Training Tuesday: Train Low, Race High or Train High, Race High?

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. Hi, Kirk. We just left off this conversation about only choose one thing. And one of the options was plated or unplated shoes for the rest of your life. And because I'm planning way too far out for the Ironstone 100K, People are going to start rolling their eyes as I repeat this phrase, but it's important knowing the first 21 miles are on a gravel and paved bike path.

1:131 % downhill, call it, for 21 miles. And then you go to technical ridge running. So it's basically a buy-in. So I'm doing long pavement or gravel runs every other week until I get up to the point where 21 miles does not take anything out of it. In theory, I get to that point. I approve. That's the hope. So I did one, I did 11-ish a couple weeks ago, and I did it in one shoe and I stayed on gravel the whole time. And then this time I did the first five, the entire time on pavement, but in my max cushion, unplated road shoe. In the second half, I stayed on the gravel and in the grass, but I ran it in the AlphaFly 3.

2:00so seeing what the first five miles of pavement did to my quads and legs based off not doing much of the pavement last time and then switching to the lighter more efficient plated super foamed shoe and seeing what that felt like on grass and gravel what would you expect would happen well first of all is this like a jfk 50 situation type race yes but in reverse where right where athletes, even top-end athletes, will potentially make a shoe choice, a shoe change at some point. Yeah. The general accepted... There are people who have done the same shoe the whole time. Some people... Like last year, the guy who won it but was disqualified ran in the Agravic Speed Ultras the whole time.

2:52Okay. That'd be a do-it-all shoe, right? Yeah, I agree. He may have changed, but into the same shoe. Is there an aid station or a crew stop right before the train changes? There's a convenient spot for it. You have like a one mile. It's a bit of trail and has some road, like a half mile, thousand meters of road in there. But yeah, essentially there's, you get to the end of the line. You get a full crew station and you can go. So I will absolutely change. I mean, my plan is to take the Mark Dottle approach. I'm planning for mile 60 from step number one. So I know my feet and my legs. I'm going to refresh them as often as possible.

3:35I'm going to change shoes at every crew station. Okay. How many people sent you a Mark Dottle interview on Theo Vaughn's podcast? Zero. Oh, everybody was real excited about that, which is pretty cool. I haven't listened yet. It's big. It's like, we did it first. We always do it first. And then they blow up on us. That's huge remark. I mean, to be on Theo Vaughn's, it's unbelievably huge. So Alphas on grass and gravel or foamy recovery type shoes on road and gravel. Yeah. Glycerin Max, which I really like. And you're asking me to predict the damage taken. Damage taken and how each one felt. Now, the last time I did the full 11 on grass and gravel in the Glycerin.

4:20So I had a comparison of how those felt on grass and gravel. And I did my warm-up cool down for my 5K in the alphas on grass and gravel. So I've done both. So I have a comparison, but not in the same run. Alphas on grass. That's a new one. I am going to say that notably less beat up on the grass and gravel in the alphas. Although maybe your calves and Achilles took a little hit due to the softer push-off. but you probably took more actual structural damage from the glycerin on the pavement. I believe I took more impact from hitting the ground in the glycerin, but my legs didn't feel refreshed for very long after putting the Alphas on.

5:04They are a firmer riding super shoe. I agree with that. Especially the threes. I mean, the twos got more firm than the ones and the threes are a a different ride than both of them, but they're not, I wouldn't describe them as plush. No, they're not plush, but they're actually kind of like built like little tanks in a weird way. Just shockingly stable. Shockingly stable. So you're trying to figure out what shoe's going to cause the least amount of damage in the first 21 miles. So I'm available for the next 40. And so you're doing, you're doing experimenting already saying, would it make sense to run in something as silly as a glycerin?

5:41And And it's not silly to run in the glycerin, but that's not a racing shoe. No. Because it saves my life. Yeah. That's all you care about. So you're trying to suss that out now. Yeah. I mean, realistically, if you were to run a marathon in your Clifton's versus your Alpha Fly's, what's your difference per mile? I mean, it could be up to like 10 seconds. And by the end, it could be more, right? Yeah. Yeah. It could even be more, honestly. Yeah. What would be your difference at aerobic threshold? Maybe it's the same for a marathon. I was going to say probably the same. Yeah. Yeah, probably the same.

6:12So over the course of a 21 mile, we're looking at what? 210 seconds? Sure. So what? Four minutes. And a half minutes? Sure. That's noteworthy, but I still think you're right. The deciding factor is how do I feel when I get there? Because all that can be eaten up on the terrain really quickly. Well, if mile two is a, mile 23, let's say, is a 19 minute mile. let's say the three miles between like 45 and 50 are 16 to 19 minute miles. The difference between being a little beat up or being a little fresher and able to still be like alert and working through that section. I mean, a three minute deficit on a technical course is not a three minute road deficit.

7:02So I'd be happy to give up five minutes on the road. if it gave a notable difference in my legs moving forward. What I don't want is to give up some time and then not get anything back for it. Well, I'll tell you what it is. It's comparing the beating up of the legs and then also can I protect my legs because the alpha is just faster per mile so I get to run at the same pace with way less cost cardiovascularly. There's that option too. Maybe I run the same pace in the Alphas and actually get beat up less and use less. Or do I run it faster and get beat up the same? Whichever way you look at it, part of it is how well do they run on the terrain and part of it is how well do they protect.

7:48I think the decision should be made as much around which shoe allows me to run in my efficient, non-damaging stride for the longest. And the reason I bring that up is because, oh man, do I love the shoes that let me open up. We call it the Boeing, the Boeing effect of let's say an alpha or even these Hoka Seelios, the Boeing effect. But what happens is I run really smooth and really fast and really efficient for this aggressive open, like I'm moving stride. But what happens there is eventually my quads, which has never really been a thing flat running for me. And those shoes will eventually take notable damage.

8:32Like even after grandma's half and then grandma's full where I DNF'd at 19, my quads were like smoked for three days afterwards. And I could feel that within there. And something about the super shoe puts a lot of quad emphasis on me. Even if I'm using a more tame stride. And then I think, okay, then I have to go into the mountains after 20 miles on them, which I might already feel a lot of damage from that shoe at 20 miles. And then it's like, now I got to climb and descend. I would be picking the one that allows me to shuffle, like shuffle at like a good clip, I think is almost as important because I know what that shoe would do to me.

9:13It'd make me want to take advantage of it and that might cause me problems. Yeah. It's interesting. So anyway, I ended up feeling less plush than I thought I would in the alpha on the grass. For sure, the alpha on the road is going to feel firm, but I thought the grass plus the alpha might allow me to use it differently. It liked running on the grass and gravel, but my legs didn't feel special in it. Probably because of the pace as well. Maybe it's just not an effective pace range for them. Have you experimented a number of athletes to one, not number two? Okay. It's a whole lot of people asking.

9:50No, okay. Two athletes Two athletes I work with have landed on the Hoka Speed Goat 7 for different types of races. One, it's going to be somebody's Killington shoe of choice coming up for the Beast. And then two, it's somebody's like flat, tame, rolling trail. Because the way it's not sexy in any means, but you move well. You don't take a ton of damage. It seems to hug the foot well. It can run technical. It can run flat. Have you ever even considered like a shoe like that for the first half? If I had to one shoe the whole thing, it'd be the Speedgoat 7, I think. Yeah. I have one pair left of the 4, which I think is to date the best shoe prior to the 7.

10:305 was good too. The 5 was okay to me, but I thought the 5 got worse from the 4 for me personally. Okay. But the 7 is the first one that reminds me of the 4 in its characteristics, the density of the foam, the way it moves, the way you put your foot in and goes, oh, this feels like I've got something under my foot here. felt like the the speed goat was getting thinner underfoot i agree with that so anyway the four and the seven are what i plan on using and then the vj uh ultra three those are the three shoes that i will have for the the night technical running but if i had to one quiver it just one shoe the whole time i'd be in the sevens yeah okay i just didn't know if you were considering even that option i don't know how if it's pea gravel you can get away with anything if it's It's like bigger chunks of gravel.

11:14It's pea gravel. Okay. And I think I've talked about on here, but in the fours, I did a 17-mile road long run in them, and it was fine. Yeah. I used to use an old pair of Speed Goats for my recovery run shoes on the roads. And I'd be like, yeah, it felt good. So it's a multi-feather in your cap type shoe. So what I wanted to see, though, is, and I'm going to keep doing this a little bit with a couple of the other super shoes, but is there one that feels so good and right at the stride I'm going to use for the pace I want to keep, that it's worth submitting my legs to its will over the next 9, 10 months?

11:49It's a lot of time to get used to that. Do I put on the Audios Pro 4 on this terrain and be like, oh, this is great, but I can't take it 21? Is it worth getting to the point where I can take it 21? Or you can change out at 10. Is it worth putting quick laces and doing a 20-second shoe switch and run one for 10 and one for 10? But finding that I have time. Can I get Alpha ready for 21 where your quads aren't beat in 10 months? Or is the Glycerin Max just my sweet spot? Is it my road version of the Speed Goat where it just works for my stride and I can just casually turn over in that shoe and it feels right?

12:30My gut off the top says that shoe, by the way. If it's today, it's that shoe. Between the two, yeah. That's how I used to feel about the Hoka Bondi, which was like a freaking boat of a shoe but it was responsive i could run in it forever semi-quickly and it didn't damage me the old bondi models like i'm talking like five to eight years ago um were fantastic or you could use like the reebok all terrains in training only yeah right you could cement run in the all terrains and then a concrete run sorry jack and uh and then just put the Alphas on race day and just float. Basically be a minimalist toe finger shoe, Vibram guy.

13:15And then - My calves are cramped. They would. Don't take that approach. That's bad advice. As of right now, I'm in that advice we give, choose your last mile shoe first. Nothing yet has beat the Glycerin Max for me. It runs lighter for me than it weighs, but it's the densest, most protective foam and the rocker in it works for my foot. anyway alpha didn't beat something at a certain pace for me for the first time ever huh it's hard to get away from that shoe i got a brand new spanking pair of threes in the mail the other day 129 no 99 i don't know yes get out of town yeah i got a yes 99 where did i find them it's like the worst color scheme but whatever link link in the episode description just kidding i'm not doing that does it have words on it nope no words i'm not that kind of pansy.

14:07I wouldn't be caught dead with those shoes. All right. So do we, what do we want to talk about? Folks, we waffled really hard over what we wanted to talk about today because we have a couple of things calling to us, but there's nothing that's been like, normally we show up and we have something that's top of mind and we want, we're either going to go a shoe route or a fueling route today. And now that we're talking shoes, do we, do we stay on course or do we pivot to this fueling situation you brought up? Yeah. And I think we pivot, but it's not entirely fueling. It's fueling related. Anyway, this is a note I made years ago and we've never really talked about it.

14:42I've referenced this lecture that I attended, but we've never really had a dive into it. So we're going to today. Back in college, my brother and I both spend time at different points in time at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. And they They are one of the high-performing D3 universities in the nation, and they have a very strong lab-based human health and performance presence up there. Part of the reason why they get good athletes, honestly, is a lot of the athletes want to go that route educationally. Yeah. And so that's a nice pairing. And they've had some very high-level athletes come out of there.

15:24Just before we got there, there was a guy, Andrew Rock. Andrew Rock? Well, he was there while I was there. You can remember, I'm much older and wiser. He was just a year older than me, maybe. Wow, you are. Yeah, you're up there. He made the Olympic team in the 4x4, D3. Got a gold medal on the 4x4. Nick Simmons was of my era as well, and he was our multi-time Olympian out of Willamette in Oregon. Yeah. Anyways, D3. So these guys go on then, and then they make connections at the Olympic Training Center and Team USA. say. And so then there's kind of like this back and forth share of information at UW La Crosse.

16:00And they just tend to be like a, they're like a D1 tweener in a lot of ways, their programs. Where they're a D3 program, but they have more characteristics of a D1 program a lot of the time. So anyway, there was this speaker up there and they had some really good, interesting performance speakers come in and talk to their track teams. And one of them came in and one of the things he talked about was the concept of train low, race high. And when we think about low and high as runners, we usually think about train high, race low, which is altitude. But this guy was talking about the concept of depletion in your body and how much you let it recover.

16:40And his big point was one very effective means of training like an Olympic level athlete is to not give yourself optimal setups and recoveries on any given day of training and always be at a suboptimal level and build up a huge resistance to fatigue and to suboptimal fueling and soreness and things like that. And as you get close to race day, really force a massive peak out of your body and have like this amplified performance. Kind of the overall lifestyle training concept of depriving yourself of carbs and then carb loading before like an Ironman or something like that. But across the board in training, which really sounded interesting when I heard this.

17:35And now is the exact opposite of what the current trend is almost across the board with pro endurance camps. Yeah, this became a thing that I was aware of in college, actually, going to Oshkosh. And my coach, John Zupont, who's still running today, lives mostly down in Arizona and is retired from coaching, of course. But he was chasing the marathon still quite hard in his 50s. And before his races, he would go like a three to five day low to no carb plan. and he was like a no carber. He would eat normally. He would go three to five days of nothing. He would say how miserable it was. You could see it in him, right?

18:23And then Thursday and Friday before a Saturday race, it'd be a PB &J every two hours on top of meals and load up with this supposedly feeling completely terrible. And then all of a sudden you're Superman on race day. And he would talk about that with us about his strategy and approach. And I always thought that was interesting. And it never interested me personally because I was like, that sounds horrible. Like he's like, I'm going to be low functioning for a few days here because I'm miserable. I was like, well, there you go. I'm deal breaker already. But it was, but he was, you know, we were national champions, uh, in cross and we had how many all Americans across the board every year.

18:59And he coached a really high end group of athletes. And that was 2002, three, four. I remember him talking about this. So that was still the line of thinking very much in those endurance races. Ironman, usually marathon distance. You wouldn't see it much for shorter events, but when it came to the long stuff, that was like the way. Yeah. If you took it seriously, in quotes. I don't know when that ended, if it has ever. Well, it used to be carb loading was talked about for all racing. And then it started to like, like bubbles at the top of a fizzy drink, like start rising up as the clear liquid started right like now it's 10k and above or half marathon above then marathon and above then iron man and ultras for sure and anything below that i don't even know if you need to but like the ceiling kept rising for what where the cutoff was where it was effective and then we left this age of having science and placebo effect intertwined although the placebo effect is science, but the, like, I feel this way.

20:09So it's got to be working. And the coaches are like, that's all I need to know. And then like, we kind of reverse engineer it. We look for reasons why that might work. And now it's like, there's just a lab-based approach to fueling. And as far as I know, there isn't like this, what would you call it? The Venturi effect would that be where you create a narrowing passage and it forces the liquid through faster like we don't have that in the body from like a you don't create a vacuum where it's missing carbs and it gets it and it absorbs it better or more efficiently like if you're low on it you don't then search it out more we used to think that was more of a thing if you're not fueling very often and then you give yourself carbs during a race it's like rocket fuel because you've never had it and your body utilizes it better.

21:00And now it's the opposite. It's let's train ourselves to absorb it better and use it better. And we actually just worry about the process rather than this imagined, create a demand and then fill it at the last minute. So that seems to have been the thing that changed big over time with fueling particularly. Well, I have personal experimentation as thoughts on this. I don't want to get ranty or anything, but you want me to you're the one who normally gets ranty but so i've talked about this in episodes in the past that i used to experiment with all diet types and this one time i experimented with eating zero grams of carbs for an entire month straight and when i say zero i mean zero it was cheddar were able to do that one to two grams a day in seasonings and byproduct like if you had a sausage and it had fennel in it.

21:52It may count as like, you know, like that, but I'm talking negligible. I pricked my finger every day to test my ketones. I could not stay in ketosis. If I even had 25 grams of carbs a day, my body would not stay in ketosis unless I was super strict. So I was whipping, taking heavy whipping cream and like drinking it. I was taking sticks of butter unsalted and eating it. I was, I mean, I was high, high fat, same amount of protein as normal. That's how you get in ketosis because protein can convert to glucose. We don't need to get into it. Point being, I was lifting and running during that time.

22:27My kidneys were throbbing. I actually felt quite bad and I could not run. I didn't have a single run in that period of time that felt good. Okay. And I was running four or five days a week. After the month was done, I said, well, that was an interesting experiment. Not for me. I think mostly because I was so lean to start with, that wasn't a good approach. I didn't have a a buffet of fat for my body to pull from as fuel because I was lean. Anyways, I went out with my girlfriend at the time. This is like 2014. And we went to, we got, I'm like, I'm done. Got burger and fries. I had like two beers.

22:58I hadn't drank at all, any alcohol in that time either. And stuffed my face. We went out for ice cream that night afterwards. It's like, oh my God, that's the first time I felt satisfied in forever. And I woke up the next day. I said, I'm going to use this fuel. And I went out and did a mile repeat session. And I have never felt better in my entire life in a single session than the day after I stopped doing keto and went for a run. But I think back and I think, okay, I felt like dog shit for four. It was almost five weeks. A month truly was like four and a half weeks. But when I look back and then I think about what were my actual interval splits from that session, yes, I felt good.

23:43because I had the comparison of feeling so bad. And then I looked back at the splits and I was like, I felt so good and I felt light and I felt like I was limitless. But my splits weren't all that great. And I for sure got hardly anything out of my training for those four weeks because I was scraping the bottom of the barrel. And so placebo effect, I was like, I feel amazing. I have energy for the first time. But to what degradation of my fitness that I took because I was scraping the bottom of the barrel for a month. And so that is really the question that needs to be asked. Yes, I can trick myself into this great race or feeling good, but I think if I was well-fueled and trained, I would have been 10 to 15 seconds per mile on those mile repeats faster if I just stuck to the script.

24:31Yes, I felt good, but it was comparison to feeling so bad prior. That's a complicated situation to really sort out the truth. It is. What do you make of that? Well, I think it's logical. I think that we're talking placebo versus evidence-based lab work. Yeah. To me, it's like warming up in heavy shoes and then putting on my racing shoes. I never feel faster than that. But when the race settles in, do I notice it anymore? No, I don't. Yeah. When the race gets nasty and I'm barely hanging on, have I ever once thought like, well, thank goodness my shoes feel so light? No, I'm focusing on my quads and my hamstrings and the bile coming in the back of my throat.

25:16That feeling's not helping me. It's not carrying me anymore. I used to look at Hobie Call, who did all of his training in his cross-country racing shoes. When I first met him, he was in these Adidas Adi Zero XCs, and he had his Brooks Mach 5 or 7 at the time, these rubber-bottomed, spikeless racing shoes. and five-ounce shoes nike waffle racer yeah these little flimsy they'd protect your feet because they had rubber bottoms but not a crazy amount and he would do a large amount of his running in that shoe and i'd always look at it and be like because that back in this day i was coming out of college i was in shape to run in spikes i could run in that in fact when i moved out to colorado at first i did a lot of mountain work and shoes similar to that because i was doing so much climbing and i would run a lot of twisty trails in those like i structurally i could handle very minimal shoes if I needed to.

26:12But I always thought there's nothing special waiting for you on race day. And in hindsight, I realized his feet were stronger than mine. His calves were stronger than mine. All his connective tissue was more useful than mine. His toe off was better than mine because he was always in it. Now I still wouldn't go back and do that, but I thought he was at a disadvantage, but really he was building up a type of an advantage because he was always at a place where his feet were ready for what's coming. So I don't know if that relates to what I was saying, but like taking off the heavy shoes, like I would warm up in high school and college in my heaviest running shoe just so I could put on my spikes and feel lighter.

26:49But it didn't carry you once that feeling left. Which you're describing what I was describing in a sense with that session. Like when it really got real, if I had to show up in race on that day, would I have raced better if I fueled normally for a month and trained or would I have raced better, depleted, and then carved up? And the answer is I would have raced better consistently fueled. And that's what we're doing now. That's what everyone at the pro level, not everyone, most people at the pro level are looking at it now. They're saying, how do I get the most out of my session with the least cost?

27:20I mean, Han said it to us. Danny said it to us. We're reading it about all the high-end athletes, but now the people we know who are doing it, they're saying the same thing. The biggest adjustment I've made is I'm fueling for sessions. I'm fueling during sessions. And so they're never getting depleted. And so they're able to get more work in for the same cost or the same work in for less cost, which then allows you to repeat it more. And that's how you get better. You don't get better by getting comparably tougher. You might become better at racing by getting tougher. Like you might get better in certain situations, but you don't bring a better engine to the table.

28:00you're just tougher at using the engine you have. But if you build a bigger engine, you're better better. It doesn't require a tough moment for it to come out. If all you do is get better, you don't get any faster to start the race. You're just hanging on better. So obviously there's a place for both. But it's interesting to me how this talk was so cutting-edge sounding when I heard it. And now the opposite is so cutting-edge sounding. And we used to think we were weak if we drank water during a workout. And I've talked on here about like even after college, I went years without drinking a thing during any run.

28:37And I would intentionally run without eating in the morning. And now it's like I won't run without getting at the very bit like a fruit snack in me or granola bar or applesauce because I don't want to be at a deficit ever, especially now that I'm injury prone. I want to give my body every chance to get recovered. So it's a, A, the question is, is either one right or is there a middle ground that's optimal? Are there times to be beat up in training intentionally? Are there times to come into a session depleted? Are there times to be under fueled? Whether that answer is yes or no, what 10 years from now is going to be the cutting edge thing?

29:17Like what are we, we're really good at judging the things that have happened in the past, but we're not great at seeing around corners usually, but it should have been obvious. Fueling yourself gives you more reps, more reps builds your engine better. Recovering better means you absorb a higher percentage of that work and then rinse and repeat and you get better. But we didn't think that way. So what are we still missing the mark on? Yeah. The theory was like dry out the sponge so that when you soak it back up, it soaks up the most water possible and you have a little extra right which um okay but this this can get us in trouble but there's like there may be a time and place there truly may be a time and place meaning which aspect of it um for the lit for the uh training low racing high there may be a time I'm in a place and I think it falls for like one camp, maybe I'd say one or two and for sure.

30:15One, possibly two, for sure. One, possibly two. Are we thinking of the same camps? I believe so. I mean, I'll say it and you can tell me what you think. Ultra. Okay. And hybrid. No, that's not what I'm thinking. Oh, what are you going? First of all, I fully believe in training volume and training load and training intensity should lead the way with your food choices. However, I think there's absolutely a camp. How many people are overweight and absolutely like the key to health and performance is like you got to trim up. So I'm going to be a little less diligent about topping off my stores and being up to my eyeballs and carbs because their sock in the tailpipe is they legit need to lose 80 pounds.

31:01And they found this newfound love for a thing called running. And a way to get there and feel better is you need to lose significant weight. I'm not saying restrict, but I'm not saying this high carb fuel thing. I'm saying like eat reasonably, but we are not topping off stores, uh, intentionally because we need to dig into some, uh, into some fat loss. Okay. So I think that one can, um, which there's a whole, that's a fine line to talk about as well. And again, I lead with the fact that like training should induce the weight loss itself and you shouldn't change your nutrition a whole lot. But I think that camp would be the first.

31:39That didn't cross your mind? No, because again, our different lens we're looking through, I was thinking under-recovered, you were thinking under-fueled. Yeah. And then the other place would be if you are, again, we're not talking disordered eating, We're not talking, um, that aside would be in, in an off season period where body composition comes into play and you have no races around the corner. This is a quote fitness building era. And if you take a hit for a small amount of time and your consistency and how you feel racing isn't for six months, you want to chip away at things for two months before fueling fully is the training volume ramps up and the intensity volume ramps up.

32:23I mean, people skirt around that topic a lot, but those are the two true circumstances or the one in which I think you could justify it. I don't think in many other cases you could. Got it. Yeah, my mind didn't even go fueling because I just almost never. For example, I have a few athletes who are in the High Rocks world. and High Rock's world is leaving the brute force mode and moving towards brute speed. You almost have to with how fast everybody's running. My goodness. The sport's getting ridiculously fast. But the people who are in the other camp who got into it because it was a way to express their power in a way that didn't require crazy speed are now like, listen, the last thing waiting here is running speed and I know I'm 20 pounds heavier than my competition.

33:17So with those athletes, even with them, it's, all right, I understand you need to be at a deficit and I'd prefer you work with a nutritionist on this, but I still want you taking some carbs in before your workout when you're in a deficit so that you can get through your workout. Like play with your macros to make up those calories elsewhere, but I want the pre-workout fuel to hit so that you're not dragging 24-7. Yeah, I'm getting whiplash from nodding my head over here. We don't do video, but I could not agree more. So your mind went right to like, there's performance on the table left due to size.

33:58And so there may be a position there. It's a fine line again. So we have to like tiptoe around it, which we should. But yeah. How many people recently? How many people recently? So I've had two High Rocks athletes. who are so strong and they're fit and everything else looks great across the board and they're running as 20 seconds per K behind where it needs to be. But they're a 200 pound athlete and they're so physically fit, but they keep coming back to that same conversation, right? That same conversation. Yeah. I'm now taking 20 seconds per station and losing 40 per run. Correct. It used to be they'd take minutes on stations, but the runners have figured out the stations faster than the power has made up for a decade of run deficit.

34:48Yeah. Anyway, from a recovery standpoint, the train low race high, I think does have a place at times for hybrid and at times for ultra. And I don't mean recovery. What about for ultra? What about for ultra? What's your angle there? I think the more you run, the more you fuel. I don't think I ever would give someone a depleted state for ultra training because to me, that's a recipe for disaster. I'm thinking there are times where you're under-recovered from your last run before you run your next run. And so you better eat your face off in order to be able to – like muscular damage while moving forward if you're already fit, that can be a springboard for resiliency.

35:29that can put you in a sweet spot for building some capacity. But you have to eat your face off in those instances because you're putting yourself at a disadvantage. But I think the back-to-back long run thing or combining days where I'm beat up from hills and now I dawdle or I dawdled for three hours and now I got to run some downhills or hybrid coming into a run session, sore from a lift. I think those things are okay and sometimes even sports specific. but not under fueled. I agree. I mean, look at if we're just in the high rocks domain or the hybrid domain right now, just take Hunter McIntyre for like a classic example, one world championship to another, right?

36:11His basically Hunter trained low, right? Got as lean as he had gotten in how long, a decade? Thinking speed was what he needed on the table. And what happened to him at Worlds last year is he imploded. And he came back and said, you know what? eating dirty, training dirty, coming in, what was he 10 or 15 pounds heavier for this next world championship back to the bulk pony? And what happened? He stuck his nose in there. He got an unlucky call or two, but like, um, he was back. And I think that tells you pretty much everything you need to know the chances of hitting that window perfectly. I think when you're restrictive and then super saturate before an event, like maybe you can pull it off one out of 10 attempts, but the other nine are going to go down in flames probably.

36:56And he was a classic example of that. And half the people listening noted that. And that was his biggest takeaway was, I thought being leaner and training light and being under fueled to lose weight was going to be my answer. And it very seldom is. So hard to lose weight and peak for performance at the same time. I'm going to say it's impossible. Without drug use, it's impossible. You can't peak and drop. The window is so short to nail it before the tipping point is just straight downhill. Yeah. So anyway, my belief that the happy middle ground is that you fuel everything and you give yourself the best possible base to start each workout from and you recover as well as possible from everyone and you sleep as well as possible.

37:44And sometimes you come into a workout beat up from a different stimulus. I think that would be my only type of train low, race high I'd ever want to do. Yeah. You're saying train low as in train low on the recovery front because I beat myself up Thursday. Then I had a lower body strength workout. Then I had a fatigued long run Saturday. And so I'm training low because by stimulus purposes, I'm never allowing myself to fully recharge just from a recovery standpoint. And then when I back off in my gradual taper, then I start to pop and feel good all while fueling normally. Yeah. And the type of unrecovered I think matters.

38:22People are like, I'm still sore from Thursday's hills, but I have an easy long run this weekend. You can go run easy long. You're an ultra runner. Go run easy long if you're still sore. Yes. If you're still not sleeping well after a monster interval session or a long run, you're not ready for the next intense effort. we can deal with some soreness we can deal with some energy lulls we can't deal with systemic issues we can't deal with neurological issues I don't see a need to push through those types I think there's something to be said for a marathoner getting up on tired sore legs and doing another run same thing for an ultra runner I think there's something to be said for a higher ox athlete waking up sore from some lift and having to go hit an interval session or a Metcon.

39:16But that's a different type of non-recovered. Have you ever experimented with it? Under-fueling or under-recovering? No, let's go with either. Yeah, I think doubling. Even though I feel better when I double, my body feels better lubricated, if that makes sense. I never feel as stiff. I'm always warmer. I know there's an interference effect with that. There's no way in 12 hours I'm recovering what 24 would have given me while doing 50 % more total volume. I know that's a thing. And sitting, college running was a lot of sitting in that, waking up and just being like, I'm tired today. But I'm sleeping a ton.

39:57I'm eating a ton. I'm fit. I'm just going to run another 8 today. I'm going to run another 10 today. That kind of thing for sure. The closest I got to under-fueling would just be the not fueling before workouts at all. waking up and doing my session. Out of convenience or purpose? Both. I still believe that I was driving adaptations by not teaching my body to rely upon fuel, which is foolish. It knows to rely on fuel. You're not teaching it to need. That was one of the things we thought we were teaching our body to need water or need fuel. You can teach your mind to crave it. You can't teach your body to need carbs in order to perform.

40:37You can teach it not to use them when they're not available. It's going to draw from its sources no matter what. If you have carbs in your system, it's going to take them. Then you're just lowering your stores. So I used to think I was driving adaptation, but it wasn't. I was just falling off in workouts because I wasn't refueled. What I feel like I am seeing a trend with, also in conjunction with the high carb craze, David Roche is partially to thank for that. I think he did a really good job of putting that on the map. I'm seeing less and less of the low carb, like the keto fat adapted runner.

41:16Maybe it's just not in my algorithm anymore, but I am not seeing nearly as much of that, which would be the, in a sense, a restrictive to a point until you turn a corner, we'll call it. But are you seeing less of that? Yeah, it's not as, well, it's not trendy anymore. It's been around long enough that it's not a trend. And it's been around long enough that people have run the life cycle of that in their training. It's indisputable that there have been people who have found a boost when going low or no carb. It works with some body types. It works with some people's genetic makeup. But for a lot of people, their body starts to reject it over time.

41:55Or they start to find holes in their nutrition. or they start to find that the benefits no longer outweigh the costs. And so it's been around long enough that some people have just kind of got what they needed out of it and then moved past it. There still are some very good low-carb athletes out there, but they're few and far between. Especially since Ultra, I mean, the Ultra really was to blame for it starting and it's to blame for it going away. Short ending. Yeah. That's true. Because it was a benefit in Ultra if you could carry less. and then everyone realized we can drink our carbs and gels have gotten really efficient and waist belts have changed the way we carry water and aid stations and crews have gotten hyper, hyper efficient.

42:38And now if you're not fueling, you just can't simply work at a high enough output to be competitive in ultras anymore with the people who are fueling. So now it's swung too far the other way. People are taking in the amount of carbs that they can't even do stuff with and it's causing its own issues. But you're now not competitive. 50K is now a fast race. 100K is now a fast race. 100 milers are becoming fast races. You can't do that without fueling for a fast race. So yeah, Ultra caused it and Ultra is solving it. A lot more people stopping for potty breaks on the side of the trail than there used to be.

43:15It's the same thing with the five-finger shoes or minimalistic running or even zero drop running. Ultra has caused it. and ultras killed it and my last uh 50k at afton in july uh it's a looped course so there's people out all over the place and uh i counted yes three two were male and one was a female so i can't speak to what she was doing but there were two male squatters off the side of the trail that didn't even care at that point like it was clear what was happening sort of the you know you look at your dog and it's pooping and it's like this awkward like I got that three times. I'm like, I bet you were shoving a lot of Morton down your gullet there, buddy.

43:54I think it's one of those cases where you can get away with it until you can't. I'm like the low carb or the low fueling or people have this honeymoon phase when they go vegetarian or vegan. And I've never felt so good. Yeah, for a month until suddenly your fingernails are brittle and your energy is low and your sex drive is gone. and you'd have this less pop in your step. And the same goes like - But you had mental clarity for a bit that you hadn't had in a while. For a bit. Same can go for under fueling. I hate to say it. I like this feeling of my stomach empty. I feel like an animal rolling out of bed and I can just tell my body's eating away at itself and I'm so tough.

44:31But then when you've had your sixth run in a row and your third quality session in a row where you felt flat and then suddenly you're a zombie at noon and then you're having a hard time getting your brain function for the work tasks like that rose tinted glasses goes away pretty quick and so we get tricked in a lot of these things right and even high carb fueling maybe you can get away with as you're going out and running these 90 minute runs but then you suddenly go for your big four hour effort and you're putting in 100 grams of carbs an hour and suddenly you're taking potty breaks twice or three times on the back end the the honeymoon phase is very real with most all of this and that's how you can get tricked into it but it's like almost always compounding interest where eventually rent comes due and you settle on what bracket.

45:14We talked about this just before we even started recording. You just eat foods that work for you and you do it. You repeat that like three or four times a day. And even if you're a little hungry, you just eat a little bit more and you make sure you got to balance something on your plate and you're probably going to be okay. And it's as simple as that. Everybody has come back to that. The pendulum generally finds the center. Yeah. We just talked about it with shoes to start this. Two years ago, it would have been blasphemy to say I might just choose a max cushion road shoe over the Alpha Fly. But people are getting to the point where we went crazy.

45:50We tried all of our different super shoes. Now we're getting back to what do I actually feel good in long term? What feels good to me? What works for me to hear rather than I need the Vaporfly because that's the fastest marathon shoe. Could be. Could not be. In fact, it's very few pros are running in Vaporflies anymore. but everything like the there used to be this local guy who was a really good ultra runner who was all zero drop shoes minimal shoes and he's like i'm the guy not cramping up in these events i can go all day in these things i don't take bouncy strides i don't i don't roll my ankles these i was injured for years and i'm not anymore it's like it worked it was great and then ultras got faster and now you have to use bouncy strides to win an ultra and you realized while it it filled the hole in his injury cycle he turned a tool into the system and then the system forsaked him when a new demand was required in the race and then he was he was obsolete and ultra running he could still finish his ultras and he wasn't cramping but he wasn't getting any faster because he could only run so many miles per week and he could only do well almost no speed work in his little barefoot shoes and he was healthy but he wasn't happy anymore so then he started adding in some shoes back in so that he could run some cut down long runs and start smashing hill repeats because now you have to accelerate downhills and ultras you can't just survive the downhills so everything comes full circle and now we're to the point where there's people who need some barefoot running in their lives because they run nothing but high stack for five straight years, seven straight years.

47:36We're going to come up on the decade of super shoes sooner than later here. They'll be runners. 2020, 2019, 2019, 2018, 19. As if it could have been that early. Yeah. Within the next few years, there will be runners who have never not known a super shoe. And we're starting to see like, there's a need for some people to do some barefoot drills and to do some low stack running from time to time. So every time the pendulum swings, it's about what do I glean and pick up from this swing and how do I keep it in perspective when we come back to best practice? Yeah. I think the logic, well, you're on shoes.

48:15Of course, you brought it back to shoes, but yeah, is I think the concept of like training low, low fueling, under fuel, training lean and mean and then racing saturated is sort of like the same concept i really i can't see a hole in this argument would be i'm purposely going to get four hours of sleep a night and i'm going to do that every night every i'm going to do that for three weeks straight and then i'm going to allow myself to sleep for eight hours the two nights before my race and i'm going to feel amazing yeah by comparison in traditional logic would be like it's not worth it you're really what do you think that's going to do to your training in the lead-up and the deficit you're going to be in because of that can never be made up by two nights of sleep, right?

48:56Like I don't think it's much different than that in its own right. No, get your eight hours. If you can squeeze in a nap, there's your extra fuel saturation, right? And go through life, grab and REM whenever you can. And you're most likely going to feel better consistently. And then on race day, then like, I mean, it's the concept's nearly identical. Nobody would be like, yeah, of course I'm going to sleep deprive myself because then I'll just feel so good on race day when I actually let myself sleep. You'd be like, duh, you idiot. That's a bad plan. Why would you do that? It's not much different.

49:27We all know the people who are like, I thrive off four hours of sleep every night. Like, yeah, but you nod off every time someone stops talking to you. Like that's what my dad is. I just don't sleep a lot. I don't need it. He falls asleep every single time he's over at our house past 6 PM. Every time he falls asleep in our little chair, He just dozes off and he looks back up. And like he falls asleep in church every week. Every week, the lights dim, music starts playing, the man's out. At least there he can pretend like he's praying. There is no way that anyone is optimal on four hours of sleep.

50:07There's no way. Unless you're used to three. Going to less sleep, you get used to it, sure. But you're not excelling. You're surviving. And that's the way low fueling is. That's the way under recovering is. You can get used to anything. Humans are extremely adaptable, but getting used to it does not mean it's optimal. I don't think I can get used to four hours of sleep a night. You could survive, though, if you had to. You would just get some sleep and realize, like, oh, my, I've been grumpy for two months. I just didn't really realize it until I woke up. There have been phases of my life, my hustle phases.

50:42And, yeah, you get four to five hours of sleep a night, but then guess what happens? you pull your car into the garage over lunch and you're like so tired you can't get out and you fall asleep in the driver's seat for two minutes before like getting into the house and then you go to do this thing and then suddenly like shoot i just zonked out while i was trying to get some work done on my computer for five minutes like your body finds a way and that's a tough way 13 hours on saturday night yeah yeah exactly well i don't know how directly we address this low train low, compete high thing. But I think maybe just big picture sentiment is what we're talking about.

51:16You know there's going to be an influencer sooner than later who's going to counter the high fueling craze, who's going to counter the threshold argument, who's going to say, we've gotten soft. You've babied your body. You now do what it demands rather than it doing what you demand. You need to force feed it discomfort and pain. The Goggins style thing's going to come back. And listen, he has been more inspirational than he's been a negative to the industry. But he also had a brief period of time where he was effective as a runner. Right? That ultra space. Yeah. Yeah. But it was a very small window in time where it was the pain over logic and it was the how you fuel doesn't matter and your gear doesn't matter.

52:10You just tough out wins. As soon as that changed, that suck it up, no one cares thing didn't really get people performance anymore. So it's going to come back. It's cyclical. I want people to be able to recognize when it's coming back that you don't have to go in on it. You can maybe use it as a tool here and there, but it's not a system, it's a tool. Maybe that's our next angle, man. Maybe that's how we make our millions. yep yeah you're eating too much well duh if you look around america as a whole but we're talking to a very motivated sector of human beings my guess is that with all the high fueling all the high carb stuff the vast majority of runners are still under fueling still under recovering still overworking workouts like we have optimization remaining we're not at the pinnacle of human performance here.

53:02Fueling question for you. We got like three minutes left. Okay. If you had to choose between, let's say it was an evening run, for example. If you had to choose between eating normally throughout the day, you eat lunch, let's say at 1230, but then you run at 530. So there's a gap there. What do you think is more important? Having a midday snack or something before your run, if you had to pick one or the other, it's a 90 minute run or just starting the run empty, but then fueling during the run as you went? Oh. My answer is easy. I can't go five hours. So I would have to eat in between. I would choose eating time appropriately, two hours, hour and a half, something dense on the carb front versus fueling during.

53:48But that's the exact point. The idea to train or fuel high would be, I had lunch, I'm not running for five hours. I'm going to give myself another 100 grams of carbs and some sort of pretty big snack if I have a big evening session, 50 to 100 grams of carbs. And then I would prefer that over going in empty. But I have to fuel every 30 minutes during my run. I'd be like, well, yes, but I think if I had to pick, I would still pick the pre than anything. I'm to the point in my life where I'd – and this is the exact opposite of where I was probably until I was 30. I would rather feel a little too full than ravenous before a workout.

54:27and I never would have picked that in high school or college ever. And first part of post-collegiate running, I couldn't have done that either. But you can train yourself to handle more. And some of those quick carbs like an oat bar or a couple of bananas, I mean, they're in and out of your system within 90 minutes. If they're a pure carb source, they're in and out pretty quick. So you can get away with quite a bit actually. There's never been an easier time for finding carbs. Everywhere. Yes. for sure. All right. Well, we sort of addressed the topic. Crushed it. Crushed it. We love talking about nutrition.

55:04Kirk, I have a confession for you right now. Oh, boy. What is it? The time clock's at 56 minutes, 42 seconds. You haven't known this entire time. I'm not wearing any pants. Stand up. Let me see. Prove it. Come on. All right. You're not wearing pants. what you are are you just in your briefs there your little sport trunks uh they're the craft greatness boxer briefs but they're only like a a one inch leg do you let's really well i wish i would have known that going into that because it would have changed just the energy i was feeling yeah bracken's definitely podcasting his underwear that's great is it hot in your room or something uh it came back from gym class i was a little sweaty uh my shorts were too tight they're putting a little pressure on my tum tum today and i took him off to quick uh try to get like two minutes of a snack lisa made me a pizza it was waiting when i got home nice and then i just came right on up here got it started and away we were nothing like a guy with a belly ache podcasting in his undies i can't say this is like a thing i've done very often i'm fully clothed everybody so here we are well that's good i think that's a good way to sign off bracken 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.