154. Spicy Hot Takes, Long-Term Training Studies, and Protein Powders!

Woo! Welcome to the Summer Call Play podcast. We are so happy to with you today. Happy Tuesday! It's Tuesday! And I'm over here feeling quite sore on this Tuesday. I actually caught like deliciously sore. Deliciously sore. Okay, so why is that? Because I saw you do a bunch of really cool things yesterday. You did a really big long run. You did strength work for the first time in quite a while. You did a hike with Leo. What is it that's making you quite sore? Well, I've decided actually that I've been sore after almost every holiday recently. Which is kind of fun. It's like this like post-holiday soreness. But we have this theory that on holidays we spend as much time as possible outside. Yeah. Then I usually have this like holiday doms hangover for a few days and it's great. Yeah, one good thing about doing a lot of the work on the computer is that basically every moment is recovery time. Like when we were traveling for canyons and then for your PhD and for the wedding and stuff I was on my feet a lot more and I'm like man standing around is way harder than sitting on the couch cushion all day long. So yesterday you did a lot of really impressive things as I was saying. But what I think might be making you the most sore is the hike we did with baby Leo. So we get out of the car and you immediately run out grab the little baby hiking backpack and like this is mine because I want the strength gains from carrying this kettlebell. We're having this endless battle in our relationship over who gets to carry Leo in our hiking backpack because there are quad gains associated with it and it's like I don't know we're debating and I think kind of coming out as the winner on these debates I'm like he's mine. I birthed him. I get to carry him now. I've literally never carried him once. You're just for stalling me from getting these gains Megan. What is up with that? I feel like our marriage vows should have said that we give the gains to the other person instead. You're hogging all the gains. I know I'm taking all the gains and I'm coming up with this like secret ploys as to how I can get more of them. Because I'm about to go grocery shopping later today and I'm like you know I should really just walk around with that back in the grocery store. Leo can hang out back there like checking out the pastas. So I have a mission to just bring that backpack with me wherever so these quad gains can stack up. I like it. It reminds me a lot of the places that have HOV lanes where you can go in these lanes if you have two or more people in your car and what I remember reading when I was a kid is that people would put crash test dummies in the past so they could ride with them. Similarly since I don't have a baby I can walk with because you won't let me take him I need to put like a baby shaped thing in a backpack so I can also match up your quad strength. That would be really fun. We should just get you a backpack with like a bunch of watermelons. Yeah but doesn't need to be baby shaped or will people just be like yeah that dude is carrying a watermelon. I mean Leo's kind of oddly shaped his head is pretty disproportionate. His head is in like the 80th percentile and his body weight is like in the fifth. Yeah so his head is I mean I feel like if we just put a watermelon and then like some sticks it would approximately. Yeah he's a short big headed king. His head is so large so maybe that's you know the key there is that you birth a baby with such a large head and it gives you extra quad strength gains and pelvic for confidence. That's that's exactly where we're going but I actually think this one is because I did all of 12 minutes of strength training which is a lot for me at these days I'm like building back I'm actually excited to dive into strength training. But you're being careful with the autoimmune you don't want to cause like some sort of runaway inflammation process and so it was very cool to see you do it yesterday because you absolutely rocked it and it was you know I don't know it was even more impressive than carrying Leo's head. Oh thank you I actually felt pretty good doing it I hadn't done strength work in actually an embarrassing amount of time. I was finishing up my PhD things got busy I got put on the back bar. Are your listeners understand? Yeah but I think like 12 minutes of strength work is actually pretty generous because I was I was in the kitchen doing like reverse lunges real lunges and I would just come over and hang out and sit with Leo for a bit so I think it actually probably amounted to like four minutes of strength training. Yes you're doing an adaptation of our upcoming ultra-exertine we have teased this for literally four months now but it's finally getting ready to be filmed and you'd crushed it but I did notice that you would do one exercise and then immediately just go sit down. Okay I respect it I respect the game even if I don't necessarily understand the physiological purpose of it so you did a really good job of drawing out 30 seconds of strength work into about 12 minutes. Yeah it's totally opposite my mindset with workouts like when I do workouts like between intervals and things like that I'm just this energizer bunny I'm like let's go it's time I can't stop moving my body when I do strength work I'm like you know I'm gonna Netflix and chill. It's gonna be real chill so I don't know I don't know why that is. It is shocking how easy it is to let strength work just kind of go by the wayside or Peter out or anything like that even me as like the ultimate strength guy if I don't finish it right after runs I'm just not gonna do it if I save it for the afternoon it's not gonna happen anyone that is able to put off their strength work till later in the day I'm like you are the ultimate motivation superstar. Those need to be our CEOs of the world. Yeah those people are like they're good at setting boundaries showing up I'm very impressed but my justification as Ben Leo is like a great form of strength work whether it's carrying him in the backpack or I just do all these like fun our emotions with Leo I'm like that parent that tries to throw him in the air except I'm too paranoid to actually release him into air or like do all kinds of crazy motions with him yeah. Yeah I wonder if that's something that happens at a certain point in parenting where you're comfortable throwing your child. Maybe the fourth child. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Yeah maybe when your bloodline is secure yeah exactly because like I was in target the other day and someone was basically treating their baby like one of those medicine ball workouts that you see where someone like bounces it against the ground and then throws it up against the wall and they're just doing this in the middle of target and I'm like okay I'm not quite there yet. His head seems a little bit too soft for that even though it is quite large so I don't know when that's gonna happen. Maybe when it gets a little bit older I'm also baffled by the people that like carry their kids on their shoulders. Yeah that would scare the shit out of me. Yeah it's so true so much to learn about the baby process and I hope that his head eventually reaches normal size. I hope he reaches watermelon size. I'm actually it'd be very interesting if his head just continues growing at this rate relative to the rest of his body because he's gonna look like one of those Pixar characters. Well eventually it's strength training so sports head so he's gonna be jacked. Yeah you remember the cartoon Hey Arnold? Oh yeah I love that cartoon. A really big football? Mm-hmm. That's kind of what Leo's is gonna be but with a beach ball. Okay we have the best episode for you in fact right before we were recording right this might be the best outline we've ever had. I'm so excited. I feel like I have this nervous excited energy for this because the topics are just so good. Yeah we have to do it justice. And I didn't want to mess up with the intro I'm like hopefully I don't say anything that turns people off because we have the ultimate turn on podcast. So here's a quick road map. We're gonna do a few shoe updates of just talking about shoes and our experiences with them. Some protein powder reviews responding to listener questions. Talk about a new review study on long-term training approaches that just came out this weekend. How are thoughts have evolved on workouts where our coaching is gone? And then my most excited topic is hot takes. Oh I like how you say that. Hot takes. Yes I was thinking that after we read each one we might have to say oh shit. So these are crowdsource from listeners and it's gonna be a new segment in the podcast. Then we have questions on sex function athletics. Why race photos are the absolute worst and possibly more. I'm so excited for all of this. I feel like we have our listener hot takes and our protein powder is basically gonna be hot takes. Yeah I have to review each one we should be like oh shit. And some of them make us go shit. Especially one of the ones we're gonna talk about in particular. So first just some follow-ups from Canyon's 100k. I'm deep in recovery and I thought that some of these observations might be interesting for athletes that are also going through like some acute stress and then recovery. The first is that my deep sleep is quite a bit lower than it was before the race. I don't know what exactly the mechanism is there. Probably has to do with some nervous system activation. In addition my resting heart rate is still a few beats elevated even after a good bit of recovery. So I'm gonna try to work through this. I think it points out how monitoring these variables might be good after a big acute stress. I'm particularly fascinated by the deep sleep variable and Leo has been crushing sleep. He's been doing so good. He has showed up like a big-headed king and has like absolutely crushed 12 hours of sleep at night. So that's not that variable. And I think I mean it do think it goes to show that perhaps you're just a little bit still like recovering from the race. But your resting heart rate is also curious to me too. And I wonder how much of that is a blood volume component. Because you know post-race you're not training quite so much you took a number of rest days and that does tend to drop blood volume. And so it's kind of the question of like is that recovery? Is that blood volume? Is that your body hasn't had as much aerobic activation recently? I'm curious. Yeah well the blood volume rationale that you're telling me is why I'm gonna happen this on a right after we record this because I stopped doing my heat training. And then as we've talked about we're huge fans of year round heat acclimation and blood volume theories for fitness. And I wonder if some of what I feel right now is not having to do with the race. It's just my blood volume has contracted a ton in the rest period. And as we talked about some of the studies should you can get 10 to 15% improvements in blood volume over just a few days of heat acclimation. So maybe all I need is a little bit of sauna and a little bit of chill time. I do think that will help. But basically you've been telling me you've been feeling like normal. You're like oh I feel great I feel so good. And then we recorded a Patreon podcast on Friday and you're kind of like I feel like shit. And I was like what a second to be. This is totally counter to the arguments we've been having or the like the discussions that we've been having as a coach athlete. It's the mic. Yeah the mic makes the truths come out. So what I was worried about last week in particular is that both my knees were quite sore. And this might be a thing to do with inflammation or just a unique stress of the 100k. And on Friday when we were recording the Patreon bonus episode I reached the ultimate fuck it moment. And as we were talking about with Grace and Murphy athletes sometimes need to reach the fuck it moment on like long term trajectories and sometimes with injuries. So I decided you know what I'm just gonna massage the shit out of this thing. So I after that I massage my knee for like 30 minutes with just my fingers. And then it was totally fine. Your fingers have magical powers. Like see I'm in many ways. Okay okay okay. Yeah. Yeah. Oh we just need to pause for a second. We'll do the hot takes. Oh shit. Oh shit. They have magical powers. But you've done that for my injuries too. And usually when you massage the shit out of it it goes away. Yeah and this is an interesting thought in general is that sometimes when you have soft tissue injuries some direct massage can be helpful. I usually like it more with like the foam roller or something that controls the effort. But you can't really foam roll your knee although I did try. Oh I believe it. I did try. And it's amazing how much sometimes that makes little things go away. So if you've reached a point with an injury where you're like a weekend you've tried. I went to a practitioner last week that didn't really help that much. And I'm just like oh I guess I'm just either gonna rest or do something. I just massage the hell out of it and it worked. Well I didn't think that was the intervention that you're going with. I thought it was the fact that you've been wearing this knee sleeve. Yeah I underneath the knee sleeve I think because to prevent shaving you've been putting fire and ice lubricant on your knee and then you have a knee sleeve and then you have compression socks. And you kind of look like you're a 95 year old guy just going out for a jog. It's an interesting look. So I was using the Trojan fire and ice lubricant. Or I just didn't know no it's a her pleasure lubricant. Oh yeah you're thinking about my pleasure. This thing is thinking. And the reason is just like this shit works amazingly. But it worked so well with the knee sleeve that the knee sleeve slipped off. And I'm like damn that is a good advertisement for Trojan her pleasure lubricant. And I was actually worried at canyons because I used it before I got drug tested for to prevent irritations and chafing. And I was like shit what is this stuff? Has the performance enhancing drug in it? Did you declare it? No no no. It's probably really funny. You're hilarious. You declared that Trojan her pleasure. No I did not declare it on the drug testing forum. Though perhaps I should have though it's just a silicon thing so it was fine. But do recommend that if you're one of those people that just no lubrication substance works for preventing chafing try it out. But I've been using the knee sleeve and embracing my 90 year old destiny because I know I'm going to be the 90 year old that runs in an e-braise really slow around the neighborhood. And that's kind of what I was doing this weekend. But one final little interesting lesson that made me reflect on that experience was at the end of my run yesterday like eight miles into it. I just decided to turn around and send it on one three minute hill segment. And I felt so good. And my body felt so great and it's kind of like a mind fuck in a good way most of the most of the time to be like my best event would be a two or three minute hill. And I just did a hundred K so I'm pretty proud of myself. Well can I share the context of this? So you got really excited about this segment and I thought it was really cool. Like your training success is my my life joy and it was Mother's Day yesterday. And so after you finish this run I got a text of just the picture of the segment with your crown and then underneath it you just said you're a sexy mom. And it was like your Mother's Day gift to me it was so great. It's the only gift I gave you. Yeah other than letting you carry Leo that's the only gift I gave you. And so that was interesting and also from a pure training perspective and we'll get into a little bit of this when we get to the review study. It was fascinating because this was my first like truly holy lactic interval in quite a while where I've just really pushed to the well. And I've been doing so many controlled intervals in the meantime. And what I noticed is I didn't really feel any pain on this. Like it was a very different feeling and I think it points out why lactate control training is so important even when you're doing shorter events like the 800 or the mile. Because it was very evident to me that my body was processing and clearing lactate in a much more efficient manner even though I haven't been producing that much lactate at any one time. So even if you're training for short events whether it's a mile the 5k the 10k still keep your intervals controlled because I think that that lactate clearance and processing and using it for fuel those mechanisms will really apply. Do you know why I think you weren't experiencing pain? Why? You had that fire nice super kids. You were fully fire nice. You couldn't feel anything. Dude that shit is good. People should try it out. You could only feel the pleasure of 185 heart rate. It was so fun. But it's actually I mean that is a curious point though because I find to when I'm coming into an effort rested as well. I find I can get my heart rate a lot higher. For me if I'm coming into an effort rested and I hit 185 heart rate it feels totally different than if I'm carrying a lot of fatigue or I'm like deep in a training block at that effort. Yeah and I think it's one of the reasons that if you look at college teams a lot of the times especially in the old days when the US based training systems were so focused on very very high intensity like hard 400s. Athletes would sometimes run their best times early season and then stagnate a little bit because they were doing lactate controlled training in the base period and then we're able as long as you're doing fast strides and enough fast work to be mechanically adapted they were able to absolutely fly in those short events and it was very cool because I felt that first hand because I have pushed this hill interval before and I went eight seconds faster than I did at a much younger age when I was I think more anaerobically fit. And it points out that aerobic fitness is everything. And it's one reason why I'm so excited to see your journey because you have focused so much on that zone one swag and now you know the strength work is a little preview of the remix that you're planning on some big dreams I think this year. Oh thank you I've never really done a zone one focus like I don't think I've had enough athletic patience to hit zone one like this morning I did a bike at 129 heart rate. Yeah which is unheard of for me and it's fun I actually I really truly enjoy the zone one stuff but I am starting to believe a little bit with training also starting to scheme some race plans I'm excited. Are you comfortable saying what those goals are you there yet? I haven't fully decided which races I'm gonna do once I decide I will but I think I'm debating right now I would love to get to OCC and Channenay this year and I don't have a ton of so you have to qualify now to get to OCC I do have a higher UTMB index score so it's very confusing we need a whole mind map as to how we can get to UTMB races but I think I can do speed go 50k and please please somewhere within like the top 15 and get to OCC so that's okay that's I haven't fully signed up for it yet but I would love to do that. Oh man our listeners are going to go crazy the fact that you're putting that out there this is so excited again. Well I haven't I mean I love fast races yeah and OCC and speed go to definitely more steep, verdy, mountainous terrain and it's kind of fun like I don't know I've seen I've worked with so many athletes that I've stepped outside the comfort zone you did that with Channen's Thunder K and I just want to try something new and different and I'm excited for that. Well I can't wait to see what happens based on how great you did in the 45 seconds of strength workout. You're ready to crush the mountains I'll say that much okay so let's get to the topics the first thing we're going to talk about is just some quick shoe notes because people a lot of people we have a lot of foot twins that listen to the podcast that agree with our shoe takes. So the first one that we've got a bunch of questions on for me is that I ran in the Hokkamafate Speed 4s at Canyons and they were fantastic. I loved them never once did I think about my feet the entire time whether it was you know running sub six minute miles downhill or you know hiking really fast like they really are a great all-around trail shoe and I recommend them very highly. And Hokkam crushed the advertising because they they describe them as shoes built for UTMB which is perfect because I feel like a lot of choruses now are starting to approximate UTMB choruses so it's kind of fun to have a shoe designed for that. They also remind me a lot of the Spigotivas. They're not quite there it's like describing a lover that you can never quite quite make again but I mean I think they're great shoes. Yeah Megan had a moment this weekend where she's like you know what I have a few pairs of Spigotivas somehow Megan hoarded a few of the final pairs she ordered them from France years ago and you're such a lucky bitch because you have these shoes that are so life changing. I'm just trying to catch that lightning that fire I once had with the Spigotivas in the Mafates and I really like the Mafates but nothing will ever match the Spigotivo. It does give me a little bit of anxiety though because I have these beautiful amazing shoes hanging out in the closet and I'm never going to get the opportunity to have those exact shoes again so I have to very specifically decide which runs I'm going to do with them and it has to be a special run when I'm wearing the Evo Spigots. Well I'll give you some confidence that I do think the Mafate is a great shoe. I don't think it's quite as fast but I think it's very durable. It's probably better for ankles at the end of the day. So if you're out there and looking for the type of shoe that you can go long in and feel comfortable in and they're still pretty fast I think we can officially endorse the Mafate speed for though I guess it's unofficial endorsement because Hoka doesn't we don't do anything with Hoka but yeah we recommend the shoe. Also order a half size down because I was going to order I actually did order the Mafates and Si7 and they were huge on me and I'm usually a Si7 in other shoes so I think if you're on the fence try a half size down. I don't have that issue so maybe it has to do more with like you know women's shoe or your particular foot size relative to the shoe because I have much more of the classic hobbit feet and Megan has the beautiful foot model feet so a little bit different boat there. Pregnancy I think actually sometimes changes foot structure. I don't think it has changed mind but maybe that's the reason why. Maybe I was pregnant. Okay the final one there is the shoe that you've liked recently which what is that? The Sockney Triumph. It's a it's a road shoe so it's a very similar build to the the Sockney endorphin speed threes which I love but they have a nylon plate so I'm like you know I don't want to run in those every single day. I want to kind of save those two to three times per week and I love the triumphs. I had a day where I was running trails on them in our backyard and I was like you know these trail shoes are eight thousand times better than the Nike's the gamma trail shoe and they're not even trail shoes. I call them trail shoes and they're road shoes. Some shots fired there. Trust the ball of the swoosh which I like. But yeah the Sockney Triumph I've recommended it to athletes based on your recommendation and a number have said that it's a great shoe that they had never really experimented with so pretty cool that you know I think that this could be that shoe that's in between like we used to love the Nike Pegasus and recommended it to everybody and they've just kind of done weird things with that shoe over time. I still like it. I just think it's a little bit more narrow and less cushioned like to me I feel like the Sockney Triumph is a great combination of cushion and speed and you can also I mean it's why the platform is wide enough to me that I can also wear it on trails. Yeah I like it. It's kind of got like a sleek feel but it can also go kind of fast and you know I don't know like it's kind of like if Tesla made a minivan. Oh I like that. Yeah. Yeah. Some tests sometimes look like minivans to me. Yeah. I'm also thought about that. Do you think every SUV is a minivan? I do. I think that SUVs just are minivans with good branding. That is an official position of David Roach. Well I thought the Sockney Triumphs were great trail shoes. Like these road shoes are gonna be great in trails and then I took them to the East Coast trails to the East Coast and I've blocked my ankle multiple times. Yeah so that was not great. Yeah we have learned that we need to tape Megan's ankles up so so so much that it's actually quite disturbing looking. You look like a mummy from the chin down. I don't know what's going on with my ankles. I think it might be breastfeeding actually which increases joint laxity but I have been trucking my ankles. Sometimes I'll be out there on a run and I'll just like think about it and I'll make this noise. I'll be spreading my ankle right now. Yeah you gotta get over that. You've got to get the you gotta get the just like swag that's okay to fuck your ankle every now and then. I know but you say every now and then I was doing it like three times a run. Yeah but you're able to get over it. Yeah. I mean I think that's a good message for ultra owners is that you have to accept that three times a year you're just gonna have a week off for ankle injuries and that's okay. Maybe you won't but accept that that's gonna happen and don't listen to a doctor unless you have a broken ankle. Every doctor is like oh that's gonna be six weeks. It's like okay a trowoner would never run if they waited six weeks for that ankle. Yeah well you say three times a year I'm three times a run. Yeah but that being said I am trying so you have a great video online on ankle taping and I've just added an extra layer of tape. I was like you know I really I call it gift wrapping my ankles. I'm like I'm gifting my ankles this tape because they need it and I'm basically triple gift wrapping. Yes well we use like athletic tape and like an off-brand KT tape. I feel like we should just start using duct tape. That's a great idea. Yeah it fixes everything. It does. I should just I mean at this point I should just have surgery and make my ankle like that's duct tape. Yeah like it's kind of like you know horse hooves or whatever they don't have the joint bending in the same way that humans do. So they never twist their ankle well if they do they need to be shot. Well if they do though they might fluck their legs. So I think it is important to be careful with that because if you think about like if you make your your ankle taping so tight you worry that if you do get your ankle that that stress goes all the way up like to the knee to the hip to other areas. Well let's do a decision tree on this. There's a 95% chance that you twist your ankle on a trail run right now versus a 1% chance that you need to be euthanized after a severe period. Which should you take Megan? Come on think about it. I'd rather give rat my ankles. Okay good and that's probably what we recommend everybody else. Okay quick discussion of protein powders. To start very seriously we wanted to say that we have seen in athletes that protein intake is one of the highest predictors of adaptation rate and we've become broken records with this over time. In fact we had dinner last night with paper hemming and EYMing who are two of the best troll owners in the world two of our athletes two of our closest friends and we were talking to them just trying to find out how they've reached this top level so quickly because we know their training we want to know everything because they are the example of athletes that we want others to emulate and we want to learn all their secrets. And among us among other things one of the things they mentioned is that they've really been focusing on their protein intake this winter and they think that it's really improved their adaptation. And I'm so inspired I'm like I'm on two times a day protein powder. Yes. And I'm doing it very diligently. It's kind of fun and exciting but it's also great to think about like what protein powders are putting into our body. How does it fit into the context of timing and it's I think it's a wild-less landscape of things for athletes to think about. Yeah so let's start with like what do you recommend for athletes when it comes to ingesting protein especially protein powders. I mean it depends on the athlete and depends on kind of their life schedule and how they're training but for me what I do is post-workout I always have protein powder. And then I try to have it again at some point later in the day whether that's right before bed. So having it right before bed has shown some research in terms of reducing cortisol levels and recovering adaptation or you know if I'm not doing that sometimes I'll toss it into the afternoon snack. Yeah so mid-afternoon I think is like the best insurance place. Like a lot of people don't love having protein powder. So mid-afternoon if you just don't want to have it after your workout is an okay place to do it. Just like a big heaping scoop of protein. But if you can right after you run is a great place to do it. We're the original proponents of protein cereal where you mix that sweet sweet chocolate checks or peanut butter checks in the protein. Oh peanut butter checks has been my jam recently. That stuff is good. It is so good. And in doing that right after exercising to be great but you don't have to do all that but what we've both found is that two protein shakes a day work great for us make it uncomplicated. Something very similar to like you can take it like a shot it's just hydration that you down and it's a supplement rather than a replacement. It can be so so so helpful. And that's been key for me because I love food. Like at the end of the day I want to be eating food. I don't want to be consuming like various powders. Like that's not my jam. So for me when I take protein powder I actually don't even mix it into a smoothie. I just drink it straight. Yeah. And I find that really helpful because then I can eat the delicious foods that I love and it becomes more of a supplement as opposed to like a meal replacement. Yeah and I think this is where it really comes in handy for athletes that are pushing their bodies to the limits. And for the longest time I feel like endurance athletes didn't consider themselves as power strength athletes. And what we're seeing whether it's in studies or in practice is that we are strength athletes which is why we encourage eating enough always and treating your body well because the power you generate perstride is what creates your speed. And I think a lot of that does come from you know the ability to get enough protein so that your muscles can get as strong as they can. So in generally we say like 100 plus grams a day all the way up to like a gram per pound of body weight even though that's probably at the high end you can generally get by with a little less. And we've seen you know this has all been done with nutritionists and working with them and that this is generally the recommendation that top athletic nutritionists are giving to elite athletes across the board and so I think everybody should do it. And when you have athletes doing the two times a day protein shake and for me what I do is I do a scent protein which is a whey protein mostly because I find it's delicious and it doesn't make me so full that I can't eat the food that I love. Yeah. Which is two times a day of whey protein. What do you tell athletes is like the gold standard of type of protein to consume and do you mix up that protein source if they are having two protein shakes a day? So I don't mess with all that because in general most of it like a whey it's a complete protein and all of the things we're going to talk about today for the most part are complete proteins because they mix protein. So let's just get straight to the reviews and that'll help I think. So the first one I was going to say is vega and I'll answer the question and then we'll get to it. So vega protein is plant-based and often those aren't complete proteins but they mix protein sources so that they do have a complete amino acid profile. And this is a really good one. It's still one of the ones I use and for whatever reason it really helps me feel good. It has a ton of protein and I think it's like 30 grams. But gotta say sometimes I don't look forward to drinking it. Yeah why is that? I don't know one it really fills me up. I don't know why that is. I have that same problem too. And two it's just like very thick. It's like THICC thick. It really pushes the limits of that. So yeah what are your thoughts on it? I think it's delicious. I think the mocha flavor is outstanding. Okay. And I think it's actually I think it mixes really well into smoothies. So I give it an A plus plus in terms of taste. Wow. That being said I give it like a D so I don't take vega because I have the same issue it makes me super full. Yeah. It's kind of like you know like when a snake swallows mouse and you can see it going all the way down or something. When I drink vega that's kind of how I feel. I'm like I feel like I have this like bolus or something that you can see externally on my body going down into my stomach. Good vocab word. Bolus. That's a yeah I'm out of court. I like it. So perfect. So try vega especially if you're a vegetarian athlete out there vegan athlete. It is a really good option. I think athletes perform really well on it. I think it's tough to do two a day. This is more of a one a day situation. Yeah. I think you can probably mix protein powders if you're gonna do this because again it is quite heavy and for me it does prevent it might actually reduce my total caloric intake slightly across the course of a day so I'm careful with it and I try to monitor okay I make sure I eat enough around it. Number two is what Megan mentioned a scent protein. She has turned me onto this one. It is amazing. It is so good. I got like the sir mix a lot protein because it mixes so well. It's like insane the level of like I don't know smoothness that you get from this protein the chocolate. It's delicious. Yeah the chocolate of this is definitely my favorite of any protein and it's super light and tasting and it goes down so easy and so especially if you're doing two a day this is the perfect like mid-afternoon protein because you drink it. It's almost just like a hydration drink and it's just kind of amazing and I also think whey protein has a lot of great science. I have a lot of the studies are on whey so think about that one. And for me I love so my favorite combination is chocolate ascent and then peanut butter checks and I just I kind of drink the checks which is an interesting way to consume checks but it's so delicious. Yeah you don't need any her pleasure rubricant when you're drinking that because you are just wet all over. It's just going down. I'm surprised we haven't found a way to puree peanut butter checks at this point for Leo. Oh he would love it. Oh he would love that. Let me take it apart. Yeah next up is gnarly. Gnarly makes these great proteins. Gnarly is a great company and we love supporting. How did you like those? I mean I like them. They were good. I wouldn't say it was ascent level. I struggled a little bit with the mixability of it. I felt like it still has kind of like drinking powder as it was going down and honestly I didn't love the smell but I think I've had athletes love it. It's great. I love gnarly cherry cola hydration mix is I drink it every single day. It's so good. So I love gnarly products. I just I'm picky. I'm a protein powder so this is a very honest review. Yeah but I love gnarly. And it points out for everyone that find what works for you because you know for us for example we're not going to take the time to use like a blender bottle or a blender or whatever. We just are like give me water or give me a protein give me spoon and maybe some checks. And so you know that really does start to matter. On the good tasting front momentous protein is pretty tasty. Oh that stuff is so good. It's also quite expensive. Delicious. It's worth it though. Oh it's so good. Oh I don't know Megan. I don't know if we'll ever go to college. Okay. By momentous protein. But it is very good and momentous is one of those places. If you're on the fence about you just don't like any protein powder try that one because a lot of athletes say it's their favorite. Can I talk about the worst tasting protein powder I've ever had in my life? Yeah what is it? It was Trader Joe's chocolate protein powder. It was horrible and I've loved it was the only Trader Joe's product to date that I haven't. I mean I love everything about Trader Joe's products and this was exquisitely terrible. Yeah it was horrible one it didn't mix at all. It didn't mix at all. It was like it was like consuming straight powder. So I mean I spent I I am not a vigorous mixer. I mixed for like 30 seconds and call it a day. I mixed this for a solid four minutes and I was still consuming straight powder. You know what it tasted like to me and this is going to be pretty gross is you like imagine a cow that's being milked right and so they're milked and then you wait 30 minutes and then you suck to get the dry part out. That's what it tastes like to me. Also is that physiologically appropriate? I feel like there's no dry part of the other. Also you probably just make one milk. Yeah all of that. Yeah yeah. Didn't really think through that analogy but I think people get the idea and actually on my drug testing sheet I had to list Trader Joe's protein. I was like oh shit that stuff was so bad. I don't know what they put in there. We took it on vacation and you can tell I was this is how committed I am to the protein bit. I just started eating the powder. I mean it was basically like I mean it was in the water but it wasn't mixing and I was like well you know I don't know if it still counts as protein powder if I'm just eating it without mixing it but that's what I was doing. It's like thin brown water and on top is dry brown cottage cheese. It was gross being what I did. I put in peanut butter checks and I tried to mix it and so they would get coated like in the powder and I was like you know maybe I'm eating muddy buddies. If you mix peanut butter checks and anything it might be redeemable right? Like you could put peanut butter checks in a landfill. I was gonna say a vial of shit. Yeah like a literal actual shit and I'd be like yeah it's kind of good. That's okay. That's pretty good. And that's why if I say something's bad that is my context is I'd probably eat shit covered in peanut butter peanut butter checks. If I say protein batter is bad it's horrific like that. Next up or gain I've heard a lot of people use this another one of those. I don't think I've had that. It's very sandy I'm not a huge fan. I mean it sounds like grow gain so I feel like I'd expect to grow some bicep and some hair. And then finally I want to talk about like the types you buy at GNC. There's a lot of these like optimum nutrition type stuff and they are often quite delicious but also scare me just a little bit because they often have a lot of little additives in it and all of these proteins have some sort of additives because unless you buy the purely naked stuff you know to make it taste okay they usually put stuff in it. But these have always scared me a little bit whenever I've done them particularly when I was younger I always just feel like a bodybuilder rather than a runner. I don't know if there's anything to that but I'd suggest trying one that is kind of a little bit more of a lifestyle brand than a GNC brand. A life like Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's is a lifestyle. And speaking of we talked about Trader Joe's a couple of weeks ago on the podcast where we said that we heard that they were required to compliment your food. Turns out that that is fake news at least according to a lot of our listeners who said that they have worked at Trader Joe's and it's just a place where every single cashier seems like they're down to fuck. They must have an amazing fuck culture there. I think that's when it comes back to actually I got excited when I heard that because I love Trader Joe's. And I was like oh man we're being scammed but no they actually want to bang me. I had more soft confidence after that. That is so good. Yeah why aren't there more like you know dramas rated our dramas set in Trader Joe's. Oh that would be so fun. Yeah instead of Bridgerton, Trader Joe's a ton. Like that would be so sexy. I don't know I feel like we have to do that. We totally have to do that. We have to have the Priton powder in there. That could be the basis. That could be the basis of the entire narrative. Looking at off-chair co-workers just. Okay let's get to the systematic review that just came out in sports medicine. This is a fascinating, fascinating topic. So here's the title. Long-term development of training characteristics and performance determining factors in elite slash international and world-class endurance athletes. A scoping review. I like the term a scoping review. Yeah I like it. So here is the goal of the authors to identify and evaluate existing research that describes the long-term development of training characteristics and performance determining factors in male and female endurance athletes. And to do that they looked at 17 peer review studies after screening 16,000 of these. They found some running studies but they also included swimming, rowing, biaathlone, paralentic swimming. That's very cool. Cross-country ski and triathlon. And in total out of all these 17 peer review studies they had 109 athletes and 27% of them were women which is quite low but I think it actually reflects the fact that like women are underrepresented in sports science. But there's a long tail on that underrepresentation because if you think about scoping reviews and systematic reviews and narrative reviews they're all they're all scraping like prior past literature. So if we're just now starting to catch up on female athlete research it's going to take a little bit of while for that to percolate into like systematic reviews and scoping reviews. Yeah and one of the most interesting things here is that the studies on women were generally single athlete case studies. So the entire study was based on that one female athlete in particular with one of the best female cross-country skiers of all time. Whereas the male studies were like hey here's 50 men. So it's interesting because I do think we can find just as many conclusions. And what the study found is that there wasn't a specific gender difference. Okay so let's get to the findings because this probably suits what you think but we're going to get some conclusions that we have for training and things afterward. So the first is that they found a non-linear year-to-year increase in training volume for most of the athletes but then resulted in a subsequent plateau. They found that it usually takes about 10 to 15 years of focus training to build up like this. And then often in athletes late 20s for these world-class athletes they plateaued with those numbers usually being 500 to 900 hours per year depending on the sport. And I think for me the non-linear component of that was the money ball component of this paper. So they found this non-linear increase in training volume and they found that it varied from 30 to 500 percent over periods that range from 2 to 17 years. That's a huge variability. And I feel like so often we hear from practitioners or coaches or like even just how we conceptualize training theory that you should only build up training volume you know 10 percent each year or these arbitrary numbers. When in reality you can actually do the trial of miles as long as you're doing it carefully and cautiously and methodically and have these non-linear jumps that add up. Yeah I think non-linear jumps as long as it's coming from easy training is kind of the secret to like non-linear endurance growth in general. Like where you're able to make that jump. So we're going to briefly maybe talk about the trial of miles later but the idea being that at some point in your athletic trajectory after you've built up enough of a base to be confident you're good on eating you understand your intensity distribution go for it. Just try kind of scary things and I think the study backs that up with real world practice. So only six of these case studies looked at training intensity distribution and what they found I think was curious so what they found was that most of the studies actually did have improvement in things like lactate threshold and peak performance but it wasn't happening through the lens of VO2 max so the development of VO2 max and like improving VO2 max was actually inconsistent across a lot of the studies. Yeah which aligns with how we think about training is that we're training to think about running economy and efficiency and sometimes we have VO2 related workouts but that's not the improving VO2 max isn't actually the end goal of those VO2 related workouts. Yeah definitely in one of the studies they looked at actually was on power act life which we've mentioned before so she was a long time world record holder in the marathon and they measured her VO2 max from when she was 18 all the way through the end of her career in her late 30s and it went down her VO2 max went down substantially but her running economy the amount of speed she was able to do at her VO2 max improved by 15 percent. So points out that a lot of these variables that are moving behind the scenes the physiological number is not what you want to drive. You want to drive essentially your power perstride that you're able to put out without using more oxygen and so that's why all of what we say about training theory essentially comes down to improving that power perstride number. Here's actually a quote from the authors on that VO2 max find it. This result provides further support for the concept that endurance performance improvements after the age of 18 to 20 years are primarily related to other factors than VO2 max such as improved fractional utilization of VO2 max and work economy slash efficiency. As always it's about running economy it really is that's what to focus on is how to make the same paces take less energy not to use more energy. And I love the freeze running economy but this study of course looked at other other components other than running so they had swimming and you know some of these other like Paralympic events and things like that. So I love that they call it work economy. In my head it's WERK, it's work work economy. Is that a running economy? Yeah it's very interesting. I actually went back and looked at some of the studies they were repeating at. The one on the Paralympic swimmer was fascinating because like it was one of the six studies that looked at training intensity distribution and what they find is in these elite athletes when we're talking about these big hour totals they're almost always doing like 90 percent of their training easy or up to study. And that's a lesson that okay if you're trying to increase any of these variables you really have to understand what easy is. Because if you try to do what the best are doing and what they have been shown to do over time without easy being truly easy you're going to get fucked and your body's not going to progress. Yeah it's the foundation for everything that we do. One question for you though so they have this caveat here so performance improvements after the age of 18 to 20 are primarily related to other factors than view to mass which we talked about that constantly on the podcast. What do you think about training prior to age 18 and developing and are you developing and building your VO2 max to help kind of raise that ceiling for the rest of life. How do you think about training younger than age 18? I don't think about the VO2 max at all whether it's for a young athlete or not. So you would apply these same principles to young athletes. Yeah because like we have a better term which is velocity of the VO2 max or speed. As long as you're training your speed or your power output none of that shit matters. In fact it might be a red herring that directs your training in the wrong direction. So like I was talking about with the short interval I did my VO2 max that was basically hard VO2 max interval maybe even a little higher than that and my performance was better than ever even though I've done basically zero VO2 max work outside of hill strides and in the point being that yeah because VO2 max isn't a driver that's just a genetic variable that gets adapted really quick. So yes we love short intervals but we love short intervals to improve mechanical output rather than to improve VO2 max. And I think the cool thing is that once you've done that training to improve mechanical output that has a long tail in terms of the body's adaptation and response and usually you can come back to that training quite quickly and I love the point that they made that you know they had these athletes were having non-linear increases in training volume but often that led to a plateau or even a decline in training volume and they were still able to maintain performance which I find fascinating because like once you do the trial miles or once you put in this volume you can often get back to that point without having to put in the same volume or the same amount of work. That's such a fascinating point like progressive overload forever is cancerous. It's just unrestrained growth. Actually it's literally almost like the definition of cancer. Yeah. Like run away, run away, chat like overload. Exactly. So you know for these athletes yes you you build up your training it's like what we've talked about with overload blocks in general but then you come back down to a baseline and that baseline might be higher than it was but don't think that the non-linear increases are the reality you have to inhabit to then maintain the benefits. Okay so three conclusions from us not from the authors. The first we talked about briefly which is take some risks with your training volume. Like if you have the time any bit counts it doesn't have to be running throwing some fuel in the fire in zone one is your friend. That 128 heart rate that Megan did on the bike is your friend. And I think you can do that in the second point is you can do that through cross-training. Yeah. So crushing is a great way to add volume without for me it's like an amazing insurance against getting injury but I'm thinking about those like zone one mitochondria gains and it's amazing. Yeah and then finally it's on the intense work. So view to max work is important to support these mechanical adaptations but you don't need much of it or much volume in individual sessions. So like focus when you're ever you're doing this focus on one your health but to your economy of motion. Like you should not be doing things like one minute intervals unless you feel pretty good and 25 one minute intervals is not better than 10 or 12 or 15 more efficient ones. Keep it efficient and then we can have the aerobic work coming from the controlled intervals the long runs the easy training and you mix all that together over the course of you know 18 years or whatever and you're able to see what you're capable of. I absolutely love the term that you just used economy of motion. Yeah. It feels like it belongs in a haiku or something. Yeah you put some her pleasure on it. So much economy of motion. Oh my gosh that's straight smooth motion. Yeah. Yeah there's there's no inflation in that economy. Actually no that economy is characterized by inflation. It's just run away inflation everywhere in the best way. So we want to use that to have a little check in on workouts. Do you still want to do this? Yeah I love this. Well I think our training philosophy has evolved quite a bit and I think it's as as coaches your training philosophy should be evolving because like you're gathering more data points from athletes the science keeps evolving and I think it's kind of we've only tweaked them in in sideways like I think our training philosophy since day one has largely been the same. Yeah but it's kind of fun to think about what tweaks we've made over time. Yeah it scares me whenever anyone hasn't fundamentally changed their approach or at least in ways that feel fundamental to them because I'm like you're not asking everybody right. Like so when we talk to Tabor and Eli the reason we talk to them is one they're incredibly smart they're incredible coaches themselves but two it's like what can we learn that will change our way of thinking that we don't know already. So even though we're giving them their miles and stuff we're also like what are you doing that might help all of these processes and so let's talk about workouts a little bit. First of all we wanted to check in on was on tempo and steady running after intervals. This is something that you've taught me and it was talked about briefly on the podcast before but I wanted to emphasize it again because I think it can be so helpful. So like doing a set of intervals and it doesn't have to be a ton that can be stuff like the O2 Max or something else and then just doing controlled quick running afterward. And it can be a little bit more unstructured. So for athletes I say something like go do our classic swap 5 by 3 minute hills and then sometimes I'll structure it as like a 15 minute tempo or just run back to the car a little bit faster. And I think after you do this set series of intervals having this slightly higher intensity and it doesn't have to be like crazy high intensity but slightly higher intensity. I think it helps with biomechanical output, helps with just learning to to run a little bit faster on tired legs. Yeah. Get some aerobic gains too. And it can prove sizzle. I think it really improves like fatigue resistance durability. Yeah. This is really highly characterized in cycling training nowadays where they'll do intervals or do harder efforts and then have like more steady state riding after. And similarly I think runners can benefit a lot from that. And the next up is I want to actually ask you hill strides or flash strides? What where are you at right now? You given hill strides or flash strides? I would say 90% hill strides. So an athlete to me they have to be super durable for me to give them like faster flat ground strides. Yeah. But hill strides I feel like they do so much between like the power and the speed output when you combine them together. I feel like they have a lot more bang for the buck than the block ground strides. I've reached the same conclusion. Yeah. So like I used to give so many flat strides when I started coaching. So like you know six by 20 seconds on flat ground or whatever. And over time I've just been like one it's a high injury risk. Because if you do enough of those eventually someone's going to pull a hamstring through bad form or just issues or hurt their calf muscle or whatever. And two like I think sometimes athletes just overrun them. And they get all of the stress of their mechanical system where they're just like flailing. And not enough of the stress of the power from that mechanical system. Like we're on hill strides the hill is making you put out more power. So I think both of us have probably come around a lot to hill strides being a bigger part of what we do. And so if you're out there and you're wondering like what you should do hill strides two to three times per week four to eight by 20 to 30 seconds fast up a hill can make a fundamental difference. You don't even need to worry about flash strides unless you find out later on that you're doing shorter races or you're really speed limited. Or I think even if someone's at really high altitude that's a case where I might use flat ground strides because it's easier to get the body rolling. Or an athlete. So if I have it like an athlete that's pretty bulletproof not super injury prone. And they're doing a big hill workout block. Sometimes I get flat ground strides because it's the best way to get in a little bit more turnover. If they're doing a big focus on hills already. Yeah and I still like to work it in for basically everybody unless they're really injury prone. It's just smaller for me it's smaller. Just a lot you don't it's like the VO2 discussion you don't need a ton of it right. Yeah. To be totally ready to use it. And that's a lot different than I used to think. And I give all caps like smooth. I'm basically nodding at them from the training law. These must be smooth. For flash Yeah on hill strides I found that athletes can sometimes like run hard. Like it's fine. You know once you adapt to it and you're used to it like you can get to the point that at the end of the stride you're like hammering a little bit. But on flash strides you cannot do that. Like it's just a different stress and if you do that it's going to end in disaster. Another training theory thing that I've been playing around a lot with too is doing a little bit of speed work before then going into threshold work. Yeah. So a great example of this could be like adding 8 by 1 minutes um before going into something like 4 by 5 minute tempos. And I think developing a little bit of lactate through that speed work and using it as like a biomechanical stimulus and then clearing that lactate in the tempo is a great way for the process for the body to start stacking on extra gains to the counts. I love that. I used to always say the speed comes after the threshold work right. So do bigger threshold sessions and then a little bit of speed at the end. And that has its place for sure and I still think that might be the most predominant way. But a good example is Grayson Murphy who we interviewed last week which she did a lot in this year before half marathon is she would get her speed stimulus via short intervals and then work directly into these controlled threshold sessions. And I think that that might improve how your body clears and processes lactate because you produce lactate then you have to use it. And that could have outside benefits. So play around with your timing and maybe that's the biggest lesson here of all is like your individual physiology might respond differently than you think. So like you know if you have 20 minutes of intervals break it up in unique ways, see what makes you feel better and what seems like it's most beneficial to you on the background of these principles we're talking about. Also do us kind of cool. What? So if we have you know tempo following intervals and speed before tempo it's kind of hard to go wrong. Yeah I like it. Thirstom stimuli at it. Throw everything against the wall and see what sticks. Which is basically training theory. As wild as it is on the background of these principles of mostly aerobic, mostly controlled, some hard. Then you just kind of play around and see what works. And I think the liberating thing about coaching is realizing that it's not like a specific thing that has to work. Like you can use a bunch of different approaches within that general framework. But the framework is starting to solidify. So yeah if someone's trying to sell you a wholly new approach or that other people are stupid, there's not paying attention. I think it just all gets down to speedplay. Yeah. It's like play with speed. Definitely. And play with it delicately and just a little bit in training and it helps a ton. Yeah no speed chafing. Yeah use the fire nice. Yeah have everything slipping off. Okay the final thing I actually wanted to ask you on is something that you've told me you've done with a couple athletes. Which are aerobic build periods before ultras. Where what do you do during the session? Those periods of time. So I found that athletes that respond really well to like aerobic rebuild weeks or aerobic blocks in training. Sometimes I layer four to five weeks before an ultra. I take away intense workouts. I still have strides. I still have kind of some of that like biomechanical output. And sometimes there might be a little bit of intensity on their long runs. But I found that athletes that are slower twits often slower twitch often respond really well to the structure. And it depends. For me it usually takes knowing an athlete for a long period of time to make sure they'll respond to this. But I've seen great results with it. So how about strides in those periods of time? I'll still use them. Yeah like six by thirty second and eight by thirty second hill strides. Sometimes I'll actually even give a little bit more strides during this period of time. Up to like 12 by 30 seconds. But I love I think the athletes that respond well to aerobic training like try playing with it a little bit before ultras. I mean ultras such a high percentage of aerobic time. And sometimes getting into those races like feeling aerobically primed. Yeah. Not overcooked. This is a great way. Well I've seen your athletes take over the world recently. I'm like what are you doing differently? And I love how much you've committed to this in certain instances. Not every instance. But it's. Oh use it sparingly. Yeah it's fascinating. For athletes that are slow twitch and have like responded exceptionally well to these aerobic periods before. It gets back to always be base building. Exactly. Yeah which is I mean usually athletes do that are slow twitch and I give them this before the race. It's kind of like the understand what makes them take in terms of their physiology. They get excited. But you know what's even more new and special? What? Hot takes. Oh shit. Oh shit it's time for hot takes. Okay so what we did is on our patreon we put up a call for people's spiciest takes. We said you don't even have to believe these. You just tell us things that sometimes you might kind of believe. So this is on patreon.com slash swap SWAP SWAP. There we do a 30 minute bonus episode every week. We're getting to 51 this week. So you have 1500 minutes of bonus podcasts built up of us answering questions which is really exciting. It's a great community there and we absolutely love getting your messages and everything else. I would say those podcasts are a lot like hot takes. Yeah. Yeah they're fun. It's like having a hot take dinner table conversation with us. Yeah and I mean I'm so pumped for this because I think this can be our new frontier of the podcast where every week we're going to do a few hot takes probably. Mostly from our patreon but if you have any that you like send them in. Our idea is to use them as chances to riff on whether we agree whether we don't. It'll have implications for training, life, other things perhaps. It doesn't have to be sports. You can send us in hot takes on anything. And what it's motivated by is the endless honeymoon podcast, which is a podcast I really like from comedians Moshe Kasha and Natasha Lajero where they have a secrets hotline where listeners call in and read out their deepest darkest secrets. We should do that too. We should do that. That would be really fun at some point. I feel like hot takes is a good intro because sometimes they read secrets and I'm like okay that's a little beyond my pay grade and a little intense. I know that scares me sometimes actually from like a liability standpoint but we could always alternate hot takes and secrets. We could but also too with these hot takes. I feel like there's gonna be there are gonna be a lot of jokes but there's actually a lot of science in some of these too. I imagine. I mean we haven't like prepped for this but I think as we go through and answer these there'll be some good training. Yeah so we have a bunch of hot takes here. We think you're gonna love them. So we're gonna start with the first one. Paying for designer running clothes is a scam that people get shamed into by Instagram. Oh shit. I actually want to counter this because I used to think the same way. Oh I did too. Yeah. And well a little less so than me because you always always when I met you you were already on the bandwagon of like have a couple nice things but I would just like run in whatever there was and then Google I'm in Senna some shit and I'm like oh my god my life is never gonna be the same. It's so good. I never realized just how important like 160 dollar sweatpants are. Their sweatpants are so expensive but they are so so good. Maybe I would feel differently if I didn't get sent them. I was gonna say we didn't buy them. I feel like I couldn't morally like walk into a store and buy that expensive amount of clothes but we got sent them and they are so good. They're life changing. I have a pair of Lulemon pants that I run in and I have worn it like probably 150 days this winter without washing them. Like I mean maybe washing them like four times. So I've gotten a lot of use out of them so that might point in favor of designer running clothes. We also have recently loved John G which is a great company by John G stuff they do amazing work in this world. But I think I'm gonna have to disagree with this hot take just slightly. Don't knock it until you've tried it but the key is only have like one pair and wear it into the ground because a lot of the time this stuff doesn't break down that much and you can wear it like in insane amount. That was gonna be my recommendation and have someone send it to you. Yeah. It's the only way that I can like somehow wear this stuff is is having someone send it to us. But also to you I'm really thrilled about your Lulemon collection because I had to have a serious intervention for you. You were wearing a onesie. The same onesie almost every single day and I thought I was gonna have to magically disappear. Yeah and it started to get holes all these different places. And like really awkward places. You would answer the door with like a hole in your onesie in a weird spot and I was like oh David I don't know about that. Lulemon would be in his playset and I would lean down to get him and I would essentially be tea bagging on a tile. Yeah it's not good. Yeah so this is very counter to me too because like for the longest time my clothes would be so threadbare. In fact I have a pair of khaki pants right now. You know how like sometimes the jeans get worn down at the knees and stuff. I have a pair of khaki pants that have two coals in the knees from wearing them too much. It's a new style you know ripped jeans. We just need ripped khaki. Yeah yeah. You should have worn them as a lawyer in the courtroom. Yeah my I'm not really about this but I would say try it. Try it. See what happens I think you might be changed. Or just wear the same 160 dollar pair of sweatpants every single day for the rest of your life. Yeah I'm basically planning on that. I love it. Until I'm tea bagging like all of our neighbors. Okay next up is a really controversial training one and here it is. Three zone model is greater than five zone model. Oh shit. I actually agree with this. I think I do too which is controversial. So as background three zone model means that all easy training is lumped together essentially below aerobic threshold. All moderate training goes up to lactate threshold or critical power, critical velocity and then zone three is just above that. Where's the five zone model breaks it down and I think that the five zone model necessarily doesn't have physiological reasons to be broken into five zones. It's just kind of like a convenient percentage zone model. So I'm going to say the three zone model used in research is what I like. I totally agree. I also in this show is why like I feel like sometimes when you come become deeply entrenched in a field you're just like what the fuck. Yeah. And we're entrenched we're deeply entrenched in exercise physiology but we're not like working in that field and I'm like why does this matter? It's all the same training stimulus. It is on the train. Well I don't know I think sometimes if you're starting to think you need to be at like a certain point in a five zone model it can become overwhelming. Exactly. Yeah. To understand where exactly the you know gradations are and if you're using the three zone model it gets so much easier because all you have to essentially know is here's my general place of threshold like my t-threshold. Here's my general place of cap of easy running and that's it. So I do like how much it simplifies things though maybe it simplifies too much. I yeah I agree. I don't know. Let's go to the next one. All right like this one. Not all trails require trail shoes. If it's not techie a comfy road shoe makes things so much more enjoyable. Yeah that's an oh shit moment. Do you agree? I agree. Well for the longest I mean okay road shoes have changed a little bit. I feel like back in the day like eight years ago road shoes were wider. They are basically like trail shoes in many different ways. I feel like now we've gotten this more like narrow speed for based version of road shoes. They're basically like all road shoes have like tons of great foam. Yeah. They don't perform as well on trails these days as they used to. I wonder if it's that or I wonder if we're just getting older or our ankles just need some more duct tape. And the old days I used to run a Nike lunar racers on the most rocky Pennsylvania trails. Like the trails that everyone's like beast coast watch out. You're so off down in Colorado and I was fine. I never thought twice about it. Yeah. And now I'm like I wear a pair of road shoes on our backyard tame little trails and I'm like ah my precious feet. I can't do it. So I wonder if the trails have changed I've gotten old or something else. I think it's a combination of everything. Okay but yeah you can if you like a pair of road shoes and they're nice and wide and have a little bit of traction. Try them on your trails especially if you're in a place like California like in California a good pair of road shoes that aren't too narrow you can take on any trail. And in like NorCal trails if there's a rock on trail you're like what's going on? This is technical. Yeah I mean for canoes I definitely could have used a road shoe that I like. I just don't have any road shoe right now that fits that mold but they used to exist. The old Nike Pegasus used to be amazing on trails and now it's too narrow. I would absolutely wreck my ankle. I could have wrecked my ankle on trail shoes. Yeah the old Nike Pegasus was like a Toyota Camry. It was reliable. You could take it almost anywhere for the most part. And the new Nike Pegasus is like one of the new Teslas that like spontaneously combusts. It just blows up when you turn on self-driving mode. Okay next one is actually this is an issue one. This is athletic greens does taste great. Oh oh shit. So okay Megan I have come around to it and I agree. Why is it because you're tasting your future of like longevity and health? Perhaps but you know how everyone says things change when you become a father? I think maybe my taste buds have changed and I've gotten more sophisticated. So athleticgreens.com slash swap SWAP SWAP. We have hated on the taste before. I'm coming around. I actually think it's the tastiest drink I'll have during a day and all I needed was to get my mind right. You would describe it as sophistication? Yeah it's so sophisticated. It has like layers of flavor. There's one layer that's like sweet. There's one flavor that's umami. There's one flavor that's landfill. Not landfill. It's more like earth. There's one flavor that's like a little bit like your backyard but it's good. It's good in the same way that like using turmeric is a spice is good. Oh I like that. Well I feel like Michelin star restaurants definitely have subtle hits of landfill and back here. Yeah exactly. So athletic greens we totally recommend it. We have seen it help adaptation. It has certified safer sport. It has so many good things. Basically when we ask our professional athletes what are you doing when they achieve these breakthroughs 95% of the time now they are taking athletic greens as their multivitamin. So remember it is essentially just a multivitamin that you take daily. We totally recommend it athleticgreens.com slash swap where I think you'll also learn. It's so tasty. I'm going to say it's a multivitamin that tastes delicious. It's like subtle undertones of landfill. Exactly. So that really well. Okay this one is more for you but I'll read it. All women's tight shorts should have the grippy stuff along the bottom of the leg hole. Enough with bunching up my hoo-hop. Not the vibe I'm going for while on my run. Someone should invent iron-ons. I totally cosign this. Okay I don't get it. What do you think? What do you think? What is your take? Well I think there's like anatomical gonadal differences here. So that like your situation when you're talking about tea bagging it prevents your shorts from coming up. Whereas I feel like for women it just starts riding all the way up and there's nothing to prevent that. What? I mean I don't understand why it needs to be tight then. Why can't it just be loose free hanging? What is loose and free hanging? The shorts. The shorts. I was like why are you not answering this? That was a very poor description. Why can't the shorts be loose and free hanging? I mean they're talking about spandok shorts. I know but why does everyone need spandex? Why can't everyone should wear just chill loose things that don't bunch up? Okay I totally agree on that but that's a different question. Okay this is a different question. It's a totally different question. But maybe this listener needs fire and ice. That's true. Yeah actually if you have fire and ice the shorts are going to be all the way up to your shoulders. Yeah actually they're going to go inside. Yes exactly. Total insertion. My take in general though is that spandex is so overrated. I don't get it. Yeah I go through various points. Sometimes I really like just like a solid pair of like corny-dewaltter shorts. They're amazing. Other times it is nice to feel like have spandex and feel like things are like compressed in there. Yeah well does that only to I'm going to skip ahead to a different distant one. Women deserve longer running short options complete with pockets. I saw that Solomon just came out with a short knee. Is it actually called a short knee? I think so. It's the corny-dewaltter shorts. Genius. I want them. Yeah I'm going to order them right now. Well actually I just take your shorts is how this works. I wear your clothes like those Lulu 100-60 dollar sweatpants that were yours. They're now mine. Well I've stolen many of your pairs of clothes too. What I should have learned is that the reason I was stealing your clothes is because they were actually good. Not hand me down to my father from 45 years ago. Those 1980s cotton like shirts and stuff. Not necessarily good for trading. Well we go back and forth. I love sleeping in those. Yeah they're great nightgowns. Great nightgowns. Great for all the various discharges that come out after you've been breastfeeding. Okay next hot take. This is actually a really important one. When someone drops from a race keep your unsolicited pity to yourself. 42 miles into my race I dropped. I had met my goals to get a long run in. Test fueling strategies for an upcoming longer race and see some new trail beauty. It was heating up. I was getting dizzy and nauseous and I didn't feel like doing battle for another 20 miles. And since I'm a grown-up. Oh yeah. I didn't want to have always have to clean my plate. I do what I want. But people are so dramatic. Another runner at the aid station tried to convince me to keep going. And when I gladly refused she cried for me and told me she was crying for me. Oh my gosh. Other people on Facebook and Instagram told me that they were here for me. That they know that this is a difficult time for me. And then I may one day be able to heal. Okay I totally agree with that. Fuck that. Yeah. If someone told me they were crying for me and it was like a situation like this I'd be like please save the tears. This is going to change the way I communicate a little bit though. I feel the need to say sorry to people that don't have the day that they were dreaming of. I'm gonna screw that and just say always congrats because we're all about celebrating yourself no matter what and celebrating DNFs. But at the same time this makes me think okay we need to actively realize that there's literally no reason to cross the finish line unless that's something that intrinsically brings you meaning. Extrinsically there's no it doesn't matter even one little bit. Well I think it depends on the situation because there are for athletes like for me I have DNF'd and if you came and you're like yeah girl you're the best we got this I'd be like yeah I don't know buddy that's on the right tone. So I think it really depends on the context. Okay I like it. So basically let's not put our value systems on other athletes or people in the world. Well I think it's all in our own intrinsic value systems and I think as a coach as a supporter we have to understand and like ask questions before diving into immediate responses. Okay and for the future of the hot take segment this that is the format that I think is you can do a one-liner those are great but that format where there's some righteous anger. I love it. That's so good. Oh it's the deep deep stuff. We'll have some fun with reading it too. Okay this next one is also really important. When you see a visibly older runner on the trail or really anywhere do not announce loudly and then this is an all-caps. When I am that old I hope I can run or how old do you think she is? Wow. Oh shoot I agree. Yeah I totally agree. Also because recently people have been thinking we're old. Yeah it's happened so many times recently that like we've been in a conversation and people would it will imply that we're like at least a decade older than we are and I'm confused because you look like you're 18 and I don't know about that. I don't know. Am I looking really old? You do not. I don't think either of us look that old. I don't know. Yeah but I'm starting to question myself. Yeah. I've noticed like I have my nose hairs are so long now. Well I don't think they're looking up your nose. I don't know but they can see them from just any vantage point. I mean I'm looking at you right now. I can't see any nose hairs. I mean I see hairs other places that yeah maybe are indicative of other things but not nose hairs. I combed them this morning. You combed your nose hairs? I do. I pushed them back in. I won't. I won't. It's convenient. It's like instead of picking my nose I can just like plunger them back up and that's actually a good point I think you know don't comment on people's age and never assume age either. Yeah and just because someone is old doesn't mean that that's what's inspirational about them. You know like achieving oldness is not inspiration. I think what's inspirational about anyone is getting out there day after day through the ups and downs. So this is going to change how I talk a little bit too. I think often I tell a lot of people they're inspirational because they are and that's what I think of when things are hard but I think I am more prone to say it to a 75 year old listener than a 25 year old listener. Yeah. And I'm going to be more of an equal opportunity inspiration man. What also changes how I talk to myself too because I mean I notice I have more wrinkles. I have like the occasional gray hair that I'm like holy shit it's coming and I think whenever I do that I like try to push back against it and or make jokes about it but I think sometimes steep down it does hurt and just to be like these are experiences like I'm getting these wrinkles because I've lived a lot of cool life at this point. Yeah you don't. I mean you look so beautiful like I mean maybe that maybe what I'm seeing actually is I interpret those things that you're mentioning whether those are wrinkles or anything else as like just you like aging beautifully and incredibly and everyone can do that but I just don't know what people are saying when they see us and think that we're so much older than we are. Yeah maybe it's because we got some I don't know yeah. Maybe it's like you know how like you look at the picture of Barack Obama at the start of this term and the end of his term and you're like oh my goodness maybe that's what baby Leo's done. It's not looking good. Okay next one if I'm wearing headphones I'm treating all my farts as silence. Oh I love this but I think why why do you need to wear headphones to do that? Just let it rip. New swap podcast you know term is all farts are silent. Yeah. It's like just like a that owner farting like it is so good. Or it's at least an excuse to make a rap. Oh yeah. Yeah you're like oh like that. That's this term Leo has been practicing mouthfarts these days. Leo and I do a lot of communication on math farts. You lost me a little bit but you mean like fart beatboxing. Yeah yeah. Well I think if you do that in public it's a great excuse just to be like just to keep it going. Yeah. You go from you go from one orifice to another you start you start down there you end up here. I like it fart beatboxing but you need to be careful about when the bass comes in. Oh yeah. Oh shit too much. Okay this next one is great. Think a little in the shower before acting on a great idea while you have that you have while running. One time I was running toward a beautiful sunrise thinking about the brevity of life and had the idea to write to all of my exes and tell them how much I love the season of my life with them and my only regret is my reluctance to fully let them go when it was time. I like that thought that I had and I'm glad that I sobered up though before sending the big old text message massacre. Okay I cosign this. Okay and what I think do you. Yeah so I actually don't agree. You don't agree. No. You're gonna send okay this scares me as a wife. You know like send like really kind messages to all your ex girlfriends and they're gonna be like let's bang. Imaginary people don't have cellphones. No my thinking with that is that the version of you that you have out on a run or something like that where you're fully living this embodied experience should be the version of you that you try to bring into the world more. Well I try to make all of my life decisions while I'm on a run because that's the version of the person that I like the best and that's when I'm my happiest. Yeah so what I would say I would not do this. Not this particular thing. Yes yes. But other things other big feelings ideas thoughts you have go for it. Don't let the version of you that's like sleepy and kind of tired dictate your life. Let the version of you that is fucking going on endorphins make your decisions for you. Yes but I think wait 24 hours. Okay like think about it make the decision and then give yourself 24 hours once you're off the endorphins and be like do I still cosign this. You know what solves this problem. What? Block your ex's numbers just in general. Oh yeah that's great. Yeah. You shouldn't be texting your ex's most likely. Well that's what I agree actually I think being friends with your ex's is just complicated. It's complicated. You can be. Yeah so. But like you shouldn't have the text like there's no need. Right. It's the same reason like you shouldn't be looking at their Instagram stories. Like if you're gonna be friends be in person friends in a totally normal like pre-2000 demand. Don't be friends the DM because that's probably not gonna go good places for anybody's health. I totally agree. Okay that was it. I like how big is fun. This is fun. I like this. Okay here's next one. Running in the morning is terrible. Afternoons are where it's at. I have zero idea how all of y'all are able to wake up early and run when you have a perfectly good bed to sleep in until the very last moment before you start the day. Running in the morning is heinous. Alexan will probably said that too. Okay well this person has never been like the glory of being so tired at 7.30 p.m. and getting into bed and being like on this sleep so hard is the best thing ever. So I feel like you just have to flip it to the evening. Yeah but you know what's fascinating is some studies have come out recently that found that morning people and afternoon people are eating people is a physiological thing. Oh yeah so genetic thing. Yeah. What's wild is we talk about all these exercise physiology studies and we never talk about the time of day of the intervention. So most likely a lot of these interventions are at 3 p.m. or whatever. Some of them are probably at 9 a.m. And that will change based on the cohort of person that you're getting physiologically. So if you're testing a morning person in the afternoon you're probably going to be seeing drivers that are not necessarily the dependent or independent variables that you're trying to test. So for this person you're almost certainly an afternoon person and stick with it. For others be a little bit flexible because I think morning running is better. Well I mean I think you can be an afternoon person and flex your physiology to run in the morning because I feel like sometimes that's the best way to like be consistent on training runs. I agree. Yeah so in other words we're two morning people saying you should be a morning person. And thank god Leo is a morning person. Yeah he really is but I wonder how much of that is genetic and how much it is is like a learned epigenetic trait. That where we're like beatbox and around the house. We're noisily farting around the house at 5 a.m. Exactly. So I don't know it's interesting to think about. Okay next one is totally wrong. And the UTMB gear requirements are actually appropriate most of the time. I mean they're appropriate from a lawyer standpoint. Yeah I mean even then you're going to get sued you're going to get sued. That's true. I mean I do think what we're I mean I is not lost on me that what we're asking people to do out in the wild is I mean I had that moment at canyons when your tracker wasn't working and I'm like is he sitting on the side of a trail somewhere without service? Yeah. And you throw in like a foreign country and like you know harsh conditions and lack of aid stations and some of these races and it kind of makes sense. So why would I have needed a coat with a hood when it was a 92 degree high? What if it hails? What if it hails? Yeah. What if it you ran really fast you could have been out there for what was the cut off of the race? The only thing I ever could have used that for a Megan is wiping my ass. Like literally there's no so UTMB gear requirements for this that don't know are very onerous and sometimes it's what like is discouraging me from doing some races because I'm like I don't want to have to carry Leo in a backpack essentially. I mean it's like a charcuterie board. It's insane. I mean some of the stuff like utensils like when you're in survival just use your hands. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like a lot of the times the required gear if shit really gets real and gonna do much. So I feel like we either should go to very limited required gear or someone essentially needs to have like everything on themselves at any given time. You could be bare grills out there ready to defend themselves in the wild. You need to compass. Yeah. You at least need a machete. It's like if shit gets real in the zombies attack what are you gonna do? Like you need the machete. Well the machete is for opening gel packets that are hard to open. Perfect. Okay. Now we're gonna get to a question to end the podcast before we swim a corner. I like this one because it's a lot about something I think a lot of us think about but don't talk about. Don't feel you have to read this whole thing. I know you're a busy guy. So it's feeling pretty good about yesterday a race where this athlete crushed and then this morning saw my race photos and immediately everything shifted. The body I saw didn't match up with the fast person I'd felt like during the run. All I could see were the thick thighs and calves which I'd never been able to make look like those of lean quote fast runners. Last night I ate a burger celebrating a personal best and how I'm faster and stronger than I've ever been. Then this morning the dark thoughts about food and weight crept in because of some stupid photos. I thought about all the times I've listened to you and Megan talk about fueling training and life properly. How food is fun and how we should be feeding the fire. Side note you have no idea how much I appreciate all the work you both do around this and the candid conversations you have. On my run this morning I cried not because of the race shots but because I spent years decades really hating a body which allows me to do one of the things I love most running. How can I hate something which at the same time gives me so much joy and has brought me so many wonderful things into my life including close friends. By the time I got home my mind was in a different space. I don't expect the dark thoughts to never return. Maybe this isn't something that ever goes away not really but I know I'm stronger now than I ever have been and I have a lot more running to do. Sometimes which is only possible by giving my body what it needs and maybe just maybe that means giving it some love along with those celebratory burgers. I'm giving this listener the biggest hug and the biggest like burger high five too but I think I mean I think almost every single runner I've coached has had a moment like this. Like I think it's almost fully ubiquitous in in traveling and missing. Yeah my big hot take is race photos are the worst. I agree. Yeah. People with incredible race photographers there's something about them that can change the subsequent experience where the experience instead of being summarized by what's in your head the memories you make all of that you actually when you think back to the race you think of a photo taken of you or a picture or video or something of taking of you which by then is the reality of all of this stuff is probably going to be different and likely more negative than your actual experience and certainly more negative than anyone else experiences you. Well do you know how I fight back against this? How? And I tell athletes to do this do something absolutely bonkers ridiculous when you're running by a camera because it's like it takes the focus away from your body or from like you know the visual experience of what's happening and I challenge people to do that with a lot of joy in the race photos I've gotten from some athletes are great. Just take a shit right there. That's the only thing appropriate in my eyes. Yeah I mean like it's so amazing. I mean race photographers are amazing like anything. Yeah and I think it says delicate balance but I also think too when you look at photos of yourself I have seen like the distortion of an image is wild. Especially in our own brains. Yes yeah exactly. We never see this. But I mean it's objective too. Like even outside of our own brains like you can take one picture in one moment and one picture in another moment and they can look totally different. Yeah yeah. This is with appearance in general like there's an offset between like what we imagine fast is and what fast is for an individual right. And I think that that's hard for some people to realize because they're like oh but wait that olympian looks like this and in general olympians look like this so shit nines like no because you're a different genetic context and you're a version of that. Their version of strong is different than your version of strong and your version of strong is fucking awesome. So they're judging themselves on a framework that doesn't make any sense. It's like we've talked about in the past. Cellulite is fast. Cellulite rocks. Cellulite is health. That shit is needed. So if that's what you're judging you're seeing something that's distorted. But then you can also think in normal life in a way that is really clear too. It's like well if you see a swimsuit model and think that that's what is sexy at a beach. Of course you're not going to like your beach photos. But the point is that's not what's sexy. Like maybe for that person great but like that's not what I want. I want your perfect body. You know what I mean? And that learning to love yourself thus becomes the key because like all you have is you. Yeah and I think value those photographs for what they are but I think you can almost like it's kind of like telling the story. I think those photographs can be a part of the story. But I think being ridiculous and like being celebratory in the nature of being photographed helps a ton. Yeah. I'm not going to read my comeback there that I told this person because... You call it comeback? Well comeback because I went over the top with it and I think our discussion is probably better. But you know for anyone out there going through these doubts about your body let's take a moment and just like re-center on like okay I love me. Yeah. And I have to do this all the time too. Like it's not just people that might have had long-term body issues or whatever. It's like I think everybody feels this on a certain point. Well and that's why we have to extend compassion to people. Because like if we all feel this way like shit that's hard. It's so hard. Yeah it's so so hard. Especially yeah. I mean especially in situations in which like races are already heightened emotions. And then you have this extra layer of like image on it too. Yeah. And so from a performance physiology perspective too your self judgment is most likely the type of thing that can get in the way of your growth. So what I loved about this listener is that they talked about you know confronting those thoughts. Let them understanding that their body in embracing this part of themselves is why they have become a champion. They won this race that they're talking about. They said a huge lifetime personal best. And you know the winners are having these thoughts. The people that finish last or DNF are having these thoughts. We're all having them. So you know again running competing all of these places should be a place where we can learn to celebrate not just ourselves but everyone else too. So like everybody is beautiful. Everybody is amazing. Whether it's a smaller body a bigger body you know big boobs small boobs whatever. Like all that stuff is great. But it's a conscious process where you have to like learn that the deconditioning of whatever society tells us whatever running magazines tell us is intentional and takes some time. And I've had to like purposely reframe that for myself. Like I've had running photos where there's like tons of cellulite in places. And I'm like no Megan that is strength. That is my long term future. That's baby Leo. That's a lot of different things like bald up into one big ball of cellulite. And it's I mean I feel like that contextualization it's hard but it's been helpful for me over time. I think you say bald up into one ball of cellulite. Yeah one ball of cellulite. Yeah exactly. Okay listen to her corner time. Hi David and Megan firstly huge congratulations on your epic month last month. Megan with her PhD and David with this one hundred K. You're both so inspiring and I hope you have a great summer of fun and adventure ahead. Secondly I went to share an update that I ran my first marathon yesterday. Oh heck yes. At least to my own standards crushed it. I took your advice and started fueling my long runs and it made a world of difference. I feel like a 50k is totally within reach and I plan to focus next on incorporating strength training for injury prevention. It was around the time I started listening your podcast that I decided I would try the marathon distance inspired by your spirit of fun adventure. Why not? Heck yes. Go for it. My horizon is expanded and I have you to thank for it. Next up I need to take David's advice and quit my job. Once again thank you both for all you do. You're both bright shining lights. Well we should have in hot take session you should quit your job. Yeah we should talk about how why exactly I think I next week I'm going to talk more about why everybody should quit their job. Oh man. It's gonna be awesome. Yeah I'm already having nervous anxiety over here about that. It's gonna be so good. Well I'll be the counterpoint on that. Okay great. Yes yeah. But to this listener amazing and to everyone let's go try something new and big and scary and it's gonna be something. Oh and if you're listening at this point please click five stars wherever you listen. Click follow an Apple podcast even if you don't listen there that really helps us out in the big algorithm game. Tell your friends about it. Like the podcast has been taken off. It means so much when you support us in any way. Thank you all. It means the world. It's also fun to think about where we've traveled with people. We've had a lot of people say they've listened to it while racing. Yeah it's an honor. We've probably been in some cool races David. We've been in such cool races people like at the end of multi-days say the only thing that gets me through like they're not hearing anything we say just the vibes. They're probably hallucinating to us. Yeah I think basically we're like what would you hallucinate? Bulluses of cheeseburgers. There's definitely lubrication involved and it would probably be a little bit freaky. It probably made me want to run faster. I like it but I was thinking that we're kind of a vibes based podcast at this point. Like we have people that don't like running listening which is the ultimate compliment I think because even if you don't love running hopefully you get some good vibes and can feel how much like we genuinely love and care about you also. Thank you. Well vibespace is helpful for me as we record because it doesn't matter what we say as long as it brings some good vibes you're okay. That doesn't need to be worse. They can be... Yeah and just don't do that... We all you are! Haha! Ahhh! Thank you.