158. World Championships Analysis, How To Train For Shorter Distances, and Improving Climbing!

We are so happy to be with you today. Happy Tuesday. It's Tuesday. And I'm feeling all the hype on this Tuesday because it is the most wonderful time of here in the running world. It's so great. Things are so awesome right now. There are so many incredible races, so many awesome stories. We can't wait to bring them to you. It's been so fun. World championships on the trails, world records falling on the track, NCAA track championships. It's like boom, boom, boom. I just keep walking around all day singing. It's the most wonderful time of the year. Oh, that was rough. Oh, no, Megan, that was so good. I rocked that to you. If I do say so myself, I was incredibly good at singing there. You are so good at singing. No, Megan, I'm so bad. You're so bad. You uplifted us in this relationship. I'm the one that's dragging us down. Well, so I remember when I was in high school. I had a 30 minute drive to my high school. I lived in a very rural place. And what I would do is I got a superstition once that I sang all the way to school. All the way to school. All the way to school. All the way to school one time. Listening to whatever the hip-hop and R&B soundtrack was on the radio. And when I got there, I had a great day. And then I rocked the football game. And I really crushed it. So then after that, I tried to sing every single day on the drive. And occasionally someone would pass me and take a picture on one of those old flip phones because it was way back in the day of me just belting with my mouth wide open trying to sing. That's incredible. Well, I recently ran a red light by accident trying to get home to use. We do this rapid baton handoff on weekends because I go for a long run and then I get to get home so you can go for a long run. In this case, the baton is a baby. Yes, exactly. We're handing Leo off. But there's a picture of me driving through this red light because I got a ticket for it. And I'm just sitting there with this game face on. And that's how I feel. That's what I was picturing you before games. You looked so intense. You know what your look reminded me of? What? Grayson Murphy at the start line of the World Mountain Championships. Oh, yeah. I saw that game face and I was like, she's very old. It's the preview of what's to come. She's going to only have green lights in her future on that course. There was actually, so the World Mountain Championships was broadcast on YouTube. And so you could comment on it, which was amazing. I mean, I feel like it would be so fun to watch Tour de France or some of these other really big events with people commenting on it. But there was someone called Robin in the chat. And she was on team Grayson, just like us. But her comments were amazing. Yeah. She was like, she's going to take Tove out for lunch. And this was who Grayson was competing against. And I was fully uplifting. Yeah. I think the most interesting comments are a vibe because like some people are really on your site. So like, obviously we're reading very hard for Grayson while watching this championship race. But there are other people that don't necessarily feel the same in us. And honestly, some people that don't understand, we're running that well, so they were saying things during the live chat. And I was like, at one point, I was like, Megan, I'm going to go into that live chat. And I'm going to start commenting. And I'm going to go for it. And Megan was like, David, take a deep breath. It's not your place to comment in a live chat when someone says something about your athlete that's not right. I love confrontational David. Like I feel like you do at like Sunny and share like you have like that like share energy in all of life Yeah, yeah, but when you get out in the football field or when you get into the Instagram live chat You let your freak flag fly and you're like I'm coming for you. I think we bring that Jawroll and the Shanti energy is coming on the podcast. Yeah, except I feel like I'm Jawroll your shanti Trying to try to think of what Jawroll's best do outlines where can't do it on the spot It's so hard to think on the spot. It really is. Yeah, especially duets on the spot extra hard singing isn't really our jam Is it what I think people have learned but we are so excited for everything so we're gonna talk to you about the world Championship today We're also gonna preview a little bit of Western states not too much. That's mainly gonna be next week These next few weeks are the coolest time of the year. It's just so fun I'm so excited and we're heading to California this week to get a broken arrow to go to Western states It's gonna be baby Leo's first Western states We're gonna have a kiddie pull for him for a still and it's gonna be a unique challenge to keep a baby cool I think everything within our coaching history has led us to this moment where we know everything about cooling for a baby at Forest Hill when it's 95 degrees. I'm a little bit concerned We might have to have a contingency plan with where Leo's gonna go if he can't do the spectating thing at Western states But we'll see what do you think? I'm excited. I think we're gonna craft him the first six-month-old ice vest That's true wouldn't that be fun? Yeah, maybe this is a startup idea. It's a great idea I feel like he would love it. Well, we took him on a hike yesterday and he he didn't fuel very well before the hike He hasn't learned he really needs to focus on his carbohydrates He really needs to think about his like pre-workout fueling his car bloating was quite poor He got out we got out two miles away from home and he almost never cries Yeah, and he started to throw a royal tempering And it was a little start-up name and I think whenever a baby cries to me I'm like I can't focus on anything. Yeah, yeah, but when we are out there He cried the entire two miles back and I feel that way sometimes in running It was his first major tantrum that wasn't in the middle of the night Like occasionally he's had middle of the night tantrums But this first middle of the day tantrum we tried everything we even played the Moana soundtrack Which is never failed to work until this moment. We actually sang the Moana soundtrack in a duet That's true. And it was I mean, we're not great singers No, we job rule in a shantied Moana. It was incredible. It was really good. Objectively amazing And he couldn't even hear it because he was screaming He totally blocked it out and he just needed to get home to his fuel So maybe that's the lesson for all of the runners at Western states As long as you stay on top of your fuel on top of your hydration You can do it and also we probably need to have like an ice sponge for him to keep him cool Well, I love that you said it was a lesson for runners because it was really the lesson for parents We fucked up. We should have had some fuel for him I was a major oops moment in parenting and my boobs I'm not breastfeeding like a ton right now And so I was like well, he could have droplets from my poop in the middle of this trail But I figured he was just gonna get even like more mad about that Yeah, it's kind of like at Western states, you know There's a lot of talk about mid cooling mid-run cooling and there's a lot of streams So we're always telling our athletes every stream you get by try to wet yourself But later in the event that can be taken to the extreme because some of the streams are just trickles And there are stories of some of the top athletes Trying to lay down in these streams that are literally literally just like a review let Kind of running down this thing And that would be kind of like trying to breastfeed him right now He would just get the smallest little bit He wouldn't actually cool that much So we need to get him home Well, I would love a live feed of like Adam Peter got her gymworms like throwing a temper tantrum And a little rivulet of trickling water trying to get actually it reminds me of Zach Miller Yeah, so there was a viral video this weekend of Zach Miller at the World Championships And he got to Nate station and didn't realize that there was water to throw on yourself They had this like broader bucket of water And so he was just taking bottles of parier That is dumping them on himself and it went viral as hilarious It was the best video ever because I think there was probably a language barrier at the each station So Zach really needed to cool himself off He's in the middle of the moment and if anyone has ever seen Zach Miller race It's the most intense amazing thing of all time Like you should go back and watch the videos from north face right north North face 50 mile or Zach Miller And it gives you like insight into what Some of the best in the world can do in these races And Zach Miller is notorious for pushing to the edge He was clearly in that place of just being in the dark zone during this race Well, he's like a steam engine That's how we could describe him He rolls with so much force but steam engines also get freaking hot And he showed up this eight station and it's like I gotta cool myself I'm gonna have a mechanical right now So it's sparkling water, sparkling water, sparkling water And the reason it went viral actually is I think some let troll or something from Europe It was like this person doesn't respect the environment And they're you know selling the name of the United States of America It's like what the fuck are you talking about And he's just trying to get cool in the middle of a race where he's like one of the best athletes in the world But we might have to do that for Leo Like be dropping you know sparkling hydration on him Sparkling cider just straight on Leo's head Well it's even better actually it's just pouring precision hydration on yourself You gotta get some of those like I feel like maybe you can soak in the calories via your skin Precision's that good You don't even need to put it in your mouth You can put it in any orifice You can even put it in your butt Or you could just put it on your skin It's perfect and go in any direction Actually on that note precision nutrition We weren't planning this but swap 15 SWA 15 at precision checkout That shit is amazing we had a bunch of athletes using it at the world championships I actually saw it being used by a professional cycling team During the Dofene which is a major bike race tune up for the Tour de France Really recommend that stuff Try it out maybe we'll give that to baby Leo It tastes so good But I also say this it feels so good too We did a tempo date this weekend And we had precision and our water bottles And I doused myself in that a little bit You did I could feel it I could feel it in my ears I could feel it in my orifice as it was good stuff Yeah and the fire ants I feel it It was so good Actually I wonder if you could feed a baby a gel I'm sure you could right like why not Um I'm sure he's old enough at this point He could probably have anything Yeah so maybe that's what we needed If we had brought a gel we wouldn't have needed to have a bottle Honestly we were so desperate yesterday I probably would have given him a gel Yeah it was one of the more jarring experiences of my life Like we got very lucky in that we have a baby that doesn't freak out too much Though it's just a genetic thing I think that's one thing we learned He came out not like not freaking out Probably if we have another one Which Megan is really beating me down with over time Well you acquiesced Can I give the spoiler alert? You came to me You came to me the other week and you're like Megan I'm sorry I don't need to be a hardass anymore We can have another baby eventually And my heart sang The inside the precision hydration Which is leaving my body in excitement It was exiting in every orifice It was great You jaw rolled from the soul Yes exactly Yeah so I was just seeing that you were getting quite nervous About every step of Leo's journey It's going to be the last time I've experienced this maybe And it's like I can't have you be upset for the next Like however many years That every little milestone is the only time you're going to get to experience it Given what you've told me So what I thought is I can at least lie to you now And tell you yes We'll have 18 kids That's fine We can be like I don't know we can feel like six basketball teams And that'll get us through the next couple of years Well it was very meaningful to me It's not going to be for a while I have some trails to run Some pushes in to consume Before we do this again But I thank you for that It made me very happy Yeah and if you know If we don't go And IUD route Maybe it'll be sooner Okay we have the best episode for you today We're going to start with a story about coaching That is one of the coolest things we've ever heard Then talk about the world championships Do a recap and analysis Including the Grayson Murphy gold medal I'm so excited Coolest race ever Hot takes We're moving up a little bit in the episode this week I'm so excited to move up hot takes Yeah They deserve to be up there It's going to be pretty soon that we're just going to say Woohoo And then we're going to get into 29 hot takes That take up the duration of the entire episode Basically the whole podcast kind of is our own hot takes That's a good point actually We're just bringing the listeners in for these More big moments from the warning world Including three world records Some theories on that as well A discussion of training for shorter races Please stick around for that If you're at all interested in how to get faster And how this applies to long distances too Four fun things including some GI system thoughts For my fellow brethren out there with poor GI systems Because whenever we have GI system thoughts written on the outline It's primarily driven by David You have a lot of existential GI system thoughts Well I think it's one of those things People don't talk that much In the picture of how you GI systems just think it's normal In the people that have bad GI systems Also think it's normal Let's just bring it to the light And then we have a listener corner about shooting a shot We also have a bunch of other topics that we might get to Might not probably not I'm so excited It's going to be so fun So we want to start with just a very brief story That we think will be incredibly meaningful to you Like kind of setting the tone for how running and sports in general Are about the team around you Well you came into the kitchen yesterday You told me this story And I was kind of like I was busy doing something I was kind of half listening And then all of a sudden my ears peaked up during this And I was like oh this is so good And then I got you goosebumps and chills So if you're in the state where you're half listening Right now doing whatever you're doing Listen up because this is very good I think some people do kind of just skim When we're bantering at the very front end of the episode sometimes Well that's actually a deep hug for me Because I'm like I don't know if you should really listen to that too closely Oh no Megan our bantering is by far the best part In fact when we started the podcast when it was just 30 minutes We would banter a little bit And what we heard from people is that's the part that they like the most And I'm sure there's people out there that just want us to get to the studies And the training but you know we need to make you dig for that gold You need to get it's all about the process of finding that gold Not just getting to it right away And by people on the masses you mean your parents Yeah in my face They're like we want to hear you banter more We like your banter We don't care about training We just want to hear you talk about Ja Rule and Ashanti Who they have to Google after they hear the reference Okay so here's the story It is about Wake Forest baseball coach Tom Walter So a brief background on Tom Walter I didn't actually know this story at all But he started by coaching the George Washington baseball team They were horrible just one a few games a year He brought them to prominence nationally Then he coached the New Orleans baseball team And this was during Hurricane Katrina They actually had to go play at New Mexico state Around that time because you know New Orleans was flooded out And at that time they actually qualified for the playoffs For the college world series which is hugely unique for that program And then he finally he went to Wake Forest in 2010 Which is when the story we're going to tell you begins And it is so exciting So what happened was he recruited this athlete named Kevin Jordan He was a superstar baseball player from Georgia And Kevin was also going to be drafted by teams like the Yankees But at the very end of a senior year of high school All of a sudden he kind of got weak And they assumed it was the flu or something like that And all the scouting reports you read of him say One of the best players in the country but something happened At the end of his high school career And that's how what happened when he matriculated to Wake Forest And the story is I mean just I don't even want to take a break to comment on this Keep going because the story is so good that I want to make sure people don't miss this So when he showed up something was definitely long And he was diagnosed with ACA or ANCA Enca Enca vasculatus Actually I don't know if it's ANCA In my head it's ANCA but in my head I always say ANCA I like ANCA Yeah and then every time I say something in my head on the podcast I get a little nervous Yeah okay so he needed a kidney transplant And his entire family got tested and no one was a match And as soon as Coach Tom Walter heard this He went and got tested himself It took six weeks of tests He found out that he was a match And that very day scheduled surgery to do a kidney transplant To this athlete that he hadn't even met that much Like he knew them from going into the living room And recruiting him But Kevin Jordan hadn't been able to show up to practice and things So he hadn't actually been around him that much But the commitment to him of coaching was so great that he's like I'm gonna do this And sure enough they went, did the surgery, did the transplant And Kevin Jordan within 15 minutes of waking up Said for the first time I felt like I wasn't gonna die Like he suddenly felt fully different from the bottom up That is so wild I have goosebumps over here for the second time And Jordan thinking about actually as I hear this story for the second time Is this is an incredible way to subvert the NIL Before the NIL was even a thing Because so back in the day you couldn't actually give money to recruit players You couldn't set up any recruiting deals But you want you can give to recruit players a kidney And this was the ultimate way to recruit a planner Yeah, right? Because this was like this all happened in the recruiting mission And this coach was just playing a long game They actually did Have the compliance officer at Wake Forest Had the content the NCAA before this Yeah, this sounds like a compliance violation Because I wonder like does it have to go inside him Could you sell the kidney on the black market Oh, it's such a great way to recruit a player for $2 million Yeah, they actually on the in law school There's an entire section of I believe that's property I think property first law first year That's on taboo top things Like you're not actually allowed to sell an organ But now that they have Bitcoin You can probably figure out somewhere So okay, so let's pick up the story Jordan was actually able to come back and play at Wake Forest In his very first game first three at bats is timing was just totally off He struck out three times in a row And then on his fourth at bat there were two strikes And coach Tom Walter called time out Went and talked to him and just said look You have a long career you don't need to press Don't think about the kidney just go out there and play Very next pitch he got his first hit And ended up having great career And the coolest way that this story ends Is back in 2020 Jordan and Walter started this program called get in the game And this was all because one of Tom Walter's friends So one of the coaches friends Said oh I didn't realize you could share a kidney with Kevin Jordan Because you know Tom Walter's white in Kevin Jordan's black And the front and after he heard this friend say that He's like oh man, you know so much of the Like the shit that happens in the world Is from a total misunderstanding of how much unites us And so again the game is all about like What they go into do they go into schools and they say Look we share the same blood And try to bring people you know cross Different you know races together via that message But it's also a great memory or a great thing to think about One about coaching and teamwork and things like that And what it means But also you know what it means to be human So as we talk about the world championships We're going to be talking about some of the best athletes in the world Some people we coach They're all going through and feeling the same things That everyone else feels in athletics And I think that part that unites us And you know we can lean into that part as much as possible And we hope that's what you feel in the stories we tell you on this podcast And I think sometimes there's a human tendency Or at least you know I've seen this among athletes And sometimes it's a defense mechanism to say Hey it's just sports What we're doing is just sports But like when you see these stories of getting the game And you know all of these stories that happens through the lens And through the vehicle of sports Like no so much more happens in sports It's not just the act of doing it Which is really cool It's all of these stories that come from it And I think the world championships are like that Because it's running But it's also like one of the first times for some of these athletes That running is a team sport Definitely It's about so much more Yeah it's the ultimate human experience And that's what's so cool about it So let's talk about the world freaking championships right now So a few things just to tee up the conversation Before we get into some specific races The first is there was quite a time zone difference So there was eight hours difference from the mountain time zone Because it was in Austria Which meant we had a lot of early wakeups last week One to track the races But even before that To do like pre-race calls with our athletes that were competing And yeah it was quite a week in that regard Because like I'm always active at 5.30am But now I had to be extra active Because races were happening Well it was so much fun for us Because like we were having these pre-race calls From like 5 to 7am And then going out and doing our own workouts And it was one of my best training weeks That's true I had so much motivation and energy From like giving the fire Or trying to give the fire to athletes Being out there and like going to do my own lactate threshold workouts It made it so much fun It also makes it feel so much easier After seeing these people do superhuman feeds Oh it's true Actually I did some of my workouts watching the races And I was like Oh man I'm only at four millimoles lactate right now Drew Holman's probably at 26 Zach Miller looks like he's dying on the side of the trail While spilling sparkling water Just Coca-Cola all down himself Actually Riley Brady Who is getting ready to compete at western states And is an absolute superstar Watch out for Riley Follow Riley And was down on our treadmill Watching the world championships And blessing our treadmill And I feel like it was the best vibes Because they were watching our athletes At the world championships While also crushing a 90 minute upheld treadmill It was just perfect It was like great a good vibes There's so much inspiration swirling around in this house House right now it's kind of what It's so cool And then it was such a fun setup And it's something that if you didn't see it live You should go back and look at some of the YouTube So the TV coverage was so good They had cameras all over the course The announcer brought the enthusiasm That I want to see in announcers Like yes, they knew what they were talking about But also they were as hyped about it as we were Which was amazing But then the most memorable thing Was the camera people at this race They were so fit I'm my goal for swap actually You know we always think about how you recruit athletes And kind of like the future of our team and things like that I'm gonna recruit all the camera people They are so fit and so good There was even a moment I mean they're following athletes In Grayson ran a 440 mile downhill And the camera person is staying with her On technical trends Like how is this happening right now Yeah I feel like we should slide into their DMs If you're a camera person at worlds Reach out to us And we'll try to convince you to join swap There was even a moment where a camera person Passed the third place woman To catch the second place woman And I was like what is happening right now They are throwing down their making moves And they're all doing it while holding one camera with their arm I mean honestly it's like the peak of influencer culture Because you know how like we have the selfie sticks and stuff They looked like they were carrying selfie sticks While running at 20 kilometers an hour It was the weirdest wildest thing On technical terrain I was actually waiting for I mean they're doing it live too I was just waiting for the moment Where this would happen to me like six different times Where it's just like Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom And you hear f-bombs And the camera is all rolling all over the place And it didn't happen Yeah I guess we didn't watch all the coverage Maybe a camera man did eat shit at some point But we didn't see it Yeah they should show it if they did Whatever their technical running like knowledge is That they also need to share that because How were they not falling when they were also filming Well it's because they're monster truck marionettes We used that cue the other week about running on technical trails The fact that it's helpful to be a marionette in terms of lifting your legs And a monster truck to just cruise through everything on straight lines And the camera people were about in it I love that Yeah Also at podcast listeners I'm sure And then finally the courses were insane Like bonkers Just bonkers I mean especially the long course Which was 50 miles With over 20,000 feet of climbing This is a more severe Vert ratio than hard rock by a substantial margin Essentially these are the steepest races We've ever seen at this level of performance And as a result it was testing very unique things And as we talk about some of these athlete stories We'll also talk a little bit about training How we thought about it as coaches And how you might be able to think about similar Similar stresses And a mix of stresses Because yes the long course was insane And the short course which was a marathon Kind of funny to call You know a 48k So like longer than a marathon a short course Especially too because it was taking With all of her took athletes quite a lot of time To cover this course The Strava file was starting to give me a little bit of like Peripheral doms I feel like I was getting doms just by looking at it Because there were miles in there with Like many, many miles that had 1400 feet of descent Yeah It's so wild to think about what they did out there Because we have one climb in here in Boulder That's like 1500 feet in a mile And it is so wildly steep In the upels, yeah I can get that to a certain extent The downhills over 50 miles It just blows my mind It's one of those things as a coach that Yes you want to think about But not think about too much Because at a certain point You just are like overwhelmed And in other words I always need to drive myself back To the first principles of running performance Which is what we did while we were coaching this Um okay so let's go through some world championship stories Do you want to start with Grayson? Of course we're starting with Grayson Of course we're starting with Grayson I am so impressed with Grayson So we started with the fact that she was standing on that start line And had the best game face of all time I'm like she is going to eat people out there And then in the best of ways Like she looked strong She looked fierce She looked ready to go And I've just been I mean listen to Grayson We did an interview with Grayson On her podcast a couple weeks ago And she has a mentality that I love And she's worked really hard To develop that mentality Like I don't think it's something that has always come naturally to her It's coming from adversity Yeah And seeing her stand on that start line Was the full embodiment of the journey of working on her mentality Yeah if you haven't listened to that episode Go back and listen to our Grayson interview Which is just a few weeks ago at this point But it was fascinating Because the night before the race I got to talk to Grayson And I also got to talk to her Before the vertical kilometer Where she was third She won the bronze medal But that wasn't really her skill set And after I talked to her on the phone I texted Abby Levine Who's this incredible athlete World class athlete But also an incredible journalist And follows the world championships closely And I was just like Grayson is going to win this And she's not going to win by a little bit And it was because talking to her She had this exact race strategy planned out And it played exactly as Grayson And I predicted Which was very cool So quick play by play of the race itself Because I think it was one of the best races you've ever seen Please go back and watch this race It's only an hour long And you know You'll get a little bit from the podcast But seeing it live With every step on video Was truly a sight to behold I mean it was one of the cooler running races Cooler one of the cooler sports events I've ever seen I agree And the dynamics of it reminded me a lot of cycling Yeah And then I think there was some tactical elements of it So as we get through the play by play I think we'll go through some of the tactical stuff And I think If I mean I think a lot of racing is tactical So I think listen up to some of this Because I learned a lot about being a Charoning tactician out there Because I think so much of these mountain races Are tactical in addition to Rawl ability And how it interacts with your physiology Because it's hoping about Grayson Grayson's brilliant physiologically Like she understands all this stuff You know as much as a person can Like she is a brilliant coach In addition to her being a great athlete In terms of how she thinks about herself And she played She used that to her advantage in the race So what happened is The race started really fast on roads Almost all these athleticists were wearing road shoes Which gives you an idea of the course had Like 2300 feet of climbing in 9 miles But it wasn't insanely technical Like some of the other courses were And so Grayson got to the top of the first climb Which is the is up, down, up, down She got to the top of the first climb Leading by about 8 to 10 seconds Which is a pretty big margin Against the best athletes in the world You know especially when you have Full teams from Africa Full teams from Europe Full teams from every You know major country That does all the distance running in the world But on the first descent She was caught by Tove Alexanderson And Grayson didn't really know that much about Tove coming in Because she's famous in Orientering She said 17 times world champion in Orientering Yeah it was remarkable to see her run downhill I mean she probably if Grayson Grayson at one point ran a 447 downhill mile On a course that was trails Tove probably ran a 430 at some point And that first left With tons of switchbacks And I mean it was not like they were just Bombing straight downhill There was tons of swerves and Switchbacks and honestly the course Wasn't marked all that well too So there was some uncertainty Tove had the home field of fanage In terms of knowing the course But there were times where Grayson I was like oh Grayson that turn looks Difficult I was so much anxiety I had so many bathroom breaks While watching these races From the nerves Okay so not only did Tove pass Tove put 12 seconds on Grayson And then maintained it On the mile through Innsbruck itself Innsbruck Austria And to the point that Like you know people were watching And in New York on that live chat You can watch it when you You know go back and look at this And they're like oh this She's putting it to Grayson Like this is the moment Like Tove has this Actually they were saying things like Grayson got schooled And I was like just wait friends Just wait And it gets back to the physiology Like that type of down it Well Grayson I talked about is on the first descent You need to save your quads Because you have to have those quads For the second climb And it's a good reminder to everyone doing These types of races with downhill end ups Even things like the Boston marathon Or grandma's or CIM or whatever You need to save your quads on early downhills Because you need those quads later And that's all Grayson did Grayson told me that Okay I saw her pass I saw what she was doing And I knew that if I just let her go It would give her more confidence In what she was doing And make her dig a deeper hole So Grayson did that fully intentionally In the heat of the moment And you can even see that in her heart rate file So on the first climb Grayson's heart rate got to 190 Which is just over her lactate threshold Right around her critical speed She has a very high Top point heart rate zone But then on the descent She got into the 160s Which for Grayson is actually pretty easy So I think people like Oh Toby's just a better descender What they didn't realize is The whole time Grayson was just relaxing Planning for that second loop Ready to unleash And I think this is where For me the tactical Like genius comes in in terms of Like thinking about this So Toby is arguably one of the best Downhill descenders in the entire world Definitely I think she's probably the best Like technical Traurining descender in the entire world And Grayson of course didn't know who she was Which is very funny I mean Toby is so legit But isn't that many trawesses Yeah exactly So I mean it makes sense that Grayson Didn't know who she was Because she hasn't raced a ton in the trawlerina But I think actually if I were Toby I might not have made that Like extreme pass on Grayson Because it's almost like you're showing your cards To her on that first descent Whereas I think You know if she had just stayed behind Grayson I think Grayson may not have realized How strong of a downhill runner she was And then realized that she had to put so much time And to her on the uphill Exactly and that's exactly what happened Because once Toby showed her cards Grayson very quickly made up the ground on the second climb And then paused right behind Toby And made an emphatic pass And we were watching this live And it was so fun to cheer on But I mean when she made a pass She ended this this is a tactical thing When you make a pass Make a pass and do it decisively Yeah and that's what Grayson said She said on in track They say you either make a pass or you don't Yep And so she paused Waited and then put like 10 seconds on Toby Within a couple hundred meters And what Grayson realized is She had to push on the climb And because she had conserved her quads Was able to make about 48 seconds or something And then cool the most cool thing to me Is then Grayson put more time in on the downhill And ended up winning by almost a minute And I think what it points out is You know one I think there might be people out there That think that first loop Shows that Toby was better at that thing Grayson And the answer is no Grayson was Grayson's the best at everything She was being smart She was being a tactical I mean she had if that was a one loop race She I mean I don't want to speculate About two different athletes Definitely Grayson would have won Oh yeah Oh for sure Yeah People like are on our pre-race call The day before the race And this is a little bit You can go back and listen to our Patreon podcast Actually where we talk about Grayson's strategy That we had we were planning Which is kind of an interesting Because this was before the race And it was exactly how it played out Yeah and what we talked about was What I challenged her to do Is the very first mile on the last descent So like as you're going downhill You don't need quads after that So um I told her I want to see your mile PR on Strava Um on that first mile of the second descent And sure enough Grayson was able When she opened it up To put in that ground So I think this really You points out the importance of understanding Your own physiology as it relates to the race Like Tove probably did the best structure race for herself She still got silver in the whole world Among Oh so impressive Yeah and if it weren't for Grayson being there We'd be looking at that result As one of the best performances ever It just so happened that Grayson might have had The very best performance In female mountain running history We're talking about two legends Who are having a tactical battle with each other So I think upon reflection that's really important It's like as we're uplifting Grayson in the chat And we're like she's going to take tove a lunch I love this type of energy and this type of chatting Especially about women's sports Like I think so often we have this competitive banter And chat about men's sports But it's not as common in women's sports So when I see people commenting like Grayson's going to take it or lunch I live and live that up But we're talking about two legends Well that being said There is a podcast listener that is from Sweden And they messaged me on Instagram And I actually gave you I showed Megan My back and forth Megan saw confrontational David on Instagram Because in the Instagram messages the person was like You know if Tobey had trained specifically or whatever And I like went off As much as I can go off And it was a podcast listener So we were doing it in a very loving way And they're amazing And I respect them But at the same time I was defending the honor of the goat Grayson Murphy Do what my hat take is What I love confrontational David so much I love being confrontational David so hard It's so sexy My testosterone just going up Yeah it's well I mean it's fun Because you don't unleash Convertational David very often So when it does happen It's like I'm that hype girl I'm like Bring it bring it bring it Coach Tom Walter gives a kidney I give a few stern Instagram messages at the very least And a training lesson from this Is that climbing ability is mostly your speed Don't forget that Once you get up to like 25% grades Yes it starts to fall apart Just a little bit for some athletes But for the most part If you get faster You'll become a better climber Don't get caught up too much in climbing Grayson before this race We're going to talk a little bit about her training But she just you know mostly did track fast work And didn't do much steep climbing on trails In fact I don't think she only did One trail workout between the US champs And the world champs And it's going to get into some of the principles That we talked about in terms of the climbing paradox The fact that if you do a lot of steep climbing Consistently at the cost of training speed I think it makes you a long-term worse runner And Grayson I'm like embodies She did a track workout almost just a week before the workout Before the race And my thinking there was just get yourself Get your legs moving after you get to Europe You know Because that's what's going to take to win this race And sure enough that's what it did take Okay so next up is talking about Drew Holman The one and only podcast legend Drew Holman Our boy Drew And he lived it up out there So he was having a battle with Perrier covered Zach Miller out there for fifth and sixth place They were coming in And they've been on this bonkers course This is the long course, the 50 plus mile 20,000 feet of climbing race And you know a lot of people would say about Drew coming in And they're just, oh he's a fast guy Who knows how he's going to do in this true mountain race And he's a mountain wizard In addition to being a fast guy But this is what he had to be both So they wrapped up the race So Drew and Zach are coming in About a mile 800 meters to go They start laying it down Racing each other and running so fast Can you imagine running I mean this probably feels like an all out 800 at this point At the end of this bonkers race They're only five minute, 30 second per mile pace At the end on roads to finish up A race that had more quad damage than you've ever seen And the videos of it are shocking Please go back, it's all over social media But you actually made a gift of Drew So Drew rounded there was like before the finish line There was like curve and he rounded it And he was running it almost look like It was like a road runner gift Because he had his head down He was just doing strides so fast So why we do our strides It was so cool So Drew finished fifth in the world First North American, first American Which is one of the coolest friend coaching moments My entire life I love Drew with all my heart But then Zach was sixth Incredible performance And then Eric Lupuma was seventh In a 567 team USA domination And I love that because it was a team moment Like Eric at one point passed Drew When Drew went through a dark patch And Eric's like you got this Stay on my wheel And the only thing that kept Drew going At that top top level was knowing that he was doing it for the team And then to further them all to finish together Yes 567 but in all intents and purposes It was just team And I was one of the cooler running moments I've ever seen And he was doing it for the Strava Yeah Actually Drew very rarely uploads to Strava So he probably was not doing it at all for the Strava But one of my favorite coaching moments So I was downstairs in elliptical when this was happening You came down with Baby Leo And we were just going bananas At the TV watching Drew finish And he finishes, he falls on his back And then one second later he stops his watch And you yelled at him You're like stop your watch Drew stop your watch I live for those Strava files Yeah when Grace is uploaded her Strava file Like it's I have notifications set for both of them It was one of the best moments of my life to see So a couple notes about this type of performance The first is Drew and I ran two weeks before this On those really steep trails in Boulder I mentioned And what we talked about during that run Is try to do granny gear climbing as much as you can So hiking is awesome We uplift hiking But every single step of a climb you can run Will pay off in the future So what we called it is granny gear climbing It's kind of like on a bike when you set it to your lowest gear And then just keep moving up the mountain So for Drew he can granny gear climb at 20% grades Consistently Oh probably even higher than that Yeah well when he's fresh when he's fresh You can granny gear climb 35% Oh he could granny gear climb a free solo Is that- El Cap, Drew's granny gear climbing that Yeah just like in the movie free solo Alex Heinlein's doing that really wild move And then just like running on the side Jimmy Chen's like hey Drew Without even pulse Without even pulse So that works to a certain extent But for Drew he did say you know I need to learn To use poles better for a race like this That being said he's going to be doing CCC this year I don't necessarily think he'll have to hike that much at CCC Because CCC is actually way easier than this race As shocking as that is Which is wild Yeah it's But that same principle I think applies to everybody You know like if your granny gear climbing goes at 2% grade If you can learn to run just a little bit of the ups And then use hiking when you can't have to That combination works really well And you'll be shocked at how much ground you can put in To people in short periods of time Very quickly When I granny gear climb too I feel like there's lots of a biomechanical stress on my legs Sometimes for me I think the extended time hiking Puts more biomechanical stress than just that like Super chill granny gear effort I mean I think for me if you compare the heart rates They're probably pretty similar Of both efforts But I feel more efficient granny gearing it And I think it's less biomechanical stress Yeah and I think it's a reason that And races with steep climbs You've basically been unbeatable And I don't think it's because your Granted gear running is necessarily faster than other people hiking But I think what happens is on these really steep grades They do level out at times So unless you're purely up walls Which some of this course was And you know in retrospect maybe we should have done a lot more Pull practice for Joe But on most of the time Yes it might be 20% at times Or whatever 30% But then there are periods of time where it levels out to 8% And it's almost impossible to switch from running to hiking And those quick iterations that you need to Unless you're grace and Murphy She was so good actually that was one thing She did do a little bit of hiking in the race And her transition from hiking to running is impressive Definitely but like for you or something You know you're already running So you're putting in four steps on someone very quickly And those times so hiking is incredibly important We but those adaptations get optimized really rapidly So focus on it but don't overdo it And try entraining even if your heart rate gets up To run just a step more of the climbs whenever you can That will add up a huge amount over time Did you have a chance to decompress with Joe And ask him what percentage of climbs he ran in this race? No we haven't talked yet about the race experience I told him to take notes though Did you really? Yeah I'm excited And I'm talking to Allison Baca today Who had a similar experience Because Allison didn't use polls at all Interesting Yeah The entire race The entire race Wow So we'll get to that Um okay so here's a question from Patreon That is relevant here So as always patreon.com slash swap SWAP SWAP There we do a bonus podcast every week That's 30 minutes. We have 55 of them You can hear behind the scenes race strategy Answer tons of questions We do science corner posts We do a bunch of interesting things And it's a way to support the podcast Do it if you can Actually that's where we're going to let out our secret picks For broken arrow Western states ahead So we always do them on Fridays And I feel like we're in that race brain space And we're predicting We're throwing down kind of what we've told our athletes So there's some like inside baseball on there Yeah yeah yeah And people did hear that Grayson was going to win Guaranteed at that race So here's a question Regarding troll running Because f-ass fault I live in Norway Where switchbacks practically don't exist I was wondering your thoughts on training intervals On steep 30% drain Versus runable train 5 to 20 ish percent Um You know clarification for those that aren't Of us that aren't killing or gracing So essentially steep train Versus runable train for intervals I've always traditionally trained steep Because I love power hiking I'm also a ski mountaineer and winner So polls are my jam But over the past year I've unfortunately realized that speed does matter And what you say about half marathon speed Essentially being the key factor in determining results Is pretty true Um So are thinking there And I think we agree here Actually you take the lead Because I think we agree But I want to make sure We definitely agree And I agree I co-sign with his listener His own speed matters And it does matter To have the mechanical stimulus in your legs That you can handle steep grades But we like doing our Like Our pure efforts focused on output At lower percentages in terms of incline Because you get much better Maximization of speed Of mechanical stress Of neuromuscular ability to turn over So I think for me A lot of my treadmill workouts Actually are instructive I do those at 8% Very very different Than doing something at 20 or 30% Yet I have the ability in my body To handle that Because I've done that steep fruit But I think Train on In terms of like your focused efforts On I would say Any anywhere between Five to 15% Yeah and maybe for more beginner athletes On the low end of that spectrum Like four or five percent Yeah And then for more advanced athletes Yes, it can be steeper And it gets back to the climbing paradox Um If you take nothing else away from swap podcasts Listen to the climbing paradox Because I think it kind of underscores Like how we've done this And why our athletes can have success over time And the answer is when you're going really steep grades Or technical Train You end up being limited By mechanical output So your aerobic system is working really high Sky high you know your heart rates as high as it can be At round threshold or whatever Um But your mechanical output Actually starts to drop a little bit As you go those really steep grades Because the muscular demand is so high Mm-hmm So the muscles are essentially weightlifting While you're to support your aerobic system And all muscles Start to fail eventually And you have to dial back power output So if you do this stuff on steep terrain Yes, you're getting the aerobic stimulus So aerobically you're in a great spot But mechanically you're going to lose the opportunity To put out higher rates of output That will help an athlete progress So for Killian or whatever This is less significant Because he doesn't have that limiter as much as others Because he's fast He could probably not do any speed training And knock out like Zach Miller and Drew type of speed And his output doesn't fade Even at 30% grades It's just a different thing But for most of us It starts to fade pretty quickly As our muscles fatigue And so if you train the high outputs When the goal is mechanical Um at steep grades You're just going to be training at Lower mechanical output than you should be Um so you can do steep trails and training It's great to do especially on long runs But don't use it for your focused efforts Um that's not where you're going to get The big bang for your buck That helps you grow over time I'm actually curious to think about too Like the When we did like a correlational analysis Sometimes I feel like training on really steep Or really technical terrain Is almost more akin to cross-training Then it is to running Because like the movement patterns are so different Like it's an amazing aerobic And lactate threshold And overall cardiovascular workout But I would say that it's Like not super specific to overall running Yeah and at the end of the day Climbing Even the steep stuff will end up being your speed With just a little bit of biomechanical change Like what I told Grayson before the race too Is um you know Your lactate threshold is off the charts Like her speed around one hour effort So you can have confidence That anyone that's going with you Whether it's tovay or somebody else Will start to fade 35 minutes Around that effort And because your speed at that effort is so high Your output is so high That people to keep up with you Will have to be better than you at that When you're talking about trails that are more runnable The contrast is the VK which was so steep I was just about to ask this Would you change your philosophy for a VK I mean if that was the only thing you cared about Yes Yeah Because VK is basically a VO2 max test With elements of strength And I think running speed doesn't matter quite as much It doesn't I mean it's still a relevant long-term growth wise So like if you're thinking three years down the line Speed still needs to be the focus And that's where it gets a little complicated And you know there can be specialists Like Andrea Meyer in the VK That VK Grayson Like she's an absolute monster at that type of running Yeah And she didn't do the classic Because she recognized that wasn't necessarily her strength and skill set Definitely And so You know in other words there are always trade-offs But the way to improve long-term Is to work on your speed and your output And on that note Alice and Baka We talked about her just a few weeks ago After Lake Sonoma She finished sixth place First American And just She's a super mom She had her kid a few years ago now Just it's such an inspiring athlete Her story is so cool And I think we've talked about this before the idea that Like I think if you pop into this story right now You'd be like She's a hero But she has worked so hard for this And yeah she's like What she did was heroic out there But is like There is a backbone of years And years of work And grinding postpartum And to see her lay it out there And her whole family was there Yeah I think she need like It seems like extended family Like I feel like she knew something special was gonna happen Yeah And that's how she raced too Like I woke up at 1.30am And I had a text from Leah Yingling Who is like Alison is in the lead at this point Which just shows how she wanted to race this Like Did you have the nervous poops at 1.30am seeing that text Oh I couldn't fall back asleep all day I My sleep numbers were so bad Where's the baby Leo Yeah way worse Leo is like a piece of cake Compared to coaching athletes racing in Europe Um But what she learned at Western states last year When Alison raced is that If you go out And for her Enraged strategically behind people And don't really enter the mix You just for her She just didn't feel like she was engaged And at that ratio I think she was 12th or 13th at Western states But she was like I just didn't enjoy it at all Because I wasn't in the mix And so she put herself in the mix She put her nose in it And that is so fucking inspiring Like that's the less than I take from Alison Stick your nose in it Yeah and be different too I mean she didn't use poles And of course where I would say 99% of those women had poles Yeah well We'll see what happens when we talk on the film After this podcast recording But I guess that she's going to say I need to practice a little more with poles Oh interesting Yeah but six in the world is incredible I was so cool to see Also I love how different psychology Like gets you different places Like I have athletes that love to race from behind Whereas Alison is definitely one that loves to lead from the front And it's like kind of knowing and understanding your psychology Yeah and what you get out of these types of races in general But I also think these races are fascinating Psychology in general Because not all of our athletes had good days Claire suffered a fall a mile eight And she finished But it was like a miraculous like come back to be able to do that And you know Hannah all good had vomiting out there And but I think what's interesting though is I think sometimes the brain smooths over those race experiences Like I think sometimes when you're in that deep pain cave It's like yeah it's impossible to keep going Like we are not about death before DNA No way There are certain situations where it's like get off that course Let your body recover It's not worth trudging to the finish line And risking a medical emergency But I think that brain has a way of smoothing that over Definitely In the after like in the aftermath Like I think two to three days post DNF Is one of the hardest times because it's like the brain isn't in that memory It's like it's smoothed everything over And it's like oh yeah I could have finished Two to three days post anything Yeah exactly You haven't workouts or whatever Well even even childbirth Yeah after childbirth two to three days later I remember being in the middle of like Labor and being like this is some deep bad shit I would do anything right now Like I wasn't even thinking about being excited for babyly I was like just get me out of here Same same major co-sign to that It was so rough And then two to three days later I was like You know I could do this once or twice a week I think you need chicken nuggets I could do this for a long enough It was two or three minutes after But that's the thing you have a very short memory As a lot of old athletes do But it applies to workouts too Like people are like oh I don't really remember that Make sure you give yourself a lot of credit That like the brain does this by design And not to overanalyze like what you could have done or whatever But it's like you do everything you can It's not a mental toughness thing It's just what the body's capable of on the moment And don't let the brain pray tricks on you That it was easier than it was Because it's always difficult Well I think some of the best athletes Have the Ted Lasso memory of a goldfish Yeah yeah Like it's very short we move on We process things fast and like You know we grow and learn from it But also in the memory of a goldfish It smooths over the pain And it's like yeah Well that was a legit experience And I think sometimes these races have a way of doing that You know what the most controversial thing We've ever said in the podcast twice What That we couldn't finish Ted Lasso season three Oh we got a lot of messages We got a lot of messages We're gonna work to do it So I guess my thing is like I understand that how people feel Like so we go out to Ted Lasso season one Season two is really good but not I mean we loved it Like when we talk about We have a belief sign in our bathroom We touch it every morning before we poop Yeah we do And it goes okay in there Sometimes better than others Let's be honest We're gonna talk about GI system maybe later But yeah people are like you need to finish You owe it to them And it's like okay we'll finish These people really do sit swear by it But first few episodes were a little rough People won't That death before a DNF man comes That we're allowed to DNF Ted Lasso If we want it's our freaking right And we still love it We're just like I'm gonna wash it on that treadmill Okay that's perfect Okay and then a couple nonstop swap stories We talked about Andrea Meyer She was 43 years old So impressive Winning the vertical kilometer Yeah Which is essentially a VO2 max race Yeah I was very inspired by that I was like I got 10 years left Yeah so if you're in your 40s out there Like this is something we've seen in coaching too The timeline on these sports Is much longer than people think This is to be best in the world We've seen athletes achieve incredible things in their 50s and 60s too If you take a long-term approach to what you can do Yes there are physiological barriers As hormones change and things like that But the body reaches set points that can be Astronomically high If you keep investing in yourself In fact there was a study that came out recently That was looking at athletes in their 60s And it found that the most of the regression Over 50% of the regression Was just determined by reductions in training volume Rather than reductions in VO2 max So yes VO2 max does go down But the problem is athletes usually then adapt their training So they're just not doing as much And that's where things like cross training And it's still investing in yourself As if you're a 25 year old professional Like that is a meaningful life And you can keep doing it Even when you face that slippery slope of time What I'm also really curious about too though Is athletes that are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s And they're overall running odometer is low So they haven't necessarily done the trials of miles And I feel like a trial of miles Sometimes at 40, 50, or 60 It has even more bang for the buck Because it's like It's revving that car your engine's odometer In a way that's really productive and fruitful But you know what I do? What? Just reset the odometer That's what I've done You know that thing you just push And it resets the trip number back to zero? Do you do that all the time? I do it all the time So this is our opposite personalities Mine just says like 43,000 miles Something No, I reset that one all the time Because I like to start at zero And that's what I do athletically all the time Because I'm trying to do in a self experiment here I think that a lot of aging regression Is because people think they should regress with age And I'm trying to I'm going to do a one person experiment You can keep me accountable to this on the podcast That when I'm 47 years old I still want to be competing at a national level That's my challenge to myself Like I'm trying to see what's possible If you try to take off any preconceived notions about regression I love this And if there's nothing else I can't talk about this before This is new Yeah, well nothing else It's just like a fun way to challenge myself But like that's what I want to demonstrate as a coach too It's like I feel like my athletics now is a chance to demonstrate That like This long-term investment in yourself Can be a lifestyle that like even That like I practice what I preach What's gonna say I think 90% of this battle is mental And I mean it's about showing up Because a lot of people stop showing up When they hit that eugen curve And I think You know your ability to keep showing up And keep finding out I'm excited for it I'll be so fun And you know who I'm inspired by? Joe Gray Oh Joe Gray How long does Joe Gray? Like in the late 30s, right? Yeah, he's really impressive And he was fifth in the world in the VK We interviewed Joe and the podcast Go back and listen to that We go off Joe And it's just point I mean This guy was kicking my ass Over a decade ago And he's still at the top international level I mean the top performances in the VK The top four were some of the most insane performances We've ever seen I believe Joe was top Well definitely top North American Absolutely so far ahead of everybody else Like he keeps resetting what's possible I think there's almost this like United mental characteristic Amongst like the Joe Gray's And the Gray's and Murphy's Where they stand on the starting line And they want to race the best in the world And I think not every athlete has that Like I think a lot of athletes would like the starting line To be clear of competitors Or like they would like to have an easy victory And what I see in Joe And what I see in Gray's And is They want that They want to be on the starting line And being like who can I take out to lunch You know And I think that's so cool And the more that as like athletes We can have that mentality It makes sport more fun Yeah and when Grace and I talked to at the start of the year Is like the goal this year is to lose Yeah and she I mean she did And if you can Yeah she got third I mean she got that podium I can't call that She got a medal Her podium was incredible But she didn't say like But she didn't win And she said I lose I lost And it was great You know and I think Do you think that gave her a sense of freedom I mean I think she might have already reached the freedom Like if you guys listen to the podcast You'll hear her talking about that I think it is kind of liberating to know That in her off discipline She can put herself out there In a place that's like she knows she's gonna hurt And face that with full Like a fully open heart Well we haven't really talked about it But there is a burden of talent Like when you have Grayson's level of talent To me Well it's incredible And she's done great things with it But it's also a burden too And I feel for her on that Like when she steps on the start line She has a Like target on her back Everyone is looking at her And she handled that with such grace and beauty It was incredible And so so inspired by all the athletes at worlds All the teams Like Jennifer Litter was fourth in the short trail That was so impressive So yeah M.K. Sullivan was top 10 in short trail Which was amazing The men should have won a gold medal The U.S. men So they were five six seven And Oh yeah we just talked about that Five six seven And they didn't win gold I was Well we thought they won gold Yeah And we were like They won gold And Instagram people were dunking on us So like they didn't win gold you guys Guess this guys They do I don't know why I'm saying get this guys I sound like I'm a YouTube star Right What the fuck am I doing But get this Humans Friends Fellow folks With F-O-L-L-X They do it based on time not place It's like that's actually just cobbling together individual results It seems really dumb Yeah it makes no sense to me Well I think the fun part of this race Is the tactical structure And I think sometimes when you remove Like yes You're gonna have people sprinting their hearts out For time But it's like the tactical nature I think is more fun And Team USA Who is able to work together for five six seven I feel like that should be rewarded Compared to just Yeah And any time you reward time in sports Above other things You're also incentivizing negative behavior Like that's just not What was we're gonna talk about when we talk about Track racing Which God we might get to We're pretty far along Okay do you want to go to hot tips? I'm so excited for hot tips Let's do it Okay as always These are sent in from listeners on Patreon They're fun little things We'll riff on them a little bit First one Music can be a great training tool Get a playlist with a fast beat And you can become the pranceiest pony Starting to run with music help me raise my cadence from one seventy to one seventy eight Plus sometimes it's just more fun Oh heck yes Yeah I totally agree I can't remember the last run I haven't done with music Oh yeah it's hard for me Racing I don't do I don't use music in races There's some jaw roll and a shanti on there And you're feeling good Please guys do a Guys with the plot But do a jaw roll playlist And actually You know I think there's a lot of purists out there That say you shouldn't run with music I don't get it But I think they've never run with music before I agree A lot of watches now So I have a Garmin 745 You can upload the music to the watch So it's essentially having an iPod shovel on your watch And you just get some aftershocks Your buds so you can still hear things around you It's life changing And I think especially if you're trying to do the trial of miles If you spend that much time in your thoughts each week You better have some inner peace Or you're gonna be fucked It's like yes I love listening to my thoughts too But after a while I don't want to listen to anything but jaw roll Oh I agree My thoughts get real scary And there's something It's really nice to have jaw roll to interrupt that stuff going on I actually sometimes find myself singing on the drill Yeah And you know sometimes people see that And I just embrace it Yeah I do see sometimes Like you'll do like air drums with your hands Or something Just like do do do do do Oh the air guitar Yeah I'm such a good air guitarist on my head It looks real weird though You're so good Okay number two I used to be really afraid of running over a squirrel on my road bike And was constantly doing weird awkward braking and swirving Whenever one of those animals started darting across the road Then one day I ran over one And it was incredibly liberating A little gross Yeah But I now don't worry anymore I actually speed up and aim for them This is such a good person So we have peridogs here You're a boulder And they kind of stand up And they taunt you as you bike by But I get scared for myself I don't get scared for this peridogs Because I saw a news article once That someone ran over a peridog And went over the handlebars Oh no And unfortunately passed away Oh god From a result So now every time I see one of those peridogs I don't think about them I think about me Yeah I'm like you're a danger to me Not to I'm not a danger to you Yeah I actually like This is why I love hot takes though This is a pretty deep dark thought I actually speed up and aim for them Oh yeah I'm talking about squirrels But I respect it I think if you can You know Wear that type of thing on your sleeve Good for you I just worry that there's going to be You know The squirrels talk I actually have you heard about the orcas No Okay so Somewhere in the Mediterranean There's An orca I'm not sure if this is like a hundred percent true The start of it Is that a female orca was harmed by a ship rudder Oh that's sad Yeah But okay I'm not sure if that part's true But the next part is true That since then Orcas have been sinking yachts By attacking the rudders Whoa So many yachts getting sunk Weat that's so cool Isn't that really cool That's incredible But now I'm worried that the squirrels Going to go after this cyclist Oh yeah right How are they going to do that Um Probably just go for the spokes You know I guess it's kind of like You know World War II Attacking like the USS Indianapolis By just like dive So maybe the squirrels won't do that Okay number three You don't get out of running what you put into it I'd really like people to stop saying There's a linear pattern between effort and results That's not true for everyone Oh damn I actually kind of agree Powerful Yeah I mean I think Sometimes it's a It's a up and down Like mountain that does Eventually look linear over time Like I think most athletes that we work with Do have some sort of linear pattern But I would say most and not all for sure Yeah Well you're the expert statistician Epidemiologist over here Um And I imagine that if we did chart it out It would look like Yes Maybe there's a best fit linear line That we could use most of the time Um But in in practice Especially zoomed in It just looks like a random number generator And you know I think often we smooth things over So it does look like in our own brains So it makes more sense Kind of like what you said about the brain After two or three days after a race Like it makes everything fit into a narrative But in reality Dude this is a grind And if you're out here training really hard That's the process part that matters Like Um The reason that we try to deemphasize Carrying about results and all Is because At the end of the day you don't really have control over that And that includes people like Drew and Grayson and Allison You know they were given gifts That they're applying in a very amazing way But that wouldn't happen for them You know what 99.9999 9% of people on the planet Well I think our brains are kind of like The opposite of researchers So researchers you try to find like that best fit line Your comments are like I see a line there And I think sometimes as athletes We try to undercut ourselves We're like oh that's not a line Like what are you talking about And I think the more that you can believe In the power of a really like Yeah I would say a really generously fit line The better we can be as athletes And just yeah like I love that idea You're essentially you're a poor statistician Exactly Be a poor statistician Yes, on yourself Exactly You're like me Really statistics just were never my jam Totally So I'm just like dude I got those significant p-values Motherfuckers I'm coming to age 47 And beyond and I'm going to rock it Watch it Be as my r-squared is going to be with 9.9 You know statistics were never really my jam either I like many other forms of math I have no idea why I did a PGG Essentially you feel that it's almost statistics We should wait because you're not going to graduate Officially until Saturday Yes I get to walk on Saturday But what if someone listens to this At this point I think I'm fully sealed Okay, I get paranoid about this I'm like what if I didn't check a box But I think my actually my like student profile That's graduated It's so perfect Okay, number four Listening to the SWAT podcast at 0.9 speed Is a great way to sneakily increase running volume That's 10% on at least two runs a week This is a Patreon listener So they get the bonus podcast I like this a lot Though I'm officially team 1.5 speed I'm a team 1.8 speed On our podcast It sound like Jarval and Ashanti That's true Well, yeah Yeah, we're pretty fast I feel like if you listen to this at 1.8 speed Your cadence is going to be 200 Thank you So as always If you like this podcast Trust us Athletic greens is where it's at And if we give something to you Buying athletic greens is another thing we can give to you But also you're giving back to us Because they've been so supportive of the podcast How does that relate to 1.8 speed I'm just trying to get a Fucking Transition in here, Megan If you listen to it on 1.8 speed Transitions don't matter When have you ever sold anything I'm out here selling That's true, you're hustling I'm hustling You are confrontational and you're selling Yeah I've never wanted to bang you so much Those two come together So the actual link now Is drinkag1.com Is it really link? Swap Yes, they changed their name They're no longer athletic greens They're now AG1 They've gone full silicon ballon Yeah Yeah I kind of like it AG1 sounds sleek sounds good It does sound sleek But as always It also stands for athletic You can still use the past Oling, they both link to the same thing But I'm trying to do what they tell me to Because I'm trying to be a good little salesboy So drinkag1.com slash swap SWAP This is the supplement That absolutely rocks I got drug tested at the Kenyans 100k Came back clean as a whistle You know negative test And the reason is And I wasn't stressed at this time It's because I can trust athletic greens Gets me all of these great supplements Totally clean Totally beneficial Feels great on the run every day It's got that ashwaganda in it Which is the only like safe Safeer sport certified ashwaganda And we've seen good good things with ashwaganda Yeah, it's so good Okay Five Almbax are good races Because you get to see all of the runners And say good job Just like you're going down the line After a little league game And you get to find out What some of the people look like from the front I like this one Up in Almbax are my favorite types of races I love almbax It's actually some nice little challenging on technical trails When you're saying Trying to say his ah And who do people And not fuck your ankle That's one of my favorite race ever Is actually quad to see These you get to pass people three different times And this listener said And you get to find out what people look like at the front I love getting to see what people look like throughout the race Because that experience Brings I think everyone together so much And it's just so magical To see other people working just as hard But with different experiences within the context of the race And I can't wait You know, I'm joking about Competing until I'm like whatever age But I can't wait till I'm 70 or whatever And being one of those people At the very very back And still fighting just to start Oh, we're going to have so much fun doing that together Oh, we're suddenly we should just race together Yeah When I'd be fun It would be interesting And Leo is going to be crushing our souls at the front No, you're going to race me like drew home and race Zach Miller That oh, that'll be fun You're going to be closing so fast Even more fun But this actually reminds me So in travel soccer When we used to do like the high fives at the end of the game We would hand off patches And the patches would represent the teeniums And you collected them over time So I had this big ring of patches That I would like attach to my soccer bag But we should have a Some work I'll play podcast patch Like we just distribute to people As we as we pass them That would be so fun You know what your honest patch would say That you're handing out to people Bitch, bitch Bitch Because yesterday on your bike You got back, you know I gave it I'm not a great person Because you're on your gravel bike And there was a triathlete that was on their fancy arrow bike And you just like blew by them And you're like I got so much joy out of that moment Well, I did pass them kind of fast And then I kind of forgot about them And then three miles later they passed me And I was like Oh, I passed them again I am so bad when I get on two wheels I'm like I have an addiction on two wheels And I don't like I feel like I'm a relatively good person Until two wheels I can't help it No, that's why you're a world-class athlete You know I'm sure all these athletes have that little thing within them That they temper To be a good person in real life But there's also a patch in their head That says There you go, bitch It brings me so much joy And out those bitch cards It's so fun Okay, number six Races are one on the downhills And following up Some people are genetically better at downhills I'm actually agree with this Yeah I think there's um So actually with uphills Specifically, I think there are some types of like structure That makes people better at uphills or downhills Like Andrea that we talked about Yeah, she's an uphills specialist Um, so yeah, I agree Yeah, the interesting thing is I think this take is right when it comes to Downhills in particular Because there was that study from U-T-M-B That found that the athletes that Were excelling on downhills in the second half Were the athletes that excelled in the race And it makes sense intuitively Because the pace differences on downhills Will be much greater than the pace differences on apps Like on ups The difference between a grainy gear and a hike Is very, it's relatively close In the big scheme of things Whereas on downhills you can start to get Multiple minutes per mile difference And it's what determines your ability to run uphill later How much you're slammed from downhills The one place I'll disagree is that Yes, there are genetic differences in everything But I think downhill in particular Is almost always practicable Oh, it's very trainable Yeah So the point that those athletes can get great And never let yourself think that your genetics Or what's holding you back on downs Yes There might be genetic limitations on ups More than downs Because of the relation of VO2 max And we know that's a heavily genetic variable But at downhills You got to believe Because that belief is what distributes Through the rest of your performance cycles So belief has to come first Belief comes before base pairs I totally agree I would say that the race is being won on downhills I think race and Tobe's race this weekend Is an example where that actually didn't happen Tobe probably the world's best downhill runner And race and gutter on the uphill So I think like speed still matters And speed, I mean downhill is also part of speed So speed and fitness in the uphill matter as well So I think I just think it depends on the race I just got to stop pause for a moment And point out this phrase I just said to end that little thing Did you hear that? I missed it Belief over base pairs Damn Wasn't that good? That's really good I know it's just a little tag on And you used to Like, you got to go on the tag on with so good But you could see that being a shirt With like a T-Rax Like a swap T-Rax, right? Oh that's yeah, let's do it Belief over base pairs Yeah Hell yeah We got it Strava hot take Google legend crowns Are better than segment trophies I like this So for those that don't know, Local legend needs you to run that part of the route More than anyone else I 100% agree, it gets back to the process I'm gonna start thinking this too I don't celebrate local legend crowns enough So I'm gonna start doing that for people Whenever I see a local legend crown I'm gonna try to comment Well you can make your own Strava segments So we have a Strava segment on our backyard trail That's serial mix champions Yeah And it's basically just us going back and forth Yeah, it's true You've taken all of them recently though Oh yeah, I love running loops You love running loops You just repeat those bitches over and over again I'm not even doing it for the trophies I'm doing it for the process The process of the loops Grinit, if you're in Boulder or California And you ever run into a segment That has like a really funny name With an exclamation point Rest assured that was created by me And now I'm gonna be creating them To get those local legend crowns Okay, number eight This is relevant to worlds Super steep, technical single track is dumb It's called trail running Not trail scramble, slip inside, rock climbing Okay, I don't really think it's done But we've all had these moments, right Oh, I've totally had this moment out there I'm like, fuck this Yeah Yeah I love US racing Like, worlds was awesome But like, at a certain point Do we need to go straight up and down the mountain constantly Like, yes, the classic race was great The race and intro they did That was really interesting But the long race Got a little bit excessive Oh, that was not a little bit excessive It was a lot excessive And we talk all the time about how In Europe, single tracks Like your switchbacks aren't really a thing Well, they had switchbacks It just, the course wasn't taking Yeah, in the VK especially They just like, skip these switchbacks Go straight up I love this type of running But I have to get in that mindset And the problem with this type of running To me is you have to do more specific training For your legs not to get shredded Yeah Whereas like, I kind of like trails more That you don't do them And then feel sore for eight days after Agreed Which is what happens to my body Like, you know, I was talking about Drew's training a little bit On some of these Steve Trails or Allison You know, the types of trails that they do Like, the first time I do them I actually literally get sore for five days And it just, to me, it makes me feel a little beat up Well, what I love is half marathon That have about a half mile of this kind of stuff Because you're like, I'm such a badass I'm so legit But it only takes a half mile of focus And a half mile of quad slamming And then you can post the photo from that section Yeah, exactly Like, look how technical this trail race was And the rest was on the road I average, I was so fast in this race 12 and a half miles of it are literally on a track And then a half mile has some rocks Look at my five minute pace running down these Slammed out rocks Yeah, all the time Okay, and then last one Running is overrated Jogging for the win Oh yeah This is my jam And if you're out there And you feel daunted at all by getting out the door Let's change for running framework to a jogging framework Because I try to start every run thinking jog city Well, we start every run the first two miles is jog city Yeah Actually, if you I have gotten to the point I used to be the one that was like pushing the pace And beginning of runs And now I'm like This two miles is sacred jog city time And your aerobic system's gotten so much stronger for it This Saturday we did another Saturday tempo date And Megan set another three minute record on a big climb here And at altitude too Where it has never been your jam And it's all coming from that aerobic system, baby Well, you know, you want belief over base spares on the t-shirt I want jog city, jog, jog city On a t-shirt Yeah You're off of Rack City Yep Which I think is about strip clubs, right Yeah, I think so Rack City, Rack City, bitch Yeah, yeah 10, 10, 20s On your Tade's bitch I can finish that high five Okay, this is a really... I've never been happier than any moment in my entire life than that This is a really dumb question Rack City is referring to the Tade's right I actually have no idea I have no idea I think Rack is probably Context clues in the rest of the song I think it's probably referring to something else But I don't understand You shouldn't have a weight 34-year-old guy Determining We just move on before we can start Yeah, that's exactly It's a great song, we respect it We will have everything about it Okay, talking about the running world now Using this transition into some shorter distance training talk It'll be a little longer episode But we'll try to keep it pretty narrow First Three world records or world best were set First Faith Kip Yegon Set the 5K record Just after saying the 1500 record And she ran a 14-0-5 It was her second world record in eight days What is happening? Holy shit She is bonkers And as we talked about on our last podcast She took like 18 months off After giving birth Sure, come back has been incredible Yeah, and then Jacob Ingerbritzen ran the two miles in 754 What? 357-357 I mean he actually ran the second mile faster than the first But to give you an idea Two, three, fifty, seven miles back to back And we're going to talk a little bit about him a second And then Lameca Gurma set the three-case steeple record for men In 758 Which a three-k in 758 is insane Three-k at that pace It's just wild It's insane what's happening right now in the running world We were sitting having lunch talking about these records And you asked me to predict what the three-case steeple what time was And I had been a little off on the five-k I was slightly too high That was a little off on the two-miles Slowly too high And then I said You know what? It's a two-minute three-case steeple That's where my predictions were going The best part is you just write two minutes You know what? I was just like, you're right Exactly, that's basically what it was So interestingly, Ingerbritzen's coach is his dad, Geert And he had this discussion about training That will be a little bit of a segue into our discussion of Training theory for short distances We don't do any tests in training to gain confidence So they mean like pushing all out in training We do the training and the training is volume-based and threshold-based Threshold being easier intervals, moderate intervals The key competition is that there's also Composition is that there's also some track work but not much So it's always a little uncertainty when you do your first track meet You have to rely on the system for a long long time It's no quick fix You have to adapt to the system It may take one or two or three or four maybe five years But when you come out on the other side having done all the work You will guarantee success I absolutely love that quote I love the idea that training is not a test And I think every time as athletes, as elite athletes If we go out and do workouts and they're a test One, it's mentally grilling, that's exhausting But I think it actually like impairs the body Physiologically in terms of long-term development Because like we don't want these to be tests We want them to be smooth We want these to be lactate controlled And if you're testing yourself like they often aren't Yeah and I think that that might explain a lot of why these results are changing And it's going to get into our discussion as training for shorter distances But something to also give you a little bit of understanding of the track world Is a poster that was at ACSM titled Comparative effects of advanced footwear technology On running economy and track spikes and racing shoes And the basic takeaway here is that there's about a 2% difference now For track advanced track spikes So they essentially have the advanced foam and a nice plate in it Versus the last generation of track spikes Which also hadn't a little bit of a plate But it wasn't quite as much So part of this is probably the spikes And I think that's important Because if it weren't the spikes And we were seeing times skyrocket like this across the board It should raise alarm bells in your head Not happy bells Well statistically if a lot of the world records have been held by former dobers And we are crushing all of those world records You'd be like well what is on the market Like what are what are athletes doing But I do think a lot of it is explained by the spikes I think also building the aerobic base Like we as as a large like running society Have focused on aerobic base building for a long time And actually can I read anger Britson's quote on this Because anger Britson has developed his sons from a really young age And you know we're starting to think about Leo as a young athlete He's doing his standing training We're thinking about his aerobic system But I think like I'm watching old videos of Earl Woods To practice how I want to be a parent Just like just drilling him Or Todd Morinovich's father Do you ever hear that story? Oh no He's the quarterback created in the lab Yeah So his dad started training him as a quarterback From when he was like three years old And was having to do heavy lifting When he was like in fourth grade Oh my gosh And this quarterback ended up being like The top pick in the NFL draft And then totally fizzled out Because as soon as he was on his own He had none of the tools for success But that's my model I'm going to raise Leo To be the very best quarterback Roll tide I love it It starts with standing training I let him fall I was a spotter for him And I let him fall And you were like Megan you shouldn't be doing that Yeah You need to let him learn his consequences He's got to hit that ground That's the only way to learn Back up quarterbacks Are caught in trust falls We Starting quarterbacks they just fall We start preseason football at age seven Exactly But I think we're raising this generation Of kids that have grown up Like high school Or set up and focusing on building their aerobic base And I love this quote from Ingebritzen About coaching young kids and young athletes If you've done something to create that base Never mind what you did If you cycled If you run Or if you play football Whatever you do to start early With that kind of training To build hard and then long That's the engine You have to train those things From an early age when you're growing Because when you're finished going You can't When you're finished going You can't build any more physically You can train what you have But if you do it in early start You will grow your lungs Your heart will grow along with your body There will be natural stamina And I feel like it's Yeah it's aerobic base building From a young age But through the lens of like Multidirectional sports And movement patterns And tag and fun things And I don't know I feel like we've gotten a lot Better at prioritizing that aerobic base And I think that applies to everybody too So you know if you're trying to create The best athlete in the world Yes that matters a little bit at 12 You know But if you're trying to develop The best athlete you can now Going out in a walk is usually beneficial All of these playing sports with your kids Playing tech Yeah Going on a swing set Doing monkey bars Like try to be in all around Treat your body as an all around athlete Like you're a kid Like and you're running too Like you're a kid When you're doing hill strides Think recess Like that type of thought process Also leads to the best physiology we think When I was a kid I was like Each 5, 10s, 10s, 20s on those 10s That's what I was doing when I was a kid I'm glad you were the one doing that I was I would be canceled Okay so now let's talk briefly About training for shorter distances This gets into some ideas of Why we think this is happening Why the Ingebritz and Method works And first you know I would say Let's talk think about Grayson Like you know the way Grayson trained for worlds Was we tried to raise her threshold Output as high as we possibly could So the basic theory is As long as Grayson Throughout any point in these races Can clear lactate She's gonna excel and win And the hard part about something like a VK Is there's no time to clear lactate But if you do that constantly You're gonna be most equipped for very very fast races And that applies to her It also applies to athletes doing these 50 mile long trail races It's the same physiological process Is happening at the cellular level No matter how long the event is And I think clearing lactate actually Feeds into the tactical approach of the race too Because you could see Grayson So anytime that it leveled out She was like relaxing her arms You could see here like actually her brain Take on Grayson has a great understanding of training theory And she's like I need to clear lactate Before this climb ahead And I have channeled that Whenever we do stepcimes now as tempos And we hit that nice like flat Or even descent portion In the middle of a long climb It's like relax I think my my underlying nature is like I want to turbocharge that It feels fast But it's like no relax easy effort Easy speed clear that lactate But a lot of the workouts that we do are focused around that But it's also a racing tactic too Definitely and it plays together though Because if you're not very efficiently fit Aerobically You're not actually going to clear lactate in that time Anyway, so you are incentivized to push the The flatter portions And that might be one place you've changed Is you're so advanced aerobically now Because you've trained easily That it's given you this This perspective that you've never had before When you're probably one of the most An aerobically fit athletes in the world But you know trained a little harder than you do now Okay, so here's a great question from patreon To tee up this discussion I'm a formerly competitive Men's 800 meter runner Now in my early 30s I kept in contact with speed intervals on the track Since leaving competitive sport almost 10 years ago Including sub four minutes from my own pace work But I'm progressively incorporating longer distances No, my schedule as my body Can endure only so much time in the oval office With that said, I would like to spend a few years raising Road and track miles and 1500s Before I leap into long distance running with both feet What kind of training plan and zone distribution Would you recommend to build the speed An anaerobic capacity necessary to achieve this Without beating up my body Like the carefree collegiate kid I used to be Thank you for considering the question And for the terrific process or podcast Well, I really like this question Because it's building on everything that we just talked about With laying that foundation over the aerobic base And doing so for as long as possible So like, ideally if we can start that at age 12 great But even if you haven't like even if you have a low odometer On you're like running mileage That's great to like start the process of building aerobic miles And then thinking about lactate processing Just like Grayson like How can we let the body become most efficient at clearing lactate And that happens through lactate clearance like smooth intervals But also like as we've talked about before When you're doing that aerobic training You're essentially building the factory to help you clear lactate Yeah exactly Even if you're not specifically working on that mechanism By doing the easy running Yeah, that's so brilliantly said If you haven't listened to our threshold training explained Podcast or Norwegian episodes Those really dig into details on why lactate is such a heavy focus As a proxy for these variables on the aerobic side So there's the aerobic side of the spectrum That is what drives performance from the 800 meters on up But especially once you start to getting a 1500 meters We're talking 98 99% aerobically driven And so these types of events Aerobically you're producing a lot more lactate than threshold Right so let's say at threshold You're one hour-ish effort You're producing four millimoles lactate These athletes might be in the double digits With lactate production But what still matters is your ability to use that lactate as fuel And then clear it from the cells All of that comes from more moderate intervals More controlled efforts So all of these short distances Like the inga-brits and brothers are showing Come from the ability to do controlled efforts aerobically But then there's the other side of that too Which is the mechanical side Which is you need to be able to actually put out power With that aerobic engine Gets back to our steep climbing So for troeners it might mean That your hill intervals are not so steep For track runners it means you still need to be able to touch the fast paces But the difference is And this is what this athlete needs to remember You are not trying to train the aerobic system When you do faster intervals You're trying to train the mechanical system So don't race them And they don't need to be long Yeah exactly Like you're not trying to go out and do 600 meters hard So it's like 200 or 300 meters I think on the track perfect Maybe up to 400 But even then that's only specific right before races So essentially your strides You're around like 200 or essentially 30 seconds or less for this athlete And that's basically where we like to cap it When you're talking about mechanically focused work So whether it's a flat strider or a hill strider It is all about power It is all about those fucking muscles Going for it You don't care about lactate Because it's not about that It's about how much power you can put out So every athlete out there Make sure you're doing your strides You're around Stay close to that top speed And I think another important point too Is what coach inga-brits and said Is the idea that training should never be a test But I think that in this process Race into shape Like track racing shorter distance racing Like you really need to do it To understand it And for your body to process and to understand that feel So I think this is a great place Where you can race into shape And also in trauma when trials We do that all the time too And I think use those to your advantages And try not to race your workouts But race your races And use that as like a workout to level up Yeah and the complicated thing Is like inga-brits and all these people They're so naturally fast That the game is a little different Is they need very little speed work to be as fast as they are What I would say for most athletes Let's think about a season You're trying to train for any shorter distance race Or just trying to become a better athlete And you can see this in our free training plans online On our website For like half marathon Marathon things like that Is to start the season Obviously you start with the base But then it's okay to have Some of your early workouts be really hard To work that mechanical system Whether those are short hill intervals Or short intervals in general That are faster Like 15 by 1 minute on 1 minute off Where the 1 minute on So you don't really throw caution to the way And you run a little faster But after a few weeks of building that VVO tube So your velocity of VVO tube Or your output at high ends Then your intervals start to get more relaxed And you start to focus on strides as your speed efforts So then everything's around Critical speed or threshold So basically Anywhere from 30 to 60 minute effort On those intervals With your shorter rest in general Is the way to progress that aerobic system And periodically pulse back in Intense workouts It's okay It's not the type of thing where you can't do intensity Because that can lead to a lot of rapid growth But make sure it's not the sole way you approach it So for this athlete You should probably not be running for a minute pace often If you want to run a for a minute mile And we're talking more Like in the overall Like the overarching physiology here How would you If an athlete came to you and said like How many weeks do I need to do this Yeah How would you describe that to them in terms of like Layering in these workouts So the initial part of the phase Or the part of the phase where you're getting race ready Both and I know there's lots of copyouts So the initial part of the phase Like once you have a base I was actually thinking about this I say that usually Like four weeks of workouts Focused on mechanical output for an athlete that has none of that That's like less talented works For an athlete that's talented like Grayson two weeks And so the way I like to do it is He'll work out like six by two Eight by two minute hills One minute intervals two minute intervals three minute intervals Across three weeks And then everything else gets more controlled I love that After that For someone like Grayson We did Hill intervals initially When she was building back from her She was injured last year And building back from that Then one VVO to work out And then restrained a threshold Because she was then efficient enough I was gonna say I'm sure she lit her fire With one VVO for two work out that she did And she was like I imagine like within a week or two You could already see her numbers improving Oh I mean it was Shocking It's a work of art It's so fun to coach someone like Grayson She'll be in the loop Yeah It's incredible I mean her Strava is Go Make sure you're following Grayson everywhere Her Strava should be in the loop Yes, she's so inspirational But then as you're getting close to race season One workouts enough 10 by 400 Where you're pushing harder Is it plenty to get the final adaptations for like Essentially the nervous system Because there is an element of nervous system Of like oh I knew how to do this That is important Um but We would be Remiss if we didn't present the counterpoint So there's a 2023 study that just came out And the Journal of Sports Medicine Science and Medicine And it was called The Effect of Polarized Training On cardio respiratory fitness Of untrained Healthy young adults A randomized control trial With equal training impulse And I really like this study Because they took these untrained adults And they put them into four different groups And these are going to have the four different groups Or three different With three groups in a control Of how we think about like training theory So one group is polarized And in that polarized training group So they had 75% of time at Z1 So really building that aerobic base And then 25% of time in Z3 Zone 3 and a three zone model So that's very We're talking about three zones here So zone 3 is zone 5 Yeah so there's spending a lot of time Working that upper end The upper end running economy Like really thinking about a lot of speed training This is also probably quite hard in the body too Yes There was a high intensity interval training group That was 100% of time in Z3 This would be That's a lot That's miserable That's miserable That's your basic league training for CrossFit at that point Yeah And then the final one was threshold Which was 50% Z1 So very easy And 50% Z2 Which is moderate Obviously this is a little complicated Because like Truth threshold training Should also have some of the speed training That the ingaubritants talk about You still be fast Yeah But the findings here are really interesting Because you can probably guess what happened The polarized and the hit group Increased their threshold more Than the threshold group did And so they all increased their VO2 in time to exhaustion But polarized got the best Hit also did very well And points out that if you're untrained You're going to get short-term benefits From going very hard And that introduces complications Because if you're just looking short-term It makes sense to go very hard But as ingaubritants said We're thinking One, two, three, four, five years down the line And then the game starts to change a lot And I think for most athletes We're thinking about that But I think every so often I have an athlete That is like functionally untrained Like me coming back postpartum I had a hard issue Had a baby It hadn't really done any training Any year You had a baby? What are you talking about? Where's Leo? Where did he go? I forgot about it Oh no Did I agree to another one of those? You agreed to four of them Oh shit Just kidding But I mean I think sometimes you can think of athletes Like every once in a while I will do like a different approach In terms of where we're thinking about A little bit more of high intensity work at the start Perhaps in someone who Who doesn't have this huge base But we're always thinking long-term And that this complication introduces The place of training theory That is where I think the rubber really Hits the road with different approaches So all of these track athletes nowadays Are probably co-lessing around the idea That it comes from the aerobic system Right The African runners have been doing that forever Now in the West we're starting to get You know more used to this type of approach But a number of different studies And training theories Also introduce harder workouts throughout a cycle Because there's a great 2022 study The premier one than this That essentially said If you inject polarized training Into advanced training programs You will see higher growth That then studies off after a number of weeks So if you introduce those periods of higher intensity Whether it's just one workout or a few workouts You might see higher growth That helps an athlete reach the next level So you can kind of do a stepwise function You're not just doing aerobic intervals You're mostly doing aerobic intervals And then occasionally doing a harder session Whether that's like five by three minute hills Or a track workout where you're pushing more Or race Yeah Or whatever And by introducing that By introducing pulses of polarized Into a longer term peer and middle structure Then you can start to really level up And accomplish something where like Right now you might be thinking To this listener that a 415 mile is your goal or a 410 But the way people are all running 358's now Is one super spikes So get pairs super super spikes But two This aerobically driven approach That has periods of speed Mixed in throughout And then periods very hard workouts thrown in After they've developed this aerobic base Well the way that I visualize this in my head In terms of like tracking progression It's almost like a step climb So I love doing step climbs In training where you're running a steep hill And then you level out You clear your lactate But I feel like If you charted an athlete's progression It would probably look a lot like a step climb In terms of how this is looking Especially as you think about like Macro cycles and micro cycles And making sure to dial back And have aerobic rebuild weeks in there too I love how much that connects the step climb idea To the statistics jokes we were doing earlier Oh yeah about like View in that step climb View it as a linear climb Yeah but the point also being that it's not linear When you're talking steps Like you're really talking something that looks different And like a lot of the work that leads to the breakthroughs Is not what you think it is Because it's not the things that's immediately preceding it It's not the sexy stuff Is this something I haven't a year before Exactly Yeah And sometimes even non-running stuff And so essentially make sure the aerobic system comes first Even if you're doing very short events And the training that works for a mile run Will be the training that works for 10 miles Which will be the training that works for 100 miles And if there's nothing else you take away from us Remember, output matters But at the end of the day It all comes from the aerobic system So keep your speed high But don't race your intervals Because that leads to regression pretty quickly I love that This is how we can all chain our Our inner grace and Murphy's Oh my god if only If only If only I could be 8% grace and Murphy Okay actually I think that was a really good training discussion I'm excited about that I think what we just, I mean So maybe you came at the end of the podcast Yeah but I like how it built off of the Angry Brits and Stoop Because like What they've been doing in training theory is so cool And I don't know I feel like the quotes in there really tied in well And I think it ties to everyone I think often Athletes that are running 30 minute 5Ks Think that the principles of athletes that run 1240s Don't apply to them And the answer is it totally does It's the same exact shit The difference is for the 30 minute 5Ks And similarly for every athlete that isn't like Genetically gifted to the point of you know It being like bonkers They just need to focus a little bit more on mechanical output Because that's a natural part It's like your velocity or power at VO2 Like that's the part that doesn't come easily for you That might come easily for Ingridson So focus on that a little more But you can still have training not hurt You don't have to test yourself You can have it be this uplifting thing Where your stepwise function might not reach You know Olympic champion or World Champion like Grayson But that doesn't mean it's any less meaningful Well it's so much less daunting to go down So we have a tribunal in our pinkie And to go down and do a lactate controlled workout Oh my god It's so much I actually like look forward to it And I look forward to like my heart rate dropping To the point where I can get to another effort Because it's like it doesn't hurt in the same way But that's like where the sweet spot and training is But the cool thing is though After I've done those in a really disciplined way I'm actually not that disciplined as an athlete Like I've had to work on myself I'm not either Yeah, but we've gotten better Yes, yeah And it's a place where coaching actually is good as an athlete Because we're able to eventually be like Okay, we get it ego, we can turn that off But after I do those types of lactate controlled workouts Like we're talking about and mix it with the speed I find that when I actually go hard It doesn't hurt It's different Yeah, it's our body is processing and clearing lactate differently Yeah And so if you- And it also feels different too It feels so different It feels so much better Yeah So chase that You're chasing those good feelings Not just those good times Oh, we're always chasing the good feelings around here And speaking of, let's get to the listener corner I love this Are you gonna read? Yeah, sure You've been even children out of the reading burden So I can go for it I've been on the fence about doing this particular race for weeks Flip flapping every other day Then I listened to swap episode 152 You gave a recap of David's Canyon's 100K experience And encouraged listeners to try the unthinkable That's exactly what I needed to hear You gave me just enough courage to hit submit on the registration page I had absolutely no expectations of finishing I prepared for a DNF I started thinking about when and where to call it quits about halfway through Soon after that though, a volunteer came along She cheered me on in all the right ways It's like she knew exactly what I needed to hear With her help, I finished Heck yes I was dead fucking less and impain But I couldn't have cared less about any of that Because I had just done the unthinkable It was the hardest thing I've ever done And I'm so incredibly proud But I couldn't have done it alone Without that kind volunteer, I'm sure I would not have finished And without you both, I wouldn't have even started Oh my gosh Thank you for the encouragement And the motivation to take on the unthinkable How incredible is this? Ah, that's incredible Yeah I love it so If you're out there, go do something scary Well, also be that volunteer Yeah, do something scary But then also pay it forward Because like people around us are doing scary things every single day Belief over base pairs, mother fuckers Oh yeah, dump that parier on yourself For sure And just like to really underscore this point Like, this is sort of saying they finished last And they were proud of that And that's what we want you to take away from this podcast Is like, you know, when we're talking about training theory We're talking about like If you can finish last Like, but one second faster That is a worthwhile pursuit in your life And yeah, to this listener You're incredible and so inspired by you But to everyone Do something scary It can be a mile race It doesn't need to be a hundred mile race It can be anything But put yourself out there Even if it's just local legends That counts too This is why running is so magical Yeah As you can get local legends On serial makes champions If anyone comes from our serial makes champions segment though I'm handing out some bitch tokens Because I'm gonna come back I'm gonna run 87 times in a single day if I have to Those swap podcast patches They're just gonna be bitch tokens Bitch tokens You know what I want right now? What? A hot tub with you first And as always our listeners can join us We've been doing that post every podcast It's such a fun way to decompress It's just okay We should just record a podcast sometime out there Oh shit Oh man With the bubbles Yeah Oh, just imagine yourself in there With us Eating some honey nut checks Oh, it's gonna be so delicious We love you all Woohoo Huzzah