Training Tuesday: Q&A!

0:08Welcome to the Running Public with Bracken Crocker and Kirk DeWint. It's Tuesday, folks, and you know what that means. Training Tuesday. 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 therunningpublic.com. We have both monthly subscription training plans,$19.99 a month. And Bracken and I both offer one-on-one customized coaching. Again, go to therunningpublic.com and check out our offerings. All right, Kirk, I have an important question for you. And it feels like a leading question and it kind of is, but it's not that serious. So are you prepared? Yep. Did your running fall off a cliff this week? No. Did your energy fall off a cliff this week? I'm going to say no. Okay. Why? Well, you ran 250Ks hard in seven weeks.

1:11And then days after the last one, because you were mad, you went out and ripped 400s and finished hard. I think you said 62 seconds was your last 400, a 408 pace. And you felt kind of okay slash good doing it. And usually I find when people jump right back into training after a long, hard race, they're either a wreck right away or a week later. like they get a free run or two and then it all hits them and i was half expecting that your next quality workout it everything came due and you just had a terrible time but none of that has happened well i think that's actually very fair line of thought and i think 90 of the time that would be the case for sure um i didn't feel good on any run in particular the back half of last week whatsoever.

2:04Um, I was sluggish and then I ran an uptempo long run in the heat and that ended up feeling really good until it didn't again. Like I felt fine for three to five miles. And then I felt, I was like, Nope. Uh, so no, I didn't have great runs to end the week. And then I ran a recovery run yesterday, felt sluggish and sticky still. I was like, My legs just feel sludgy, we'll call it. Had a sluggish warmup in my quality session today. And then the pacing was just there and I felt in control. And I ran eight sixes and fours today in the heat. And I was very pleased with my metrics. Other than a shoe snafu, it went really well.

2:48So I don't know. So I'm just wondering if maybe I wasn't able to get to the place to cause the real damage from the Ultra maybe or something. I'm not sure. And I'm not saying I'm bulletproof. Maybe this will come due the rest of the week. I have no idea. But so far, I'm above water. Well, your second interval session should be telling. And if you're still not having to come due, maybe just really fit in bulletproof right now. But eights, sixes, and fours, especially in our temperature right now, we have a heat bloom going on right now. We're both in the upper 90s. with humidity. That's, you can't fake that.

3:23I gave myself two minutes rest on everything because of the heat. So that's, you can sort of fake it on two minutes, right? Yeah. But post 50K, you know. Yeah. No, it was. You know if you're on borrowed legs or not. And about 226s for the eights and about 440, 445 pace on the sixes. And then 66s, 67s on the quarters. other than one really bad 600 meter rep where my AlphaFly's completely blew up. What? So I haven't worn Alpha since the last time we've talked about this, my AlphaFly ones. You've recommended the shoe glue and all of that. And so I shoe glued them, tied rubber bands. Which shoe glue?

4:06Glue for shoes or shoe goo itself? Oh, just like the E6000. The E6000. Okay. And I glued them, put bricks on them to hold them tight. After that, I realized there were still some seams around the edges that weren't perfect. So I bought these mini E6000s, just like single use, did that, tied rubber bands around them really tight. So everything was sealed. And I thought, well, I don't really care about my training that much right now. Let's roll the dice and see if this worked today. And so I pulled them out for the first time saying like, well, if it goes to crap, that's my sign. I shouldn't work that hard today.

4:41and so i was good with it and right in the middle of the second 600 meter rep i mean it went from attached to totally detached and flew off the end of my foot the whole bottom chunk of foam flew ripped right off the toe attachment and everything so i so i was about oh gosh maybe 100 meters from finishing. So I sort of hobbled in through that rep. With one leg three inches shorter than the other. On the road. I never mind you. On the road. All good. And that one was like, I went from like 440 pace on the rep prior to like 516 pace. Like it really impacted my ability to finish. Right. So then I look at the other one like, gee, oh man.

5:26And I have it programmed into my watch. So I can't just like change the deal, run home on my watch because it's going to start ticking off my intervals that I have pre-programmed. So I just stopped the watch. I was like, what do I do? Started running on the people, ripped the other sole off the other shoe because it was coming loose, by the way. I grabbed it, ripped it, came right off. So now I'm just wearing Alpha socks, Alpha Fly socks. And so I start doing my jog, my recovery on people's lawns in the Alpha Fly socks. I just left the soles on somebody's driveway. And I soon realized that was going to be a tear.

6:01I was like, I'll just finish this workout in my AlphaFly socks and run on the people's lawns. Well, I realized there's mailboxes and gravel driveways. And I'm like, that is so dumb. Don't do that. So I stopped my watch and I ran home in my AlphaFly socks. How far? Like 0.6 miles, just over a half mile. So it could have been worse. So I ran home in my AlphaFly socks with my watch stopped. So none of that was accounted for, which irks me. And I grabbed my cellos. and then I started my next interval right off the end of my driveway. So I took a little bit longer rest and I will never, ever, ever try to buy another pair of AlphaFly ones again.

6:38I've learned my lesson how many times and I'm at a loss. So blew them out. It was my second run in them bracket. The first run they blew out, I paid 300 some dollars for these things, tried to fix them. Second run blew it again. I have a lot of thoughts right now, Kirk. Tell me how much of an idiot I am. No, no. Overwhelmingly, I'm sad. You were in a relationship that had been so good to you and the relationship changed and you were trying your hardest to make it work. And today you had to come to the conclusion that it just will never be what it once was and you had to move on. And that is a sad moment in any, with any genre, But with shoes, that's really sad.

7:22And I feel like they broke up with me. I didn't break up with them. I tried my best. I was going to counseling with these shoes. I was patch jobbing little arguments we were having, and they just didn't want to be with me anymore. It was terrible. Well, and this was your shoe that would have been – was this the first or second super shoe you ever got? Third, actually, technically. You bought me a pair of Saucony Endorphin Pros, and then I ended up buying a pair of Vapors. But right in the same time, I bought all those in very short succession. And ever since then, what would that have been? 2020?

8:042021? 2021 for sure. It might have been 22. It was 22. So for the last four years, not one shoe with all the technology advancement and everything that's gone along with it has supplanted that shoe for you. It still was your, I don't want to say unicorn shoe, but kind of your road unicorn shoe. You could run recovery all the way up to 5K pace in that shoe. And you raced recovery all the way. But you did do recovery all the way through a 5K race in that shoe. marathon, raise everything was that shoe. Unicorn is the right term because I haven't found a shoe that you go, uh, in and just, it reacts with you so well for my stride.

8:51So though there's a, shoes are great. It'll be fine. But, uh, I'm done. I'm done. Fool me once. Shame on you. Fool me twice. Shame on me. I will not be fooled a third time. So have you ever had a shoe? Have you ever had a shoe structure? I've never had a shoe structurally disintegrate like this. It's the glue. It's the seam between obviously the fabric and the upper and then the lower. But have you ever had any issues like this? Because I never have with a shoe ever. Yes, not to that extent. There have been several trail shoes I've had that through the midfoot, inside or outside have just started to delaminate, have started to peel back.

9:38And then they're just out, especially as a trail shoe, because grit and water starts getting in there and then it just eats away. But there's so much mess in a trail shoe. There's that woven, there's like yarn that crisscrosses back underneath there in the footbed and nothing is smooth or clean. And so there's so much to bond to in there. The things stay pretty attached. attached, but that ZoomX footbed is just so smooth. Once the bond starts to fail, it just comes right off. It's done. It just makes me... I thought E6000 was the strongest glue ever made. Now I'm starting to... Which I know isn't true, but thinking about what glues they actually use in these shoes to attach the uppers to the sole, I can't imagine.

10:26Yeah, the grade. Anyway, I'm sorry for you, but the nerd in me really wants to know what it felt like to go right from alpha one to the should we just call it the cello i don't know if it's cello or cielo but right to that you which is your hoka approximation of the alpha what did it feel like compared to the one on back-to-back intervals um i'm not sure because i feel like i still liked the alpha ones more now that i had a direct comparative and that makes me sad. The Cello, you have to, the Alpha puts me on my forefoot. The Cello, I still have to think about it a little bit. So I noticed I had to run a little cleaner.

11:11It still worked very well. It is much more tippy than the Alpha. There's some sharp turns, 90 degree turns. I have two of them, three of them in this lap that I usually run my speed sessions in. And I'm sliding around in those things, especially with a little sweat. They are like a straight line shoe, just like I thought the, um, Asics Metaspeed, uh, Sky was as well. So, but there, there's the, you got to run clean in them and I have to run fast in them too. I feel like, but they're still good. I still ran good splits. So, uh, it's hard to say it got a little muddy. It's still going to be very viable shoe that I will continue to pull, pull out.

11:46Okay. Yeah. What's your, what's yours of choice? If you, if you went away from, um, the Nike options, What is your shoe right now? I don't have a one shoe for everything. Yeah. There's now, if I had to have one shoe for everything, it would be the Adios Pro 4. Yeah. I can run slow enough in that shoe. It's softer than the 3. So it's now viable for a one quiver shoe for me, but it wouldn't do it as well as the Alpha One. The Alpha One, like you, just works for me. but unlike you I have to think a little bit more about the Alpha to run in it well to get the max out of it I do have to think a little bit but the Audios Pro 4 is just a really solid shoe and now that it's softer it's just a little easier to do all the things in.

12:35Adidas worked so well for me in college and just out of college and I haven't worn an Adidas in well over a decade nothing I haven't owned one I haven't considered it and I remember it was my go-to I don't know how that changed. I went from an Adidas guy to believe it or not, Bracken, a Mizuno guy for years. And then eventually Saucony when they came out with the Kinvara and a couple other, the Ride and the Glides and all that. I was into those and now it's just been all over the place, but I haven't entertained Adidas in a long time and I probably should. Well, I believe that Adidas was, they were top two first to use anything fancy with foams.

13:16Skechers got into their what was it even at the time? Their Razor line tried their burst, whatever. I don't even remember what their first... I can picture it's on the side of the shoe or on the bottom of it. I forget what it is. I have one here somewhere. The Gomeb 3 and the Razor. That ugly green. Hyperburst. Hyperburst. Yeah. Anyway, what Adidas did, they were the first ones to market fit anything with Boost. And they had that everywhere. They had all their commercials, and Boost was revolutionary, but it was so heavy and dense that I think it actually made all of their line worse for a long time.

13:58It made the Adios better because they just used a thin little piece of it, and it made it like a cushioned racing flat, which didn't exist at the time. Not cushioned by today's standards, but I think Boost set them back for a long time because they became really clunky and over-engineered because their bottoms were so heavy they had to give more structure to their uppers and for a long time I think they lost their way with their just regular running shoes but I think it positioned them really well to move into their hyper boost and ultra boost and all their other things that they're streamlining now I think that they're really good with it because in light strike pro I think boost taught them a lot of what they needed to know.

14:38So as soon as they found the next version, they could control it better than a lot of people. Well, next time I'm shoe searching, I'll reach out to you and say, Bracken, which one do you recommend I experiment with? And it'll probably be like another model or two down the road because I got so many shoes right now. I got to stop. But yeah. All right. Well, we'll have that combo. I see you have a pair of Adidas behind you. What is that over your right shoulder, I believe? That's the Adios Pro 2. Okay. It's a cool looking shoe. So I'd never had the one. I had the two, the three, and the four. And the two was really bouncy and really firm.

15:15And I had to run in it one specific way. And if I hit that, it was like the Alpha in that it made me instantly better, but it was just so costly. I couldn't do more than like six miles in it before I was beat up and I couldn't hold the form. And then the three was less super to me, but a little more accessible. And then the four combines it all. It's bouncy, but it's soft. It's light. The four is the real deal to me. I can only imagine how good their$500 pair is. Yeah. Not going to go there quite yet. And I also see you have your Mizuno Wave Rebellion Pro 2 that I sent you. Three. Three that I sent you.

15:54And I think you're just keeping it on the shelf now too. Yeah. It was so good in a straight line on the treadmill for me. And as soon as I took it outside, it just didn't work for me. So the two is still, if I just had to run one thing 10K or under the, the two is still always a top two choice for me, but the three, I just can't come to grips with anymore. That shoe sucks. All right. Should we get, um, should we back clean up from our last episode today? That's what I'm hoping to do. Yes. By back clean up. I mean, get to the Q and a questions that we didn't get to on Friday. Yeah, let's do that.

16:32Okay. I need to, um, find the album here. So I saw 13 screenshots. We'll do our best, um, to get through these babies. So the last one is still from June 17th, our oldest question. So that's not too bad because what's the date today? The 14th. So we're only about a four weeks backlog. That's not so bad. That's really good. Yeah, let's pat ourselves on the back. All right, and this is actually a two-screen shotter. So this will take care of two screenshots of mine. All right, this is from Jarrett. Jarrett says, high school track coach here with two questions. Not sure if it would suit a Q &A because it's very track specific.

17:12This came through the website too. I feel like when questions come through the website, you know, they're legit. First, I inherited a talented group of 800 meter runners who had essentially no aerobic background. All natural. When I got them during indoor season, they didn't understand easy running and had never consistently run beyond a gym class mile. We improved what we could in season, but I felt building volume aggressively wasn't the best use of championship season. This summer and fall, we're focusing on aerobic development for 500 to 1600 athletes who finish spring around 10 to 15 miles per week.

17:49What would you consider an appropriate mileage range by the start of indoor season? For context, I am not the cross-country coach and the coach is horrible. Their mileage was lower than our spring mileage. second our meets are every wednesday gross would you treat meet days as quality sessions when building a weekly training structure with a midweek meet how would you organize workouts throughout the week and across the season while still progressing fitness and sharpening appropriately for championship races uh he says love the show thanks for the great content and for taking the time to answer so this you coached high school track i coached high school track I think it is either the easiest or hardest form of run coaching that I've ever tried, depending on how far down into it you want to go.

18:38I think you can do the easy thing, which is just treat race days like a quality session and then just try to balance it out with a different quality session and not really overthink it ever. Just run fun intervals, pound intervals, and move on. Or you can try to say, how can we build the best engine possible? And that's really difficult to do with a high school program, which is never going to have enough coaches to separate everyone out into the groups that they should be separated into. and try to get everyone's volume to their own levels, which is the right answer, and progress them individually and find out which kids are fast twitch versus slow twitch and try to prioritize skill of running development.

19:26You could drive yourself mad trying to be perfect with high school run coaching. So I'm on your team here. This is hard. I feel for you. Yeah. Yeah. And let's say you have 30 kids show up in your group. 26 of them haven't done anything as they show up to the first day of practice. Two have run off season mileage and done well and are ready for like advanced type approach. And then two are kind of half ass training a little bit in route, but you basically get this mix of most of the kids are totally not ready. And then you have like a few high performers who have done their job and are ready for advanced level stuff.

20:06Usually they have good involved parents that are runners themselves and kind of pushed them into doing what they should in the off season. And so you just get this, like, I don't know where to start because one kid didn't make one lap around the track on day one of practice and he stopped to walk. Well, another one has been running 10 mile long runs every week and running 40 miles a week. And so it's like, it's the most disparity between the front of the pack and the back of the pack that I've ever seen. That was the case with my girls team. I'm sure you can relate. Yeah. Yeah. It's very difficult.

20:42And as the coach, it is really tempting and just convenient to focus your efforts on the fast kids because you're most rewarded with like team points and accolades by making your faster kids faster and then hope that everyone else comes along for the ride. But anyway, I think that the hardest thing to deal with is over racing in high school. And if you just have one meet every Wednesday, that's actually pretty good. Did you race? We often race, especially like freshman, sophomore meets, we would end up racing twice a week quite often, early in the season, especially. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a lot of Saturday morning meets.

21:25Yeah. Yeah. Which to me is more complicated because you're tempted to get more done throughout the week. You just know midweek is always going to be Wednesday and we're going to get, then things change a little bit. So it really comes down to, I think, what your head track coach and athletic director demand of you, which is, are we trying to develop our kids or are we trying to score points? And you may not have a say in this at all. And if you're forced to score points at races, then you have to race your kids a lot on meet days. And then the meet days become your biggest stimulus of the week.

22:02And you try to hold your big kids back and say, race tactically and never give me a 10 out of 10 effort until the end of the year and try to have strategy for everyone. So yeah, we're going to race hard, but not kill ourselves. And then the more you race, basically, the more you have to undertrain the rest of the week with quality. But if you only have to run once, each kid once per meet, then you can treat it as like a skill day and you can have them doing stuff at the meet outside of their event. You can do a little skill work, mechanical speed work, have them do extended cooldowns, use that as a quality day and then another one.

22:41But I'm not giving you concrete things here because I have no clue what your program looks like. I've tried both. I've tried racing our way into shape and I've tried using the races as minimum effort days and try to get volume on other days. But the reality is that I think it's really important for high school kids early on to get away from miles and to go in on time. I think that is the way to build volume. So I'm not giving you a miles per week. I think you try to build them up where they can all get to the point where they're filling 40 to 60 minutes per day. And you get your slow or poorly skilled runners really, really well acquainted with your facility, bikes, ellipticals, treadmills.

23:31You round out their engines with that. I wouldn't try to make every kid run mileage. Yeah. I don't know about you, but back in high school, in particular, my junior and senior years, but also sophomore we would have like these invitationals or these smaller meets and it would be a go run one event at these meets but then we had city county conference sectionals and it was dewint i need 20 points from you and a relay so it would be in the relay we may win we may not but it was like we're gonna run the 3200 meter relay then i need you to go win the mile and then i need you to go win the 800 or the two mile.

24:13And we had two guys on the team. He was a 200, 400 runner. And I was the 800 up guy. It's like, we need your 40 points. And then a little bit of help on some relays if we want to place well or win. And it was like, you knew your task and it wasn't said that directly, but that's exactly. And then those big meets, they'd race us three times. It's a big day. That's the biggest. I mean, I'm racing over three and a half miles generally in one meet at all out race effort, like that has to be the pillar to your week. So if there's that approach, everything else plays second fiddle. You can't go hammer those kids again, like on a Monday leading into a Wednesday or a Friday on the way out afterwards, cause they're just going to be snubbed.

24:54So it gets, it gets tricky. I wish we could have waited till later in the year for that approach. Cause like we had the city meet early. So it's like race number three is the city meet. You got to score points. It's just interesting. Did you ever, did you ever deal with that? I don't, I'm trying to think back. I don't know if I ever in my high school career raced only one time for meet, per meet. Yeah. It was always paired with something. Like if you're running the 800 or the two mile, which is in the second half of the meet schedule, you're running at least the four by eight early in the race, early in the meet.

25:26And if you're running the mile, then you're probably coming back in the 800 or at least the four by four, sometimes mile, two mile combo. Four by eight, two mile was a pretty standard combo. You always had something. Now, talking about I had a big day, I had three miles of racing. Doesn't sound bad, but it'd be like if your coach said, all right, we're going to do your one-mile time trial today, and then we're going to do your two-mile time trial today. Right. Well, which one do you want me to do well at? I can't do both, but that's the reality of what a track meet is. It's not the amount you're racing.

25:56It's the fact that you're racing it more than once. That's demanding on the system. Yeah. And then by the way, you're also going to run an all out 400 meters as part of a relay as an end cap to the meet because that'll be great stimulus. Yeah. So there's a lot of ways to get it done. But I think the idea of track is no different than the idea of what we've talked about. Like how would the optimal look developmentally? What would the optimal developmental look be for a youth athlete? It would be I would prioritize aerobic development and speed development, speed and skill. So teach every single kid to run well fast and everyone has to get to the point where they're doing an hour plus of aerobic work a day.

26:39But I wouldn't care how many of those minutes were spent running versus doing anything else. I would have everyone scaled to what they can currently handle. They're all going out for their run and everyone's scheduled to come back at a different time. And you just get them right away used to finishing up on the bike or on the treadmill if your facility has that. but I would just try to not spam, but spam volume in an appropriate way. I wouldn't care if it's running or not and then really get good at running well fast, which is going to look like mechanical speed work, but it's also going to be a lot of interval work.

27:12But I wouldn't prioritize like the classic high school thing, which is a lot of race pace work. You'd be having them finish with like rounding the corner 150s and stuff like that, right? Come off the turn and open it up home. 80 to 160 meter reps, a lot of that stuff. And then a lot of aerobic volume. And then yeah, somewhere between, somewhere slower than two mile race pace would be the volume of, or the speed of work that I'd have. And I mean, I'd be running threshold with my kids from the start. I'd be teaching them. I'd be running a heart rate based or RPE based program. And I'd have pace groups where each kid's not allowed to pass a certain kid who has the most trustworthy pacing of the groove.

27:58I would try to do it as regimented as possible on quality days and try to make it as absolutely fun and social as possible on the aerobic days. I like that. But yeah, I mean, I'm rambling. I'm going in circles. But it really comes down to what is the expectation for race days? Because if it's racing once versus racing three times, everything changes. And if you're racing three times, are you allowed to just do okay? Or do you need maximum effort out of the kids? because that completely changes the cost of that day. Just sounds like this gentleman was getting pushed back on running slow and easy, right?

28:33Like he wasn't getting buy-in at first. It's a hard hurdle to overcome until the kids see a result in a race. And they're like, okay, maybe this makes sense, but you got to get them to the start line confident. I gave him a concrete answer, by the way. I gave him a brief concrete answer in response. Okay. Your kid's got to be running 20, 25 miles a week. The ones that can handle the volume, I think that is a very safe spot to race up to two miles and down to a quarter. But I think you need to be, I think they should be worked up to 20 miles a week. The ones that can handle it. You're going to have some collateral damage on the, along the way.

29:06And yes, I'm saying that. And yes, that's not PC when it comes to this, but like some kids are going to get injured and it happens in high school. If you run five miles a week or 50 miles a week, the third of the kids are always out with the clipboard anyways. So, so, and they're still a part of the squad and you can, you learn. through injury as well. So I'm not promoting it, but I'm saying like, if these kids really have a thirst to be good, they should have a thirst to be putting more time in their running shoes. And the ones that don't will fall to the back or end up frustrated and that's okay.

29:37But I think they should be running 20 to 25 miles a week for sure. And I also told him that, uh, Friday should be your pillar track session of the week. So you erase Wednesdays, you're going to blow the doors off the kids on Friday with their big pillar session two days after they raced. They're going to go home and not do much over the weekend. You're going to tell most of them, go for an easy run on Saturday. Half of them will, half of them won't. And they're going to show back up Monday. You're going to give them just the overspeed stuff you talked about, that mechanical efficiency work on Monday, easy Tuesday, race Wednesday.

30:10But their big pillar session, I think, should be on Friday. And again, knowing that most of them are, one, going to go easy over the weekend, and two, some of them aren't going to do anything. So you might as well send them before they head home for the weekend. So that's what I, I mean, this is very generalized recommendations, but that's what I think. Okay. Then I'm going to take an opposite stance. If I have to get boilerplate advice, I'm going to train every kid, start them like they were Parker Valby like that. Every time you're running, it is quality, but they are controlled quality sessions.

30:45we're going to prioritize volume of quality work done within yourself and then the second priority is filling in all the other days with aerobic work but it's all cross training and you earn running days as you progress through so by the time you're senior you're running five six days a week and freshmen are running three days per week and then prior running experience would play into that but i would try to get them all to six hours of aerobic work per week or six hours of of work per week and then let them fill in runs as it goes. But I would want it to be every time you run, we're going to run beautifully and we're going to run fast.

31:23I love it. I wish that, uh, that approach was taken with me in high school. Cause I was too tibial stress fractures and I had a back issue. I had, if somebody said, Hey, we're going to cross train instead of run until you're hurt. That would have been so helpful for me. That would have been the right approach for me. So I love that idea. Again, buying would be tough, but go ahead. No, it's not realistic for nine out of 10 high schools because you do not have cross training equipment enough to handle the entire mid distance and distance team. So I know it's a pipe dream unless you, you go to Arrowhead or you go to Catholic Memorial or you're, you know, in Wisconsin, we're talking.

32:01If you had an assistant coach, you could do like an A, an A day and a B day having some kids, on different schedules, but that's another situation itself. But the reality is how the kids used to dawdle and run off and then play around and then say, yeah, we ran. I would encourage that behavior, I think. I would encourage dawdling and socializing on easy days. You don't think every kid, I mean, by the time they're a junior at minimum, shouldn't be running 20, 25 miles. If this is their sport. Yes. Yes. I would just step how we got there. For sure though. Yeah. You should be able to run. And I believe that all humans should be able to run 30 to 40 miles per week injury free.

32:41I do. It's just how long it takes to get to that point. All right. Chris asks, another one through the website. In training for high rocks pretty seriously, 10 to 15 hours per week over the past year, I've given myself plantar fasciitis. I've admitted that it's because I run too much and I weigh too much, but think shoes probably play a role. I've been wearing the Adidas Takumi Sen 11 for races, hated the Adios Pro 4, and the Adidas Evo SL for training. Is there a recommendation for a better shoe that may limit plantar fasciitis from returning and keep it away long term? Any other PF avoidance recommendations?

33:19Thanks. We have some episodes with PTs that you should go back and check out. We had Dr. Patrick. Did he talk about plantar fasciitis? all? I think Jared did. Yeah. And maybe even Dr. Pete and Dr. Ben did. I think we've touched on it with most of them. Yeah. So check out any episode that says something with a doctor, with a PT. We talked specifically on plantar fascia with a few of those. So I'm not going to try to do medical advice here, but the main takeaway is that outside of some mechanical issues or lifetime volume or bad shoes. It really is you got to prioritize your Achilles and your calves, which means you have to prioritize your hamstrings and your hips.

34:05So if you are tight somewhere between your Achilles and your glutes, that's just going to pull on the back of your leg. Somewhere down the chain, there's going to be tightness and it's going to pull and it's going to increase the odds that you have foot problems. And the Evo SL is on the lighter side and more forefoot necessary side of shoes. It doesn't really have a super stable heel in my opinion. It's a phenomenal shoe, but it encourages a mid to forefoot strike. And the Takumi Sen is absolutely a mid to forefoot strike required shoe. And neither shoe is like a plush, plush shoe, especially not the Takumi Sen.

34:47So there's just a chance that you're running a lot of strides that are fatiguing your calves. so I would choose the shoe that allows you not to have to do that that would be kind of my one size fits all advice what shoe would that be I mean if you were moving in the Adidas family move up to the Boston or move up to the Supernova Rise or move up to um what did what did Danny talk about what was her shoe she was running in Pure Run or something like that any of their bigger shoes typically take the pressure off your calves. But then I would pair that with, you've got to go through your stretching and mobility and body maintenance, find out which part of your rear chain is tight, if there is such an issue in your rear chain, and then just attack the heck out of that thing until it's not.

35:36That's your best prevention strategy, in my opinion. Yeah, calf strengthening and then calf mobility work, which is so interesting how it presents under the foot because you might not even feel anything up your chain. Like, I don't think my calves are tight. I think my hamstrings are fine, but you have this ever-present plantar fasciitis and it is coming from up your chain. It just is. Even if you can tell it is or not, it's just a tricky one to wrap your head around. Do you get it anymore? I'm dealing with it right now. Currently. What do you think has been causing it? When I went from no vert to lots of vert training, getting ready for superior, it came back very quickly.

36:16Uh, 30 % work. It's flexing and, and, and fatiguing my calves and put me on my toes all the time. It was almost like the, like the flip of a switch where it started coming back and then it's there. And now once you get it, it's so hard to get to go away. So I'm even to the point of, uh, almost limp running the beginning of many of my runs throughout the week right now. Um, I'm to that point where I might need to get some treatment on it, but yes, I'm dealing with it right now. And I've been very lucky with my feet of all the issues I've had in my life, bottom of my feet really aren't an issue.

36:47But when I get the feelings of that or the sharp tugs or like the, oh, that must be what it is, but it goes away. It's always from basketball. It's the day after basketball. And that is very calf demanding for a runner. Jumping and cutting and stagger foot kind of exploding fast first steps. It's all driving up through the calves. So it's when your calves get exerted and then they retract and they get tight and stiff. That's all pulling. And then it pulls all night as your body gets stiff and tight. So that's the area to focus on. My advice, which you didn't ask for this domain, is the surface you're running on, I think, is very, you can be very much in control of that with PF.

37:35um if you chose twice a week to go put in grass miles or dirt miles i am telling you it will make a difference and will alleviate um a bit of that pain so yes grass miles at the local soccer field are slow uh slower than road running but getting grass miles in or dirt miles can be so helpful and then any terrain based running where you're just not in that same strike pattern like you would be on the roads can be so helpful. So terrain, run on the grass next to the sidewalk instead of the sidewalk or the road. I think making a twice a week switch to something like that may make a difference. And then also, I don't know, this is probably the dozenth time I've said it's probably the treatment I'll end up getting if this thing sticks around is just get in for some shockwave therapy.

38:24More practitioners are using it now. It's much more accessible. You can first getting that type of treatment. It was really hard to find. Now shockwave treatment, small bullet in the, in the end of a little bit of like an electronic, uh, like handle. And it just, it's like tapping your area of pain with a hammer, creating damage, gets new blood flow in there, which, you know, creates inflammation, which is good. And it helps repair that really strenuous, tenuous tissue that doesn't have a lot of nutrient availability, we'll call it. And so shockwave has been literally the game changer for me. I went from plantar fasciitis to like not be like limping out of bed, not being able to put full pressure on my foot to fully healed in two weeks.

39:03The first time I dealt with it bad from shockwave therapy, it's the only change I made. So for what that's worth, Chris. Beautiful. All right. Uh, Joel, I work with Joel. This is via text. He says question for the next Q and a heard y 'all talk about hill repeats with a ski lift recently. That's non-existent where I'm at, but I do have some hills and a skateboard. Would there be enough benefit from running up and skating down to offset the downside of awkward running while carrying something and the increased risk of injury from falling? Thanks in advance. So Joel, I laugh when I read that. Joel wants to know if he could skateboard down and run up.

39:43It's not a ridiculous idea. How many times have you thought like, how could I get a bike to the top of this so I could just coast down or could I have a buddy do it? It's real. Yeah, you could do that. Now, you could get... It's no different than a schemo. Or you just have a backpack, a harness set up where you just slap it in there. Or you could have a tether around your waist and you just run uphill towing it. The difference is going downhill on a skateboard requires active exertion. Unless it's a very casual hill. I do like the idea of it for volume-based hill workouts. But for the average hill workout, it's probably hard to find the right hill that would make this even viable.

40:31So I say stay a tinker on this. Find out a way to make it work and test it out. But it would have to be for a big, long hill workout on a more gradual hill. And the volume of work would have to offset the inconvenience of it all. Joel, I really did chuckle. I was like, skateboard, really? um and he doesn't he won't go on a treadmill which is the worst part about this because the fix is a treadmill you don't need to skateboard at all unless you want to do it for fun separately but joel in the treadmill just it's not a thing that's going to happen apparently joel and so now he's like okay i take too much damage going downhill in these repeat.

41:18So what's the fix? Sure. I think pulling it behind, towing it behind up the hill would be probably the best, like on a little bungee. And then you wouldn't even have to detach it and you could ride it down, still attached to you, turn right around, go back. I just think the risk isn't worth the reward. You're going to hit a pebble. You're going to Superman. Then you have a broken wrist and cut the workout short. It's an amusing idea. Yeah. If it's a slow enough hill rep, You might as well get a hyper light bike and run pushing it in front of you like a running stroller. Then at least you can control your descent, not have to engage your legs and not have to worry about crashing as much.

42:01I'd be more likely to do that. I mean, I ran hill reps pushing a running stroller. I trained for a Spartan Race World Championship using a running stroller. Actually, I had my best Spartan Race World Championship ever running hill intervals at 5K effort with a running stroller. You can run pushing it. You could run pushing a bike. You would just take one session to get used to the technique of it. Then you can switch off hands and you can even switch hands mid-rep. But honestly, that would be the way to go. But the treadmill is the answer. My answer to people who are like, I won't do that, is like, then you don't care about your goals.

42:37if you don't care about your goals enough to suck it up for one treadmill session every other week then i don't want to hear it oh fighting words one session every other week listen i hit my thumb with a hammer once every other week hard if that was like the best way to get good at a race i'd probably do worse than that yeah um well joel hopefully you heard that amusing question nonetheless um all right this one um let me see if we can make sense of this because we answered this gentleman's question and then we answered it or we answered it. And then he followed up to the original question. And I don't have that original question screenshotted.

43:14So let's see, let's see, this is Johnny. And Johnny says, kind of an, I kind of have an extension to the above too. This first 100 miler in September is on a 2.3 kilometer course. I did a six hour race sim focusing on my fueling, but actually got some tendonitis in my right leg due to all the right turns. I'm working through that with a physio, but my question would be, should I be getting the majority of my mileage on the course or should I save the majority of the course for race day and then deal with the tendonitis after it's all asphalt with one small uphill and one progressive downhill that damn Hill is the race name.

43:52So 2.3 loop course where he's turning right a lot for a hundred miles. That sounds terrible. That's the course. You're looking it up? Yeah, I'm looking up to see what the vert is. Of that damn hill, D-A-M, not D-A-M-N. All right. It is along a river. Okay. So it shouldn't be that big of a hill. I mean, it could be, but all right. So the question is how often should I do the thing that flames up my tendonitis that I'm going to have to deal with? Do I put it all the way off till race day and come in as fresh as possible and not have it rear its head early? Or do I try to prep for it and get ahead of it?

44:37That's the question. I'm just like, not to say I'm picking holes in this, but do you buy into the so many right turns cause my tendinitis. It's a mile and a half almost. If it's ankle tendinitis, I could see that. I don't know what tendinitis is, but a tendinitis type of reaction. Inflammation, we've seen it where people run a long or a loop course. And if you're running on a slope on a turn, I could see it. But my answer is - That surprises me. Do you ever have people who reach out - I've heard of people who reach out - when somebody like an athlete you're working with reaches out and they're like, my right leg hurts.

45:20Like, great. What, what hurts exactly? Like, I don't know my right leg. Like, well, there's a lot of things in your right leg that this could be. And he just says, I had some right leg tendonitis, which is like, okay, where on your right leg is, I need more than just your leg. Yeah. And was there any pre-existence of that prior to race day. So I would say that ultras are already a foolish thing and not good for your body. And I would say pavement running is already not great for your body. A 100 miler on pavement, I think is a really bad idea unless you have a really compelling reason to do it.

46:00So my first advice is just choose a different race. I don't think that's an option right now. But if it's not an option, you have to be prepared for that thing. And as any middle-aged person who goes to the track knows, the left turns get to your left leg. But as anyone who grew up doing track knows, you get really good at turning left. And it doesn't bother your body really at all. So you have to do that thing. You got to get on this course or an approximation of it. But you have to dose it so that early on you're not doing it to a level that causes a bad reaction in your body. but you have to develop tolerance for that over the course of the prep.

46:38I would be building up sequentially more and more minutes spent turning right throughout this time. And then I would be balancing it out with left turns as well, because you don't want to develop an imbalance. And then you target those areas in your indoor strength training as well to make sure that they're ready for it. But I think you have to expose yourself to that over and over and over because otherwise you are going to have something come up on race day. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think you have to dose it once a week, minimally, whether it's within your long run or in a recovery run or something.

47:10Minimum one dose a week and ideally probably more. I mean, it's a 100-mile race you have to endure. So getting familiar with that, it might be worth the risk to me. It's 100 % worth the risk to me. I wouldn't run a one-mile track race seriously that I cared about if I wasn't on the track at least one time per week in the buildup. Yeah. Well, that's your answer then. I don't know. Really? A mile and a half loop? How many turns can there be? It looked like it was a figure eight. It looked like a lot of turns. Oh, it did. Oh, okay. Well, shame on me. You can move on to the next one. I'm going to find that again.

47:46If it's a figure eight, you'd be going left as well, though. Maybe I didn't see it. Anyways, okay. I am now on a different website. Here we go. But I do agree. I think all they need to know is, yes, get on that course and practice on that course and build up tolerance. Oh, it's not. It comes in close. It's the shape of an eight, but it doesn't quite touch. All right turns. That feels like sacrilegious to me, like a right turn only course because we're so wired to go left from the track. Running in a circle with left turns, does that not feel way more natural to you than running right? 100%. All right.

48:21Should we move on? Yeah. No, you just got it. I ran at the Pettit yesterday with Lisa and after 40 minutes, I was tired of turning left and my left leg started to take a different type of damage. If I was to do a 100 miler there, I would be doing all my long runs there. You got to get used to it. And if you can't handle it in training, then you're not ready for the demands of the race and you shouldn't race that thing. That's my take. You're going to salivate at this next one. Chris. Chris says, hi, a possible Q &A about shoe size and fit. I started running in 2023 and ran my very first half marathon in November of that year.

48:58I was 51 at the time. From there, I got into triathlons and completed a full Ironman last year. I'm not, I'm not wanting to explore trail running. When I started, I went to the local running store knowing almost nothing about running shoes and was directed to a wide toe box shoe and advised to hold on. This is getting cut off. Why told you an advice? Oh, and advise to size up from my actual 11.5 wide size foot. so my feet would have room to swell. That direction worked fine for my slow road running, but I've never noticed any real swelling in my feet. Anyway, I'm following that same direction today and feel like I'm swimming in my trail shoes when making turns and navigating the various hazards I come across.

49:40I hear you both talk a lot about how your shoe fits, cinching down the laces, not liking heel slippage, et cetera. What advice do you have for an old dude who perhaps has never worn a properly fitting shoe? How snug do I want a trail shoe? Was that original advice given to me correct for road running? Is it the same for the trails? By the way, my current trail shoe is the Topo Vista size 12.5 wide. I like the shoe, but it's too big. I don't know what size is correct, and none of the stores here have it for me to try different sizes. And honestly, I don't even know if I would know the right fit when I felt it.

50:11It's the wrong advice. Honestly, you were given the wrong advice. The only situation where shoes or foot swelling causing bad shoe fitment comes into play would be honestly probably races 50 miles and longer. Or I mean, it might be 12 hours, 10 hours plus maybe Kirk is 10 hours to cut off for that for most people. I mean, minimum six, but probably much longer. Yeah, so it's advice that exists in the running community, but only for long ultras. And the play for that is to have a second bigger, roomier pair of shoes waiting in a drop bag for when your feet start to swell. You don't wear the big clown shoes as prevention.

51:01So no, you got bad advice. but what I would do is stay with the Topo Vista because Topo is an anatomically shaped shoe and it has good four foot room. I would just move away from the wide and drop down and or dropped. Honestly, if money's not a tight concern for you, I would get a 12 and a half regular and a 12 regular and I would try them on and then send one back, whichever one. They should just feel right. But it's just you won't know. You'll know what feels wrong and you'll know what feels right. But if the 12 and a half wide is bad, then you have to get rid of the wide first. And you might have to size backwards.

51:42I don't size up in regular shoes to running shoes. Yeah. So one of my least favorite running shoe advice is the whole you want a finger, you want a thumb between your big toe and the end of the shoe like they used to fit you like that. Horrible advice, even on the roads and the trails. I very much disagree. and then you talk summer running and you get sweaty and you end up breaking in the shoe and even if it's slightly tight and even abrasive for the first 20 miles by the time the foam compacts and some of the fabric stretches and you got your sweat and salt in that shoe and some of the fabric breaks down a little bit it ends up working out perfectly once it does that as well and so even erring on too small of a shoe I've worked into it and it's been perfect a too big a shoe you've already started with one hand tied behind your back and if you care about running quickly on anything that's technical it's only going to be a detriment and so find a shoe that fits i think snug for me i would take it if somebody said you can half size up or half size down i'll just roll the dice and half size down every single time because i trust that that shoe will end up how it needs to be for my foot after i run in it just enough and i found that with most shoes unless they're that notably too small.

52:55Even a shoe that's fit perfectly in the first hour of some of my runs, like this Hoka Rocket X Trail, that shoe fits perfectly out of the gates. By the time I've cinched it down twice and I'm still two hours in and it's sweats flying off, it's a sloppy mess no matter what. And that shoe fits perfectly. So that's my own personal bias, but that's how I feel about that. Really, the only time you're going to run into issue is if your toe starts impacting the front of the shoe. Correct. And that can be solved with a better, tackier midsole. I mean, sorry, insole or by spraying pre-wrap spray on your insole.

53:30And that'll lock your foot down in place. So I don't want them tight on the trails, like front to back, but I do want them snug side to side and top to bottom. And then if front to back, I don't want them roomy. I don't. you're more likely to have problems from them being excessively roomy for most people. But if you think there's a problem with it being roomy, then start dialing it back a bit. Keep the 2E 12.5 for if you run a 100 miler for a later drop-in. Yeah, good point. Do you have anything you want to add to that? No. All right. Next question. This is from a gentleman who is sending me his tech...

54:12Speaking of shoes too small, is Tecton X2s, but they're a half size smaller than what I currently wear. He says the shoe doesn't work for him. I said, let me try it on and see if I want to buy it from you. So this would be a 10? This would be a 10. So if it was an 11 non-starter, I'd be like, no, I'm not interested. But he said, I got this shoe. It's got 10 miles in it. Interested? I said, yeah, let me give that thing a try. So I'm backing up what I'm saying. So that is a shoe though, that has a very stiff confining toe box. It does. It does. Yeah. Yeah. Um, well you can put a thinner footbed in and then maybe if it's like a 10 and a quarter, we're going to find out.

54:48Oh, that's the blue color. I'm kind of over the hoka blue color, whatever. Yeah. Anyways. Um, he says, I have a quick question that I'd love your take on and maybe a future pod topic. Uh, after longer races, I've been experiencing some mental fogginess, things like slower recall and just not feeling as sharp cognitively. It usually clears after a few days, but after Zumbro in April, this year it's lingering longer than normal. For context, I'm 57 and I'm paying more attention to how my body is responding. And I'm thinking more about my nutrition approach, especially high carb intake during training and racing and any potential longer term impacts, including concerns around things like Alzheimer's, dementia, being labeled as type three diabetes.

55:27Is my high carb nutrition needed for racing actually a risk factor for poor memory as I get older? Is mental fogginess something you see as a common response to heavy training, racing load, or could it be a signal that I'm overreaching or missing something in nutrition or recovery? Would appreciate any perspective you have. It's a sticky one. All right. I am not a dietician. I am not any sort of medical professional. So I'm going off of what I believe to be true right now. There may be someone that's going to just roll their eyes hard and yell at their phone when they hear this. So if so, reach out to us and correct me.

56:03If there's anything that's going to help or hurt your brain function, if you're going to hurt your brain function, it's because you're not going to have enough carbs or fat. Your brain needs glucose. If you're going to have too much carbs and too much fat in your diet, I don't know of any evidence that points to that losing cognitive sharpness. I've not heard of high-carb fueling hurting brain function. I would think that starving your body of carbs and healthy fats would be way more detrimental to your cognitive function than having an abundance of that. Could an electrolyte imbalance cause some fogginess?

56:49Yes. But I would lead towards this is a sleep issue. This is a fatigue and sleep issue. Or just a central nervous system hyper response. but not. Kirk, can you see any way that high carb could hurt brain function? I am not well studied on this topic. My intuition says no. I have thoughts on the fogginess and slower recall and not being as sharp cognitively afterwards. I have some thoughts on that. As far as this particular thing about high carb needed for racing, asking if it's a risk factor for poor memory as well. He's not just asking about, you know, diabetes potentially, but, um, what are you searching right now?

57:35Well, I'm just looking at if high carb fueling, which could spike insulin production, could that cause brain fog? But the, but like working out and training is like an insulin stabilizer. So you'd think it would off, it would offset itself quite nicely in the moment. I just don't think it could happen long term. Well, I wanted to touch, cause I can't speak knowledgeably about that and I can't even fake it, you know? Um, but about the fogginess and about like feeling a bit out of it and maybe dull, uh, I don't know about you Bracken, but after I see Jesus out there and I see Jesus long enough, I'm off cognitive.

58:13I'm in a fog. Think of it this way. Like, let's say you go out on a bender, uh, you drink too much. And then the next day you're like foggy and kind of out of it and hung over, et cetera. You're not your sharpest self. You're filtering through toxins in your body and it's impacting your ability to feel as vibrant as you would like cognitively and physically. At some point, we take enough metabolic damage in these long events that our body is literally filtering through byproduct of let's call it toxins or residual from the effort, which I see no way in which it wouldn't impact cognition, potential sleepiness, fogginess.

58:51I've gotten done with a race and feel like, like even after Afton in the heat, it felt like I was in the twilight zone for a couple of hours. Just like, I, yeah, like I couldn't like, you want me to solve a complicated problem. It wasn't probably going to happen until I got fully rehydrated. I got some real food in me. I got, you know, cooled down. And the same thing happened after superior as well. Superior had a shorter window of like a half an hour. I was like trying to be interviewed by somebody and I was putting it together, but I'm like, I'm not my best self right now. Like, and it's not there.

59:19It's not accessible to me. I'm in dreamland because I've just been in tunnel vision, looking at the trail, even just the focus it took and your lack of awareness of everything else going on around you and in the world. And so I think it's worse. He does make it worse and shorter races. I don't experience that nearly as much. Like I could go sell my soul on a 5k and two hours plus. Yeah. For me, it's the long stuff. And then usually by the time I wake up the next day, for sure, I start to, it starts to lift, but I think just, You've got crap floating around in your compromised system. You're filtering through damage.

59:51The beehive's been kicked, and the bees are buzzing, and it's going to take a while for that to settle. And so I would have no concern with that whatsoever. Now, if it's lingering for days, and you're like a week out, and you're like, I'm still off. Is he already into weeks in his question? I don't think so, but... If it's days, I'm going to look to insulin levels. It usually clears after a few days. Oh. But after Zumbro in April this year, it's lingering longer than normal. So I don't know what that means. Okay. So three guesses. One, could be insulin levels. Two, I don't sleep well after big long races, especially hot races.

1:00:25And then get bad sleep for two nights and you're going to pay for a week as a middle-aged adult. And then finally, get checked for limes. That's my blanket advice for everyone going through anything weird that's into outdoor activities. Go get checked for limes. It's not the worst. Honestly, it's not the worst advice. It's the thing that they don't look for. So go look for it early just to rule it out. Otherwise, how many stories do you have, yourself included, where you find it way too late because no one looked for it specifically? Yeah. And if you go in any doc and just say, hey, I run on the trails all the time out in the woods.

1:01:01I haven't been feeling well. Can I get tested? They'll be like, yes, of course. No doc's going to push back on that. All right. We're ending this at that question. I've decided that mostly because I've got three three to five minutes. And I see that the latest screenshot is only from last Wednesday. So from like six days ago, so we can get to that one a little bit. So we still have five left, but we did a bad job in terms of quantity, but I feel good about the quality. I agree with you on that. Um, all right. What do you have? Do you have anything you want to close with? Uh, well, I ran my longest run yesterday in eight and a half weeks.

1:01:35Oh, good. At the padded. I assume, I assume you went indoors cause it was so hot out. Yeah. The real feel is like 97. And it's oppressive. And we got a late start anyway. So Lisa and I had a window we got to run together. So went and did that at the Petit. But got eight miles in on a hard surface and then played basketball this morning. And I did take a nap this afternoon as a result. But I'm not destroyed. So things are looking up, Kirk. How is the cyst foot situation? I'm having no issues whatsoever. If I look and touch that area, it is not the same as the other side, but it's not getting any worse.

1:02:15And there's no pain and not much pain. I have no discomfort from it whatsoever. Good. Slow play this build. There's no rush at this point, right? No rush. There just isn't. I have to treat myself like these high school kids in that scenario. Spam volume and run as you can. Yep. I approve. and then maybe when carting season lightens up sometime in the fall and you have a little more time at your disposal then you can decide what you want to do then but right now it's yeah bide your time yeah yeah okay sweet well we have a guest interview later this week so that's what's happening i'm actually really looking forward to this i'm going to keep it a secret for now bracken doesn't even know i'll tell i'll tell you i'll tell you after we click the red button cliffhanger.

1:03:02If 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.