Explaining The Sub-2 Marathon | Stephen Scullion

0:00Thank you.

0:30morning and here we are. And in terms of London Marathon itself, you know, I, for the first time, I went to watch as a spectator, which, you know, was really, really cool, but also really annoying because of tubes and all this. So like, well done, everybody that goes as a spectator, like I rate it so highly, but it's hard when you're on the course to know what times people are running. And I mean, my phone just went, what the F just happened, what the F blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I have no idea what they're talking about and that was clearly two athletes that just broke two hours which is phenomenal.

1:02So I was going to ask you when you realized that they were on for the record but you just said you didn't really know you just found out same as everyone else essentially when they crossed the finish line. Yeah. What was your initial reaction as an elite runner yourself when that milestone in history was broken? Yeah like I'm I mean I'm watching so many races these days in awe of what, you know, athletes are doing and athletes are achieving. It's crazy that I probably just had never anticipated that it would actually happen. And then for like two athletes to go and do it. I had heard rumors that Sebastian is just incredible.

1:40And if people in like Kenya are impressed with what somebody's doing, then, you know, you must be incredible. Because to impress somebody like at your local running track, maybe not that difficult to impress people in Kenya and get people talking about you. You have to be doing incredible things. But Sebastian Saway has been around for a long time, right? So like even I as an enthusiast, you know, know who Sebastian Saway is. What's the difference between his recent performances and what he pulled off in London? so marathon day as you know everybody will know sitting at home you can have all the fitness in the world but you rely on things so like you rely on possibly your body on race day just feeling good and you rely on course conditions you know course itself being a good course that allows fast times and then weather conditions being in an optimal state to allow for sort of like fast human performance and then if you combine possibly we've all seen these Adios Probe threes kicking around.

2:43Like if you take that into account, then you've got possibly the stars just align on one day. And nobody could ignore the fact that this athlete had Kajelcha, who is a, you know, world record holder in other events sitting on your shoulder. And that has to just make you work harder. So he just had, if you could line everything up and say, what would it take to break two hours for a marathon? You would say perfect conditions. You would say absolutely amazing footwear technology, like a really good training buildup, and I'm healthy on race day, and competition. Somebody, once the pacers drop out, on your tail going, if you don't keep pushing, I'm going to beat you.

3:23And that just drives human performance forward. Kajelcha's marathon debut, and he broke two hours. Yeah, got beat. 11 seconds behind now, the new world record holder, Sebastian Saway, and it wasn't enough to win how how might that feel yeah i mean part of him is going to be obviously elated by running such an incredible you know sort of time and kajel just an athlete that has ran i want to say 347 for a mile indoors so like kajel just range is just absolutely phenomenal he broke the you know indoor mile world record i think it was in boston um to now go and run a marathon as fast as he's just done is, yeah, it's just frightening.

4:10I mean, he is an athlete that, even though it was a debut, there's not a sort of person in the world that knows anything about running wouldn't have thought he could win, you know? Like, he's very, very dangerous, and that just means he's incredible. But, yeah, a part of you must be thinking, like, did I pick the right event here? Because what do I have to do to win? It's amazing. I mean, he looks like he's built to run, you know? He's kind of the perfect physique. Yeah, he is tall, but he's super, super skinny. I think I Googled it and he's like 57 kilos or something like that. It's just the way, I don't know that.

4:51East African tendons and ligaments just must be different from my tendons and ligaments and the majority of, say, the Western world. Because when I watch an African just running past me and those elites, They're just moving in a way that I just think my body would break if it moved in that way. And it is just so amazing to watch them just pound off that pavement. And like Kajelche, Sebastian, like so many of that elite field, like Cheptegei, Kiplimo, as if we're not speaking about Kiplimo, who was third. And like he is also like beast, like just broke the world half marathon record. But I must say that the African sort of tendons and ligaments, I feel, are a bit more responsive off the ground than perhaps like Western general sort of like tendons and ligaments.

5:39I mean, they look incredible. I think what I find funny because, you know, I obviously have no position in any of this, but the whole world is now talking about this time. Sure, yeah. So like dropping the kids at school this morning and I had, you know, mums from Theodore's class asking me about the shoes and, you know, the time and oh my God, isn't it incredible to run 21 kilometers an hour for the whole race? and I feel like that conversation has been around for a very long time because when Kipchoge broke within the Nike parameters which wasn't counted as an official race of course because it wasn't this conversation I feel has been around a really long time but for some reason because of Sunday it's just everywhere now you've got people going to gyms and turning the running machine onto 21 to see how long they can hold it for or, you know, people are lasting 11 seconds.

6:38Barack Obama tweeted, I think, Kipchoge when he sort of did the sub two, which was like, I know people know who Eloy Kipchoge is, but when something in life that is so monumental is achieved, it just, yeah, grabs the attention of the entire world. And so London, what just happened in London, which I am delighted it happened in London because London Marathon obviously works so hard to achieve what they do. and for it to happen there and something so, yeah, like monumental. Like it's almost just that goes way above running enthusiasts, people that have ran before, people that are interested in a marathon.

7:15That's like world news. That's like such a huge event like that and such a like big barrier, you know, to be broken, like two hours. Like who would have thought, yeah, like what's your marathon time? And now someone's like, yeah, it's like one. So like, wow, like the bar has just been like raised. Did you say one? Yeah. Like one? not two not three not four you know one it's just mental yeah

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10:45Do you feel that now we will see an array of different athletes breaking too, similarly to how when Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile, all of a sudden thousands of athletes since then have gone on to achieve that? Yeah, no, I don't think so. I don't think now suddenly it's going to go to one hour, 57, one hour. So the sub four-minute mile, 359, incredible. now it's 347 or sorry the actual word record is 344 I believe the indoor record the Kachalcha broke is 347 um but no I don't the reason I say that is because I think the sub four minute mile when it was broken that was at a time that people were you know smoking on the side of the track and then jumping on the track and running a race and and we're not just talking about smoking here we're talking about the general attitude towards running was just probably 50 percent or 40 percent of the attitude that it could have been in terms of your discipline, your training approach, your nutrition, all these wonderful things, right?

11:47These athletes that have just broke, you know, two hours, you know, two of them, there is likely very little that they can change that could like create a positive outcome on race day. Like I don't, you know, if you're already running 140 to 150 mile a week, it's like, well, it does get to a breaking point that more might not be helpful. If the shoe technology is already at a place that it's been stretched to its maximum potential. Like, what else can you do, you know? And so I don't think it's going to be that common. I do think somebody else will go and break two hours, but it could be two, three years before we see it because it relies so heavily on we're human.

12:27So you have to feel a certain way on race day. The course conditions on race day, like weather plays a huge role in this and it can be so unpredictable. We were just talking about that. Chicago Marathon, Windy City. What happens if it's windy? I just think the stars aligned for one day. And the other part of it is you likely need two athletes to feel that way on race day because then they're going to push each other and race each other. And there is nothing worse than having somebody sitting on you when you're sort of like that tired. But it does make you work harder. It does push you to be like, wow, like I actually had more than I believed I had.

13:01It's unbelievable. Also, Adidas stock through the roof. I mean, this shoe, which I've held, by the way, it was on display at the expo in Tokyo when we were there in March. And we all kind of held this shoe, 98 grams, does it weigh? Yeah, something like that, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, if you take a Prime X3, I think it weighs, you know, 380 or something. Your average super shoe weighs like 220, something like that. You'll know better than me. Yeah, pretty much. That would be about half, yeah. So it's about half the weight of, you know, an elite super shoe, 450 pounds, eye-watering stuff, sold out completely, impossible to get.

13:45You know, it's unbelievable, isn't it? And I kind of, I was grinning to myself this morning when I was cycling in here that so many kind of, you know, average runners such as myself are now going to be desperate falling over themselves to find this shoe just because we're going to feel that it's going to give us some kind of edge. Whereas I think it's probably fair to say that super shoes really come into play, you know, the more efficient you are with your running. So the more elite you are, the more you're going to gain from the tech. I think it's quite clear that these two runners in particular, both wearing this new Adidas shoe, who both went sub two, clearly the shoe is playing a part.

14:26How much of a part do you think the shoe is playing? Well, what was coming to my mind there was I would love to see the time effort, almost like probably like a drug that some people are going to put in to try to get their hands on these shoes. Literally, they're going to be fighting each other in the streets to try to get a pair of these. but it's like literally like that effort is not worth for most people like possibly yourself at London who was four seconds outside the sub three so where I'm going to go with this is to save like two to three seconds per mile there is much better things you could put your time and energy into that could find you 10 seconds a mile 15 seconds a mile you know dare I say more which would be like good training and good nutrition and good sleep but like we said earlier when you have already maximized all those areas, that's when like half a second a mile makes a difference.

15:18Like, so for the likes of Sebastian and Kajelcha, if you have already tapped out every area, you're the lightest you can possibly be. You know, you've done your strength stuff, your nutrition's where it always is. You've done the 130 to 140 mile a week. If an outside source like Adidas can find you like one second a mile, two second a mile, three seconds a mile, that is mega huge. But there's going to be such a demand now for these shoes. And I'm not trying to be disrespectful. It's just like you could honestly buy a pair of shoes that are, you know, 200 pound, which is still really, really expensive versus the 450 and possibly run a bit more.

15:55All that time you're going to spend on your laptop trying to like get these and find them, you know, just run again, especially if you're not like that injury pro owner. And so I think sometimes it's blown out of proportion what impact these are going to have. They obviously have a really positive impact, but so do all super shoes now. Like they're obviously incredible, but you'll find much bigger seconds per mile in other areas. Normal people now all over the world who don't run are trying to comprehend it. And they're all going, oh, wow, like I can run at 21 kilometers an hour for 60 meters or 100 meters, or in some cases 400 meters maybe even a kilometer sure but like you're not getting too many people that could stay at that pace for any kind of sustained distance right like obviously you could and you know elite athletes can long distance runners can can you explain how impressive you know running a marathon at sub two hour pace is from a physiological perspective Probably the most impressive part of it.

17:02Last time I was on here, we kind of spoke about the physiology and this got everybody in the comments giving it all the chat. But it's like we talked about like the VO2 max element, the running economy element, the athlete's body weight. To clarify, that was talking about the energy demand of the marathon. So the marathon usually comes down to energy, which is fueling. A lot of these athletes can run that quick for 30 minutes, 60 minutes, but then the body runs out of fuel. Can I just ask a quick, sorry to interrupt your flow. Do they carry gels and do they just eat gels the same way as other people?

17:35They're given out on the course every 5K. So they don't carry anything? No, no, no, they won't carry anything. Well, it's at least five minutes. Definitely faster, the weight. So we talked about sort of like the physiology and the physiology is that's what sort of genetic makeup or physiological makeup would an athlete need to break a 2-hour marathon. And that comes down to literally carbohydrates per sort of minute or whatever it would be, right? And I guess what we didn't touch on last time, because then you had people like getting in the comments and like, you know, like, well, Christian Blumenfeld has a VO2 max of this much.

18:10So like, oh, my goodness, how, you know, fast could he run, right? And so what that says is he is one part of the equation in a really good place. So from an energy demand, yes, what you're saying is, you know, really legit, right? But the part that you've just expressed is the physical side of it. how does someone physically run at that pace for two hours, right? And so even me, for example, like in my sort of like prime, I ran like 1348 for 5k. And so I genuinely think in my prime, I only had seven or eight K in me at what they just did for 42.2k. That's insane. Isn't it? So like when you're running a 1348 5k, you could hold their pace for 7, 8K, but they're doing 42.

18:57Yeah, well, the last two miles - It's insane. It's just mad. Yeah, two mile of what they did was 412 and then 430, I believe. So they ran 420 pace for two mile, which now I'm going to get maths out, but that's like 65s, which puts you in at 1332 for 5k, they ran two mile, mile 24, mile 25 at 1330 5k pace, quicker than I've done. That's 18 seconds quicker than I've done. And I wasn't like shit at this. I was actually all right. You know, people thought I was like a legend. And so like, they would have just been like, hang on, Stephen, you wait there. We'll go run 23 mile. We'll pick you up. And then they'd still drop me.

19:44Yeah, I'd be like, guys, I'm out. I'd be tapped out at like a mile. Yeah, probably like two mile in. It is just phenomenal. But like, okay, so everybody at the minute like sort of think like, maybe it's like Kenya and bad reputation with like drugs and things like this. And I, for this occasion, I don't. I don't think, I didn't think like, oh my goodness, like sub two hours, like has to be drugged. They must be on EPO. EPO, like people will automatically jump to that. And I want to believe that we just have special humans in the world. And like you think about it, like everybody in England basically wants to be like, let's say, maybe a good rugby player, a good football player.

20:24And not everybody can be a good rugby player or football player, right? And so in Belfast, we had like George Best and he was just like a legend. He could just do things that you can't do. And so I like to think that in running, there are still outliers that are just blessed. they're blessed with whatever we talked about on the last podcast all this physiology that some of that can be just natural sort of in your dna and then they're blessed with an ability to handle the training and stay healthy and then they're blessed with an ability on race day to go and execute and get it done and i believe those both of those athletes i would say i believe are clean um and i wouldn't have said that about loads of athletes and that's not a personal thing that's just that if athletes are getting tested for drugs and they're getting sort of banned for drugs all the time from one country, you're going to start to think, oh my goodness, are they all?

21:13But yeah, I watched that and thought I genuinely believe that's clean. I read somewhere yesterday that Adidas has took their blood many, many times in the lead up to London, just to have - But I don't care about that. Like a bank of - Why I don't care about that is because you can orchestrate that, right? So like, that's like, again, I don't want to draw negative attention here, but that's like in the UFC. Like, you know, oh, yeah, we're going to do testing the whole way up. Hey, you don't mind in 10 days coming in to get tested? Yeah, yeah, no problem. Like, that's fine. What, stop the drugs after like, you know, take them for the next five and then like maybe four or five days off the drugs.

21:53You're clean. So you're clean for the test and then get back on it. I believe in a world of like most of the testing and running is random drug tests. So it's like you're not told, you're not informed. but I don't, I would need to know the answer. That's not why I think they're clean but I would need to know the answer of was the testing that Adidas put in place or the funding that they put in place, did they go, here you go WADA, which is the world anti-doping, here's money, go and test them randomly whenever you want. That is bulletproof, that is really cool. I'm not sure that's how it was. It might've been a, we'll nominate the days that we go in to do testing and if anybody listening wants to go, there's a Guardian article and journalists went to Ethiopia, I believe it was, and they asked these random questions.

22:42There was literally a pharmacist, I think you were told to go into and tell them you had insomnia, I think. Go read the article. It's really cool. And all you're told is stop taking the drugs three to four days before the race and you'll be clean as a whistle. Nothing will show up. So they could still cheat, even if they've pumped all this money into testing, because you could literally orchestrate when you take the doses and you could still show up and be clean. But it is a cool move from Adidas, but I hope it's random. I hope it's not orchestrated. I've got a follow-up to that. So Adidas spent 50 grand funding the testing.

23:18They didn't do the testing. The testing was done by the athletic integrity units. That was World Athletics. Should be random then. In which case, that's bold. That's huge. Huge for the sport too. really, really mega for the sport because that, I think what clearly people are trying to do is like take away some of this bad reputation that, you know, Kenya's developing and you can't be mad at the public for developing that reputation. Like if you follow AIU on Twitter, it's like, it's becoming a daily thing. Like this athlete banned for drugs, Kenya. This athlete banned for drugs, Kenya. But that is really sad for the athletes in Kenya that, you know, are clean.

23:56And so that's a huge move for Adidas to make. Huge, huge move. and really cool for the sport. So it does feel as though the pace is getting stronger generally across marathoning. Marathoning is far more popular than it ever has been. You know, 28 % of runners this year in London ran sub four hours. I remember even, you know, when sub four was the kind of goal. It was the general goal, right? Running sub four hours was considered to be a good marathon, obviously not for elite professionals, but just generally for the general public, normal ballot entry. 6 % of runners this year in London ran sub three, up from 5 % in 2025.

24:46Sub three does definitely feel like the kind of new shiny target, doesn't it? Like, you'd be hard pressed to find an influencer who's running who is not going for sub three. And to Hugo Fry's point, most people miss it, particularly if it's their first or second marathon. It's quite a difficult goal to achieve. Can you break down the difference? I think we could probably leave sub four out of it for this conversation. But can you break down the difference in running a sub three hour marathon to running, say, a 230, to running where you were around 209, to the sub two, which of course is kind of alien and very new.

25:28But, you know, what are the actual differences? I mean, there must be a huge genetics advantage or, you know, the word of talent, for example, that would get thrown around. And, you know, a lot of people would be like, oh, you know, like talent's a myth and things like this. But that's just unfair to say that because, you know, there's going to be two athletes that have gone out there and broken three R's and you're going to have one athlete that has been working at this for the last 10 years of their life and really dialed into training and they've finally got this breakthrough and got the right conditions on race day and the training buildup went well for them and they've hit that two hours 59.

26:05And then you have another athlete that probably didn't put in that much effort and still managed to go out there and run sort of like two hours 59. And that has to be talent. That has to be ability. And so for me, it's difficult for, if I was to put it in context of how difficult would it be for me to run, say, sub three hours versus two hours 30 versus 209 and versus down to like sub two. I honestly, I'm not joking. This is going to sound so arrogant, but I don't know for how long I'd have to not run to run three hours on race day if that was me pushing as hard as I could. I don't know. I honestly could tell you that right now.

26:46I don't know. I know that I've taken like 10 months off before. I know that I gained like 15 kilos and I went and paced the elite Kenyan at Belfast Marathon to like 234, the female. And that was after like zero running, I think for 10 months or like 30, 40 mile a week. Right. And that has to be genetics or talent or ability. Right. And then when I would bring, if I brought that down to two hours, 30 or under two hours, 30, then I'd have to run probably like 40, 50 mile a week, you know, some sort of long run stuff. And, and that, what you said earlier about people learning from the first few marathons.

27:22What's beautiful about marathon is you can have the fitness, but you don't have the knowledge yet of what part of your body is going to break down on race day, how your stomach's going to handle it and things like that. That's where the marathon's quite unique. And then if we're going to go from two hours 30 down to like two hours 10, under that, like it's, they're light years apart. For the difference between two 30 to our, you know, nine, two hour 10 marathon, light years, absolutely light years. and the work like you're talking like five six years of hard craft to the absolute max no like no stone left unturned as they would say you know and and that is yeah when it's not I don't look at a 220 or 230 with any level of disrespect because that's such a difficult question to answer because everyone's starting point is so different so somebody else's 228 could be my 209 so I can't I can't vouch for that.

28:15I can only tell you from my perspective what would it take if someone said to me, Stephen, you have to go and run under torch 30 for a marathon. If you don't do it, you know, we're going to take your house away from you, your business away from you. And I'd be like, okay. Woo. Like, what day? Later?

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30:49No, if we were talking like you have to go and run under 210, the fear of God would go through me. Honestly, the golden retrievers would be on the street with free to good home. Like, they'd be gone. and I'd have to really put the head down and figure it out. I just couldn't get to sub two hours clearly. I think my maximum, maximum potential might be like 207, for example. And I only say that because on the day I ran 61.08 for the half, if that had been the marathon, I'd have ran 207. The marathon was three weeks later and my body just didn't come around. And the weather on race day wasn't as good and I'd been away from the group I was training with for another three weeks, which never helps.

31:32And the fitness was different on the starting line of that marathon. In terms of breaking three hours, it's so hard to be like, everybody can do it because that's the part that I'll just not ignore the talent side of it and the ability side of it. And I know some of the comments last time on my zone two thing where like I said, do you think, you know, elites walk, jog, blah, blah, blah. And there was some really great comments that it was like, that's easy for like an elite to say or whatever, because rightly so, I don't know if I did ever have to walk, jog, or I don't know what my starting pace was.

32:06I can't imagine it was outside 10 minutes per mile or nine minutes per mile. It was probably always six or seven minutes per mile. And that has to sort of be like a genetic thing. That for your zone two? No, just running in generally. If we weren't even talking zone two. I think I don't really do things in miles, but I think my average pace for London this year was, I think it was 620 per mile, something like that. Does that sound right? It was 4... It's probably 6.30, 6.25 to 6.30. 4.13 kilometers per kilometer. But where I'm going with that is, at your starting point into running, you probably didn't have to run at the speed that some other people have to run at when they're just starting, getting into running.

32:46I think running's an extraordinary sport because it shifts around you really noticeably quite a lot. right like I'm I'm not someone that dedicates like hours and hours and hours and hours a week to to running I love running so if I if I can run for 40 minutes to an hour most days I will so I like doing that you know but it's not you know I don't bank I've I don't I banked maybe 160k in a week once in my life like preparing for the 30 30 so I'm not around that level I I probably run 70 on a huge week, 90K a week, K, not miles. So I don't have this big base of miles. It's a lot for a normal person, I think, but it's not a lot for a runner.

33:41And I've probably never focused on being really fast around the marathon. So it's all new and interesting to me still. but I remember looking at a sub-three-hour marathon like an alien. I remember looking at people when I was running 355s. I was like, well, I'll never get to that three-hour mark or anywhere near it. I remember my friend running a 306 or something at London. I was like, oh, my God, he's a mutant. So I was never paying attention. Was this before you had ran? This is just as I was starting out running, but it's only a few years ago. I started running seriously maybe two years ago.

34:16Seriously, inverted commas for me. I'm wondering if you took two people that are obviously, doesn't matter if they're similar or not, but you took two people and, you know, they weren't really into running. Like two things will happen. You're like, okay, later today you're going to go for a run. And, you know, one of them might just literally be able to go and do one hour already at like a pretty decent pace. And that has nothing to do with training history, nothing to do with that. It's just like off they go. The other person not only might not even be able to run at the speed, they might not be able to run for 10 minutes period.

34:45like through muscle pain, through muscle breakdown, like blah, blah, blah. So my thing with like saying sub three or sub two hours 30 or anything, sub four, it's so hard to quantify so many people are going to have achieved something monumental on race day that they possibly weren't even supposed to be able to achieve given their, whatever they were dealt in life, given the hand they were dealt in life. And so that's why I like to put labels on any of this stuff. Like we should never brag about like times or like, because it's like, it's what, if there was such a thing, we should be bragging about what we extracted from our body.

35:21You extracted 100 % of your, I think my tool nine is about 97 to 98 % of what I was physically capable of in life ever. And that's from 20 to 25 years of really good training, finding the right setup, dedicate my ass off, being willing to keep going even through disappointments to finally extract something so close to my optimum. Maybe Sebastian's 95 and maybe he can go one hour 55. And so I'm not saying my 209 is better than what Sebastian did, but maybe somebody out there has ran two hours. Maybe someone out there has ran 301 and that was 100. Because maybe the hand they were dealt in life is they're busy, they have two or three kids, they have a locking on, they're not naturally gifted and they grafted and they plugged away at this.

36:10It's another great point. I think that varies per person as well. And you know in your mind how much of yourself you gave to that effort. And I think that's one of the really interesting parameters of how you set goals. That's what I was talking about. After London, I was like, I need to readjust my goal because the three-hour thing is there. So it's no longer that exciting for me to run at that pace. Let's aim for something bigger and better and give, let's bump up the effort by 20%, 30 % and see where we get to. I'm nowhere near 100%. Like literally I'm down at, as you said, 60, something like that.

36:47So it'd be interesting to give it 90 just for an effort and see where it comes out. And I think where I'll add to that is like I've, like for anybody listening, honestly, like running is such a sort of like special thing. And like I've done all sorts of other things in life since being the professional. And we're probably talking like last two years now, for example. And I've achieved things in work life that I never believed I would achieve. achieve but nothing has given me the same happiness that running has which is so so interesting like you'd think on paper you've achieved all these things that are supposed to generate happiness and that could be like financial security and not having to worry about these things and like you know you're living in london and and all these wonderful things but i can tell you that most of the time the happiness side of things came from me putting a little goal in place or big goal and then just chipping away at it.

37:38And that made me feel really content in life, really happy in life and really settled in life. And chasing some of the other stuff sometimes is just a never-ending, you know, like how much money do you need to make in your business to be able to afford life, right? And so like you could earn 100 million tomorrow and that buys you, what, one plane or something? Or one, it's all gone. So you can't win that, yes. But you can't win that game, right? But you can get those mini wins in like that chipping away at sort of like whatever it is, like your maximum potential as a runner. And we're always talking about maximum potential from the parameters, sorry, of what you're willing to dedicate or can dedicate.

38:13We're not talking, you know, you're going to move off to Kenya and, you know, and go do all this side of it. You don't have to. But you can be like, I'm willing to sort of give it whatever it is, like maybe 45 minutes to one hour a day. I'm going to learn some of this stuff that I don't like doing, whether it's stretching and gym stuff. And that's going to be the work part of it. The little run, amazing for the psychology, small victory. the stretch in the gym stuff often sucks. You don't want to do it, but you've decided this goal is important to you. And so you're going to do it. And I promise you, it's probably the happiest you'll be.

38:42I think it's important to place yourself at the forefront of kind of how you're prioritizing your happiness. If happiness is your end goal, not that I'm some guru, I would prioritize my health and well-being and my mental health, you know, above all else. It's very important for me to be busy, earning well, et cetera. But those things, to your point, can be spent and used. So if you don't create a really clear mind and a nice healthy body, you know, you're going to look back in time and say, I wish I'd prioritized those things, right? Like so many of the really successful people that I know are estranged from their families and divorced.

39:30and they've spent so much time building their business and becoming billionaires that they no longer have a family. And it's kind of... I bet they'd enter a bloody 5K and they'd be like, oh my God, this is the most content I felt in so long. And it wasn't like... There's probably moments during some of your challenges, not that I would ever get you to be like, oh yeah, that was better than time with family or Vogue and this sort of stuff. But it's like, I guarantee you there's going to be moments in the depth of the toughest times in some of your challenges is that you've probably felt the most content.

40:02And like, this is such a silly example, but like, I feel like the more options you get in life or the more things that open up with all these work things, like it almost just creates like decision-making fatigue and all this sort of stuff. And it's like, actually, they probably said to you, the crew or whatever, like you have 16 hours to sleep and rest and fuel before you have to go do this tomorrow. And you're like, amazing. All you wanted to do was rest and recover versus like, what am I going to watch on TV tonight? All these like, literally all the extras in life that we think are the most amazing things are often not.

40:32And something so simple like running or just finding 10 seconds off your next 5k pb or something, it seems so simple and stupid, but it's probably the most rewarding thing to be doing. I think to wake up and have something like running in your life is just truly incredible. What are your best marathon recovery tips? So to the 60 ,000 people who just ran London, some of whom I know are still in a bad way, I'll give Vogue's friend and old agent Max a shout out here. He ran his first marathon. I think it was probably a little harder than he expected it to be. I think he ran around the 330 mark, which is very respectable, I think, for a first marathon.

41:16His toes are just battered all black. Oh, wow. Obviously, probably the wrong size of shoe. He's in a very bad way, poor Max. Max, you know, when should Max think about getting back on his feet, getting back out there running? Because, you know, I've had races in the past that are obviously kind of heavier than perhaps this was. But, you know, what's your guidance to getting back out there? Yeah, I think there's, so we'll go like slightly sort of like, and forgive my terminology, but we'll go a bit more like amateur first, which is like, you know, the masses that have just ran, and like they're not professional, and they don't possibly do this all the time.

41:58And so the first thing you're trying to do is recover from the cost. And so the cost is like, even in the training buildup, you were sort of creating damage that you don't normally do. You probably don't normally get up on a Sunday and run 18 or 20 mile or further. So you're trying to recover from the buildup and then you're trying to recover from race day. And so a lot of that is like muscle damage, like little micro tears within the muscles, which is why they're screaming at you and they're really sore. And those amazing videos that come out of people trying to walk down to the tube and they're like in agony.

42:27And so actually movement is quite helpful. It's sort of like not doing too much as in like pros where we'll go to next day, might go for a run the next day and that actually can really aid recovery. It's not like, oh my God, you're a psychopath, like you're going running the next day. If you're not used to the marathon, the more sort of in pain you are would steer you away from going for a run in those first couple of days, but you can go for like a walk or maybe like a bit of a cycle. That's going to get sort of like some blood flowing around the system and that actually helps sort of aid recovery.

42:59What you're looking for really is at what point can you go for a walk or a run? And not only are you not in pain during it, but most importantly, after the run, does any soreness creep in, right? So after like World Champs 2019 in Doha, I did a run that next day. And then we sort of wait probably like three, four days before I do anything else. And that's just like, you know, you've done that first run. You've got blood flow moving. You've got the muscles working again. And then probably like four or five days later, you're looking to go for a run. And then when you come back from that run, you shouldn't be in pain.

43:36Like a three, four mile run shouldn't make the calf sore, shouldn't make the sort of quad sore. And if they do, you're not there yet. The sort of body hasn't sort of like compensated yet enough to get you back to sort of a good place. So then you're waiting possibly a little bit further and you're retesting that. So you're every sort of like couple of days, you might try a sort of 15 to 20 minute run if you can manage. And really what you're looking for is I shouldn't be in pain during this run. And I certainly shouldn't be sore after this run because it's like two, three miles. And that would be like the first layer to that recovery.

44:10and that's eating good and sleeping good if you can and getting whatever nutrients in. And then if you're looking at actually getting back into training, the protocol that we always would have done would have been maybe three times a mile and you're starting slower than marathon pace, then you're going to marathon pace, and then you're possibly going a little bit faster than marathon pace. And again, if you've just been able to run 26 miles at these paces, you should be able, without too much pain or too much discomfort, handling sort of that three by a mile. And that would be like your next checkpoint, I guess you could say.

44:46And then probably the most important part about all this is once you've got past that sort of like 10-day period or two-week period, whatever it takes for you, you have to get in the gym. So that's the part that I think people miss. And it's not like you don't have to go in the gym. You can do it at home, for example. But muscle damage has created muscle weakness. so all these tears all these broken down sort of components that's where they're going to be in pain and so I ran it's relevant but not I ran 6108 for a half marathon 6108 6108 and as I'm leaving the race Mo Farah the only thing he tells me to do so I'd been training with Mo Farah at the time and he says in a few days you need to get back in the gym because you've just broken the muscles down which actually makes them weak and you almost have to re-engage them re-get them switched back on so that would be worth probably like 10 days to two weeks after your sort of recovery period, after you've passed those little check marks, you're able to go for a walk, there's no pain, you can do a bit of a jog.

45:43Not only are you not in pain during the jog, you're okay after the jog. You've possibly been able to do a couple of one mile reps or one or two kilometer reps at marathon pace. There's no pain, there's no discomfort. Get back in the gym. Start doing little things or even at home, little like squats, little sort of like step-offs, for example, things that will just get the muscles re-engaging turning back on, activating them. And I bet if they did strength testing prior to a marathon and strength testing post-marathon, the results would be like quite fascinating. Strength would go down quite a bit.

46:16And that's your like return to running. The final thing I'll say is just find something in life to motivate you for the month after the marathon because people are probably sitting at home depressed as can be and confused why they're depressed. And it's because for four months, It's not even linked to the race result. Everyone would assume it's linked to the race result.

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48:46Where's this four months coming from? Is that, do you think, optimal time to train for a marathon? Oh yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, that's my brain went. Well, I would assume people - You said it twice now. Yeah, well, I'm thinking I've never trained four months or anything. No, fair. Yeah, no, I just would assumed people would enter something like London and then probably like January start thinking like, I need to start preparing for this. And I really think then they've woke up not every day because they're probably not pro and psychopath, but like at least every Sunday for the last likely four months, there's been a, ah, I have London in like four months.

49:21I've got to go out there and get a long run done today. where otherwise they might be like, I probably wouldn't have bothered. I'd love a four-month training block. When you have a direction like that, a goal like that, there's a huge emptiness after it. I'd be really interested to see what four months of specific training could lead to. I'd love that. You've been training your whole life. Apparently that last podcast, you've been dialed in for the last. Well, you know, my nutritionist and coach make me. They would beg to differ. They show up at your house and say, come on, Spencer. I would love to work with a coach for a specific fast time.

50:01We could work together. Yeah, no, but I think my brain just thinks that would have to be something that you just want to achieve. So I think you're driven in a lot of areas, which then would make a very good coach not as interested. Or because you can't give the time to it. A very good coach said to me once, like he kind of agreed to help me. And this is probably like towards the back end of my career. And, you know, we were talking and I was talking about the business and I was talking about life generally. And I was talking about what I'd been up to over the last week. And he said, Stephen, I don't think running's enough for you.

50:39And I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, well, you've just told me your business is doing phenomenally well. And that's really cool. I love hearing that. But he's like, I need you to go for a run. And then when you come back, just be like, yeah, it's fine. It's kind of part of the reason that, you know, like I haven't lent on Chris Taylor, for example, you know, who's helped me with, you know, the 1330 and the Project 7 and stuff for marathons because I know that he's going to write me a plan that I can't really do. Yeah. Can't or just get distracted with other. See, where I'm going with that is like, I think if you decided that two hours 45 is something that you need to achieve, right?

51:14And we're not talking life or death here. We're not talking about, oh, you need to go live up this mountain. but I think you're easily distracted because you want to achieve other things. Well, it's just I have like work and stuff. No, but that's different. Work and family and stuff. So no, I think what I would love is like if I was going for 245, for example, I'd love enough time for the plan to work well, including other stuff. Like I would never try to squeeze that into three months because then your life is going to become about running and you're going to spend less time with your kids, you're not going to be present at work.

51:52Whereas I think, for example, if the target was Chicago, which is in October, it is in October, you can cover that plan with intense training in the last few months, but you can cover the basis of it starting now or next week. And you can probably still be very present at work, still build the company, still spend time with the family. And it won't feel kind of as last minute and as intense as it would need to be if you were giving yourself three months, say. So I might just set a long stop target, you know, and start working on it now in less of an intense way. Yeah, so you, what were probably where a lot of people go wrong with their training is they probably train for marathons like boxers would.

52:38And they do this sort of build up and then they take this bit of down period off. And then they, maybe three months to go, your hypothetic center, two months to go, they're like, oh, I'll train for another marathon. And really what happens is your starting place for each one is just the same. Like you've never really improved on your starting place. You've never started, like hypothetically before every marathon, if you race to 10K over a five-year period, that 10K would be identical almost each time versus like actually three years ago it was 40 minutes and now it's 34. I feel like my marathons still have question marks over them.

53:11So that creates a higher potential. I don't know when my body may start to break down, but I kind of know that it will. Whereas like, I think if you set yourself a really strong target, you know, 249.50, that's the target. Ideally, you'd turn up to that race kind of knowing that you had it, right? Well, you'd get to a place that that 10K I just spoke about, you'd get to a place where you'd have so much like, we're not going to data science-y this, but like you'd get to a place where, let's say you did do this 10K with 10 weeks to go every time and you've gone literally just for numbers. You've gone 40 minutes and that created three hours, right?

53:47Then you've gone 38 minutes and that created two hours 57. You would get to a point that even before the 10-week buildup, based on that 10K, you'd know likely what the potential of the outcome of that next marathon is going to be. And where people are possibly going wrong is they're not working on that fitness between you want to, all that time away from marathon, you want to improve everything you possibly can so that when you start that next buildup and you have 10 weeks to go, you're in a much better spot than you were before the last marathon. So at least you have the potential that the outcome will be better.

54:21And that's really what most people should focus in on in that sort of down period, not just like, well, I'll just wait till I'm motivated again to go again. Where I was kind of going earlier was you could put the best plan in the world in place, but the beginning of the end of my running career, literally the beginning of the end of my running career was when I started to wake up at 8am and, you know, maybe we had already sold six pair of shorts. And I was like, easy. I won. The day's over. And it wasn't that I couldn't still train full when I had other things going on in life, the business stuff.

54:54And it was that my focus and motivation was split. And my feedback loop used to be, wake up at 8am, nothing's happening in my life until I go for a run. There's no good feel and no nice well dones. and that's probably what the business stuff started robbing the sort of like focus from the running stuff. You were still doing the running stuff. You were still fulfilling it exactly like it was in the program but then when you got back from the run you were straight back to the emails and trying to, it's the split focus it's not, so it's not just about like now to achieve some of the things you're talking about doing, you don't need to have this like, you know, like yeah it doesn't have to be that but it certainly has to be enough that then you're in.

55:39You're really locked in. And I'm talking like you've done the sort of like what the plan set that morning. And then maybe at three or four o 'clock in the afternoon, you've came back to it because you're, oh, you know, I wonder will I run two hours 50 at Chicago. And it's there, it still exists. It's something you really want. And my best results in the end of my career always came off disappointment. So I would be in this little floating place where, like I said, I'm waking up, I'm checking the emails, I'm all excited. I'm still doing the training. And then I would go race and I would race shit, right?

56:11I would struggle and that would have to happen and that would humble me. And then I would almost get angry. I'd be like, that was embarrassing. Like, what were you doing? And that embarrassment would turn into watch. And then that next focus, there was no emails, there was no nothing, it was like watch. And then I would turn what to me felt like embarrassing into special. And that, it took that, like all that changed was the focus and the attitude. My attitude just got to a place where I was like, no, no, I still think I can do this, but let's do it. And then I'd be thinking about it all day because something had triggered that.

56:46Now it's, how do you trigger that without this sort of like initial disappointment, you know? And that just comes down to like, if a goal means enough to you, you'll try to achieve it. It's a wonderful message and we're delighted to have you back. Same time next week. Thank you, sure. Fantastic.

57:05you