Episode 649: Alyssa McElheny

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. So, Alyssa, you ran at Calvin? I did, yep. My high school cross-country coach and track coach ran at Calvin. What was the name? Dan Hookstra. Okay. Yep. He also coached me in high school. Really? Yeah. He came on my freshman year. I went to Grand Rapids Christian and he came on my freshman year. And like now he's their head.

1:11Yeah. He moved back a couple of years after I graduated, I think. Yeah. Yep. That sounds right. Yep. His wife is like a doctor here, OBGYN and has a few kids. And yeah, so he coached me in high school. And then, I mean, I coached at the same high school he did after that for a little bit. So yeah, we have a lot of connections, a lot of overlap. Small world. He came on my junior year. He was relatively fresh out of college and we had had just the classic high school coach who didn't run. And then suddenly we had like a 1430 guy come on and life changed very quickly for us. But yeah, truly he was, he had an impressive career for sure yeah and he was like he was directly the reason i ended up running long term oh that because we just had a sports and then you ran on the side and he was like the first example of like no you can just keep running yeah and train well from when when you come from like a coach that just does it for the you know like it works and i you know i have no running background but we'll figure it out yeah great guy but suddenly uh an all-american shows up and workouts change quickly.

2:20Is Calvin still a powerhouse? So back, I mean, I graduated college in 05, so it's a while ago, but it was, Calvin was always in the mix. Had that continued in the recent years? No. It hasn't? I mean, I went to Oshkosh and we were national champs then. And I mean, the program's really tanked in the recent decade, so we didn't keep it up either, but I didn't know if Calvin was still, I mean, who's really kept it? Like North Central has always been a force i feel like they still are they're never never fading for sure screw north central work berg is work still killing it i feel like they had always you remember missy buttry back in the day do you guys remember missy i remember that name north central will bring 8 000 guys to a cross country meet yeah that might that might truly be like what the like regardless of like collegiate division that might be one of the most like impressive long lasting consistent programs out there so they'd run entire heats of like a 3k just like the pinstripe yeah just the red and the white yeah i know their their women were never what their men were but i was used to like the guys on our team just being like are you a michigander yeah yeah is that the right way to say it yeah i that sounds great what's behind you where are you located like physically right now what's behind yeah i'm at the gym i train at so this is all like the programming for the next like a month or two um yeah i like seeing that your gym thinks long term yeah truly yeah it's i mean we have until i think november 6 all planned out so yeah and i think with my coach travels with me a lot for competition so like kind of has to be operating like you know a month ahead in order to like keep things keep things moving and consistent and all that so yeah we have a good team here for sure.

4:10I would like to know, uh, what exactly you were doing to make you late today, this morning. Like what, I assume you were training, squeezing in training, right? No, no, honestly. Oh, nevermind busted. No, yeah, no, it was a, it was a mix of like, um, so one thing I've been working on is like getting a lot more sleep. Um, cause this is my job now and I'm able to, and that like affects recovery so much. um so slept a little later than planned and then needed a grocery shop for lunches because i was like flying by the seat of my pants and didn't have anything yesterday we needed to swing by the grocery store um get breakfast yeah i just had like a had not quite enough time to fit that all in not the epic training story you were hoping for kirk i know i really shot and missed there unfortunately yeah no all the training all the training is coming later today is that typical for you?

5:05I'd say a lot of days, like it's broken up into two sessions. Today is just going to be one because I have like a big, like simulation type workout tomorrow. So today is just kind of like an easy, easy day training wise. Well, let's, let's not pass up that. I want to hear what you're doing for a simulation workout. Yeah. So I mean, it is high rocks based. It'll just be like, we call it the hump um the first like a little over half of the hyrax race so through i don't know how much you guys are familiar with hyrax oh yeah i don't know i'm walking into i've never heard of it we both coach hyrax athletes oh okay then you're familiar um yeah through the burpee bra jump um and then that run afterwards um so just kind of do like a simulation but not like the full thing wear and tear on the body wise.

5:57We're trying to go through it a little bit quick compared to like what race pace would be. So today is just all about like really easy machines and easy run and call it good. So no, no real work today. Just, just grocery shopping. I would say that's a pretty common one we use. We either do first four or first five. Yeah. Yep. And just sometimes we run to the row. Sometimes they row, but But yeah, I think generally we go. Yeah, we end that road just to kind of more of just like a data point, not as like we're not racing it through the row. We're just seeing how you feel coming into the row after.

6:30I think we just want to see tomorrow kind of like how, you know, how my body behaves, trying to run a little faster than I'm used to and event a little faster than I'm used to as well. So and the current consequences of burpee pace. Yeah, correct. And see how that happens before before we actually test it out at like a major coming up. So you'll go slightly faster than race pace? Yeah, tomorrow, yes. At the major, we'll see how tomorrow goes. Yeah. How many days out are you now? I think it's about a little over two weeks. So two weeks and two days or something. So it feels close enough that the nerves are setting on a little bit.

7:06We're definitely arriving. Will this be the most specific work you do in terms of chaining together the order of events? Yeah. Or will you do some more things like this? um this will be the last one before the major um we do again we do simulations i don't know it's not not something we do like wildly frequently especially with how common like races end up being like once you know once the season starts i'm racing every you know two months which from my marathon background that's like mind-blowing to me you know coming from the marathon it was twice a year and that was like you know the two major things you really had to like have your brain and body dialed in for maybe a couple little like a random 10k here and a random local 5k there but with high rocks yeah it's like I have to be on and ready to go and focused every couple months so yeah the amount of sims that actually happen are able to be fit in especially with so many of these races being like travel based by the time I travel get used to the time zone race come back recover get used to the time zone again like it really only gives you like a month to you know fully yeah again it's really it's a really weird quick sort of um training schedule we've talked about it a bunch but i want to get your opinion since you're the newest to the sports on the pro end uh it's hyrox is just runners and like everyone else i feel comes together because even if they're swimmers or cyclists or you know crossfitters whatever they all compete a crazy amount and runners once you get past 5k you really don't and high rocks duration is elite half marathon and you're not going to see an elite half marathoner trying to like hit five good ones in a year and then go to world so what how has it changed i guess your expectations of how often you can race in a year and or are you just like not approaching each one with intensity like the same vigor yeah so I mean my lap my first season in the sport was so short like I had from February till June whereas all the other women in the Elite 15 had been racing since I mean October so yeah I think I think I hadn't like really experienced what that would look like and yeah looking at what this season is going forward it's definitely it will definitely be you know a variety of approaches depending on the race I think for Hamburg I mean I think no matter what I'm going in being really competitive, giving it my best on each day.

9:35But yeah, I think we're definitely trying to approach it from a standpoint of it's not just a five-month season anymore. It's truly a nine-month-er. It's a long time. So yeah, recognizing that just because I won a world title doesn't mean that I'm going to win every single major. And I mean... So you're not going after it like other people have in the past? No, I don't want that to be my story. Yeah. I'd rather have my story be back-to-back world champ. You know, I, I'm not going to say I couldn't care less about the majors. I care about the majors. Like I'm a competitive little rat. Like I love, I love winning and, um, I'm never, I'm never going to go into a race with like a, you know, half, half-assed mindset.

10:18Um, I would love to win things, but yeah, I think my, my, my story of my season, I want it to be back-to-back world champ. I don't, I don't necessarily care if it's a sweep of the majors. Like that's not, you know, that's not the story for me. So yeah, ideally would love to win, but recognizing that it's a long season and that, you know, coming into any given race, we might be, you know, focusing more on the running piece than we are on the stations. Or we might be a little station heavy, kind of like I was this summer coming into like my first race in Beijing, focusing less on the running. Um, so yeah, just depending on the race, depending on the time of year, um, it might mean that I'm not at my absolute peak.

11:01And that's something that I think right after worlds, I kind of, you know, sat, sat down with myself, with my coach and had a discussion of like, if I come into the season, um, with the mindset that like, I need to win everything, like there's going to be disappointments. Um, so I need to - The quickest way to lose worlds is to win everything else. Yeah, truly. Yeah, correctly. Yeah. So I'm, yeah, I'm flexible, love to win, but also trying to like be mature and realize that winning every major might not be the best way to do that. And I think it's also helpful that I'm not, I mean, I'm new to this sport, but I'm not new to like elite, you know, level sport.

11:38I'm 35. I've been doing this for, I mean, I've been competing at like an elite level for, you know, decades now. Um, so I, yeah, I'm really thankful that I found high rocks at the time that I did in terms of like my mental, um, mental sporting, like emotional maturity. Yeah. You, uh, you're chasing the trials for years, uh, three 52 or two 52 ish. I think first swing, um, then they reduced the standard even further away from what you were currently running. That standard is just going to keep dropping. And I mean, marathoning is absolutely asinine right now in the United States. The men's side in particular is just ludicrous.

12:19However, so you ended up qualifying. You're only 234, I think, eventually. So you cut, let's call it 18 minutes. I don't have these numbers exactly memorized. No, you're right, though. I am. Okay. What timeline was that improvement? and just talking from a pure run standpoint, like what, uh, was it just as, as non-sexy and non-flashy as consistently similar work or did you find some sort of keys to like breaking through with your marathoning? Yeah. A little bit of consistency and then a little bit of the sexy. So yeah, I think it was, yeah, it was about a decade. It was from trying to, trying to qualify in the end of 2015 and then finally qualifying in the end of 2025.

13:04So yeah, 10 years exactly. And yeah, I don't care. I think people need to hear that, by the way. Like, Brack and I work with a lot of athletes and it's so funny to hear like a frustration with slow improvement sometimes, especially as like a tenured athlete. Like it's one thing to be a year into your running career. And yes, chunks should be taken off of time if you're training. The newbie gains. Yeah. Yeah. But like, like a deck, I just want people to like, like we talked about like what it took me a year to take off one and a half seconds off my 1500 time. And that sounds so trivial, but like that felt like moving mountains.

13:36Right. And so a deck, a decade to improve, just, I don't know. It's a good lesson. People just appreciate their gains. Yeah. All right. Continue. Yeah. No. And I, and I think there was multiple points in that decade where, um, it was a, like, I don't, is this worth it? Like, is it, you know, this isn't my job. This isn't, this isn't what I like depend on for my livelihood. Like, why am I still just like beating my head against the wall? And I think to me, the answer comes down to with, with a marathon, with high rocks, whatever it may be, there are just like a million little things you can change.

14:10And yeah, so like I might've, you know, ran 252 and failed. But then And my brain immediately goes like, well, I like fueling didn't go great. Like next cycle, like, let's try like, let's try a couple different brands. Like, why do we need to stick with the same thing? And then I run 252 again, and I'm still not dialed in on fueling. So like, let's, let's keep knocking down that. But maybe we also like, maybe we get a coach. Like, maybe we don't write our own training because every time I write my own training, I'm not doing the workouts that I hate. Like, I'm not doing the things that like really make me a better athlete.

14:43So yeah, finding a coach. um and then next cycle you know we we break it down and run 247 and that's a huge step um you know that's a you know five minute chunk off and so i think seeing that little improvement that you can make with like those little steps i think it makes it hard to like to get off that wheel um and just seeing that in a sport like marathoning or in a sport like high rocks where there are so many little pieces that come together and that have to come together on the right day to make it like the race, it's hard to like fully stop trying. Um, so yeah, it came down to like, again, consistency, huge, but yeah.

15:18Um, really increased mileage. And then speaking to the marathon piece of training, really increased mileage, um, found good coaching, found like partial support through Adidas that was helped me, helping me to like travel, um, compete, not for like full, full cost of competition that most athletes incur. Um, trying to get what else. Yeah. Trying to, again, focusing on like sleeping better. Um, there's just, I mean, you guys know there's a million pieces and just seeing those little pieces come together to like eventually put together a full puzzle, um, last fall. Um, yeah, it's hard. It's hard to fully let it go.

15:51How big was the breakthrough? What was your previous PR before two 34? Uh, two 34. I had actually run, um, two 37 30. So 30 seconds off the standard, um, right before the cycle opened like they had already announced the time but i think qualification didn't begin until like september of 2025 and i ran that time in like may of 2025 no yeah okay well this is gonna really confuse me no okay 22 sorry 237 30 i ran that um right before the 2024 trials like i came 30 seconds um you know far off and then tried again the last i think the last time the cycle like was open was CIM in that year. That was like the last race I could have possibly done.

16:37And it was dealing with some hamstring, hamstring tendinopathy. Um, and so like, just ultimately didn't happen. Took, um, a couple, I think a couple months off after getting PRP to try and heal that, you know, hamstring spot. It was just like an overuse thing and was kind of like, I don't know, I don't know if I'm ever going to come back to the same, you know, athlete that I was like taking two months off in my brain felt like catastrophic. You know, it's not. But at the time it was like, this is it. Like I, you know, I don't think if I just, you know, if I can just run without pain again, like that's enough for me, I don't need to be competitive.

17:13And then, yeah, in May of 2025, ran Glass City Marathon in Toledo, Ohio, and ran 234, 235 low there. So yeah, That took, you know, two and a half minutes off. And, um, yeah, it was emotional, like just to see that, you know, the fitness was still there and I was really scared to race the marathon again. But, um, knowing that like, if I just kept that going, that momentum going, that once the cycle opened again, I'd be able to run that fast. And then I did an Indy with my teammate, um, Gabby Henteman, who she ran her first marathon, uh, in two 34. So that was pretty wild. How long was that after your break from the hamstring tendinopathy to that race?

17:52to that race um see I took I took that two months in the very beginning I want to say it was 2024 so yeah it was it was a good chunk of time like I had I had time in between for sure but yeah it was a it was a really scary I think I think like 20 yeah summer of 2024 um was the like the full two-month break and then I had about a year until that marathon in Toledo Ohio where I you know hit the time, but it didn't count yet. And then, you know, had another chunk of like a few months to, to get better before Indy. So yeah, it was, it was a pretty short window. So along the way that fall, you're on a half and you're on like 118.

18:30Yeah. And that's like a real common thing. I think for a lot of people coming back, they'll test out half the distance, but I think it's really also common to not be anywhere close to what you'd like to find out in that half. I'm sure like it was nice to run that, but to think that I've got to do that again and faster both times. Oh, scary. Would have to mess with you. So what was the mindset going into that half and what did that half kind of like do for you? Yeah. The half was like, I think I ran in Grand Rapids. I think it was like, it was like all women's half marathon in Grand Rapids. So I knew it wasn't going to be, it wasn't like a super competitive field.

19:02I just got to go out there and do my own thing without a lot of pressure. So it was the perfect way to kind of like inch back into things. Um, I was truly just focused on like my own running and not anyone else around me. And then, yeah, the plan was like in my brain, I wanted to do another half in the spring. Like I wasn't ready to marathon yet, but then yeah, coach kind of said like glass city is a good spot, like competitive, good of course, but not like, not this like major, this major marathon where there's so many highs and yeah, it truly ended up being like the great, like such a great situation.

19:31Um, I'm really glad he pushed me to like, you know, he trusted my fitness more than I did at the time. So again, another reason that like a coach is just a beautiful thing to have. So what did he see that you didn't to make him think she could go faster than she just ran in a half twice? Twice. Yeah. Uh, I think, I think he was just seeing like the, um, the stacking of, you know, weeks on weeks on weeks. I was running, um, a hundred mile weeks ever since kind of after that half marathon. Um, once I felt that like the hamstring was kind of like, it was feeling safe and I was like able to trust it.

20:06So I think, I think he just understood what that fitness was going to do for me. The fact that I was able to stack pretty much from October of 24 until May of April of 25, consistent, you know, triple digit weeks. I think he knew what that meant more than I knew what that meant. And again, ultimately just really glad I trusted him at that. Cause I, if it were up to me, I would have still, I would have run one more half and then maybe save the full to the fall. So, yeah, again, trusting people that are in your corner and might know more than you or might be able to see things more clearly than you was really important.

20:42Letting go of the marathon. Has that been a tumultuous thing or a welcomed pivot? Because if you really focus for a decade on that and now and we still got to get into how the heck you ended up in the high rock space, because I'm sure you've had this conversation a million times, but I have. I love it, though. I love it. So are you feeling like a part of you is missing or is this just so novel and invigorating and exciting that the marathon is now just see ya? I think there's a little bit of both. I think for me, I've gotten better at it. But initially, it was really hard to part with that high mileage part of myself.

21:19Because for me, for years, that's where I derived so much confidence from. like these big, you know, 20, 20, 22, 24 mile workout days, um, and finishing a week and seeing like, you know, 105 miles like that to me gave me so much confidence, um, in my ability and in my fitness level. So just learning to like flip that and take confidence from other things like high rocks workouts, um, while still being able to get in like, you know, a 15 mile long run every week, I haven't completely given up that like long distance part of myself. So yeah, it was a, It was a little bit of like a tough piece to, you know, part with that part of like my safety blanket or my comfort.

21:57Yeah, I think it truly is like Hyrax has just been like so fun and just like new and interesting, especially for my brain. I did I competed in the 3K steeplechase in college and I feel like there's a lot of similarities there. Like I was never going to be that 10K girl that just ran laps like my brain. My brain did not have that in me. I think that's why marathoning is like okay for me because it is, you know, not track based. You get to go through different neighborhoods and then there's hills and then there's turns. But yeah, to me, like high rocks and steeplechase have a lot of like commonality.

22:29You know, you're running laps, but then you get barriers and you get hurdles. That's exactly what high rocks is. You're running laps, but then you get barriers and hurdles. So, yeah, I think that's truly more of like where my body and brain are meant to be. I think I kind of forced myself into being a marathoner over the years. um so yeah I think there's I don't think I really miss it at this point um I think I saw especially towards the end of that you know qualification journey that it wasn't the best thing for my brain and body again like that hamstring overuse injury um I just feel like I wasn't myself in terms of like I was more irritable I needed naps all the time um I just feel like so far the high rex training has been like a much better fit for like my brain body emotions all the above So I like I'm very much planning on running the trial still.

23:15I'm not going to let that dream die just because I found a different sport. But the training for it will look very different going forward. Did you have like were there signs looking back that high rocks or something like that was your like ultimate version of this? We used to joke in college if we could like during a workout, we'd like if we could just throw push ups or pull ups and we'd be all American. we knew we weren't aerobic or anaerobic monsters that could just go yeah you know just like clean cadence for the whole race never tie up never rig anything but if we just threw something else it's like did you have that that knowledge somewhere in you yeah totally um and again i think i saw little bits of that through the steeplechase that yeah in like a 3k on the track i wasn't anything special but um you know the 3k steeplechase all of a sudden i was all american Um, so yeah, just like the little bit of additional athleticism, I think made a big difference.

24:12Um, and yeah, I've always been more of like a power speed ish athlete. Like, um, you know, I'm not a sprinter, but you know, I think generally the 800 or the 1500 meter, um, like might be where I could show a little bit more of my strength rather than like a 10 K on the track. Again, kind of built myself into being a marathon or don't know if I was necessarily meant for it. I'll line up on any given marathon start line. And I'm generally like the tallest and the most muscular woman out there. So I always have kind of fell out of place in that realm that, you know, I don't look like the rest of the women in the field, which doesn't necessarily make me, you know, out of place, but it feels that way.

24:47Whereas lining on a high rocks, lining up on a high rock start line, I feel like I, I see so much more variety and like body types. And, um, it just feels like a much more like inclusive space where like I'm meant to be as an athlete. Were you staying in touch with your, uh, like, where does this, this, I mean, high rocks is an aerobic based sport. anybody can argue against, especially on the women's side. I feel like running leads the way without question. Um, yeah, we're seeing that more and more. So I mean, yeah, you can't, you can't look away at this point. Um, so the strength side of things though, we still need to be able to put power out.

25:23Were you staying in touch with the strength side of your fitness over these past, this past decade? Like, what did that look like? Like how, how did you set yourself up for the transition? Like, was it like you look back and say, I did it without knowing I was doing it or were you not in touch? Like, have you been a strength believer? I guess is what I'm asking. What were you doing for that? Yeah, it's definitely been something that's like popped up in the last decade every so often. It's not something I was consistent with. There would be, you know, there's a two year stretch where I coached boxing.

25:55There was a couple of years after college where I ran a lot less and I went to the Y every day and did like really basic. Like I would, I would like do like heavy back squats and then bench, but like, I, I didn't know what I was doing. There was no programming. There was no like, you know, method to the madness. Um, the last handful of years I would, I, you know, I coached high school girls and like, to me getting them comfortable in the weight room was a big deal. So we would do things in the weight room. Um, so yeah, nothing, nothing consistent, nothing, um, truly planned out, but yeah, I've always been like comfortable in that setting.

26:30So it's, it's not wildly new to me, but the stations were wildly new to me. And, you know, I've never pushed a sled, pulled a sled, rode, skied, burpee broad jump front. Like I had never done any of these things, but I think I'm also like a pretty trainable athlete. Um, not that I was great at the stations to begin with, but I think I was able to pick up on things and make changes, um, pretty quickly and pretty efficiently, um, with good coaching. So do you, do you innately, do you feel like you're like stronger by nature? Yeah, I think that's what my body's like, what it leans into naturally for sure.

27:07Yeah. I'm never going to be like a, like I'm never going to be your classic marathoner for sure. Body wise. Are you, are you classically strength training now consistently? No. Oh, yeah. I see doing a lot of work on high rock stations and sometimes incorporating weights are a bit heavier than competition weight, but not focusing a ton in this current, you know, cycle or build on like pure strength work. Right now we're actually diving a little bit back into we'd spent a lot of time this summer kind of focusing more on stations and getting stronger with those. But right now we're actually kind of in a spot where we're, you know, delving back a little bit more into like the mileage piece.

27:49So it feels good, especially when like the weather this time of year is like exactly when I want to be running outside. Yeah, it feels really good. Bracken, isn't that fascinating to you? Yeah. Like you're not like grabbing 40 pound dumbbells and doing walking lunges as working sets in the weight room. You're not back squatting. You're not rowing like bent over. You're not doing anything like in a traditional sense. It's always infused into some sort of like high rocks component. Correct. Wow. Yeah. And again, occasionally that will be like heavier weights, but yeah, for the most part, it's high rock specific.

28:24Yeah. So I saw a quote by you the other day and I, this isn't like a humble break or anything, but I said something similar in an interview a year ago, which is that anyone who claims they know the best route for high rocks is either delusional or lying because they know the best route for them right now in this snapshot. It's a fricking new sport. But every person we hear, everyone's background determines what they need right now. Listening to you right now, it'd be really easy to sell people on just going on functional, going on station work and crush your running. And then you listen to someone else and you'd be like, yeah, you have to lift heavy and often because you need that absolute power.

29:01And then you listen to the next person. So anyway, it's just every person you talk to, it doesn't highlight what you should be doing. I mean, it highlights that you have to know your athlete playbook currently on your athlete timeline. Yes, there's no one size fits all. Again, like whether if you come from, you know, a collegiate running background, there's different focuses that if you come from a CrossFit background, if you come from a soccer background, like there's just so many different answers. So currently working with my coach on building like a training app, because right now everything that's out there is so like it is one size fits all and there isn't like a lot of like variation um so yeah that's something that's like I think he's really passionate about as well that there isn't there isn't an answer yet our sport is so new compared to you know running there's been decades of science and like experiments and data and high rocks it there's not like we have like five years of data we have it's still again such a baby especially when it comes to like how long you know brands and companies have put like a lot of investment and priority into the sport um talking about like shoes um I could nerd out about shoes all day long um but you know there's you know these brands are coming out with their first iteration of a high rock shoe and of course they're not perfect because again like with running shoes we've had decades you know there's been so many different you know in college I would you know do all my workouts in like a racing flat You know, like the bare minimum of a shoe.

30:34And that is not the case anymore. So, yeah, just seeing like that change as well. Like, you know, no one's going to have the answer on their first iteration of a product, whether it's coaching, whether it's shoes. Still a baby sport. We're still growing. We're still learning. And I think that people that recognize that and acknowledge that are my kind of people. Well, what we don't know yet is the long term ramifications of the fitness we're building now. Yeah. Like we know what happens with aerobic development in 10 years. we don't know what happens with station work in 10 years we don't know what simming now means for do we have to sim to sharpen later we don't it's kind of like the high school kid who goes off to college does one sharpening workout he's like this is how i need to train i just got so fast like well no you can train like that for a little bit and then you gotta change and we're at that point with high rocks where we've seen how people have responded up until now but yeah No, my, so my coaches heard me do like a hundred podcasts at this point.

31:30And he's over in the corner. He's like, I've never wanted to be part of a podcast more than this one right now. Tell him to hop on. Get in here. There's just so many stages of development with this stuff that we don't yet understand what you're going to need next. Has this happened before? Has he wedged his way into any of your conversations, Alyssa? Literally, no. like this is i've done like i've done so many of these at this point and there's not been one where he's been like i need to talk to these people i think it's a good thing we'll find out you guys are asking some of the best questions uh that i've ever heard on a podcast for alissa oh start yeah easily um who are we talking to right now can we can you introduce yourself My name is Joe Cebulski.

32:19What have you done in life? Hey, Joe. What's your background? I went to college to play baseball and ended up discovering track my junior year. So I never did it in high school and ended up winning a national championship in the decathlon a couple years later and then qualified for the Olympic trials in 2008 and 2004. He's done some things. In the decathlon? In the decathlon, yep. Okay, mixed modalities background. Yeah, right. Which kind of led me when I moved back from California in 2008 into CrossFit, because that was kind of the closest cousin to decathlon training back then. Did that for 17 years, kind of opened up a gym, have had that run for 17 years.

33:01And then the High Rocks kind of moving into the space and seeing that coming. We opened up a High Rocks only space about a year, year and a half ago. And that's the perfect combination of track and field background combined with CrossFit. So it's been a really fun to feel like having 30 years of experience in all of those sports kind of coming together into a new sport called High Rocks that really has the financial and manpower backing to be a professional sport for someone has been such a joy to work with Alyssa. Yeah, he's super passionate about the whole like, again, And it's not one size fits all.

33:35People that claim to know the answer are full of shit. Like, it's a big thing here. Our take is that you can't be a systems coach. Like, you have a blank method or you have the blank approach. Like, you have to have pillars. Unbelievable. You're making him so happy right now. I'm literally looking around for where are your bugs that you've been listening to. I mean, you get to this place by failing, right? I came out of college running and I bought Jack Daniels book and I did that until it didn't fit the mold of what I was trying to train for. And then I did Salazar's approach and then I did Renato Canova's approach.

34:12And eventually you realize that like they did math method for two years. Like everyone has its limitations until you realize that it wasn't built for your archetype. Like you failed your way to a holistic approach. I think that's generally how it goes. So, yeah, I trained under Dan Path alongside Stuart McMillan. And I don't know if those names mean anything to you in track and field, but like they would never, Dan would never call it the Path method. He would say that he's standing on the shoulders of the coaches who came before him and developing new ideas and programs. I think the modern times of being a social media world that we live in, that coaches are now creating methods after their name.

34:49And I think that's a really unusual thing to do with a sport because there isn't like your named method of training. There is athletes who train under you who need specific modalities, training methods, specific instances of stimulation for, you know, training. And it depends on their background. And I don't think I've encountered a sport more unique than High Rocks where it absolutely depends on the athlete who comes to you and what they bring to the table with what you're. So when you're saying you're training 500 athletes, I have no idea how you're training 500 athletes. I can train five and that would be a full time job in High Rocks.

35:25So it's a really unique time and place for sport and the combination of social media and how that directs people. Well, and realistically, if you're a famous Hirox coach right now, you're either a famous Hirox athlete or you got the most famous Hirox athletes under your umbrella. And then they're already really good. Yeah. There's a difference between like, you know, being able to coach like an elite athlete who's really motivated and being able to coach someone who's brand new to the sport in general. So it's a totally different experience. And then there's this guy that coaches a world champion who's doing his first ever public podcast right now with you two guys.

36:03Oh, I want to hear about it. Well, we always say we're not a system coach, but we believe in a couple of pillars like maximize aerobic development, maximize anaerobic development. Make sure that all of your pieces are accessible under the demands of race day. Depending on what, you know, we don't care how we get there. You can be 30 miles a week. You'd be 300 miles a week. I don't care, but like, we're going to match it to whatever you need. I want to hear your, not methodology, but your pillars. Like what do you believe in as a coach? Before that, I'm going to throw you a real curve ball and give you this idea, which is right now, Alyssa has basically become one of the biggest red herrings in the sport, meaning that she has, she has misdirected an entire community of people towards marathoning and business running, because they think that that's what she brought to the table that has made her great, but she's not, she's a power athlete.

36:51And I've thought that for the last decade, I've thought she was a power athlete. When I first met her, I thought she was a heptathlete. And she has forced herself in an incredible disciplined and athletic way into becoming a marathoner. But that's not what her secret magic special abilities are. It's the ability to produce force over time and to eat lactate like it's just breakfast. And I think that what is the misdirection is that 10 years from now, people will recognize hyrox as an interval racing sport it is an interval race it is not a 10k the greatest athletes we will ever see in hyrox will be the best interval racers we've ever seen it will be really large 1500 meter to 5k runners who come in with speed reserve and nobody talks about speed reserve in hyrox yet and they're going to come in with speed reserve meaning they can jog a 310 and have it be way under theirs they can run you know 230s repeats and so they can jog a 310 and be fine there they may be not great at a 10k but they can run that 1k the only time you really race in high rocks is 2200 meters of running between the thousand 200 meter carry and the and the next thousand the rest are interval races when you run and sit on a rower and run you are not running a race.

38:13You're interval racing. So that's my big picture stance. And Alyssa is just simply busting into that. She's a great interval racer. Bracken, doesn't that resonate with you just with our background a little bit? It's just like in college, I was an All-American in the 1500, but I struggled to string together a stupid 8K, right? Yeah. But we could do 1 ,000-meter repeats, and I'd be right with the top guys. Give me a minute. Yes. And I am good, but make me do it for eight in a row without rest? Predictor workouts were broken with me because they didn't predict anything. So we have a group chat on the back end with a lot of this.

38:49And one of the common phrases that gets thrown out is the steeplechasers are coming. Because there's not... I shouldn't make a blanket statement, but I'm going to. There's not a better interval runner than a steeplechaser. There's two types of steeplechasers. There's the metronomes and those that switch strides throughout their race. And the ones that can like modulate which stride they choose based on what stage of fatigue they're in are going to be fantastic high rocks racers. Fantastic because you can give a muscle group a break while doing something else. And some people sit on the rower and they come off trashed for running.

39:23And some people sit on the rower and come off and their legs have not been used in a way that taxes them. And it's like that steeplechaser archetype is going to come over and we all know it's going to be above six foot for the men. And then it's going to be above five, nine for the women at something like there, the prototype will be built eventually. Yeah. We're just too young to have it right now. Yeah. We're still baby. Yeah. I think, I mean, I just ran with, um, Colleen Quigley in London when I was there at an Adidas event and she, I can't remember what her first race is going to be, I think it might be Denver, but she's hopping in soon.

39:56Um, so another chasers are coming. Yeah. High level chaser. That's, you know, making this, the dive into high rocks. Um, so super excited to see how that goes for her. talked about doing a little steeplechase women's doubles. Like that would be fun. I still, I still have yet to find like an American female partner that would be a good fit. So I'm crossing my fingers. It's Colleen. How long have you two been working together? So we've known each other for a while. We're both from Grand Rapids, Michigan. I've coached in the high school level. He has as well. He has had kids go through programs that I coach against.

40:30We've had like a lot of overlap. But yeah, I found Hyrax through another friend in November of 2025, right after I qualified for the trials. Two weeks later, I hopped in my first Hyrax. It was a mixed doubles and loved it. I thought that doubles was going to be my future. You did not. Yes, we've been working together about a year now. Okay. Yeah, I think, you know, I found, you know, I happened to find high rocks in Grand Rapids and Eighth Day Gym is the largest high rock space anywhere. Huge. Like, you know, 30, you're going to know numbers better than I do. 10 lanes of turf. Yeah, we've got 8 ,000 square foot facility dedicated to high rocks with 10 lanes of full length turf.

41:17And we got 36 skiers and 24 curve runners. So, yeah, we've kind of went all in. I tend to do that. I just go all in with things, especially if I see the future being bright for that space. And then obviously it was something that I had passion for. So I kind of just, in my own way, said, well, I like it. I'm doing it, which is a great way to have passion for a business, doing things that you like. But yeah, I mean, she did her first workout in November at the gym. And I think I told three people that week that she'd win the world championships. Why? Because I'd never seen anybody process lactate like she does.

41:52I mean, if everyone's out there looking for the next marathon or 10K runner, and I'm saying do 45 thrusters at 95 pounds and get on a bike and see how fast your heart rate comes down. That tells me if you're going to be a great hyroxer. Can you modulate heart rate? Can you clear lactate? And can you recover? It's an interval race. So she does that beautifully in a way that's almost alien. And then she produces force repetitively. Like she might not have. We've done a lot of testing in CrossFit over the years. We've had games athletes. I've had coached world champions in CrossFit. We've had top 10, top five CrossFit games teams, and we've done a lot of testing in that realm.

42:30So I've learned over time that, you know, athletes that maybe have the highest amount of power output get lost when they're asked, you know, if they, they back squat 350 pounds, 10 times quickly, but they get lost at 185 and the athlete who can't even back squat 315 smokes that guy at 185 for reps. So there's this nexus of power output that meets kind of with your ability to manage that energy and waste removal. And people don't pay attention to the waste removal side. And Alyssa has the ability to produce mid-range impressive forces and clear that waste very quickly and return to producing the energy for it.

43:08So when I saw that, I kind of just projected that she had the ability to win world championships. And then you took someone who had never pushed sleds or rode or skied or any of the stations. And then in six months, uh, turned me into a world champ. So pretty good coaching. It is. And you said she's, it's not the secret. You said she has a red herring and I, I agree with you. You're not, you shouldn't train for a marathon to get better at high rocks. No. Yeah. However, would her lactate clearance be anywhere near what it is without a decade of 100-mile weeks forcing a power-based athlete to become hyper-aerobically efficient with her pathways and all of the building blocks in that system?

43:51Could she be doing this without – I'm not saying it needed 100-mile weeks, but without 12 hours a week of high-end aerobic development? I think that's a fantastic – You're so annoying, Bracken. That was exactly what I was just going to ask as we were trying to talk at the same time. The exact same question. We had that connection. Freaking crap. You guys have done this before. We're annoyingly on the same page. Sorry. That's a fantastic theory. And it's one that we've kind of noodled here at the gym as well. And so the way you would put that opposing thought is, should you take a power athlete?

44:24Now, let's say that High Rocks, right now, today, we're going to go find the next great High Rocks athlete. and we have 10 years to make them. Are we going to make that athlete do the marathon for 10 years to become the best high rockster possible? That could be your coin system. That's how you could make your millions. Why don't we make that your system? The marathon method. The marathon method. The Joe Stavalski marathon method. Boy, does that sound fun. No, of course not. But could you give them 12 hours of low-end machine work a week? So yeah, my question to people in that realm is, would you choose marathon training to make the best next high rucks or would you choose interval training, machine work, things of that nature to create that aerobic base?

45:12And I don't think most people would answer, well, the best way to do it is to force someone into marathon. There's so much repetitive injury risk. There's so much difficulty with what it shapes the body into. Now, the fact that there is someone who survived that and who came out the other end of it 100 it's what has put us ahead of the game but it wouldn't be the way that i would continue to to train to break the world record i think that's a good way to see it like it helped me out a lot and it allowed me to be where i am but would it be like the plan yeah probably not probably not yeah would the plan though be years of our double digit hours per week of aerobic development in a different modality maybe yes but this is something we do would you just find the best possible runner with the frame and the skill set you're looking for and teach them how to put out power consistently in a one direction i think that the sport of high rocks is running in between doing other modalities and i think that you would it would be silly to train only one modality non-stop to get better at all of them.

46:21Correct. Yes, you would definitely have a form of trying to make sure that they had an aerobic base. But in my opinion, there's very few reasons going forward to run non-stop to get better at high rocks. You should be running and then interrupting it, then running, then interrupting it. So why does Alyssa still do a long run? He's been flexible. For her sanity. For her sanity. Because athletes have safety blankets and they have ways that they've been doing things and you don't come in and train them differently. You don't come in and impose your will on them as a coach. You also don't come in and abruptly, you know, decide that your way is the best way.

47:01You learn from that athlete, too. You give them the room and the space they need. Yeah. And I think for me, like I still feel so I'll do between 15 and 17 mile long runs every weekend still. um so I'm running for like an hour 40 um generally I like a spicy long run so like I'll you know do a warm-up and then um maybe just do like mile or like half mile intervals like my my long run on Sunday was six mile warm-up and then just alternating half miles on half miles off at like that threshold pace and yeah I you know to to be able to do that and I feel like I hope you agree with this like not just doing a long run just for time but also incorporating those intervals and like practicing, like storing power well.

47:45And, you know, having my body respond well to that fatigue, I think is still very valuable. And I think, I know you agree with that part. Yeah, running mechanics is the least, it's the most ignored thing in high recs right now. And I can tell you what an athlete's going to do during a high recs race based on their hip positions and their ground strike. And nobody's paying attention to that. So we pay a lot of attention to positions coming off of stations and how the body is running and storing energy off the ground. So yeah, I think being able to like work on that, you know, on mile 13 when, yeah, when things don't feel good and really focusing on like, you know, yeah, storing energy well and like producing that power in the same way I was doing at mile three.

48:21I think there's a lot of value there. And I think you agree with me. There's tissue durability. I mean, there's reasons to run nonstop for long times for tissue durability. And I think that the idea of creating mitochondria from long distance running is a bunch of hooey that doesn't happen, but definitely tissue durability occurs from long distance running and then mechanical durability, the ability to maintain mechanical positions over tissue fatigue is really important. You guys are getting a totally different podcast than you've gotten. No, this is great. This is how we make our living. We're both professional coaches.

48:48This is, we are so far in the weeds every day. You guys don't listen to our podcast, but if you listen, you'd be like, this is right in our wheelhouse. So now he's going to start. So I want to say a phrase to you guys, and I want you to react to the two letter, don't have a phrase, two letters. Just give me your knee jerk reaction. Is this a thing? Compromised running. Yeah, he loves you so much. Yeah, I think that's something that is like massive. And I think that's something that you think is massive. You don't know this, but Kirk invented the term. So I know what you invented like fatigued running and OCR broken running.

49:33Back in the day, we came out of college. you got into spartan racing 12 years ago and this is when this conversation started and a decade and a half later people are still debating whether compromise running is a thing and if it matters yeah kirk came up with the phrase so if you hate it or love it it's kirk's fault it's totally my fault or we say it all the time we do it all the time um yeah most not every single workout but so many workouts it's you know we're gonna push a slide two lengths and then go out the door and run you know 300 meters um floor is yours but but like is it is do you believe like the process of learning to run well compromised all right in essence is what we're looking at yeah but the okay so what is compromised running is the question not does meg jacoby would say it's not a thing james kelly would say it's not james kelly would say it's not a thing i have a definition that they don't believe in yeah so it's like any like any argument you have to define the word first so if you're going to define compromised running, most people right now are trying to aerobically train themselves through compromised running issues.

50:36And I don't believe that compromised running exists in that space. I think that we know this from the 200 meters, the 400 meters, that what really breaks down and what Stuart McMillan, Dan have explored is coordinative ground striking in the body. Like the ability for the body to coordinate itself in space and time gets broken down with fatigue. We're not really running out of energy. We're not actually being inhibited with waste products so much as in running, the mechanics are falling apart. And we can't coordinatively create as much force as we were previously in the race. What I see with people coming off the sled isn't that they are unable to clear the waste products or unable to produce energy.

51:16They are coordinatively falling apart. Soggy hips. Soggy hips. Structurally breaking down. they're structurally breaking down and the questions of why is that occurring is where the science needs to land and that's where i'm working with adidas to do 360 meter you know 360 degree camera studies on what the body is doing off of the lunges off of the burpees and off of the sled push what is happening with hydrogen ions with acidosis that hits you after the sled you know four minutes or eight minutes later in the burpees so compromise running to me has a lot more to do with being able to maintain.

51:50See, running is a story, an energy storage movement. You store energy efficiently in the fascial trains. And when you push a sled, your fascial trains fall apart. When you do burpees and lunges, your fascial trains get hammered. And when your fascial trains can't store energy, when your core gets blown up by the ski because you went too hard, running falls apart. So the future of... Can you explain fascial trains real quick before we lose some people? I think they're not, they're like, what does that mean? So you have bones in your body held together by ligaments and tendons, and the muscles are the rubber bands that make your body move.

52:23But the white tissues that run through your muscle fibers connect all your bones. They run from the back of your head down to your heels. They cross over. They also contain a lot of organelles, like benji corpuscles, organelles that we would almost consider to be like the GPS of your body. Like it tells your body where you are in space. It's proprioception, afferent, efferent communication. So telling your arm to move and your arm telling your body where it is in space is done by the fascial trains as a theory. So when those fascial trains store energy and stretch and hold it, they're also communicating where you are in space and what the next movement is going to be.

53:04When those fascial trains get overstretched or fatigued, then they don't do that. And coordination falls apart as well as energy storage. And if you go into the sled using five ATP per ground strike and you come out of it using 15 ATP per ground strike, then that's going to be a much harder high rocks race. So you're saying like the ability to store energy in fascial trains, that's what we're training. We're training compromised running. To me, compromised running has a lot more to do with the body's fascial structures, the mechanics of how you run, and then a sidecar of energy systems, but mostly hydrogen ions more so than even lactate because mostly elite athletes are processing lactate pretty well into pyruvate.

53:47So it's hydrogen ions and what happens with athidosis. What happens if you constrict your body too long on the sled push and the hydrogen ions don't get out of the muscle bodies? Things like that. The biology major is just like slowly seeping out of him. I don't think it's slowly seeping out. Streshing out. 20 ,000. Go ahead. How do you address? stress um because really the key is like if you're going to traditionally marathon run you want 90 of your body to be asleep and you want your two legs and some other things to be really dialed but still asleep honestly what a cool way to think about it wow and then you and then you go to a high rocks and you put somebody on the row or the skier or lunges or it doesn't matter you get the deal um and then you have demands on all different areas of your body.

54:38So like nothing can be asleep the whole time in a sense. Is there, is there any way to address the point, like the upper body pump? Like I know very real when we would train for OCR, like Spartan racing, like something as simple as like do 20 pushups and then run a 400 meters hard, even 20 pushups would compromise my ability for my legs to work well, because I don't know, you go blood shunting or whatever you want to call it. Is there a component, like any philosophy on, on that aspect, mixed modality use, how to stay asleep, uh, et cetera. That's a really cool, yeah, I gotta think about that.

55:11That's a really cool way to think about it. You know, what's awake, what's asleep. Um, yeah. What's relaxed, what's tensed. I like that. I feel like that's something you've talked about a lot to me though, is like, I mean, take the row, for example, like it should be as relaxed as possible. So even talking about like how we're gripping the handles like with the return of the row you know like there should be like as much relaxation there as possible same with how we're breathing when we push the sled talk a lot about how like you're gonna have tension but like you should still be able to breathe through it same with wall balls so yeah allowing for as much like relaxation recovery as possible in those stations is something that we do a lot of work with yeah but I really like that illustrative way to think about it about what's asleep and what's awake and when yeah it's really That path for us started in college running fours and eights.

55:59Can we be dead asleep down the backstretch at the same pace that we used to pump down the backstretch? Can my eyelids be half closed? Can my cheeks be bouncing? If you took a picture, would it look like I'm falling asleep? And if true, I'm probably going to PR. And if I'm starting to tense, we know what's happening. Yeah. We talk about track resonance, right? Like being able to feel the energy the track gives back to you because you're so relaxed that you're literally feeling that like what the mondo is giving back to you every foot strike. Yeah. We'd run an eight. We'd be like, can we go out in 52?

56:35Yes. Can we go out at 52 now without trying? Like how low can my arm swing at 52? How little can I try to bounce at 50? Like there are multiple ways to put out the same force. And one of them is by trying really hard. but I don't think you ever want to try hard. Yeah. And so the question is, what is the benefit that's given to your body when you can achieve that? Right. What is the actual physiological benefit of being able to run that way? Saving matches for later. Yeah. I mean, we, I look at it as energy seeping out everywhere in your system, constantly losing it out. Like this is a pipe and there are leaks in it.

57:14And every time you squeeze a hand or grid it, like it's when you're riding the line of a threshold like every little cent of energy matters and it might be your hands that push you over the line you know it we we don't always it's hard to quantify in the moment where the energy is leaking out but i think that you get that through training by turning one body part off at a time yeah and if you have tension at all then you're requiring more atp for ground strike and if you have tension at all, you're restricting the waste removal systems from doing their job. So restriction and tension is a bad thing in most power sports.

57:55Yeah. And like you said, you can see it on the backstretch when like, like your eyelids are like not this and your jaw isn't clenched. And I think that's a big deal to me is like those little, like those little physical cues, like it's all connected mentally and physically. Um, so like to me, like if I can just be like loose and taking in the crowd and like enjoying things. And, um, my brain knows that my body's going to know it. You can tell when I'm running well, like you can see it, you know, I think it was at the world champs, like after the row, um, there was a picture of him just kind of standing there like this, like he would be coaching me every lap until that lap.

58:28He was just like, like, I can see it in your form. I can see it in how you're moving. Like you're relaxed. Like this is, this is our day. Um, so yeah, it's pretty, pretty visual, pretty easy to pick up on. Is smiling your hack? because I've never seen somebody smile. Usually the leader, we've seen it a few times. Ronkavik was when he won a couple of years ago, he was smiley and having the best time out there. And then you reminded me of that. I don't know if you were paying attention back then. Linda did it too when she won. Yeah, Linda did it too. But like, not only were you winning, you were having the best time out of anybody there by far.

59:02Was that fake or was that real? Completely real. Yeah. I mean, I started it my first race. Like it was in Vegas in February and like just from the get go, like I love the atmosphere and like the crowds are so engaging. And I, yeah, to me, it's like impossible not to like have a good time and smile. But yeah, I mean, it also, I am under no illusion that it like it, it does good things for my brain, you know, like that, that feedback, that like loop of, you know, I'm smiling, they're smiling. I think it's like Kipchoge has talked about this a little bit too, that like, like the smile and like the, the attitude you're having when you're racing, even if it's not the best day has, you know, the ability to flip the script a little bit in your mind.

59:41So I am a big believer. Well, even like muscle tension wise, if you look to the bodybuilding world, the hardest thing in the bodybuilding world is not building muscle. It's posing because it's incredibly difficult for people to be at full, perfect contraction with a relaxed and smile on their face. Again, it's a drill we do with runners. It's a drill I did with high school kids. It was like, grit your teeth as hard as you can and now relax your hands. Now flex as hard as you can and try to like smile. Like it's your face generally controls muscle tension. And it's really hard for even world-class bodybuilders to pose while smiling and having an incredible amount of muscle tension.

1:00:23And so it doesn't matter why you smile. Like you're happy. Great. You're sad. It doesn't matter. The same response is going to happen in your body. And Hyrox is like, I've never seen worse breakdown in form than Hyrox runners. And then as soon as that phase changes and the pain train hits, now the form. And I love Hunter. He and I go way back. But you've never seen a pain phase like Hunter. This is about to get dramatic up in here. Alyssa probably has. What are Alyssa's flaws? Where is she breaking down? What's her working point? I mean, like a couple of years ago, I was outside the gym doing some work on something.

1:01:06And off in the distance, two people came running. They were running towards the gym. And I remember thinking, I just stood there. I was like. It was this summer. You're bad with time. Anyways, this summer. No, sorry. 2025. Summer 2025. Before High Rocks. Before High Rocks. No, it was before High Rocks. Yeah, a year ago. And I just thought that's some of the best mechanics I've ever seen in Grand Rapids, Michigan. from a distance and coach path always used to watch us pull vault and do things from a distance because he felt like he could see the whole picture and then they got closer i was like oh it's elissa like okay i mean and i you know i don't know i drive around with my kids in the car and people are running and i just have to look away and then my kids have gotten good at like oh my gosh their hips are gone oh gosh they're four foot straight you know like they talk mechanics now um so i mean elissa has an incredible natural ability and a natural gait um to run well um She stays very tall with her posture and keeps her hips underneath her naturally pretty well.

1:02:03We've worked on that some, keeping her hips from falling and pointing down towards the ground. Her arms need a little bit of work, but I mean, we're in the leaves of the tree. I mean, the base of the tree is solid. No, I have a lot of energy. She crosses midline. It's also the least important part of your stride. Yeah, it's true. Right? You're in the weeds. What else am I bad at? But when you're trying to save ATP, you want the arms to be to the side and towards the ground at ground contact because you're creating basically a plyometric response with every single stride. So when they cross over, then you have basically energy leaking laterally immediately, and we want to get rid of that.

1:02:44The running mechanics do have a torsion aspect, but you want to control that by playing catch with that energy up and down. So here's one for you. This is purely anecdotal, but I believe that a cyclical arm rate... Is more conducive to recovery after a station than a good plyometric loading arm rate. We're like, now we're balancing equations of what's going to give me better energy return versus what's going to help with, in theory, some clearance in my arms. Yeah, no, I hear that. That's, yeah, I like that idea for sure. That's it. There's no science behind it. It's just purely of years of us trying to figure out how to get off.

1:03:28The punishment in OCR was 30 burpees if you failed something. Or you might get off a 60-second hanging obstacle and your forearms are pumped. And there was something through a motion of a little sloppy arms where you had to go to your glutes for a little bit. I agree with that. I love that minutiae, right? Like what if, you know, the rock zone, you run a particular way with the arms. And then once you're on the straightaways. Now you're metronome. You get 30 seconds of clearance and now you got to get to work. That kind of minutial granular thinking is really cool. I like that. And it doesn't matter until it matters.

1:04:01Yeah, exactly. Yes, it doesn't matter until it's one or two wall balls that decides the winner. What else am I bad at? Let's not phrase it that way. Your bad at experience. What do I need to? I was just going to ask that exact question to both of you. Areas of improvement maybe is how we'd phrase it. Yeah, and I'm still like this is still my eighth month doing all these things. So I've come a long ways. um she's incredibly gifted at being coached which is a component of athletics right like everyone wants the athlete who's tall big strong powerful but being coachable is a big a much larger percentage of becoming great than people give credit to and she's incredibly good at taking coaching and we used to talk about like a normal human is a 10 to 1 they need 10 times being told something with any chance of changing that, that thing.

1:04:50A good athlete is a five to one. An Olympic athlete is a three to one. And the kind of the magic is when you occasionally get one to ones, like you tell someone to do something and they make the change. And she's had a bunch of times in our training and coaching where she's had one to ones with mechanics. And then at worst, three and five to ones. And so that progress comes pretty quick. A lot of times I just need to like see it. Um, like talking about like the ski, like, I think it was hard for me to like develop like the right rhythm with like hips coming forward and like not getting too low.

1:05:23And I think we realized like, I just needed to see him and like see him do the little things. And like, after I could like model it from him doing it right next to me, like, that's kind of where like the things started to click. Um, so yeah, we've just like learned, um, like what works for me in terms of like demonstration or like what there's. Yeah. I think six months ago that this, that question would have been really easy to answer, right? She's terrible at burpee broad jumps. She rose inefficiently. Wall balls were waiting. Let's talk wall balls. Yeah. We love them now. Yeah. But most people don't.

1:05:57And runners struggle. A, runners have terrible hips generally and are really bad at getting depth and somehow coming up with power. And they have terrible shoulder endurance. So like, what, what was it like for you? Yeah, I think turn that to a strength. Yeah. I think the, the shoulder piece was the most difficult for me. I just don't have a lot of musculature, like upper body wise being a distance runner for so many years. Um, I mean, to me, that's, that's what felt difficult, but I'm thinking about like the first time I did a simulation, like I think wall balls took me five, maybe six minutes, six minutes.

1:06:33There's like there's a video of it it was just like I was completely lost um my first high rocks I had a 640 wobble okay great I think I was I was similar to you there um yeah I think I was just like really like unbalanced on my feet um would rock a lot um anything else you saw yeah yeah they were they were yeah understandably rough I mean we we just consistently have done I mean we throw them into workouts all the time we've practiced doing big chunks here and there like we've done karen a couple times like 200 a few months ago did did 350 like a couple weeks ago is it more a mechanical efficiency piece do you think as much as just like abrasion resistance to the movement yeah i mean it's mechan it's positions and mechanical efficiency yeah like and the reason why we do unbroken sets and i know people have questioned that online and said that's that's a dumb training stimulus.

1:07:31But the reason why we do these things is because you need to learn how to relax, learn how to, I don't, I, part of me doesn't even want to reveal some, I I've always said, I'm not going online and talking our secrets because the dumbest thing, all these coaches are telling me exactly how they're training their athletes online. And I love it. And then I don't say a word. Um, so I mean, there, there's ways to throw a wall ball that take the shoulders out of the equation. And we've done that in CrossFit now for 20 years and trained all of our athletes that way. Um, and we have lots of my, myself, you know, I'm two 20, two 23 for unbroken wall balls.

1:08:03We've got lots of athletes over 200 by taking the shoulders out of the equation with the way you use your hands and place your hands on a wall ball. You have to arrive to wall balls with your legs intact. Yeah. I mean, and I, to me getting to three 50 unbroken, um, just gives me so much, um, like peace and like mental confidence for when I get to that a hundred at the end of a race, like 100 is nothing to me now. So I think that to me is, it wasn't the why we did it, but it's to me the biggest takeaway. If I knew nothing else about you other than that you were an Olympic trials marathoner qualifier and you got to 350 wobbles, that's all I'd need to know.

1:08:45Because you can't do 350 off any amount of strength reserve. You can't do it on any amount of power. It's so long that there's only thing that gets you there is efficiency of movement. That's it. There's nothing else. Thank you. Yes. And so if you have the running and you have the skill to learn that movement and then the actual musculature to pull it off, like I wouldn't need to know anything else about you. So the internet has decided and done science tests on it and all that and has decided it's her aerobic capacity that let her get to 350. And I instantly threw my hands up and said, no, it's her mechanical efficiency that allowed it to become aerobic.

1:09:19My guess is Elliot Kipchoge could not take two 20-ounce water bottles and do it 350 times because his shoulders would blow out. It's not aerobic capacity. Oh, my gosh. Thank you. Well, maybe it is. All right. Underlying. I shouldn't have brought him in here. But you can't access it. He's cannibalizing your podcast, Alyssa. Oh, which I love. I'm kidding. I've done a lot of interviews. And there's been a lot of interviews that I get off and I'm like, that was the exact same as the one I did last week. So this is refreshing. It's a chicken-egg thing. It comes back to aerobic capacity, but you couldn't access it without the movement pattern.

1:09:54100%. It can be both. It can be tied. So something that Alyssa, I asked about structured strength training. I don't know if you were listening during that part of the conversation, but I was surprised to hear that they're, I mean, would you agree that even on the pro scene? Like, okay, there's 15 elite, the elite 15 and 14 of them are doing structured strength training. I think there's one that isn't. Now that we've talked, I could be wrong. Dylan. Dylan. Okay. Well, on the women's side. Um, can you talk to me about like just the thought process behind that? Um, yeah, I'm gonna leave it that open-ended.

1:10:29There's definitely a situation where an athlete arrives with Alyssa's background and needs that. Right. So if you give me, you know, uh, trying to think of the girl's name, um, Maddie, Canada. Yeah. I don't know. I can't remember her last name. Ibergen. Madeline, who is a current track and field runner who is an athlete who needs structured strength training. And she would say that, and her coach would say that, and I would agree with it. I mean, Alyssa arrived on scene, like literally like walked over to a fully loaded sled, pushed it across the entire turf, and went, that's not bad. That athlete is not one that I need to waste time doing deadlifts and back squats with.

1:11:13We are playing a game for five years to get her to the fastest high rocks that she could ever possibly run. That's the goal, right? The goal at the end of your career is to at some point done the fastest, highest, longest thing you've ever done and to sit in a rocking chair when you're years old and talk about it. And so if our goal is to do that, we have been playing the game of spending our time in biomechanical analysis and improvement of all of her movements in high rocks. she's done zero years of crossfitting zero years of functional movement and we're building that functional movement engine that's what we've been our last entire block from last year doing we will add back in the running and finish this season as a complete athlete with functional movements biomechanics and running and then down the road there might come a time where we really explore building her absolute power but right now that's not necessary for her she has more absolute power than almost all the athletes that are on the course right now.

1:12:15So we don't need to invest a ton of time. We don't need to fill our buckets with that modality at this point. That's not like a, it's not like a no, it's just not right now. Not right now. Yeah. That's what Michael Phelps, Michael Phelps approach. I don't know if you remember back in the day, you remember this Bracken, like he was exclusively in the pool and they got all the juice out of that squeeze as possible developing him that way. And then once they needed to put put just a little bit extra icing on the cake after they felt like they were breaching upper limits of potential and not getting anywhere else.

1:12:47Then it was like, we're going to add in the stimulus of the structured strength work. He talked about that pretty openly and that was in the later stages of his career after he already had many world records and how many Olympic titles. It just reminds me of that potential. Like let's worry about what we, what we need to worry about now before we implement, like, like Bracken always says, like the more ingredients you add to the formula, the more ingredients you need to keep in the formula. and you can be drowning and I need to do all these things to be my best athlete. And really the simplest training methodology for as long as possible.

1:13:19And that's what I'm hearing. My 30-year-old self would have over-trained her already because you get excited about an athlete. You get excited about potential. You put them into a structured training program right away. I mean, we spent months just having her do classes here because you need to find your joy. You need to find your community. You need to find your kind of belief in yourself. I remember, I think at some point, like this past winter, just being like, I want to do harder stuff. Like, put me in the workouts that I'm not going to like. Everything's been fun. I think that was a huge focus that like up until Worlds, it was about like fun and enjoyment.

1:13:55And I mean, obviously working hard. But yeah, I don't think we've really like, we're just, I mean, just kind of starting to delve into that, like more of that pain cave type of workout that's not sexy and not enjoyable. Tomorrow's session. Yeah. I coached Division I track and field for seven years, and I was kind of wet behind the ears when I started programming for my athletes then. And when I look back on it, I talk about that I coached all the leaves of the tree. There are so many leaves in the tree that you can coach, and I was coaching all of them because that's what felt like doing the right thing is coach all the stuff.

1:14:25And then you meet someone like Dan Path, who's coaching trunk of the tree. He's coaching large, large branches. And occasionally he'll touch a leaf, but mostly he's coaching trunk of the tree and the base. with Alyssa, I think a 30 year old me or a younger coach or someone less experienced would be coaching her with so many leaves of the tree right now. She'd be overwhelmed, over-trained, possibly injured. Right now, we don't need the leaves of the tree that includes structured strength training. We don't need it. We have all of our time slots can be filled with biomechanical work, functional fitness training, combining running mechanics with, you know, compromised running, like all of that stuff is going to make us a lot better.

1:15:09And at the end of maybe career, you know, year one or two or three, maybe we start looking at maximal force production and things of that nature, but we're not there right now. Yeah. I think that's like, that's kind of what I talked about. I mean, a broader version of what I talked about earlier, like in this season, I'm not looking to, you know, win every major. That's not my goal. But similarly, like I'm not, this year is not the only year of my career. Like I want to be at my best in four years, five years. Like I hope to be in this sport for a while. So yeah, it's about long-term goals, long-term picture.

1:15:39I think that's hard for me. And that's why coaching is important. Like if it were up to me, I would have probably dug myself into a hole already. You can't race to win every major and train to win world championships. You can't do it. You can't do it in basketball. You can't do it in track and field. And if you train to get as good as you possibly can every year, you'll only get as good as you could have gotten that year. You You have to train to get as good as you can four years from now, five years from now. And that's a very different training plan than training it as good as you can every year.

1:16:09I agree with that. Some of the best season world championship performances have come off someone getting unlucky early in the year with an injury or something and long-term realizing like, oh, I'm not cooked now for the year. I'm good. So there's this little exercise Kirk and I have done throughout the years a few times of being like you're trapped in a room for a whole year. you can only have one two or three things in that room with you so for you training a high rocks athlete let's say you're you're you're in solitary confinement for a whole year just you two and what three pieces are you bringing in there with you to train three pieces you can have three pieces very generous is the room big enough to run in bracken like can can we get a good run work in there no nope so if you're choosing a treadmill you have to choose what type of treadmill i need a motorized treadmill.

1:16:58Motorized? He's not into that. This gym has how many? Well, you have three pieces. You could have one of each. No. That's what I have in my basement. How many self-powered treadmills does the gym have? 24. 24 curved self-powered treadmills here. I just worked with... Of which she'll use zero. You're an elite runner. Yeah, working with Center. they just sent me one of their motorized treadmills and it was like he's not well about it. I wonder who's going to put it together. Okay, are we getting three pieces or are there three movements in this room? Three pieces. You can do whatever movements you want with those things.

1:17:41Oh, any movements you want. Okay, motorized treadmill. You need to run. You have to have some way to do it. Does the sled come with plates? Very precise with these kinds of questions. The sled is preloaded but it's welded on. And it doesn't come with like ropes. Yeah, it comes with ropes. You can choose a sled with a rope attached to it. I think I'm doing sled. Sled with rope and plate. Yep, that's one. And then my third would be... Oh, that's a really tough one. You kind of need just like a set of dumbbells to sim other things. Or, yeah, to do like the wall ball thing. Oh, we got a thumb down.

1:18:18Some of you disagree. Okay, what are your three? Yeah, we're training high rocks. we're in a room by ourselves we get three pieces of equipment and we can do any movement that we want treadmill the sled now the trick is yeah you do need because it'd be easy to say like if i'm on a deserted island and i just want to be fit i'm doing burpees and rowing you know what i mean like but but the rower maybe isn't as important enough and high rocks i want to see two bike um because that's the great way to deal with running without running. You have to get volume somewhere. You're not allowed to run 100 miles a week anymore.

1:18:58She can incline hike if it has grade on the treadmill. Yeah. It's a motorized treadmill. You can do incline. Yeah, the dumbbells are smart because you can do tons of stuff with the dumbbells. The dumbbells are smart. Yeah, you can lunge. You can thrust. What weight of dumbbells? If you have to pick, you get a set. What weight are we picking? 35 pounds. 35 pound okay now same thing but you only get three movements just three movements i get running is one i'm assuming no with the dumbbells three movements oh three movements with the dumbbells uh i mean again we're in high rocks not just general fitness right and we're we're going to lunge with them um we're going to do thrusters with them um and honestly probably i'm just this is just quick thinking just dumbbell snatches because we can we can control maintain power and explosivity with the dumbbell snit.

1:19:44That's a good one. How about you guys? I want to hear your answers. Well, mine got complicated because I bought a manual treadmill last year. And now I'd be tempted to have... I love incline treadmills. So Kirk and I both have one that goes to 40%. And we look back because of our mountain running and OCR days, but I'd be tempted to have two treadmills. Really? You doubled down on the treadmills? For happiness. But if it was only for training, only for training i would actually take the motorized and so that i could do unlimited volume uphill that'd be my safety net yeah um it's tough the ergs i can't i want to take a rower okay but uh i mean he took a he took a c2 bike like just he had a not like volume without the he didn't he took sled and dumbbell he wanted a c2 bike but yeah you don't have room for it yeah So you're going to have two treadmills and a rower in this room?

1:20:44You're going to be doing thrusters with a rower. Two treadmills and... No, I mean, I wouldn't. I would take one treadmill. But two treadmills and a loadable dumbbell. Okay. Okay. That was nice with the adjustable dumbbell. Yeah, fancy. I don't think you could be a world champion in this sport or hit your ultimate, like try to PR. Let's just say PR for the regular person. I don't think you could PR without touching a sled. I do think you could PR without touching any other of these specific things. Like without a wall ball, you could PR. Thrusters would probably cover 90 % of that. I think without the rower, you could PR if you were so good at the sleds and burpees and lunges and wall balls.

1:21:29I wouldn't want to do it without rowing, but I didn't. Yeah. You can't replicate the sled with anything else. I don't think, unless you had, no, not the pole, the push maybe, not the pole. That's unique. Yeah. And it's the sleds that are destroying everyone's burpees and nobody realizes that. And now the sleds are coming back heavy again, it seems, with this carpet. Anyway, yeah, I think you have to take sled. I hate to say the exact same thing, but I have to take sled. No, I mean, there's a reason. Okay, Kirk, are you different? No, no, I'm, I mean, I'm not having two treadmills. Three treadmills.

1:22:00Yeah, three treadmills. Yeah. No, I'm square in the treadmill. You have two treadmills now too. I do have two treadmills, yeah. And I think incline work is a hack, not only for power production, but for recovery. If you need to use it as a tool, for sure. But I mean, I want to find a way to put an assault bike in the room, honestly, because I feel like that one is a catch-all, but there's no room for it. If it was general global fitness. Different. It'd be treadmill, assault bike, and I'd still take dumbbells. Yeah. Like if I knew nothing about the person I was training for and they needed to take Echo Bike.

1:22:36I don't think I'd take Echo Bike. I was going to say Echo. Yeah. It's going to fall apart. Air Bike. I'm not putting an Echo Bike anywhere near my room. She hates them. They're terrible, but they're going to last that whole year. Yep, for sure. Okay. So we don't want to take up too much of your time. We've been chatting for a while here. That's good. I figure maybe get to an hour and a half or so. But I just want to know what's the – moving to like today's timeframe. frame what's uh what's the plan for the rest of the year i guess we kind of know but let people know what's no where are you racing uh gonna go to hamburg in a couple weeks race there um a month later is london the next major um i'm gonna bow out guys okay that sounds good great bombing in yeah he's never wanted to do this before thanks for joining us good to be chatting you guys did something right um yeah i'll head to london for a major there and then the rest of the year is um um bangkok vegas leon france and hong kong for a lot of travel i know it's a lot of travel so i think kind of aware that there might be one of those races in there that gets like the gets the x not sure what one it will be i think the easiest answer would be bangkok just because it's so far away is that adidas or or sorry adidas yeah oh i feel i don't know what to say anymore because in the u.s you say adidas and people are like you're like you're trying to be too fancy but in michigan And everyone says Adidas.

1:23:59And then you get to Germany and you say Adidas and they're like, Vat. So it's a hard balance. It's like Bangkok would be the obvious like, oh, it's far away. It would be an easy one to kind of like X out. But hopefully it's such good travel practice. It's a full day. I've done it. It's a 24 to 30 hours of travel. World championships is going to be rough too. So that's my thought. Yeah, Bangkok allows me to experiment to see how that will go. You know, is a week, you know, a week being there pre-travel or pre-competition, is that enough? Do I need more time? You know, I think it's a good trial run.

1:24:41I'm also ideally planning on trying for a mixed doubles world record there after my solo competition. So that's going to be part of Bangkok ideally. So, yeah, I don't know what race is going to get the cut. Maybe it's France. We'll find out. But yeah, I think just trying to, you know, keep up with that travel and compete at the majors, but then really focus on like the recovery piece when I'm coming home, the sleep piece. Yeah, if I can if I can do those things well, I think the travel schedule will be fine for my body. We've said this a lot on here. My take is that if you couldn't make it as a pro while working in another gym, another job, your odds aren't that much better while not having a job because there's the discipline piece.

1:25:22You're going to disagree with yourself here, aren't you? But I did the run for a living thing for a bit. And the two things that changes more than anything are recovery and travel. Traveling for a race, being able to say, I'll go over two weeks if I want. You know, that right there, as much as anything, is such an advantage heading into a championship race. Huge. And I mean, I even found that, you know, I traveled to Beijing to race like a month ago. and being able to fly a business class and not be in a seat like this the whole time. I got off that plane and my body felt relatively unaffected.

1:26:00And that's never been the case for me before. So just having the support of a brand to be able to do that. Well, I didn't get that. So good for you. Thanks, Audita. It's been helpful for sure. So yeah, I think there are, like you said, I agree with you on the discipline piece. If you can't cut it at that level with a full-time job, then it's going to be an uphill battle for you to cut it. um as a full-time athlete but yeah i think i think there are pieces like the fact that i don't need to be up um and at work at any certain time you know that's helpful i can sleep in i can you know i have more resources in terms of body work in terms of still trying to get better at that but yeah there's there's a discipline place and then there's the like it does afford you some pretty great perks yeah all right last question i have before we head out then uh you talked a couple times about pulling emphasis away from running.

1:26:48And so you were at 100 to 110, it sounds like, for a long time. And then you'd entered the high rock space. What did you drop down to as like your baseline volume? Yeah. Trying to maintain, again, leading up to competition is different. And I'm not, I'm still unsure what that's going to look like when I have, you know, a month in between Hamburg and then London, like, you know, how far back up can you build? How do you drop? How do you not, um, trying to maintain around 60 miles a week. Um, and that might be down to 55. I mean, I ideally, I think after London, there's like kind of a two month competition break would love to see myself more around that, like 65 miles per week.

1:27:26I think that's still pretty high for most any high rocks athlete. Um, but yeah, I still, I get so much joy out of running and I get so much self-confidence out of running that that's, um, I think that's where I'd like to live. Okay. How much time on top of that is spent on the ergs would you say? Yeah. You beat me this time. We're so annoying. Your brains are just like this. We've been doing this a while. Yeah, I can tell for sure. Yeah, I think. Yeah, there are a couple I run seven days a week and there is probably a day a week spent on just easy erging, maybe like an hour and a half. But then, yeah, the other days there, I mean, we throw ergs into high rocks workouts, you know, pretty much every single workout.

1:28:09um like yesterday was a mix of like ski carry and run um so yeah there's there's a ton of it probably nine hours of high rocks work a week on top of that probably not yeah probably 18 hours a week of total training so at that point yeah job's not super feasible not to do it well i've always thought that with running um i've always talked about that how like you know obviously pros are pros for a reason. They've, you know, put in the hard work. They're really gifted all the above. But so many, you know, those semi-pro level runners are never going to see the full benefits of like, you know, what they could be under that pro contract.

1:28:48And that's frustrating. So to be able to live that life now and be able to have no excuses and put all my eggs in is a real gift. There is a difference between finishing up a big workout and going to work versus laying down. Yeah. Going to sit in recovery boots and then red light bed. And yeah, it's, it's, it makes a huge difference for sure. How has your life changed? Hasn't it, uh, recently? What a dream, huh? Do you feel like that's, it's a little bit of a pinch yourself where you're at today? Oh yeah. I mean, I just never, as a runner, I I've always known that, you know, I'm, I'm talented and I can run really well and I'm a hard worker, but I've known that there's a ceiling, you know, I'm not delusional.

1:29:25I'll have people like, I'll tell people, yeah, I qualified for trials, but like at trials, like I'm there to run and like run as best I can, I'm not trying to make a team and there'll be people that don't understand the sport. They'll be like, no, you can do it. Right. Just believe it's like, no, no, there's, I can believe in myself all I want, but I'm not delusional. I'm not, I'm not making an Olympic team for running ever Olympic team for high rocks. You know, that might be in the pipeline. We'll see. It's a, it's a ways away. We'll see. I might be, I might be pretty old by then. But yeah, I truly never saw that as something that would be possible for my life to get to work with brands like Adidas and Koros to like actually have like a hand in like developing product, like to have like a, you know, a firsthand like say in, you know, changes that are made to their high rock shoe and changes that are made to like, I mean, Koros has like a hybrid fitness mode to get to like actually, you know, talk to product and like have feedback and have it actually change what's going on in the space is incredible.

1:30:23Because again, it is a new sport and we are making so many changes. the, yeah, in the running world, that's just not quite as possible. So yeah, hyrax is a fun sport to be in, in that way for sure. How have your running friends accepted your lifestyle choices? I get so much shit for it. After, after qualifying, it was like, what is this side quest? Like, what is this hyrax thing? But I will be honest that there are like a handful of Grand Rapids runners that are now signed up for hyrax races. So I think I, at least I've hoped people be a little hyrax curious. A good contract will do that. yeah truly do you have any last question then we'll cut this thing but do you have any um women in your circle uh that may be uh like you know personally that you've inspired that might be dangerous or no i have i mean i think colin quigley could be a great runner or a great hyrax runner athlete um there are a couple other names of a couple other pros that have reached out to me that have not made their hyrax interest public yet so i can't i can't name drop them i'm to let them break that through.

1:31:26Are you sure? We could just like whisper about it. But yeah, I will definitely say that there are other very high level runners, not necessarily marathoners that have seen the investment that brands are making into the sport and that there's a potential to earn more than they ever earned as a pro runner, which is just wild. And yeah, I think that there'll be a handful that are going to give it a whirl in the next year. you can out earn your running career yeah truly um it's a difficult like the qualification process is I think something that not everyone is like ready for prepared for that it is a lot of travel a lot of upfront cost you have to run you know five races at the right times and um getting into elite 15 is a little more difficult now than it was you know a year ago when I was entering the sport so yeah it's a process and it requires some patience but yeah I think we'll see a lot of changes in terms of the level of competition coming into the sport in the next year or two.

1:32:24This could start a whole episode and I don't want to, but I just think we should have a golden ticket, a wildcard entry for people with established credentials in another sport. It'll get eyes on the sport. It'll mean that people don't have to change their life. They can just come over, give it a shot. And if you're going to be a force you're in, just save one spot per major for a wildcard. I would be a fan of that. They did that with CrossFit Games. Yeah. It was fun to watch. If they use that, you said eyes on the sport. And if they use that golden ticket and they don't belong in that field, then they're out.

1:32:56That's how Hunter McIntyre got into the CrossFit Games, wasn't it? Yeah. There we go. He's one of the golden tickets, yeah. I love that idea. Yeah. Get a triathlete in and have their whole audience all of a sudden learn about High Rocks and become curious for the sport. I think that'd be great for all involved. And then wait 20 minutes for them to cross the finish line after everybody else. Yeah, it might be the case sometimes, but then they're out, you know, like one try. Or at least in the contender series race. Yeah. Yep. Put somebody in the challengers. Yep. For sure. Remember when they put a Harlem Globetrotter and TMX?

1:33:30Do you remember those days, Bracken? This would be less ridiculous than that. All right. So people want to follow along. I know your presence online. You also post normal daily stuff. You're not just like always flexing in your sports bra, which is refreshing. You post pretty normal stuff. but where can people follow along and all that? Yeah, I'm just on Instagram. I'm at Alyssa McElhoney. And yeah, I mean, if you're looking for like a travel, food and fitness content follow, please come my way. You want to find the sweet coffee and donuts and shops? Yeah, I'm your girl for sure. I'll lead you in the right direction.

1:34:03Well, thank you, Alyssa. Yeah, thanks for your time. It's been great, guys.

1:34:19Thank you.