Training Tuesday: Mailbag!

0:09Welcome to The Running Public with Bracken Crocker and Kirk DeWint. It's Tuesday, folks, and you know what that means. Training Tuesday.

0:15Brian D. McKenzie: We are going to take every rabbit hole, follow tangents, use useless metaphors, get lost in the weeds. This is Training Tuesday.

0:33When 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.

0:51Brian D. McKenzie: Kirk, we're back in our happy place, you and I, this morning. It feels so good to be nuzzled up, Bracken. This is a Tuesday morning. We have caffeinated drinks in hand and we're starting our day with each other. That's very nice. Very sentimental of you to say. What are you drinking this morning caffeine wise? Celsius powdered drink. Yeah, you're not a coffee guy, are you? I should just do it, but no, I have an aversion to coffee. Because it tastes bad objectively. And because of growing up around teacher's breath all over me with coffee breath. It just made me never want any part of that. You know the response, like some things, like if you push on a bruise, it hurts, but in a good way sometimes, or like a sore muscle, it hurts in a good way.

1:39I feel that same way about coffee. It tastes bad. Objectively, coffee tastes bad, but in a good way. And I don't know how else to describe it.

1:47Brian D. McKenzie: It's a palate-based, masochistic approach for you? Yeah, I think it is. But that's you across the board That's kind of true And your bargain brand Celsius powder drink Is that you across the board? Celsius is no bargain brand The powder is the bargain The powder is the bargain Plus I'm a diluter Of most drinks I like things slightly watered down Sweet things I should say I like sweet things less sweet so with the powder i can mix it however i want it smart yeah all right i want to open with something i don't we have a q a here we have a lot of screenshots way too many to get to so we've got to do our best to get through them which won't happen but i do want to open with a quick psa kirk and you don't i'll give you two guesses what this is going to be we haven't talked about this oh uh well then it's not what i thought it was going to be what was your first guess oh you're going to talk about poop?

2:50Brian D. McKenzie: It is on the front burner right now. It is front and center. You can't get away from it. No. In fact, yeah, this is not a poop PSA. Okay. No, I have no idea. Go ahead. Coming back from injury and doubting fitness. This is going to sound bad. It sounds reflective of me and maybe it is, but I have two athletes myself who are coming back from injury and have a few messages from people who are coming back from injury, extended time off, whether it's surgery or sickness or just life, but missing more than I would say two months of consecutive training. And the fear is uniform across the board that this is going to take forever to get my fitness back.

3:34Brian D. McKenzie: And so I just wanted to say from someone who has been there and then you have as well. So you can add to this, obviously. Two things are true. The first is that if you've been cross-training intentionally throughout, fitness comes back way quicker than you expect it to every single time. Maybe not at first, but then all of a sudden you're just feeling good again. And number two, you do not have to rush the process with risky training. It's almost like you have all this interest you've saved up over years that you can draw upon, but at the same time, you're a newbie. And so newbie gains exist at the beginning again.

4:15Brian D. McKenzie: So you get to do vanilla, smart, safe training early to avoid any sort of backslide. And you also are going to get fit really fast. You're going to be rusty, but you have fitness waiting as soon as the running comes back around, which will happen quicker than you expect. So everyone who's in that boat, A, I feel for you. B, it gets better and it gets better faster. Preach, I couldn't agree with everything you said more. Are you talking to some specific people who need to hear this right now? No, I talked with those people this week. We just had these conversations on Zoom calls. And anytime you hear something more than once, you notice the trends and you just feel like there's a bunch of people out here who need to hear it.

4:57Brian D. McKenzie: And unfortunately, at any given point, there's a lot of injured runners or just athletes in this world, but people go through catastrophic injuries and come back just fine. And just recently NFL kicked back up and there are a bunch of superstars coming off of ACL, ankle like dislocation, Achilles stuff. And they all did pretty well this weekend when people were not expecting them to be back so soon. So just modern medicine combined with modern training and really good protocol means you're going to get your fitness back quick. So don't rush it. Well, I know it doesn't feel like it to the listeners because of, you know, I deal with my niggles and naggles, but I haven't been really knocked out for a few years, but I dealt with a decade of in and out.

5:40I didn't go a year without an injury that sent me back for six weeks to five months, depending on what the injury was. And I've experienced that exact same thing without question. And I've worked with a handful of athletes now who've gone through it and the discipline with the cross training, if you're able to, of course, if it's not setting back your injury recovery, what happens is you start to run again and you feel like, oh my God, I've lost it all. The legs tighten. You get sore from your first 20 minute run back and you're like, what on earth? And then when you tie up or when things go south, they go south really quick on a run and you think I've lost it all.

6:18Well, what you've lost is your efficiency and your resistance to impact. What you haven't lost is your heart and lungs ability to pump blood and breathe in oxygen. You just need to be reminded. And so you can go from feeling, holy smokes, I'm out of shape to once you get those systems back in place, a little biomechanical efficiency, your resistance to impact, you can turn a corner in like three to five weeks back to running where suddenly you're like, holy smokes, I'm not as far gone as I thought. And you're going to get a glimmer of hope even that quickly, even on minimal mileage. I've talked about the sunburn theory.

6:53I don't know how many times now, but like if you haven't been in the sun in a while, it doesn't take a lot of exposure to get burnt and get a tan. And that's why micro size workouts and not risking it. When you come back, you're going to respond to that stuff so quickly. Like you could do a four by three minute interval session for your first one back and see huge gains from a micro size session like that. Cause you haven't been in the sun, right? So you respond to anything and everything at that stage. It's almost a phase I wish I missed because now I feel like I have to do 15 by three minutes to see any sort of benefit.

7:24Whereas those are kind of the good old days. Coming back from injury, doing three by three minutes as a workout and getting better from it. How lucky. Anyways, not to ramble, but yes, you're exactly right. And I've experienced it

7:38Brian D. McKenzie: many times. It's the only time where linear progression is at all even remotely reliable in endurance training. It's true. You can just add a rep each week for a while and get better each. And you just talked about what moves the needle fitness-wise. If you're going out the door now, what is the least amount of miles you're going to get in? Say on a recovery day, what's your shortest run you're going to do? I mean, eight at minimum. What's your most average run? 10. When I put my shoes on, I average 10 miles a run. I was thinking about you this weekend because I just did a 10-mile long run. Last week, I did 11.

8:12My long run has been 12 miles recently, so they're not much different.

8:16Brian D. McKenzie: But I'm getting so much fitness from that run and you're like, I'm going to recover from yesterday. Eight miles, 10 miles is not doing anything for you fitness improvement wise. You're maintaining and maybe adding like a few drops of sand into your hourglass, right? I'm changing the size of my hourglass every time I do it. I miss those days. Right. I'm trying to figure out my interval session for this after we get off this call. And I'm like, how much volume do I need to move the needle? I'm like, I'm going to do an 800 and 400 session. I'm like, well, I got to do at least 800, eight 800s. And I got to do at least eight 400s because I got to get six miles of quality if I'm even going to maintain my fitness right now.

8:58And I'm like, what have I done to myself? Not that I wish I was coming back from injury, but it is sort of a rose tinted glasses phase if you can look at it that way. Anyways. No. Just the TSA.

9:12Brian D. McKenzie: It's a reminder. Meet your fitness where it is. It'll springboard real quickly. All right. We're about to disappoint the listeners, but we're going to touch on it very quickly. Okay. Because I don't think we're going to touch on it as in-depth as most are hoping, but Bracken is going to tell you how someone shats themselves in a high rocks and what happened in order to do so. Your theory is good. We don't need to necessarily dive into the who's right and wrong and da-da-da, but what do you think happened this weekend at High Rocks? And explain it for there's going to be some people who somehow haven't found the right corner of the internet yet that don't know what happened.

9:52Brian D. McKenzie: Yeah, this is not going to be the take anyone expects out of what happened this weekend. This weekend, Joanna won High Rocks. Is it Beijing? Beijing, yeah. Beijing. And early in the race, pooped herself explosively. Continued on, won the race. And since then, there's been just an absolute meltdown online about it. And we're actually not here to talk about any of that. I'm going to talk about what the takeaway is for all of you. And that is sodium bicarb. Now, I don't know Joanna, but this is the second time it's happened in High Rocks. And both times it happened relatively early in the race. Now we've seen this happen in for sure.

10:37Brian D. McKenzie: Marathoning occasionally triathlon, but it's when there's typically it happens. People lose control of their bowels when they have taken themselves to the limit, when they've worked hard enough for long enough. And that's why triathlon and marathoning is kind of the sweet spot for pooping yourself. You occasionally see it in cross country races. That's about as short of a race as you ever see it in, but you have to work. Or just the length of the race. Like if you're competing for 12 hours in a triathlon, you may have to go to the bathroom at some point just by proxy. Correct. But there's usually like a duration and an intensity that intersect where you just wear your body completely down and your nervous system is fried and your body just like loses control.

11:20Brian D. McKenzie: And it's usually at the end of a race. Well, both of these instances happened front half of the race, which means it's not that issue. People can say what they want. And I haven't talked to Joanna about this, but the fact that this happened to two different people at similar stages in the race tells me everything that I think we need to know about this, which is that this is a sodium bicarb issue. So sodium bicarbonate is probably the best form of legal cheating in endurance sports right now. I think it's caffeine, sodium bicarbonate, and super shoes. Those are the three things that will make you noticeably better the moment you use them.

12:05Brian D. McKenzie: Would you say that that's fair? I can't argue with any of those. Okay. Legal things. Yeah, legal cheating. Yeah. When super shoes go wrong, they beat your legs up or they work against you with the stride or you get to the point where you can't optimally use them anymore and they start working against to you and you get sore or slower or blisters or IT band pain or Achilles pain or something like that. When caffeine goes wrong, you get jittery or your heart rate's too high. You could lose consciousness in theory if you're way too lightheaded before a race and you happen to bend over or stand up fast, but that's pretty rare.

12:47Brian D. McKenzie: It's usually that you are just too jittery and maybe you have a little bit of gastric emptying from the diuretic effect of it. But when sodium bicarbonate goes wrong, it explodes out of you with the force of a thousand suns. Have you experienced this or just secondhand knowledge? This is all secondhand knowledge. And it happens typically earlier than later. And having talked to a few athletes who it has gone wrong with, you're typically fine once it's done. And that's what we've seen from the individuals in high rocks when that happens early is you continue on and actually race pretty well because it's gone.

13:28Brian D. McKenzie: If you're sick or you're having true incontinence, it's going to get worse. But with this, it's kind of like a relief, like, oh, got that out. Okay, let's get back down to business, which no one's ever said in the middle of a bad bout of incontinence, right? So to me, it says it's sodium bicarbonate and it's a good reminder to everyone that there are downsides to using sodium bicarb and there are no upsides worth messing with the proper dosage that you have absolutely dialed in in training. And that little things like extra pre-workout on race day, extra caffeine on race day, extra nerves on race day, extra tummy issues on race day will take your perfect line of sodium bicarbonate and it can move it up a little bit.

14:21Brian D. McKenzie: So don't do the classic thing, which is increased dose on race day. Account for nerves and caffeine and things. And if anything, back off slightly or hold steady on race day. That's as far as I want to go into any of these issues today. just about uh just surprising it happened to someone who on the outside is a very dialed athlete and one of the faces of the sport you would think that these things have been sorted out beforehand you would imagine so obviously it can happen to anybody now the decision you make after it happens to you you need to make the right decision obviously which wasn't made by joanna uh to stay on course i'm not even touching this i'll gladly touch it we don't perk we don't need to get into it.

15:07But yeah, this is all on her. She needed to step off course without question. You can argue her determination and grit and perseverance to push on and all of that is a fraction of the pie, which is your responsibility and get the heck off course. Are you kidding me? But what I think about this is how do you come back from this? And you and I had a nice little We'll talk before we hit the record button about it. We have these candid conversations sometimes before you guys, your ears, here's what we have to say. And you had said you have two options. You either crawl into a cave and die and this is it, or you step forward and own the heck out of it.

15:49And like, it's kind of your identity in the sport now because nobody's going to forget. And so you have good spirits about it. You apologize about it. You take ownership about it. And then you sort of make light of it the best you can. moving forward because she's a professional athlete. She makes her living in this space. And to have something like this happen to you, you have one of two routes, but the route isn't apathy. The route isn't finger pointing or I stand by what I did. The route is apology and ownership or disappear, but there's no in between.

16:24Brian D. McKenzie: Do you agree with that? Yeah. And when it's your job, you either change careers or you're going to have to weather the storm. I feel it's going to be a rough patch either direction she chooses to go. I'd be on the first rocket ship to the moon if I had to choose. You know, Spartan Race would have been a great vein for this to happen, and nobody would have known. I'm sure it's happened. Spartan Race, rolling mud, problem solved. I peed my pants on course. Who hasn't? I peed my pants on the start line. Who hasn't? Okay, that seems avoidable to me. Not if you're like, oh, man, you get held in the corral for a while, and then you're like, I got to pee a little.

17:04And then you peed on the start line.

17:06Brian D. McKenzie: Yeah, you were in black compression shorts. Nobody can tell. It's just a little. It's just the brace nerves. It's not like you're completely unloading. Sure, a little bit. Just looking at you. You know how many women pee themselves at the start line before they get going? No, I don't. All of them. All of them. I'm not buying all. I'm not saying it's 100%. I can't buy that. All right. We can move on. sodium bicarb come with a warning label do you know that's funny so when it first hit the craves i have a big old pack of martin martin sodium bicarb but they were all out of the typical weight class dosages dosages because everybody gets the 150 to 160 pounder and the 160 to 170 pounder but you find not many people get like the 180 to 190 pounder whatever it's not the realm of athlete well that's all they had available so i bought it thinking like yeah okay but i've been too scared to try.

17:58So I've had it for a year and I've never tried the too high a dose. And I could see that happening to me.

18:04Brian D. McKenzie: Yeah. I mean, it's the kind of thing I think you find the limit from below. You start with a 60, 70 % dose and you move up. The other thing is that the brands aren't created equal. So you can have a total tolerance to one brand and you switch brands, you have a different reaction. So it's, you switch sponsors or you switch sources and things change. And But anyway, it's the kind of thing you got to test out several times and then you make a safe choice on race day. Yeah, I bet Joanna hasn't slept a minute since that race. Let's move forward. Questions and answers. Our favorite. In the last three weeks, I have 28 screenshots.

18:45I don't know what to make of this. People are out of their minds. People got so many questions. Some of these are long. So there are three parters. So maybe in the 28 screenshots, I've got 20 questions.

18:54Brian D. McKenzie: okay um well let's let's do our worst all right should people be allowed to send a three-part question is that more efficient or is that more obnoxious well they don't know it's a three-part question because they don't know you know i can only screenshot so much of a question oh i thought you meant there were three different questions in it no like the question is so long it takes three screenshots on my phone to capture it all oh wow yeah i think yeah you know what let's talk about this real quick because people's questions often border on like consult call type questions. Like if you have to write more than three sentences to five sentences, maybe book a consult call.

19:32Brian D. McKenzie: Let's say a tweet. Is it 153 characters or less? Yeah. So if a question requires 16 different background information, qualifiers, et cetera, it's probably a consult call thing, not a Q &A question. So anyways, CJ asks, one screenshot, CJ. Thank you, CJ. Hope this message finds you both well. Have more of a coaching question for the pod. The broader version, what do you look for in an athlete and their training to determine if they are ready for a given distance of ultra marathon? The specific version, what minimums, time or distance, would you suggest for common ultra distances, 50K, 100K, 100 mile, for average weekly mileage, long run, weekend mileage, if you are doing back-to-back long runs or doubles?

20:19Thank you in advance for your insights. Kind regards, CJ. Great question. Very specific and to the point. So basically, he's asking total weekly mileage and long run minimums for ultra distance athletes. He's going 50K to 100 mile.

20:34Brian D. McKenzie: Yeah. I don't have numbers for you because ultras are weird in that most people aren't racing. And so if completion is your goal, you can go couch to 50K if you're comfortable walking the vast majority of it and playing with missing cutoffs. So I actually don't, it's probably harder for me to do that than a marathon, 50K, 50 miler, 100K, 100 miler. It'd be harder for me to put numbers on it. I mean, I could, but there'd be an example of someone who did it without ever touching that, that would prove me wrong. So I think it's more of you need to be ready. You need to know you can handle certain time on feet in training.

21:17Brian D. McKenzie: If you're going to run a 50K, you've got to be able to go three hours in training without it being a big chore. If you're going to go 50 mile, I think you've got to be able to handle a four to five hour run in training or workout in training without it being like, I'm done for a week. If you're going 100 mile, I think you've got to be able to do a six to eight hour training day. I'm not saying you have to do them, but you have to be able to. You have to know I could go six to eight hours on the trail today and I'm not going to pay for it for a week. I'll have three or four days of rough, but I'll be back training by next weekend for sure.

21:50I have more of like hours you have to know you can do so that you can go slower than that and walk a bunch and be destroyed by the end of an ultra.

21:58Brian D. McKenzie: I agree with those numbers almost exactly. Really? Yeah. Three hours of moving with purpose. This isn't like, oh, I'm dawdling. I'm not saying you're working hard, but you're moving with purpose and the intent is to cover ground. Three hours for a 50K, four to five for 100K, and then I'd say closer to eight, but six to eight for 100 miler, depending. or if the way your back-to-back long runs work, you could finagle with those numbers. But those are the exact numbers and parameters I've used. In fact, I got some people running the Killington Ultra this weekend, which talk about a race. And I almost look at that as closer to like a 50 mile than a 50K considering the terrain and obstacles.

22:39So they're going off for five hours. That's been our pinnacle once every three weeks or four weeks. It's been five to six hours on foot. You got to do it. Um, so I agree with that. So was that recommendation for the competitive athlete, meaning you're really trying to thread the needle on the race? Or is that just no matter across the board? I say it would be pretty much across the board because the competitive athlete is going to fill those hours more intensely. Yep.

23:04Brian D. McKenzie: So I would look at me, my, an example of me from Killington, my first year is actually a really good example for this. So I was prepping for a three-hour race. Heaven forbid it goes off course four hours. I ended up crossing in 2.59. So it was bang on three hours. And I worked up to three and a half hour long hill session. I did multiple between two and a half and three and a half hours to prepare for a three-hour race. And most of them had some sort of intense aspect to those workouts. And I ended up doing two laps out there. So like the competitive side of me was dialed in three and a half hours, comfortable with that distance for a three hour race that I was going to run harder than I was training.

23:51Brian D. McKenzie: The unprepared side of me got up to three and a half hours and the race took me 744 when I added in the second lap. So I didn't get to half my intended duration, but because I had done it hard, I was able to survive and hold on. And my pace dropped off a bunch, but I had fitness and resistance to impact from all the hills I hammered downhill that year. That I held on for double the distance I was prepared for. With absolutely atrocious fueling and racing the first three hours all out. so if that worked for that it's a pretty good representation that if you're going for a seven to ten hour race and you can go three to four intense in training you're probably going to be okay you won't you won't do your best in it but you'll finish and i think that's kind of how i look at these things i didn't have a goal i didn't run one 20 mile run i didn't run a i think the longest I went on a single run was like 15 or 16 that block.

24:52And you did suffer immensely doing it. Let's not say it was all, it was cake. Like you had to.

24:57Brian D. McKenzie: It got really dark for a while there, but then I came back around. Because somebody saved you with a power bar, if I remember. Two power bars. Two power bars brought you back to life. Yeah. I drank the hose water they were spraying on the rolling mud. I mean, the barbed wire craw. You were so unprepared. Remember the days when the banana-flavored power bar was our only option and people would eat those nasty things? I did the vanilla rice one or whatever. Vanilla rice, yeah. That brings me back. I'd be like, that was a super fuel, and I choked them down in high school thinking it was our only option.

25:29Oh, how the times have changed. Total volume per week. The nice thing about ultras is generally they're trail-oriented. So screw mileage. Let's talk hours. Here's what I think. minimums for a 50k uh i think you're looking at eight to ten hours of running per week on foot i think for 100k you're looking at probably 10 10 to 12 and then it becomes kind of the wild west for a hundred miler but let's say same same domain except some longer efforts on some weekends honestly i don't know if you need to go longer than 10 to 12 um in my 50k builds i was running seven to eight. That's it. Now, granted, I was covering some distance a little quicker than some, but I was only, I think I peaked at eight hours of training in five runs, but nonetheless, I think I was somewhere around eight.

26:23Brian D. McKenzie: Yeah. My volume of work doesn't change much for any distance I'm talking about above a 5K. I have three tiers generally. It's eight to 10 hours. Yeah. Eight to 10 hours is, oh, sorry. Let me start over. Eight to 10 is the middle ground. You can get by on six to eight, but you're going to have to hammer some things. Yep. Eight to 10 is the sweet spot for most people and most people's schedules. And 10 to 12 with a plus at the end of that is high level training. Now the plus can extend to 20, 25, 30 for the psychotic pros or non-pros in some cases, but it's diminishing returns after that point. I, most of my time where I was racing for a living, I was in the 10 to 12 range, but I'd hit a fair amount of those weeks in the nines from time to time.

27:15We talk about these training hours, like eight hours a week. Like it's like minimum barrier to entry, but it's a lot of training, by the way, folks. Like we are not foo-fooing your five-hour training week. You work 40 hours a week. You bring the kids to and from daycare. You have family and social plans. Eight-hour training week is gigantic. We are talking to a weird select group of people. If you're doing six hours of training a week, you're doing a great job. I don't want people to feel inferior because we're talking some pretty extreme pursuits. And I would argue to you that beginning tier of six to eight hours, which is where I fell, I guess if I'm being honest with myself in the 50K training, is you can get away with very subdued weekday mileage when you're hustling.

28:01You just got to commit on the weekend to some extended time on feet and you can pull off something really nice, which is where most people fall. The people who are working full-time have families and are training 10 to plus hours a week. Even you as a professional athlete, Bracken, at the time, you said your relationship suffered. Selfish decisions are being made. The sacrifices to train those hours mean other things are costing. And so I just, I don't know why I felt the need to say that, but I just know a lot of people aren't training that volume and we're throwing those numbers out casually.

28:33They're not casual numbers.

28:35Brian D. McKenzie: No. And it's important to know that it's like, it's kind of logarithmic in the way that training hours scale with their cost. A six to eight hour training week costs you seven to nine hours. When you talk about the time it takes out of your life outside of that from being compromised or having to spend more time on your body, a 10 to 12 hour training week might take 15 or 16 out of you. You're just, you're unavailable more. The more you spend training, the more the training affects you. Like a six hour long run doesn't cost you six hours. It costs you 10 or 12 on the day because you're prepping for it beforehand.

29:16Brian D. McKenzie: You're probably driving somewhere and you're a wreck afterwards and you're not really useful to your family. So as you train more, you actually have to recover more as well. And you spend more time napping or lounging. Typically five to six hours a week pair nicely, but 10 to 12 doesn't just cost you an extra five to seven hours and it costs you way more time and unproductive time. Listen, if I am running and training five hours or less per week, I am the best version of myself across the board in sport with my family, my energy availability to do things other than my training, my attitude, my everything.

29:56When you start getting close to that eight plus hours, I am not the best version of myself almost across the board. I come home from a long run. I eat. I'm like, I need to lie on the couch and maybe shut my eyes for a second. Pretty soon it's 3 PM and I haven't given anything to anybody else in my life, with myself and it's mid-afternoon. I haven't cut the grass. I haven't because I'm a POS. And so I think sweet spot training would be like 5K to 10K training. For me, it'd be like 40 miles a week, maybe 50 miles a week. And I could be my best self across the board and nobody else would suffer for it.

30:32I think other people in your life are suffering for it if you're doing higher mileage.

30:36Brian D. McKenzie: Just is what it is. In spirit of talking about everything under the sun with this question, I want to reiterate one thing, which is that the secret to great ultra preparedness without 100 mile weeks is absolutely smashing your legs on some descents from time to time. And so that can make up for hours of training. Durability comes from drip, drip, drip or from sledgehammer blows. And we firmly believe that if you develop the ability over time, you don't just jump into it, to rip downhills every other week maybe. You can drop hours out of a training workload and be just as good on race day. And going back to the Killington thing, that was my whole saving graces.

31:26Brian D. McKenzie: I had destroyed my legs every other week on ski hills going downhill. And I'd also done a lot of heavy carries and you have to carry those back downhill. But it got to the point where it was hard for me to destroy my quads in a hill workout. And then it took seven hours to destroy them. But the first three, I never lost my descending. Even at the end of that race, I'd lost my climbing, but I hadn't lost my descending. And so if you can get to that point, it's the only volume amplifier there is other than maybe compromised running is intense downhill. It just makes up for so much time. Yeah. There's two super, uh, super training powers in this world.

32:11And it's either going uphill exclusively on a treadmill or downhill hard on real terrain going uphill, saves your legs, creates very little damage, but high power output keeps you available for training and hard downhills absolutely ruin you and smash you, but make you very durable eventually. Once Once you recover from it, the combination of both could be really the secret sauce.

32:32Brian D. McKenzie: That is the secret. Yeah. No secret anymore. We're telling the secrets, folks. Are you ready? This is why we don't get through crap. I tell myself people appreciate this. That's what I tell myself. Not the person who just asked a question this week and won't get it answered until December. We're teaching a man how to fish. Not just put in a fish and say, this is the answer. Go out there and learn to fish. I do like a good fishing analogy. All right. Jeff asks, question for the next Q &A episode. I just ran the Marquette 50-mile race in northern Michigan. Have you noticed, okay, we have leaned into chatting about ultras.

33:16There's no denying that. And I feel like we have a very ultra-curious crowd, more so than ever. You agree with that? Yeah. Did we get a question prior to this race about the training leading up to it? We did, and I don't know if it was. Or shoes or something? We did, yes. I don't know if it was from Jeff or not, but... I just ran the Marquette 50-mile race in northern Michigan. Overall, the race went well, and if anything, I exceeded my internal expectations. But in the spirit of wanting to get better, I have a question on how to get better or faster on running on technical terrain. I would describe this terrain as similar to the superior 50k, maybe a little more technical, just a higher percent of the course being full of rocks, roots, etc.

33:54I'm thinking of more of the flat areas that are technical, but could include climbing and descending as well. What is the best way to get faster on uneven terrain like that? Mobility training? Feet, ankles, etc. More ladder drills like I'm in football training camp? Is it just a mindset shift of committing and going for it? Appreciate any insight, tips, or training advice you can offer.

34:16Brian D. McKenzie: This is a relatively easy one from a 10 ,000 foot view, and it's just run a bunch of technical terrain. The more you run it, the better you get at it. But you can absolutely build technical terrain. I don't know if skill is the right word, but like the underlying skills through plyometric and strengthening work. Part of me is like, you either have it or you don't. You know, a little bit like, are you a natural born athlete or are you not? I don't even think the gym work matters. I do if you have a deficiency. From a strength perspective, maybe. I'm thinking from a getting off the ground standpoint.

34:57If you have a long ground contact time, like you're just a plotter, not going to go well. So maybe some plyo to help you get a little more boing. But the thing is this. Running technical trails easy on a long run isn't, I don't think what you're, I mean, yes, that's helpful. but going out and putting out output on technical trails with purpose, I think is where the skill is really developed going when you can take your time and it's a zone to zone three drift. Long run is very different than one, the back half of a 50 K when it's hard to pick up your feet and two running a little bit faster with purpose.

35:37It's like some of those shoots and ladders workouts we had done together or 60, 60 workouts where you're actually running a little risky and quick on that terrain and just getting used to eye to foot, to neuromuscular control at a pace and trusting it and learning to trust it. I think it's more about that than just like, I'm going to go plot on technical trails and say, that's going to cover it because I don't know if that makes you a better technical trail runner that much.

36:04Brian D. McKenzie: Yeah. There's a, there's a, a skill component to being able to sight the ground ahead of you and keep moving without second guessing, what you have to avoid is energy squirting out the side. You can't lose it to the side where you go too far off to the side on a step and it kills your momentum. And then you have to regen to get to the next side and then re... You don't want to keep driving new power. You want to flow over the top of it. And so that is a time spent doing it skill. But then there's the other side of it where you just fatigue. All your stabilizing muscles fatigue from doing this thing for a while.

36:46Brian D. McKenzie: And maybe more than anything, you hear people talk about how just exhausting it is mentally to do miles of technical work. So you have to combine all three of those together into this. I can move fast on it. I'm now efficient moving fast. And I don't drop off pace after a while because I'm just sluggish physically and mentally. And that's a big part. Eventually your eyes just slow down and you can't ever slow down. So if it was only one piece of advice, it would be run as often as possible on technical terrain. Is that fair or are you going to go a different route? Because I'm going to stand on that one mostly because when I ran Superior 50K here this spring in May, my fitness is very good.

37:30But that kind of technical trails, I actually don't have access to unless I drive up there, which is two and a half hours. And so I was good on trails. I was good on vert. I was good on descending. But it was death by a thousand little lateral movements. And my hips and my groin started to cramp on me. My hip flexor in a way that wouldn't just because of the shift in lateral steps. And so the answer for me, I can tell you, the gym wasn't going to fix that for me. But I've been an avid gym goer and strength is my strength. So for me, it would have been like my butt should have been up there every two weekends, sacrificing, making the drive, getting on that terrain, those micro little side to side adjustments that you're talking about that are constant.

38:09I just needed more exposures. And I felt that for sure. The gym wasn't going to do that for me. So that's where I'm coming from with it.

38:14Brian D. McKenzie: Yeah. And I can't separate them. So I'm going to say both. I think you have to identify where it's going to go and try to bulletproof that in the gym. And again, that's where these leg builder combo sessions come in. Get fatigued, use it, get fatigued, use it. But then yeah, you have to get on the terrain and this is where I would make my plug for gray zone running. I really like like 90 minutes to two hours where a lot of it spent around aerobic threshold or just over where you're not hammering this terrain, but you're moving through it faster than you probably want to just a little bit, but it's still like you're under control.

38:54Brian D. McKenzie: So you're not gasping. Your eyes can still keep up, but it's like gray zone. You're not easy. You're not hard. It's easy slash moderate. But I think that's the sweet spot of technical terrain running because it's not the huge risk that you can run hard intervals on terrain, but you're going to turn your ankle hard at some point. And so running moderately hard for moderately long, I think is the sweet spot. If you could do that once a week or maybe once every other week, that's going to be where you see your biggest gain unless it's absurdly technical. And then I truly believe you have to pair it with the weight room, like specific weird motions to get ready for the absurd stuff.

39:37I love gray zone running. It has been so demonized. We need like make gray zone running

39:42Brian D. McKenzie: great again signs because it's so productive. It's a governor if it's all you're doing. but like if you have a non-flashy training week and you have say a big pinnacle interval session early in the week but then nothing else of structure the rest of the week you can go recovery run one day gray zone run one day recovery run one day and then a gray zone long run one day and you will be better for that it's just when people go out the door like a shot and run it every day like gray zone running is great your long run if there's not a quality component and you've only done one quality session that week your long run can be gray zone running heck you can finish in threshold for all I care if you want to.

40:22You're not burning too hot as long as it's offset with some recovery days. So anyways, we don't need to go down that rabbit hole, but it's been demonized. I don't think it should be. Especially if we're talking marathon and longer,

40:33Brian D. McKenzie: I think that hill work, both up and downhill and technical terrain, those three are perfectly paired with gray zone work. Yes. Like low end threshold is beautiful to run uphill at. And And that's kind of where you get to working a downhill a little bit. Like in that sweet spot of I'm working the downhill without trying to race it, that kind of gets you in that gray zone heart rate. And then technical terrain, working it with purpose, it's hard to be totally relaxed and you get in the gray zone area. You can live in that area on those three types of runs. And that's a beautiful thing. I agree with you.

41:11Brian D. McKenzie: You just can't live there every day all the time for every single run. That's bad. You have to have recovery runs. Yeah. All right. Gabriel C. asks, Hi, so... Peace Pilgrim got me walking long distances, not anywhere close to what she accomplished, but more than I thought possible. Dee Goggins got me pushing those walks into runs further than I had ever ran or thought possible. Courtney DeWalter led me onto the trails and into mountains. It's quite the progression there. I have since run a few ultra distances, twice ran the Avalon 50 mile, and will do it again a third time uh one nine twenty seven i went from 10 25 finish to an 11 34 four years later uh i had pretty much stopped running and started strength training uh sorry it's this one of those two parters uh during those years away from running my legs and body got stronger than ever i trained for about four months before the second attempt with the pr goal obviously failed so basically this person ran this race four years apart and got worse uh obviously stopped running in between.

42:16Correct. Since the second attempt at the race, I have not stopped training long runs. I'm headed back to Avalon with the goal of a sub nine finish. So a PR, I feel faster and stronger than ever. My issue is I get ahead of myself at times. I am self-coached and use chat GPT to navigate the ultra world information and establish my workouts. I have definitely progressed beyond what I was doing on my own using this method. Which questions or inputs do you recommend while using chat GPT as an information coach. I do not get a sub nine hour finish. I will become your student. Sincerely, Gabriel.

42:48Brian D. McKenzie: Well, it's in our best interest to give you bad things to search on chat GPT then. That's right. I would ask it all the same things you'd ask a coach. However, when it gives you little links or sources that you pull from, you have to be clear whether it's pulling from scientific papers or threads and forums because it pulls indiscriminately from information online. So that's the, that's the, there's two weaknesses of ChatGPT. One is that it pulls from all sources pretty much equally. It doesn't care if some rando said it online and it was wrong or if a scientist said it online and it was right.

43:28Brian D. McKenzie: And that's a little bit of a oversimplification. But the second is that it doesn't do great with, so then what? If you ask it that, then it does. So ask the question of a coach as if you're trying to pick its brain for how to learn to coach yourself. I can't give you specific questions to ask, but treat it like a human, but treat it like a dumb human. Like someone who's withholding information, always ask the follow-up question. Do you know I've never used chat GPT? No. Not one time. Ever. Have you? Job, you're saving the earth. I am not saving anything. Yeah, I used it in front of you when we did that episode of we asked AI training questions to see, or we had them answer our Q &As that week.

44:10Brian D. McKenzie: Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I use it for mundane tasks. I've never used it. No AI service at all, actually. I'm clearly on the boomer side of things. um so do you not feel now this is from other people's feedback but i feel like chat gpt kind of you end up where you want to end up like you guide yourself to the answer and it sort of gives you the feedback that it thinks and you want do you agree with that it can be depending on how you're framing your questions yeah like how long of a long run do i need to do for this 50 mile chat gpt then it says well traditionally you need to do a long run of this and that yeah, but I'm kind of tired this week.

44:52What do you think? Well, in this case, let's reduce to 75 to 90 minutes on terrain specific. And then pretty soon, like you're talking yourself, you really are coaching yourself and you're talking yourself into

45:05Brian D. McKenzie: your own personal biases filter into chat GPT. Whereas I think it can be very, very helpful to have somebody who doesn't care about your feelings or whatever input saying, no, this is what I believe after assessing is best for you. And so it can have some shortcomings there. Like, I don't care about some of the nuances that you think are important. A second eye can often be helpful with that, especially if you keep yielding the same results. Not saying it can't be effective, but I feel like you end up in the corner where you're trying to get to anyways. Yeah. By having it guide you the way you want it to guide you.

45:41Brian D. McKenzie: I'm torn on how to really answer this because we're all about free advice on here. We don't really believe in gatekeeping information. Not that we have a ton of information you can't find anywhere else, but I also firmly believe that AI is going to hasten the downfall of modern society. I think the internet kicked it off at its inception and we've just been getting kind of worse as a society ever since. There's a lot of good things that come from the internet, including our relationship here, you and I, but it's a net bad on our society. I think it's net negative. And I think that the emergence and over-reliance upon AI from a business and industry standpoint is going to absolutely hasten the downfall of everything.

46:30Brian D. McKenzie: And so I don't actually want to give advice on how to use it more either. I think that business should distance itself from it. It gets crazy hearing people talk about how there are AI goals for people in companies. Like you must use it 80 % of your workflow or whatever. We must see blank amount of usage. Like it must be used. That really doesn't sit well with me. And it's anytime you use blanket statements like that, it means people are going to have to just do nonsense work just to satisfy your goal. So I'm getting way off topic here. But point is, I don't really want to teach you how to use AI better because I don't think we should be relying upon it in the first place because it's totally unregulated at this point and it's going to destroy us.

47:17Brian D. McKenzie: I'm not saying it's going to take over like Skynet. I'm saying it's going to destroy the fabric of humanity. That's a bold prediction. I don't think it is. I think your answer of asking multiple follow-up questions is probably the best answer. I don't care what those questions are. Just don't ask surface-level questions and then walk away. All right. Let's see if we can get like one or two more questions in. Bailey says, Hey guys, love the show, particularly your Q &A episodes. I have a couple of potential podcast questions for you. This is a three question. For years, I ran in the Saucony Fast Twitch shoes plus Superfeet Berry insoles.

47:59Since the Fast Twitch line was retired, I've struggled to find a shoe I love. The closest I've gotten is some of the new Saucony trainers with the same insoles. I've tried to get away from the insoles, but have foot and ankle pain without them. Outside of Saucony, I've tried a few pairs of Brooks, which led to a toenail losses and scared me off from trying other brands. Do you have any shoe recommendations that might be similar to Fast Twitch? Answer that one in 15 seconds.

48:24Brian D. McKenzie: I don't know if anything exists. Saucony was a Fast Twitch was at the time, it was like a tempo shoe. It was a low stack, lightweight, unobtrusive shoe. Was it like their Kinvara or was it different? I think it was less than the... Maybe it was like a stability racing shoe. Was that what it was? It was a... I've never run in it. I think it was like a stability... It was in between a Kinvara and like their type A racer. It might have been like their stabilized racer. Anyway, the closest things I can think of right now for that, it'll be a less soft upper, but the Takumi Sen from Adidas. You could look into something like the Topo Spectre.

49:07Brian D. McKenzie: That would have a softer, more accommodating upper. It's going to have a little bit more foam. Maybe something like, there's just not a lot of it out there. Adidas, the Evo SL. Wouldn't you just put it right in the endorphin speed or something? Yeah, but the Fast Switch was very flat-bottomed. Okay. There was no roll to it whatsoever. Basically, anything stripped down you can find right now. What about the Nike? Oh, my God. What was the worst shoe the first rendition? The Streakfly? But the Streakfly 2? Or is that too light and stripped down? It could be if you could find some. With an insole in it?

49:49Brian D. McKenzie: Yeah. Let's see what they even have for some. They don't really make this anyway. It'd be considered a performance trainer. You would have to look for performance trainers right now, but yeah, there's not a lot. Let's move on. Yeah. Because we have two more questions. Honestly, maybe like, I don't know. I can't come up with anything better than what I said. Second question. Asics Magic Speed 5. Try that. Try them all is the answer and then buy them on Running Warehouse. They all come with free return shipping labels. Try them all. Send what you don't like back. Beauty. Done. All right. I'm training for a marathon course will be flat and on the roads how many days per week can I run on the beach without significantly impacting my ability to train to run my best marathon easy answer every recovery run you do can be on the beach and it will not negatively impact your ability to run well in the marathon get on concrete three days a week quality session midweek long run long run and you can run anything else in between on the beach it might even help Perfect.

50:51I have nothing to add to that. Third question. Hope you can settle a debate between my partner and me. Context. We both have a very average running background and are nerds. Physics and engineering standards were brought up the last time we discussed this topic. Anyway, is it more damaging to run on a concrete sidewalk or asphalt road? Or do they lead to an equivalent amount of wear and tear on their body? Thanks. Bailey. I like that question.

51:16Brian D. McKenzie: Concrete sidewalk, I believe, is harder. but it's flatter. Asphalt roll definitely has a pitch to it to allow water to run off of it. So that's more from a structure standpoint that'll get you more. That'll lead to issues of IT or whatever but the concrete will be harder. They re-asphalted all the roads in my neighborhood. looks really nice. Without question, it is softer. The real black blacktop is like, I can notice the difference. With that said, the pitch makes me nervous. If you're struggling with any sort of overuse injury, I would still choose the sidewalk if I'm struggling with anything, in particular on an overuse front, because I think we're splitting hairs either way.

52:05Brian D. McKenzie: We're splitting hairs. And if we're going to split hairs, let's split them all the way. Modern shoes have so much action happening in the shoe that the pitch of the road is going to be amplified by plates and rockers and things like that. And that's not going to make you feel as good. Plus, asphalt is hotter. And so that's going to cause some things in your body. If you're really looking at all the factors, if I could only choose one to run on, I would actually choose sidewalks. And specifically from the long-term damage removal of cars hitting you. but if I could only have one actual surface and I could control the pitch, the shape, the safety, it'd be asphalt.

52:46Brian D. McKenzie: Yeah. I'm going to agree with that. But I really do think this is like, like it's fun to talk about these things because we're nerds and it's enjoyable, but like, we're talking about splitting the split splittiest of split hairs. As far as the one that you can get to the best, get the best runs on. Yeah. All right. What have you run more on concrete or asphalt in your life? If you had to look at your cumulative miles concrete, I think so too. Yeah, for sure. No debate. But I've gone several years of my life where it was nothing but asphalt. Yeah, probably concrete. One or two more questions. Okay, we'll see how long this one goes.

53:20Joshua says, hey, hey, question for the next Q &A. For a marathon, let's say somebody doesn't care about their finish time and the goal is to just finish and not feel like a complete poo-poo during or after. What do you think the bare minimum amount of running is needed? Instead of grinding a three-hour long run, what would be better served by pounding some weights in the gym to build durability? Oh, instead of grinding a three-hour long run, would that time be better served by pounding some weights in the gym to build durability?

53:50Brian D. McKenzie: What was the first sentence of that? For a marathon, let's say somebody doesn't care about their finish time and the goal is to just finish and not feel like complete poo-poo during or after. I may say the long run is the most important for that person. I agree 100%. I don't like saying that, but there's no way around feeling like complete poo-poo after if you haven't run long on pavement. Yeah. And bare minimum, bare minimum. I don't even care about distance. If you really want a bare minimum, two hours. Bare minimum. I don't care how far you're covering that two hours, but bare minimum is two hours on feet in a long run.

54:27If that was my only goal, I would rather run one time per week and run two to three hours

54:35Brian D. McKenzie: on pavement every time and do all the things in the weight room and never do a long run. 100 % agree. And we love the weight room. And I hate the concrete long run. It's just so important. You can't recreate the specificity of that kind of breakdown other than getting out there and doing tens of thousands of steps in the exact same manner over and over and over again. Yeah, I wish you could. You can help, but it's still important. Ultra, different answer. Marathon on the road. It's the only piece you need to just finish and feel good. Do you agree with the two-hour, minimum two-hour? You said minimum.

55:12Brian D. McKenzie: I do, yeah. I think two hours. And then minimum of three days running per week. Like minimum, truly a 60 minute session, a 60 minute session, a two hour session at minimum. If you're just looking to survive and not feel like poo poo the entire time. I would say my, maybe I changed my answer to two hours from two hours to minimum is two thirds of your goal finish time. Oh, so it could be much further than two hours or much less if you're elite. Yeah, I guess. Like you, if you're going to run two 30, you could get away with hour 50 long runs, hour 45. I don't know what the exact two thirds would be of that.

55:52Brian D. McKenzie: Anyway, it could be a lot longer. Yeah. I think you got to go two thirds on pavement for the pounding in training. Maybe not super frequently, but you got to. All right. We got a lot of marathon questions. We can see we got people are curious about the long stuff. Let's make this the last, the last one here. Matt Mason, who I worked with for a good bit, Matt's chasing it pretty hard. Kirk got a question for the Q and a, How do you think about the trade-off between marathon training, higher overall volume versus slightly lower volume with bigger, faster quality sessions, assuming you're absorbing the work, staying controlled, still running legitimate mileage and feeling good?

56:27For context, I was around 85 miles a week for Boston with more moderate workouts. And this fall, I'm closer to 75, but doing bigger, faster, more marathon-specific sessions. At a certain point, the quality is consistently strong and controlled. is there more value in keeping the mileage where it is versus pushing volume higher just because you can, especially if you feel great and everything is clicking. I was considering raising volume to 90-ish miles per week for a few peak weeks. I think I can absorb it, but rethinking volume since everything is clicking. Six weeks to the race on 10-4. So he's saying higher mileage in slightly less big quality days or a little lower mileage, but really prioritizing the size of the quality.

57:11Brian D. McKenzie: Assuming performance is your goal. I would not change a thing. I would stay at that 75 mile per week and keep hitting your big workouts and land the plane. And otherwise, if you change it now six weeks out and it goes right or it goes wrong, you don't really know why. Because I did one thing all this time and then I changed it. And if it goes wrong, you're never going to forgive yourself. You've got a great thing going. And I think a 10 % to 15 % reduction in volume in order to gain great quality sessions is always worth it. I could not agree more. And that's the philosophy I've been prescribed to for how many years now?

57:51When I put my shoes on to have a day that matters, the day is big and the day matters. That's how I coached Matt when we were working together. Um, and so I think sometimes for the sake of mileage, I just had this conversation with an athlete, you know, saying, well, an eight mile recovery run isn't feeling like recovery when it takes me 90 minutes. And so for the sake of volume, we need to see eight miles on the paper, but we're actually just snubbing our tomorrow by doing a 90 minute recovery run on a Monday. day. And so sometimes for the sake of mileage, we end up taking away from our big quality days because we like to see that number on paper.

58:33And so yes, a 10 mile isn't truly a recovery run, but if I'm going to hit 80 miles this week, I got to do a 10 mile recovery run the day before my long run to hit my mileage. And then your quality long run is a little subdued and you're a little dull for it because you never quite got above water. And some people can handle that higher mileage and still feel fantastic, but eventually I feel like rent comes due. And so I very much think my long-winded way of saying is prioritizing getting to those quality days and having those be big, even if it means sacrificing some time on feet on the recovery days is, in my opinion, the answer.

59:09And it sounds like that's the exact sort of place Matt has himself. And so I approve and don't change a thing.

59:15Brian D. McKenzie: I don't think anyone's ever looked back who's already running at least medium amounts of volume and thought my 10 mile per week bump up was a game changer for my fitness in a good way. I don't think that's ever really occurred because 10 miles of aerobic work extra is not like scientifically notable, but it can be the thing that puts you over the edge. But all the time people look back and were like adding in this quality session or getting more quality work was the difference maker in this training block all the time. So 10 miles per week, we're talking about splitting hairs, 85 versus 75, you're not going to be a different athlete, really.

59:58Brian D. McKenzie: But if those 10 miles allow you another quality session, you're going to be a different athlete. Or another two miles of quality on your Tuesday. Now in marathon training, you're hitting nine miles of quality in that session versus six or seven. Huge. One of the biggest issues I ever hear with runners is in order to hit blank this week, I need to do blank. No, no, no. Reverse that. I need to do blank this week and then I'll end up hitting blank. The volume should be the end result of the work of the week, not the work of the week designed to hit the volume. I firmly believe that. Which 99 % of people look at it the opposite.

1:00:37Brian D. McKenzie: Yeah. Yeah. I would agree. Myself at times for sure. I got to hit 60 this week. I'm going to wedge it in there where I can't. You're the only one that knows what your mileage ended up being. Your body doesn't know 59 versus 60. 100%. But our psyche is a weird, finicky beast. I guess it is. As you said, we're weak, flesh-based humans once upon a time, and that is indeed true. All right. We still have 20 screenshots left. FML is the young kids say, but we'll get to it. We'll get to it when we get to it. Kirk, can I wrap up that last point just by reiterating to people? If you get six weeks out and you have decisions and options in your brain, you're in a really good spot.

1:01:23Brian D. McKenzie: You're not to be trusted either, though. You don't get to make decisions. I'm just going to add in blank. That doesn't work. That doesn't go well usually. if you're in a spot where you're like i'm doing things better and differently and i feel good just do it for another four weeks continue to do it and feel good and then back off like don't make choices once you get inside of the race don't do that well for better or worse matt uh his race is on october 4th and we're not getting to this until september 15th so we are way behind the boat he has already made that decision uh whoops that'll happen sometimes when the queue backs up.

1:02:00So, all right, let's cut this thing. Let's have another coffee date soon. I prefer it. I vote for we make this switch on Tuesdays. All right, we might have to. I just have to do my quality work after this. And you know, it's nice to bang that out right away, but it is what it is.

1:02:15Brian D. McKenzie: We could move up a little if we had to. We could. I had my Bobos before, and now we should be good.

1:02:25Brian D. McKenzie: If anything resonated with you on today's episode and you're curious about taking your training to the next level, check out therunningpublic.com, where we have a training plan to fit your needs.