Episode 652: Dying to Run

0:09Scott Huettel: Welcome 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.

0:30Scott Huettel: When 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 how are you, Matt? It's been, I'm trying to think, it feels like it's been a while, but maybe I'm wrong. Has it been over a year? It had to have been, has to have been. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. A year isn't very long. I know. Not at this stage. Nope. It's less, what is it? It's less of a portion of your life than when you were younger.

1:08Scott Huettel: So like when you're 10 a year sounds like forever, but when you're 50, it goes quick. Do you believe in that? Is that real?

1:15Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah, there's actually like, I mean, this is a tangent, but - We like those. Like there's real science showing that perception of time does change measurably as you get older. Like if you tell like a young person and an old person to count off a minute in their head, you know, the kid will be done in like 15 seconds. And then the older person will be like three minutes and counting. And they're like, that's a minute.

1:43Scott Huettel: Interesting.

1:44Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah, it's real.

1:45Brian McKenzie: Yeah. All right. This is tangent off a tangent. But back in the early obstacle course racing days, GPS watches were big and not super accurate. And I'd get a wrist pump, forearm pump from obstacles. So I didn't want to wear a watch always. And so when I'd see a runner before or behind, I'd start counting in my head. Like how many seconds you were behind? How many seconds, fore or aft. And I wasn't super accurate. it. Throughout the years, I've played with that. And I have a manual treadmill now that has the dimmest screen known to man. And it's in my basement in the far corner where I can fit between the joists.

2:30Brian McKenzie: And so I can't really see it well. So the only way to track time is either put up my phone as a timer or keep checking my watch and I can't stand it. So I've been doing a lot of timing again. And I absolutely am more accurate now than I was at like 25. it'd be like 15 seconds per 60 off and now it's like 1 to 2 I really want to play an exercise where we close our eyes

2:53Scott Huettel: and I'll count to 60 in our heads but let's not put our audience through that they'd all do it with us though, that's the thing you moved to the Pacific Northwest

3:07Matt Fitzgerald: temporary move we're here for a year anyway is what we've committed to

3:13Scott Huettel: Where are you exactly?

3:14Matt Fitzgerald: Vancouver, Washington, the other Vancouver.

3:17Scott Huettel: That's a thing, huh?

3:18Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah, it's right across the river from Portland. So as far south as you can get in Washington state.

3:25Brian McKenzie: What brought you there?

3:27Matt Fitzgerald: Family. So my dad is 83. He's got Parkinson's. He's declining. And the time to get quality time in with him is now. um and so yeah i get to see him every day versus you know three four times a year um did the same thing with my mom when she had alzheimer's and it just like you know you don't want to as a child you don't want to be saddled with regret after you lose a parent so like it worked pretty well to prioritize quality time with my mom and now doing the same with my dad and i have two siblings and they they and their families are both in this area as well so it's just a good family focused year.

4:06Matt Fitzgerald: So what happens to Dream Run Camp? It's on pause or hiatus. Yeah, I'll hope to resuscitate it in 2028, but it's a little bit open-ended. What happens if we signed a one-year lease here? When that lease ends, who knows? But we'd like to get back to Flagstaff

4:27Brian McKenzie: and start hosting run-ins again. Did you keep the property down there? No, we sold it.

4:33Matt Fitzgerald: Got it.

4:34Scott Huettel: or free van life yeah yeah we've talked to a lot of people who live the van life we've recorded with many out of their vans actually even a bus yeah even a bus yeah um what's the terrain like there where you live do you have access to nice trail systems and topography and vert or no no no i've never been to that little part of the country yeah i mean it it's not a bad it's not a

4:58Matt Fitzgerald: it's not a bad city for running in general, but for trails, it's, it's not good. I mean, you gotta, you gotta drive 20 minutes, minimum closer to 30 to get to any decent trailhead around here. It's good. They got lots of parks and there are like safe places to, you know, do paved running. But yeah, I mean, you know, I was braced for this, you know, like fly stuff. There's just no better place on earth to be a runner and everything compares poorly in that regard. You'd hate where I live.

5:31Scott Huettel: County highway running. That's pretty much the jam. Small neighborhood running, county highway sections. Bracken ran out here with me. It wasn't as bad as I project, but it wasn't great, was it, Bracken?

5:41Brian McKenzie: No, but it's kind of nostalgic for me because UW-Whitewater is highway running and Campbell University was highway running. So that was kind of my formation was highway running.

5:55Scott Huettel: You have... So I kind of get kept in the loop on you, Matt, because I know you and Diane stay in touch and me and Diane work together in the gym. So I always like, what's Matt up to? So I ask about you quite a bit or she just divulges. But you did you get sidelined with some sort of injury recently? And you've been dealing with that now. Is that right?

6:17Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah. Yeah. This is embarrassing to admit. But yeah. So I suffered my first ever stress fracture. just over a year ago, I was three weeks out from my first 100 miler. That's right. Were you going to do Hevelina?

6:35Scott Huettel: What were you going to do? Yeah. Yeah.

6:36Matt Fitzgerald: So I'd done the 100K in 2024. That's what my book, Dying to Run, centers on. And then, you know, I thought that would be the last race I ever did. But, you know, I was progressing with my health and decided to step up to 100 miles. The next year made a ton of progress. and then something went snap. Well, I now know it was my left fibula. Two miles left in the Flagstaff Marathon, which I was running as kind of like a tune-up. And, you know, being who I am, I went ahead and finished the race. And this is the embarrassing part. I mean, in my defense, I did not have a definitive diagnosis until – it took like two weeks actually to get the imaging, two and a half.

7:24Matt Fitzgerald: So by then I was just days out from the 100 miler. I've had plenty of soft tissue injuries. I'd never had any type of bone stress injury. So I just didn't think I could have that. And then so I kept training on the thing and just made it so much worse. Then got the diagnosis, pulled out of the race, and still just kind of like botched the recovery and the rehab. So I'm still – it's like now past a year. and I've tried like three or four times to like ramp back up into running and this bone is just still not right. So I think I just like just took a molehill and turned it into a mountain. I mean, I can't imagine this will be a career ender after everything I've been through, but yeah, a year in counting for just like a grade two stress fracture.

8:15I'm still sidelined.

8:17Matt Fitzgerald: Do as I say, not as I do.

8:19Brian McKenzie: That's the longest I've heard for a grade two.

8:21Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah.

8:21Scott Huettel: I had two stress fractures, metatarsal and sesamoid at the same time, and I kept biking on it. And it took me five months because I, in hindsight, kept preventing it from healing with my cross training so hard. Five months is pretty long, but a year is a – that's a record. A fibula is not even a weight-bearing – not technically as much of a weight-bearing bone. That's a rare one to stress fracture. What the heck – how is that possible? Yeah, I think, you know, I don't think it's ever one thing.

8:54Matt Fitzgerald: I think for me, the biggest factor was overuse of super shoes. We've been having that conversation, Matt. I was doing a ton of running and carbon-plated shoes. For me, I've always been a stopper. I've always landed hard. And for that reason, I've never been able to tolerate the kind of volume that would be required to fully tap my potential for aerobic fitness. There's cross training for that. But when super shoes came along, I think they make some difference for most runners. But they made a huge difference for me. Initially, they were supposed to be for racing. But like I quickly realized, man, if I train these things, I can do, you know, an extra 20, 30 miles a week.

9:40Matt Fitzgerald: And so I just took that a little too far. I also I lost a ton of weight and it was like, you know, good weight. You know, I've always just relied on training and, you know, dialing in my diet to get to my racing weight. But I got like really skinny. And so I think I might have just been a little bit under fueled on top of like very high volume in, you know, shoes that were kind of like transferring forces. You know, you're still absorbing the forces. The shoes just change kind of like where they go, where they concentrate. I think those probably were the main factors.

10:15Brian McKenzie: We have these just like points of emphasis you see that everyone is hitting at the same time. and right now we are seeing the pain for our super shoe sins era of runners. The pendulum is not going to swing back away from those shoes, but the pendulum is swinging back towards people who overuse them. This is like the third straight interview where someone brought it up on their own accord. It's unreal how many people are realizing that they used the tool, spammed the tool, and it was too much. Yep. Yeah. Live and learn. Well, it's interesting that yours then got chalk traveled up there. Yeah.

10:58Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah, it's funny because I didn't know much about all this stuff because, like I said, I never had this type of injury. But, yeah, I drew the short straw.

11:07Scott Huettel: What's been the part that you're getting stuck on coming back? What's happening?

11:12Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah, I think I'm just ramping up too quickly because I'm always fine initially. You know, I just sort of like, I haven't gone back to doctors. I just sort of wait until, you know, I don't feel it at all. Just in my cross training, if I, you know, dig a thumb into like the epicenter, you know, it feels the same on both sides. And then to me, that's a green light to start easing back into it. But I'll, you know, my approach is, you know, I'll only like do the repetitive impact like every other day. and I'll start with run walk and then fiddle with the ratio until I can run for 30 minutes straight and then I'll start to build from there.

11:53Matt Fitzgerald: But what I would do is I would take a step forward in the progression every single time I went out there. So it would be eight times 30 seconds, then 10 times 30 seconds, then eight times a minute. And I would just go and go and I would be fine until I wasn't. Because when you look back on it, you can actually get up to a two-hour run relatively quickly that way, if you just keep progressing a little bit every time. And I think it was just a little bit hurried. And if I, so this next time, you know, I had plenty of practice with this long COVID. I had to progress at just a glacial pace in order to, to be able to tolerate it.

12:30Matt Fitzgerald: And so I'll just have to be more patient, like draw out the progression over a much longer period of time this time around, be willing to take steps back at the first time a sign of trouble. Just things I would do with any athlete I coach. But when it's you, it's for, you know, can't apply the lessons.

12:49Brian McKenzie: When you say every time out, do you literally mean like each run you progressed it?

12:53Matt Fitzgerald: Yes. Yeah. Okay. I mean, but by little bits, I'm literally going from like eight times 30 seconds, you know, like jogging sprinkled in a walk to like 10 times 30 seconds. And that would only be like every 48 hours. So I wasn't doing that. I wasn't stressing it every day.

13:11Brian McKenzie: Got it.

13:11Matt Fitzgerald: But still that adds up quicker than you would think.

13:14Brian McKenzie: So is there some underlying nutrient delivery issue you have that you're just not able to build bone density at the rate you would expect?

13:24Matt Fitzgerald: I don't think so. You know, cause I, you know, my, you know, I had everything kind of checked and, and it seems to be fine. But yeah, I think, you know i think i just was a little bit like just under fueled generally um just just just judging by the amount of weight i lost um and so i think you know that just lowers the threshold and then in terms of the recovery i think you know because i had imaging done you know like three weeks into my recovery and you know the orthopedist said you're healing normally everything looks fine. You're on track. And then I just went and screwed it up. So I think my body can, can heal.

14:05Matt Fitzgerald: I'm just kind of haven't let it.

14:07Scott Huettel: Okay. The good news is you're going to respond to anything when you run because you're starting from ground zero every time, right? On the fitness front. Um, I was going to say something. Oh yes. So I've had like, I think seven bone stress reactions or fractures, none in recent decades. So I'll touch wood, but all but one, Matt, I have done the exact same song and dance as you have come back, started running. Oh shit. It's back. Have to take a second break and relearn. And it took me so long because bone is so different than soft tissue. You're learning all of this and you are so right. It is so painstakingly slow.

14:44Scott Huettel: It's frustrating. And you think you're ready. And the last one I didn't have to do that with was my five months off. And I was like, I think I'm ready. And I waited another month to even take my first run after I thought I was ready. I had to be so painfully slow. And the story here, my camera's moving, is that I've built the best. I mean, I had five months off. That's a long time. And I have since built the best fitness slowly, but surely going from three days of run week to four to five over years, it took me. And now I'm sitting here with the best run fitness I've had, and I'm 43. And so it's slow, but I've done it and it sucks, but it works.

15:23Scott Huettel: So I think, have you wrapped your head around the, you don't need advice. You're one of the more brilliant minds in the space, but has, has it, has it sunk in that you're just, you've accepted the slow progression at this point?

15:35Matt Fitzgerald: Yes. Yeah. And I, you know, I have plenty of experience with that and it's different. You know, if I, if this had happened when I was 32, it would just feel like just much more catastrophic. Like, Oh my God, I'm losing, I'm losing my prime years. Like, you know, I'm, I'm 55. Um, and so what I'll just do is, you know, when I, when I know I have to take an extended break from running, I'll just forget about it and just focus on other stuff, like other types of exercise, non-exercise stuff that I enjoy. And so I just kind of push it out of mind. And then I don't, I'm just no longer really in, in a rush.

16:12Matt Fitzgerald: I'm no longer tempted to, to hurry the process.

16:15Scott Huettel: So it's kind of where I always feel, um, like I'm about to take a couple of week break to go bow hunting and do other things than running. I might take a week or two off of running. I always feel a little bit like a poser in the sense, like you were like the running writer guy, but then you're not running. Do you ever wrestle with that? Because like, I have this emotional detachment in the fall from my running. I kind of check out a little bit. I still do it, but I feel like I'm kind of putting on a front, but I'm like a running coach and I'm a running guy, but I'm not, I don't care about that thing as much right now.

16:48Scott Huettel: Do you ever wrestle with that? Or is that not a thing? Yeah.

16:52Matt Fitzgerald: No, I wrestled with it big time with long COVID. So I didn't run for more than three years. And until that time, I didn't really appreciate just how much I depended on my continuing to be a competitive athlete to just feel, yeah, like credible, um, as a coach and, and as an author authority. Um, and then when that went away, yes, I felt, um, it was on two different levels. One was like, yeah, the image part. It's like, Oh, I'm, you know, I'm supposed to, I'm presenting myself as an expert of a sport I don't do anymore. But also it was partly substantive as well. Like, you know, like being out there in the trenches was just a wellspring of like knowledge and learning for me.

17:44Matt Fitzgerald: And that was cut off. Even stuff as simple as like technology, you know, technology is changing so quickly. And, you know, after I hadn't been running for, you know, two plus years, I would be coaching athletes who would be using tools that I had never used myself. And I, and I felt like, oh my God, I am, I am falling behind. I'm becoming a relic, a dinosaur. And so, yeah,

18:08Scott Huettel: I wrestled with that quite a bit. Bracken, do you ever deal with that, with your injuries? And then like the poser, like I'm, this is my career yet. I'm, I'm not as committed to the thing or anything. Have you had that internal battle?

18:19Brian McKenzie: Yeah. The imposter syndrome for me was when I, what'd you say?

18:23Scott Huettel: No. Yeah. You're right. Imposter syndrome is the best way to describe it.

18:26Brian McKenzie: For me was when I officially wasn't racing much, but I was giving race advice or critiquing races or giving do better talks when I wasn't doing better. Just do the thing. Don't rely on other – well, I'm not doing it. But I think the hardest, you talked about the tech piece. Mine was how do I accurately coach someone using a training stimulus that I haven't used? So I did a lot of threshold work. I did a lot of double threshold work. But now with combining it in a certain way that they're doing now and combining it with a volume I didn't hit that at. And now I haven't felt what you felt. And I always relied upon, I've felt this training stimulus, so I can talk you through.

19:20Brian McKenzie: Even if we respond at different rates, I at least have felt what 100-mile week feels like. I felt what 30-mile weeks and four speedworks feel like. But some of these things now I haven't felt, and I don't love that.

19:36Scott Huettel: What's interesting, maybe because we're run coaches, but if I look at a football coach, a professional NFL football coach, Yeah, he used to play football, but he hasn't played football in 15 years. Yet I trust this guy immensely in his credibility. And it works across other ball sports. But for running, I almost feel like the coach kind of has to be doing the deal. Because it's a lifestyle sport. It's not – I feel like there is a checkbox that feels like it needs to be checked as a coach in this space. But it doesn't need to be checked in other – Clearly there's not. There's no, right. But in other sports, I don't feel like I look at it that way.

20:09Scott Huettel: Maybe it's my own messed up brain. Am I the only one here? You know, years ago, I compiled a list of eminent running coaches who were not runners.

20:19Matt Fitzgerald: And it's an impressive list. It's close to Mount Rushmore.

20:25Brian McKenzie: That's depressing.

20:26Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah, it can be done. I mean, think about it. We all know this as coaches. So much of effective coaching is not technical knowledge of the sport. It's people skills, communication, giving a shit, all that stuff.

20:39Brian McKenzie: Well, of all sports, cycling probably is the one that you can most be lab coached. And running's not super far behind. A scientist can just coach you. Now, they're going to miss out some of the human pieces, of course. And the human coach will miss out some of the lab pieces. But arguably, at the high level, the lab pieces are probably more important when you're dealing with that type of output from athletes. So I think it's like a weighted blanket we use to be like, yeah, I did it. I get it. But the reality is maybe that's our blinder. I felt it. So this is the way to do it. I don't know.

21:17Scott Huettel: Let's not go down this black hole too far.

21:19Brian McKenzie: Tell you what it made it easier, though. It made it easier for me to criticize athletes when I was no longer competing. And I don't love that. When I was still competing and I'd go on a podcast or I'd go on a reaction show, I would only take a neutral or positive stance. You could put yourself in their shoes. Yeah. Who am I to judge it? I've screwed it up. And now looking at things, I'm quicker to just be like, that was a big mistake. And I don't love that not feeling it anymore has dulled a little bit of my – it's not empathy, but it's just like willingness to criticize. I don't like that.

21:52Scott Huettel: You're an inherent a-hole. Well, yeah. So what else is new, Matt? Anything else that we need to get? I feel like our listeners are invested in you because we've had you on quite a bit. I mean, half of them have probably read a majority of your books. And I had two people who have read your recent book and said, it's the best work you've done yet. And I was like, well, we got to talk to Matt about this because I haven't read it. I don't own it. But anyways, besides that, anything else new in your world that's worth talking about before we dive into the book and sort of the learnings and such?

22:26Matt Fitzgerald: Well, AI is everywhere. and yeah with my company 80 20 endurance we we sort of like took our time you know when the wave hit and everyone's hair is on fire and we like you know you know if you're if you're any kind of like you know entrepreneur or business owner you have to reckon with it in every industry one way or another so we've just we finally decided to go down this path of you know integrating it but also kind of humanizing it a little bit. So we've created this mind of Matt entity. So we just basically poured every word I've ever written into training our own kind of like agent who is like, it's supposed to be like a true representative of me.

23:08Matt Fitzgerald: Like it knows what I know. It shares my philosophy, communicates in my style. And we found like cool organic ways to integrate this, this voice into the things were like the mistake. I think a lot of people who were too reactive to AI, they would just do the most obvious thing and just try to like cram AI down their customers' throats. Whereas we are finding like subtle ways to integrate it into the products and services like our athletes are already paying for. So, for example, if you have one of our subscriptions now, you'll get like a weekly summary from Mind of Matt about your training. So he'll just go in and look at your training peaks calendar, break it down, look back, assess, and then kind of look ahead and really just do exactly what I would do with access to the same data.

23:59Matt Fitzgerald: But it's just automated and it's cool. And I'm also doing like videos now. It's called Sports Science Update. It's just like a short video series where Mind of Matt, my avatar, just breaks down a recent relevant sports science study. So, you know, you know, AI is very polarizing. And I think I'm losing fans just by using it. It's like, what am I going to do? Like, I have to. This is like and I still don't have it right for me and I never will. So, like, even when I do these Mind of Matt videos, like I script every word. um it's just i have like this virtual version of myself presenting it but um yeah having fun with

24:41Brian McKenzie: that and it seems to be uh well received so far how often does it make a decision based off

24:48Matt Fitzgerald: something you used to believe yeah i mean we've tried to like you know train that out of it because you know i you know i've written enough over enough time that i've contradicted myself more than once so it's like like if you ask about running form you know i used to think oh there's one right way to run and you need to learn that that way and now i'm like way over on the other side of that debate just like leave it alone unless you're like getting recurrent injuries and then then tweak it so like if someone asks a question about running form i would not want it to pull from say my book brain training for runners where i do teach people the right way to run i would want it to pull from pretty much everything i've written since then but so yeah the if you if you just just feed it in the raw material like from my books and blogs and stuff it it can do that but then you can do ongoing subsequent training it's a little bit you know this is this is like the reality of modern existence like you communicate with yourself like like i'll ask myself a question my ai self and then my ai self will answer and then i'll berate it for like not sounding like me yeah or whatever it's just yeah it's a little it's a little so my son is is a is big

25:58Brian McKenzie: into go-karting. His dream is to be a motorsports athlete. And it's a niche world and there's a few eminent minds in the world. And one of the preeminent engine tuners gave a masterclass on it and misspoke in that masterclass and then corrected himself after the fact. In the video, the YouTube got some comments on it. He put out a new post. The two words, everyone in the crowd knew what I was talking about, but I kept saying one when I meant the other. And I found that anytime I used AI to search on this topic, they're pulling from the transcript of his speech. And that made me realize like, oh, we're doing that too.

26:40Brian McKenzie: Like we have these Q and A's come in. Like I know we answered this four years ago and I wouldn't answer it the way I did that. But if someone pulled it and it pulled from my previous, like it's going to get it wrong. So there are several spots in my own personal life where I've realized it's drawing on old beliefs. What is your, like, what does that look like for your end for negating? I know you said you've worked on it to train it out of it, but how do you set parameters for what not to draw from?

27:08Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah. I mean, I mean, two things. First is like you can withhold what you feed into it in the first place to train the AI.

27:18Brian McKenzie: Does it not have access to web archives?

27:20Matt Fitzgerald: It's all manual for this type of code. This is not like Claude or anything. It's our own thing. So it's completely siloed. And you give up something with that because a lot of AIs, quote unquote, know everything. Mind of Matt does not know everything. It only knows what I have written about. It's actually more than 3 million words because I've written a lot. So there's that. But again, like I said, I've contradicted myself or just, you know, I've learned. And also even the science that I based some of my teaching, teaching science. So it's not even my fault sometimes when I'm wrong. You know, I'm just like, well, the science said then and now.

28:03Matt Fitzgerald: And so you can withhold what you train it on and then you can do the continuous training. And so you would just like, you know, pick a question like that, like, oh, I wonder if I should, you know, proactively change my running form for the sake of becoming more efficient and improving my performance. So I would I would ask that question myself. And then if it said anything other than leave it the F alone, you know, like your form can improve, but not by like, like, you know, just consciously overriding the way your body wants to move. If it gave any answer other than that, then I would say that's wrong.

28:44Matt Fitzgerald: Anytime a version of this question is asked in the future, I want you to answer it this way. And that will override anything that contradicts it or should.

28:52Scott Huettel: How long is setting up a process like this? I'm asking for selfish reasons. I'll tell you why. But what kind of process is that?

28:59Matt Fitzgerald: It's gotten a lot easier. And this is something, I mean, I'm not an expert on the AI industry, but it's been an interesting evolution. Like when the LLMs like first hit these large language models, you know, you would have, you know, entrepreneurs and, you know, opportunists in the business realm say, okay, we're going all in for this. Like we're going to become like an AI business because the thought was there's a huge barrier to entry. And, you know, every other business is going to be reliant on the, you know, the AI experts. So we need to go to them. That's changing so much now. You don't have to know crap about coding or anything.

29:39Matt Fitzgerald: You just have to be kind of smart and comfortable with computers, and you can make use of these tools. So I went through a service initially called Delphi to create an AI avatar. And Delphi, that's what they do. They have this whole setup to help coaches and teachers or whatever create AI avatars for themselves. And it's expensive. and like there's this whole process there's this learning curve you have to go through in order to get all set up but now you know nothing against delphi like it works pretty well but now you can just do it yourself so um i have two business partners at 80 20 endurance who've just really got and they're not computer guys but they did they're just smart and they've they've gotten into it so that they realized because we went down the road of like who should we pay and how much to create this mind of Matt thing.

30:30Matt Fitzgerald: And they looked around and they're like, you know what? I think we can do this ourselves, like, like on the cheap. So they took care of like, you know, like the initial kind of like setup thing. And then the training is almost instantaneous. It's literally just like drag and drag files into, you know, just drag and dump the files and, and you're up to speed.

30:53Scott Huettel: Well, I ask you're muted, Bracken, professional. So I want to say something real quick and then go to the floor is yours. But it's just for selfish reasons, like Bracken and I have our running public training plans. We run four different options. They're very budget friendly. They're$19.99 a month. But Bracken, this is a conversation we should have off mic. But it's like if you could provide a service with virtual feedback that uses our brains and you can charge double or triple for that where it's hands off. But we are giving you feedback on what we believe. that's a very scalable and very good business model and provides the athlete with more context and feedback from people they trust.

31:35Scott Huettel: It's like a kind of a brilliant idea for like a, like a affordable version of you for a lot of people. Anyways, that's why I'm asking because this could make a lot of sense for a lot of people who like subscribe to our$20 a month plan for more feedback. It's already in training peaks. It's already, you know, the data. It's It's very interesting. I'd never thought about that.

31:55Brian McKenzie: That's all. I just wanted to say that.

31:58Scott Huettel: You've done something to my brain here to make it go.

32:01Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah. It's a good way to go. I mean, I know some people are just like, AI is bad. Anyone who touches it is a loser. But, you know, okay. Some people feel that way. But, you know, I feel like there are, you know, there are responsible ways to use it. And, you know, I really stand behind the way we're using it because it really just does amplify my convictions and beliefs and philosophy. So what's bad about that?

32:32Brian McKenzie: What's a tool? Data centers. It's as bad as the hands that use it, right?

32:36Matt Fitzgerald: Yes.

32:37Brian McKenzie: You're certainly in a good spot where you have a profession based around pre-existing walls of text that you can feed it to. Rather than like we'd have to feed transcripts of podcasts where we hem and haw and say it depends a billion times and make mistakes.

32:53Matt Fitzgerald: Which you can do. But yeah, actually, what got me started down this road was, you know, there was this class action lawsuit that authors brought against Anthropic for, you know, pirating their books. There are certain fair uses for using copyrighted material to train an AI, but I don't understand the minutia of the laws, but Anthropic basically just stole hundreds of thousands of books, including 18 of mine. I knew nothing about this until I just got a notification from the law firm representing the authors. And I'd always thought of a book I had written 15 years ago as basically having no value.

33:40Matt Fitzgerald: But when I saw, well, apparently Anthropics saw value in it, things I wrote 15 years ago. And that's what got me the wheels turning. I'm like, well, I hate that my work was pirated, but why don't I turn this into something good by actually doing it myself? Using this new technology to extract the value that is latent in things I wrote a long time ago.

34:11Brian McKenzie: I did an interview with someone else's podcast a couple of months ago. and one of the topics was how have you changed as a coach? And the reality was that like, yeah, I'm probably the first fifth of my coaching career embarrasses me to this day. I'd really like to eradicate that and the people's experience with me that I was spewing this nonsense too.

34:32Matt Fitzgerald: Only a good coach would say that, by the way.

34:35Brian McKenzie: Or someone that never gets it right, but just is aware of it. But you just went through this big time. So what would you say, looking back on your, because you got to look back on your volume of work, how much of it do you stand by and love today? How much do you still agree with but would do differently? And how much you're like, oh, man, that's, I'd love to have not put that out there. Yeah, I will say, I mean, I am very self-critical.

35:03Matt Fitzgerald: And I think that's a good thing. It's just, that's conscientiousness. I think you can only set a high bar for yourself by being self-critical. Like, do we want to be perfect now or do we want to be continually improving? I want to be continually improving. So, yeah, there's no way around it. If that's the way you are, then you're going to look back. You're going to take yourself to task for falling short of that bar in the past. I will say when I look back, you know, like my core convictions have not changed at all. And, you know, like I've always been ruthlessly pragmatic, for example, as a coach.

35:47Matt Fitzgerald: So, like, I'm not trying to have like a cohesive theory of endurance training. You know, I just want -

35:56Brian McKenzie: That was part of my problem. I was.

35:59Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah. So I've always just felt like I would rather be contradictory and just be an effective problem solver than just be totally consistent all the time and dead wrong a third of the time because the whole model is just like –

36:16Scott Huettel: Does 80-20 not fall under that as a principle? That hasn't wavered, right? No.

36:22Matt Fitzgerald: And then for years before 80-20 was even a meme, that was my outlook. So yeah, even things like high volume, mostly low intensity training is the key. But even the belief that there is no perfect way, that there are rules you can't get away with breaking. There's a framework you have to conform to in order to reach your potential as an athlete, but there's lots of room for individuality, change, preferences, all that kind of stuff. So yeah, when I look at just kind of the core beliefs, my orientation toward the sport, philosophy, it's been very consistent all the way through. it's really that you know the things that embarrass me are only some of the like the you know just the specific beliefs that I was wrong about but I've also like always been like very very slow to like jump on a bandwagon or do like the bright shiny object thing so like I think I've consistently held a nice balance between being open-minded and willing to you know adopt new practices but being very selective and having kind of a rigorous filter on what I do, choose to incorporate.

37:41Matt Fitzgerald: On the coaching side, one of the reasons I actually waited a very long time to start coaching professionally in a serious way was that I know a lot of great coaches and they're just wired for it. They just have like this – because it really is a servant role And I never really thought of myself that way. I was like, I was on, I was team Matt Fitzgerald. So I, I'm like, I just, I don't know if I can care enough about other athletes really to be, to be as good as these other coaches I'm surrounded by. So, but, but when I decided to just go for it, I was experienced enough and self-aware enough to know that that was going to be a limiter for me.

38:23Matt Fitzgerald: And it was like, I just was a little bit bumbling in, in the soft skills of coaching early on. And I, and so I do have some regrets of that nature, just like not being like very skillful on the, on the people side, but have, have, have improved a lot. I think.

38:43Brian McKenzie: Kirk and Matt, I'm interested in this. What was your absolute worst take that you can remember ever publicly stating? Worst statement in a book, worst advice you gave an athlete, worst statement on a podcast. Do you have one you'd take back? Kirk, you first.

38:59Scott Huettel: Yeah, I want you to go first. I need some time. I do know I've said a thing or two through the years that Bracken has not included in the podcast. He's decided to delete it when editing. Do you remember them? Well, I can't say them because you didn't feel they were appropriate at the time. I can remember two instances. I was going to say, in our, what are we on, seven years?

39:19Brian McKenzie: I can only recall of maybe recall less than five times I've ever edited you. And at least half of those were because it would have been misunderstood.

39:31Scott Huettel: And you also could have done it to yourself. So I know there's been instances.

39:34Brian McKenzie: I've done me way more than you.

39:35Scott Huettel: Uh-huh. I have to think of, that's a great question. I'm trying to, I think I regret some of the things I've, I'm not like a people talker about her. And once in a while I've had takes where I will allow myself to elaborate how I really feel about somebody or something. And I wish I hadn't done that. I think that would be the one I haven't been like 400 meter. I regret being honest. I regret being honest about certain things. Sometimes it's best to keep your mouth shut. I still need to learn that from time to time. So I'm going to say that would be my vein. Not like a, I live and die by mile repeats.

40:06Scott Huettel: And if you don't do them, you're going to suck. Like I've never said anything like that. I'd take back

40:10Matt Fitzgerald: Matt. Anything come to mind? I'm the one I always go back to. I mean, I mean, there are things when And like I did something for the money and only for the money. Guys got to eat, Matt. Yeah, I know. But, you know, there's this Einstein quote, not one of the apocryphal ones, but an actual real bona fide Einstein quote where it was actually the last interview he ever gave. And he was giving advice to a college kid. and he said something to the effect of strive not to be a man of success but a man of value and when I saw that it drove a stake through my heart because like it just clarified a tension that had existed within me for my entire professional life and really even before like I was always like a very ambitious hungry go-getter type of person and I very much wanted to be a person of value especially as a writer I wanted people to say like, wow, you wrote such a magnificent article or book or whatever.

41:16Matt Fitzgerald: But also I wanted to be successful. I wanted people to know my name. I wanted to make money doing my thing. And you can have it both ways to a large extent. But if you don't have real clarity on the distinction between success and value, then you're going to be muddled and you are going to make some decisions you regret.

41:36Brian McKenzie: So, you know, I did struggle early on and, you know, my wife is not able to work and I support her.

41:44Matt Fitzgerald: So, yeah, there are times when I just kind of held my nose and did something for, you know, for the greenbacks. And in hindsight, I mean, it's easy in hindsight because you've already spent the money.

42:00Scott Huettel: Listen, in my post-bachelor days, I did a couple of those bachelor shows, Matt. I don't know if you know this. I mean, I was selling fricking white strips on my Instagram. I was, I mean, anybody, they'd be like, I'll pay you a thousand bucks to make one post. I'm like, yep, that's the best white strip I've ever seen. Put it on the feed. Oh, did I slut myself out for a while? And I don't regret that only because it was, it went in Rome, but Bracken, do you have one? Well, I hadn't thought of the business side of it.

42:28Brian McKenzie: I've been pretty discerning with who I partnered with. But the most recent thing I did is probably the one I've thought the most about. I helped promote and then commentate a race in Saudi Arabia. And I did it because the company who was putting it on was expanding their race series across Europe. And the Saudis had brought them in to do one there as a test to see could they expand into different markets. And I did it to get my foot in the door to hopefully be doing stuff in London and Paris and everything like that. And then after the fact, people were like, well, you know, like, is this different than live golf?

43:09Brian McKenzie: Is this different than sport washing? And I was like, well, I don't, I guess no. And then it turned out they never even released the race. They kept it as like a propaganda video for tourism in their area. So in, in, yeah, at least, well, yeah, that's why I did it.

43:25Scott Huettel: And I thought I was going to get paid more in the future. Well, I know, but at least, I mean, at least you got the greenback.

43:31Brian McKenzie: It was for, the race occurred at an old world Wisconsin type thing, like a recreation of an old Saudi village. And it's a horse racing or camel racing, like billion dollar track. And they used it as tourism to come there and they only showed it on regional airlines. It was very much propaganda for the Saudi government.

43:50Scott Huettel: How does OCR translate to an airplane ride local propaganda. They were trying to get people to come to that village. Oh.

43:59Brian McKenzie: And they're showing all the different things they do there. They do camel racing. They've done OCR. The Westerners have embraced it. Come on over. So I didn't know what I was doing, so I'm going to claim ignorance. But the Saudis are pretty solid in the human rights violations camp. So yeah, that's a weird one for me because it was one of those mistakes with the best of intentions. It doesn't make the mistake any better. But in terms of coaching, for sure, the thing I brought early into, this is the downside of having been a racer. I felt that it's fine. I repeatedly and loudly critique people who are reliant upon hydration and fueling before and during workouts early on, not even that early.

44:44Brian McKenzie: For a long time, I was like, you don't need to fuel before anything other than maybe a long run. You do not need to bring water on runs less than 90 minutes. You do not need during interval sessions to sip electrolyte mix and carbs during that. I never did in college. Our coaches frowned upon it. And that was one of the things I didn't challenge. And that is absolutely bad information to have given out. And I don't love that I said that repeatedly and with confidence. So those would be my two. I'm sure there are billions of others. I see people I regret more. like Darren Locker of Colorado. One of my first clients ever.

45:22Brian McKenzie: I, if I ever meet Darren, I have to give him a check. He, he, he overpaid for things, but the people I regret more that I've had a few things I shouldn't have said, but it's more of like, what did people get out of me?

45:36Scott Huettel: Okay. Matt, let's talk about your book. Let's do that. I heard it's a good to leave it to us to get 46 minutes into this thing. It's classic. Um, we talk about everything other than what we come to talk about usually. That's a good sign. That's a good sign. Some would say. But if you're doing a training Tuesday and it's about threshold training and you're 35 minutes in, still not getting to it, sometimes it can be misleading. Your book, Dying to Run. I forget the subcontext, but this is about kind of the journey back from COVID, during COVID, ultimately culminating with the – does it lead us all the way up to the 100K?

46:14Scott Huettel: Walk us through it. Why was this book the next book? And yeah, give me the context there.

46:20Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah. So the book really, it really, it tells a story that spans 48 hours. So from the day before an attempt to run a 100 kilometer desert ultra marathon in record heat with unresolved long COVID. So the book opens the night before the race. and then it ends the night after it. And then the broader story of my journey through chronic illness as a lifelong runner is kind of nested inside. But I wanted it to be, you know, I'm an avid reader, love fiction, and I wanted it to read like a war story. Like, you know, the reader, the unsuspecting reader just cracks open the front cover and they're just grabbed by the shirt and just like dragged into like a battle scene.

47:20Matt Fitzgerald: That's a new approach for you, isn't it? Well, I did it. I've done it in ways like Iron War is kind of like that. That's really a story. It's like a 280-page book about one race. And so it's similar when you open it in media race. to use a literary term. So it starts and you're in the race and it keeps coming back to it. And so the story of this epic battle between these legendary Iron Man Titans from the 1980s is the focus of it. But the whole backstory is kind of nested inside that narrative. And for me, as a writer and an athlete, to me, especially a longer race is a story. you know um and and and i think you know they can be gripping you know like thankfully i've i've never been to war so i don't i don't know what like a real a real battle is like but this is like in for everyday humans like this is as close as you get you know it just it certainly feels like life and life and death um and for me it was like you know the the word dying is in the title because what I attempted was risky to dangerous.

48:37Matt Fitzgerald: It was, frankly, it was dangerous what I did. To my knowledge, nobody who was as sick as I was in the way I was had ever attempted something like this before. I mean, three of the primary symptoms are chronic fatigue, which makes you not feel like exercising, exercise intolerance. I mean, that is the name of the symptom. So you just feel like you're dying when you do exercise. And then the worst of them all post exertional malaise, which just makes you like deeply, deeply regret your foolish decision to exercise despite symptoms number, number one and, and two. So it was like this kind of like reckless decision.

49:15Matt Fitzgerald: And, you know, the idea is like, you know, the readers like turning pages. I've talked to a lot of people who said, yeah, I read this in one day or two days. It's like, is this guy even going to live? So I want to like, to have that kind of like dramatic narrative pull.

49:29Scott Huettel: Well, you're like surprised. I wrote the book, so I did. Should have used a pen name. Yeah. Yeah.

49:36Matt Fitzgerald: But it's funny. You can suspend disbelief and pretend you don't know.

49:40Scott Huettel: I believe Diane's on round two of reading the book already, if I'm not mistaken. She's in it. She's in it. Yeah, she was there.

49:48Matt Fitzgerald: She was part of my crew.

49:49Scott Huettel: Yeah, that's right. That makes a lot of sense.

49:55Scott Huettel: So remind people how the race went for you. Can you do that? Yeah.

49:59Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah. I mean, it's like, I am in fact giving away the ending now.

50:02Scott Huettel: So, so just everybody knows the, I mean, our listeners know the ending most likely already.

50:07Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah. I mean, so yeah, for just like a little context. So I got COVID in February, 2020. I went out to Atlanta to watch the Olympic trials marathon. And then I ran the Atlanta marathon the next day, came home sick. And then, you know, the acute viral infection turned into this never-ending chronic illness purgatory. Long COVID is kind of like a species of chronic fatigue syndrome. Utterly life-changing for me. I had to stop running. I had to stop exercising. For a while, I had to stop working because I had pretty severe neurological symptoms. So my brain... Very foggy thinking, I assume. Yeah.

50:50Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah. Couldn't create a training plan. And, and so, you know, my, you know, I started running competitively when I was 11 in 1983. And it's really my, my whole life, you know, like, I was still, you know, I kicked ass in the Atlanta marathon. I think I finished 14th overall, and I was 48 about to turn 49. And so still getting after it, you know, I'm a coach, I'm a writer, I'm an entrepreneur, all in the endurance space. So it was like my everything. So just to lose it was just utterly devastating for me. And also on top of that, I just felt like garbage all the time. In the book, I liken it to being 30 % dead.

51:35Matt Fitzgerald: So you just start dying and then level off when you're 30 % dead. That's how you feel every day. But my dream was for this Hollywood comeback. I would eventually beat the disease, Lance Armstrong style. And then they'll get my fitness back. And then, and I had some unfinished business because I had DNF'd my first attempt to run 100 kilometers right before I got sick. And, and, and, and I just hated the fact that like, it wasn't my last race, but it was almost my last race was, was that just humiliating failure. And so my vision was, I'm going to, I'm going to get healthy. I'm going to get fit.

52:18Matt Fitzgerald: And then I'm going to finish my unfinished business. And then it was like one year, no progress. Two years, no progress. And when I got to three years, I think it just kind of sunk in. Like, I'm probably not going to get better. And if I'm going to finish unfinished business, I'm going to have to do it with this disease. Which was just like a paradigm exploding revelation for me. It's like, oh, I can still, I can be 30 % dead. And the disease can't stop me from at least trying. So that's what Javelina was. And, you know, it was an incredible journey. I gave myself 10 months to prepare for it, and I needed every day of those 10 months.

52:56Matt Fitzgerald: When I signed up for the race, as far as I knew, I could not safely run any distance and any duration at all. And I had to, like, go from, like, truly zero. And I was also, like, fully deconditioned at that point. I gained 40 pounds. and I had to go from that to being able to run 100 kilometers in what turned out to be 99 degrees Fahrenheit in the Sonoran Desert, which is bad for everyone. But one of the many symptoms of long COVID is dysautonomia, which includes compromised ability to thermoregulate. So I was just a sitting duck out there. I knew it was going to be the hardest thing I ever did.

53:36Matt Fitzgerald: I mean, the preparation, but then the race itself had, you know, two, two and a half full blown episodes of autonomic hyperactivity, like out on the race course, which is a form of shock. And it was just like this ugly shit show. But like, this is what I signed up for. Like, I knew it was going to be like borderline impossible. But I had like Diane and this like this eight, you know, eight different people flew various different distances to be there with me because I knew how much this meant to me. for sure it was going to be my last race. Cause like I was still very sick and you know, this couldn't possibly lead anywhere where it was just like, I just needed to do this.

54:16Matt Fitzgerald: Um, and hopefully survive. Um, and I did.

54:20Scott Huettel: Yeah. You had a pretty hard, all, I call it the all is lost scene. Like you watch a movie and it looks like the couple's definitely not getting together ever again. And then they somehow bring it back and they do at the end. You had a bit of that in your race though. You had an all, all is lost scene with like a loop to go or something. didn't you? Where not only like you were like lights out, like the body's shutting down on me. And then you basically had like, this is my words, echoing your words, but like an out of body experience where you like suddenly just like came back from the dead and then whomped to finish.

54:52Matt Fitzgerald: Is that accurate? How I remember you telling the story? Yeah, it happened twice because, you know, what's weird about this disease is that, You know, it's polysystemic, so it affects everything. But kind of the core of it is just an overreactive autonomic nervous system. So that's why you can't exercise. When you go out and jog a mile, your nervous system thinks you just sprinted a marathon. and all manner of, even things like heat or lack of sleep or like any type of like stressor is magnified a hundred times by this disease. So that's what I was dealing with out there. So that, yeah, these episodes of, but it's like flipping a switch.

55:40Matt Fitzgerald: So it's like, it's not like you have like a giant tumor growing inside your body. you know it's just like so in a way it's like almost like there's nothing really wrong with you it's like this switch is flipped in the wrong direction so any number of things could switch it back the way the way you know where it's supposed to be so that's what was happening with these episodes i had where i would start to like hyperventilate and my heart rate was like pinned at at absolute maximum even if i stopped moving like and it would just not come down so So like I'm hyperventilating and heart rate going 180 beats per minute, like at a slow walk.

56:18Matt Fitzgerald: I feel like I'm just like boiling inside my own skin. And it's just like this horrible. Yeah, you feel like you're like going through like acute narcotic withdrawal or something. Like it really is like a kind of shock state. But what's actually happening is you're trying to finish an ultramarathon. So you're like you're out on this race course. Like you have 40 miles to go. It's getting hotter by the minute. and like you just keep moving forward. So that happened. It is a multi-loop course. There are three loops. So I had these, the big episodes on loops two and three. And the third one, I was with my pacer and best friend, old high school running buddy, Mike, who had a SATCOM device with him, you know, just in case.

57:02Matt Fitzgerald: And, you know, he kept a poker face. You had a do resuscitate memo.

57:08Scott Huettel: Yeah.

57:08Matt Fitzgerald: he said i was this close to to making that call you know to to get you medevaced um out but but i rallied both times like there was this like this kind of long gradual hill on each lap and laps two and three when i and there's a there's an aid station right at the top of the hill so both both of those the second and third laps when i got to the top of the hill was able to you know just get some cooling measures and some nutrition and just like take a little break and a reset, I was able to rally both times. So it was just weird. You know, my friend, Mike, he said he was in shock because he actually ran ahead of me to get help in the last lap.

57:50Matt Fitzgerald: And then he comes back, he's just sprinting back from the aid station toward me, and I come charging toward him running. And he had left me almost like just doubled over on the side of the trail. He's like, are you, are you messing with me, dude? Like what's, what's going on here? Yeah. And I was running, you know, nine minute miles, like the last 10 miles to the finish. Um, it was just like, yeah, it was, it was, it was crazy. You know, it's funny. Like I, I averaged, I think like just under 12 minute miles, like for the, for the full distance, I didn't run a single 12 minute mile the entire day.

58:23Matt Fitzgerald: Like, like I, when I was either like fine and running eight and a half to nine minutes per mile, or I was just death marching, you know, 21, 22, like nothing in between. Like in a race at that distance, anyone who's done an ultra knows like you have highs and lows, but this is like extreme bipolar, like very, well, the highs were just kind of normal, but the lows were just, you know, borderline medical emergency lows.

58:52Brian McKenzie: So everyone knows your race. I mean, anyone knows in a long ultra, their race can go off the rails. But the way you described your lead into this kind of hit me because it resonates with what I'm doing. I have my first 100K in nine months. I'm not currently prepared to do it. But I'm in the place where one run I'm terrified, the other run I'm dreaming about winning it. But that's the thing that gets you through training is like, but what if it goes well? When it goes right? By the time I get there, I'm going to be So you didn't have that portion of like, it sounds like you never had a, this could go well thing.

59:32Brian McKenzie: It was, you went in knowing this will be worst case scenario. Like anyone else's worst case scenario in the race is probably a good day for me. So I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around training for 10 months, going to the start line without like that, like dreamers hope that, Hey, I could, this could be my day.

59:52Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah. I mean, forget about the race. I told people, because this came out of the blue, I didn't tell anyone. I was noodling on this idea. And then registration opened for Javelina at midnight on New Year's Eve. So this is 2023 going into 2024. So I just stayed up till midnight, registered right at the beginning. And then the next morning, emailed my family and closest friends and say, here's what I've gone and done. And I told people then, I think I have about a 10 % chance of making it to the start line. I wasn't even thinking about it. So I expected to fail. And I knew that in the process of failing, it was going to be like torture.

1:00:36Matt Fitzgerald: It was just going to be like a suffer fest. So that was all baked in. It was what I was signing up for.

1:00:42Brian McKenzie: Have you ever done anything remotely similar to expecting to fail a competition from the jump? Like day one of training, have either of you, have you ever had a block of training where you're like, yeah, this can't work? Prior to this, anyone? No.

1:00:57Matt Fitzgerald: No. I mean, that's the whole idea though. Because like, you know, everyone walks around with it. Not everyone, but almost every athlete walks around with this paradigm. It's like, I have to be healthy to get fit and I have to be fit to perform. Like that's, that's, that was my mindset for three years. And it was only, I went to crew for a friend at Javelina in 2023. And, you know, I would go to races when, when I, you know, was in, in the depths of long COVID and not be able to participate and have like, just excruciating FOMO in those environments. but it was something about like, I was like at that, at that point, I think that's when it really started to sink in, in like my body, not just my head that I was not going to recover.

1:01:39Matt Fitzgerald: I was not going to get better. So I'm standing there just thinking like, you know, I couldn't even pace my friend. Like I couldn't even run a mile with my friend. I just had to like stand back there at, at, you know, at the, at the tent and just wait for him to come around. And it was just something about that moment where I, where like, I just put a needle through that notion that I had to be healthy. And for me, in the book, I talk about Charles Barkley's last season, where the legendary NBA basketball player announces his retirement before the 2020-2021 season, and then promptly ruptures his quadriceps tendon on the third game of the season.

1:02:20Matt Fitzgerald: And initially, he's like, oh, well, that kind of sucks. But I had already decided to retire. So, you know, it just moves out the timeline. But the more he sat with it, he's like, well, my last memory of playing basketball, the sport that has meant everything to me for so long is being literally carried off the court. And he couldn't live with that. So he ends up waiting for the last day of the season. He's he's he's had surgery. He's still in a medical brace. And he just tells his player, I'm playing. He tells his coach, I'm playing. And he rips off the brace, goes in, and just hobbles up and down the court for six minutes.

1:02:55Matt Fitzgerald: Like, he's a shell of his former self. He doesn't play well. People criticize him. Oh, you're tarnishing your legacy. But afterward, he's like, I needed that. Like, I just needed to write a slightly different chapter. Rather than having the chapter written for me, like, I just, you know, closure is the word. So it wasn't about, like, he didn't get the Disney version, you know? He didn't rip the brace off and lead his team to the NBA championship. Athletically, there was nothing to it. But in terms of the story of his journey as an athlete, he meant everything. And that's what I was looking for.

1:03:30Matt Fitzgerald: So I expected to fail. I knew it was going to be a suffer fest. But even when I woke up on New Year's morning and remembered what I had done before I went to bed, I felt like I had won already because I was just giving a double middle finger to this disease. and just like doing it on my terms and being okay with crashing and burning.

1:03:51Brian McKenzie: So what if you had though crashed and burned, like definitively? What if you had on loop one had an episode, it doesn't resolve in your pull off course. Would that have given you what you sought?

1:04:05Matt Fitzgerald: Yes.

1:04:06Brian McKenzie: Really? Just by getting there, you were, the middle finger stays up.

1:04:10Scott Huettel: I feel like I can relate to that just to chime in, because if you put yourself in your position, Charles Barkley's position like not knowing it's your last time when it's your last time is unsettling and unfair right and that's what you're talking about that's what Charles Barkley is experiencing is this I didn't know I couldn't process and internalize how I felt like I needed to write my soul and so even making a decision to go back and race whether it's a failure or not at least you're choosing it to be your last time in a sense versus it choosing you that's how it feels to me anyways, taking some sort of control and being able to appreciate the weight of the situation, knowing where you're at because of it.

1:04:55Scott Huettel: Right. Am I making sense? That's how I look at it.

1:04:57Matt Fitzgerald: Yes. Yeah. I mean, the way I look at it is that like how, how something, how an endeavor like that ends is like just a snapshot. It's like, it's, it's literally one, like crossing the finish line, oh, I succeeded. That's one second in a 10-month journey. Does it really matter? In the book, I say, I take it even one step further. If I had woken up in the hospital the day after the race and people had said, Matt, you made it to six inches away from the start line and collapsed, you didn't finish. It would have made no difference to me at all. I know for most people, that's like, oh my God, that's heartbreaking, so close.

1:05:37Matt Fitzgerald: It's like, no. Everything about the journey is the same day one was the same regardless of how it ended the first month was the same the entire race was the same like only only the snapshot at the end is different who cares like you know like there's a lot of like stoic philosophy in because it was those ideas were really a lifeline for me well even just throughout the entire ordeal with long covid and like you know those ideas are out there and you know they sound they make great bumper stickers and t-shirts But if you really internalize those ideas, that's exactly how you feel. Like, it's like, all I care about is, is the parts I control.

1:06:16Matt Fitzgerald: Like what kind of man I show up as for, for a challenge this great. And so I didn't give a crap about, there was so much I couldn't control. Like, even when it was like, I saw the weather forecast before the race, it's like, oh my God, like this is, this is going to absolutely kill me. But I didn't care. I was in a way I was like, bring it on. like, you know, anything that makes it harder. Great. Wonderful. But I really honestly felt that way. And I, and I had to, because again, like I really did expect to fail. So yeah.

1:06:47Scott Huettel: What I was going to ask you actually just sort of answered. So I didn't need to sort of try to interrupt, but it was about the control piece, meaning like COVID, long COVID, chronic fatigue labeled with it. By the way, the whole chronic fatigue labeled is an interesting one. I could go down a rabbit hole with you about that diagnosis because it doesn't always address the root cause. So there's many reasons that are not, but, um, the whole taking control over like taking control of potentially failing is still taking control of something when you probably felt like very out of control with almost everything in your life.

1:07:16Scott Huettel: Right.

1:07:16Brian McKenzie: Like, even if

1:07:17Scott Huettel: I take control and bury myself while doing it, at least I'm making choices and decisions. And like, I don't know if that had to be, I feel like that would be important to me in your shoes. It would be liberating. It would feel, um, I don't know, like new in a sense after not having control for years? Was that part of it for you?

1:07:35Matt Fitzgerald: Yes. Yeah. I mean, it really is. It was taking to an extreme the way I've always felt. Long before I got sick, I used to get injured all the time. So I would just be scrambling to make it to the start line of a race healthy. I would do races with an injury or like less fit than I wanted to be because I'd had setbacks. So, you know, I just learned to take pride in doing the best I could by controlling the things I could. But, you know, I coach the same way. Like, you know, I tell athletes, like, I don't really separate this process into like going well and not going well. To me, it's like, it's all one process and it's never perfect.

1:08:24Matt Fitzgerald: I'm just always focused on the problems. Sometimes they're small, sometimes they're, they're gigantic. So, you know, I just, uh, you know, I would just take pride in, in showing up at the start of the race feeling like, wow, that was an absolutely disastrous build. You know, like I am not where I want it to be and it's going to make it a lot harder, but like I am, I'm going to embrace the challenge of, you know, making, making the best of that. So I just had lots of experience with, with, with that kind of like stoic mindset at, at that level. The only thing that was different about the Javelina thing is like, I really took that mindset to its like absolute limit.

1:09:05Scott Huettel: Um, we have like three or four minutes left. We have a little bit more limited window today. Uh, just because I have two athletes, I've had a number of athletes on Javelina over the years, but, um, I got two athletes racing in two weeks. I think it's on halloween day javelina uh this year you do too party time well i got one running his first 100k um and then another running 100 there i'm pretty familiar with the course i've had race debriefs and previews but why don't you just they're gonna feel real special give my the two athletes i work with in bracken what is your athlete running 100 the 100 mile what's your best advice for the javelina course, uh, and race day for them?

1:09:44Got any, um, yeah.

1:09:47Matt Fitzgerald: Walk before you have to, you know, there are, I mean, it's a, it's a fast course, you know, by, by ultra standards. I mean, they're like the winner last year averaged under seven minutes per mile for a hundred miles.

1:09:59Scott Huettel: Like, yeah.

1:10:00Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah. On sand. Um, but for most of us, like, you know, we can't, we can't run that far nonstop. So, you know, swallow your pride and think about ahead of time, like opportunities for strategic kind of power hiking. Because that was a revelation for me, you know, I finished the 100k in about 12 hours, which is like, I was like 17th place in the entire race, like after the entire freaking shit show that happened before that. And that made me realize, wow, you can actually do quite a bit of walking and still be competitive there. So, um, you know, you can get into like pacing and cooling measures and all that.

1:10:41Matt Fitzgerald: But, um, but I think, you know, that, that's right. I, this is really a pacing focused answer, but like thinking about how you can strategically, um, mix, you know, power hiking with running throughout the race, um, to, you know, to

1:10:56Brian McKenzie: minimize your completion time is smart. Would you run a single step uphill above 5 % grade? Well, if you weren't trying to win the race, if you're trying to just run your best feeling race.

1:11:09Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah. For a hundred mile, maybe not. For a hundred K, yes. But it really depends quite a bit on what level of fitness you're bringing to the race. So I learned a lot from the first one. When I trained last year to go back to do the 100 mile, I did a lot more. I played around with different ratios of walking and running and different paces to try to like find like the optimal balance. And so that's going to be different for and I coach that way, too. Now it's like, let's experiment a bit with like different different ratios, different paces to find it. So there's no blanket answer to that question, but it is the kind of thing you need to be willing to think about.

1:11:57Matt Fitzgerald: It's like, oh, man, I can run up this. It doesn't mean you should.

1:12:00Scott Huettel: How do you feel about – I had one pretty in-depth conversation with an athlete about the taking advantage of the cooler morning temperatures because the inevitable heat is going to win and slow you down. How do you feel about a strategy of – I'm not calling it being aggressive early. That's not what I'm implying. but allowing yourself some leeway to press the gas a little more when the conditions are better. How do you feel about the potential of that strategy? If you're truly racing the event, which this athlete is racing.

1:12:32Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah, I think that can work as long as it's like just a slight.

1:12:40Scott Huettel: That's what we talked about. Yeah.

1:12:42Matt Fitzgerald: Slight emphasis. Yeah. Don't go crazy. I think there's actually more to be gained in being the guy or gal who slows down less when it does get hot. I think that's where you're going to see more of a potential competitive advantage.

1:12:57Brian McKenzie: I think it's not that you asked me, but I think you don't rev the pace. You rev the fueling when it's cool. I love that. That's my take. Your body will take it better. I don't think getting ahead on mileage is a real thing past seven hours or so.

1:13:12Scott Huettel: You see people do it with totally different events, but like in WTM, when you have your hot laps early in the day, there's like a place where it makes sense to run harder for some athletes. Okay. We don't have time to go down this. I'm cutting off my own question. The last thing. Get ahead on fueling. Get wet, stay wet. There you go. Get wet, stay wet. Last question is where does it benefit you most for people to go buy your books and where should they do that?

1:13:37Matt Fitzgerald: Yeah. So I am not only the author, but the publisher of Dying to Run. So I have a small publishing imprint called 8020 Publishing. So we would like it very much. You can buy it anywhere because we're distributed through Simon & Schuster. But if you go to 8020books.com, 8020books.com and purchase there, that would be great. And it's available, I should say. It's available in print, e-book, and audio formats.

1:14:05Scott Huettel: And I haven't read it, but I'm just speaking secondhand from what I've heard from the people who have. And I said at the beginning, I just want to sell you some books because I want to help. And they both had claimed it is the best work you've done. And they were pretty much gripped to the book from the beginning and blew through it. And it's a very good read. So that is not you saying it. It's other people saying it. So if you're just go buy the book, go buy the book. I'll buy the book. I'll do audio version though, if that's okay. But yes.

1:14:35Matt Fitzgerald: Yes, it's okay. Okay, cool. Thank you for your business. Thank you.