Episode 644: There Are Holes in Your Training Plan

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 therunningpublic.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 therunningpublic.com and check out our offerings. Welcome to another episode of Kirk's Off in the Woods Hunting, so Bracken talks about shoes. That's not exactly what we're going to do today, but I can almost guarantee shoes are going to come up today. In fact, I can guarantee shoes will come up, but that is not the purpose of this episode, shockingly. So Kirk's off in the woods.

1:06I believe bow season is upon us. So he's off trying to get himself a deer. And I am taking this one on solo. And what we are going to do today is I have gone through and looked back through the vast majority of the notes I have taken on coaching consult calls over the last several years. So whether it's take a look at my training plan and fix it for me, Or a common one is I've signed up for a race in 30 weeks. I'm working on how to prepare for this. I just want to pick your brain about every single thing about this race and how to prepare for it. Other times it's I'm coming off an injury and this is what I've been dealing with.

1:47Help me build a rehab plan or see the things that I'm not seeing right now. But any question that a runner could have is on the table during this consult. And my job in this moment is just to come up with the best possible advice for every scenario you can throw at me so that you leave the consult ready to take training into your own hands with confidence that you're not having any glaring issues in your training. So I've gone back through years of notes on these consults, and today's episode is going to be summing up what people are traditionally missing in their training when they come to me.

2:26Because whatever the consult is, whatever the purpose of the consult is, the process generally comes back around to the same general outline, which is I take a look at what they've been doing and what they intend to do and just pick holes in it. because I don't have their blinders on or I don't have their bias or their habits or any preconceived notions that they have about what they do and how they do it, it's pretty easy for an outsider to see what's missing. And so even when it's rehab protocol or it's race prep or fueling questions or gear questions, it all kind of comes back to what is that athlete currently missing in their training?

3:04Where are the holes? And then how do we go about filling that? And so we're going to do that for you all today. I'm going to show how this works, what the common pitfalls are, and how to think about this with your own training so that in theory, you don't miss those pieces in your own running, in your own training, in your own nutrition, in your shoe choice, whatever that's going to be. The process is the same. So we're going to get into it. So the very first thing that happens on like 90 plus percent of either new coaching calls or consult calls is I ask to take a look at the work they've been doing.

3:37They send over in some format all the training they've been doing for at least the past six weeks. But when it's a consult, I'll look at the whole training block or a whole year. And from the outside, it's really easy to pick up the immediate holes in the training. So as I'm scrolling through, most people are pattern-based. And you can just look down and they kind of have columns like Saturday is long run, Tuesday is speed session, or whatever it's going to be. It's not always like that. A lot of times it gets moved around. But you can see if you have a practice diet, this kind of thing, which fortunately, this is all I've done for the last decade or two, is stare at training plans.

4:09So it's pretty easy to pick out what's missing. And in a holistic, well-rounded training plan, there's always going to be an overall training volume that you're looking at at the end of each week. There's going to be some sort of speed work, some sort of stamina work, some sort of endurance work, and just an overall emphasis on building aerobic and anaerobic capacity. So when I just look at the aerobic and anaerobic side of the training plans, something's always missing. It's really, really difficult to hit all things at once. And usually we have some sort of bias or habits in our training that leaves some stones completely unturned.

4:47And most often, it's speed work. So the most common thing I see with people's training plans is they simply aren't addressing high-end work. And it's pretty easy to see why people don't. It's not needed in their minds for whatever they're preparing for. I'm preparing for an ultra. Why would I do speed work? I'm preparing for a marathon. I'm doing a lot of marathon-specific work. I'm just building base right now. I'm not focused on VO2 max or faster. I'm not looking at 5k pace, at mile race pace. I'm not doing my mechanical speed work. And so as a result, it's just not present. But I have this theory on training.

5:27It's not like this earth shattering thing, just something I believe about it. It's the Netflix queue approach. I mean, this applies to everything in life. But if you add a show or a movie to your Netflix queue, to your watch list, to your watch later, and you bypass it more than once, you are exponentially less likely to ever watching. And this is, I have movies sitting in my watch list that have been there for years and they come and go from Netflix. And every time they're back on there, they pop back into the list. And I still haven't watched them years later because once you start pushing something to the side, you stop seeing it.

6:05And it's just like a known psychological quirk of human beings. It can be right there in plain sight, but if you ignore it more than once, you develop an actual blind spot for it. And that's how speed work is. So if you ignore it during a base building block, or you ignored it during a marathon build or an ultra block, you are way less likely to ever notice it and put it back into your training plan again. And so like half the people are intentionally not doing speed work and the other half aren't even realizing that they're not doing it anymore. So missing speed work is one of the first components that I see.

6:37And that's really easy to add back in. You start with what Kirk and I talk about as mechanical speed work, speed work that lasts 20 seconds or less. Very fast running, but not all out sprinting necessarily, but just using your fastest best stride without sprinting and doing it for 20 seconds or less so that you're not accruing fatigue. You're taking a long rest in between. If I'm working for 20 seconds, I'm probably not working for at least a minute and a half, two minutes in between. So the easy way to do this is like really fast up a hill for 15 or 20 seconds, stop, slow walk back down to the bottom, walk around for a little bit, and then do another one.

7:15That's a good work-to-rest ratio in terms of just thinking about the imagery of how the workout would look. And starting with those kind of things. Once, twice a week, adding in some easy strides, some accelerations before quality sessions and after easy runs, and then eventually you work your way up to some actual speed sessions. But it does not need to be a stressful activity to add into your training plan. Then the next thing I see if we move down the intensity line is that Usually there is some sort of quality workout happening, meaning in this case, let's just say above aerobic threshold, something that's having some sort of lactate accumulation in your body, something that's approaching a race pace of some sort, starting at, let's say, marathon pace or faster, and it's there, but it is not progressive in nature.

8:04It's kind of disjointed training plans. Sometimes this is because you're part of a track group and you didn't know what the workout was going to be each week and it feels a little bit randomized. They're just picking workouts out of a hat. And then you get done with that and you move on with your training and you just keep recycling workouts you've done in the past. Recycling workouts we've done in the past is probably like the number one training habit most people have in terms of when they script their own programming. We do what we've done before, but that generally leads to holes in your training.

8:31So I run thousands every Tuesday. All right. That's good that those workouts are now linked. What's the progression? How are you progressing this? Doesn't mean you have to get longer each time. Doesn't mean you have to do more reps each time. It doesn't mean you have to get faster each time or shorten the rest each time, but you have to do one of those things semi-regularly in order to progress the workout. So let's just say this is classic threshold training. You're not necessarily shooting for a pace. You're shooting for an exertion level. And so what you're tracking is you're tracking your pace and you're tracking heart rate and you're probably not doing finger pricks.

9:09And that's fine, but you're not trying to hold it for longer each rep because that'll be, that'll probably take you outside your intended range. And you're not trying to run it faster each week. But as you notice your heart rate is starting to drop, then you start picking up the pace slightly. And if initially you can handle 20 minutes of threshold work, eventually you're going to try to hold 23, 24 minutes, then move it up towards upper 20s and then 30. and then eventually you'd want to be hitting upwards of 35 to 40 minutes spent working in that range per week. And that's easily scriptable. Start out with 7x1000, 6x1000, and then after two weeks move to 7x1000.

9:48And after four more weeks move to 8x1000. And take an entire year to progress it up to 10 to 12x1000. If you even get there in a year. You can milk this thing out over multiple seasons. But you're tracking your heart rate and your RPE and your pace and you're making micro adjustments throughout. But that is scripted, progressed workouts rather than just throwing workouts on there and seeing how they go and just trying to run them faster. Most people, the way that they improve workouts is they try to just be better at the workout, which is good. It's better than not doing anything. But high level runners, good running groups, progress their workouts.

10:26Each workout leads to the next. There's a rationale behind why you're doing it and what you're hoping to be able to do later in the training block in that workout. So then the next piece moving down the intensity line is oftentimes you see that the stamina work is missing. So if mechanical speed work is like true speed work and the interval work would be what's speed, speed adjacent, you could call it threshold work. It could be VO2 max work, but it's working on race paces. Stamina work is a little slower than that, but hanging on for a while. Some people will call it gray zone work. Some people would call this slower than marathon pace.

11:03Sometimes it is marathon pace for a lot of people. A lot of runners don't spend a lot of time running marathon pace, but something stamina-based that is going to take your system, not tax it super hard, but force you to keep it together as the workout goes longer and longer. And you're running with good up-tempo stride, like popping off the ground later into a workout past 40 minutes. Something like it could be a long cut down. It could be a 3x5k tempo. It could be 10 miles easy, 5 miles fast. It could be 5 minutes on, 5 minutes off for 80 minutes. Something that is longer in duration, not insanely fast by any means, but forces you to keep it together as the workout crosses the 40 minute mark.

11:47I think that that's a missing component in a lot of people's training. It's not always necessary in everyone's training, but usually if someone's coming for a consult, it's because something's not gelling in their training and something's missing. So if you don't have speed work, you add it in easily. Easy little to digest chunks. If you don't have progressive interval sessions, then you just start making them naturally progressive. And if you don't have stamina work, you just start adding a little bit of faster running to some of the longer stuff you do. That's the simple way to do it. Obviously, there's a million stamina workouts you can put in there.

12:21And if you're a hybrid athlete, then there's a lot of different types of stamina you can do. Hills are a great way of working on this. Just go run a hilly terrain for an hour, hour and a half and work either the ups or the downs above aerobic. Those are easy ways to add this in. Final real piece missing of the training plan is the actual long work. Most runners benefit from having a run that goes past 70 minutes one time a week, at the very least every other week. But it's like speed work. You're one or the other. You love doing long stuff, but the thought of speed work makes you nervous. Or you love fast stuff, but the thought of just a monotonous long run bores you to death or scares you.

13:05And so whichever one you are, you have to address the other one. And so the scripted progressed long run in particular is missed. A lot of people just go out for 90 minutes or two hours every weekend. And that's fine. But if you're not used to long runs, you can get used to them pretty quickly. But you just start scaling them out. One of the first questions I ask athletes that I'm working with is, what would you consider easy, medium, and long for you? So if I just said, go out for a run, how long would you run before you'd start to think, if I go any longer, it's going to compromise what I do tomorrow.

13:38And that would be what I would consider a good easy run. And for a lot of people, that's 40 to 60 minutes. And then I ask, what is a long run? If you think before you do this, I'm getting ready for a long run. What is that distance for you? Is it time? Is it mileage? Is it eight to 10 miles? Then start with eight. And next week, go nine. And the week after that, go 10. And then drop it down to eight. and then go 10 and then 11, drop it back down to nine. But scripting it so that you progress, you just nudge the line forward bit by bit, it's a really simple, effective way to build out your long run.

14:15Most people can get to the point where they can run two hours comfortably if they start with 80 minutes and just start progressing at five to 10 minutes every week or every other week. It's a real easy way to get there. And these don't have to be long, hard runs. If you're already doing a lot in your training, just adding duration is a powerful stimulus in your training. So those are the common things I see when I'm just scrolling through initially on someone's training plan. What's missing? It's either that you're not progressing your work systematically and intentionally, or that you're just flat out missing a type of stimulus that's going to help you for your race.

14:54Next thing that I see people miss are specific race demands in their training. That they're just missing terrain or they are missing a type of impact. And so terrain could be that you're training for a marathon, but you're doing all your work on the trails. And trust me, I get it. Trails are my sweet spot. I love the trails. Pavement beats me up, but the race is going to beat you up. And so you have to be ready for that. And so again, it comes back to intentionality on a lot of these things we're talking about is how do you program in intentionally getting on the terrain you're going to need to do or vice versa?

15:29So you're getting ready for a mountain race. You don't live in a mountainous area, but you hate the treadmill. Well, you have to suck it up and program in specific terrain and impact workouts, or that is the goal today. The goal is to take impact. So right now I'm working with myself as I'm trying to rebuild and get to a place where I can race a high rocks and I can race a 100K and the 100K demands that I'd be able to run pavement and really technical terrain. So I am forcing myself at least once per week right now to run on pavement and at least once per week to run on either hills or technical terrain.

16:08Those are non-negotiables. That's not going to happen unless on my training plan, it says these things. So one week is a flat, medium, long, or long run, and that is always going to be on harder terrain. And then the next week is a vert or terrain-based medium, long run, or long run. and that's always going to be on a location that I have already specified. So when people tell me, listen, I don't have access to blank, I always then ask, how certain are you of that? How much have we looked into this? Without naming names, there's an individual I just started up working with about a month, month and a half ago, and they live in a very rural, flat area.

16:56and just do not have access to trails. But we found some. If you take the time and you go on AllTrails and you go on the Mountain Bike Project app and you go on Strava and check out heat maps and search for segments and you cyberstalk as many runners as you can. For example, this individual found where they have a university in the town they live in and they found that they have a cross-country team there and then they went and found where does the cross-country team train? It turns out they actually have a cross-country course. It's outside of town, but it's grass, grass and dirt. And it's not the biggest trail system in the world, but that's one.

17:37And then you went and they found a, I think it was like a little hiking area, a small little hiking area. But with making loops then, then they can make a semi-interesting trail network out of it. Now that's two. So now if you just simply run each one of those once a week, you've taken up a good chunk of your week without repeating the same run and without running on pavement. And this kind of thing happens with almost everyone I've ever interacted with that they haven't exhausted their search. There's the tool they haven't used. Like I went on all trails and I didn't find anything. It's like, okay, did you go on the mountain bike project?

18:15because bike trails are all over the place and we don't generally know that these mountain bikers have created these little trails, but you're allowed to use them most of the time. Obviously check with the club rules and the signage, but it's there. Have you gone on Strava and looked everywhere people are running? There are all these little places to run that aren't obvious. There's not a big sign that says this is a trail system, but you can usually find these things. Hills are the same way. If you're willing to really look around and search for hills, use Google, use topographical maps, use Strava, use all trails.

18:53You can usually find something that you can make fit your needs. And then obviously the final piece is just some people have to bite the bullet and either get a gym membership or buy their own treadmill or StairMaster in order to be able to do some vert. But most people during these consults realize that they haven't researched their running areas as much as they really thought they had. There are surface level searches and then there's the deep dive. And if you're committed enough to training that you are booking a consult with someone or you're writing out your own training plan or you're signing up for races, you might as well take an afternoon or wake up early one Sunday morning and just do a deep dive online and find different running locations.

19:36It's worth having. I talk about it a lot, but I really only have like three trail locations within 40 minutes of where I live, but I use the heck out of them. And then you learn them and you realize, all right, this is my go-to for long runs. This is my go-to for technical terrain. This is my go-to for trail intervals. I've got, I mean, I have three hills I have access to primarily, and then I have to travel over an hour to get to the other ones, but I can really milk those hills and get a lot out of them because I'm very intentional with how I use them and how I set them up. So rounding out this training plan, like the actual nuts and bolts of the plan, it's the terrain and the specific impact that oftentimes is getting people on race day.

20:16Even Kirk talked about it. We all know at this point, like Kirk's a monster. He's in his forties. He's still running close to 15 flat in a 5k. He's outright winning ultras when he jumps into those. He's just competitive on every surface that he races. And in his two most recent races, he ran into dead legs during the race and they were a result of specific terrain that he wasn't totally used to. He's a monster and he's a great technical terrain runner, but because he just doesn't have superb access on a daily basis. I mean, I've been to Kirk's house. I've trained at his training locations. The man does not have good trails nearby.

20:54I mean, He doesn't even have trails nearby. He has to drive a minimum of 60 minutes to find any trail. And it's more like 90 minutes to two hours to get to legit trails. But he self-admittedly, if he's going to go after a record on a trail or an overall win, that's a commitment level that would require once every other week making a two-hour drive. And he's going to do that for the next time. So even at the profession of we're coaches, we're still making these own mistakes in our training because we have the same occurrence of bias and having blinders on that anyone else does. Next thing that people always want to talk about on coaching consults is strength work.

21:31It's just a very confusing topic when you're the only person involved in it. And especially because there are so many people out there with so many different takes on what strength training needs to look like for a runner. You could talk to 10 different professionals and get 10 different answers where you wouldn't necessarily get that for running. You might get three or four different answers, but you're not going to get 10. So it's, am I doing too much high rep work? Am I doing too much low rep work? Am I strong enough? Or it's the opposite. Where do I even start? So generally what I find is that people fall in the two camps.

22:07They're doing way too much or they're doing way too little. If you were in the third camp, you're probably fine, which is I'm doing a good amount of work and it's not really impacting my running negatively. And I'm not sure it's the greatest thing ever, but I'm healthy. I feel relatively strong. I like the way I look. Yeah. Anything that I could do from here would be fine tuning. That's not really a good use of your time, my time, your money to worry about me working on that. But if you're doing way too much, it's really hard to see that. Kirk's talked about it after his talk with Tyler German about you're just doing too much strength training, realizing that there's diminishing returns on investment from a performance standpoint for sure, but also on the impact of what it does on your recovery and availability for your next workout.

23:01So do you need to do step back lunges or split squats or something like that for a runner? Need? No. Should? Yes. But does Kirk need to be going 225 for step back lunges? like would 185 be just as effective from a systemic standpoint, from a health standpoint as a runner, from a resiliency standpoint? Yeah, he'd probably be just fine at 135, to be honest. And he knows that and he's talked about that. So that kind of example, the person who's just doing too much, this is really common with high rocks athletes, with hybrid athletes that they can deadlift 400 pounds. They can back squat three, 350 for reps.

23:41You don't need all that strength. It's great that you have it, but you can afford to lose some of that and not have it impact your on-race track performance whatsoever. What you do need to do is challenge yourself. You need to stress your system, but it doesn't have to be the type of challenge you're used to feeling. On the other end of the spectrum is the person who has just no clue where to start. And the answer to that is you do the strength equivalent of mechanical speed work. You do the smallest little dose that is safe and manageable and unintimidating, and then you just let that slowly build over time.

24:20But you can sit in really light, safe, confidence-inspiring lifts for weeks and gain improvement on it if you're a total novice. So strength work does not make or break your running ability. What it can do is make or break your availability as a runner. Strength training, if it doesn't have a negative impact, will only make you more durable. It will only make you better able to put out force and you'll be more stable in your stride and you'll break down less as a run goes on. You will likely not get any faster, but it'll keep you from ever having things that cause you to lose speed either during a race or a run or due to time missed due to injury.

25:05But the key there is not to do so much that it does impact your recoverability or your availability. So you're either the person that's doing too much and listen, you got to back off. Just let's move down to two days per week, do your minimum effective dose and see if you can put that extra energy into like doing 10 to 20 % more weekly volume in your running. Or you're the type that like, listen, you need to get on the Dan John Easy Strength Program. I can't even tell you how many times I've recommended that to a novice. It's just so simple and easy. Is it best practice for building strength? No, of course not.

25:40But it starts you building strength. It starts you getting used to movements. It gets you used to the movement pattern and your body can handle it and you don't get doms and you don't get torn apart by it. And then eventually you like the feeling and you start looking for more and then you're ready for the next program. But strength training, most people miss by doing way too much or just simply not doing it at all. and the longer your race gets. The longer and shorter your race gets, the more important this thing is. Middle distances are really like you could lift, not lift. It really doesn't matter that much from a performance standpoint, but if you're training intensely or raising your volume, strength training is preventative from an injury standpoint.

26:20Next up, people all want to talk about nutrition. Now, I'm not a nutritionist by any stretch of the imagination, but what I do have some time spent really worrying about and focusing on is race nutrition. And so if you are coming to me and we're talking about a race that lasts longer than, I'm going to say 50 to 60 minutes, 50 minutes for sure, you should have a nutrition plan for your race. And that nutrition plan, just like executing a race, stems from a training plan. A race nutrition plan stems from a training plan. You have to script your nutrition practice, your in-race fueling, the same exact way you script your intervals or your long runs or your recovery runs.

27:06It has to be intentional. I'm sure by now you're seeing the thread here that happens during these consults. It's that real coaches, real high-performing athletes don't do things by accident. There's a purpose. It's intentional. Each move you make is intentional. And if you do enough of that, it allows you the wiggle room to do things spontaneously because you've built in such a good protective cage physically and mentally that you can just handle variants and ad hoc activities. But you'll also be able to see these things and be like, all right, I'm doing this random thing here and I know how to adjust for it because everything else in my world is intentional here.

27:46And nutrition for race fueling cannot be any different. I just read someone's race report from the UTMB weekend. They're not a high performing athlete, but they talked about in their lead in, in their intro paragraphs to their race recap, they talked about their fueling plan strategy and training they'd done as much as they talked about their training volume and their hill work and their shoe choices. And right away, I knew this person's probably going to do okay. because they were so prepared, progressive in nature, how they talked about training for carb tolerance and what type of sources their gut liked and what their plan was for the race.

28:28And they had a specific plan on how they were going to start with 90 grams of carbs per hour for the first X number of hours. And then they were going to drop down to 60. And I looked at it and thought, I don't think I would do that. I would probably start a little lighter with the nerves for the first hour. And then I'd bump up and start hitting my full on density. And if I was going to reduce, I would reduce down in a more stepped manner, like down to 80, down to 70, down to 60. But this person clearly trained this. And so I have to assume that they know more than I know about how they're going to tolerate this.

29:03And so I read the race report and a lot went wrong for people that didn't watch UTMB. There was torrential rain for a while. They had to reroute the course because of how heavy the weather and the rain was. And it just, I mean, hours and hours and hours soaked and it threw everyone's plan off. This person had a plan where they were going to swap their full kit, their clothes, socks and shoes and everything at an aid station. And they got there and they're like, what's even the point? The moment I step back out here, I'm going to be soaked again. So everything went off, off the rails, but they kept their fueling strategy and ended up having a very successful race.

29:38and it stems right back to their very first long run where they said, my long run progression is up to hour and 40 minutes this week and I'm going with 65 grams of carbs for the first three hours of this or for the first three miles of this and then I'm going to move to 75 for the next three miles and see how that works. And that's how this thing has to work. Just like you wouldn't prepare for a hundred miler by randomly choosing distances to run on your long runs, You can't randomly choose what you're going to fuel with. So when I'm preparing athletes for long races, the very first question I ask is, historically, what have you done with your fueling?

30:18The same way I ask, show me your last nine weeks of training. I need to know what you've done. And if I don't see that you've tried multiple things, I know that you're doing what you've done because you don't know anything else. And if it really works for you, that's fine. But if you think at all you're leaving something on the table, you have to expand your horizons. Next thing I ask is, what does the race use as their fuel? Because almost every major and even minor race, even Ironstone, which is usually capped at like 100 or 150 athletes, Tailwind is their sponsor. They have Tailwind at a lot of their aid stations.

30:54So right away, you need to know what's going to be on course. And you need to immediately get to work building up a tolerance to that thing. even if you don't want to use it. There are a lot of people who don't like the way tailwind sits in their gut after a while or the way it makes them feel. That's fine. But if you're racing a race with tailwind as the only drink mix or fuel source that will be provided by the race, you need to build up a tolerance for it. So that when things happen on course and your flasks rip or your fuel falls out or your crew doesn't show up or something happens or your gut turns or you're going through more drink than you expected and you're bone dry and you're supposed to still have two flasks left leaving the aid station, but you come in and they're bone dry, you've got to take the tailwind now.

31:48And so you need to know that my gut's going to handle this. I may not love the taste. This may be like a 20 % reduction in my stomach's happiness, but I also know it will not reject this fuel source. So what have you done? What's going to be there on race day? And now we bridge it together. Are there major holes in your fueling that you need to work on? I keep bringing it back to Kirk, but you guys all know Kirk. He's a good example to use. Kirk has famously been a chew-only fueling person. He has nothing but water and maybe some electrolytes in his bottle, and he just chews his fuel as he goes.

32:25And as he's gotten into hot races, he's found that it's just not worked as well for him. Hot, long, hard races. And so now what's Kirk doing? He's exploring more drinkable options or more gel-based options. And that's just the evolution as an athlete that we all have to have. But because he is so historically high performing, he wasn't pushed to explore these things until they popped up on race day. And my job on a consult is to get you to think about it as if it's already popped up so that it doesn't have to pop up on race day. So trying different fuel sources, trying different densities of fuel.

33:00That's what you do and you script it out in your plan leading up and you make notes during and after each long run that you use this with and you get to race day knowing exactly what you're going to use. And then every single consult at some point, and it's usually towards the end, people either lead with it confidently or right at the end they say, all right, as long as I'm here, I have to ask, I have some shoe questions. And the same patterns exist for shoes as with nutrition and strength work and speed work and all that. It's just, why are you choosing the things you're choosing? Is it intentional or are you just doing what you've always done?

33:34Whenever I hear someone say, I always run in Asics or I've run in Adidas my whole life and they discontinued the shoe or I'm looking for a new shoe. I used to run in the Super Blast, but they changed it. So now I run in and then they just name another Asics shoe. Asics is great, by the way. I'm not dumping on Asics. I love Asics. They have maybe changed their shoes as much as anyone in the industry over the last 20 years. Their progression has been phenomenal. But are there holes in your shoe game? Are you choosing things just because you always have? And if you always have, you probably picked the first one because it looked good, felt good on your feet, or just someone got you that shoe.

34:10My first shoe I ever got was the Adidas Response when I was back in seventh grade, I want to say. and so I ran exclusively in Adidas for years because of that. When I was at the shoe store, we bought it on the way to my first track meet and I picked out three shoes that looked cool and Adidas felt the cushiest on my feet and I bought them. That was the extent of why I had them and I wouldn't run into anything else. Lisa, I got her one pair of Asics back in the day and she loved the feel and the fit but she got crazy blisters from it. She is not running a pair of basics since. Once people find something that isn't offensive to their feet, they generally lock it in and ride it out as long as they can.

34:55They stopped making blank shoes, so I loaded up on six of them, but I'm screwed when they're gone. That's a phrase we hear all the time. But the reality is there are so many brands out there with so many shoe offerings that there's probably a best fit for you that you have no clue about. And so right from the start, we're asking, what have you run in historically and why? What have you liked? What have you disliked? What does your course demand? And as soon as people start thinking about shoes as tools, it becomes really simple in what your process is for picking a shoe for training and for your race.

35:30My distance is blank. The terrain is going to be blank. And historically, I like blank. Great. Now we can start looking for what your best shoe is going to be. and Kirk gives the advice on here a lot and I back him up a fair amount. Order a bunch of shoes, send back the ones you don't like. That works for a lot of people but that's going to be an absolute non-starter for a lot of people. First of all, a lot of people just don't have the funds or the desire to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on this process. So if that's not your process, the other thing we recommend is find the biggest running shoe store that you can go to in person and try on every single shoe you've ever heard recommended or looks interesting to you.

36:13And even by the end of that day, you're going to start to know what your feet like and you can try them all on and run on the treadmill there. Some have a little track you can run on. Some let you go outside on the pavement and run around on them, but do that thing and don't settle for anything that doesn't feel great. And then the question always turns to, should I be in super shoes? I don't know the answer to that for anyone until you run in the super shoe. And the difference between super shoes and anything else, any other type of shoe is this shoe absolutely has to be running with the stride you intend on using the super shoe for.

36:47So when you put your foot in a super shoe, that is the only type of shoe that you can't just trust that feeling when you put your foot into it because that's not how your foot's going to be used. It's not going to be used stationary. Usually I trust that feeling. My foot's not going to blister in this or it's not going to get neuroma feeling. If I put the shoe in, lace it up, stand up, and it feels good, I'm probably going to be fine in the shoe. But super shoes, that's not the protocol. You need to run in it at the pace and specifically the stride type you're going to use. So when you get on the treadmill, don't say, I run my marathon at seven minute pace, so I'm setting it at seven minutes.

37:17No, get it there, but then test above and below that by 30 seconds per mile because you don't know what the treadmill's accuracy is. Get to the stride you're going to be using and see how that feels on your foot. I'm running probably 60 second reps minimum in every shoe I'm trying on at a I generally just run threshold pace in these things to figure it out and I hold it for at least 60 to 90 seconds like by the end of this I do have some sweat going but it's worth it knowing how the thing's going to feel on my feet and if you have discomfort if you feel like this is clunky or awkward the shoe is not for you.

37:54If it feels that way on stride 20, think of what it's going to feel like on stride 2000. It's only going to get worse. If you think, oh, this shoe is so bouncy, but I kind of feel this in my quads. That's not the super shoe to start. You start with the one that feels safest and best, and you can always explore later. So should you be in super shoes? I don't know. If you're not trying to do anything crazy, you're probably not missing out on something drastic, but at the same time, like we've seen with Kirk and the AlphaFly, it's unlocked like 20 % more mileage for him on a weekly basis with probably 20 % less fatigue and damage than he used to take with 20 % less volume.

38:33So you find the right one for you and it just amplifies your run. So it's worth testing out if you're interested in this, but also know that it has its limitations. And the biggest one is you. And the second biggest one is the terrain. If you can't use the shoe, it wants to be used for every stride of your race, it's not worth using. I mean, maybe if you come up a mile short, sure, but it's kind of like being in an aero position for triathlon. If you can't hold that position the whole time, the aero benefits you accrued go out the window the second you stop being aero. It's not worth it anymore.

39:04It didn't help you. You didn't save anything because now you're just a sail in the wind and what was the point of saving for the first half of the race? That's how these shoes are. If they're going to make you 4 % more economical or efficient, that stops the moment you stop being economical and efficient. Now it's working against you. Now it's going to make you actually worse. You're going to start cramping or running terribly because you can't make it work for your stride anymore. So they're good until they're bad. And there really isn't a middle ground. There's very rarely a super shoe that you're in.

39:36You're like, it's fine, but I didn't get much out of it. Probably did get something out of it because it didn't work against you. It just didn't feel as special as other shoes. People will say that a lot. You hear about some of the more recent Sockney Endorphin Pro models. Some people say it about the Pumas. It's fine. I just, it doesn't feel super to me. That's still a win. It's not working against you and it's better than a regular shoe. So great. That's fine. That's a good one to start in. Yes, it's nice to find that super feeling, but the reality is you have, it's as much about avoiding the shoe that works against you as it is about finding the beautiful unicorn shoe.

40:11So if all of that sounds distasteful to you, just avoid super shoes. If the thought of that process is interesting or exciting for you, you're probably a candidate for super shoes. And this goes double for the trails. If you can't use the superness of the shoe more often than you're not on the trail, it's not worth having. If you are, because realistically, no one is getting more than 10 seconds per mile. in theory while you're fresh out of a super shoe. But how quickly can you lose 10 seconds per mile in your pace on rocky terrain really easily? If you're in a really nice low to the ground foot lockdown trail shoe going through a technical stretch, you'll put 10 seconds in a quarter mile on someone who's in Hoka Cliftons.

41:03Now if those Hoka Cliftons were super bouncy and had plates in them and you can't trust them whatsoever, that might be 20 seconds that mile. I mean, 20 seconds in that 400, but let's just say it's in the mile you lose 30 seconds. That's three miles of running afterwards. Best case scenario to make up for what you lost during that technical section. They also don't help very much uphill and they can cause stress uphill. They can actually make you work harder. Downhill, when it works, it works beautifully. A good super shoe matched to your stride and the angle of the hill is legal cheating. It's so nice.

41:39But when the plate or the foam or the terrain do not agree with each other, it is actively working against you down the hill and you cannot use your fitness. All of your being goes into controlling that shoe down the hill. So again, if you are unsure on the trails, when in doubt, don't wear super shoes. Don't wear carbon trail shoes. Carbon trail shoes, they're getting better this year. They really are. But they're not a guarantee ever. It is solely coming down to your ability to use them. I consider myself a very above average technical terrain runner. And there are pros running in shoes on technical terrain that I couldn't even fathom using.

42:22So you just have to be so good at the act of running in them that it excludes the vast majority of us from using them on technical terrain. So shoes, nutrition, training, strength training, all of it comes down to what is your existing bias? What is your lens that you're looking through? And what are the things you're missing because of your blinders? We all have holes in our training. This type of consult is really just me plugging the holes in your training. But if you went through it objectively enough, you could find this yourself. It's very difficult to do. I've tried doing it with my own training.

43:01It's possible, but while you're doing it, your brain is going to keep tugging at you and being like, but the reason we do this is because, and you have to say, yes, but we're not doing that right now. We're solely just trying to audit this training plan. The holes in our training, the things we're missing, the things that we're doing too much of are holding us back as much as any of the 2 % things that people get hung up on. Am I using the correct amount of protein? Creatine or no creatine? Super shoes or no super shoes? Should I be using sodium bicarbonate or not? High carb versus medium carb.

43:34Now, if we're talking high carb versus low carb, that'd be a different story. But the high versus medium, high versus super high, these are all 1 % and 2 % things. Finding out what you've been doing historically that has just been kind of holding you back, That's going to get you as far as anything. So if after all of this, you don't need Kirk or I for consults anymore, congratulations. That's fantastic. If you got to the end of this and you're like, I need a consult, go find a coach you trust and book a consult or just hang out with our running buddy and go through this together with each other.

44:07Kirk and I have done this with our training plans. We just send each other a block of training and we pick holes in it. You don't have to pay someone to do this for you. just getting a second set of eyes on it who has a fairly good understanding of endurance work. That's all it takes sometimes. So Crick's going to be back next week. We hope if he gets a deer today, he's back tomorrow, but he's going to be back, but this is the season. So we may have a few more solo episodes coming up, but hang with us. Maybe we'll even do just a full shoe episode. Maybe you're already sick of it and we won't. Maybe I'll do the old standby and bring Rich try him back on.

44:43But let me know what you're interested in from a solo episode. You can send that to my email, bracken at therunningpublic.com. We will see you next week. If anything resonated with you on today's episode and you're curious about taking your training to the next level, check out therunningpublic.com where we have a training plan to fit your needs.