Episode 635: Our Running Education

0:09Welcome to The Running Public with Bracken Crocker and Kirk DeWint. Whether you are a brand new runner or you already have a great mustache, we're here to help you increase your running knowledge and present it at a practical level. This is The Running Public.

0:30When you're ready to take your training or racing to the next level, go to the running public.com. We have both monthly subscription training plans,$19.99 a month. And Bracken and I both offer one-on-one customized coaching. Again, go to the running public.com and check out our offerings. You all right over there? No, I'm struggling today. So am I. I think I have pink eye. I don't think you have pink eye. This is a ridiculous thing, but I think I had a rabbit clump of hair on my finger probably, and I touched my eye, and I have allergy eye that's flaring up right now. Do you think rabbit allergies are like a common allergy the gen pop has and doesn't know it?

1:14Because you didn't know it until you got a bunny. Probably. I assume if you have any dog or cat allergies, you probably have bunny allergies. Do you just rub your face in that little rabbit? I don't, but he's just getting to the end of a shed, and so his stuff gets everywhere. Does your bunny play fetch or do tricks or anything? He's a petulant little cat. So is it smarter or dumber than a cat?

1:41I've never owned a cat. I know people who have cats, so I know the personality type, and he's a cat for sure. But I don't know how intelligent a cat is. Certainly not as conniving as a cat, I imagine. He's close. He's a little pistol. Does he ever dropkick anything? That's like the bunny's move. And I know this because I have these big fat bunnies that live in my yard. I mean, big fatties and the squirrels. And they sort of argue and the squirrel jump on the bunny and then the bunny will like go at it and do this dropkick move. Oh yeah. It's a Royal Rumble out there. The red squirrels always win out amongst all though.

2:23Between the gray squirrels and the bunny. So tell me about the dropkick. We don't get that, but he's petulant. That's exactly what he is. He's just a moody, standoffish rabbit. Everything nobody wanted to know about your bunny. There it is. Now he's affecting my eye today. Yeah, you look, you're all bloodshot in that. But we are matching today. Yep. Pop the sleeves off our running public shirts. We should have a flex off for the people. Too bad we're not a video organization. They'll never know. We'll never know who won, which is going to be you right now. I'm just big. I don't know if I'm muscular.

3:06Okay. Well, I took a sick day from work today because I'm not feeling 100%. So we're just two peas, man. There we go. Well, we have a good episode today, in my opinion, because it was my idea. And that's all I need to know to be a supporter of anything. So we're going to take a walk back through time, all the types of running, the levels that we ran at, and touch on the most important takeaways, the things that we learned via that type of training and running and racing that was indispensable to our pursuit of running nirvana. I love it. But how far back do we go? I think we should lump track in one big bucket.

3:49elementary all the way through university and just say the things we took away from being track athletes. Athletes is a bit generous of a term. We're all athletes out there. It's the mindset Bracken. No, you must perform too. Hey, what did you think of... My computer just started making the sound for the first time in a long time. Yeah, it's like growling. Usually hitting things helps sometimes what'd you think of i want to get your take real quick um about one do you or do you not root for jacob ingebritsen two does seeing him come back and do relatively well and win the european championships make you feel anything at all and then three tell me the exact same thing about Josh Kerr?

4:43I'll start with three. For whatever reason, no matter what happens, I never find myself rooting for Josh Kerr and I find myself rooting for Jakob. Okay. So we're in the same boat. Yeah. I don't know what it is. I'm sure they're both delightful in person, but I just wouldn't consider myself a Josh Kerr fan. despite an immense amount of respect for him. A lot of respect. So my wife and I went... This is disconcerting. I made her... I said, oh, this is Jakob Ingebrigtsen's first race back in a year. Did you watch it live? I didn't watch it live. But I already knew the headline, right? I knew what had happened.

5:28And we were in bed. I said, I just want to watch this race. Do you want to watch it with me? She's like, I like Jakob, but I really hate that Josh Kerr, she said. because I made her watch the mile world record race too. And she likes it enough. And then we went into a deep dive. Okay. On their Instagram posts. She's like, let's just look them up. So we're scrolling through and like clicking on Jakob's stuff and then went to his YouTube and then went to Josh Kerr's. We spent maybe like a half an hour doing this. We had nothing better to do. And it was so interesting, the difference in just like how they face their audience.

6:02Jakob is like insight into daily life. He's kind of a dork, very joke aroundy, like kind of a nerd, but does not take himself too seriously. But he's still got like this confidence underneath him. And then Josh Kerr is like wearing his burberry and taking professional photo shoots and very forward facing buttoned up, which confirmed how my wife felt about them both. And so it was just top of mind last night, like 14 hours ago, we were talking about this. So I was just curious as to your takes. I generally don't root for the favorites, but there are certain dominant forces that I find myself rooting for.

6:41I would say he's one like Steph Curry's always been one. Even when the Warriors were good, I liked watching them win. And I think it's when people kind of revolutionize the game. I applaud that. And I like seeing how far they can take that. Usually though, I do not like the favorites. I like a good underdog, but I watched it live. mccauley actually sent me a link he said hey this is starting in a few minutes here's a link watch it sold so it was a very entertaining 5k i if you entertaining if you have to watch a 5k uh championship you want it to be crazy fast or crazy tactical and that was very tactical yeah this computer sounds like it's gonna die well if if this is you know our podcast gets cut short it's they know why it is really really ramping up the noise and the intensity of the noise right now at the same time so i find myself really like immensely rooting for yakub and i did even before like i'll root for the americans cole hawker a year before like anybody who's going head to head like of course and i'm yeah they really mean that but if i had to root for anybody else it's been him and it was hard to for a while and then he got his humble pie because it was just like him constantly dominating and now it's like going to be a really good story to follow honestly like the thing i'm here to watch is him against everybody else coming moving forward and seeing if his achilles had held him back he hadn't been able to train at full capacity if he's actually healthy what can this guy do and coming back to a sport that's like been changed like his event even has been like there used to be one or two guys there's 15 now and so i'm like here for that show and I want that show like right now.

8:23Yeah, I agree. The comeback story is always, always entertaining. It's compelling. And he's an interesting one where he's been upfront from the start. The ego is a big part of what he does. Like he wants to be known as the best. And I think everyone has said his best events never at the 1500 of the mile. It's just what he went after. And now like we see he shows up and wins the 5k at will and now it would make sense to move up in distance coming off of injuries and but i don't know if his ego could let him walk away with his tail between his legs so to speak in the 1500 so it's going to be a very fascinating road to world championships and then the olympics in the 1500 if he chooses to pursue that.

9:15I mean, other than this last year, which he was openly dealing with injury, he lost the 5k champ final world champs. Can you think of a 5k final he's lost? I think he's lost a 5k as a pro until that one. Yeah. Quite impressive. But anyways, it was just top of mind. I didn't know how much you were invested in that current story or the scene right now. It was a bizarre race to watch. I don't want to give it away if anyone has no give it away he said it here he won yeah he ran in second to last place for how long and then he moved to the front and then he moved to the front and then the pack started to go and jimmy gracie started to come up on the side and he put his arm out and he's like no don't do it yet and jimmy looked at him and like laughed and like put his hands on like what what are you talking about and but he listened he literally put like down like a barrier with his arm as they're running saying slow it down man yeah don't go for it yet just wait so i can help kick you in three laps yeah and jimmy responded exactly how i think i did watching he's like what in the what are you doing but then he listened he waited and then yakov won i i've never i've never seen that happen in a race before would anyone be able to pull that off telling the field the favorite, the guy who just won Worlds, don't go yet?

10:35And the guy said, that's ridiculous. Okay. I don't think even Jakob can pull that off, not coming back in his first race. So I don't know. I've never seen that before in my life. Someone tell them, don't go to the favorite. You see the favorites do that to the young dogs. Like, hey, or they're countrymen. Like, chill, not yet. But I've never seen the favorite get put into line. That's fascinating. It's worth the watch anyways. And it's not decided until like the last. Okay. The last lap. We'll just leave it. So track is what we're talking and tracks where we're going to pick up here. So you started sixth grade.

11:15Is that correct? Well, technically they did a Hershey meet. Hershey track race in like fourth and fifth grade. First season though. Eighth grade was my first actual season. Okay. My first season was seventh, but I think we had five. Does that sound right? Five or six races in the year. I think I had four or five, yeah. Yeah, right around in there. So seventh and eighth grade. So we did that all the way through. I took five years in college, but didn't run one of them and really only ran half of the first year. So I ran my last three years consistently in college track and then one year, my first year cross country, my last year cross country.

11:54So we had a long time of track. Let's call it 10 years safely, a little more for me. Yeah, 10 straight years of, I mean, racing and racing and racing and seasons. And there's cross country in there too. So I don't know if you want to lump that in or not. And I've said this a few times that when we do onboarding calls or have conversations with people who find running late in life, especially hybrid athletes, like, man, it's such an advantage to have been a high school and college runner. I wish I'd done that. I said, yeah, but it comes at a cost and there's pros and cons, but there certainly are some pros.

12:33But there's half to two thirds who get chewed up and spit out the other side and never want to touch it again. So there's casualties. But we came out with, and again, I'm not saying we're world-class anything, but we came out with some unique skills compared to the people who didn't run in high school and college and knowledge and skills that would not have been developed to that extent any other way. And so that's where I want to start. What are the things we took out of high school and specifically collegiate running that were really important to know long-term for us and that everyone should know or learn?

13:06Well, if we want to start bullet pointing this, I can say the biggest thing I learned, which I think half of our audience is less than great at, is the art of pacing. Yes. The art of pacing when you're a developing human as, I don't know, 13, 14 in eighth grade, and then learning hard lumps early, didn't know how to pace, really messed it up a couple times, had the most embarrassing final hundred meters of things to the point where I almost walked across one finish line of a 400 meters. That's not a joke. and then you just get so in tune eventually and you have to keep refreshing the skill but the art of managing effort and pace no matter if it's a 400 or if it's a 40 mile race like the art of pacing had been instilled in us from the beginning and i think that will be forever my superpower i think um the ability and need to thread the needle especially in college if you're trying to hit Q, like qualifier for nationals.

14:08So I'm going to start with that. The art of pacing, biggest takeaway from all of my track years. Yeah, it's people oftentimes, again, a lot of times it's athletes I work with. They'll say, how do I learn pace? How do I learn to feel pace? The answer is, well, for me, it was run a million intervals from every distance and pace, from 100s all the way up to, we had some 5K intervals. And on our long runs, taking the split every mile and playing the guess, we played the guess our split game so many thousands of times in college. But we would get to the point where you knew you weren't guessing seconds anymore.

14:50You were guessing tenths on intervals. And it's something everyone can learn. Not everyone will be good at it, but everyone will learn to do it. and that is it's invaluable. I would say that even in OCR when compromise running came into it in hills I still had the know-how of how to click right into a pace that was sustainable. What track teaches you to do is to toe the line and it punishes you for crossing over the line and so you get really intimately acquainted with what is the fastest pace I can be working at while still being able to close the race hard. And that is part of what you're talking about is knowing the pace and being able to run the pace you want.

15:35And the other is pacing yourself appropriately for any given distance. And that's something you come out of college running with. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm outlining. I'm actually not even outlining as much as it applies to this. Like, okay, Kirk, you're going to go run your 400 meter splits at 68 today and you're going to go nail it. Yes, I think I can do that. But I think extrapolating it out further to understanding on a race, on race day in particular, I'm a mile and a half into my 5K and I already am up to my pupil in lactate, but can I sit right here still at this effort and know my pacing and body well enough that I can still see this through for the back half of the race versus backing off because I'm scared of blowing up or committing and then dying the last mile and then not seeing my true potential.

16:27It's the awareness, like you said in OCR, in the moment to say, this is sustainable for what I'm racing or this is not. And then just almost turning your brain off and your body on to what needs to be done. I don't know if you can teach that. I was having this conversation isn't going to teach you that. It's one of those things you have to feel out so many times and and get so in tune that it's like, this feeling equates what for me in five minutes, in 10 minutes, and what do I do with that? Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. This is such a weird analogy, but if you've ever watched people who work in kitchens, they know exactly how and how long to grab each hot pan or pot for.

17:13How many times have you gone to grab something and be like, oh, I can feel that through the hot mitt. I got to drop that and let go of it. But they just know like this is fine for three or four seconds and then I got to get rid of it. And this I can do with a towel. And the only way you know that is to have felt it and been burnt by it and not burnt by it and just figured it out. It's just a feeling and you can't describe it and you can't teach it. But you know that if you touch that type of heat enough times, you're going to have the ability to read it the way you can read anything else. And that's what racing is, right?

17:47It's touching your hand at the flame. It's touching the heat and knowing exactly what type of hot is dangerous and what type of hot is sustainable and what type of hot is going to get dangerous and how long it's going to take until it gets dangerous. But it's totally by feel. You spend a lot of time in the kitchen there, Bracken? I'm the main cook in our family, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's like how big of a sip can I take in my piping hot coffee and then how much bigger sips can I take as it cools? You're feeling that out in real time. Similar analogy. but that's the good news that if you can do it in all those other places you can learn to feel pace yeah so what do we how do we apply that to how do we apply that to people the biggest way and i still rely on this because we can't always be trusted conditions wind hills right terrain etc can't always be trusted um and i know i've given this advice before but when you're really looking at honing in on your pacing.

18:42And I just had a call with an athlete. I work with Adam and he's got a 5k coming up and it's a thread, the needle 5k. Like we're going to go out at pace. You're going to race. Even if you've got a race to the two mile mark to hit pace, you're going to do that. And we're going to find out mile three, if it's still there or not. Right. Um, but point being is the, I don't know if you rely on this as heavily as I do, but the lap screen on your watch. No, I don't. Okay. Well, you can set, you know, if you're in miles or kilometers, the second scroll down on a Garmin, not the first face, which tells you your current actual pace as you're moving.

19:20The next one is your projected mile pace saying, if I continue this trend, I will end up here through the mile or through the, you know, if you're running an 800 meters, well, you'll hit the lap button at 800, but you'll know your projected pace and living on that screen for me with stuff that matters. I was running thousands earlier this week on Tuesday. I said my window is roughly 455 pace. And if I was behind, I would pick it up. If I was ahead, I would slow it down and I would thread the needle. I looked at my watch every 15 seconds, the last minute of those intervals. And so when you have sessions like that, I think it's very important to do a lot of watch checking, especially if you're trying to get super dialed on exactly where your limits are.

20:03So that lap function, knowing exactly what pace you're running for that given distance, I think has been irreplaceable for me. And that's coming from somebody who feels pretty in touch. So I don't think enough people use that feature as they should. Yeah, I would agree with that. And then my side of the coin, I take splits way more frequently than most people take splits during workouts. What do you mean? I'm checking times all the way back to college, but pre-GPS on the track, on the road. I was checking it at the 100 meter mark, at the 150, at the 200 meter mark. Oh, very often. Every interval I'm checking.

20:38And last interval, I was at 13 high through here. I'm coming through here. I'm a little more tired, but I pressed a little on the first 10 strides. Oh, I'm at 14 low. Okay, I must have backed up. Constantly comparing what I've put in to what I'm getting out pace-wise. I was always checking in route to my actual, even on a 200 meter interval, I'd check my watch three times in college because I always wanted to know how is this interval progressing and do I need to take a micro adjustment? And part of that is that a lot of the workouts we did had caps when you no longer hit a certain time you were done with the workout or that was your one freebie and you didn't want to burn that.

21:19So I always wanted to make sure like I get to the home stretch with X amount of seconds remaining. But anyway, if you're not using your constant real-time or projected pace, you can get this done. And this is what I recommend for people who really can't feel it. They're doing track intervals. Take cones or cut tennis balls in half and put them out on the track every 50 meters. And look at your pace every single time you pass one so that you notice Just the variances. I mean, there's little differences. And I come off the turn and I start the straightaway. And you run a little differently the first half of the straightaway than you do the second half.

21:57And you run the turn a little differently the first half of the turn versus the second half of the turn. And figuring out all those little tiny things, it makes you in tune with your body. There's no magic to check in a lot, but it just forces you to analyze what you're doing 10 more times per rep than you normally would. And then you can extrapolate that out over further duration and distances. on your marathon race day and maybe your check-ins every half mile or maybe you're checking whatever it may be but yeah um yeah i don't have an issue with compulsively checking your watch or splits when the integrity of what you're doing matters and i don't think it's a hindrance at all um i mean to for me to i wear my watch face upside down do you wear yours upside down okay it's never worked for me flip of the wrist i mean it's i'm not even changing the way my arms are moving boom check-in i don't think it impacts you negatively at all at all do you think it does I think that you get good at it I think if you're my take is it's like looking behind in races if you're going to do it in the race you might as well practice and practice like you better check every single turn you ever take if you're going to check your watch in the race you might as well check constantly because you get efficient with it and your eyes train to the point where it's sighting into the watch as it's coming up and your arm cycles through and you don't really have to hold up and pause so yeah I don't think it costs you if you practice it.

23:20That is the most I got chewed out in track is for looking over my shoulder. Only time I really got truly chewed out by my track coach my freshman year. I never looked over my shoulder again. They decided at the conference indoor meet, I'm a freshman, a talented freshman, but a freshman, to have me anchor the 4x8 at indoor conference, which happens, it's like your third meet of the year, indoor conference, second, right? And they anchored, and I had a senior, two juniors, and me on the team. And I get the baton in the lead, which was the plan, and DeWint will figure it out. They figured I was the guy.

24:00And I was later on. But I got eaten alive by a guy behind me from a rival school, and I kept looking over the corner. He's closer. Looking again over the corner. Guess who got outkicked in the last 50 meters, and we lost. DeWitt what the hell are you doing out there let me talk to you I got scolded I was so embarrassed I never looked over my shoulder again I was a checker and you didn't get yelled at for it I also wasn't a leader I was a kicker so I wanted to always have a sense of when I am about to move just a radar going of where is my clear path out of the pack to snap and do a kick I wasn't a builder up kicker.

24:44You see guys do that all the time in those strategic races. Those guys are looking left and right constantly. And that was me. I never led races if I couldn't help it. And so I was constantly looking around. But in my eyes, it was, I know where my exits are and I'm going to be able to take it. Because I didn't build into kicks. I snapped into kicks. I waited until the right moment. And I didn't have a great top end, but I could get there in two strides. And that's what I... So I wanted to know I can burst, go. and then at that point, the button was pushed. They're either going to catch me or I'm not, but I didn't look back from then, but I was a scanner, a constant scanner.

25:19Crocker the kicker, that's what we'll call you. To a fault. Kicking crack. It costs me races for not putting my nose in it, but I love to kick. All right. Okay. So then my thing that I learned in college, the biggest thing I learned, was the difference between running hard and running fast. It sounds like semantics and it's not. And it took me a long time. And look, I've talked before that I didn't get a lot of coaching in college. I got a lot of instruction. And those are not the same either. This is not semantics either. There's programming, there's instruction, and then there's coaching. I didn't get a lot of coaching.

25:56This is why. I got a lot of this is how. But one of the things that I did get coaching on and it stuck with me right away, it made sense to me, but it took me a while was that I need to learn to run as fast as I can with as little effort as possible. which sounds weird, but it's like, duh, right? But not. Yeah. And especially as a middle distance runner where like, where you're running very close percentage wise to a much faster pace, but you want to do it with minimum effort. So you don't accumulate any excess lactate because you're producing it in like bucket loads. So you want to sip wherever possible.

26:37and that was my big and when that clicked my running leveled up probably the most it's ever leveled up at any one given time and i remember the day it leveled up it actually leveled it happened during a 400 meter kirk i let off a four by four at uw oshkosh and i was out in lane i don't know if it was eight or nine i don't know what you guys have couldn't see any well i didn't i never ran at the new stadium so we didn't i don't know well i was the lead off which there's a big stagger in the four by four. And so I didn't see anyone. And then I just got out hard the first like 70, 80 meters and then just shut it down entirely, except in my legs and hands.

27:18It felt like my legs are still moving. My hands are still moving, but everything else was on autopilot. And I just held that there until someone started to come up till you could feel someone coming up on your shoulder and then just throttled back up all the way to the finish. And it was, the best 400 I'd ever run by a lot. You run, that's the farthest leg. And it was faster than because you have your 400 plus the transition. So you run longer than 400. And it was my 400 meter PR in that moment. It was, I don't know, 407 meters or whatever. And I PR'd and that it just clicked. I never had to worry about it ever again.

27:56From that point on, every rep I ever did was relaxed and calm and sleepy eyed and relaxed fingers. But it took two and a half years for that moment to click. But once it did, the ability to run very fast with very minimal input was one of the most important things I ever learned in track. Do you think that extrapolates out all the way to the marathon distance? Yeah, I do. My belief is that we have these little energy losses in our system. We're like a machine with pipes there and the pipes have tiny little cracks in it and the steam escapes out the side. And by the time it gets to where it's going, the overall force, that PSI has dropped.

28:38That's how I look at inefficiencies in running. And your job as a runner is to find all of those leaks and fix them, close those off, so that all of your effort, as much of a one-to-one ratio of effort in to effort out occurs, or energy in to energy out, force production, however you want to think about it. you want as few little steam leaks in the system as possible. And that was a huge one for me because I am an arm-based runner, like a Kohlhocker. I don't run like Kohlhocker, but I'm a Kohlhocker. We're cut from the same mold, much lesser, but that's the style of runner I am. I have a low stride.

29:19I have low arms, but when I want to run faster, my arms drive it. it's very easy to overwork your arms when you run that style. And so it took me a long time to get over that. You are so annoying. Do you want to know why? Why? Because I was literally going to follow up your whole spiel with, and it's about your arms and your shoulders and your neck. I'm not, I was just waiting for my turn to say what my, what my cue is. How do I know I'm asleep, but working versus starting to thrash and reach is what I'm doing with my arms and the tension I start to carry in my neck and traps. Yes. If I can just keep it down and relax and keep my arm carriage tight, honestly, which I don't have the tightest arm carriage, but the tightest version for me, I know that I'm on the right side of it.

30:05I am running asleep in quotes, and I still have another gear. I have more options. I'm not overextending. As soon as I realize I'm starting to engage and pump the arms, I'm starting to feel tension in my upper clavicle traps. I'm like, okay, I'm probably on borrowed time now, and I certainly don't have much room to go faster for whatever I'm chasing and pursuing. So for me, it's my cues are my upper body and my arms. And then you had to go rob that from me right there. If you watch pros, almost all of them, minus a few oddballs, always look like they're running slower than they are, especially on the track road running almost always looks fast like marathoners look like they're running ridiculously fast like if you show me a random clip i might think they're running 5k pace who's the who's the i have a strong opinion on this who do you think is the slowest looking fast runner in let's not count like 1500 and up because i have one who i've seen a few races and i think back to college and the dude moves so fast for how slow he looks like he's moving and my and that's charles hicks charles hicks could be running seven minute pace or 430 pace and to me it's going to look almost the same he looks the slowest in a vacuum in the pack but yet he's running as fast as they are and so he's my one i'm like dude doesn't like he ran 445 pace for the marathon for the pseudo american record which wasn't his because it wasn't a ratified i think it was boston right or whatever it was and i seen the clips of him i was like that's what 445 pace looks like?

31:40And the answer is no, that's not what that looks like. For a freak of nature, a well-polished. Yeah. But if you watch their lower bodies, if you ever just cover up the screen, their lower bodies are cooking. And then you cover up their lower body and it looks like they're out for a bouncy little jog because their arms are so quiet, so quiet. And a lot of the African women have just mastered this. That tight carriage in front of their chest. How could you drive any power while doing that? And the answer is we're not. We're not driving power here. We're running. We're saving. This isn't an arm competition.

32:21Conor Mance always looks like he's sprinting, whether he's running a 400 or a marathon. He's the one who actually looks fast. He's the exception, yeah. I would say that... Oh, my goodness. name um this is this is terrible i was just watching him race myler for uh eric holtz oh dude looks like he's all out from stride one yeah yeah he's kicking it looks like he's punching the air anyway most runners are so pro runners are super smooth and calm looking and because of their upper body carriage. Shoulders relatively low. Arms relaxed, compact. They're sitting there and they're like, they're drumming a little bit.

33:06They're not swinging. They're just tap, tap, tap, tapping away. And their legs are flowing. But anyway, that was the big turning point. I started PRing like crazy when that happened. And I stopped tying up at the end of races, which in middle distance running, it's so easy to tie up because you cross, you're right on the line. And that was the thing that kept me under the line. Not that I was that fast or great, but I unlocked my potential when I learned that. Stay asleep, as they say. Yeah. Half asleep down the backstretch was like, that was the picture I was looking for. I want my eyelids to look, every picture I take on the track, I wanted my eyelids to look like I was sleeping.

33:44Like you're bored. Yes. Yeah. That's why there's so much power in staring at somebody's back, not having to do any thinking other than to just settle in, relax, and kind of get pulled. It's very powerful. Well, I have my takeaway then from the college, the other big college one for me was, and I think you're going to, if you don't agree with this, I would be shocked. Mr. Kroc and the kicker, the great, is you actually never found, I sat and kicked too. I sat and kicked in high school and I did it beautifully. Mostly because I was a big fish in a small pond and I could get away with it. And then you get to college and I realized I can't sit on anybody because if I do, I'm in 10th place and I'm not even in the race.

34:27So now suddenly I have to reach earlier and find out what I'm actually capable of. And I went from a 431 mile as a senior, which isn't that impressive, down to roughly 414, 413 my freshman year of college, which maybe that didn't sound like a big jump. But that, you know, 17, 18 second jump is a big jump in the mile. and yes I was more fit but a lot of it had to do with just like find out like take some risks commit early it's the most I learned how to hurt and sit in it because you'd shy away before but now it's like well I over committed early let's see this thing through I got very familiar with like oh that's my pain threshold I thought I knew that in high school when I sat and kicked no you were uncomfortable, Kirk, and then it hurt when you kicked.

35:16Now it's like you have half the race to go and I don't know if I can do it. I really don't know. I might blow up epically. And I found so much more breakthroughs from taking a risk just so I wasn't left behind in the collegiate scene. I'm just going to commit. And it taught me that it's not as scary as you think. And if your training is good, often you'll surprise yourself with how you can hang on. And so I've taken that philosophy since sitting and kicking is not in my repertoire anymore. All these 5Ks I've done recently in my own time trials, I chase it. I thread the needle out of the gates.

35:49And if it's a good day, you're going to break through. And if it's not, you're probably still going to have a good race. And so the committing early and then relearning what it means to sit in the pain cave, as cliche as it is, I relearned that in college. Yeah, it's all correct. I don't think I have a lot to add to that because you just captured it perfectly. So my last thing that I really learned, I mean, you learn a lot, right? But what I really, really came to understand is what fatigue feels like. And that is a sliding scale. I had never been tired in high school like I was tired in college.

36:29The days, not just the workouts themselves, which were arduous. There were some long, yeah, middle distance running is not roses and rainbows. Middle distance running is a lot of time spent zone five. Totally. If there's a zone six in zone six. You're so, I mean, two to three times per week, a zombie on the track after the workout thinking, I don't know if I even want to get up and make it back to my dorm. Do you remember how much your legs would ache? Yes. Just aching, walking to the cafeteria afterwards of the next morning, going to class. My legs just ache in a way that they don't ache now even.

37:11It's different. It's a different kind. And so the workout, yeah, it built toughness. It built ability to tolerate a specific type of pain. But what it showed me is waking up in the morning thinking, there is no way I can practice today. and just getting the shoes on and starting and your body coming back together a mile in. And just the power of getting the group of guys, start moving, your body will come back around. I would have never considered running on legs that felt the way they felt at least three days per week for four or five years of college. Three to four days per week, my legs were trashed and you'd get seven to 10 miles in.

37:58And that changed your perception of what really is fatigue and what does it mean? How limiting is being tired or sore? Now, that's also the reason college kids get stress fractures like crazy is because you change your relationship of, is this bad or not? Or not, I can go get another 10 today. Like I have another day before I have to run hard. I'll dawdle 10. That's fine. That leads to injury as well. So it's not all good, but you certainly become differently acquainted with tired legs. it's all i really if i think back about it even after cross races though too i would remember feeling that just underlying ache i don't know because it wasn't like you were always sore because you were too well conditioned to be sore most of the time right it was like a the fatigue exactly as you're talking it was almost an unwell feeling and it wasn't it was structural fatigue is what it was yeah for me it was anyway it didn't to an extent some nervous system stuff, there were times like legs would be just heavy and dead for weeks.

39:00And then you'd warm up and your body would come alive and the first few reps would snap you into it and you'd get competitive. But just walking around with pretty much a constant or semi-constant state of deadness in your legs for a long time. That, I think it's why they say middle distance, part of the reason middle distance runners do translate well to ultras. Because it takes you to a place structurally and nervous system-wise, middle distance running does, that really does deplete you. And it's a lot to get up and do your 8 or 10 miler the next day. There's something ultra specific about that.

39:35Yeah. We spend more time, way more time running poorly, like trying to keep our form together as 800 meter or milers than you do as a 10K runner. Oh, I saw you trying to break 60 in our last quarter mile repeat a couple of winters ago. You can't judge me by an out of shape 35. I've never seen, talk about running with the arms. You almost levitated with those things. I was not proud in the moment of what I was doing, but I was willing to do it. That was at the end of a big session too. I mean, you had to be, and I think you ran 60 point, didn't you? I think 60 point too. Yeah. I think you just fell short, And then you were so smoked you didn't run the two-mile buyout with me.

40:15That was my secret plan. You paced me a little bit, yeah, if I remember. But what did we do, like true middle-distance runners? We went and got a long run in the next day. Yeah, it went like two and a half hours until the next day. That's right. I'm trying to think of others before we should move. It sounds like this is glamorizing our yesteryears. It's really not. But I want people to think about this for, Or I'm considering working on blank. Or there's a track club that does more races that I could be joining. I've been hearing this a lot. There's a local circuit. Should I run in these? Or there's a track club that me is like, yes, there are benefits to doing these things.

40:53Do you have others that jump out at you? I think we should move to what was next for us, which was obstacle course racing. Well, I'd like people just clicked off. yeah well i would like to move to the in-between phase for me which was a decade more than a decade which was the forgetting you took so much time uh-huh the fitness abyss phase which was i was still running a couple like road five i mean i was lifting i was 10 pounds heavier than i am now and i was you know in the gym on a five-day split routine you know the whole thing but I was running 20 to 30 miles a week still. And I would do my one pinnacle interval session every week, still did that, but it'd be like, I'd be doing my 400s with a lot of rest.

41:36Or maybe I'd do some miles or maybe I would do, but it was always structured. It was always a lot of rest and I rarely did anything thresholding for sure. I was zone five or I was zone three, but I was nothing else when I ran for sure. Zone four, maybe on my way up to zone five, right? You get what I, yeah, I would just, I breezed up and through zone four anyways. Point being, and I've talked about this a few times on the podcast, but the phase of that was like, I mean, I have this, I was like, I'm going to race a bit these next two years. 16, 19, 16, 13, 16, 11, 16, 16, 16, 13, 16. I was right there.

42:18And I mean, like thrashing myself to do it. like like i was seeing red tasting pennies i was trying as hard as i couldn't feeling like i was running well and i was stuck there on my same short intervals my long runs were like 10 miles i'd go to like 10 miles maybe progress do it maybe i spent some threshold in those but it was that and then some short runs as soon as i just started running a little more mileage and started doing less sexy, like structure, like shorter rest, longer intervals, or doing more tempo style work, even slower than race pace. Of course it's tempo style work. I mean, the bump started happening pretty quick and that was during like the pre obstacle course racing phase.

43:01And just in that, but the main difference was I was running just a little bit more easy mileage. And like, I wasn't going to the track and doing quarters on two minutes rest anymore. I was running three by two miles with two minutes rest, which I know is still a big session, but it was like, I just drew those things out and I got faster at the 5k after being stuck in the exact same wheelhouse. I go to the track and do my quick intervals once a week. Made a world of a difference. Running, honestly, slower in a lot of my quality sessions to get more volume. And it made me faster on my sharp end.

43:34So that was a big lesson I learned in that middle phase. Once I got to OCR and started drawing things out. I learned that lesson for sure. Short intervals are great, but they're not the answer. They're really not. If it's all you're doing. Yeah. And that's what I learned immediately because I went to OCR within a year of graduating. I did my first race and I had no staying power. I graduated college with a 1629 5K PR. And a 151 or 153, 800. Those don't correlate. If you're What's more impressive? One of those sticks out. It was bizarre. I took right away, I started doing OCR 400s. I started doing things like that.

44:21This isn't doing that deep fatigue, that hurt of six miles in, eight miles. It's not doing it. The only thing left to do was, like you said, draw it out. Draw it out. I'm running 1 ,200s now. I'm running miles. I'm running 2K intervals. I'm doing cut downs. I'm going to do long runs with fast finish. I'm going to do long hills where I'm not sprinting up the hill anymore. To that point in life, the only time I'd ever run a hill workout was to attack the hill and then dawdle and recover. And there's only so much of that. You can get 20 minutes of hard work in that. You're out of power. So the only thing left to do is to go slower and draw out the intervals.

45:01And right away, it was like 1602, 16 flat, 1542. to. It just melted away right away. And I wasn't working 5K pace, but it instantly carried over. And then you start being available that eight mile cutdowns turn into 10 mile cutdowns, turn into 10 mile straight tempos, turned into, I can race for 90 minutes if I have to now. And it's not like the last half hour is just a write-off. So the power of working sustained long intervals was real key to have learned from obstacle course racing. Yeah, I think I was never even running 5k pace in my training, yet my 5k got faster. It's so hard for people to wrap their heads around.

45:49And it is absolutely true. It is so absolutely true. And if you want to be a 5k specialist, then you touch on some overspeed training, but the bulk of your work should still be unfortunately slower, like sometimes notably slower than, um, which is just very interesting. And then in that phase also for you though, you went from being a four to 1500, 400 meter to 1500 meter guy to like, I might get in a race that's going to last three hours. So you, you get scared into the fact like, okay, like I know I can't justify running 200 meter repeats right now because I have a two to three hour mountain race ahead of me.

46:27so I just need to draw it out. And by proxy, you had no idea it was going to make your 5K faster. You were just so scared, I'm assuming, because I was. Like, I'm going to race for that long in the mountains. I better start running longer stuff. And it translated to shorter success. Yeah, fear has always driven my programming. What am I most afraid of on race day? That's going to have to be a big point of emphasis here. And the fear of cramping up and running out of energy. And I knew with the style of runner I was and the volume I could run, I couldn't just do 20 and 30 mile long runs to get ready for that.

47:04And that's where I learned the next thing here was that hills are a magic pill. They work on any engine type, any zone you want to work on, you can work on on a hill. But they also allow you to do more volume with, in one regard, less damage. You can also create more damage on the hill. But in terms of I'm going to get a stress fracture, it's going to happen on the 20-mile long run. It's not going to happen on the two-hour hill workout on a ski hill. So the hill has unlocked an entire world of training for me. My freshman year of college, I'd run 60 to 70 miles a week, and it was bad for me. And I finally got back up above 50 for the first time when I added hill work in.

47:52because I could do more mileage if I had hills in my week. And it didn't make any sense to me. I didn't do that intentionally. I just found myself, oh, I can go do this today because yesterday I didn't beat up my legs on the concrete. Yeah, or just finding the trails in general and running on soft grass. I used to go do loops on the soccer fields because it was the softest terrain close to my townhome at the time. And you realize how much like, yeah, you ran slow. And yes, the run felt sluggish because you're running on three-inch plush grass. But then you're like, hey, I feel pretty good the next day.

48:24And then the stuff that matters the next day is still available to you. I very much agree with that. I don't adhere to that at all now, but thank God for super foam and super shoes on the roads, which actually have probably saved me in that regard. But back then, the terrain and the climbing for sure kept me available. OCR was a weird thing in that it allowed me to remove preconceived notions. like I need to run a certain pace nope I can work at an effort level because I started doing burpees and tuck jumps and air squats and tire drags before my mile repeats and now I'm running 540s instead of 510s and I'm getting fitter it's this weird thing but it's like well there's some magic here I'm just gonna do it what I didn't realize there was that like I'm doing engine work.

49:14I'm not doing pace work and your body doesn't care. And then having Brayden and coaching track at the time and trying to train for my first Spartan Race World Championships, running everything with a stroller. My mechanics changed. My pace has changed. I was running hill reps with the stroller. I was doing tempo runs with the stroller and I got good at pushing it ahead with one arm, taking three good strides, push it with the other arm, take three good strides. None of that was clean running and I got fitter. And it did so much that first year of OCR training did so much to get rid of my preconceived notions about how you have to build speed.

49:56And all of it was reliant upon pace prior to this. Everything I did in college was pace. I told you, I checked my splits like crazy. And then it turned into effort. I agree, approve, love all of that. I'm going to throw a wrench in this though. Good. What do you think about most of the people listening? We have this one feather in our cap that most don't, and that's we spent eight years working on speed. so we are blessed to not really need to touch on it as much to keep it available to us yes which is fact for us like like i'm still even seeing this at 43 because i've touched on it enough not a ton in my ultra training but like i'm right back in it running fast when i shouldn't really be able to based on what i had done the previous six months and a lot of it has to do with i believe muscle memory a bit from younger years, right?

51:01Your developing years are very important. And so I'm not trying to discredit what we're saying because it's our truth, but I'm also saying like, like how many people do you say are just like, I am so slow and I cannot run fast and I am so slow. Like the answer for a guy like you and me might be like, yeah, let's go out and do some eight mile cut downs and run this whole drag into mile repeats, which I love by the way, a version of KDE, two minute drag into runs best. It's like, so in that person who might be shaking their head at us right now, that's not me. I need my speed work. It can be, it needs to be customized at times.

51:38Yes. If all you've ever done is run slow and you feel like you don't have a fast twitch muscle fiber in your body and your foot ground contact time is a second per stride. Maybe there's some other keys here that like, Hey, you might be the exception. Like you need to work systems. You need to work effort level, but at some point, maybe this person needs more dose of the speed because you didn't spend eight years running track like we did. Do you get what I'm getting at? I just want to add sort of like a – I'm not walking it back for us, but I'm saying there could be a case where I added speed work to my programming and I got faster.

52:15Well, yeah, because you've been running just slow for a decade. So there's another side of the coin is what I'm getting at. So this will just continue with this nostalgia episode for me. But back in my freshman year of college at Campbell, I had this running playlist. And at the time there was this rapper named Joel Santana. I don't know if you remember Joel's. I know Santana. Different Santana. He was a rapper. But there was this song and it was in my running playlist, but at the end of it, he talks a little bit. And it drove me nuts because I wanted to get to the next song for the beat to go.

52:51but he had this part at the very end he said and I say that to say this and it always struck me as absurd that he did this entire like four minute song to say his final thing at the end that he wanted to say and over the years is just one of those things that never really left my mind it wasn't even a great song I don't think I don't remember the song but that concept of sometimes you have to do all of this things up all this up front just to do then the thing that matters or You need to earn that via this. And that's how I look at our staying power work. We said all that, what we said in college so that we can say this now.

53:31100%. You're the person who's saying I'm slow. Like you need to go do your college speed block now. Sometimes you have to do the precursor work in order to even have the other work work for your fitness. You say that in order to be able to say this. I know we muddied the waters or I muddied the waters by bringing that up. but it it's true. Your analogy is perfect. I'm not even going to elaborate on it, but you're right. What has gotten you to this point? And then what do I need to balance to balance that out, to bring it back together? And the answer could be a little bit opposite of what we're talking about.

54:04I still think if you had to pick like the speed work still comes like tertiary, not even secondary, like to systems and engine work, but there are exceptions. Yes, I agree. Yeah. Okay. OCR. OCR. OCR taught me so, so much. But I think the final thing that I want to focus on that it taught me is the power of working on the things that are going to break down on your body. Which is, again, fear-based training. I cramped here. I need to do something in training that targets that area in a fatigued state so that when I call upon it next time in a fatigued state, it has legs to stand on. or I just run out of power uphill or I can't take downhill damage past a certain point.

54:52Everything we had done up to this point is kind of skill-based talking. The skill of running fast, the skill of running relaxed, the skill of working on your pace. But this is structural. We're taking the thing that you know is the weak link in your chain and hammering it into submission. You can go from a cramper to a not cramper. You can go from a fader to someone who doesn't fade. You can go from a certain type of runner to a different type of runner by being very upfront with what breaks down on me and fails out and then designing things to target that specifically. We never did that in college.

55:28No, because we ran in either circles going left or in a straight line. And we worked it in practice exactly as we needed it in the race. That's not how OCR works. Nope. and this also that's also probably a really good point to bring up which i think the last phase of our training which would be like the ultra side of things that whole what's going to break down on me and how do i prevent it right i'm going to give a guy a shout out right now and he's not going to like it but james just ran eastern states oh uh and james dnf'd and james was quite ready i I felt like James was ready. He listened to the podcast, James.

56:06But his terrain at home, I mean, the way his growing, growing, growing was cramped, like going on him, the way his hips were going on him, on the technicality of eastern states, not being able to run downhill, having to literally pick apart going rock, you know, field trails downhill. He just didn't expose himself to that type of terrain in training at all. He put the time in. He worked very hard. he was on the trails, just like much like me at Superior where suddenly I was cracked. I didn't earn it. I didn't bulletproof the structure for what the demand was going to be. And he experienced that earlier than he thought he would.

56:44And 40 miles in, he's like, there's just no way. There's no way. Because I wasn't taught to the test. We didn't get that one thing right. And that's how OCR was. I didn't realize my back would start to seize up on me with a bucket carry in the front going uphill after five minutes of a carry so much so I had to set the bucket down because of my back what do you remember that when you started I was like my lower back I never knew like you would never imagine could happen that was the old days where you couldn't have a lid on it and it couldn't be on your shoulders and you couldn't spill the bucket dude I didn't know I was such a weakling yeah like okay I gotta figure that out that was one of my glaringly obvious examples.

57:25But we're back. Because 100 meters all the way up through 10K on the track, the formula was the same. You run the volume that is accepted to be necessary for that distance, and you run the speed work that's necessary for that, and you will PR. You run the volume, you hit the intensity on the paces, and you're good. There isn't the, but what if I break down, or what if this gives out? It's just, no, do you have the aerobic and anaerobic capacities? Great. You're going to PR this season if you're not a head case. You know, every kid that went out and ran 80 to 100 mile weeks over the summer and came back and hit his speed work, it's probably going to be all conference that year.

58:09Maybe all American. That's just what worked. Then you met a bucket. You're like, I did the volume. I did the speed work. But there's another component here that gave out on me and it didn't. It's the same thing with ultras. I would argue down to a marathon it matters. I think that's the missing component of a lot of people's marathon cracking. There's something that just wasn't prepared structurally, muscularly. It's not a skill thing. Bucket's not a skill. It's time under tension. A lot of time under tension in an ultra. I remember setting that bucket down, I don't know, a dozen times at my first world championship.

58:46carrying towel. Lindsay Webster goes by me as I'm sit there writhering and pain face standing goes by me. They started 15 minutes later. May I remind you? And I'm setting this bucket down because my back just couldn't anymore going up this ski hill and they didn't set it down once. They made me feel so small that day. And it was all because I wasn't ready for that demand. Guess who was doing uphill bucket carries for the rest of their career? And you were strong enough. You were fast enough. You had enough volume. I was stronger than them. I was faster than them. And I, and paper should have been able to carry that bucket notably faster than them.

59:18And I was a withering waif. Yeah. And I think it applies to everything in ultra all the way to fueling. It is something to address that is not fitness related. I wanted to add also, and that's why sometimes these things don't make sense to you on paper. You can look at a result in the ultra. I guess we can combine OCR ultra because we're one a little bit limited on time. We got about seven minutes, six minutes, But is like on paper, you go and look back at somebody's Strava and you'd be like, this person was running 30 miles a week and they just smashed me in this beast race or in this trail race.

59:51And I'm running 60 miles a week and I'm doing these things and I should be better. Like, why is this person getting away with less work? Well, what is the content of that work based on what you're racing each other against? What is this? Maybe this person is bulletproofing their hips and their quads in the gym that you don't see. Maybe this person's soccer games, which seem trivial and not on their Strava, has so much lateral movement that they just move better through that terrain than you're in a vacuum fitness can. And it's like all of those intangibles that often you can't see on paper, you can't see on somebody's training log or Strava.

1:00:25I feel like it's that stuff you're talking about. My 10-minute average run, but because there was bucket carries in there and dumbbell farmer holds on top of hill running, but on paper, you wouldn't even know it. I feel like it's those people that you see and you're like, what I'm seeing doesn't add up. It's like, well, what are they really doing? That's where you find that happened a good bit, I think. When I used to analyze people's training, stalking them online, looking at pro training journals, coaches that would list the stuff their athletes are doing, I would just look at structure. I would just look at, it went easy, hard, easy, easy, hard, easy, hard, long.

1:01:00And this was the volume. And what were the pillars? Your interval is Wednesday. You were doing Temple Thursday or Friday. And you were doing Long Run Sunday. And then on Monday, there was some real speed session. Okay, great. I know what their system is running. And OCR had me clicking on workouts to see details of what were you doing on these days. I mean, even little things like that's when I started looking, what shoes were you wearing? I don't, it was started with Hobie call. Why can he run for three hours and Nike waffle racers on terrible terrain and his feet are fine and his calves didn't cramp.

1:01:34I didn't get it. And so now I'm pouring through his training videos, trying to find what was he wearing on his long runs? And well, he was in his Brooks cross country flats. Okay. He's not like, that's a tool that doesn't show up in volume. That doesn't show up in intensity, but he was bulletproofing his race shoes and his mountain runs. The small details that would have seemed small are the key components to OCR and Ultra. So what would you say is one key component or two, like a very specific thing with OCR and Ultra? Like this exact thing is what made me better.

1:02:15Vert made me better. Yeah. Terrain work over engine work. If I had a day where this should be a threshold day, but on this terrain, I can't quite hit threshold, I more often than not would compromise on the intensity in order to get the terrain I needed. Because on race day, the terrain was going to do that to me. Yes, I was going to have to crush the ridge and get back to tempo running. But up the ridge and in West Virginia, going up and down those hills, there's not an intensity I could quantify other than working hard. But it wasn't a heart rate. Any heart rate wouldn't surprise me. I could look down and see 120 and be like, yeah, I'm crawling.

1:02:56Or I could see 180 and be like, yeah, I'm sweating. It didn't matter what we were working at. You were taking the fastest route through that terrain that you were taking. And you had to do some quality work through that terrain to be able to be smooth and efficient. So vert work, terrain work, but then the overall, the compromised running, that was everything. Deplete a body part and now go run 10K pace on that. I think that's the biggest thing, even something like going through like, um, going through even like rolling mud or like, I mean, people that's like, Oh, it's a little rolling mud. You hit that and you're already at in zone four or five.

1:03:32And then you go over that and the legs fill up way quicker than they should. And then that rolling mud has you at the base of the ski hill where you have to start running right uphill and you go, well, I'm not used to this feeling. My legs are blown out from crawling up the stupid mud, which sounds silly, but if you know, you know, and it's like okay well how do i emulate that make me drag a tire for two minutes and then run my five minute rep yeah on full quads and just it's just like running at altitude getting used to how it feels and then you can sink your teeth into it because you're familiar with it yeah and so it was that and then free running then heaven forbid you go run a 5k time trial at a local road race just because i want to know and it feels so effortless by comparison because you didn't beat the legs up beforehand.

1:04:15It's powerful. It's why I think we have a history of OCR athletes becoming real forces at the ultra distance on trails and mountains. Because we knew from the start, we knew these athletes. We knew they're not all great runners. They're just great at combining things for this type of terrain. But they took that and they translated it to mountains. They are all really good at figuring out what the race is going to ask of them and building that creatively rather than saying, do I take a marathon plan and advert to it? Or they're not encumbered by those types of limitations because they cut their teeth in OCR.

1:04:57I have to do heavy carries. I have to do compromised running. I have to do terrain work. They get to the mountains. They're like, well, this is simpler. and there's a lot of ultra runners right now that have OCR roots but that wouldn't have worked in the marathon it wouldn't have worked on the track it wouldn't have translated it went to hurt right and but yes right um all right well I think we have to cut this so is there anything else you need to wedge in there obligatory shoe comment Kirk OCR taught me to plan for the shoe that will see me through to the end of the race. Never once did we contemplate that in track.

1:05:38Our races weren't long enough and we were so efficient and fit that you could run in anything. But OCR taught me what I needed to know for ultra, which is you don't pick your fastest shoe. You pick the appropriate shoe for the duration. Okay. That was never a thought. What do I feel the fastest in? I pick that shoe all the time, 10 out of 10 times. How light is it? Great. That's the one I want. Yeah. I don't look at it that way at all anymore. Even if I were running a mile on the track, I don't know if weight in my shoe would even come into play. Only if there were two equal shoes that felt the same on me, then I'm going to take the lighter one.

1:06:14Yeah. But that's it. That's the only time I would care. And then your shoe obsession began. Unless you've always been a shoe obsessed nut job. I've always, I blame my parents. I hope Colleen listens to this because this is a good blame. We didn't get a lot of things growing up. Like birthdays weren't where we received presents. We got experiences. But as a result, like I became a little infatuated with the things we didn't have, which were things. So I liked researching things. Like I'd get the toy magazines and think if I ever had something, this is what I would want. Like I spent years daydreaming about the things I might have.

1:06:56and that just rolled right into shoes and baseball mitts and bats and all that. And then now I'm just living out my childhood dreams. Yeah, now look at your shoe wall behind you and whatever mess is on the floor by your feet that we can't see. Not a mess. This has been KonMari'd. All right, well, way to go. Thank you.

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