on to be top 20 at world cross a month later amongst other incredible athletes. And I was running with so much anger. I remember not feeling a fucking thing in that race, just feeling so empowered. And to this day, it's my best performance ever. So and I won the national championship and it, you know, changed the trajectory of my life. Should I break up with you between now and Kenyans? Would that be helpful? Maybe we can think of something that's a little bit different. Do you have any other idea of ways that you can get me really, really, really angry? I do. So you don't like letting people down. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like if we like concocted a situation where you let someone down, you'd be pretty angry. Oh, I like that. Yeah. Or you'd be sad which you'd turn into angry. I was thinking you could be like, you could accuse me of not of like peeing on the seat or something. Because I'm like, Megan, you're worried about peeing on the seat. Look at all the shit you leave at. And then that'll get me really angry and I'll perform really well. What do you think? I love that idea. Good plan. But how do you actually, I mean, I think in that situation, you were able to harness anger from sadness, but it's actually like way, it's way easier said than done. Yeah. What's best about trauma? I mean, you know, a breakup is serious, but it's not sexual assault that this listener suffered from. And I think that that's where it's like constant working with an expert probably. Yeah. To do that. But wherever your, whether it's trauma or whatever else, that can create context that give you power. And so I think the idea is finding how you can seize your personal power over situations you're in. Yeah. And I mean, I think that's a lot of what therapy is. Yeah. Finding the power. But like, I think it's also work that you need to constantly do intentionally. Because our emotions are often dictated by things from the outside, but not fully, right? Like it's how we're responding to stimuli. And it's a learned process that's done with intention. So, you know, feel the feels, but also make sure you're not just letting the feelings take hold of you and control your life. And I think last point on this too is that we're talking about this to the lens of performance. Yeah. But sometimes performance is not the BL and end all. And sometimes if you're going through these like really, really deep and tough emotions, I think like let performance go. Yeah. Like run for the sake of joy and freedom and processing emotion. And I feel like there's no reason to also like try to try to try to recontextualize things if this is a place where you're not out. Man, performance is everything. It's everything. It's everything. Yes. Yeah. Have you read anything? Didn't you read Lance Armstrong's biography? It's not about the bike. That's where I learned a lot of these lessons. And I think nothing has happened since I read that book. It's not about peeing on the seat. But no, one of your studies was actually on mental health during COVID-19 and professional athletes that went into your dissertation. And so you actually have a lot of expertise on how external stimuli relate to this. So, yeah, totally agree with what you said that it's not about training or whatever. Because one of the main findings of your study was that training volume had no correlation with emotional state. So, I think they are often disconnected things. Yeah. I think I could say the idea that just like work, develop and develop the team. Like develop a lot of support. Like training should never be the one area you go to for this stuff. Yeah. Okay. So onto a little piece of news that hit the mainstream from ultra running, which we always want to talk about running news that gets on like BBC and CNN and things like that. Oh, it's really cool. But I was sad about this. This is pretty sad. I feel like it's really fun. It's hard when it's like not the most uplifting running news. Well, we're changing our sadness into anger. Oh, yeah. No, we're not actually. Which I think we are. Let's go through it and we'll see. Let's see if we get to empower empowering mission. So this is Josiah Zakroski. So she is an international runner who did a 50-mileer and was on the podium over in the UK. And it turns out that she took a car in the middle of the race for a few miles. She did one mile of the race in one minute, 40 seconds. And then most interestingly, she uploaded this file that included the car ride to Strava. So there's a lot of interesting stuff going on here. It got picked up by the mainstream press because everyone's like, you know, I think cheating scandals are kind of like juicy topics. Oh, they're fascinating. Yeah. Psychologically, it's also like the mechanics of how someone goes about and does it. She gets a F minus for mechanics of going about doing this. I feel like if you take a car and upload it to Strava, it's like the worst cheating scandal I've seen. But she gets an A plus for efficiency. She does. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. A car. A one 40 minute mile is pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Car could have driven faster. Maybe it's an A minus. It's true. That is actually not. I mean, yeah. It's not super fast. Yeah. Unless you hit 100 kilometers an hour. Like, I don't know if that's, we'll give it A minus. And we always talk about fueling. It's like, while a human can only take in like, you know, 400, 500 calories per hour during exercise, a car can take in a lot more calories per hour when you think about how much is an oil. So that's pretty cool. But I think the big thing that I thought, and I'd love to hear your thoughts since we didn't really get a chance to talk about this, is have so much compassion for these types of things. Like, there are people jumping on her online and it's like, look, it's just running. And we do care about it, right? Like, we do care so deeply. But at the same time, we're talking about it as a means to explore emotions. I'm sure that this story is way more complicated. Yeah. When the truth actually comes out. Well, her story was that she felt sick. She got in the car. She thought she was going to drop. She felt better. She got back on course. And who knows? Like, and granted, it's only 50 miles. So she probably wasn't hallucinating at this state. But I feel like there's so much more to the story. I mean, there's so much more to every single story that's portrayed in the media. Yeah. And so, as always, message to try to forgive people for their mistakes. Well, I think this gets back to the idea of intention for me. Like, I mean, we all fuck up. And I don't know who knows. But I mean, I feel like if you're uploading to something to Strava, like, this isn't like a pre-deliberated treating, like, cheating scandal. I feel like this is something that happens more on the fly. Something weird must have happened. I should have an auto upload. Yeah. Which would be a big fail. That's exactly what I was thinking. Wouldn't it be funny? So sometimes the Garmin watches or whatever, auto automatic upload to Strava, if you have that turned on, if you do like, the most diabolical treating or cheating scandal, and you just nail it, you do something perfect with like cutting a course, and then an auto upload sabotages you. I'm like, oh, no, Bluetooth connectivity. The one time it actually works. But yeah, so if long story sorry, if you have anything in your life where you regret, whether it's intentional or not, try to forgive yourself and also try to forgive others. I hope Josiah comes back and is fully forgiven in this sport. As long as like, this isn't a pattern of behavior that really does harm others over time. I think this type of thing, like, come on, you got one chance at life. Why are we stressing about, like, someone that made a mistake that's actually a little bit funny if we let ourselves laugh at it? Oh, it is kind of hilarious when you think about it. Yeah, but I also wonder too, I mean, I feel like she came out and she was open about, you know, struggling with this and like... Well, I think she had no choice. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Once it all uploads to Strava, you're like, yeah. Yeah, which is always where it gets like to our doping discussions. It's like, where's the line between, you know, compassion and accountability? And I think this is a little different than doping. I think this is way more permissible. I mean, it's obviously not permissible in a specific sense, but in a general sense with like, I don't think his athlete should be banned or anything. Well, this is like taking like 200% APO or something. A 140 mile hike. It's like your blood is just straight APO at that point. You don't get a long-term benefit from riding in a car. That's true. That's a possible difference. Okay, now we're going to get into some science topics. We're going to do this in the context of the Canyons 100k that's coming up this weekend. Oh, heck yes, you're getting ready to race. I'm so... We have a lot of life going on over here. We do have a lot of life going on. And there's some interesting things with this going on. So my taper's going great. Things are going wonderfully. But I checked out the Google alerts for the weather in Auburn, California where this race is. And Megan, it's looking quite spicy hot. It's looking spicy, spicy hot. Right now it says 89. And I feel like it's just been climbing. We might as well just break the 90th barrier at this point. I love that that was your take as like super coach, super physiologist, is you saw the temperature and you're like, it might as well just go into the 90s. Like that's way cooler. I'm like, no, like way more epic. I'm like, no, Megan, that would be the worst thing. I mean, why are we stopping at the 90s when I was just making a sauna out? Like just 188 degrees in the Canyons. See what happens. Oh my god. Yeah, so I'm not the best heat performer traditionally. Why do you think that? I think a lot of it's genetic. I think we talked in the past about how I have brontosaurus bones. You know, my body type maybe at, you know, baseline from when I was a kid is a little different. I was really, really struggled with heat as a kid when I was like, you know, the bigger kid in class. I remember like my parents always talk about having to dump ice water on me. I think we were at Western State's aid stations when I was like three years old in random moments. And I'm like, oh, that's not a good sign. I also salt very heavily. We talked about this before, but like after I finished Irvine, even when I hydrate well, my body has like, okay, beef Wellington with salt on the outside. So I think that it's probably just a genetic predisposition that I've been improving at with time. So you've evolved. I've evolved. You're brontosaurus. Yeah, you've evolved over time. Yeah, yeah. You've made the best of extinction. What is that? I've made the best of extinction. That is going to be a mantra in my head during this race. So what am I doing about the heat? And I think that this is actually really relevant to every athlete. I am heat cramming right now. So I've done some sauna year round, but right now I'm stepping up looking at the studies and trying to optimize my performance in that heat as much as I possibly can. Well, can you call it cramming when you've been really diligent all along? I feel like you've been like an A plus student. So an A plus student, you can't call it like cramming for an exam when you've been preparing all year. I wouldn't call myself A plus because like we have a wet sauna which doesn't really match the study perinocalls. And honestly, like I don't stay in that long. You stay in the long time. I guess. You come upstairs and you're cracked. We talked about last week, you're like putting meatballs in the medicine cabinet, frozen meatballs in the medicine cabinet after your sauna. That's true. You're trying to make me feel better. But I'm really calling on a 2015 study right now that was in the European Journal of Applied Physiology. This is kind of the gold standard in the field and how it relates to some of the physiology, which found a 17.8% increase in peak blood plasma volume. So this is your red blood cells, plus the liquid content and blood after four sauna exposures consisting of 30 minutes and 188 degrees immediately after training. I'm going to push back against that, though, because were these participants, had they been doing, I think it's a little bit different when you've been diligent with your sauna training all along. If they have been doing sauna training consistently, would they get the 17.8% increase after four days of exposure? Are you trying to undermine my current sauna protocol? Just curious. Yeah. Probably not. No. I mean, the weird thing about blood volume when you look at the studies is that it does track a little bit of a parabolic curve. It reaches a higher set point, but it goes up, up, up, up. And then it goes down a little bit as the body stabilizes and starts to increase red blood cell count. So these athletes probably are harnessing initial adaptations. But you would assume that these types of plasma volume changes, even if they're smaller than this, would have some positive benefit. And I haven't never done four days in a row this winter. So we're here in California. I've got that 24 hour fitness all gym membership pass that I forgot to cancel. This whole time, I'm just like, oh, I should cancel this membership. But then it's like, but then I'd have to call somebody and calling someone sounds like a nightmare. And it finally paid off after like two years of not using it because I get to go to the gym and sweat my ass off in 25 fitness. We've also been wearing a mat we've been a little bit cautious of like getting coded in the week before you do canyons. And so you've been wearing a mask in there. Do you feel like that has added benefit? I'm getting so many red blood cells right now. You're getting your blood your blood blood cells are getting hard so hard. So the way this works is that after you have when you have huge heat stress against the skin, the body needs to cool off. And it does that using blood. The main stress is on the liquid content in blood. So essentially the water, it expands the amount of liquid content in your blood, which as a result should help you cool more efficiently. And so the way we talk about this with athletes is if you see heat coming up in your race and you're not constantly heat training, especially in spring or something like that, three exposures in a row is the place to start around a week out ideally. And then you just pray. You pray to the heat gods that you're bestowed with good luck and you practice cooling techniques on race day. That can make a huge difference. I'm in the midst of that right now. And we'll see how it works. I mean a lot of these studies do show performance benefits even in temperate conditions. So whether your race is hot or not, this could have some benefits. Are you praying to one God or multiple gods? Every single one. Yeah, every single one. Including like celebrities. Yeah. Wayne the Rock Johnson. He played a God in Moana. He was the demi-god character. So I'm praying to him as well. Who else Gandalf of course. In fact, the entire fellowship of your PhD committee. Because who knows? They all seemed really nice. Maybe they have some sort of deity powers. I'm getting creative out there. I love it. Yeah. I feel like you harness all those powers. Yes. Okay. And this actually brings up a very fascinating study that a listener sent us that just came out in the journal of physiology. This is not directly related to what we're talking about necessarily. But I think it does so some wrinkles of physiology that we don't truly understand. That I am deeply fascinated by, especially as it relates to blood volume. Well, I think it's more related than you're giving it credit for. Because blood volume I think is at the foundation of a lot of fitness and exercise metrics and variables. And I don't think we often think about it that way. Yeah. We don't actually. I mean, there's really very, there are very few ways to track it outside of a lab. And it does vary a ton. Like in winter, there are studies that find that blood volume, the background measure of how much blood you have in your body can decrease by 10% seasonally as you're just in a colder weather. I don't know if that applies to athletes nearly as much because we do get our body core temp up even when it's very cold. But it has a massive impact. So the big way this study worked is it did a six week intervention of sprint intervals, your classic sprint interval training protocol before the intervention, they measured the two max after the invention intervention, they measured the two max. But what set it apart here is after the second view to max intervention. So after six weeks, they did a flobotomy to reduce blood volume back to baseline levels. And what they found is that the two max all the increases seen after the six weeks of training in these untrained athletes, which we'd expect went back to baseline as well, that all of the fitness changes in the athletes just correlated with blood volume changes. So is what we're seeing blood volume here? What are we seeing? Well, they decided to take the next step. The study was wild. Actually, it was pretty bonkers in terms of the level of intervention. And they did a right heart path, which I hope they paid these participants a large amount of money because signing up for flobotomy and a right heart path is invasive. I don't even know what it is. I've just seen it talked about on like house MD, the old television show. And whenever they did it, it was like a big decision. So I'm like, wow, this is a wonderful way, hopefully to get a few hundred bucks for participating in this study. Oh, I hope it's like thousands. I mean, it's a minimally invasive procedure, but it does come with a level of risk. And maybe one of the what this is seeing is we always talk about view to max is not something to train to because it adapts very quickly and stabilizes. Maybe we're essentially we're just seeing blood volume changes. We don't know. But we would say that as you conceive of your own training, have a blood volume, you know, framework in your head just a little bit more. So that includes things like your iron supplementation, because that gets to red blood cell volume, which isn't a total amount of the percentage, but is very relevant to how you're able to translate blood volume into fitness. And think about hydration a lot. Think about heat acclimation year round, which is something we're a big fan of both because of the blood volume and the red blood cell counts that you can do. And limiting your overall stress because that can affect your red blood cell count. And as you approach races, especially, even if you never heat train, two weeks out, three weeks out, something like that, if you have plenty of time, it does not hurt to do some heat exposures within reason, because you'll probably get some of these benefits without having to do a sprint interval intervention group. And I'm glad we're doing this discussion right now, because sometimes in training logs, as coaches this time of year, when we're on, like the precipice I've entering into summer, some of the early heat, heat runs can be so challenging on an athlete. But that's actually where the gains are at. Like that that level of deep, deep suck that goes into one of those for first heat days can be hard, but it's the gains. The gains are coming. I'm so worried. I'm so worried. So two weeks ago, we recorded a podcast, and you got the first exercise window, and then we recorded while Leo napped. So I went out and I ran the steep loops and boulder for 16 miles. And at the end of the run, it was 83 degrees. And that was the meatball in the medicine cabinet. Yeah, we'll go down as an infamous day. Yeah, well, it will go down as infamous day, but this day is going to be hotter and it's early season. So yeah, we'll get to we'll get to predictions in a second. But I do want to say, my best performances are in 40 degrees in rainy, and this is going to be the day that turns it around. I'm confident. I'm changing my anxiety into excitement. Well, one thing I'm curious about before we get into this is the periodization component of this. So I think like the seasons in like, you know, spring and summer and winter are interesting like background periodization, sometimes of athletes heat exposures. But how much does periodization matter in terms of blood volume? Like much like training, I think we have a lot of questions like that still to be answered. Yeah, and that's why, you know, we're such big fans of year round heat exposure. Yeah, because it's like blood volume, there's no benefit to having it lower. Like it just does isn't helpful. Well, you think about it in terms of training, like if it's lower and it's impacting training variables, you're essentially adapting to lower training stimulus. Like you want to have the higher training stimulus on board for your body to adapt to. Especially because like this isn't just fitness. This is also the number of healing factors in that are transported to your body. So I think one of the big reasons for higher injury rates in winter is not that people are running on cold legs. That could be one. It's because their blood volume is lower. So they're getting less adaptation stimulus to the same stress. So I think that's one of the more interesting things in training theory that anyone can grasp onto. Because it's not just sauna, you can also use hot bath. You can also just dress in a couple extra layers to do a treadmill double every once in a while. It doesn't take much to get the stimulus. Okay, next little study. It's kind of fun to use canyons to talk about different training principles and studies. My Strava title from Saturday, which is this was said in the phrase of baby got back by Sir Mix A Lot. Second podcast in a lower, we mentioned this song, which is I got this California quads and the Boulder booty. Oh yeah. Well, you also got the Boulder lungs too. Yeah, so I got the Boulder lungs, the Boulder booty, but I did not have the California quads until we came out here. And I'm very glad you had your PhD defense because I got to get out here and get on the trails, which are very different. They're so quick and so much pounding on the body. I'm very glad we don't live in California anymore because I don't know. I think one mile in California, what is it? One mile in Boulder is 1.5 miles in California. Totally agreed. Yeah. But then also the California miles beat up the body more. They're like meat tenderizers on the downhill. Yeah. I feel like you came out here and your quads were well done. Yeah. The entire trip. Totally tenderized. And I think it's the nature of the trails are so firm. They're so steep. They're so fast. So you can just rip sub five minute miles down really steep hard fast trails. Yeah. And so I got way more sore from my 15-13 back-to-back taper runs than I usually did from anything else. And that brings up a 2022 study in the European Journal of Applied Physiology. There's a lot of cool studies like this that all show similar things. Actually, as we were preparing for this podcast, I was like, I feel like we've done the same study five times, but they've in fact been different studies that have all found the same thing. So you know science is coalescing in a good spot. Yeah. And they're often in the European Journal of Physiology from this same research group. Yeah. I feel like if you find something, just run with it. Yeah. So they took 11 male participants and they had them do two bouts of 30-minute downhill treadmill running. And they looked at the subsequent duty factor and mechanics from the first belt to the second belt. And that type of study design is really interesting because it's just one stimulus. It's like, how can the body possibly respond in one stimulus? And that's what so cool about the repeated bout of fact is it only takes one often to start to see huge results. So in general, this is a quote from the study, participants ran with an increased duty factor toward the end of each running bout. So that means that their feet stayed on the ground longer. Okay. Duty factor? I love that term. It is the best term. As I was tip-toing downhill and you saw me being a noob in the forest on that like 30% downhill that I was trying not to break my pelvis on, I was like duty factor. Yeah. Yeah. You were a nooby factor with a high duty factor. However, increases in duty factor during the second run were only 5% compared to the first run, which were 9%. Significant reductions in leg stiffness and joint quasi stiffness were observed during the downhill run one, but not during the downhill run two. Furthermore, downhill run two was associated with less energy absorption and energy generation than downhill run one. So in other words, these athletes were using less energy, but also absorbing less energy to go the same speed after just one set of 30 minutes downhill. And so I think the big lesson here is that these downhill stimuli are something to constantly think about in your training approach. Not just like right before race, though that is the time, even in your taper to make sure you're dialed in with the types of downhills you're going to be running, but also anytime in the four to eight weeks before your races, especially very steep races, like your downhill fitness can improve with one stimuli. Your aerobic fitness takes months, years to develop. And so work on that aerobic fitness in the background, but as you get close to races, specific specific specific specific say that five times. I felt like a snake that couldn't read. That's my existence a lot of it. But I think actually what I find fascinating is just like the range of different stimuli that produce this. So I'd be curious if they did these two treadmill bouts, and then they ran downhill on like the UTMB course, which is very steep, very technical, quite different than a treadmill and measured like, you know, how ready those athletes were for that downhill. And my bet is it would be way less than if they had run on the UTMB course. And I think the general recommendation is if you can get to a place early to be on terrain, that mimics the race that you're going to do do it. Because even like one or two sessions on similar terrain goes a long way. Yeah, I mean, my legs got sore after the first California run. And even though my fitness is by far better than it's ever been, that soreness after 15 and a half mile or indicates that if that happened in a race, I'd be done by the end. You know, it definitely wouldn't work. So now it might not work for other reasons, but it won't be that. Well, I am so sore right now from the race yesterday. Every time I like get up and move around, I'm like, oof, it sounds like, yeah, I sound like a, it's, I sound like a drama queen. Yeah, I like it. You know, right now you're wearing your, your nursing bra, and I was thinking, you're new with boobs. Yeah, with small boobs. No, they're not at all. They're powerful boobs. We're re-contextualizing. Yes. Because we're doing framework. We're drawing an arrow to powerful, small. And finally, I went to end with a range of probabilities discussions. So, you know, one thing with, as coaches and as athletes, is that every race we enter into, there's a range of probabilities we're not aware of. Yeah. Often after the fact something happens and we're like, oh, well, that's the thing that would have happened a hundred times if we ran this race a hundred times. In reality, sometimes it would be 90 times. Sometimes it would be two times, whether that's a DNF or a win. We've had that happen with athletes that win big international races. It's like, oh, that they might have won that race five times, or they would have won that race 95 times, and they didn't, they DNF'd for some reason beyond their control. Well, I think what's hard though, is if you use those range of probabilities, especially if they're at their low end, to draw conclusions for future races. And I think if you win a race, great, embrace that swag, bring that range of probabilities to future races. But if it's a tough day, I feel like sometimes athletes like try to rethink all of training from a very small range of probabilities. Like perhaps they're really set up for a good day. And I think like take that into account when you're thinking about future training and racing. Okay, so Coach Megan, I'm putting you on the spot. Oh shit. After your incredibly uplifting weekend, here's some stressful question. What do you think my range of probabilities is for Kenyans? I would never, in my existence as a coach, answer this for any athlete but you. But I feel like you know, I'm chill about it. You haven't evolved for a second. I don't care. It's also a great source of content. I'm doing this for the content, David, but my athletes out there, I would never answer this question. Daddy, give me the content. I'm only going to print it in the positive though. I think there's a 30% chance you get golden ticket, perhaps even higher. Wow. Yeah. Okay. What's my chance of DNFing? Not answering that. Oh, you're not answering that. I answered one. Yeah. I like it. What do you think? Oh, I'm flipping it. Okay, I think lower chance for sure for top two or podium. Probably, I think, yeah, the lower chance, but still there. Why? I mean, Megan, like, I'm truly stepping into the unknown here. You're an evolved brontosaurus, man. I'm an evolved brontosaurus. Hidden, there's 90 degree temperatures with swag. Yes. Yeah. You know, it's a bad thing when as a coach that is like, I got a text from Clara Gallagher this week is one of the best in the world. And she's like, David, here's advice. And she just gave advice that I gave her for my hand in last year and like do this. And it was an amazing message, you know, like an amazing content. But I found myself thinking, I'm not going to follow that advice. Instead, what I'm going to do is try to get as far as I can before it gets hot. And I'm like, that's the worst strategy ever. But my brain is really thinking that. So in other words, I think that there's things I need to learn as always, there's a learning curve unless you're Adam Peterman, or Kim Waltsley, or Courtney to Walter or whatever, like, but you're David Roach. You're an evolved brontosaurus with tenderized quads. Yeah. You are David Roach. You can do it. I'm a beef Wellington with big dreams. Yeah. So we'll see. I think that there's probably a 50% chance of DNF. No, no, no, no. But I do think you need to. I think I will say this. I think there's a 20% chance I win. Yeah, I agree. I think though, for your own performance, you need to lower that range of probabilities in your head. I don't think it's healthy for you to go into race and be like, there's a 50% chance I'm going to drop out because you're just manifesting it at that point. Okay. This is my dream board. Yes. Yeah. We got it. We got a dream board. But no, I think the range of probabilities is objective though. Yeah, I agree. But I think there's, I mean, I think there's a range as a coach, as a coach, you have your own range of probabilities. And then the way you want an athlete to think is, and this is actually genuine, you want an athlete to think, fuck it, I'm going to crush essentially when they get to the start line. And that's how I'll be, you know, I'm going to give it my all. And I say that as like DNF thing would only happen if I kind of think my health is at risk. Yeah. And like, I want to be able to adventure all summer with you. This is not a death before DNF situation. I don't think it ever should be for athletes. Oh, yeah. But like, especially for me right now. Yeah. So, you know, I do think that there's an interesting way to think about it. And the way I'm going to try to think about it is whatever emotions I have is trying to optimize my mental state as much as possible because the physical stuff is going to be beyond my control outside of the logistics of fueling and cooling and stuff like that. Well, I think I'm going to push back against actually that probability of DNF. It's now coming to me. I have dream board at how I'm going to respond to this because I think when you have a range of probabilities of winning, there's, you know, there's you're thinking about strategy to go into that. But I think there's also strategy that goes into avoiding a DNF and finishing a race. And I think we should set you up with a range of probabilities that doesn't put you at a 50% chance of DNF. That would be a dumb way to race, to be honest with you. Like, I think when we combine how you're going to race, I think lowering the DNF probability, like sure, if you're in the DNF and lowering the win probability is probably the best way to race it. No, but I think lowering your DNF probability is going to elevate your win probability. I'm saying there's an inverse relationship. No, no chance for me, though. This is the problem. No, but I think if you go out smart and you don't try to cram as many miles in while it's cool, I think you're going to lower your DNF probability, but also raise your win probability. I disagree with the win part because I think it's going to, someone will survive the front. So the question is, do you race to win or do you race not to DNF? And I think that that is a tough question in internationally competitive races nowadays. I think it's different in a race in 100k that's going to be 90 degrees. True. Yes. But I think it's also, I don't have the fitness of some of the people that can race conservatively. I'm not Drew Holman or Claire Gallagher. But you've done all your training runs with Drew Holman. You're functionally Drew Holman. You're about as correlated to Drew Holman as it's going to get. Okay. You got high correlation to Drew Holman, man. Okay. So we got noobs, boobs, and Drews. And finally, I think I'm going to try to think about my dopamine, my brain context. Yeah. Even though I have that understanding, which you can't avoid, like you have to be realistic about yourself because I live in this body. I also want to be so hopeful and so kind to myself throughout the process. And this brings us to a dopamine and exertion study. I'm not sure how exactly related it is, but it's fascinating. This was 2023 in nature. And it was actually testing Parkinson's patients. And this is a quote from the study. To test dopamine's role in the translation of effortful exertion and assessments of effort, we had participants with Parkinson's disease and dopamine depleted and elevated states. Exert levels of physical exertion and retrospectively assess how much effort they exerted. And this Parkinson's population is fascinating actually because you can modulate dopamine levels through medications and the impact that it has. And I was a little skeptical at first because I think we're going to broaden this out into how this relates to performance and to athletes, which is like massive fundamental leap. And I was like, oh, I don't know about this. We have a lot of studies to go. But I do think, I mean, I think if you think about the underlying neurobiology of dopamine, it makes sense that we might be able to make this logical leap. Yeah, you push back in to study a little bit, but the researchers also made these leaps. Like they were saying that this will have implications for the broader population. So the basic finding was that in a dopamine depleted state, participants exhibited increased exertion variability, over reported their levels of exertion, and the increased exertion availability with associated with less accurate effort assessment and dopamine had a protective effect on this. And finally, it essentially just corrupted all assessments of their effort and made them think they were going harder than they were. And so, you know, that's something to, and this isn't happening in a vacuum, right? Like there's tons of stuff on this. Dopamine Nation, the amazing book by Anna Lemke gets into it with how dopamine influences exercise performance, via perception of effort and how the brain works. So, you know, we can't necessarily control our dopamine levels all the time, but whatever cycles I can control, I'm going to try to. Well, it's fascinating to think about the connection. I think we can safely say that dopamine might be connected to RP. And I think that's really fascinating, actually. And for a long time, we've known in research that dopamine is related to motivation through reward pathways. And it's interesting to think about kind of this potential outside linkage in terms of RPE and effort that might be outside of pure like motivation and reward. And maybe dopamine also applies to the discussion we had earlier about emotional state. Though I don't know exactly what how short-term correlations with that type of neurotransmitter work, but just fascinating stuff out there on how brain impacts all this. And especially for someone like me, the studies on heat have often talked about how self-talk plays a bigger role in heat than in temperate conditions, because the brain plays a much bigger role. And so that's the thing I'm going to try to harness and use this as an experiment of is like, how when things get hard, can I respond? You're going to get that dopamine? I'm going to get that hardness. I'm going to stay so hard out there. How are you going to mean? Is there like one particular strategy that you're going to use to get that? I mean, it's not as easy. Again, like we're talking about things that are sometimes easier said than done. How are you going to do it? Well, how did you ground yourself when you were doing your presentation to get the fun in the process? Just I think locking into flow state, reminding myself of the preparation and clutching Leo really tight, be like, I created this 14 pound motherfucker. I played a much smaller role in creation, maybe like give myself 10 seconds worth of the role of creation. Can I still count it? It was a solid 20 minutes. Okay. Good. High five. But yeah, no, that's exactly it. For me, it's love, right? Yeah. Unless I want to, you know, get an argument with you before the race and make you threaten divorce or something and channel to anger, like that for me is the empower emotions, love and humor, you know, and so I'm going to try to be a goofy motherfucker out there, have fun. And no matter what, if you're out there, just know I'll be like, no matter what, I'm just so thankful for you all. Like all the listeners out there who've sent things and like, I know you're out there supporting me at the race this weekend. We got so many podcast listeners come up. Oh, so fun. Yeah. It was the coolest thing ever. And I'm like, that's why I want to be there is for the community. All this result based stuff. It's because it's just, it adds meaning to the process. But like, main thing I want to do is just get to engage with this community more and get to travel the world with you and race fun races. Oh, it's so fun. This weekend was an out and back race. And so I got to run back through almost the entire field of athletes. And there were so many wahoos and hazazs out there. And it was, I'm so excited for you to experience that. Okay. If you guys see me, please yell hazah on the trails. That's exactly what I need. Okay. And it also, the thing we recommend the most right now, and this is kind of relevant for me because, you know, I assume at any big race, like you need to make sure that you're not taking any band substance that might be contaminated in a supplement. Yeah. And athletic greens is where I go for that as I approach this type of thing. And it gives me that big hazah energy. So athletic greens.com slash swap SWP. It is NSF certified for sport, which is so important as we think about things like doping, because a lot of supplements are contaminated. And so this has everything you need. And my favorite thing is it's the only supplement that is, you know, NSF certified that also has ashwagandha, which decreases stress, helps you deal with these, some of these emotional stimuli. So we are a huge athletic greens fans. A lot of our pros take it and they take it partially because it's certified and partially because it really works. And I'm the ultimate skeptic as you probably recognize from like five minutes of this podcast. But I'm truly baffled by how athletic greens work. It's works. It's like a magical green powder that improves performance and energy. And I can't believe I'm stringing those words together. It gives me mild anxiety, but I'm baffled. Well, I took two packets of it. So I have the travel packs. I'm taking two packs all day this week until Friday. And then I'm not going to take any because I want to make sure nothing goes into my GI tract on Friday that will be excessive. That's also a thing with canyons that's interesting. It's a five AM start. So I'm already, I fully know that I'm going to have to go to the bathroom at least twice on the trails. Well, I love how you were talking about athletic greens, like, you know, being rid of contaminated and contaminated products, but it's contaminated our existence because I feel like when you make it, you always like the residue of athletic greens stays on our spoons. And I was eating chicken noodle soup the other day and it tasted 100% like athletic greens. And I was like, what is this shit? It's contaminated all of our spoons, all of our existence. It's like taking over our house like this mold that's encroaching on us. It's not good. So your chicken noodle soup tasted like adaptation? Yeah, it tasted like the good magical green stuff and like shit at the next time. Okay. And then a little training topic here, kind of maybe big training topic, we'll see is on the lactate shuttle. We talked about lactate a lot recently. I think this is kind of how the entire framework of fatigue is now being understood in exercise physiology. And this is a process that has really developed over a few decades. So starting in the 1980s, moving into the 1990s, and then into 2000s, and now even now being put into training theory, as there became evolving understandings of this molecule. And whenever we talk about heart rate or heart rate zones, or thinking about even like the Norwegian model of training, it's all centered around lactate. So I think it's helpful to kind of do a deep dive in a primary on like, what is lactate? Why does it matter? And like, how is the field evolved, which I think is really fun from a scientific perspective. Yeah. And so this is in the context of a great article by Dr. Howard Looks. And we're going to share this on Instagram stories after the podcast comes out. So make sure you check that out. And he's actually an MD. He's an orthopedic surgeon. And I think it's kind of cool how like, you know, MDs can think about exercise physiology. I mean, like human disease is essentially exercise physiology gone wrong. And I think it's really cool that he's chimed in on this. Yeah. And I mean, I think sometimes people that are really smart and have a baseline understanding of science outside of the specific field are sometimes the best at explanation. So even though Dr. Howard Looks hasn't done the actual research that he's citing, I find that his explanations are the best for a baseline understanding of how this works for the layperson that just wants an under like a general knowledge of it. And then you can go down deeper rabbit holes and find all the complications that he would also know and acknowledge. But he creates like infographics and things that I absolutely love. And so he broke it down. So he started by and we'll just get to the baseline definition of lactate. So lactate is essentially a fuel source for cells. We say this on here all the time. It's not the boogie man. It was like put out to be, but rather we use it as fuel for ourselves. And it's the accompaniment of the hydrogen ion that changes the pH of muscles that makes it lactate have that classic like burn effect that we associate with negative impacts. Yeah. So lactate is correlate correlative with fatigue, but not causative of fatigue. Exactly. And at baseline, we all have lactate levels that are relatively that are there. Often you'll see graphs and this is measured in millimoles per liter. It'll usually be between one and 1.5 at rest. Then as an athlete starts exercising at a low level, that lactate actually can go down after 10 or 20 minutes. It's one reason that we recommend warm-up to athletes even for very long races. Once you turn your aerobic system on and with a low heart rate, you can actually stabilize your physiology. And so it'll often go to 0.8 or whatever if you look at these lactate curves. And then once you hit LT1, so your aerobic threshold essentially top end of zone two, lactate starts to go up. And then once the lactate shuttle mechanism, which we're going to get into a second is overwhelmed, that's your traditional lactate threshold where your body can't clear lactate as fast as you're producing it and fatigue mounts up rapidly. And so improving this whole processing ratio with lactate is the baseline of fitness for any event because it's all what is associated with fatigue and cellular level function during intense exercise. And I think historically before I like dove into this and really studied it, I always had the misconception that like our training and our exercise, we were just reducing the amount of lactate that we produced. But that's not actually the reality. Like there's a lot of different ways in which exercise helps us process and metabolize the lactate. So I think we can kind of break this down into three different silos. So one is we can have and develop better and stronger mitochondria to process the lactate. And that becomes really helpful in terms of using lactate as a fuel source. We can get more shuttles to clear the lactate. And we've talked about that actually in recent podcast episodes. And then the third point is we can build more resilience so the body can get better at handling and even like perceptions of RPE and effort at higher lactate levels. Yeah, and that gets back to what the third thing is kind of what you thought all that was. And I think most athletes think all of it is. It's like you go really hard to get better at handling the high levels of lactate. And that's the lesser of the third. That's the one that happens quickly. The mitochondria and the shuttles are ones that are developed long term. And that's why intensity controlled training is so important. But the scientific context here is so cool. When you go back and look at Google Scholar and see the evolution of the field. So a 2002 study in biochemical society transactions, I'm really struggling with my S's today. It's hard. You're getting into practice. Yeah, I do. I'm a snake that can't really operate at the moment. We'll get back to Harry Potter and to be a Slytherin snake. Slytherin snake. You have no idea what that is. You never read it, but you can practice. Well, I'll be a Slytherin snake. And I'll absolutely love and support and uplift inclusion of all people. Which is the opposite of Slytherin. Slytherins are known as like. No, I think Slytherins are going to be. They've come around. If the creator of the thing thought that, I think we can rehabilitate the images. I don't even know what that is. It's called lactate shuttles in nature. And here's a quote from it. The presence of cell to cell and intracellular lactate shuttles gives rise to the notion that glycolytic, so more intense, and oxidative pathways, so aerobic, can be viewed as linked as a post-alternative processes. Because lactate, the product of one pathway, is the substrate of the other. So in other words, lactate isn't just intensity. Lactate is also low intensity. And they started to realize this, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. And that led to a 2018 review that's my favorite in this field called the science and translation of lactate shuttle theory. This is by George Brooks, who is one of the preeminent scholars that developed all of our understanding of lactate. And essentially, it just talks about how the shuttle itself is maybe the most important thing, because we're all producing an amount of lactate as we exercise that can go up a lot, but very efficient athletes who are robically skilled from low intensity training use that lactate much more rapidly. So they're creating it, using it, creating it, using it, creating it, using it. They're not really reducing their creation rates that much, though it does get reduced. It's more than just getting shuttled out real fast. And I think as we're talking about the evolution of the lactate field, we cannot leave out in Jio San Milan. So he's a researcher at CU School of Medicine. And he looks at lactate both in terms of exercise physiology. And then we've talked about another podcast, like also cancer metabolism. And it gets up the idea too, that these lactate processes are happening in the background, in our body, without even exercising. But I'm fascinated about the links between how athletes might respond to cancer treatments and the potential impact of potentially having athletes at lower risk for cancer, because their ability to clear lactate and process lactate is higher. That'll be a really fascinating area of the research, as it evolves. I mean, we're just questioning. At this point, it's like true hypothesizing, but it's fascinating to think about how I love when exercise physiology comes back to human biology, like in terms of chronic disease states and cancer and things like that, it's so cool. Yeah. And so the shuttle all comes down to essentially your type 1 fibers in your midi-contra. So your slow-twitch fibers in your midi-contra. And Luke's article really does this well, and how it relates to pyruvate. But what that means in practice for everybody is the reason that so much of this is based on low intensity and intensity control, is that as you start to overwhelm the shuttle, you also make the context less productive for the midi-contria, as we talked about before, with some of the signaling mechanisms. And you start to recruit more of your faster twitch muscle fibers, which are never going to be that efficient at this. And so it's not something you want to do outside of things that have a good mechanical stimulus. And you brought up the term pyruvate. I think we should maybe tease that out instead of just like toss it out there into the wind. But essentially what happens is when the rate of glycolysis increases, you create pyruvate. And that's either used as fuel or created and converted into lactate. And then that lactate can then be returned to the cell as fuel. And that happens via the lactate shuttle or the shuttle is overwhelmed. And the lactate is just dumped into the bloodstream. But pyruvate is always kind of that like intermediate step. Yeah. And the reason I love to think about this is, yeah, for elite athletes, this is really cool. And his quote on elite athletes is, elite runners don't produce less lactic acid than the average runner. They are better at clearing it and repurposing it for his intended use purpose as fuel. I love that part. But the part that I'm most fascinated by is that if you're out there and you're doing walks or whatever, anything that you're trying to push yourself at, you are using the same processes. And so thinking of yourself like all elite athletes, like you are an elite athlete if you use your body, I think really helps us find our power in athletics. And it also brings this all together because like whatever I feel at canyons, it's going to be exactly similar to someone that's out there on a two mile run in the heat, having some issues, right? And so harnessing this via keeping most of your intensity low, especially like 80 to 90%, I think can be massively important. And the more that we think about the lactate shuttle mechanism, the more we emphasize intensity control is your friend and only go to really high intensity when you're also doing really high output. Well, I think that's the coolest part of human physiology is that we don't have to produce like metric fock tons of lactate to get good at clearing it. Like we build the powerhouse to help clear and process and shuttle lactate without actually having to produce a lot of it, which is kind of fun because it's like we can do the hard work without having to do the really, really, really hard work. I mean, we need some of the really, really hard work, but it's in small percentage. Yeah, and I'm coaching my mom right now, who's 72 and we're 73, 72. And she's coming back from a heart scare. I think she have heart effect, something like that. And she's doing like 15 by one minute jogs right now. And it's the same principles. And so I'm trying to emphasize her mom, it doesn't have to hurt. It shouldn't hurt. Try to make sure athletics don't hurt. If you're out there, maybe that's the biggest message of all. Most things you do should not hurt. And the things that do hurt, you should make sure that they're really efficient, whether that's like an interval or a hillstride or something like that. And also too, cross training can be a great way to do this. Sometimes I feel like runners, it's like there's this level of feeling incredibly let down when you're cross-training, but you're still working in these same systems. I mean, perhaps you're not working in like the biomechanical like mechanisms of running, but you're still working with a lactate channel. And that's relevant and it's going to elevate you as an athlete. So like use it as a gift. Let's do it. Okay. How about GI training follow up? Well, do you want to get into actually Heather Jackson in cross training and then our cross training question? Okay, great. You did actually get into perfect segue there. I was trying to transition and bring you along and I was like, follow my thought pattern, man. But I wanted to do the GI, but we're going to miss it today. They'll have to wait till next week. Okay. So Heather Jackson, she is an incredible athlete. She's triathlete initially. She's come into ultra running this year and has absolutely excel. She's crushed. I also like how she races. Like she puts it out there. She goes for it and it's really cool. Yeah. It's so cool. And so the big thing that happened for her is that she won the Belgian Waffle Ride, which is this really difficult race in is it gravel cycling or? It's gravel cycling. Yes. And it's a long distance gravel race. And she historically has not gravel cycled. So she's come in this year. She was an elite triathlete. Now she's in the gravel cycling. She was even at sea otter mountain biking. Yeah. And yeah, in the ultra space too. It's so wild. When an incredible athlete. And so she also was a podcast listener, which I- Hi Heather. Yeah. Heather, you're the best. We're so inspired by you. But I think it really brings up some interesting implications with cross training and running. And we want to talk about that really quickly because we get lots of great questions on this. And so here's a question from Patreon. As always, patreon.com slash swap SWIP support the podcast there. Another question related to running and cycling. A few podcasts ago, you talked about how runners can benefit from adding cycling cross training and how it only takes about two weeks to adjust to cycling workouts. Where whereas when transitioning from cycling to running, it takes about a year to adjust. I assume the transition from cycling to running is a lot longer because of the biomechanical stress of running. But I was wondering if there was more to it than that. As someone who bounces back and forth between prioritizing running and cycling, I was curious as to how slash if running benefits cycling performance. This is a great question. I think we're seeing this with Heather Jackson. I think running actually has a really nice outsize benefit on cycling. I feel like the aerobic impacts, the cut stuff we're talking about in terms of lactate shuttling. I think running is a efficient way to do that in a different stimulus. So that if cyclists add it, I think it helps elevate cycling. And they don't really know why. But it's pretty objective, objectively true at this point. At least with perhaps not like pro-tor riders that a little bit of running goes a long way into helping cycling. And a lot of running can really go a long way. And I don't know, we have some theories for why that is. And let's start thinking about the interplay between the two. The first is that biking can stress the metabolic system in ways that running cannot. You can go on a four hour ride. You can only go on so many four hour runs without breaking down. And if you do that type of running, you're just going to get slower as your biomechanical system increases. But on the bike, because the bike is doing a lot of the work or whatever cross training tool you have, you don't have that same type of breakdown. You can get a lot more metabolic stress. And as we talked about with lactate, that's all metabolic stress dependent. So it can really improve some of those processes. And I think I'd be curious to know actually to how running translates to something like road cycling versus gravel cycling or mountain biking. So my understanding is that sometimes in gravel cycling and mountain biking is you have these surges or lactate spikes that then your body has to recover from and clear. And I wonder if some of the mechanistic pathways of running better contribute to gravel biking and mountain biking because there's strength components, but also because there's more of a lactate clearance component. Yeah, I think that definitely could be the case. And yeah, I mean, it's really complicated though, because the reverse of how much does cycling help running? Yeah, not much. Yeah, I don't think it's that. Actually, I think it helps a ton. Well, it helps the aerobic system. But the problem is if you're not in the context they handle that impact, you can get kind of fucked by trying to mix the two too much. Well, I think for me, what it gets down to is if you're already a good runner, like you've already gone through the trials of miles, I think cycling can help a ton for running. But I think if we took a professional cyclist and was like, here, let's try to become a runner, it would be really hard. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I mean, the way I like to frame it is that cycling burns hot in a running fire. Oh, I love that. So the running fire needs to be burning for cycling to really work. So if you're someone out there that's trying to prioritize wants to be a good runner, but also wants to bike, make sure that you develop your running a little bit in a focus manner. And it doesn't take much cycling to be really good. And your intensity distribution in cycling can be geared more towards higher intensity than it can in running if you're doing small distance of it. So if you're only running once or twice per week, it's okay to spend a lot of time in zone two, zone three, maybe in some zone four. Whereas in running, you really need to be careful about intensity distribution no matter what volume you're doing. Like 80% plus needs to be zone one, zone two, or you're going to break down. Well, I love that analogy used about the fire burning, but I don't think it has to be actively burning. So I think, for example, we've seen runners that have gone through and done the trials of miles. And then perhaps they get injured, they have like a change of heart and they have a cycling period for a period of time. Usually they get back into running really well. It's like, as long as the fire burnt at one point, the body tends to have that like muscle memory and the biomechanical memory of it and can get back into it faster. So as always uplift, cross-straining. Like, don't worry about your running miles so much. I think it just the more we see, the more we realize it is a weak proxy. It is a solid proxy because it's the best one we have, but it is not the one that's actually the driver. So embrace every single cross-straining option you got. Yeah, we had dinner last night with Kate Courtney, which was fun. She was world champion non-biker. World champion, mountain biker. Very funny, great human dynamic. I loved her. She was like a total dynamo. But I think she runs two days a week. And I thought it was really interesting. I mean, it seems like she does that just to like stay in touch with it. But I'd be curious, how long do you think it would take Kate Courtney to be a great short runner? Oh, like a year. I would say six weeks. Yeah, six weeks. It depends what we mean by great. But like, you know, that type of engine is that type of engine. And usually it takes longer, right? But I don't know when you have that much worse power, probably doesn't take too long. Yeah, she's got a lot of worse power. Okay. One more question, actually, this is just going to be a second piece. It's a very simple answer. And we're going to keep it very narrow. I follow up question in response to your most recent podcast episode about fueling. I'm beginner triathlete and I have chronic GI distress. It feels like my body just doesn't want to process and absorb fuel while exercising. I have a long history with in disorders and disorder eating. So it was hard to make myself fuel during exercise in the first place. But now that I'm trying to do so, it's like my body doesn't know what to do with it and it rebels against me. I've tried different fuel sources and consistencies and training it over time. But my gut is just not a happy camper. Give me suggestions for how to train your gut to accept fuel during training and racing. Oh, this is like a question. Yeah. Yeah, the sounds, the sounds rough. The sounds honestly, like the mechanics of this are not fun. It's so hard, but just keep it simple. It's basically the idea here and reinforce it constantly. So, you know, often we talk about gut training and you're just like, oh, I'm going to do it periodically. It's like, no, every single run, even your 20 minute runs, take some gel. You want to take it all gel? Yeah. Take a little bit to start just enough to get used to it, but do it every single activity you ever do, including your hikes. Make it so that this is something that your gut and the cell lines and your gut are constantly exposed to. Yeah. And I think you can build that up methodically. Like take a little sips of gel and then build up to the point where you're taking one gel at once and sometimes like two gels at once, try to like, you know, as you get better and build, try to overdo it sometimes. Definitely. And then finally, at the end of some of your runs, like let's say a half mile or a mile to go because you don't want to do this too early and then have it implode your run. So you can always walk back at this point, plug a bunch of water. So, there's some studies on this in stomach comfort. I think that's one thing the listener struggles with. I'm talking like 30 big gulps. So you're taking a huge rehydration stimulus, but not overdoing it for health reasons right at the end and then running the last half mile or quarter. And eventually, you'll get to the point that it doesn't affect you as much. And that stomach comfort, I think, will go a long way for you being able to handle any sort of amount in your stomach. And I think finally, also to think about the background context of fueling. Yeah. So we know that low energy availability can cause GI inflammation. So I know this person mentioned here, the history of eating disorders, which I think is fascinating. But I think make sure to reduce as much GI inflammation as possible. So think about things like feeling your body properly, making sure you're not touching that low energy availability fire. Yeah. And for this listener, maybe in that context, triathletic greens, I know that that seems shilly. You don't have to use our code for it. Just because we have seen athletes that have some of these issues, have some success if they take it mid-day. Well, there's probiotics in there. Pro-exactly. It just seems to help gut health a little bit in some athletes, but take that for what it's worth. We want to make sure we don't mix business and pleasure. Okay. We're going to do this short one for listener corner right here. We have a longer listener corner that we'll say for next week. That's beautiful. But this one is on fueling as well. I always thought I was feeling low at about 50 grams per hour for my long runs, but would occasionally fade past three hours and get more prone to injuries. Slowly, I upped it to 70 grams per hour and really felt the benefit both during the run and on subsequent days. I thought, fuck it today. And I dialed it up to a comical 120 grams per hour like we talked about and felt like an absolute machine. Oh, yeah. Relatively speaking. You guys have proved to be legends once again. Oh, high five cheers to the podcast leading to fucking moments. Yeah, and 120 grams per hour. That's intense. I like it. And I like it. If you can get it, it's good. Is this a mail listener? Oh, yeah. Sometimes I do see this. It's a little bit easier in mail listeners. Yeah. Mail athletes, not just listeners. Our listeners are a special subset. Maybe because they did all those keg stands in college, bro. But yeah, I mean, it basically shows that a lot of what we consider endurance limitations are actually hydration or fueling limitations. It's something that I've had to learn and I'm going to have to really confront at canyons. It's like, especially hydration, as my beef welling, it's going to be super duper important. So if you're out there and you feel like you have those endurance limitations, try on a couple long runs on upcoming to increase your fuel to comical levels. And like, don't start right. We start at like 30 minutes or 40 minutes. And then see what happens. Don't go too far from your car in case it doesn't work for you. But what you might find is that you're like this listener and you feel like an absolute freakin machine. That's so amazing. Feed the machine. Feed the brontosaurus in your case. Yeah. Yeah. I hope you do something maybe not quite 120 grams per hour, but something similar to give yourself that range of probabilities. We'll see in that heat. Yeah. It's going to be a lot. What do you think I'm going to aim for? I'll try it in for 100%. That's a lot. Yeah. So to everyone out there, if you don't listen to our Patreon podcast on Friday, I'll see you on the other side of this adventure. It's going to be really fun. I promise I'll be happy no matter what. So if you're tracking and you see that guy go way off the back, totally happy and thrilled. Things are going to be okay as long as I live to see the next day. But most of all, just love you all. And Megan, I'm so fucking inspired by you in the like most genuine definition of that word of like seeing the things you have done in life and the things you have overcome. And the fact that your dark forests were so dark and you're out the other end and we're celebrating in the light, it brings me so much love and joy. Oh, thank you. Well, we're just two dinosaurs in the forest. It's really fun. And we can reach the top leaves because we got those long brontosaurus necks. Oh, shit. Oh, awesome. Well, my brontosaurus neck wants to wrap around your brontosaurus neck and tell you I love you. Oh, damn, that's creepy. Well, your brontosaurus neck, your brontosaurus back, your brontosaurus pussy, and your brontosaurus crack. All of me too. And we're working together. Our brontosaurus necks are bobbin. Huzzah! Woo hoo! Okay.