Ultra Runner & UTMB winner - Tom Evans - #24

0:00Tom Evans, welcome to the podcast. Hello, Jakey. Jake the snake is your saved in my phone. Is that what I'm saved in? Yeah, with an emoji of a snake. For the people who don't know who you are, you're most well known for winning UTMB, is that right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, that's probably been my biggest race achievement. But would you be able to explain all the other mad stuff that you've done? Um, yeah, of course. So I went to school, left school, joined the army, went to Sandhurst. Um, and I was in the infantry. I spent eight years in the army in my penultimate year. I didn't know it was my penultimate year at the time.

0:48I signed up to a race called Marathon desaab which is a 256 kilometer self-supported race across part of the sahara desert

1:01and i didn't do much training if i had an hour i'd run for an hour if i had three hours i'd run for three hours didn't have a gps watch didn't have heart rate monitor didn't know what lactate was and yeah fast forward six months in yeah april 2017 did marathon de saab um and ended up having a really good result i was the first european male to finish on the podium you was third i was third having never done anything the furthest i'd furthest i'd raced was 10 kilometers before what was the podcast that you went on after that because that's when i first heard of you after winning Marathon Disciples because Marathon Disciples back then was like the toughest race on the planet.

1:46Yeah. Like, I don't know if it was assumed at that, but like it was hardcore. I feel like it's kind of lost its aura now. Yeah, that's definitely how it was marketed at the time. It is really tough. And actually like, I think it probably is the hardest race for the mid to the back packers of the race. whereas if you're fortunate enough to actually be pretty quick it's actually not from an hours wise it's less hours than i normally train in a week now so like yes it's really hard but if you're quick it's not it's long but it's not that long so you're saying to me that marathon disciples is a five-day event right yeah and five days it's no it's not it's six days but five stages because you get 48 hours for the long stage okay when i did it i did the long stage in eight hours roughly okay whereas some people will take 46 hours to do it if you had the choice of doing training for eight hours training for 46 hours non-stop working at about the same intensity i get you and you take into consideration like all of the external factors the heat the dehydration you still get the same amount of water whether you're training for eight hours or for 46 hours but then i was in the only shade is in your tent in the evening or in the day there's no sun in the evening obviously so you were just chilling i just chilled yeah that's crazy so you're saying that marathon disciples like say over six days but your typical training week is more than that more intense than that would you say whether it's more intense it's longer hours longer hours that's crazy that like your day-to-day week is like harder than marathon desables from a pure statistic standpoint yes but not taking into account like the heat and i think the hardest thing for marathon desable is the from day one from minute one in the race you're in a calorie deficit because you've got to because you're carrying all of your foods you're working out and if you also do it now i would do it differently like i would spend time in the lab i would figure out actually exactly how many calories i'm burning at this effort at this heart rate in this heat this is how much water I know I'm gonna get and actually train a little bit more specifically for it whereas at the time it was just okay cool I'll just get a freeze-dried meal I'm not gonna take anything to heat it up so I ate yeah it was I can't remember the brand of it but it was pretty tasty but it was like a curry with rice in it but because you didn't heat it up it was that sounds good so it was like eating a raw pot noodle almost um so yeah it was pretty tricky i would definitely do it differently if i were to do it again um but yeah you're in a calorie deficit from day one so like the recovery afterwards took so long because your body is just completely empty yeah no that's that's crazy so let's just like quickly tick off what you've done so the achievements so marathon in 2017 had the opportunity to then race some other mountain races so raced all all throughout 2017 2018 I then had a really good year I was third at the trail running world championships I then signed with Red Bull the night before the 100k race at UTMB CCC and won CCC then into 2019 I debuted in 100 miles and I raced western states and I finished third bit of covid bit of an injury a major knee surgery um and then yeah since then I've won western states won UTMB had a baby um met you and yeah here we are that's crazy to be able to just like tick off all them achievements like the you know you just said it like it was nothing but like it's incredible you are literally one of the best talk runners yeah but it's i think when you put it like that yes i i would you'd have to look at the results and i would have to agree and if you saw it on paper but like for me i get i think when you do something that you love it doesn't feel like work if i wasn't doing this as a professional i would still be doing would i be racing as much probably not but would i still be going running every day with some structure yes so like it doesn't feel like work so and I think that's then when you can really and I get points that makes it really good and at points it makes it difficult because if you can't be bothered it's then really difficult to get motivated because it doesn't feel like job you have to convince yourself that all right this is actually your job you need to go out and train whereas that probably only happens five six days a year maybe but then on those days it's really difficult so where did it all start was you like naturally talented growing up was you doing cross country was you doing i did i did some running at school but it wasn't i'd say it wasn't like the cool thing to do like i was at a very team sports orientated school and for me rugby was my passion rugby and going to the gym was my it's what i enjoyed doing it is what I was good at like I think it was I needed something to had a lot of energy and yeah I was always fit like if you school cross country I would always win if I ever thought that I was stressed at school I would train I would go running I would go to the gym whatever it was like that was how like I if I like actually look back at my training age and how long I've been training structured for it'll probably be since I was 14 years old like actually doing things and I think like my parents are incredibly un-pushy and they wanted me to almost find my own way from that age and part of me sort of thinks oh I wonder what if what if they had actually identified that I was good at athletics and good at running and pushed me into it would I be here today probably not would I have done something else would I run track would I run road yeah maybe but would I still be doing it and loving it today probably not so like I think there was some talent and like I look back yes I wanted to play rugby I looked better than I was at team sports like I would score a try in the last five minutes of a game or I would try saving tackle with a minute to go I was less because I was less tired than everyone else like I had this engine I would run to everyone would be trying to hitchhike or walk up to sports walk up to the pitches like I'd run up like for me it was it was just a no-brainer like you train you train as hard as you can because I enjoyed it so like yes I think there was some talent but I think the talent as well as being physical is a mental talent as well like I can i can now i look back like i can train do the most boring training day in day out and i still love it it doesn't i don't need the sex appeal of doing cool fast reps on the track in these amazing places i could lock in on a treadmill staring at a wall no music and just embrace it and i think like for me that's my my major strength as an athlete isn't my vo2 max it's not my running economy yes those are good um my and having been in the lab recently my uh economy so my fuel burning it was the highest fat percentage that they've ever measured in the lab so like genetically that's and physiologically that's where my strength is it's my ability to be able to preserve carbohydrates longer than anyone else whereas i think my real strength and my real talent for these long races and for sport in general is the ability to be able to put myself in the hurt locker and just stay like consistent like day in day out yeah and it's not like i'm not does that mean i could go and bury myself in a hour race yes would it be very good probably not but actually what i could do for an hour i could probably push to doing it for 70 minutes or what i could do for two hours i could probably push to doing for two and a half hours and just really embrace it and just deal with it at the time and i think that's the when the chips are down and things are really tough I think that's where I thrive knowing that yeah it's hard I'm not enjoying it necessarily I'm struggling but I know everyone else around me is also struggling but I think I can go for longer going back to when you mentioned about rugby how much did you weigh at my prime and I'll send you a picture I was I don't think I quite made 100 kilos I think I was you were a big boy then i was 98 98 and a half kilos maybe a team no neck so i went straight from jaw to shoulder um what was your training like so you kind of you build muscle quite easily i assume like you you didn't struggle putting on muscle 98 kgs so some weight and was you kind of like was your fat was your chunky or was you kind of like when i say that i mean did you have excess body fat or was you kind of like a lean would i have gonna was i gonna be on the cover of men's fitness magazine no do i have a better am i more toned now yes bad big arms big arms and i thought that i thought at the age of 16 to 18 that was the key that was the is that not still the key well i think it well no actually there is a there's a study there is a direct proportion of tricep size to marathon time and no one with a i'm gonna butcher this but basically the bigger your the bigger the circumference of your arm around the biggest point of your tricep is directly proportionate to the maximum time that you or the minimum time that you can run a marathon so what you're saying that if you have if you have big triceps and big arms you cannot there is a limit there is a ceiling yes there will be exceptions but there is a limit the biggest predictor from without going into the lab of easy measurements to do is circumference of interest tricep it's pretty interesting how did you find out that because i'm a sports science nerd and i like reading um i think that's when when we first actually clicked the first time i i met you let's say i've been a fanboy for years and years and years um watched everything that you've done all the achievements you've done but i met you in person uh last year yeah last year january last year so over a year ago uh we had the luxury of going to a little place called umir which was northern sweden yeah uh in the middle of nowhere middle of nowhere and we basically hosted uh how cold was it there i think it was like minus 10 or something why did you have your top off uh it was actually not because of me red bull wanted me to do it for for the cameras and for the you got to give the people what they want exactly can we talk about you a bit because you're the you're the podcast host and yes people it's your podcast if people are going to know about it but like you doing i'm really interested in high rocks not because the name and i mentioned this before what do you think of the name i think i think it's an amazing event and i think it's really cool that you can put fitness in a small area and people can push themselves and you can do it as a relay you can do it as a pair you can do it as an individual so there is something for everyone i just don't like the name hybrid rockstar like and when i thought high rock sounds really cool like it's a really clever name it's really catchy high rocks you know what sort of thing it is when you break it down to hybrid rockstar i think it's just yeah just would that put you off doing one um i would have to say oh i'm doing a i'm doing a how would you describe bit i'm doing a fitness race i'm doing it is classed as like a fitness race i'm doing a fitness race yeah i'd say i'm a fitness race athlete i think is how i would have described it but how did you get into that because for me like it's a bit of a have you always been a bit of a jack of all trades and a master of none definitely like when i was back at school uh i was always like pretty skinny and all my mates around me still are yeah well i am still pretty skinny scrawny but uh all my mates were a little bit bigger uh we started going to the gym and i just wanted to lift what they were lifting i remember like trying to lift i think it was like 80 kg on the bench press this was like when we were like 14 like trying to lift 80 kg and all my mates could do it and i couldn't do it and it just take me ages and i just didn't progress in the gym as fast as I did with running because we all so went to our local Harriers which is like athletics club um Lee Harriers shout out um and I I love running I love running around the track I think we train for like middle distance or 800 meters yeah got pretty poor time 206 in that but we've got uh yeah two minutes six seconds for my my 800 you think you could beat that now uh yeah I reckon i could only just though but like if i train for it i reckon i could get close to that two minutes i don't know if i could get under what's your 800 oh no idea no idea yeah um but uh always loved doing that and then loved doing the gym and i always had these like two separate friendship groups yeah but everyone that knew me thought i was stupid they were like why are you doing both yeah because they're counterproductive and i did feel that when i was training for it but uh back then there was nothing that combined them both and then go throughout kind of like leaving school um working i took to a little bit of crossfit did like six months to a year of crossfit and then uh changed from doing civil engineering to being a personal trainer just because i liked helping people and then actually was in a gym that was called hybrid performance center so it was all about this hybrid yeah training and we were like well they'd like to say that they were at the forefront of hybrid training obviously if hybrid training has been around forever yeah like the term where you basically lift weights and you know either do like well do cardio wasn't really a thing so uh i coached there i did it and then hyrox came along did my first one won it and then thought oh i could be actually decent at this if i if i trained to it like what i really like about and then what i i really liked crossfit and sort of the early days the rich running era i thought it was really cool and what i really liked about it was it was i would say it was really hybrid because you didn't know what you were doing you had to train for absolutely everything whereas i think with and that for me that's really exciting because it's the unknown it's the unexpected you might you'll be better at some things than others you don't know if it's going to be a swim with pull-ups or it's going to be rope climbs or whatever it's going to be so you kind of have to tick every single box so you really are a proper jack of all trades you have to have something in everything i think that is the definition of fitness like being prepared for anything which i can i i completely agree whereas i guess my and i think the great thing about high rocks is it's then really easy to train for because you know exactly what you're going to get but what i don't like with it is seeing people sort of complaining saying oh they've changed the mats for the sled pushes and i couldn't get any grip i just don't think you would get that level of complaining for crossfit like oh no the ropes are yeah a bit too thin on my big hands or whatever no no one knows whether because no one knows we were going to do it's that unknown so like what the way that you've trained you think that you're training really specifically but you're then going to go to the race and it might be a bit different whereas what i love about crossfit is like when they would reveal cool this is your workout and there'll be some people who are like great this is amazing there'll be some people like oh this is not great but like guaranteed you won't have done the exact training needed so for me like the hybrid from it is way more crossfit than high rocks yeah no i definitely agree with that and you could even say that with ultra marathons as well because you don't know you can't control all the factors with ultra running it's completely different to say an indoor 5k or an indoor 800 meters where everything's kind of controlled show up on the day whereas like you're going out onto a mountain you do not know what the terrain is going to be like yes you can study it and you can train as best as possible but at the end of the day there are going to be bits that are unknown uh and you don't know what the weather is going to be like you don't know for me it's how your stomach's going to be you don't know anything it's problem solving yeah like and for me that's what i love about that's what i love about sport it's the ability to be able to solve problems whether it's whether you're playing a team sport and you're losing because they've got a really good a couple of players or whatever it is so it's then figuring out on the fly and being able to like people talk about being able to read the game better than anyone else what I love about trail running is the ability to be able to read the game to know okay this is what my stomach's doing this is how my legs are feeling this is what the weather's doing this is what the course is like this is the time to the extent where like we practice using running at night for example you would think oh cool like the head torches i use now you can get like 10 000 lumens like ridiculously bright but what that does to your brain and does to your eyes it like fries your eyes and makes you more tired you feel less tired but it actually makes you more tired so actually yes you've got the technology to do that but knowing that okay well my from a neuroscience standpoint what my brain is doing I want to start with low light so my eyes don't get overly tired and overly strained but then when it gets to three in the morning and you're most tired that's when I pump on the full beam and then yes your eyes might be a bit more strained for a little bit but it's easy to see because you're more tired it's that level of problem solving that I love and from a hybrid training crossfit way that's what i love like it's the you be doing things that you've not done before in that order necessarily whereas and i guess in a nice way that's where crossfit where high rocks is great because you rock up knowing exactly what you're going to do yeah and i think that kind of persuades a lot of people to do high rocks whereas i know a lot of people like most people don't like change yeah they don't like uncertainty and they don't like surprises and crossfit is the definition of that like we just mentioned you only find out maybe the day of maybe the week before the workout that you're gonna do you can't do anything about it yeah so you've even trained for it or you haven't and that's it whereas like like you say high rocks has kind of seen that seen that that potentially is great for for crossfit yeah but is a weakness if you want to get maximum participation and i and i think that's where it's amazing like i've said to you before this like my mum did a high rocks the other week and in a in a relay and yeah absolutely loved it and for be able to set yourself a goal that you know it's going to be really achievable because you could go to a crossfit competition be not be able to climb a rope and actually that's the crux of the workout and then you end up not being able to do it but actually if you know that you're doing a high rocks you can then train exactly for it so like yeah it takes for me the way that my brain is wide i like the uncertainty i like surprises i like the guesswork i like figuring stuff out on the spot whereas for high rocks for me it's uh yes you still got to figure some stuff out like i'd much rather do a pairs race where there's uncertainty because of your partner yeah yeah and you've got to communicate on and you've got to communicate and there's that problem solving whereas like if you know okay this i've got to row this far and i've got to run a k and i've got to do some burpees like you know how you're going to do it before you even arrive you know your strategy you know right doing i need to hold this power or this split for the rower and for the ski erg and war balls i'm going to do it like this which is amazing but i like the uncertainty yeah there is very little surprise when it comes to a high rock so even when you're lining up on that start line you're you're in the the elites like you've got a couple of factors that might change basically how you show up on that day are you healthy are you fit uh if you're one percent off you're probably at the back yeah that's just what it is especially when you've got someone like hunter yeah i like the sheriff yeah he's great hunter hunter's great like he adds such a personality and he's built the sport probably better than anyone else he's my he's my favorite yeah even with you he's my favorite yeah i'd i'd admit that as well like he's my favorite is he your favorite yeah yeah but uh do you have a nickname what like he's the sheriff what would you maybe you should come up with one the snake the snake i don't like that one though because it refers to me as being like a yeah it's got negative connotations to it the gunslinger maybe is that a the gunslinger yeah i think that's quite cool you could brand it as a bit close to the sheriff but the sheriff's i feel like i'd be like copying him yeah it would be a little bit but what's your nickname on the course there we have one the captain the captain yeah this is easy from the army but yeah i wouldn't say any really maybe we should maybe we should come up ask the put it in the comments so going back to when we first met we spent the plane journey just nerding out about everything i was basically picking your brain our eyes met in the departure lounge and yeah we created a little bit of a bromance yeah it went from there because you i just something that i thought that of asking because you like ordering things online yeah what do you reckon the last three things from amazon that you ordered were mouth tape because i know i've just restocked you just restocked her mouth so you're a proper woke sleeper a woke sleeper are you not saying that's something that i should be doing like you're you're the king of like optimizing stuff like that that's what i found out about you you are the best in the world at what you do like you say you've got great genetics but that doesn't set you apart from anyone else like everyone's got great genetics when you get to your level yeah but you optimize and think about everything and this is where i was like this is where we nerded out because you was like you was the first person that told me about heat training yeah see that that amazes me you're doing indoor exercise and you're not prepping for heat but now i am and i've been doing it every every day since not every day but you know what i mean i do like cooling strategies as well like you should definitely be meant to cooling charge you're wearing an ice vest before you start which guaranteed you don't do uh there's some people that do it i don't do it well some people you should 100 be doing it yeah you'll be eating ice slushies before the race so let's talk about no no so going back to the things that you've ordered this is let's we've got to spice this up a little bit where the people want to hear conversational chit chat so mouth tape because you sleep you're a work sleeper i don't use mouth tape because if I want to talk in the middle of the night uh I can breathe through my nose anyway that's gonna be fine like you just train yourself to do that okay okay mouth tape what else have you ordered yeah I want you to be honest otherwise I will get your phone here we go Emily's got it Emily's got it okay do you want to bring it over fucking hell why have you ordered this oh here we go here we go so we've got we've got knee pads knee pads why that could be like a dodgy why have you ordered knee pads what are they for for lunging because I want to speed up my lunges for high rocks so I raced last weekend analysed all my data I thought I was doing pretty good with the lunges when I was actually doing them realized that I'm still 30 seconds off the top guys.

27:35So I can hit the ground a little bit faster. So you're wearing... With my knee pads in training. In training, yeah. So I don't hurt my knees. Yeah. And I can practice that turnover a little bit faster. But you're then not worried because there's a... You're then going to lose... I'm not going to wear them all the time, but just like when I'm going for like speed reps. You know what they say, safety first. Safety first, exactly. I mean, I don't want to bat on my knees. Is that a bit weird? That is a bit weird. But they also come into use for other things. like if you're doing some gardening or you're doing some work under the kitchen sink i've also which is a bit of a hack i've also started doing amazon fresh so i order all my food okay on amazon because i don't like supermarkets yeah i agree i don't do supermarkets yeah and the chance being an athlete the chance of getting ill in the supermarket it is amazon fresh good uh yeah it's pretty good you've got oh no you've got morrison's you've got uh up north we've got booths which is our like posh um it's like weight roll yeah see i use a cardo a cardo yeah bougie yeah but it's a card has got a price promise it's the same as everything else all right okay okay it's really good um and then the other thing i've got a trx i've just ordered a couple of trx so i can do um walkbacks so do you know how you walk backwards on a treadmill yeah and which it creates, it builds up the VMO.

28:54Yeah. Obviously I do sled pull. Yeah. But I can do walk backs instead. Ah, okay. That makes sense. So they're the last three things I ordered. The last three things you bought off Amazon? A screwdriver. That must have been you. What about you? Sorry, why did we get on this one? Because when we were talking about heat training, within 10 minutes of meeting each other, you then ordered a heat suit. Oh, I still have it. Actually, I've ordered another one because that one broke. Yeah. there's now actually a good one that's got like a thermal liner in it because it makes you a bit hotter um makes you even hotter um so yeah i'll send you the link so you can order that right okay i need to ask you about this so when we spoke you was like you need to do heat training two days on one day off yeah 45 minutes at a time yeah i've now been told the optimal way is to do five times a week 45 minutes for five weeks would you agree or disagree with that i think it really depends where you're starting from um and it also depends what type of training you're doing like even your sessions that you're doing on the treadmill like your core body temperature is gonna rise depends also if you're doing any passive training like actually now like i do i do the majority of my heat prep passively just in the sauna like i do some training on the treadmill obviously where you are getting your core body temp higher but for a maintenance standpoint i'm just using the sauna because training quality decreases when you get hot so i want to maximize my training and feel as well as i can in training and then use the sauna for heat but also for recovery at the same time um it's been a few studies i've been working with the university of leeds beckett university with heat prep and actually they found that doing like hot water immersion so hot baths is as good as doing heat training yes you want that specificity of actually running but when you're running and you're really hot you're sweating so much you're dehydrating yourself your quality is going to go down your turnover is going to be done yes it's more replicative of what you're going to be doing during the race but also at the same time you're then going to take longer to recover so actually if you want that consistency which for me is the most important thing and I think in in any training like I listen to you and Alfie talking like consistency is the king um and yeah I think if you melt yourself physically and metaphorically doing heat training then you're not going to be able to achieve that consistency it might not take that day but like slowly it's just decreasing your calcium levels because you're sweating more it's yeah you're dehydrated so you're gonna have to fuel with more water and so it makes it more difficult i guess it's really good but like everything comes with a cost a cost um see that's why i asked you why what things you'd order niacin because i realized that you are a serial spender yeah when it comes to stuff like that like i don't even look at the price i'm not gonna lie like if if it can improve my performance or improve my recovery have you got a lot of stuff at home?

32:17so say for example this is one have you got clutter? yeah I've got a lot of clutter and we need to get rid of it we actually got a skip the other day we filled it within like an hour why don't you like use like we I'm the same as that's what I would do I would just get rid of things whereas Soph my wife is incredible at like Facebook marketplace oh yeah one man's rubbish is another man's treasure that is true but even if it's for free like give it away yeah because people will he's like all of my try and give it away all of my old shoes and my kit we're the charity that we've worked with and sends it out to africa and can then be reused and because yeah i might put a thousand kilometers through a pair of shoes but like that's still absolutely fine yeah they might not be the most performance and yes do i think you should give your sweatsuit to someone no um i think that should be burned no no i reckon we could sell that maybe yours maybe yours not mine but yours i'd buy yours you'd buy mine yeah yeah there we go you can't get out of amazon though

33:17so um obviously mentioned their heat are there any other things that you do because you do a lot of things um for ultra running i feel like people just think about time on feet you need to get time on feet but what are all the other things that you're thinking about i think the main difference between trail running and ultra running and road running is the skill that you need you could do realistically for a marathon you could do everything on the treadmill you don't need any like you can you can predict a marathon performance with lab data because all you need like vo2 economy efficiency that's pretty much it within a couple of minutes you could get someone's marathon time whereas with trail running like the skill required to be able to run on very uneven terrain uphill downhill through the night that level of skill is huge but it also changes for every race so race like UTMB there's a lot of hiking so being really efficient with poles like hiking poles so for example like in front of our treadmill at home I have mounted a concept to ski arc that is it perfect no I actually think it's harder than using poles but I can train my arms as if I was polling while I'm on the treadmill we've now got and with that we have got two altitude generators because one wasn't enough so I've now I must have the best endurance home gym in the country Matt does fitness who I love watching on YouTube yeah he's a great guy less on gladiators I think he comes off way better on his YouTube I really like him thinks that he's got an amazing home gym it's really cool and i know they've just redone it i think mine's cooler it's way more endurance obviously oh i could get an invite maybe you get an invite we could how do i get this invite slide into my dms you can then you can then be a little bit flirty a little bit you can then use the sauna you can then use the ice bath afterwards as well so so so yeah so the skill level is what you need so i train as well as the aerobic capacity and the endurance training i also train for the skills so whether that's i'm adding in downhill technical trail intervals during my training so i can that proprioception for my feet works how are you doing that you literally just go into the top of the mountain and then just like And then, yeah, for a little bit, for a decision-making standpoint, like if you're going, I do quite a lot of biking, quite a lot of mountain biking and gravel riding.

36:21Pick a semi-technical trail. You're obviously going way quicker on a mountain bike. That ability to be able to make, to see what's ahead of you on the trail, read the trail, make that decision, make those adjustments. Yes, it's not running, but I can do it on the bike because I'm actually going faster, so it's a bit harder. Do you ever fall off? A few times, but not for a while. Touch wood. um when i was at red bull at salzburg a few years ago we tried to do stuff with some um vr goggles for like decision making on the trails which way to go that was quite cool i don't do any of that at home but definitely something that you could incorporate um i do a lot of ankle strength work really boring training i brush my teeth standing on one foot hey emily does that as well for balance yeah for balance that's apparently do you do anything else to be fair you do because you showed me your little knee routine and you was like if you do this routine yeah you're never gonna have sore knees yeah yeah so i must i've had surgery fairly near where we are now at 40th and i and i yeah i did need surgery i had a stress fracture i had my it band was in absolute pieces so I needed surgery I spent so much money so much effort so much time on physio gizmos and gadgets which I imagine you have a lot of as well that I think are good but for the one percenters at the end the massage guns like I use Compex I use yeah massage guns recovery boots all of that stuff that i had paid for i found this guy on instagram called the knee over toes guy and for anyone that's had knee pain they'll know who yeah and honestly the biggest game changer in my training and my performance came from after finding this guy on instagram signing up to the program doing the program you sort of take pictures or videos of when you're doing it one of the coaches there then analyzes it says oh you're doing this right you're doing this wrong try and get more uh more of an angle on your knee or whatever it is but yeah absolutely incredible so yeah i do that i don't do it as much now now that i'm a dad my training i would describe it as a lot of it's like dad intervals so gone what this is gone are the days where i'm doing 20 minutes mobility before a run and then doing some activation doing some drills going for a run stopping before the intervals then doing some more drills doing some strides so everything beforehand was perfect like it was uh to kind of like a program yeah perfect to the program but faffy if you had a 90 minute session with some intervals it's probably going to take you two hours whereas now i have a 90 minute session with intervals and it takes me 90 minutes because i've not got the time to faff about if if not less have you ever done it where like you've had to reduce your rest time because you're like oh shit running out of time no don't be silly no don't be silly no because yes with that or you just they're like you now realize that like you're and i think it makes you a better athlete because you can't procrastinate you can't be like like, oh, I'll just go in half an hour.

39:41It's like, right, no, you either go now or you don't go. But also like, I've definitely, there's definitely a phase in my career where you're searching for perfection. And if you've got an hour, if you've got a 70 minute run to do, you've only got 50 minutes of the time. I used to think, oh, well, I just won't do it because I can't do it perfectly. Whereas now I'm like, I can still do something. It might not be perfect, but it's better than nothing and like people say oh if you're not gonna if you're not gonna do something and if you're not gonna do it perfectly don't bother doing it whereas now I'm like actually I'm okay with mediocre if I feel if I've only slept for five hours because we're up during the night because Phoebe's being ill or whatever that's fine like listen to how your body is and so like things have definitely become more flexible more malleable that if I don't feel like it today cool push it back to tomorrow or actually just scrap it because like we said earlier like consistency is key you're not your session your season isn't going to be built off one session one that yeah you'll have key sessions that you really want to prioritize you might have to push them back a day or not they might be absolutely fine but the ability to be able to have the confidence to say okay cool today's not perfect but i'm going to make the best out of this day I'm going to do the best that I can with what I've got in front of me rather than saying, oh, I can't do this because it's, I've only got 45 minutes.

41:13I've got a call in 45 minutes and I've got a 50 minute run to do. Doing 45 minutes is better than doing nothing. Yeah. No, that's, um. I think a lot of people get caught up on that. Do you think your performance has changed due to that? like would you say you're in better shape now or would you in better shape before when you was doing everything to the book i think if probably for under a four-hour race i'm probably in worse shape now so kind of like your fitness yeah i think i think if you measured in the lab i think i'd probably be i say worse now maybe maybe not on i would track everything through training peaks naturally i'm in very similar shape now to what i was in four weeks before utmb so i'm in really good i'm in really good physical shape but yeah the top end stuff i don't think i would have i'm yeah i don't think i would have as much of but that's the great thing about trail running that in a 20-hour race like you can't train for a 20-hour race you can't train for 24-hour race 20 hour race whatever it is because you can't replicate it you can't think oh i'll tell you i'm just gonna go do 20 hours 20 hours of running like you can train for the first half of it but what happens in the second half is what you can't train for and that's where that mental strength like i now have such a a huge purpose for why i'm doing this having a daughter genuinely has given me like that dad strength that people talk about and i really do feel it like i do honestly believe in it um but then also just that level of being a year older being a bit more mature having another year of running in my legs those skills that i've built up makes me a better athlete that yes in three hours race isn't going to make any difference but actually come 15 hours where the racing really starts to happen then i think that's where i'm a far better athlete so for me i'm a i'm a better 100 mile athlete now than i've ever been but i'd probably be a worse marathoner than i've ever been do you think the sleep the sleep deprivation from having a child actually helps technically in that in that aspect of like being able to push through in them last eight hours of 100 mile yeah i think so as long as like you're not going into the race tired um and i think that's the yeah that's the real key to it but you do definitely get used to it Like if you're used to sleeping 10 hours a day, which we were, we then found the beginning really difficult when you're only sleeping for six hours.

43:49Whereas now if I, now we're back to probably average eight, eight and a half hours a night. If we have a night where it's six, like actually you're all right in the morning. You definitely get used to, you get used to the conditions that you're in. Yeah. so like you wouldn't say after going through all that you wouldn't say eight you must get to eight hours no matter what but again that's like that's the searching for perfection yeah because you you was like that i remember speaking to you a little bit um obviously before you had phoebe uh and you was like i and i found this so fascinating you was like i get in bed at 8 30 i'm asleep by nine and I don't wake up till 8.30.

44:33And you get almost 12 hours in bed. And I found this mind-blowing. What time do you guys go to bed? Now, I go to bed. I'm trying to get to bed for 9. Yeah. What time does Emily go to bed? She normally comes with me and then she just sits on the scroll and then I get up at 7.15. So it's still good. I think it's still over 9 hours in bed. yeah do you track your sleep uh yeah what with uh whoop whoop yeah and uh yeah i'm a bit obsessive with it my day is ruined if i get under eight hours on the whoop yeah interesting but do you do any you collect the data but do you do any like actually how you feel do you listen to how your body's feeling or do you just look at the data uh i listen to how my body's feeling as well I don't go off that so say for example if that says I'm 17 % recovered yes I will check in with myself I'm probably checking with myself before actually looking at it and then if that aligns with how I feel so say I wake up I feel like shit I'll check my whoop if it's in the red then we're like oh something's a problem if I'm feeling great I probably won't even check my whoop because I know that I can get out there you make the final decision on your feeling yeah yeah definitely for sure but like you do if it's in the red i'll probably take it easy i probably would never if my week was in the red i'd never do a really hard day unless i needed to like it was like a competition day yeah um but if it's like yellow or green then i'm ready to go yes i like i track sleep and everything but like again similar to you if i didn't if i slept badly i would look and think oh this is really annoying because you're searching for that perfection because you know what you need but like life happens and i think for me like in the it's in the hardest moments of a race where for me i like try and rely on these like happy memories and these happy thoughts

46:38that right and i would probably i would now prioritize making those happy memories and having a really nice time rather than prioritise not prior not not prioritising sleep but like if you're having a really good time with mates and you're on your feet for a bit longer during the day than you should have been or you drove to see some family but you had an amazing time that's going to serve me better at hour 15 than having recovery boots on for an hour during the day and I think for me that's where my mindset has really changed like yes the physical element is so important you have to do the training but at this the level that we are at everyone does the training everyone's training high volume everyone's using sports science everyone's fueling really well the difficulty then becomes that desire to win and you can't it's very difficult to do that by accident and And I think now like being really aware of what we're doing, making sure that we're not just existing, but like going out and having fun.

47:54Like gone are the days of coming from a run, make recovery shake straight away, have a shower, sit down, recovery boots on. like now i get him from a run and sophie's like okay cool here's phoebe she's halfway through her lunch and i'm like okay cool is not you anymore the priority is not me and i think that's really good as long as you can still look after yourself to a certain extent but like if i get a recovery shake in immediately or 45 minutes later is it perfect no but have i had an amazing time with my daughter or my wife or friends family yes in the long term what's gonna be more beneficial and for me it's that it's that mental strength and that mental resilience of it sounds sort of a bit hippie but like filling the cup up with all of these great memories and all of these great really powerful strong happy moments that during the race you can slowly spend them um and for me that's why that's why i think that i won yes i was in great physical shape last year for utmb but i was in the best mental shape that i've ever been and it wasn't because i was really focused and had my blinkers on and it was just right this is what i've got to do it's actually because i took those blinkers off and i was like cool this stuff's amazing well i watched everything like leading up to that like all the stuff that you put out on youtube and everything and i remember when the race was happening and i just had this feeling that you were going to win did you know beforehand did you like get a bit of a feeling that you were going to be successful in that race because there's so many things that can go wrong in a race like we've discussed whether it's your stomach whether it's weather whether it's everything but uh there was just this feeling that i had that you were going to absolutely crush it I thought that I felt really good.

49:55I felt that the mental side and the physical side were both there. I was really excited to race. I didn't have, I really didn't have any like outcome expectancy on the race. I wanted, I wanted the race to be a success. And I had genuinely got into my head and I genuinely believed that

50:21if someone beats me fair play and the ability to be able to not say like yes i wanted to win the race i've been trying to win this race since 2022 so four years on the bounce good result dnf dnf and then i won it by trying not to win the race won me the race i was too focused on winning the race is the most important thing ever was actually when I took the blinkers off and I allowed myself to have a bit of fun enjoy it not still searching for not for perfection but just trying to do the best that I possibly can do because the thing is with perfection is once you have done something that used to be in your eyes perfect you then want to improve on it yeah and i think that's the like if you if you pb'd in your high rocks race and you did something that you didn't think that you thought in your why that was your goal yesterday you've now done it today five minutes later your brain is going well i could have done that faster or what's next but you've actually just achieved something incredible you've done something that was your massive goal so for me for utmb it was a actually let's let's put the defenses down like let's go have some fun let's the race is going to happen regardless of whether you're ready or not it's a 20-hour race go into it excited go into it happy don't try and win the race like if you don't try and win the race it doesn't guarantee you're going to win the race but like it guarantees it increases the chances that you're going to be able to do the best that you can do and then from a physical standpoint you do the training that to get you in your best physical possible shape and i think that when i'm at my best i am one of the best i'm genetic talent i train very hard i'm quite good at what i do when you can get the mental and the physical side there you can perform your best and that doesn't like so success for me wasn't winning the race i really wanted to finish and i would have much rather have finished the race in a hundredth place than dnf'd halfway but in the lead so i want to get to the finish line i wanted to show that not giving up and doing things right in a different way is the way that i want to do it and yeah success was getting my very best out of the day and as soon as you finish like i did get my very best out of the day like yes it's not an official course record because the course is a bit different but from a pace standpoint it was the fastest pace that the race had been run from the second half of the race it was 20 minutes quicker than anyone has run it before it was the highest ranking score that that race has ever got from like a point standpoint

53:49will someone go faster yes do i think i could go faster probably not so like you think that was your your best i think it was my best it was my best on that lifetime on that exact day and it's like oh what can i now do to get better and it's like yes i want to get better but like what if i can't get better and it's never going to be the same like you say all the factors you can't be different you can't put everything in this and that's for me that's what i that's what i love about trail running and going back to the trail running versus high rocks you can compare yourself from last weekend to next weekend yeah oh i was two minutes slower today whereas you can't when i was from utmb 2022 to 2025 i was an hour quicker in 2025 so obviously there has been improvements but you don't know technically was that an hour because you're an hour fitter or was it you're half an hour fitter and the conditions are good like there's no yeah there's nothing that can you can't really compare it from trail to trail from day to day what you might run today on the trails might be completely different to what you do tomorrow whereas ski-hug is ski-hug yeah yeah that is that is true going going to your training i feel like a lot of people will think your training is very specific and it will be very specific to ultra running but it'll be people will assume it's very different from a typical runner whereas i remember we did a session together and you were doing intervals on the treadmill at your threshold pace like you would with my top on with your top on yeah yeah did i have my top on yeah no of course you didn't

55:38but i feel like your your training isn't as dissimilar as what people think like people will probably think it's so different and yes there's elements where like you're being specific you've got a ski erg attached to a treadmill and you're practicing with poles but there's other elements that are very similar to just getting better at running and the fundamentals of running i think if you took if you took some of the specifics out of it and you purely looked at the data like i did a session yesterday that was a 30 minute progressive warm-up getting heart rate up to lt1 and then two 20 minute intervals somewhere between lt1 and lt2 if you looked at the pure heart rate and then a cool down if you look to the pure heart rate it would look like a long ish marathon session you've got 40 minutes at marathon pace marathon effort with a warm-up with a 30 minute progressive warm-up and a 20 minute cool down so if you look purely at heart rate you'd think oh that's a runner's session but i did it at 30 on the treadmill 30 incline 30 incline hiking but at marathon effort I can walk really hard I'm really good at walking it's my new thing is that the thing?

56:59do you think that's the sequel? guaranteed you couldn't the session that I did yesterday you couldn't do 90 seconds of we'll do it for a next YouTube video okay no I'd love to actually come and we'll film it you can play you can come and play in my palace so what speed are we talking on the treadmill? So 30 % in class. I can't even imagine that. My treadmill goes to 15 % and that's it. And I've got one of them woodways that you've got. Do you know? Not what I've got. Not anyone. You've got a special one. I'm the only one in the UK with this one. The bad boy. What's it called? Woodway what? Ridge runner.

57:32The ridge runner. What's it go up to? Does it just go vertical like that? 35. 35, but then we've also got a block of wood that if you put it on its side, it will add another 5%. If you put it like that, it will add another 10%. You're not supposed to do that. It's all right. yeah you do that they're not listening so so that so that session is it looks like a runner session but it's really specific at the same time what what speed you're going up this treadmill yesterday we were altitude so on a double altitude as well and most is obviously like i've heard with altitude training it's best to uh and it might be a little bit different to you because you actually are climbing mountains but to uh live high train low whereas you're doing kind of like the opposite it there are so many different there are so many different ways i think everyone is a little bit different everyone is a bit individual but we are measuring how performance is going and by doing similar exposures to what you would do for heat we're finding really really good results and you don't really need to live in an altitude tent no i don't sleep in an altitude tent i find when i try and sleep in the altitude tent my sleep quality is so low now with a baby it would be even worse and recovery has got to be a might not be number one priority but it has to be a priority this is music to emily's ears by the way because she said it's going to be the end of us if i get an altitude you don't need to sleep in the altitude complete waste of time so for someone like me how would you train altitude if if i should train altitude i wouldn't train altitude if i were you i would do heat just heat you don't need you're doing altitude for from a performance standpoint to have more red blood cells yep you don't need you sure you're only going for an hour yeah but it's still endurance isn't it not really your fuelings the fueling your endurance your fueling systems you're using isn't you're not purely aerobic you're you're using your aerobic glycosis system more than you're using anything else yeah you are having a rest but you need the oxygen obviously more red blood cells more turnover yeah but you're still getting yeah like to a certain extent if i have like just going a mad thing where we will it's like starting doping and stuff you're saying that like if we were doped with epo like i wouldn't get better i would yeah but there's a there's a cost to everything yeah but like with the altitude if you have more if you had more red blood cells in your body you are going to by doing hard exercise like strength stuff you are going to you are therefore transporting you've got more blood in your body you are going to be transporting more blood into your muscles you are therefore probably going to be creating more lactate therefore your run is then going to get slower right whereas actually if you increase your blood volume with plasma by doing heat training yep you're not the flow of the blood is easier so it's easier to transport it around your body to get the glycogen to get the sugar into your muscles to create what you need to create because you're not relying solely on oxygen like you are for running a marathon does that make sense that does make sense i feel like you're going to get a lot of dms asking people to train you for high rocks but then the knowledge maybe i could do that i do i coach i'm i'm trying to start a pro women's trail running team almost like a cycling team maybe i can do the same for high rocks just women or would you take me on as well uh i wouldn't take you on i think you're you're a bit too big time i'd like to take the emerging athletes through you know what you're doing you don't need any help but that's really interesting what you said that like you said that altitude wouldn't really i don't think i i think it would it might make you 20 seconds quicker maybe if you did it perfectly but it's a lot of risk your the quality of your training will drop if you're trying to do heat and altitude at the same time and that's purely because like you say the if you have more red blood cells your blood is thicker and then the blood shunting from yeah like like you say going from exercise to running and back to running or back to exercise like the blood shunting is a bit harder it's harder yeah it's going to spike even higher yeah right interesting whereas if your blood's more diluted with plasma yeah then it's going to be easier to do that correct and you'll be able to shift quicker i think i think i think it probably would make you a bit better but like i would only do altitude prep if i was racing altitude like i think the i wouldn't use it yes i think if you're pure running i think going to altitude is is great but it carries a lot of risk because your blood levels your red blood cells and your blood profile will change so much almost day to day so you what people would typically do is do 21 days as a minimum at altitude drop down and either race immediately before your body is like oh my god what's going on why is there so much oxygen here and you've got those red blood cells you then have a window from typically day three to day 14 where your red blood cells drop off massively and you feel horrendous that's when people get sick and that's when people get sick and you perform really badly and then the levels then start to go up again you almost get like a super compensation phase but it's really risky because you might not be able to you have to plan things really well for it whereas with heat there's no risk okay so like i think it's something that if you want to play i don't think for you it's worth playing around with i think you'd lose a bit of strength because you would end up your body it's more costly on your body being in altitude it's harder like your body would just start eating muscle and chicken legs over there i think you need to do some calf raises um yeah i do need to do some calf raises i did that session with you i was aching for like a week after um just yeah need to hit calves a little bit more but anyway yeah no that that's uh that's interesting what other things um would you do if you was a high rocker yeah when i'm gonna be i think we should do doubles i really do think we should do doubles where where should we do doubles well it's gonna align with your schedule what are your major races this year um hard rock 100 in july um utmb at the end of august is that when your season finishes yeah probably probably august september okay so what we're saying like october october november time maybe we'll do that we've got we could either do manchester birmingham all london yeah you got the in between us yeah who if if you were an in between us who would who would you play who would you be probably like Neil or something you think Neil just a bit thick I don't know yeah I can't dance though he can dance he can dance what about you

1:05:09Jay yeah I think bullshit yeah no I think you'd be Neil's dad alright okay okay no no I think I'm not sure who you would be I think I'd be Mr. Gilbert yeah yeah that's how i see myself as i could see that as well yeah you've got like nice like posh voice i could be i can rule with an iron fist but i can always have a bit of fun and put my tie around my head and drive a quad bike there we go there we go i've just lost my train of thought now i don't even know what we're on about good that's what podcasts that was what podcasts should be no i was doing my high rocks yeah i was doing high rocks so yeah we'll do that but if you was like you say there's probably a lot of high rocks that are listening to this a lot i imagine i imagine this is a very popular podcast lots of listeners maybe maybe but uh if you was to give advice to someone who was doing high rocks but you're coming from like outside yeah you're thinking outside the box what would you specifically train so the way that we go into every race build is we sit down as a big team and we work out what is the demand of the event what have i actually got to be able to do in order to achieve my goal during this race whether it's to win a race whether it's to finish a race whether it's to do a high rock so i would look at high rocks the demand of the event is the demand of the event it doesn't change whatsoever you know that you're doing whatever it is eight by a k eight by k yep and then you're doing eight stations as well so you know what it's going to be and that's not going to change which is really easy so like the demand of the event is the same you then have a choice to make yes you want to bring everything up but like from a military sense if you were fighting on two fronts and you had reinforcements to send you would always reinforce success so do you if your secret weapon if you're really good at burpees that doesn't mean that you neglect burpees i would get i would aim to get even better and make that your absolute be an absolute weapon at the burpees while then finishing everything i think once you've done an event and you've done one you can then actually analyze it and be like okay well where did i go wrong where did i lose the most amount of time or what did i necessarily find the hardest and i think what a lot of people will do for high rock mistake me if i'm wrong but try and run all of the reps kind of a similar sort of effort on the running whereas actually if you know that you're bad at sled pushes i would then say right let's take instead of trying to run it call it four minutes a kilometer actually for this one I'm going to run at 4.30 and I'm going to give myself a little bit more recovery or definitely before the wall balls where you know that it's a leg.

1:08:11And if you stop, then you're not moving forward. Yeah, precisely. So I would, I would, again, if you're using four minutes as your, what you wanted to average for it, I would run it 4.30 knowing that you are going to make up more than 30 seconds on the wall balls by not emptying the tank on the run because at the end of the day like it's all about speed it's all about the time that it takes to get from the start to the finish and if that let's say that's an hour cool you can work out okay well i know i can do the rowing in this rowing is obviously aerobic it's fairly similar to the running works fairly well together you can probably run as quickly before and after the rower but if you know that actually this strength based exercise the it's going to send you anaerobic it's going to send you anaerobic that's then when you're really going to struggle so actually by slowing down a little bit now you can then speed up there rather than saying right this is what i'm doing i'm going at at this pace yeah that's a that's a great point to be fair that would be back to when you said like work on your strengths to make them even stronger obviously you've had it in ultra running where you have got weaknesses whereas i'd i'd be like glass ankles yeah yeah so say for example uh we do a high rocks complete a high rocks and i'm really good at four of the stations and i'm really shit at four of the stations yeah i'd subconsciously always go i need to fix my weaknesses before i try and improve my strengths that's how i'd look at it yeah i think you're saying different or is there just different ways to skin a cat i think there's different ways to skin a cat i think like by i think hierarchy like it's all like i guess you can split it into different things like typically i imagine the better rowers are the better ski ergers who are the better runners yeah and it's all aerobic yeah because it's all aerobic so So typically, I think you would find those who are the good amateurs, I would say, sort of the top third.

1:10:25Probably at that point, you can get a little bit more specific and deep dive into exactly what you're doing. But yeah, if you're good aerobically and actually work out, OK, cool. The demand of the event is I need to run. I want to qualify for Elite 15. so i am probably going to need to finish my race in let's say 58 minutes 50 54 minutes 54 minutes okay so let's say 54 minutes okay cool so that's the end step i need to be finished by this time doesn't matter what anyone else does because if i can't go quicker than 54 that's fine but i'm going to train for 54 so then from like a strategic side okay i know that wall balls are my strength i know that i'm going to be able to do this unbroken that's great take that off done don't really need to worry about it but if that is a strength but and you've not really trained them because you're just naturally quite good at it it ends up being quite low hanging fruit maybe you could get another you could eat out another 10 seconds from that whereas like if sled if you're bad at sled pulls or pushes but actually you've worked quite hard on them but just like your physique isn't built for that then if it's not low-hanging fruit and actually you've worked pretty hard on them and they've just not got any better you think okay well that's fine i'm gonna do that in two minutes just accept that and just accept it and be like okay fine i'm bad at this i can't be the best at everything but then you then need to find okay well that's gonna take me a bit longer i'm now 30 seconds in the red i now need to find 30 seconds somewhere else so the first thing I'd look at doing is find the low hanging fruit.

1:12:07What is the least amount of work I need to do to get better? Yeah, no, that does make sense. And where do I lose the most amount of time? Yeah. Well, I'm going to take that into my training. Sadly, you can't order that on Amazon, but I can get that from you. Yeah. I want to, I want to touch on nutrition a little bit because obviously when you're running ultras, it's a huge part. It's a make or break sometimes. What's your strategy? Very different now to what it was a couple of years ago. I go in the lab at the beginning of every block. And again, demand of the event. What is the demand of the event?

1:12:50And I know my superpower, my physiological superpower when I'm running is my efficiency, my ability to be able to burn fat over carbohydrate. I'm very efficient. So if I am running flat and downhill, every hour I am at race pace I am probably burning 40 somewhere between 40 and 50 grams of carbohydrate if I'm going uphill which musculately is a way higher load I'm burning 100 grams of carbohydrate so you fuel for the demand of the event so if I'm about to go and you're not fueling for now you're fueling for 30 minutes down the line so if I'm on an uphill it's actually quite hard to fuel because I'm using poles it's difficult to take a gel so I don't actually fuel that much going uphill so what we do is we make a traffic light system so we get the race profile and we then put a traffic light system in fueling for not for now but for 30 minutes down the line so I've if I'm on the flat now where I know I don't need much fuel because I've got enough of my body and I'll be burning a lot of fat but I've got an uphill in 30 minutes time I will fuel loads when I'm running on the flat so I'm ready for the uphill knowing that what happens after an uphill it's flat or down it can't go up anymore so I know that I've then got that respite window where I'm then burning less fuel again so I'm only at 40 grams an hour so if I can take in the 30 minutes or the hour before i'm running flat i just nearly need to take 40 grams but in that hour before the climb i know i need to take 100 grams so i don't have a oh i'm gonna average 100 grams an hour for this race i break it down into very specific because i've tested it it's what my body uses there's no guesswork it's then really easy cool if i'm on the flat i know what's coming i know the course great i can do this fuel now for half an hour's time and then take it from there travel light system cyclists use it okay that definitely because when cyclists are going downhill yeah they're doing fuck all they're doing nothing they're just using gravity they're concentrating so they need energy for that but that's from the carbohydrate usage you can then get and we need a different podcast for this you can then get into way more detail with caffeine when am i using caffeine and i use a lot of caffeine i like caffeine a lot i use it for almost like fake energy to make you think that you've got that energy give yourself that i use it less for carbohydrate more for mental clarity and for me 99 of my race is finished with the downhill because they finish in the town or the village and the village isn't at the top of a mountain it's in the valley so normally you'd finish with the downhill and you're there you need to be focused for that bit and if you're not focused for that bit you can lose a race in the last five kilometers downhill easy i've won races in that last stretch before because i've been more focused and i've got that mental clarity and i've been running for 20 hours you need that mental clarity so i'm a huge believer of caffeine ketones who knows i like taking them they're ridiculously expensive but i think they're really useful but at the moment of the research is more for recovery rather than performance but i've used them in performance i think they work really well um yeah there's so much stuff to play around with after one box in the next podcast no no like i say we're a little bit short of time so i want to finish with some quick fire questions yeah uh do you prefer running in the day or at night uh the daytime definitely uh favorite meal post like big event there is a burger place in chamonix called poco loco that's like a i think we've been there yeah it's tiny it's dirty burger but really good quality um yeah that's my favorite is that is that the one that's my go-to um you take your full team might write to we did this year yeah but then last year when we were out there there was uh when we were eating our burgers in a park there was a very odd man uh who was um pleasuring himself into the park while we were trying to eat our burgers which was a bit weird so it slightly put me off but not fully was he french i'm not sure can't comment didn't ask him while he was busy that's mad um i know that you uh this isn't a quick fire question but i know uh do you still have your same bedtime ritual this sounds a bit weird this that i know that your bedtime ritual what's my bedtime ritual uh you is it new york time oh yeah yeah we still do exactly the same yeah we do our wordle um we are wordle we then do the mini crossword we then do connections that's like four eight twelve sixteen words and you've got to try and pair them up and they all got like a something similar they might be like colors of the rainbow to the take off a letter and it's the first name of a popular boy band so some are easy some are difficult and then like a word search at the end and that's what every night in bed you and self together yeah that's great a little bit of quality time that's what happens when you get married and you have kids exactly play wordle um what is the biggest bad habit that you have screen time is pretty bad but i've recently got myself a brick device which is incredible are they actually good they're worth it i've heard they're quite expensive for what they are not for you if it gives me if it means that i don't want to go on my phone and i can spend quality time with my family you can't put a cost on that yeah that is true why was you just like addicted to scrolling not addicted to it but like you'll just go on you'll just go on it and you realize 10 minutes has gone by and like you've done nothing i'd be like having a meal with phoebe she's eating and she's obviously not talking it's like so you can just sit and scroll on your phone and you realize 10 minutes has gone by and like you could have had really good quality 10 minutes so it lives we've got a fridge magnet board lives on there whenever i go into the kitchen just block myself so i can't use any social media i just do the things that i need whatsapp emails but can't use any yeah anything any ones that aren't going to add any value to my life and then you have proper quality time and if you end up them finding that you're not when you've got a free minute you're not sort of just going on it and aimlessly scrolling and scrolling and my screen time's dropped so much and i've had way more quality time with my family so and it mad that the world's got to that point where you need a device to help you with your device but that's where we are and you've got to lean into it and if you don't lean into it then that's when things go wrong and yes they are expensive I bought it myself but yeah you can't put a cost on quality time with your family no no it's crazy last one running or the gym running I love the gym I like what you I think you bang for buck you can get you can get a lot from it I love running I love how I feel when I'm running I love how I feel after I'm running whereas with the gym I don't necessarily enjoy it while I'm doing it but I feel great afterwards and then another one that I've just thought of someone asked me to ask this have you got your predicted marathon time?

1:20:35I was going to race Valencia last year and wanted to run to 2.11ish 2.11 so that's what you think you could get? uh i reckon if i really went into it yeah i reckon circa 211 um it's definitely an itch that i would like to scratch because some people think like ultra marathon there's a slow i've run 63

1:20:5813 i think 63 13 the half uh what's your 5k 13 41 so i'm not slow it's not quick enough to do anything but like this was in not quick anything 2022 2023 and like you see the guys coming on now guys who i would see on the cross-country start list and think like okay cool they're good but i'm gonna i take someone like alfie for example what he's done now is absolutely incredible and he is head and shoulders above where i was whereas two three years ago i would like to think that you'd beat him i would beat him so like what he has done is incredible fair play love what he's doing both from a running and from a social media standpoint and he is that sort of hybrid athlete mix of influencer athlete and it's working so well and he is in a bad way it's making everyone else look bad because he's doing such an amazing job but i think he's going to inspire and motivate so many people to do more and i've learned so much from watching his stuff and trying to incorporate it now so shout out to Alfie and good luck at London Marathon probably this come out afterwards um what he has done is incredible so I'd like to think with the right training and the right mindset you could do it but for me I would enjoy it less I love running on the trails and that's what I want to do that's class and a high rocks and a high rocks and get a high rocks tattoo with you we get one of those like we could get like this you could be the high to my rocks or something where would we have these tattoos we'd have to like maybe like on our bums and then like we pull our pants down like we could like yeah put them together put them together maybe we'll leave it there yeah we'll leave it there thank you mate