Episode 650: Q&A

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

0:30When you're ready to take your training or racing to the next level, go to therunningpublic.com. We have both monthly subscription training plans,$19.99 a month. And Bracken and I both offer one-on-one customized coaching. Again, go to therunningpublic.com and check out our offerings. Your lighting's different. Yeah, it's a little dark today, so I turned on one of my lamps. Yeah, the left side of your face is illuminated a little bit more. Ooh, some contrast. Yeah, it's really nice. So people ask from time to time how I choose the shoes that are on the wall for each thing. I just asked last episode.

1:10Yeah. Well, do you know what today's is? Well, you definitely have trail shoes from what I'm gathering. Just make Kirk jealous. Just a bunch of Tecton Xs. Yeah. You do have one, two, three, four Tecton Xs up there, don't you? And then you have what looks to be a Brooks. One Brooks. This is the Glycerin Max. Oh, this is the Glycerin Max. Yeah. And then my newest addition. The Metafuji Trail. What is it? Megablast. Oh, you're trying with the Megablast, huh? Maybe the best first impression of any non-super shoe I've ever had in my life. Is that a super trainer or more like a recovery everyday? A super trainer.

1:51But this is like, this is the future, Kirk. Why? It's full-on super foam, an upper that would have come off a super shoe, but with a little bit more to it so that it can just be a little more stable and no plate. But they've tuned the foam in a way that it's stiff enough that it's a stable shoe with super foam. So I can just run in it easy. I can run long. And if I wanted to tempo in the shoe, I could. If I wanted to run a 10K in the shoe, it wouldn't be my first choice. But if I looked in my bag and this was it, I'd think like, okay, I'm not going to get out hard, but I'll be fine. What's the price point of that shoe?

2:36It's the downside, right? $225. Yeah, so they know what they've got is what you're telling me. You're paying for the tech that went into the shoe. Like when people say you're not paying me for the time it takes to fix the task or the problem. You're paying me for all the work that went into me being able to fix this in just five minutes. that's what this shoe is you're not paying for a plate you're not paying for the upper you're paying for all their r &d that went into the point where now they can slap this on a regular shoe could you make that a daily trainer because i'm 100 especially if you wanted to daily train at a slightly faster stride some days yeah you always want that like i'd rather plod in the glycerin max i can plot in this one but just regular running goes better in that one it's so light this is an eight ounce shoe for my 10 and a half uh super blast super blast no no you're probably gonna mega blast mega but they have a super blast as well they have a super blast three they're on which is more shoe yeah i mean this is still a high stack shoe all right i might look at the super i'm on a little more shoe for some of these recovery days maybe i mean this one I'll look it up quick.

3:49I think it's around a 40. Pretty high. A 45 heel, 37 forefoot. So it's still a lot of shoe. It's just a lighter, little bouncier version where the Super Blast would be your recovery long run shoe. You can still do easy runs in it just fine. All right. This one's just a little peppier. I'm going to be experimenting with the dull side of the stick with the recovery end shoe. I think I got my quality stuff all figured out. When I want to punch, I can punch. But it's been more tricky to figure out the right, like, everyday shoe for me. I have not yet found a better recovery shoe than the Glycerin Max for my strap.

4:25Yeah. But this Mega Blast, if I, this is, this is the first shoe I've had for the road where I'd say like, this is the unicorn one shoe quiver. That's not a thing. You're going to give up one end or the other. Like it's either the Alpha Fly one or this like Alpha Fly one, you give up just normal feeling ever. and this you give up race feeling. But this would be the one shoe to complement a carbon shoe. This one could do it. All right. That's good. I'm going to be spending some cash on some experimenting coming up, which isn't as exciting to be experimenting with recovery running shoes. It's like for some reason it doesn't move my needle at all, but it's very important.

5:08But there's not a better feeling to me on a recovery day than being like, okay, this will work. I put these on after my, they came at the day after my quality session. So my first run in them was a recovery run and I wasn't going to run that day. And I put them on to run and ended up going like 45 minutes, just feeling a lot better than I should. All right. Too bad they're not like 185. Seriously. I just read a review today. It was like 190 and they're like, it's refreshing to see a shoe neck over$200. I remember buying the Asics Gel Kayanos in high school, thinking that's what I needed. I was dealing with stress fractures.

5:49It's not what I needed, by the way. But I thought the most expensive shoe, and that was the most expensive shoe on the market that you could find at the time. This is, let's go 2000. You remember what that shoe cost? And it was insane what it cost. It was like$130 or$100. It might even been$125 or$135. And it was like, you couldn't fathom spending that on your shoes. And regular trainers, 79 bucks. And like for a good shoe, like a gel Nimbus or a Cumulus, which I used to run in or any of those shoes, even some of like most of the Nike models, 70 to 90 bucks. Yeah. You can't get lunch for 70 to 90 bucks.

6:29That's ridiculous. I'm turning into a boomer. I am so boomed out. It's about as political as I'm ever going to get. Ooh. The minimum wage has not increased with the price of running shoes. Tell you that much. I didn't know where you were going to go with it. And I agree. And I like it. I can stand on that no matter blue, red, or anything. Green. Green. All right. I'm going to update the folks on my wife because I got a lot of messages. It's funny. Even I had talked about how I didn't care about running or whatever, and I didn't care about people's running. which in hindsight, I'm such an idiot.

7:10But it's funny, just like things have gotten better, obviously. You can probably hear my voice, but even my quality session, like once everything, like the nervous system settled and we weren't in like panic mode anymore. First one back, I chose a nice cookie cutter 10 by 3 minutes. I said, you know what? Like that is an approachable session. It's time-based. It's very structured. the intent was threshold type effort, which I actually didn't breach lactate threshold once almost. Um, you almost didn't preach it or you didn't preach it, but almost did. Yes. That one. Okay. I believe. Yeah. And pacing came.

7:50I mean, I was running faster than I thought I should. It was feeling effortless. It's just funny how like even in a week's time period, it's like whatever you're in isn't permanent. Nothing is. And so all that to say, like it was We went back to the ER one time after we recorded that podcast to get some labs drawn, only because we needed to know right away how her hemoglobin was. Anyways, everything's turning in the right direction. She's lost most of all that water weight. She went back to work this week, half days, partial week. But yeah, we're doing well. And I see a lot of books have been bought.

8:24So thank you to those who bought. But yes, we're not out of the woods completely yet, but we are like 95 % of the way there. So, and which was, which is a record. And then I'll stop talking about myself. I don't know why talking about this stuff makes me feel a little goofy, but, um, this is like a record number. They ended up pulling and fertilizing 25 eggs, healthy, went through it all. And of those 25, 15 are like grade a highest quality, best promise for, you know, implantation or, or transfer to go well, which is like a record. We could make a village of DeWintz after all of this. I'm not joking.

9:04Some high school is going to be really lucky. Well, for example, I had two clients and athletes of mine go through IVF, both successfully, and one got four eggs and one got one egg. We got 59 to start and whittled down to 25 and then 15 varsity athlete little fertilized eggs. So all of it was not for naught. And so now the process is she's got to recover for like two months for her body to regain blood volume, to feel good, to get rid of all of the crap she went through. And then we can finally do like the whole final stage of putting the baby in, which is much less invasive. So the hard part's over.

9:44So we're doing much better for all those who ask. So thank you for the messages. That's my update there. And running's fine again. So we're good. Yeah. How about you? What's your running update? that we had very different updates. That was the most polarized we've been in positioning of where we were at for an episode, I think, last week. I think we're typically polarized, but in the other way. We're correct, correct. So, no, I'm injured again, unfortunately. Are you serious? No, I'm not. Running's great, Kirk. He just made a face. You guys can't see this. He just made a real, like, legit, like, sad face that you sold me.

10:23You sold me on it. Yeah. I'm a great actor. I think that's going to be the next stage of my career. You really only have eyebrows to work with. So you really use them. The eyes are at all. Continue. It's good. It's funny what one extra piece of stimulus can do, especially when you're old with creaky knees. Or not old. I'm not old. I'm aging with less cushion than I should have in my knees. I played a third day of basketball last week. I went out to a different gym with a group of guys and played on Saturday morning for two hours. Usually we only play like 75 to 90 minutes, but this was after Friday, Wednesday and Friday basketball.

11:04So I played back to back for the first time in a third day in a longer than usual. And that was the stimulus that tipped me over. I was so beat up the rest of the weekend, Kirk. It's unreal. But I recovered. I still worked out and then got a quality session in on Monday. And now I have my next quality today. So it's still clicking, still working. And the beauty of my really, really safe goal, which is just to be anywhere in about that zone above aerobic threshold, really came in on Monday because I could just roll into the first rep. and then find my footing. I don't think I realized, nor maybe the listeners realize, how much basketball you play.

11:51I didn't realize you were playing twice a week, let alone on occasion a third time. And so I have a question around that because I used to train not as much mileage or I wasn't quite as fast metrics-wise, but I used to play soccer, pretty high-level, post-collegiate-level soccer. And it was intense and I worked very hard. And I actually felt like it brought a little something like rounded out my fitness a little bit, especially like indoors, outdoors. It didn't matter. Yeah. It also took away for a couple of days. Like I could see like I needed to figure out the logistics of my quality days in relation to that.

12:27Sometimes I'd have like a race on a Saturday or a big long run, but then a soccer game on a Sunday. And I could tell I was a little compromised, whatever. Yeah. So my question for you is, do you feel like it makes a difference having some lateral sport to your fitness? So it's very beneficial for me, but it also kind of rocks me. I think that in theory, it's really good for me, but in practicality, it hurts more than it helps. At this stage of my life, that didn't used to be the case. I used to be able to play. Even out in Colorado, Macaulay and I would play a time or two per week. We'd go to the Air Force base once a week and play there.

13:06No, it wouldn't have been Air Force. We'd go to the army base there and play once a week. And then we played with a different group of guys every other weekend. I'd cut it out two weeks prior to a race. But even throughout my highest training volume, I was playing basketball at least once a week. But post-surgery, it's been hard on my knees. But my dad is 70 now, and he still plays with this group of guys. And I've just decided that I'm going to do it until he's done doing it. It's our, like, how many years do I have left of playing basketball with my dad? Most people, that stops around 40. We've got an extra 30 years out of it out of him, and he's still really impressive physically.

13:49But you know it's a matter of time. So I've just decided that whether it makes my body feel good or not, I'm going to do that until he's done. And kind of pay the price if need be. I try to dog it a lot. I try to not be going 100 miles per hour most of the time, but it's just kind of going to be what it is. Is this senior citizen basketball with plus Bracken, or is this a mix of ages? It's a mix of ages. He's got 20 years on the next guy, minimum. Okay, gotcha. We should have Pete on the podcast. Would he ever be open to that? He'd be resistant to it, but he would do it. Maybe. My dad I would love to have on the podcast talking.

14:31He was a state champ back in high school, running in literally sorrel boots in the winter. That's not an exaggeration. But I don't think he knows what a podcast is. And he certainly, there'd be a lot of coaching to get it all set up. So that'd be fun. We have a better, my mom wouldn't ever do it. But she listens to every episode. My mom would do it in a heartbeat. My mom would gabber your ear off. My mom would know how to do it, but she would never say yes. My father is 72 Yours is 70 so they're right about Same at wheelhouse But recently the basketball is getting closer To in season And West South Central where we play Has a really good team these days They've built up a program there And their boys have been coming in And playing with us and that has Dramatically changed the style And pace of basketball And as a result I've been playing too hard and I come home pretty beat up each day.

15:29Well, if you're healthy. I'm healthy. Just don't play with fire too much, Bracken, all right? I know. Rich Ryan, like five years ago, when I considered like, do I go after this one more time hard? And I did a consult with him and we talked about working together. He asked me on the call, he said, are you willing, is this important enough to you that you'd give up playing basketball to do this? I was like, yeah, I think so. And then now the answer is no. But he knew right from the start, This is not a net benefit to you. But it takes care of all the plyo I could ever need. That I would agree with.

16:04All right. So we're going to do some questions today. Don't send me any more questions. I got 30 screenshots. Again, the number of these are two-parters. We're going to have to start doing a few quick live sessions like all the real people do. Yeah, and I'm being tongue-in-cheek when I say don't send me questions. It's just we're getting a little delayed here. And we also could do more lengthy episodes, which would help us. And we're also long-winded as heck. I'll say we. So we need to work on it. But nonetheless. You're going to put it on me. I was. And I don't think anybody would have bat an eyelash.

16:47I'm offended. You look offended. You look offensive. All right, are you ready? Born ready, Kirk. You're just catching strays right now from me. All right, Seth. Seth says, you guys really talk about running form, but I just had a recent possible revelation about my own running. You say really or rarely? Rarely. Okay. Did I say really? I don't know. I couldn't tell which one, but it does change the question. Yeah. Okay, yeah, you guys rarely talk about running form, but I just had a recent possible revelation about my own running, and I would humbly suggest requests that you might talk about being a quad dominant versus a glute dominant runner?

17:22This seems like it could easily fill an entire episode. Below is a rough outline of what I've been thinking about. Hopefully this sounds like a good topic because I'm interested in the deep dive nitty gritty details from your perspectives and maybe some expert interviewee that you think is good fit. And then they say, my personal experience is that I believe I'm a quad dominant. Never sore in the glutes after any running. Quads are sore after 16 by 200 meters, for example. Relatively weak hamstrings and glute max. My PT, AT loves telling me this, but the diagnostics tests I'm aware of don't flag any mechanical reasons.

17:52So I'm led to believe this is a really just an activation issue. I've been running for many years, followed the TRP training plan for a long time, changed strategies and put in months of consistent work, aerobic base and uphill work. Think math method and uphill athlete Scott Johnston, doubling my volume, haven't seen any significant progress besides durability. And I feel I'm still on the sticky plateau of inefficiency that I'm desperate to escape and break above. The door is open. Walk through it, Brackett. I don't want to. I want to shut it because I just don't like this topic. It's not my, it's not the place I'm comfortable spending time in.

18:30I'm not an expert in this area. Not that it stops me from talking about other areas I'm not an expert in, but I don't even like most of the words associated with this topic. I don't like talking about activation because I think it's a huge buzzword that's misused most of the time. I don't like talking about quad dominant versus glute dominant front chain, rear chain. I do think that almost every person that has an imbalance, it's fixable. But I think that most people trying to fix it are charlatans and are throwing things around like, oh, you're just not activating. But that implies that there's just like a malfunction that as soon as you flip the switch, you're good.

19:06And I never have found that to be the case with anyone. So it would take me bringing on someone else to talk about this. It's a good question. I'm a quad dominant runner. I'm the inverse. I get extremely sore in my rear chain because when I have to work hard for an extended amount of time, there's no way not to burn that area out because it's not ready to do the work it needs to do. So I struggle with these things too, but there's just so much snake oil salesman going on around the whole topic that we just have to find someone we trust to come talk about it, in my opinion. I'm not qualified. Yeah.

19:43So I agree with you, by the way. It's a very good question. It's a very tough one for us to dissect. My first reaction is, does it really matter? Which I hate to say that because that seems dismissive, but we're probably going to be one a little bit more than the other, most likely. For example, I have a bit of a forward lean, which puts me more in my rear chain just based on my trunk and hip position. I find I drive a lot of power that way, but I've also like run a half marathon in alpha flies. And the only thing sore the next day was my quads. What does that tell you? Well, shoes come into play.

20:17Terrain grade comes into play. Um, in relation to your lower body strength work comes into play. My butt is sore today. I'm going to have rear chain pain during my run. So am I, what does that tell you? So I think there is a lot of factors in play. I'm certainly not a biomechanics expert in order to tell you how to fix it. But my question to you really after saying that is, does it really matter if you are in quotes quad or hamstring dominant? I think that this is one of those that matters in theory where from simply a physics standpoint, meaning the physical act of running, it does matter how you run.

20:59But real world application is messy. And we have seen as many athletes become high level elite pro runners, world champs even with atypical form. As we've seen, people try to fix their form and never become even like a shell of their former selves. so it's yes it should matter but the human body is complex enough and controlled by a human's brain that there's no guarantee that you'll ever optimize it to the beauty standard of running that exists like in the theoretical perfect so like yes it matters and no also at some point it doesn't matter optimizing your own version of a great form is really the most important thing because everyone that we've ever talked to that has been an absolute staunch defender of you must run perfectly.

21:53Also can't deny the fact that there are several pro athletes who have tried to go through that process and been broken by it. Yeah. This is one where I'm going to just say I'm too stupid to give this one the service it deserves without making a lot of assumptions and cutting a lot of corners. If there's a biomechanics expert that listens or something, that would be very helpful especially like a run economy we already had that conversation a couple episodes ago but like a mechanics expert that might be helpful i don't want to get in over my head and something i can't see honestly because i'm not passionate about it to start with and so that it stems there but then also just lack of knowledge between the two to me running form is the is like the twin sibling of nutrition where yes it absolutely matters and no you don't need it to be great.

22:46You do want to focus on it for long-term health. Absolutely. You should run as well as possible to avoid injury. And you should run as well as possible, just like in general, just like you should eat as well as possible. But for most people, it's not the missing link. I would agree with you on that. Let's move on from that one. Maybe we can revisit in a future episode with an expert with somebody smarter than me all right scott says hey kirk question for the next q a how much credence do you give the ground contact time uh percentage data on garmin watches at what point do you grow concerned i should clarify that i'm wearing the hr pro plus chest strap with my watch theoretically it's going to be more accurate than a wrist-based heart rate monitor is going to be.

23:37It's simply an accelerometer. It's tough to fool while you're running. You can get your steps wrong in a day by doing other activities, but while you're running, ground contact time is pretty cut and dry. So if we trust our heart rate strap, an optical heart rate strap, we should absolutely trust the ground contact time. Now, does it tell you what you think it's telling you in terms of what conclusions you draw. Maybe, maybe not, but I think it's relatively trustworthy. You think the technology is there? For sure. Nothing ever replaces a lab, but yeah, if we trust heart rate, we trust this. Okay.

24:17I'm going to just, I'm more being devil's advocate here than anything. Do it. Is what, what, what, who cares? You're going to get a reading. What do you do with that reading? Okay. My ground contact time is X, Y, and Z. Yes. You can do your research and say what it should be or what the sweet spot is like what it's almost meaningless data for many um do you ever look at yours i don't know um so the concern being what that you're over striding that would be the main concern or you are running inefficiently we'll call it um you know if you're showing an imbalance left right correct so how accurate is that technology because there's always some imbalance, at least for me, but you could be running on a slightly sloped road and you'll have an imbalance.

25:03So, um, ground contact time going uphill is going to be notably more than going downhill for the most part. Faster paces are less ground contact time. So there's all these other things, I guess is what I'm getting at. So I don't put a lot of stock into it. God, I'm just being such a naysayer right now, but I guess this question, I don't know. I don't know if I have a strong opinion on it. I think that these are the things that are all indicators for when there's, it's time to work on stride. Like if you have never rear chain soreness or fatigue, or if you never have quad soreness or fatigue, or if you have a huge, if you see an imbalance in your ground contact time, or it's way slower than what you think it should be at any given pace.

25:47Those are times to look, am I actually just not running well? Yeah, those are great times to look at it. So I think those things have to combine with anything else. But no, I don't dive into ground contact time myself because it's no more necessary than looking at cadence for me. They're both indicators of the same problem. Yeah. Some of all parts, kind of when you were talking about the quad versus hamstring dominant, I feel like there's more ingredients to the stew that need to be looked at yeah yeah just like your forward lean puts the pressure on your rear chain when i forward lean my quads take it it's like it's a hip angle thing yeah not the lean it's the hip angle amplified by the lean and it's going to be the same thing with ground contact time people are in the weeds though which i like we have the you are the right you are our people asking these questions um this next question is an interesting one.

26:42So this comes from Cody and I actually hopped on a consult call with Cody after he sent this question. I like this when you've already answered it and now I have to answer it and we see if we would answer the same way. Well, it just, he said it was a coaching inquiry plus a Q and a question he thought. And I still thought this was worth chatting out and his story is very interesting. So, um, Cody says, uh, hi Bracken and Kirk. This is a coaching inquiry plus Q and a question. I I think. I'm finishing up PT school at NAU. I have an amazing wife and two girls. Where my dad went? He went to NAU? Oh, I heard NIU.

27:18Sorry. And I was like, you went to NAU? That hasn't come up yet? No, NIU, not NAU. I'm finishing up PT school at NAU. I have an amazing wife and two girls, and I am an ex-Paralympic cyclist. I retired after Tokyo. And also a professional breaker. We had a great conversation. Guy's energy is great. He'd be fun to actually have on the podcast. and I love running. I've been following Kirk on Strava and one thing that strikes me is how he seems to do so much and so well on a relatively low volume of running for his fitness. Hence why I took the console call. Clearly his background endurance history has played a role, but I'm really drawn to how I can break down my training and get more for less.

28:00I really love trail racing from 20k to 50k and I'm currently training for a trail marathon in November. Right now I'm following swap, David Roche, 50K plan, and tinkering around with the workouts mileage to suit where I'm at. However, as I look forward to joining the workforce as a PT, I'm interested in being coached again as a cyclist. I love getting and trusting a plan and checking off the box. I have some fun planning my own training, but the mental energy time, you get it, is a bit of a suck. So the main question is... It's the wrong sport. Yeah, no shit. So the main question is... No shoot.

28:31Sorry, I'm working on my swearing. I've been good lately. So the main question is, what advice do you have for paring down training to the essentials. It's easy to add volume, heat training, strength, shop for new shoes, more intensity, et cetera. But I'd love to have one or both of you look at what I've been doing and tell me what I can take out. Let's start there. So if you're going to whittle it down, how do you prioritize what you're spending your time doing? Let's leave it that simple. Yeah. I mean, the reality is that we don't know how well Kirk is doing because we don't know what his theoretical ceiling is on 100 mile weeks on 200 mile weeks right kirk is successful yeah but assuming health sure you're nowhere near your ceiling if you were putting in 20 to 30 hours a week i think we could agree on that assuming health yeah i i absolutely agree on that i could be doing much much more even if it's just the tertiary things surrounding when my running shoes are on.

29:27Yes, 100%. I agree. But we also can't argue the fact that you are successful with your approach. So I think that you've outlined really well on here and we're seeing it with some other pros right now that if you have to cut out daily volume or frequency, you also have to have some pretty big sessions in there. That's the only way to make up for the global volume is with big days, demanding days? Yeah, that's where my answer first went and goes is absolutely with, well, on Tuesday and Saturday, you are training like a hundred mile a week athlete. It just happens to be for two days, not all seven.

30:13And those other days can be filled in with tolerance and time availability. I think that those pillar sessions can make up for a big lack and volume when life and everything else is involved. I think that's the absolute first hack, without question. Yeah, and runners generally don't have a great understanding of why what they're doing is working. When people talk about the volume of running you need to withstand a marathon or an ultra, what they don't understand is that they're developing, let's say, resistance to impact or eccentric damage. They're developing that through a million mini little reps.

30:55But maybe you could get away with a thousand major reps or a hundred momentous reps. Eccentric load is eccentric load. Impact is impact. And if you raise the force of those things, you can reduce the reps of those things. So you could run 150 mile weeks or you can do like weighted deficit back jumps. And are you going to get to the same place? No, but are you going to cause damage in equal amounts? Like, yeah, you probably are. So as you reduce volume, you have to get more creative in how you create resistance to impact and how you create resistance to eccentric damage, especially if you're talking ultras.

31:34Yeah. Yeah. The nice thing is, is leaving cycling, you just physically can't run as much as you can cycle as far as time commitment goes. So that's a good pivot in itself. didn't he say he's looking to get back into cycling maybe i'm sure he never gets up cycling um but also getting creative with um like for example like let's say you're a true pro and you're running 100 mile weeks in the trails training for say your han stroyer and in the training block he's on the trails every single weekend for a big effort and then the next weekend's probably a back-to-back effort and then the next weekend's a solo big effort and then he disease you know but he's running long every weekend well physiology and how it works and we've explained this a few times is like okay so heaven forbid you get out every other weekend and wedge away wife takes the two kids and you have four hours but it can't be every weekend because that's too interrupted to life and so getting creative that way like the appropriate stim when it's needed seating yourself like it doesn't have to be as frequent as you think to make a difference and so even like like the two week like the a week b week cycle for somebody like that a high week low week or whatever it may be can be like really really productive it's like i have your cake and eat it too it's kind of how i prescribe like other than my abbreviated build between superior and afton which i only had six weeks in between i did long runs every weekend um when i was training for superior which you know i was sick and it went relatively well.

33:05I was doing it every other week as well. I could carve out every other weekend to really go swing and put a lot of time in my shoes, but then every other weekend I wasn't. And it still was a good formula to success. And so there's some ways around it that way too, not just looking at the seven day, but looking bigger, the 10 to 14 day. What are you looking up? I was looking up what the current best practice is for recovery from the eccentric damage of downhills. What do you find? I mean, it's always the, you see the, some people say seven to 10 days. Some people say nine to 20 peak damage fades after 72 hours.

33:40So if you look at like what most pros do is they err on the side of abundance for how often to stim something. So if you need downhill work, like they're going to run a big mountain day every week for sure. They're going to run vert several times per week. But if you could, if let's just say it's seven to 10 days, they're for sure doing seven or less in between their, their downhill just running downhills but you could do 10 and if it's 9 to 20 like you could do 20 but then you have to make sure that you push the button pretty hard on that every 20th day to make up for the fact that you're not dosing it more frequently but the people i know who are running like for example miguel medina got ready for was it uh the uray 100 and won it and he was doing 100 mile weeks for like 10 11 straight weeks but he wasn't ripping a ton of downhills because he was running all of his runs with vert yeah like the people i know that run the biggest mountain vert they also rip the least amount down their hills because a they don't have to and b you can't can't get 20 the next day if you just crushed your legs and do that repeatedly so the lower you go the more freedom you have to rip it more often like the high volume is great but it It also is limiting from some of the stimulus standpoint because you can't recover from some intense stimuli while doing big volume.

35:03So I don't think you're necessarily giving away as much as some people believe you are, but you have to get real well acquainted with what are your recovery cycles. And the moment you're ready for another one, you got to do it. Yeah. Yeah. And then you have, I mean, you think starting is like a young PT going to be very busy working and lots of hours, two kids at home, energy expenditure elsewhere. Like for me, if I were in a position like that, and let's say a lot of our listeners, I mean, how many run streakers do we have, let alone six or seven day a week runners? Um, like I feel like you can get most of the way there on five if they're the right five.

35:41Right. And so like everything you've known has been six or seven days of structured training and something like backing off. So you can actually get a good night's sleep in the middle of the week one time. So you don't have to get up early to train, et cetera. Like if you're never buried on the recovery front, like that may be your actual long-term best route to running well for the next few decades is something like that. I went to a five-day approach because one, I want to make two days for strength and I also want a rest day. And yeah, it's not the fastest way to the top of the mountain necessarily, but I'm doing all right because I've been available and consistent, right?

36:18And so even things like that, looking at frequency of exposure, right? Like I could run six days a week right now. I'm not by choice because I enjoy many other things other than running. And so I guess that's kind of muddy, but you get my sentiment there. We've referenced this quote several times throughout the years since he said it on here, but Ryan Kent had one of the greatest quotes we've ever had, which is volume gives you the wiggle room needed when races go off the rails. Yeah. When things go off schedule, off plan, the more volume you've done in training, in general, the more wiggle room you have to absorb things like that.

36:53And the same goes with training. The more you span volume, the less you have to nail a lot of the little pieces. So the inverse is also true. You can cut out a lot of volume, but you can't miss on the little things then. If you cut volume way down, you've got to be on point with your strength training. You've got to be on point with your strength endurance work. your muscular endurance. You have to have those things if you want to run a good ultra. You've got to be on point with how you execute your long runs. There's not going to be a lot of three-hour dauntles in your routine. They don't fit in there.

37:25They're not going to cover all your bases. The best thing for him would be to get really injured and have to start back with two miles feeling like it's moving the fitness needle. If there's one blessing to getting injured and having to come back, it's that you respond to everything. When you've been healthy and running high volume for a while, like taking a step back feels like such a downgrade and like you're going to lose everything. But what's a good hard reset is some real time away and realize like five by three minute intervals absolutely move the fitness needle for me today. And 45 minutes in my running shoes, I'm going to be better in two weeks because of this.

38:04I'm not actually wishing that on him, but we're so reluctant to step back from volume because we think it's only going to be a fast track to worse fitness, but I don't believe that's the case. Look at Alyssa, who we just, the podcast just released. We had a great conversation. That was one of my favorite conversations in a long time. Her volume is almost cut in half run-wise. She had to make peace with that to make room for other stuff. It happened to be more fitness stuff, but nonetheless, to make room for stuff. I don't know. There's examples of it where I don't think backing off volume is necessarily means it's a death sentence for your fitness.

38:39You could get better on less volume. Yeah. Still, all things equal, more volume is better, but all things are rarely equal. What did he say the longest thing he's prepping for? Did he say 50K? 20 to 50K, yeah. Yeah. So I mean, you could be a three-day a week runner if you're crushing every other weekend on long runs and you're not trying to be a three-day a week runner. So you're going to be fine. I agree with that. All right. Next question, Matt. Potential Q &A question. I'm running a six local race series next year. So plenty of time to answer this. Haha. Thank you for that, Matt. Uh, the distances are one, one mile to two mile and three 5k races for the two mile races.

39:18How should I prepare? Would training for the 5k is sufficient? Should I do more speed work? It's an odd distance for the average runner. Thanks. I'd keep it simple. It's funny. He's worried about the two mile and I'd be worried about the mile. Yeah. I'd keep it simple. I'd be a 5k runner with mile workouts as well. I would address the two ends of the spectrum and the two mile is going to take care of itself. A good miler can step up to a two mile and a good 5K runner can step down to a two mile. So whichever one you focus on, you're going to be fine. I was the most underdeveloped aerobic athlete.

39:53I wasn't a great miler, but I ran 426 in high school, which is good. At that time, it was good. Of all the kids who ran 426 in our state that year, I was probably the worst aerobically. And I still ran a decent two-mile. It didn't correlate to my mile, but in a championship race, I was able to win our conference title against some good runners because mile fitness can translate to two-mile. I couldn't hold their jock in a 5K. But a two-mile is close enough to either distance that you can step up or down and be fine. Honestly, yeah, I'm saying don't worry about the two-mile. Yeah, I guess I'd be very curious is the order of these.

40:30Is it as simple as the mile is first, and then there's two two-miles, and then there's three 5Ks? That matters to me for some reason, mostly because I think this is my own natural bias and tendency. But for example, if you were opening with a mile, I would absolutely be mile time trialing on my own to get acquainted with where I need to open my season because I'd have no idea really where I'm truly at. And I think you're not going to nail your first mile no matter how much you think you're nailing your first mile. And so if you're opening with a mile, I would probably be seating myself with one or two time trials beforehand as an introductory.

41:07Um, but if it's wedged into the middle of the season, I still may time trial by the way, because that one, just for some reason, you can really get it wrong. You don't have enough time to make up for errors. Um, in my opinion. So, um, that matters to me, but I would be exclusively training as a five care and I would be hitting some of those classic, like we've talked about, like I'm going to run 800 meters at mile pace and then run some 200s or something over speed training. I would definitely be over speed training maybe every 10 days for the mile, but I'd still be very, very 5K focused for the most part.

41:40And the two mile will take care of itself, just like you said. That's going to be taken care of. And if we really want to muddy this thing, which we're good at, are you a speed guy or are you an endurance guy? That's fair. But the reality is 5K is so intense that you are right. Train for the 5K and touch up on the mile, but get acquainted with the feeling of the mile. 5K fitness does transfer to the mile. I know you're probably sick of hearing us talk about our college days, but every year people, including ourselves, would open up indoor with a mile coming off cross-country season or coming off of base building and rip a mile off no specific work.

42:19And it wouldn't be from getting out hard in the first 400, but you just run a real steady, evenly split mile and close it down and surprise yourself. The mile fitness is a weird one, but if you get any amount of comfort at that feeling prior, you don't need a lot of training at that stimulus itself. I agree. One or two time trials, couple 200s at or faster than mile pace on top of 5K training is a pretty darn good mile training program as is. It's no different than the 5K. The, the, the having trust in the mile when you're 600 meters in and it's already hurting that you, you can't and must not back off and you can live there until you get close enough to the finish to kick home.

43:06It's the trust in the middle phases and you just have to feel it. It's the same with the 5k. You get to a mile, mile and a half, and you're in nine out of 10 pain. And there's no way you can possibly sustain this for another mile and a half. And you back off, not trusting that you can. And that's where the seconds are lost. in the mile, those seconds matter a lot more, I think, than in the 5K because you're working with less of them. So for me, it's all about feeling it and trusting it. And there's only a couple of ways to do it. And it's sim workouts or it's time trialing. Middle distance running, 400, 800 mile.

43:36Let's just say 800 mile. The vast majority of your time improvements are going to come from global fitness. 100%. 5K training alone will get you 90 to 95 % of the way there, along with feeling the race and just figuring out how to handle it and race that. All the rest of the training, all the actual race pace and above training is nothing more than biomechanical efficiency. It's just getting incrementally better at doing that pace with less effort. And that's where people are fighting for 10ths and 100ths or sometimes seconds, but cutting off chunks is just going to come from your 5K fitness. You could spend two times running mile work on top of years of running a 5k and cut off chunks.

44:21And then you can spend the next five years running mile pace and cut off seconds. I mean, yeah, look to the, yes, look to the pros. I mean, how many of them now are all, I mean, they're strength-based 1500 meter runners. That's shorter than a mile folks. Um, most of them, most of them in the front are all strength based at this point. There's a reason for that, right? Who isn't? I mean, even Josh Kerr, who you could argue hasn't stepped into the 5k ran a damn good half a few years ago and is the two mile world record holder indoors anyways right like the dudes the dudes racing down and then he's considered a speed-based or like a miler moving up yeah and you look at the coal hawkers and the yakubinga britsons and even yerden a goose who can go up to the 3k and womp um you watch even parker wolf run up really fast like 1500 off of like pretty impressive 5k work anyways i could ramble on and Nah, but you get the gist.

45:10So we're racing down. Train for the 5K. Worry about the mile. Yeah, forget the two mile. Yeah, your worry should not be the worry. All right. Dave, Dave, Dave says, good afternoon. One for your Q &A. I've signed up to a four-day running event called The Tour in the UK. It is four back-to-back events, which are Thursday, Trail 10K, Friday, Fel Run, very hilly Trail 10K, Saturday, Mixed Terrain Half Marathon, Sunday, Road 12K. Interesting. My question is, how would you plan for the back-to-back nature of it, in particular the Friday p.m. to Saturday a.m. transition? Oh, yeah, he notes that the Thursday-Friday races are in the evening, but the Saturday and Sunday are in the mornings.

46:00probably working around people's work schedules. So yeah, how do you do the back-to-back-to-back-to-back race situation? You could go all in on this. You could prep by doing back-to-back work a lot in training, but the reality is you race every single distance one notch below what an all-out effort would be, and you string together a great weekend. You prioritize recovery after the event, fueling during, and sleep as well as you can. But I don't think there's any need to try doing more than two days in training in a row hard. I don't think you should try to do this. Get used to the PMAM transition and you'll be pretty much good.

46:41Just don't empty it in any one given race. I'm very pro. Like if you had to experiment, like day one of running hard would be an uphill quality session on the treadmill. and then day two you could go flat and draw it out or vice or vice versa but i feel like that is a little bit of a hack like sure go uphill you're not going to take a ton of damage you might feel a little sticky on your second quality session the next day but um i think that's a good that'd be the best approach if i were to do it that's what i would be doing anyways um the other thing that really matters to me in this question dave which you didn't outline is how is this being uh what is the competition of this is it your average placement is it your total time uh etc because that matters to me in a sense where the big one is you have a trail half marathon on saturday morning that's going to eat up the most time most likely of this whole thing well you also have a fell event the day before which means you could rock your legs if you go all in on this fell event on these descents and so what does that leave you for saturday could you bleed out five to 10 minutes in your half marathon because you cracked yourself so hard fell running the day before, and that's going to negatively impact your total time for all four events across the board.

47:54That matters to me. Or do you just go race and rub shoulders and placement matters and you race within your wheelhouse and make sure you're ahead of the biggest group that's near you and call it good. For me, that matters a lot in this, but it doesn't change your answer and the fact that I agree with it. It's you've got to still be holding back knowing I could have gone harder today on day one and two for sure. Maybe day three you go all out and what's left on day four is left. But I agree for sure two days of dialing the effort back just below. Like a good big quality day effort. Yeah. Yeah, it's somewhere between a quality effort and a race.

48:29In reality, you're racing without getting out hard and sprinting at the end. You're practicing running even splits, maybe slightly negative. when you're between two shoes you choose the more supportive cushioned one each time the little things that will save your legs that's going to do as much as most of the training will yeah if you have time in your training now double up a couple times a week but your body will respond better than you think it will but you can't get too behind on nutrition in these events that would be my biggest I'd be fueling during whatever you can maximally sustain and fueling wise during the races, I would be doing.

49:06I agree. And immediately after, even though you don't want anything quite yet, like you are getting something in your system and you're, you almost feel like you're kind of overdoing it a little bit between, like forcing it almost between. That's what I would do. Any back-to-back racing I've done, I've kind of forced it. I don't always have a Gatorade around and some sort of bar. I could take or leave it after a race. I don't really want much right away. But in this case, I'd be drinking the whole Gatorade and getting 200 calories of sugar in me. and also eating that bar, even though it doesn't appeal to me before I get to my next meal.

49:38And going back to the track conversation, this is the world of track and field. Multiple day events, running the prelims, the semifinals, the finals, like we've lived this life. You have to fuel like it's your job. And you're always surprised how hard you can run coming off an effort where you got done and thought, I can't do that again. I don't know how that's going to work, but the key is to pace it well. You don't want to get out hard and die in any one of these events. And you don't want to have to sprint the last 100 or 200 meters if you can avoid it. Yeah. You want to be working positively or negatively.

50:13I guess it depends how you look at it. You get what I'm saying. All right. Next question, Chad, Q &A submission. Bracken has spoken multiple times about 90 minutes being something of a ceiling on a person's aerobic benefit within a single session. Have you said that? I'd say that the benefits of the aerobic work in comparison to the cost of recovery starts to tip not in your favor between 70 and 90 minutes, 60 and 90, depending on your fitness levels. Once you get past that, the things you're working on are not primarily aerobic development. Okay, I agree with that. So he says, should regular runs, common everyday easy recovery runs, rarely exceed 90 minutes?

50:59Is it bad to do three runs of 90 plus minutes each week, assuming a person isn't doing too much intensity for their own good? If so, how does a slower runner build weekly mileage volume without having to double? That's a really good question. And to start out, I would say that just be careful with how you use the term recovery. I don't really believe that a non-highly trained athlete can do anything for 90 minutes and call it recovery. So no, I would say most people should not be doing 90-minute recovery runs regardless of how slow you are. I don't think that that's recovery. But if you said you're not working super intense on your quality days, then you could run 90 minutes every day.

51:41I'm talking bang for your buck. You're getting the vast majority of a two-hour run, the aerobic benefits. between 45 minutes and 90 minutes in. After that, now you're getting some good stuff, but also your recovery costs are skyrocketing. So it's really more of an equation you're balancing, not like a don't run past 90 minutes rule. But have you ever been able to recover for 90 minutes? Like after 90 minutes? Like if you did a quality session, have you ever in your life had the fitness where you're like, I think I'll recover with a 90 minute run tomorrow? No. And if I did, it's a scrambled week where it's a midweek long run and I may go that far.

52:16but then you would need recovery from that the next day then I'd have a down day after that no I have not but the slow runner aspect of this is legit how do I build running miles without going over 90 minutes and the reality is that you don't focus on miles you focus on good minutes until you're fit enough and fast enough that miles makes sense as a metric to chase you don't think I mean almost looking at it the polar opposite way of, all right, I'm going to go 90 minutes three times a week. And one of them is going to be within a quality day where I have a warmup, cool down, and some work in the middle.

52:55And one of them is going to be my long run. And the other is going to be a midweek long run. And then everything else is going to be short in duration in between. Like, could you cheat the system that way? Yeah. I wouldn't even call that cheating. Those are just three good stimulus days. Right. They're just big. They wouldn't be easier recovery. And you would need some shorter, lower volume days in between if that were your cadence. The most fit I've ever felt in my life was when I had the most prevalent 70, probably 70 to 90 minute runs in my week. The highest occurrence of 70 to 90 minute runs has been when I've been the most fit.

53:31It's a chicken egg thing. It's also I was fit enough to handle doing a lot more of those. But yeah, I think those are great stimuli. I think going past an hour is really great for aerobic development, but not for recovery. So choosing when you do them and how is everything. Perfect world. Yeah, I'd probably run 90 minutes every other day. Yeah, I ride the line somewhere in 70 to 75 minutes feels about right. Like my heart rate will still be low. It's right where it should be. I'm taking this effort truly easy. But I get past like eight-ish miles. I get to that 55 to 60 range. and I can just tell the legs might be a little heavier.

54:07And you can just tell like, I'm not like ruining my recovery, but if I were to sit in this another half an hour, even up to 90 minutes, it may negatively affect me the next day, even though my aerobic output is low. That just comes from damage, structural damage. For me, it's somewhere around there. I don't know if I could call anything over 75 minutes recovery for me right now, even keeping the effort very in check. Yeah, and unless I was doing zone one, like just dawdle jogging. I don't know if ever in my life could I have passed a lie detector test saying I could run over an hour on my recovery days with no cost whatsoever.

54:47Yeah. I just don't think I could. I guess that's what I do right now, but I also have one full extra day off of running that a lot of people don't have. That helps. If I had to purely arrive in better shape than I came in, confidently I have to stay under an hour. Yeah. Although zone one dawdling is painful in its own right. For me, it is anyways. That's its own thing, right? It's its own thing, yeah. All right. I don't know if you've been looking at the clock, but we're done for the day. And we lost a chunk of time today, folks, because Bracken's power went out in his house mid-episode. We would have a little more time for this, but internet and everything shut down, so we lost a chunk of our window.

55:23A whole neighborhood lost power. Yeah. Is everybody back on? You don't know what happened? Yeah. Again, city hall is our litmus test. I see it out this window here. and when they're good, we're good. When they're off, we're off. So we're good. Everything's up and going. All right, folks. I think that's it. Did we miss anything today? We got quite a few questions left in here. Maybe we'll have to do another one of these next week. 30 seconds or less. What was your best workout of the week so far? Well, I had a workout where I felt like myself again and I did my three by 10 or 10 by three minutes, one minute rest on the roads.

55:5610 by three or three by 10? Sorry, 10 by three minutes. Okay. And generally, I try to run them half marathon pace, let my heart rate be the indicator, and I was quicker. I averaged like 5.16 or 5.17 pace. For me, that is... I mean, it was a cool morning, so fall, thank you. But metrics really lined up. Pace versus heart rate didn't lie, only on a minute rest. And I ran quicker than I intended to with really good heart rate response. So 10 by 3 minutes, not sexy. It was great. How long could you hold 5.17 pace for right now in a race? running it today i felt like i could definitely do it for like somewhere between 10k and half marathon probably yeah so i think what do you think if you had to choose one distance for sure could you make it 10 miles i'm so curious i'm not sure i did a 516 average for a tempo in the middle of a long run with my buddy dave back in march 516 that was with hills we had like almost 200 feet of gain in that five miles.

56:56Drawing that out. I don't know. It's somewhere in there. Your guess is probably pretty good. On a good day. I'd have to be having a good day for that to happen by the way. What about you? My best workout, I did a sub-threshold workout. It was actually an over-under. I did 1 ,000 meter erg above threshold, four minute run on the assault runner under threshold, 1 ,000 meter row above threshold, thousand meter run below a threshold. And I did three rounds. So when you say above, does that mean you're working hard, not caring what your heart rate's doing really? Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to, it's theoretical high rock space.

57:32This is your three zone method, by the way. Yep. Although I was exceeding that, that zone two on the ERGs. I was going anaerobic on the ERGs and then going gray zone on the run. So three rounds of 1K ERG, four minute run, 1K ERG, four minute run. So six by thousand running, 6x1000 Ergs. But no rest, just one continuous. Call it a tempo effort. I added a T to continuous because I was going to say tempo afterwards. A continuous tempo. That's like when people say X specially. Wedge and X in there. That sounds like a good session. That probably took you a while. You did 6 rounds. So you did 6 runs.

58:15Basically 6 runs, 6 Ergs, so 12x. a meaty session. Call it just under four minutes a round. Yeah. So you had a I was going to say 45-50 minutes session. It was a 47-minute workout. Yeah. Nice. What kind of pace are you aiming? I think people are curious. What are you skiing and rowing right now? And that's a tempo effort. This isn't like spicy intervals. What are you shooting for right now? So I'm trying to stay in the low 150s on the skier. And then I'm trying to match that on the row. Interesting. I'm trying to teach myself to work a little harder than I'm comfortable on the skier and then just get better at it and recover on the row while still putting something out so i was trying to hit 152 it's great that's good output i mean and if if you're keeping your uh ski relatively close to your row in any capacity you're doing something right i was overworking the ski i understand in the row but where they fall in the race that you should be underworking the row yeah i'm exactly yeah i'm i'm a firm believer that there's not much to be gained on the row other than recovery.

59:19Yeah. You work your butt off and gain eight seconds. Like, okay, what's that? Bye-bye lunches and wall balls. Exactly. All right. That's it. Good. That's a good session. Fitness coming around. Laying down brick by brick, Kirk. Yep. Inserting those pennies into the bank one by one. We'll see you all next week. Goodbye. If anything resonated with you on today's episode and you're curious about taking your training to the next level, check out Visit runningpublic.com, where we have a training plan to fit your needs.