Can You Run LESS To Get Faster? | Extra Mile with Nick Bester

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2:00Excite OSA is an FDA-cleared prescription-only device for primary snoring and mild obstructive sleep apnea. Not for everyone. Individual results vary. Risks and benefits at springsleep.com. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Untap the Extra Mile with me, Spencer Matthews. And me, Olly Patrick. In today's episode, we're going to be talking all about tapering, which of course is a reduction in volume. It's giving your body a bit of a break ahead of the marathon, assuring that you get to that start line, feeling as fresh as you possibly can. But to give us advice and an even greater take on tapering is Nick Bester, friend of the show, friend of mine and sub 220 marathoner.

2:43Marathoner. Woo! Let's go! Welcome to Student Investor! Thank the Lord. That's the best intro I've got. And I'm glad to be joined by fellow Sub 250 Marathoner over here. Congratulations. Hello! At Berlin as well. Special things happen at Berlin. So yeah, huge congrats. And tracking in the right direction. Oh, no. Thank you, my brother. It's nearly taper time, which we'll get onto in a bit. Taper time. Taper time. So, I mean, to me, the taper kind of makes sense, obviously. You build a block of training into your legs. You build your mileage. you get your fitness in as good a place as it can be.

3:14And then I guess like, you know, there'll be some science to it, which is what we'll discuss. But the idea is just to give your legs a bit of a break so that you arrive at the start line as fresh as you can possibly be. Exactly, yeah. So I think the whole purpose of the tape is that you've done a whole lot of good work in the buildup. You've hit your peak weeks and you really want to sort of starve the body of mileage quality and the mind as well. You know, in the thick of marathon training, it can get relentless, like motivation comes and goes and it's tough you want to get to the start line like almost like starving your body ready to go like that first half must almost be for free it's like clucking to run exactly exactly so i'll go on to shortly what i feel the perfect taper is if there is such a thing as a perfect taper yes but the whole purpose of it is sort of like you know you really want to to get this first sort of third half of the race almost for free because you've tapered and your your whole body is restored with energy your glycogen levels are full you carb loaded and you're ready to go.

4:09It's just like, honestly, I find this kind of chat exciting. This is the dream. Honestly, being in here this morning with you two guys chatting about running and tapering is the dream. It's why we're here. It's why we exist. It's very untapped. Tapering, am I correct in thinking, and I don't know if you'll know the kind of origin of the taper, but was it some Norwegian dude who fell ill before a big race and so wasn't able to run and everybody else carried on running and then he arrived at the start line like having been sick but having not ran for a few days and he just absolutely blitzed everyone and everyone was like, oh, maybe I'll take a few days off next time.

4:47That's what I've heard. I've not heard that at all. But Nick, you're closer to the world. Have you heard? No, I mean, I haven't. It sounds like a cool story. I haven't heard that. It probably is true. Often you'll get like runners that, you know, running, a lot of people have addictive personalities and we get addicted to mileage splits. You want to do more, more, more, more, more. And then when it comes to the taper stage, I actually personally like tapering, but a lot of people don't because you starve the body of what you're used to. You start losing that confidence. You're not doing as much volume at that quality anymore.

5:17And a lot of runners make the mistake of panicking, doing more, like I can't sit still today. I need to get up. I need to know that I still can run. There's a thing called maranoia, which is marathon paranoia. It's a strange thing. You genuinely almost feel like you've forgotten how to run. Like if you take even just a couple of days off, like before a marathon, you start to go, oh my God, will I be able to hold that pace? You know, something that should feel easy. But you're just, your mind starts to play these strange little tricks on you. What in your opinion is the perfect taper? Yeah, sure.

5:48So, I mean, I can relate to that. I think when you're in the thick of training and you're smashing out 4x5K, you know, 3x or 2x10K at marathon pace, your confidence is high. You're like, I can do this. As soon as you stop getting used to that work, your confidence almost drops. And sometimes it starts playing on your mind and then you'll do 1K at marathon pace and it'll feel hard. and then you'll be like, oh no, I'm losing it. So it's really like the mental side of it can obviously mess with you big time, but the physical side of it is still there. And hopefully, you know, that's what comes out on race day.

6:14But sort of the perfect taper. So in my experience, and you know, I've been, I've run over a hundred marathons now and coached a lot of athletes to sort of PBs. You've run over a hundred marathons? Yeah, I started with ultra marathon running. So I was doing like marathons in prep for the ultras in my early days. Now I don't do as much in a year. But I think the perfect taper looks something like this. So let's say, you know, if you, your big weeks are probably from, you're in your big phase now, very important phase. So within sort of seven weeks out to three weeks out is like almost the make or break of your training block.

6:47That's where winners and losers are made, you know. Yeah, exactly. This is it. This is it. I can tell you, your mind's in the right place. Dialed in, brother. I'm in monk mode. You've changed a lot since, I don't know if race day is coming, but you, or you've had more coffee, but you are buzzing for your race and you're ready to go. So let's just hold them back. The same caffeine, brother. I'm dialed in. You are very darling. And you got your coach back. So that's always good news as well. So from seven weeks out to three weeks out, that's like the most probably important, one of the most important phases of the marathon block.

7:14Like motivation comes and goes, yeah, but you're pushing your limits. You really like, you're trying to bank as much volume and training without costing the body too much in that phase. Then we go three weeks out. So this is, so it can get confusing, but three weeks before race day. So 21 days before to 14 days before. You're looking, you want to do it around probably 80 to 90 % of what you'd usually do from a mileage point of view and from a quality point of view. So let's just use an example, 100Ks, you're doing 100Ks a week, all right? So from three weeks out, so 21 days to 14 days to go, you want to do about 80 to 90Ks.

7:49So still quite a lot of volume getting in good quality. Then from two weeks to go, so 14 days to go to seven days to go, you probably want to cut that down to about 50 to 60 % of what you're used to, right? I'm not even just trying to sound like, like, yeah, because obviously that's still quite a lot of running, but to go out and do a 40 or 50K week would feel like I wasn't doing anything at all. It would just feel so weird. Like that would be odd. That's what you want. That's like one long run and two small runs. Exactly, exactly. In a week, it's terrible. In that phase as well. I hate that. In that phase, it's also important to get the legs turning over at like goal marathon pace.

8:28For you, it's 353, is that correct? around there. So you want to I'll probably try I'll 3 50 to 3.50ish Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm a big fan of almost and I mean I'm sure Scully will write you a solid plan in that week and he'll probably agree but you want to get your legs turning over at around 350 per K so at 353 you know starts feeling more and more comfortable on race day and shorter efforts maybe like 2 or 3 times 3K at that pace. So you're looking at around 50 to 60 % of your usual volume. So now your niggles are slowly starting to disappear. if you've made it to the stage of the training block, like chances of getting injured are very, very minimal.

9:04You've made it like now it's like, oh, sweet, it feels weird getting out of bed and not limping in the morning type thing. You know, like you really want to start feeling good. Then when it comes to race week, this is very much according to feel. Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, email, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work.

9:36That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. That's goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. Grainger knows if you're a procurement manager at an industrial manufacturing facility, you're balancing inventory and budget while sourcing critical supplies across the operation. Too much inventory? Costs climb. Too little? Production slows. Grainger's$2 billion in on-hand inventory helps you get what you need when you need it so you can help keep budgets balanced and lines moving.

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10:40Often people stop running completely in race week. I tend to still run quite a lot. I thought that, so we'll get onto the Berlin taper, but I thought that was very unusual. So I felt like a normal taper included running like all the way up, basically until race day most just like you know five six k whatever you know but just keeping the legs ticking over but anyway so so most of it does um but you're probably looking at you want to put a figure on this because it's very race day race week's very much according to how your body feels but it's probably about 20 of your usual mileage for example you'll do like an easy shakeout just to keep ticking over and then you'll do like shorter reps at at goal race pace a little bit faster than goal race pace maybe like 10 times 400 meters at a little bit faster than goal race pace with 75 seconds recovery.

11:28And that should like start feeling really good. You can also do maybe like three times 1K at goal race pace, tiny bit faster. So come race day, it feels good. Often I find that like doing a 20 to 30 minute shakeout the day before with a few strides is nice. It's not going to affect the race in any way, but it's nice to just keep the rhythm and leg turn over there. So yeah, race day is very much according to feel. So just to recap, when we're looking at, you know, three weeks out, 80 to 90 % of your usual. Two weeks out, around 50 to 60 % of your usual. Race week, probably about 20 % of your usual and really starting to feel good.

12:03In my example, when I'm training, let's say I'm doing like 150Ks a week on average. Three weeks to go, I'll do about 130Ks, so still quite a lot. Two weeks to go, you're looking at around sort of 80Ks. and then in race week I aim to try and get to probably like 80k so I'll only do like 38, 40k's that whole week in the build up to race day so once again you get into that start line like oh please I can't wait to get going and that's always like a sign of a good taper okay nice nice it makes sense it does make sense to arrive clucking at the start line I think the clucking is the line you know what's so interesting about tapering and that to me is so interesting Nick because that's so beautifully formulaic and I love anything that runs on a formula.

12:47And, and, and to me, that makes sense, you know, really that that general theme of tapering is, is how am I able to hang on to all of my gains, but remove all of the fatigue, you know, so, you know, use three weeks out from, you know, Valencia should be at your greatest level of physiological capacity, but you'll probably be at your greatest level of neuromuscular, of cardiovascular fatigue, of, you know, of, of basically your body has taken such a block of training that is in you so the idea there is it's a sort of a race that you're saying over that next two weeks i'm going to allow that fatigue to dissipate as low as possible but believe that i will retain all of those benefits that won't depreciate so you're assuming which the science is robust you won't lose blood volume you won't lose um you know capillarization you won't lose stroke volume of your heart you won't lose the strength of the muscles you won't lose mitochondrial quality you've basically built this enormous ecosystem of of banked benefit and were you to lay in bed for two weeks you'd lose quite a lot of that that's why the training volume is so interesting it's like the perfect amount to keep your body retaining all the benefits you've built but allow the fatigue to dissipate that's interesting that you'd say that so were you to lay in bed for for two weeks what you would lose a lot of your fitness you would lose yeah so what So you're saying keep moving, obviously.

14:06I would follow Nick's advice to the letter. In fact, what's so interesting about the dosages, and this is a bit, isn't it, Nick, the sort of science of what is the right volume of volume to make sure that you don't lose any of those gains, but you also allow the fatigue to dissipate. And that's where this volume going to 80, 60%, down to 20 % is the science of letting fatigue go whilst not having a drop in fitness. Just a slight pivot from tapering, just a fitness related question. How long for runners specifically, in your opinion, of inactive behavior leads to a lack of fitness? So say you're as fit as you can possibly be.

14:46So I go out and run five, six weeks now of 100 to 110k a week, loads of great speed sessions in there, you know, lots of lovely mileage. You know, my data is screaming that you've never been fitter. And then I go and sit, broadly speaking, you know, still sipping cocktails on a beach for a month. How much of that fitness will be lost? Or how long does it take for the body to lose what you've built? Yeah, you lose fitness a lot less than what you think, let's say. So people think like if you don't run for a couple of days or if you get sick or something, your fitness is completely gone. That's not the case.

15:23I think to lose fitness, you've probably got to not run for about 10 days or so. However, if you're on the beach... But then does it kind of fall off a cliff or does it just start to slowly... Slowly, slowly, slowly. So it's sort of your fitness graph, I think, goes like down after 10 days a little bit if you're doing nothing. and then from there, it'll start escalating and dropping off. There's obviously a beautiful thing called muscle memory and you can get it back quicker than you think with consistency. But if you're on a beach sipping cocktails, living an unhealthy life, let's say, post-race celebration for a big period of time, then obviously you're not putting good fuel into your body.

16:00So you probably might lose fitness at a quicker rate than were you keeping clean, staying active, but just not running. I've got so many questions for you. So I think maybe we should do our own episode on fitness. on how to build fitness, how long does it last, how long does it take to build actual fitness that lasts. I think that's really interesting. It's for another day. But I think there's a lot to talk about with you, actually. This is a great addition to the team. I'm delighted. As I said when we had Dr. Hazel Wallace on, an actual expert. But that change in dosage is so interesting. And actually from a coaching point of view, Nick, because one of the things that I know a lot of people run for is also their psychological well-being.

16:37So when we've got this reduction in volume, If you took away 50%, you know, 80 % of your running volume. I feel like I was doing nothing. Yeah, but you also put up, you probably use it for stress management. It's your, it's your happy place. How do you manage that, that, you know, in that taper, you're taking away the, if you like, the psychological crutch that lots of runners have, which is that running is their place where they manage pre-race nerves and they manage their, their sort of race paranoia. What, what, what do you find goes into that space or how do you help them manage that? Yeah, it's amazing how much you understand like a runner psychology and not being a distance runner yourself.

17:11You know, you obviously dealt with a lot of runners, but he's incredibly intelligent. He knows things. This guy knows things. But as far as sort of like a runner's psychology, so look, it's when you're running well and hitting sessions, often I find that you're most productive in other areas of your life. You know, your family life's good. You're happy, you're buzzing, you're productive. When I was in the corporate world for 10 years, my lunch break, I would spend running all the time. Maybe I ran a little bit too much. That's why I'm here at the moment. But I found that if I took a 30, 40 minute break from my desk, I would come back and be way more productive had I not done that and just stayed at my desk the whole time.

17:48So you almost hit mental fatigue. But by going out, rejuvenating the mind, you come back, you have incredible ideas when you're out there. My best ideas when I'm out running. You come back and you're like, okay, cool, I'm ready to smash the day ahead. So that actually happens in the taper. So the taper, your sort of mental health, I don't know if that's the right word, but you're not as buzzing anymore because you're not getting that run as high as you would, you're not smashing sessions. And often the anxiety and the stress of race day is coming now, right? No matter how many times you do it, like I think it's beautiful.

18:18I think the whole process is awesome. And when those days go away, I know racing doesn't mean as much to me. So I get nervous talking about it now on the start line, you know, you get this pre-race nerves and stuff. But in that final stage of the taper - It's so important as well. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You need to embrace it. Sorry to interrupt your flow, but in my opinion, in order to perform on race day, you must have that, right? Like the elevated heart rate on the start line stood still. The kind of the pre-match nerves of like, shit, this is like going to war. Like this is going to hurt at times.

18:50Like this is hard. And then, you know, you're kind of almost pleasantly surprised by the adrenaline helping you run. You look down at your watch, you're running 20 seconds, okay, faster than you need to be going. you go slow down slow down and the whole thing feels like okay great I'm in the right frame of mind to run this thing well um like I just to elaborate briefly like I didn't have that at the big half because I kind of signed up to it super late I was offered a place like a few days before it Scully was like oh yeah you know you know run it if you feel like running it but you know it's not some big PB day just just you know go and enjoy the experience of it but like got to the got to the start line didn't feel those like nerves that you would normally feel obviously it's only a half as well so i was kind of like oh you know this will be a fun experience i'll see if i can hold my valencia marathon pace for half and like set off and like in the first maybe 2k i was a bit like oh this is this is going to be this is going to be a long kind of you know hour 22 or whatever it's going to be at the office um and the whole thing kind of felt pretty uphill you know like not literally uphill although London is sneaky hilly it was it's kind of like it was it was sort of just um not that pleasant kind of on the edge of but like I think at the start line it's literally going to feel like I know that this like it's this is your game time yeah yeah that's important I can relate I mean as far as when you when you have your goal race you're going to have that adrenaline like don't worry about feeling like it's going to be boring He's getting his head in the game.

20:23I'm going to waste all of my energy on the start line. It's also important to have these non-goal races, let's say, and training efforts because like that you're working through, you're grinding through it. Like I think you can over race almost and that feeling might go away. And when that feeling goes away, like maybe take a bit of a step back or reassess or have a different goal or something like that. But that feeling that you feel is what it's all about, right? The whole process. Like you've got to enjoy the whole process because good race or not so good race, one day that feeling is not going to be there and you're going to miss it so much.

20:52So often runners freak out and this is the point I was getting to. So 10 days, your taper starts kicking in nicely and you're doing less and your mind's not buzzing as it was before and you start dieting yourself. Then you actually start getting ratty and irritable with people around you. So like your partner might bear the brunt of like you being short and snappy because your head's already thinking about Valencia. Now you've got to, you know, take the kids to school and it's raining and you're thinking like, oh, you know, this could affect my immune system. And you run for a train that you'd run for for all that or something for all the time.

21:25But now you're doing it in the taper stage and you're thinking like, this is going to affect me. So a runner is not a very nice person to be around in that taper phase. And I think like sort of, you know, runners kind of understand, especially in the final few days. But what I wouldn't do as well is like, like I said, you've got to just try and make the most of the process. Like you're lucky to have this ability and this talent and stuff that you are unlocking at the moment. And you're going to be in a Spanish city. you were just in a German city it's like very few people get these opportunities to do it so you've got to embrace it and like you know I've been to races in the past in my early running years where I've just sat in the hotel room the whole day before in my bed like freaking out waiting to go and I've done races where I've sort of like you know done a shake out with people met cool people experienced the city a little bit but not much like not too much time on the legs and honestly like it doesn't affect the race result too much so you may as well go there and enjoy it at the end of the day like the work you've put in is hopefully what you get out on race day if you execute well, which you will.

22:21But by freaking out before, it doesn't help. I know it's only natural, but that often happens in the taper phase. No, no, 100%. Sorry, Ali, you were about to say something. Well, I think that reduction in activity is such an interesting piece. And filling it with gratitude and saying, how lucky I am to be in Valencia or Berlin, I think it's a brilliant strategy. What I reconcile is a lot of people feel their body differently and more so. So there's things like phantom aches and other things. because you know you're you would almost if you're sore today and you have to run that dissipates during the run but if you're not running today that ache and that that's it so how would you help an athlete sort of get past the fact that that fatigue is actually what they probably feel but less but they're noticing it more that that sense of their body scanning a little bit more than ideal you know what would you do how do you how do you trick yourself that that isn't meaningfully going to you know deteriorate your performance very very good point so that's that's my job as a coach um when well like we said you get maranoia which is sort of like you get paranoid and when you have those niggles within training you run through them you know nine times out of ten you're good yeah now it comes race week and you you your body's not moving as much you're feeling these little this knee over here this achilles over here and that's when as a coach i get a lot of messages to say like oh my word i woke up this morning and you know i heard my knee clicking it's never done that before and i think it's it's your job almost to like and i mean it happens to me as well as an athlete you know but it's it's then your job as a coach or as an athlete to just sort of like trust the process trust the training you've done and 99 times out of 100 you do not feel it on race day you have that adrenaline you have that buzz if you channel that in the right way and you let it come out the second half I've been racing like a monkey lately and I go for it from the start so I've been risking it a little bit but I don't recommend that strategy is that a known strategy the monkey?

24:02no no no no I'm just I'm checking I'm not completely excluded from the early running world I went for the monkey you don't know what a monkey is? it's where you go really hard from the start yeah yeah yeah exactly so yeah I'm at a weird phase in my training where you know I'm very happy with my PBs but I think to level up I have to risk it a little bit more but with that comes at a big cost especially when you're putting yourself out there and making YouTube videos and hitting a wall and blowing up and knowing there's probably going to be a lot of kickback and it's not the way I like to race but it's almost like when that does pay off you're going to go huge and it just takes one of those to pay off and it's close it's close one of those are going to pay off but the last couple of races like racing does hurt but I've made it a lot harder for myself so please don't do that at Valencia I was just going to say to anyone listening who feels these niggles when they're tapering and who is just like worried the night before race day or who can't sleep apologies if you've heard this before but I'll just quickly take you to Tokyo earlier this year the days leading into it just simply couldn't have been worse right I bought race new race shoes I was very well behaved at the time I took it quite seriously I only really had six weeks to prep.

25:12I was invited by a friend to go and run Tokyo with him and his pals. And I thought, what an amazing experience. I don't quite feel ready for a sub three, but I'll give it my absolute best shot. Everything was sort of fine. Bought the new Nike Alpha Flies that's just the Alpha Fly threes, but the new colorway, the Canary ones. Loved them, couldn't wait to race in them. And then like took them out for a quick like couple of K just before going to Heathrow. um my shins legs have have never ever in my whole life felt as painful as it did in that moment i'm not blaming the nikes because it wasn't anything to do with the nikes something had just happened like i couldn't i had to take the shoes off was it a massive thing i don't know what it was i had to take the shoes off and walk home barefoot like i couldn't feel like my shins had blown up i can i called the team like my guys and i was just like i don't think i can go to tokyo like this like There's no way I can run on these shins and it's in three days type thing.

26:05I had to go and get like a deep massage and thoroughbodying the shit out of my legs. I couldn't sleep. I was so paranoid about the whole thing. You must have been freaking out. I literally couldn't. I could walk. I couldn't jog. Couldn't run. It was bizarre. Like it never happened before. Same the following day. This is the day before race day. Had to take the shoes off. Like had to walk back to the hotel after a K. I was like. So at this stage, you're probably thinking. I might not even start I'm at TNF I don't think I'm going to start I don't think I'm going to start and very very that happens more often than you think I know but it's just crazy though because you were talking about phantom makes and stuff like these certainly didn't feel phantom-y they felt very real like full of pain and on the morning of the race I had a couple of paracetamol I'm not advising people do this this is just my experience I had a couple of paracetamol like half an hour before the race I rubbed a whole tube of that ibuprofen gel like into my legs basically shins yeah yeah into the shins can I definitely recommend people don't follow that no no I'm just explaining what I did no exactly right I'm putting a legal caveat in there but no one is putting a horse tranquilous dose of meds in well it's very nice actually well it worked yeah and anyway so I decided to wear the Prime X3s which at the time was a little controversial I didn't realise that I wasn't a world leading professional athlete so I actually am allowed to wear the shoes so I was worried about that for no reason uh so anyway wore wore the shoes set off and um set off at a pace uh six seconds faster than we had agreed to set off at held it for 35k it's one of the best runs of my entire life at the time uh slowed down wheels came off a bit but not catastrophic you know like cruised the last 7k in ran my 257 which was you know beyond uh what we were after but my point of the story is regardless of how you feel the night.

27:59Oh, I also slept for one hour. I slept for one hour, right? So I got into bed at 8 p.m. Literally, I got into bed at 8 p.m., tried to go to sleep, couldn't sleep. I was still awake at four in the morning. Just tossing and turning, thinking about the race. Well, and punching the wall and head butting the wall. Yeah, no, I was furious. That's not going to help you. No, no, I was furious. No, no, no, but this is at like four in the morning. So yes, tossing and turning, couldn't sleep, just too paranoid about the legs, the race, the pain, the whatever, having flown all the way to Tokyo, having done this six weeks of like mental kind of, you know, monk preparation, all to not even be able to start, I think just couldn't sleep.

28:36Anyway, long story short, the thing went well. So however you're feeling the night before the marathon, please don't worry. Also, in my opinion, the night sleep that you get before that last night is quite important. Obviously, I did sleep for like nine and a half hours the night before. So I had banked some sleep. So especially if you're just wandering around the town that you're in, or even if it's in London or whatever, or Manchester, wherever it may be, just don't move too much. As long as you've got hours of sleep banked, you know, in the days leading up to it, you should be okay on the sleep front.

29:08That's London as well. Just before that, I slept for an hour. I just could not sleep. If you'd given me a briefcase full of unmarked tax-free cash to fall asleep, no chance. It would have woken you up even more. yeah yeah exactly that's definitely not a technique i'm sleeping yeah um okay so but and then and then just um yeah so that's tokyo and then just back to to tapering now i did a bit of an unconventional taper for for berlin um again a little bit of a different build-up i definitely took the build-up to tokyo more seriously than berlin berlin obviously not target race yeah i i drank twice that week two different nights in the lead up to that race just because again i just didn't see it as a hugely important race you know valencia has always been the goal has always been what i was going to take really seriously had a kind of like board meeting thing that i went to ended up getting a bit loose and like all of this stuff that i just wouldn't do right if something was like really important and then like the following day like i had a few drinks as well like just i don't really know what happened i think the pressure of trying to succeed in this in this uh youtube series that i'm putting out and stuff was kind of getting to me a bit and like blowing off a bit of steam just felt really nice like i it's unusual i don't usually turn to alcohol anymore for that kind of release but i definitely was that week and i'm not really sure why but drank quite a lot on like the wednesday and the thursday okay uh got a night's sleep on the Friday, but kind of still kind of broken sleep just because I was full of booze the previous days.

30:47Got to the airport first thing Saturday morning, definitely feeling like rusty. And I was just like, oh, fucking hell, like, you know, I can't believe we're running this marathon tomorrow. Chris had a similar experience, but he's just an absolute beast, like, you know, whatever. Yeah. And, and then I didn't actually run a single step for four full days before Berlin. not not one step no no shakeouts no no taper really i just went from training to just raw dog nothing right for four full days which i've not done in i don't know i want to say years like you know i've always trained in some regard like you know i train most days so four days off and uh got a good night's sleep the night before whoop scores just bounced into like 99 and like huge hrv because of the because you know they'd crashed down to like single red digits and then um they came soaring back on the sunday morning just in time full of beans and off we went and uh yeah held great pace and held it you know so um the night before the night before was extremely important for sleep like when you when you've especially for a rest like valenza it means so much to you we can tell you're probably not going to sleep well the night before so that's why that night before that is quite important.

32:03And by letting your hair down, I don't think it's a bad thing. You know, I also document my journey. I put myself out there on social media. Like with that, there's a lot of motivation. There's a lot of people holding you accountable, but it's also, it can get to you sometimes when you see something that you don't want to see and stuff like that. So often it's important to just sort of reset and let your hair down because like it's important to find balance, let's say. And if you sacrifice everything for running and trying to get faster, often it can take away happiness from other areas of your life and you sacrifice too much.

32:33And when you sort of get that balance right and fill your cup up with doing the best you can running wise, that's often when a run is at the most dangerous and sort of like you achieve the most that you can. So, you know, it's maybe not good to have blowouts here and there, but obviously like after a key race, like enjoy it, you know, celebrate, let your head on, catch up with your mates. Like don't feel like you're sacrificing your life just for this faster thing because then that enjoyment factor sometimes tends to go away. But John, do you want to touch base on a couple of points? Yeah, the booze, the four-day booze, no running, rapid taper.

33:08You could turn this into a model. This could be a dispenser. It worked. So, you know, there is that case again of why didn't it fail? Because you'd already built all the physiological capacity. So, you know, you're not going to lose any fitness in that four-day window. The big risks of that would have been, of course, that nutritionally, you didn't fully store enough glycogen. So if your nutrition dropped off through the alcohol clouding judgment on foods, or you had a much richer diet you needed to get rid of through your digestive system, that could have caused gastrointestinal distress in some way or another.

33:40Then, of course, the risk to hydration. And hydration isn't just whether you have a full bladder, it's whether you have full cells. So if you had two boozy nights in the four days building up, I can't imagine you entered that start line optimally hydrated. That would have been a challenge. Good. That's something we can fix. It is. More gains. Yeah, all these things are great. Well, look, if you achieve that, despite potentially having a slightly corrupted glycogen store, potentially being dehydrated. It wasn't slightly corrupted, it was corrupted. Fully corrupted. Fully corrupted. And then equally, not having optimum glycogen, optimum hydration, optimum sleep, yet running the time you ran, you are now in the scenario to say those are, of course, immediate wins.

34:19But I think your point there is spot on, Nick. That blowout gave you the psychological release that meant you weren't hyper-anxious when you entered the start line to a certain extent. They released that shackle of pressure. And everyone is looking for that sweet spot of I want to be ready for that event. We talk about the pressure performance curve in sport, which is when there's no pressure, there's very little incentive performance. You at the half, you didn't have any pressure on. You didn't have that pre-event excited heart rate. You hadn't primed yourself psychologically or physiologically to take on that task.

34:50So that was too little activation. So we see less performance when there's less pressure. then there can be too many pressures when performance dips and and this is called the yerk's dodson inverted u hypothesis of pressure performance it's an absolute um it's a golden discussion it's it's basically the idea come again yerk's dodson inverted u hypothesis of pressure performance which basically says with no pressure there's no performance with too much pressure there's no performance and we we're looking for that sweet spot when all of the things that i'm thinking about come to that fruition where i deliver optimal performance and for some people that means you've got to rev them up on the start line right and you might have others you know where you've got to g them up nick you have others we've got to talk them down off the edge and that's that beautiful individuality of people i think we also say you know you've done the hard work over the months building up i'm so excited i'm literally like it's a blip just visualize well yes it it certainly felt like a blip but it's a blip that ended up brilliant so again your point which will be your take always is if if that is true then what else is true you know which is if i can run that time with those conditions then what could i do when all those things come into a total sweet spot i think in both cases and and in spencer's case with tokyo and with berlin and a lot of athletes out there that approach races is that your final few days weren't perfect in the build-up and often like you get to that start line very unsure and that can sometimes actually be a good thing i've had races where i don't know if i'm going to finish or if i'm going to go well and then the first 10 k's go by and then you get to the half marathon the point when you're feeling good and that's when it kicks in and you're like, okay, wow, this is going way better than I thought.

36:24You've got that adrenaline factor and that takes you all the way to the end. So sometimes, you know, running can be weird. Sometimes you can have the perfect taper and then you hit race there and you don't feel perfect and you're like, but why? I tapered perfectly. Last time I drank heavy for two days, I didn't run for four days and I felt better than this. What's going on? So yeah, fitness is stacked up brick by brick by brick and you want to give yourself the best chance on the start line but it sounds like you had too much blood in your alcohol stream that day. And you can definitely find marginal gains, which is great, which is great.

36:53So that's good. I think it's a good thing knowing that that happened heading into Valencia, which obviously I'm looking forward to taking more seriously. The other thing is, I think, you know, again, from my far more limited experience than yours, treating, and we spoke about this in a separate episode, treating the race with extreme levels of respect is really important. like understanding that you're going into a dogfight with this thing, not anticipating that it will be easy. You know, like, I think I've done that before as well, where I've gone, all right, well, I'm so fit at the moment, and I'm only going for this time.

37:29So I know that that time, this should feel like a victory lap, right? I've done all the work. And you know, I'm at the start line, I'm just gonna have a great time. And I'm gonna high five everyone. And it's just gonna like, hopefully the whole thing will feel easy. That's a mistake. Like you don't ever want to go into a marathon feeling like that. Like that's great if you can enjoy the process and you can, you know, slow down a bit and no one's saying you need to push yourself as hard as you can go. But like, it can feel pleasant, you know, but the best way in my opinion to look at it is to feel like this thing is going to hurt me if I'm not careful and I need to really pay attention to it and I need to lock into it.

38:08And I need to be like hyper aware of when this pain could seep into my brain just so that I'm ready for it. If the pain comes as a shock or like the wall suddenly appears and you're not ready to deal with it, good luck dealing with it. You know, I think it's way better if you're almost anticipating it. Have it in the back of your mind every single step of the race. Enjoy it. Enjoy the first 5K, 10K, 15K. go for it but just be violently aware that there's something that can come and bite you at any stage and just be ready to fend it off 100 because then you're you're in a good spot then to push it back you know when it starts to appear you're ready for it push it back that's the way to be that's how i was in berlin i was almost expecting this thing to come and violate me yeah you know at any point and and you know i was able to keep it at bay because i was so ready for it so you've got to prepare the mind as best as possible and and you you nailed it from the point of view that like you've almost got to expect these phases to come.

39:07Like when it comes to, and we spoke about this last time, endurance running is so hard when you're pushing your limits for an extended period of time. Whereas when you're doing something like a backyard ultra or certain Ironmans, you know, you can almost like stop, reset, go again. The pain of a 5K, a 10K, half marathon, a marathon, when you're pushing yourself at that threshold level and over and the demons start coming in sort of like, let's say at the halfway mark, that door starts opening. and then in the last 10Ks, it comes every five seconds. I think the racing more regularly and doing more gives you that experience.

39:43You're like, I've dealt with this before. I know I can get through this. But having said that, it almost doesn't get easier. So that last 10Ks of the marathon is always brutal, especially if you've really gone for it, let's say. And often I get to that stage and I'm like, oh, we are again. So you know you can get through it, but you've almost prepared yourself as into what's your reasons for running, what motivation, for running what motivates you and with 10ks to go it can often be like people that are no longer with you whatever and or whatever means most to you family kids every everything and you can be like lean on that stuff because now it's physically you can do it but mentally like can you get the most out of you in those phases so you're preparing for that is key um but you know often you can feel good with 10ks to go and you and that buzz can help knock out those those negative thoughts let's do the reverse so like 95 % of marathon is positive split it's just you know the way it works and a lot of times unfortunately and with a big positive split let's say that that there's more mental demons that you face and from that point of view it's like you've got to prepare for for when those moments come yeah ladies and gentlemen thank you for your listenership and viewership if you've been watching uh we very much enjoyed this episode on tapering which actually went far beyond the taper into realms of mental battle and marathon strategy with our friend Nick Bester.

41:07Thanks very much for listening. We'll catch you next week for another episode of Untap the Extra Mile.

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