Latest / The CITIUS MAG Podcast | A Running + Track and Field Show / Galen Coaches Kyle (Episode 1) | “Don’t Screw It Up For Me”

Transcript

Galen Coaches Kyle (Episode 1) | “Don’t Screw It Up For Me” · The CITIUS MAG Podcast | A Running + Track and Field Show

• 0:06
  Hey running nerds, Kyle Merber here.
• 0:09
  No Chris Chavez this week. I am excited to bring I guess a
• 0:14
  miniseries to the Sidious Meg podcast airwaves this fall with
• 0:21
  a very special guest, Galen Rupp.
• 0:24
  I decided to run the Chicago Marathon in October and thought
• 0:31
  that it would be really fun to get some guidance from a Nike
• 0:35
  athlete that is also running the race.
• 0:38
  And when I took a a long look at the list of athletes that were
• 0:42
  competing, I thought, well, who have we never really heard from?
• 0:46
  And aside from a couple interviews that Galen has done
• 0:51
  with Sidious through the years, I feel like he's just sitting on
• 0:55
  such a wealth of knowledge that we haven't fully been able to
• 1:00
  tap into. And so the idea of this series
• 1:03
  of Galen coaching me as we both prepare for the Chicago Marathon
• 1:08
  is not so much about my running and my build up to the Chicago
• 1:15
  Marathon, but more So what can we extract from him in terms of
• 1:21
  his career, his many build ups to successful marathons before
• 1:27
  that all of us would be able to take away and apply to our
• 1:31
  training and our build UPS. So it's a great conversation.
• 1:36
  This is the first episode. We'll be doing at least a few.
• 1:40
  It's funny because I didn't know how into this idea Galen would
• 1:44
  be. I didn't know if he was
• 1:47
  ultimately convinced by others to take part.
• 1:51
  But almost immediately, as the conversation gets going, and as
• 1:56
  I've experienced now the last week or two as he's been
• 2:00
  coaching me behind the scenes, is he's very into this and is
• 2:04
  excited. So, without further ado, enjoy
• 2:07
  the episode of the first conversation that Galen and I
• 2:13
  have as we plan the approach to the Chicago Marathon.
• 2:24
  OK, so I'm here joined with I guess coach Rupp for our initial
• 2:31
  consultation on the 1st of what will be an exciting series
• 2:36
  leading into the Chicago Marathon.
• 2:38
  And I will be running the Chicago Marathon, Galen will be
• 2:43
  running the Chicago Marathon. And as part of a partnership
• 2:46
  with Nike, I, I thought it would be really fun if one of our Nike
• 2:52
  athletes who are running in the race alongside me.
• 2:55
  So we'll be going head to head at the end of all this would
• 2:58
  take the reins and coach me up along the way.
• 3:02
  And essentially, you know, we'll record the advice and share it
• 3:07
  with the rest of the world. And so outside of a very quick
• 3:11
  alignment call on the the idea of the project a few days ago,
• 3:15
  this is the initial consultation that Gan and I are going to
• 3:20
  have. And we thought that it'd be fun
• 3:23
  for everyone to listen in. So Galen, thanks for being a
• 3:26
  part of this. Next 2 1/2 months.
• 3:29
  And yeah, have you done much coaching before?
• 3:32
  Is this new? No, I haven't done a ton of it.
• 3:35
  You know, I've done some. There was about a year ago, I
• 3:39
  was spending a lot of time down in Flagstaff and I was a
• 3:42
  volunteer assistant, you know, with the NAU cross country and,
• 3:46
  and track teams. And so, you know, working with
• 3:48
  Mike and Jared and, and the other, the rest of the staff
• 3:51
  down there was, was awesome, you know, to get kind of get my feet
• 3:54
  wet a little bit helping out with, with some of the college
• 3:57
  kids. But, you know, a lot of it for
• 3:59
  me was about trying to learn from those guys and, and just
• 4:02
  see, you know, how they operate and, you know, the the workouts
• 4:06
  that they give to the kids. You know, the last thing I
• 4:07
  wanted to do was trying to come in and say, well, I think you
• 4:10
  need to do this, this and this. So, you know, where I was able
• 4:13
  to help, you know, I was there, but it was a it was a great
• 4:15
  experience, but I haven't had a lot of experience coaching, you
• 4:21
  know, specific athletes. But this will be fun.
• 4:23
  You know, I think when, when my career is done, it's something
• 4:26
  that I, I would really be interested in doing, you know,
• 4:30
  in, in several years time. So this is a lot of pressure on
• 4:33
  me then. This is, yeah.
• 4:36
  Don't. Don't screw.
• 4:37
  Put it like that. Yeah.
• 4:38
  Jeez, I got to make you look good.
• 4:40
  No, it's funny. I was talking to to Chris and
• 4:42
  Mack the other day about this and they're like, all right,
• 4:46
  well, if Galen's in, then you got to stop going to happy hour
• 4:48
  and start getting serious. So we're going to buckle down
• 4:53
  here this next 910 weeks. Cool.
• 4:56
  Well, I guess the the basic premise for everyone at home is
• 5:00
  damn, doesn't really know anything about what I've been
• 5:02
  doing, I guess the last six years since retiring.
• 5:07
  And I'm an open book. So whatever you need to know in
• 5:10
  order to write me the best training plan possible, I did
• 5:14
  send you the, the a few of the workouts that I've done in the
• 5:19
  last couple months just here and there as I'm getting into it.
• 5:22
  But I'm going to make my, I'm going to put my excuses out
• 5:26
  front in the very beginning, which is I've got two young
• 5:29
  kids, I've got a full time job that I commute to and I also
• 5:35
  travel a lot for work and Sidious.
• 5:37
  So if that's your excuses built in at the top, and besides that
• 5:42
  I've got no excuse now 'cause you're on, you're on my side.
• 5:46
  Well, yeah, well, I got 4 kids, so the kid thing, I don't really
• 5:48
  have a whole lot of sympathy for them.
• 5:50
  But I can't relate to the, you know, traveling as much as you
• 5:52
  do and you know, having a full time job, you know, my full time
• 5:55
  job's to run. But yeah, I think that that this
• 5:58
  will be, this will be good. So you know what, why don't you,
• 6:01
  what do you just start? I mean, what have you been doing
• 6:03
  roughly, you know, and the last even like couple years as far as
• 6:09
  you know, mileage and, and, and then more specifically, I guess
• 6:13
  you know, as we get forward the last couple months, you know,
• 6:15
  what's kind of your, your base and background as we, as we get
• 6:18
  into this build? Yeah.
• 6:20
  So I, I retired in 2020 and aside from a very occasional
• 6:27
  thing, I was really miler. But since then I like ebb and
• 6:31
  flow in and out of wanting to like jump in races.
• 6:34
  Like I'd say like once or twice a year I get indecent fitness.
• 6:39
  Immediately after retiring. I think it was the 2022 New York
• 6:42
  City Marathon. I actually like kind of trained
• 6:44
  pretty hard for it. And it was the year it was
• 6:46
  really, really hot and I went out hard and I died miserably.
• 6:51
  I think I ran 238 and I thought I would never like want to run
• 6:55
  another marathon again. Like I was borderline crawling
• 6:58
  my way through Central Park just to make it to the finish line.
• 7:01
  And, and kind of like the last few years, it's I'm running, I'm
• 7:06
  always running 30 to 40 miles a week.
• 7:09
  And then I go through periods where like for two months, I'll
• 7:12
  try a little bit. But the thing I've learned is
• 7:13
  that if you're not working out, it's, it's, it doesn't do
• 7:17
  anything like just running 5-6 miles easy everyday.
• 7:20
  Your finish just slowly gets worse and worse.
• 7:22
  And so I've ramped up at times into the 5060 mile range, but
• 7:32
  I'm always running. But I I'm no longer running 90
• 7:35
  miles a week like I used to. OK.
• 7:38
  So like when you were running for the mile, 90 miles was like
• 7:40
  kind of where you. Capped out.
• 7:43
  Yeah, I've, I've, I've had the odd 100 mile week here and there
• 7:47
  in my life. But for the most part, I like to
• 7:49
  say I was 85 to 90. OK, yeah.
• 7:53
  And, and I know like life's really busy now and it's not
• 7:57
  Yeah, the lifestyle, you know, we're, we're really spoiled as
• 8:00
  as pro athletes where we get to just run and then sleep and then
• 8:03
  run again and then sleep. And that's, you know, obviously
• 8:07
  a little bit different. But you know, I, I think that,
• 8:10
  you know, we're getting ready for Chicago and, and for me,
• 8:13
  when I'm building for a marathon, that the biggest thing
• 8:15
  that I try to look at is like what I can do for like a 12 or
• 8:20
  16 week block. You know, if I can get 20 weeks,
• 8:23
  like that's even better. But it, it isn't so much about
• 8:26
  like a one or two week, you know, Hey, I had really high
• 8:29
  mileage for this week. It's, it's about being
• 8:32
  consistent for, you know, 10/12/16 weeks ideally.
• 8:36
  And, and that's where you're really going to build fitness,
• 8:39
  you know, as being consistent for, for that long amount of
• 8:42
  time. So, you know, I, I know that you
• 8:45
  sent me some of your workouts and, and some of your mileage.
• 8:47
  I think 2 days ago we were talking about this, this really
• 8:50
  is like a, a fresh thing. But yeah, for the next like 9
• 8:55
  weeks, I think the biggest thing that we got to kind of our
• 8:58
  mantras got to be just consistency and and stacking
• 9:01
  weeks on weeks on weeks. Do you keep your peak mileage
• 9:06
  for the extent of that 12 to 20 week block or do you kind of
• 9:10
  think of it as like, all right, in this six day week period, I'm
• 9:14
  just going to really like bump it up.
• 9:16
  And as part of that, are you taking down weeks on purpose in
• 9:20
  terms of mileage or are you letting the chips fall where
• 9:23
  they may and when you need a rest, you need a rest and.
• 9:26
  I mean, when I, when I go back and compare builds, like I'm
• 9:29
  certainly looking at like what I'm averaging for that 12 or 16
• 9:33
  weeks. And and that doesn't mean that
• 9:35
  I'm just trying to stay at a certain, you know, High Peak
• 9:38
  mileage for that whole time. You know, there's definitely
• 9:41
  going to be ebbs and flows in your mileage.
• 9:44
  Sometimes that's, you know, forced, like you get a little
• 9:48
  injury and you maybe have to back off and, and you can't be
• 9:51
  scared to, to take a low week and, and that's just going to
• 9:54
  happen sometimes. And in a, in a marathon build.
• 9:57
  And I know, especially as, as I've gotten older, I think that
• 10:01
  it's, you've got to be really cognizant to, to stay on top of
• 10:05
  the little, you know, injuries or, or things that come up and
• 10:09
  not be scared to, to back off a little bit.
• 10:12
  But you know, that's kind of the, the challenge of the
• 10:15
  marathon is like, how well can you stay up with your workouts
• 10:19
  and with your, your volume, your weekly mileage for that 12 to 16
• 10:24
  week block. And, and you know, certainly
• 10:27
  there are races, you know, I'm running a half marathon in a
• 10:30
  couple weeks in Northern Ireland and I will rest for that.
• 10:35
  You know, I want, I think it's important to, you know, run well
• 10:40
  in races and, and you can't just be a slave to sing like I have
• 10:43
  to hit this certain number. Sometimes you're going to have
• 10:45
  weeks that are a little bit higher.
• 10:46
  Sometimes you're going to have weeks that are a little bit
• 10:48
  lower. And, you know, I, I just think
• 10:50
  like your body responds better when you're, you're kind of
• 10:53
  building and not just saying like, I'm going to stay in this
• 10:56
  zone here for a really long amount of time.
• 10:59
  You know, you're able to get higher peaks when sometimes you
• 11:02
  have a little bit of, of lower valleys.
• 11:04
  You know, you, you need that rest and there are periods
• 11:07
  where, yeah, you got to got to back off.
• 11:10
  So throw a number out there and like what's the highest you've
• 11:15
  ever done and is there a sweet spot for you personally?
• 11:19
  And then has there been a correlation in your career
• 11:22
  between when I have a block with the highest mileage that the
• 11:26
  race at the end of it has panned out the best or is it kind of
• 11:30
  it's not a one to one ratio there?
• 11:32
  You know, I don't think that it's necessarily a one to one
• 11:35
  ratio, but you know, I pretty consistently, you know, if I'm
• 11:39
  in that one O 5 to 110 average for, you know, a 12 week or 16
• 11:45
  week period, like that's that's usually pretty good.
• 11:48
  And when I've run my best races, you know, and, and you know,
• 11:51
  within that, again, like there's a lot of weeks where I'll be
• 11:53
  running, you know, 1213135, there might be some weeks where
• 11:59
  I'm only running 80 or 90. But you know, when you balance
• 12:01
  that out over that long a period, you know, that I would
• 12:06
  say is kind of been the, the number that, that I've been at.
• 12:09
  And you know, I should say too, that as far as peak mileage that
• 12:14
  I run, you know, as far as just outside miles, probably is only
• 12:19
  around 120 is about the most I ever really did.
• 12:24
  You might have an odd week here there where you, you do more,
• 12:27
  but I'm a big believer, you know, in, in cross training too.
• 12:30
  And, and that's something that I think, you know, it's definitely
• 12:34
  going to be relevant for you, you know, from a time standpoint
• 12:37
  or if you're travelling, you know, I, I've, ever since I've
• 12:41
  been in high school, I've been a big believer in, in cross
• 12:43
  training. And it's kind of like you got to
• 12:45
  run a certain amount to get your running legs under you.
• 12:48
  You know, you can't discount the value of running outside, but at
• 12:51
  a certain point, you know, it, it becomes a kind of a cost
• 12:55
  benefit where you're looking at, am I putting myself at a much
• 13:00
  higher risk of injury, you know, by running an extra 10/15/20
• 13:03
  miles a week, You know, and I don't think that your heart
• 13:07
  really knows the difference as long as you're going hard and
• 13:09
  you're getting your heart rate up, you know, whether that's
• 13:11
  swimming, whether you're on a bike, you know, and I've used
• 13:15
  underwater treadmills a lot. I know that's like not something
• 13:17
  everybody else has access to, but you don't like stare
• 13:21
  machines. I mean, you can get your heart
• 13:23
  rate up pretty high on low impact.
• 13:25
  And again, I, you need to develop that cardiovascular
• 13:29
  system. But as long as you're getting
• 13:31
  your heart rate up, your heart's not going to say, well, oh, this
• 13:33
  is a running mile versus this is a swimming mile or a biking
• 13:36
  mile. And so, you know, I've added on
• 13:38
  cross training in addition to that, you know, 100 and 15120
• 13:42
  miles a week. I might be running outside to
• 13:45
  get that total volume up. And I would kind of just count
• 13:48
  it as a really easy run, you know, time wise to to try to get
• 13:52
  an equivalent amount of miles. So when I first texted you about
• 13:59
  this, you said jokingly, I hope you're ready to run 200 mile
• 14:03
  weeks. So I've been running, you know,
• 14:06
  this block the last five weeks I've built from 62 to 72 miles
• 14:11
  and I think I want to settle in like the mid 70s.
• 14:15
  Does that make sense or do you think I should throw in some
• 14:19
  double s and it might be junk miles?
• 14:21
  Like, I don't know if that's worth it or is it just that's
• 14:25
  going to be enough? I, I mean, I think that if you,
• 14:28
  you know, from from listening to, you know, when you get up to
• 14:31
  like 5060 miles occasionally and you know, now you're up to 75,
• 14:35
  you know, obviously if you could sleep and recover and, and run
• 14:40
  80 or 90, sorry, I think that that would be like better.
• 14:46
  But if it's if that's not something that you're able to
• 14:50
  do, like I would just keep it at that 7577, you know, miles, but
• 14:56
  add in some cross training, you know, add in some biking, add in
• 14:59
  some swimming, whatever it is that you can just get your heart
• 15:03
  rate up as if you were running, going on an easy run and, and,
• 15:07
  and add it in that way. You know, again, like for a
• 15:10
  marathon, pure endurance, your running legs are going to be
• 15:13
  fine under you as long as you're running 7075, you're getting in
• 15:18
  some good long runs and you're getting in good workouts.
• 15:21
  I mean, we kind of got to prioritize like what's going to
• 15:24
  help you the most? What's going to be the most big
• 15:25
  for your buck getting ready for a marathon?
• 15:28
  And if I had to, you know, kind of rank them, I would say, you
• 15:30
  know, long runs by far probably the single most important thing,
• 15:34
  you know, as far as one workout to get you ready and get you
• 15:37
  strong. Then it's going to be the, you
• 15:39
  know, the stuff at a marathon pace, your speed work, you know,
• 15:42
  intervals, stuff like that. And then it's going to be, you
• 15:44
  know, overall volume. You can get it, however you, you
• 15:48
  can get it, whether that's, you know, run 70, you know, biking
• 15:52
  for a couple hours a week, like do it that way.
• 15:55
  And that's going to keep you healthy.
• 15:57
  Because trying to do too much miles is also, again, I think
• 16:00
  we're going to run into a risk of like getting hurt.
• 16:02
  And doesn't matter what shape you're in, if you're hurt, you
• 16:05
  can't make it to the start line. It doesn't matter.
• 16:08
  All right, so let's talk long run.
• 16:11
  I did 20 last week at 628 pace, just straight ran 20 miles.
• 16:18
  Obviously like naturally progressed at the end, but that
• 16:20
  was my first twenty. I've done a few sort of
• 16:24
  structured things like I did in an 18 Miller with eight at 5:40
• 16:29
  in the middle. Do you 2 questions like have a
• 16:36
  Max like all right, I like to, I don't go above 24 like 20 I but
• 16:41
  I need a one or two 24 mileers. Yeah.
• 16:43
  And then do you normally structure long runs as part
• 16:48
  workout or you just it's more about time on feet?
• 16:51
  How do you think about it? Yeah, I, I mean a little bit of
• 16:55
  both. You know, I think definitely I
• 16:57
  do a lot of like 2425 mile runs. That's kind of been like a very
• 17:01
  standard thing. Once I'm in, you know, once I'm
• 17:06
  in shape and in in the middle of like a big build, I think 20
• 17:10
  would be kind of, you know, minimum.
• 17:12
  And you know, I should say though, like when I for the
• 17:15
  first time when I'm in a marathon in the Olympic trials,
• 17:17
  I never ran further than 20 miles.
• 17:19
  That was as far as I ever went. And, you know, I remember, yeah.
• 17:23
  And I, I, you know, I don't think that that was necessarily
• 17:25
  ideal. Like I remember Alberto
• 17:26
  constantly telling me the guy, you're going to be fine, like
• 17:28
  the last 6 miles, like they, they hurt, but you just going to
• 17:31
  be in a lot of discomfort for a long time, but you can handle
• 17:34
  it. It's just a mental thing.
• 17:35
  And, you know, but I remember talking to him a lot about being
• 17:38
  super nervous about, hey, like I'm about to run a marathon for
• 17:42
  the first time and this is the farthest I've ever run in my
• 17:44
  life. You know, like, I've never done
• 17:46
  this in training. Like, and I, I did have some
• 17:49
  nervousness about those last 6 miles just because it was such
• 17:52
  an unknown to me. And you know, I never did it in
• 17:55
  training and it ended up working out all right.
• 17:58
  You know, I think I had a lot of fitness and I did a lot of 20
• 18:00
  milers that, you know, I was mentally prepared for it.
• 18:04
  But you know, after that I think we started doing a lot more 25
• 18:09
  milers and, and with Mike for sure, I still do, you know,
• 18:13
  anywhere from 22 to 25 I would say is kind of the range when I
• 18:18
  do a long run, how far I'm going.
• 18:21
  I've gone up to I think 30 before a couple times.
• 18:25
  Is that the longest you've ever run?
• 18:26
  30? Yeah.
• 18:27
  I think the longest I've ever run was 35 miles.
• 18:30
  What context did you run 35 in? That's fascinating.
• 18:34
  It was just as part of training. Yeah, it, you know, and, and I
• 18:38
  did it and I remember afterwards just being like, I don't really
• 18:42
  know what the benefit was to, to doing that, you know, like.
• 18:45
  Yeah, at a certain point. At a certain point, yeah, like
• 18:48
  30, it's, it's almost more of a mental thing where you you stop
• 18:51
  thinking so much about the marathon or the distance.
• 18:54
  I think for a long time people were, I don't want to say
• 18:58
  intimidated by it, but there was almost too much respect for the
• 19:02
  distance. And it's like, you got to do
• 19:03
  that in training. And when you do longer, there's
• 19:06
  something I think mentally where it's like, yeah, you know,
• 19:09
  you're going to get there at the end and you can do it.
• 19:12
  But I don't, I don't know that that's totally necessary to be,
• 19:15
  to be. Totally, Yeah.
• 19:17
  I would love to not have to do 35.
• 19:19
  Yeah, I don't think we need to. Do you do?
• 19:23
  Do you do long runs on bike paths?
• 19:26
  Trails, I know you love the turf.
• 19:29
  Like what is the surface come into consideration when you're
• 19:34
  running that far in practice? Yeah, I would say like, you
• 19:38
  know, in once we get to within like 6 weeks, you know, I'll
• 19:41
  start adding in some more concrete.
• 19:43
  But for the most part, I really, I've always been very diligent
• 19:46
  about running on softer surfaces, you know, whether
• 19:49
  that's, you know, bar chip trails, grass fields, turf
• 19:52
  fields, you know, there's a little loop of crust gravel.
• 19:56
  You know, I train on a Nike campus almost every day.
• 20:00
  And, and so I really, I really try to like stay off of that and
• 20:04
  it is boring, you know, like looping around these things over
• 20:07
  and over again. It's, it doesn't bother me too
• 20:09
  much. And and also music.
• 20:12
  Ever. Not a lot sometimes, but it's
• 20:15
  very rare and there's a lot of times, honestly, I do long runs
• 20:18
  on the treadmill. So, you know, that's very common
• 20:22
  for me to run 2025 miles on a treadmill.
• 20:24
  And again, it, it just, I think there's something about being
• 20:29
  able to have total control of a pace, you never having to stop,
• 20:32
  you know, for a stop light and you know, you can change the
• 20:36
  grade on there. And so I, I do a fair amount on
• 20:41
  the treadmill as well, which I think it's just softer than than
• 20:44
  concrete. And again, I've been, it's been
• 20:48
  like drilled into my head from a young age like it's just boring
• 20:51
  is better than than being hurt and you recover better.
• 20:55
  You know, it's easier on your muscles.
• 20:57
  But, but certainly, you know, once you start getting into, you
• 21:00
  know, within six weeks of a marathon to start, you got to
• 21:03
  get used to the pounding a little bit too.
• 21:04
  So we, we add that in strategically where, you know,
• 21:07
  maybe it might be I'm doing, you know, 8 or 10 miles of my long
• 21:11
  run outside and you know, we're adding in a little bit more, you
• 21:15
  know, every every couple weeks just to get used to that
• 21:17
  pounding. So is there workouts as part of
• 21:21
  the long run on routine? Like if you're running 25 miles,
• 21:25
  you're not just running 25 miles at 5:30 pace.
• 21:28
  Like you're doing something in the middle.
• 21:30
  Yeah, yeah, there are definitely times and, and there have been
• 21:33
  periods with Mike where, you know, I've almost alternated
• 21:36
  weeks where one week we've just done one where it's just being
• 21:38
  on your feet. You know, you're out there just
• 21:40
  for a long time, it's easy. There's no, you know, he's not
• 21:44
  telling me you got to run a certain pace.
• 21:46
  It's just kind of however I'm feeling get the volume and get
• 21:49
  used to being out there for, you know, 2 1/2 hours on your feet,
• 21:53
  running, drinking and. And then the next week we might
• 21:57
  do something a little bit harder.
• 21:58
  And you know, one thing I really like doing is, you know,
• 22:03
  running. If I'm going 25, I might run 15
• 22:07
  of it. You know what, at a, you know,
• 22:10
  not jogging, but also not super hard.
• 22:13
  You know, it might be like 540-5550 pace for that first 15
• 22:17
  and then you know, the last 10 or the last 7, whatever, you
• 22:22
  start picking it up and, and by the end, you know, the last five
• 22:25
  miles might be at marathon pace or you know, the last couple
• 22:28
  miles would be a little bit faster when you're finishing
• 22:31
  harder. And I think that it's just a
• 22:33
  really good way that it doesn't, you get used to running on tired
• 22:37
  legs, which is a really important thing and, and running
• 22:39
  fast on tired legs. Like you've got to be able to
• 22:42
  run at least what your average pace, your goal pace is from
• 22:45
  marathon when you're tired. And the, the challenge is like,
• 22:48
  it's hard to replicate that in training without totally
• 22:51
  wrecking yourself. You know, for, you know, a week
• 22:54
  or two weeks where you can't recover from it.
• 22:55
  You can't run a marathon hard every week.
• 22:58
  But you know, running something where you're doing it at a
• 23:01
  moderate pace and then working on closing hard those last 510
• 23:05
  miles I think is really effective.
• 23:07
  And it, and it's also something that you're able to, to recover
• 23:10
  from. You might have to take an extra
• 23:13
  day or two to, to recover from that because it is going to take
• 23:17
  a lot out of you. But again, the more you can get
• 23:20
  that feeling of being dead and, and physically and mentally
• 23:24
  knowing that you can still run the pace you're hoping to run in
• 23:26
  a marathon, I think it just gives you so much confidence,
• 23:30
  you know, when when race day comes.
• 23:33
  So the I operate on a 7 day cycle because I'm very much in
• 23:40
  life at the moment and I don't have the the liberty to be able
• 23:43
  to do long runs in any day outside of a weekend.
• 23:46
  Do you do a seven day cycle still or like every 7th day?
• 23:51
  Are you doing a long run or like, yeah, what's it look like?
• 23:55
  Yeah. I mean, more or less that's,
• 23:57
  that's kind of been what it is. You know, sometimes, again, like
• 24:01
  Mike's been great about helping me understand that sometimes you
• 24:05
  just, you need an extra day and, and that's OK.
• 24:08
  And so, you know, I think that again, he, he's always reminding
• 24:12
  me about how you got to be able to hit your workouts in your
• 24:16
  long runs like that. That's like the top of the
• 24:19
  pyramid. Like that has to be your
• 24:21
  priority all the time. You know, if you have to take
• 24:24
  more recovery days or you have to run easier, or maybe you got
• 24:26
  to do a little bit less in between.
• 24:28
  If we can't hit those key workouts, the long runs and the,
• 24:32
  and the interval workouts, running a bunch of miles slow
• 24:35
  isn't going to help you, you know, run fast for a marathon.
• 24:39
  You know, if that was the case, it's like we just run 203
• 24:42
  hundred miles a week and just be jogging all day.
• 24:44
  But that's not going to get you to run two O 5 or two O 4,
• 24:48
  whatever it is, you know, 220 that you're hoping to run.
• 24:50
  So the workouts have to come first and you got to make able
• 24:55
  be able to make sure that you're recovering from them.
• 24:58
  So is it one workout? I guess for me as well, The idea
• 25:02
  being let's do Sunday long runs with a big focus obviously on
• 25:06
  that and then sometime midweek do one other workout that sounds
• 25:10
  like a. Yeah, if you.
• 25:11
  Can fit if you can. Fit 2IN every once in a while.
• 25:14
  You know, I think that that's good.
• 25:16
  You know, maybe like one week it.
• 25:18
  So I would say this, if you're running like a hard long run on
• 25:20
  Sunday and you're you're doing something where maybe you're
• 25:22
  running the last five or 10 miles hard, you know, take three
• 25:26
  days, four days easy. Do a moderate workout.
• 25:32
  I mean, maybe just kind of spitball on here, but maybe if
• 25:35
  we look at it like in in two weeks, like 14 days, you know,
• 25:39
  you're doing 1 long run in those 14 days and you're doing like 33
• 25:44
  interval workouts in the middle of them.
• 25:47
  And then 14 days later you're going to do another long run.
• 25:49
  Does that kind of make sense? So if you were going hard on
• 25:52
  Sunday, maybe you're doing an overwork on Thursday, maybe
• 25:55
  you're doing another workout on the weekend like Saturday or
• 25:59
  Sunday, maybe you're doing something else on Wednesday and
• 26:04
  then Saturday or Sunday we're doing another long run.
• 26:08
  And, and I again, I think that if you do something super hard,
• 26:12
  whether that's a hard interval workout or a hard long run,
• 26:15
  you've got to come back with something easier.
• 26:17
  You know, you, I think it, it's so, so tempting and so easy to
• 26:22
  get greedy with trying to stack too many good workouts on top of
• 26:25
  each other. And if you're having like in a
• 26:27
  workout where you run really hard and you hit it like that's
• 26:31
  great, but then you got to come back with something that's like
• 26:34
  AC workout, you know, something that is to kind of get your legs
• 26:37
  under you. The purpose of it isn't
• 26:39
  necessarily to build a ton of fitness.
• 26:42
  And, and again, coming off of those hard long runs, I usually
• 26:46
  my next workout will be 3-4 days after them.
• 26:50
  And a lot of times I'm doing 2 hundreds or three hundreds and,
• 26:53
  and not spreading all out, but still running fast because
• 26:56
  that's something that, you know, you try to go do 8 hundreds or
• 26:59
  KS or miles after doing a hard long run, you're going to be
• 27:02
  wiped out. Even if you, you know, think
• 27:05
  your body's recovered and, and is doing all right, it, it does
• 27:08
  take a lot out of you. And so you almost need like a
• 27:11
  bridge workout or maybe even 2 bridge workouts from that long
• 27:15
  run before then you're going hard again or like, you know,
• 27:19
  let's say Saturday or, or Wednesday of that next week.
• 27:23
  Now you're ready to hit it super hard again.
• 27:26
  And that's when you focus on like, you know, your mile
• 27:29
  repeats or your eight hundreds or your KS, something like that.
• 27:31
  That's going to give you another great, great stimulus.
• 27:37
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• 29:12
  Happy running. All right, so looking at my
• 29:15
  workout so far. So I'm coming off the bench at
• 29:18
  the end of May having not like broken a 6 minute mile in
• 29:22
  months. I started the idea basically
• 29:26
  being like, let's hop on the track and just run 520 pace
• 29:29
  intervals for a while. So I, you know, I did 5 by Ki
• 29:33
  did 5 by 1200. I did 10/8 hundreds.
• 29:36
  I did 5 by mile and I'll share all these as well for for
• 29:42
  listeners. But the idea being was like I
• 29:45
  need something to just start moving again.
• 29:49
  And then I slowly have now just been like ramping up the amount
• 29:54
  of miles that I can extend that 520 pace.
• 29:57
  Or. So like 520 something.
• 30:00
  So I guess again, like we we haven't really touched on this.
• 30:03
  So my PB is 226 from Houston 2025 and that was like a pretty
• 30:08
  bad mediocre build up. And so I keep joking.
• 30:13
  I'm saying that this is project 222, which is 525 pace and seems
• 30:21
  like, you know, that's like a, a fair next step.
• 30:25
  Obviously we'll see how things are developing in the next 9
• 30:28
  weeks. But right now, like that's kind
• 30:30
  of been my barometers like 520 to 530 pace, like somewhere in
• 30:34
  there. And now I'm starting to extend
• 30:36
  it. So when you take a look at the
• 30:38
  way that I've structured where I'm at, like the idea of just
• 30:41
  getting on the track and building up from 5K of work to
• 30:43
  10K of work, and now, you know, yes, a couple days ago I did
• 30:49
  three by three mile at 521 pace. So now I'm at like 9 miles at
• 30:54
  close to goal pace. How am I doing?
• 30:57
  What'd you think when you took a look at what I've structured so
• 31:02
  far? Yeah.
• 31:03
  I mean, I think it's it's a great start.
• 31:05
  You know, I think that obviously like you're, you are getting
• 31:09
  longer and longer extending that.
• 31:12
  You know what, let me ask you like what workouts do you feel
• 31:15
  like helped you the most when you PB and like what just makes
• 31:20
  you? What do you enjoy like doing in
• 31:23
  training? Yeah, it's funny.
• 31:25
  And I, I'm curious if you felt this way coming from you
• 31:28
  obviously having a successful track background.
• 31:32
  I can like fake the shorter stuff a little too.
• 31:35
  Well, like, you know, I, I've just, I've, I've ripped a lot in
• 31:42
  my life on the track. And so sometimes I get on the
• 31:44
  track and it's just like, this is good and I can do it.
• 31:47
  On paper it might look nice, but I know this is not converting to
• 31:52
  marathon fitness like this is. I'm tapping into mile fitness
• 31:56
  from years ago and muscle memory there.
• 31:59
  And so I do definitely feel like having 10 plus miles at Gold
• 32:06
  Race pace and not giving myself a lot of rest because if I do
• 32:10
  take a lot of rest again, I kind of like I can just fake it.
• 32:14
  And I don't know if that's something that you've
• 32:17
  experienced before, but I, I think I have to run 10 plus
• 32:20
  miles and I have to keep rest short if rest at all.
• 32:24
  Otherwise, it's not. It's it's like I'm just tapping
• 32:29
  until like 2012 to 2020. Yeah, No, I mean, look, I I
• 32:34
  think that there's different ways to tackle a marathon and
• 32:38
  there's no one right way. You know, everybody wants to
• 32:42
  talk about double threshold seems to be like the buzzword
• 32:46
  that everybody's throwing around.
• 32:47
  And I think that, you know, certainly there's there's value
• 32:51
  to doing that stuff. Me personally, like I, I don't
• 32:54
  think it's everything. And you know I've.
• 32:57
  Do you do it ever? Yeah, I and I do it under Mike,
• 33:01
  but you know, and when I was running with Alberto, we never
• 33:04
  did it. You know, we did straight temple
• 33:06
  runs where we would just run for, you know, 5678910 miles and
• 33:11
  or, you know, sometimes I would do 20 miles where I just run
• 33:14
  hard for the whole 20 miles. But we rarely did things on time
• 33:19
  to rest. I mean, it was super rare.
• 33:22
  We did things a lot more where everything was very intense.
• 33:26
  And the important thing was keeping rest like consistent so
• 33:29
  you're able to, you know, kind of compare reps or compare
• 33:34
  workouts, But it was never, most of the time it was like, you
• 33:38
  know, jog a lap was what we did in between stuff.
• 33:41
  And, and it wasn't that I was never worried about time, but
• 33:45
  but we ran really hard for those reps in the middle.
• 33:48
  And, you know, I remember when, when I first started working
• 33:53
  with Mike in, in 2019 and you know, and I was sending him over
• 33:56
  some of the training I had done, you know, like before, before
• 34:02
  Chicago and before I ran really well at a marathon in Prague.
• 34:08
  And he, you know, he's like, you look like you're training like a
• 34:09
  1500m runner, even for those build UPS.
• 34:12
  So, you know, I, I came from the bottom up a lot early on.
• 34:19
  You know, I know a lot of people come where they're just talking
• 34:21
  about doing a ton of strength and, and I don't think he'd
• 34:25
  one's necessarily better than the other.
• 34:28
  You know, my best answer would be probably need a little bit of
• 34:30
  both. And, you know, I think with with
• 34:33
  what you sent me over with your workouts, you know, I would say,
• 34:37
  yeah, it's there's definitely something to be doing a lot of
• 34:39
  things at a race pace with, with little rest.
• 34:42
  You know, that's more of that kind of threshold work.
• 34:45
  And and there's a lot of value in that, you know, but I think
• 34:49
  sometimes you've got to do things that significantly faster
• 34:53
  than your race pace too. You know, you want that that
• 34:56
  pace to feel so, so easy. And again, we've got to, we've
• 35:01
  got to get you to have enough endurance that again, you can't
• 35:04
  just rely on having raw speed. You know, otherwise Usain Bolt
• 35:08
  would be a great marathoner because he's that's so far away
• 35:11
  from his top end speed that, you know, but he doesn't have the
• 35:13
  endurance. So again, I, I think that from
• 35:18
  what you sent me, I would just say maybe encourage you to do a
• 35:20
  little bit more variety of things.
• 35:22
  Like it's OK to still run 2 hundreds, three hundreds, 4
• 35:25
  hundreds. Like I still do that now even
• 35:28
  when I'm getting ready. And, and that's not everything,
• 35:31
  but there is certainly a place for that because you don't want
• 35:35
  to lose that efficiency and that speed and that power that, you
• 35:39
  know, you've got a great advantage with that track
• 35:40
  background. And you know, I've always just
• 35:43
  said, like the further away your marathon paces from your red
• 35:47
  line, like you're going to be able to relax that much more.
• 35:51
  And then when we can add in endurance that you're able to,
• 35:53
  you know, not die at the end, you're going to run a great
• 35:56
  marathon. And so again, I think, you know,
• 36:00
  we can talk about more specifics, but the more I'm
• 36:04
  talking out loud, I'm kind of like in this two week kind of
• 36:07
  plan with you. Or maybe we're you know, we're
• 36:10
  doing a long run on Sunday, let's say Wednesday, Thursday,
• 36:13
  like we're doing something short in it and fast.
• 36:16
  You know, whether that's hills and two hundreds or a bunch of
• 36:19
  three hundreds, like keep hitting that that lower system
• 36:24
  where you're running fast. You know, I think that that is
• 36:26
  going to help. So best waist training you can
• 36:29
  do for your legs is sprinting. And so, you know, maybe doing
• 36:32
  that on a Wednesday or Thursday, maybe on Saturday, then we're
• 36:37
  doing some, some threshold stuff where you are like, you know, if
• 36:41
  you are up for doing double workouts, like I, I think that
• 36:44
  they're great. You know, it's just about
• 36:45
  getting a lot of volume in at more or less your marathon pace
• 36:50
  on short rest. I'll have to talk to my wife if
• 36:53
  I'm allowed. OK, well, yeah, definitely do
• 36:56
  that. But even if it's just single
• 36:59
  set, you know, if you just want to work out in the morning, like
• 37:01
  get in 1012 miles worth worth of work with short rest, you know,
• 37:05
  and, and start working on that system.
• 37:08
  And then maybe on Wednesday or Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
• 37:13
  somewhere in there, you know, when you're feeling recovered,
• 37:16
  then that's when we're going to do something.
• 37:17
  We're hitting, you know, stuff that's that's hard and fast, you
• 37:21
  know, those 800 KS miles. But I think that it's important
• 37:25
  to do those faster than, than your race pace, you know, and,
• 37:30
  and don't be scared to take a little bit more rest, but, but
• 37:32
  run those things hard and, and get in some good volume on those
• 37:36
  days. And then, you know, Sunday
• 37:38
  we're, we're back to another long run.
• 37:40
  And that I think that might be a really good two week kind of way
• 37:44
  to, to chunk this up where you're hitting all of those
• 37:47
  buckets, you're hitting your speed a little bit, you're
• 37:50
  getting 2 long runs, you know, bookending those two weeks,
• 37:53
  you're getting some threshold and then you're getting
• 37:55
  something in that moderate 800K miles where you're running
• 38:00
  faster than your marathon pace. And you know, those are going to
• 38:03
  be some some ball Buster workouts.
• 38:06
  All right, yeah, I'm in. And you know what, we could
• 38:09
  probably structure this around some travel as well and weeks at
• 38:13
  work, a little bit more flexibility than like the strict
• 38:17
  7 day you only have Wednesday and Sunday in terms of workouts
• 38:25
  and everyday running. I think like you're an
• 38:28
  interesting case study of someone who has like seen the
• 38:31
  entire evolution of, of footwear and especially in the marathon,
• 38:36
  we've obviously seen like so much benefit to it.
• 38:39
  How do you leverage super shoes in training?
• 38:44
  Like is it every time you have a big workout, you're in whatever
• 38:48
  the fastest shoe possible is? Or do you strategically say,
• 38:51
  hey, like, you know, we're going to run this in trainers?
• 38:55
  Yeah. So how, how, how do you use it
• 38:57
  in in the toolbox? Yeah, I, I kind of, I kind of
• 39:01
  treat super shoes almost like like spikes, like I, I run in
• 39:04
  them a fair amount for, for hard workouts.
• 39:07
  But you know, even when I was running on the track, you know,
• 39:10
  pre pre super shoes, you know, I did a lot of stuff just in
• 39:14
  normal, normal flats, you know, at least half of the workout
• 39:17
  would usually be in that, unless it was like, you know, a couple
• 39:20
  times where there was a really, really big one where we were
• 39:22
  just hitting it hard from the start.
• 39:24
  Like I'd wear spikes for the whole thing and, but most of my
• 39:28
  workouts were like half to 3/4 of it might be in normal flats.
• 39:32
  And then the last half or the last quarter of it, I'm wearing
• 39:36
  spikes. And then as the season went on,
• 39:39
  you know, we, we would do more and more and spikes, you know,
• 39:42
  it usually was like half and half or sometimes towards the
• 39:45
  end, you know, when we're getting into like racing season,
• 39:47
  we'd, we'd be doing like 3/4 of it and spikes and start out in
• 39:52
  flats. But you know, the big thing was,
• 39:54
  was just protection. You know, it's, it's like,
• 39:57
  again, injury prevention is, is been such a big part of my
• 40:03
  career and, and why I think I've been able to like continually
• 40:07
  train for so long. And, and I've definitely had my
• 40:10
  fair share of things come up. But we've always just said, you
• 40:13
  know, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and.
• 40:17
  You know, it's frustrating sometimes they have to stop a
• 40:19
  workout or have your coach say like, Hey, you're limping or
• 40:22
  something sore, but you deal with that right away.
• 40:26
  And if you can only miss, you know, a couple days versus a
• 40:30
  couple weeks or a couple months, like you'll take that every
• 40:33
  time. But again, I, I think it's
• 40:35
  really easy to say like, oh, it's, it's not that bad and push
• 40:40
  through it. And so that was a big reason
• 40:42
  why, you know, we didn't wear spikes all the time.
• 40:45
  And, and I think with super shoes, like they're, they're
• 40:47
  tremendous, you know, I mean, they for me, you know, I've,
• 40:52
  I've where the alpha fly, you know, from as soon as they came
• 40:56
  out and I I love them, but I wouldn't run on them all the
• 41:01
  time. You know, I think that they do
• 41:03
  such a good job with putting your feet in good positions and
• 41:08
  they do such a good job. You know, they they feel good.
• 41:10
  You're able to run fast in them. But again, if you're doing that
• 41:15
  all the time, I think you need to actively be working on like
• 41:18
  strengthening your feet a lot. And, and that's where I think
• 41:21
  now like a normal pair of flats or training shoes where you
• 41:25
  know, there's not just a ton of foam in them can can really
• 41:28
  benefit you. So, you know, the majority of my
• 41:31
  running right now is done in a in the structure Triax, just
• 41:34
  normal structure. You know, that's what I've
• 41:37
  always trained in because I do have a tendency to pronate a
• 41:40
  lot. So I need a little bit extra and
• 41:45
  you know, now I, I kind of look at shoes.
• 41:48
  There was a guy who who works in shoe development and Nike and he
• 41:52
  put it this way. So I'm going to steal this from
• 41:53
  him. But you know, all these
• 41:54
  different shoes you kind of got to look at like different,
• 41:57
  different arrows, you know, in your quiver, like they're
• 41:59
  different tools in your toolbox, like they all serve kind of
• 42:02
  different purposes and, and used together is probably the best
• 42:05
  way to, to maximize them in training.
• 42:08
  You know, I think the bulk of it you, you need to be able to feel
• 42:11
  the ground. Your body needs to be a get used
• 42:13
  to a little bit of pounding. And you know, I, like I said
• 42:17
  earlier, I was trying to run on soft surfaces to minimize
• 42:20
  pounding. If that's not an option from
• 42:22
  like where you live or if you're traveling, you got to run on a
• 42:25
  road, like maybe using something with a little bit more
• 42:28
  cushioning, you can kind of bring the soft surfaces to you.
• 42:31
  So you know, there are times where I know I'm going to be
• 42:33
  it's going to be hard for me to get on grass or hard for me to
• 42:37
  to get on a software service. Like I might wear a vomero for
• 42:40
  that or a vomero premium, something that has like a ton of
• 42:43
  cushioning in it just because I know it's going to protect my
• 42:46
  legs. But super shoes, I think you you
• 42:49
  got to be a little careful running too much in them.
• 42:52
  You know, I've seen a lot of people that are doing all their
• 42:54
  easy runs in them and you know, all their workouts in them and I
• 42:58
  get it like they feel great. You run faster, but you should
• 43:03
  really be looking at effort, you know, and if I run a little bit
• 43:06
  slower for a Rep because I'm in a pair of normal shoes, that's
• 43:11
  OK. You know, they're they're
• 43:13
  building strength in my feet. And then when I go to use those
• 43:16
  super shoes, I think they're going to get more effective.
• 43:18
  Like you don't want to use them all the time for everything.
• 43:22
  Do you, do you notice a difference in, say, your heart
• 43:25
  rate or your pace that you're like, all right, I know it's
• 43:27
  worth 5 seconds. Oh.
• 43:29
  Absolutely. Yeah, it's worth a few beats.
• 43:31
  Like, do you have some calculation in your head that
• 43:33
  you kind of do a conversion for? For sure.
• 43:35
  Yeah. I mean like in just tracking my
• 43:37
  heart rate on long runs or, you know, even just running, like if
• 43:41
  I ran 6 minute pace and pair of structures versus 6 minute pace
• 43:43
  and pair of alpha flies, I mean my heart rate's significantly
• 43:46
  lower. I mean, there's, there's no
• 43:48
  doubt about it, like they work and they help you a lot.
• 43:51
  You know, I think they, they help you a lot on reps the
• 43:54
  intervals. But again, like if you're
• 43:57
  running, if you're running reps at, at let's say 520 pace, if
• 44:02
  you're doing that in training shoes, it's a lot harder than if
• 44:04
  you're running in a pair of super shoes.
• 44:07
  And so you got to kind of try to adjust for that, you know, and
• 44:10
  in in your training, you know, you need to run a little faster
• 44:13
  in super shoes or sometimes be OK with like, Hey, I'm getting a
• 44:16
  little bit more protection or I know this is going to be harder
• 44:19
  muscularly, you know, wearing a pair of trainers, but you're
• 44:23
  building strength and that strength is going to help you
• 44:26
  when you go transition into a super shoe.
• 44:29
  You know, like if you ran in sand all the time, it's going to
• 44:31
  be really hard to run 520 pace on the beach and then you go
• 44:36
  stuff on concrete. 520 foot pace is going to feel really easy if
• 44:38
  all you've been doing is running the sand.
• 44:40
  And you know, that's kind of how I look at it with super shoes
• 44:43
  and, and trainers and, and normal flats.
• 44:45
  You know, there's, there's a place for all that in your
• 44:48
  training. And, and I think that they are
• 44:51
  great super shoes. I'm a huge proponent of them,
• 44:54
  but you can't be doing everything in them because you
• 44:58
  need to work on these these other things too and and get
• 45:01
  that extra protection. You know that that comes with
• 45:03
  wearing a training shoe all. Right.
• 45:06
  So thinking specifically about Chicago now, you've won it, so
• 45:12
  probably pretty good idea of what the course is like.
• 45:17
  What do you do in preparation for Chicago differently than,
• 45:21
  say, Boston? Yeah, I mean anything, to be
• 45:26
  honest, I think sometimes like people make a little too much
• 45:28
  out of courses. Like there's not like if it's a
• 45:31
  really technical course, you know, Boston is a little bit
• 45:33
  different because there is so much downhill.
• 45:36
  There's so much uphill like you have to train for that and you
• 45:39
  have to get used to that. You know, like for getting ready
• 45:43
  for Boston, I did a lot of downhill running like you know,
• 45:46
  I would either put my treadmill down, I think it goes to a -, 3%
• 45:50
  grade. In the past I've like put just
• 45:53
  stacked like 2 by fours on the back of a treadmill like legs to
• 45:56
  put it on a downhill incline. I.
• 45:59
  Love the idea of you having to do that.
• 46:02
  Like in my mind that's what I should be doing or like that's
• 46:05
  what the rest of us are doing. And the fact that you also are
• 46:08
  doing that same thing to prepare for Boston is great.
• 46:10
  You, you make it work with, with what you've got, you know, and,
• 46:14
  but the important thing is that you just get your, you got to
• 46:16
  get your quads used to that, you know, I don't care.
• 46:19
  You can lift, you know, you can do these other things, but
• 46:23
  there's no substitute for getting used to running downhill
• 46:26
  than than running downhill. And you know, I, I live kind of
• 46:30
  on a big hill where, you know, it's like 2 miles straight down.
• 46:34
  And so a lot of times, you know, if I was getting ready for
• 46:36
  Boston, I will start just running down that hill.
• 46:39
  I'll do some stuff at Nike and then I'll run back up a bit.
• 46:43
  And so, you know, I think I guess to answer your question,
• 46:47
  that's like it's core specific as as I would get.
• 46:50
  But Chicago, the nice thing about it is like it's so flat.
• 46:54
  There's there's no hills there. You don't really need to worry
• 46:57
  about that. The biggest thing on a course
• 46:58
  like that is just getting fit, you know, you know, I think
• 47:02
  definitely still do some hills. They're just good for you.
• 47:05
  You know, they're good for your mechanics.
• 47:06
  They're good for sprinting and power in training.
• 47:09
  Like I think you sent over one day, you did some hill reps,
• 47:12
  then you did some some 2 hundreds or three hundreds after
• 47:14
  that. Like that stuff's great.
• 47:16
  But Chicago is essentially like 3 out and backs, but it's
• 47:19
  pancake flat. The biggest hill you get is like
• 47:22
  800 meters from the finish line and it's going over and
• 47:25
  overpass. And so, you know, I don't think
• 47:28
  that you have to worry about that or do anything.
• 47:31
  Just a specific, you know, when I was, when I went to Chicago in
• 47:35
  2017, I think I ran the last like mile or two.
• 47:38
  But you know, when I started out in the marathon, that's as much
• 47:41
  as I ever saw of any course I ran before.
• 47:44
  Before I actually, yeah. You just kind of showed up and
• 47:47
  you're usually from the Google Maps.
• 47:51
  Yeah, they're not even worrying about that.
• 47:53
  You know, I kind of look at roughly elevation profile.
• 47:57
  But like, you know, for the trials in LA, yeah, it was
• 47:59
  pancake flat there. You know, there's not, you know,
• 48:01
  everybody was talking about all these like 180 turns or things
• 48:04
  like that. It's like, OK, maybe I'll lose a
• 48:07
  second or two by not cutting fast around this corner, but you
• 48:10
  know what? I'm going to gain a hell of a
• 48:12
  lot more about being in great shape and running hard for those
• 48:15
  other 26 miles than worrying about this one silly little turn
• 48:18
  in there. I just Have you ever.
• 48:22
  Done like the Japanese turn around a cone.
• 48:24
  You know how they do like the the the little spin?
• 48:27
  I haven't seen that, no. I'll have to check that out.
• 48:31
  I've seen the Japanese guys do that before.
• 48:33
  Instead of just like turning left the entire time, they do
• 48:35
  like a weird 180 flip in the middle.
• 48:39
  I mean, if I got to like, I was worried about breaking a record
• 48:43
  or like, Oh my gosh, if only I was able to run that 180 turn
• 48:46
  better. Like, we're in a pretty good
• 48:48
  spot if that's the biggest thing you got to worry about getting
• 48:50
  ready for a marathon. In terms of between now and race
• 48:57
  day, I'm sure that you have like a couple workouts that you know
• 49:02
  you need to do that you want me to do because if you're doing
• 49:06
  it, I would like to do it. What are like the key indicator
• 49:09
  workouts that it's like it's a must you do it every cycle?
• 49:13
  Yeah, I mean, honestly, like running hard for 20 miles, like
• 49:17
  just straight through is probably a a real stable workout
• 49:21
  for the marathon, you know, and and I will run basically right
• 49:26
  around marathon pace for for 20 miles.
• 49:28
  You know, I might warm up a mile really easy and, and do that,
• 49:32
  but there, I'll probably do that a couple times.
• 49:34
  You know, getting ready for a marathon, you obviously need to
• 49:37
  make sure that you space that one out, you know, make sure
• 49:42
  you're not getting too close to race day.
• 49:44
  And you know where we've got 9 weeks, You know, we're kind of
• 49:47
  getting to the point where if we're going to try to do 2 of
• 49:49
  them, yeah, you probably got to do it in the next couple weeks.
• 49:53
  But again, there is there's no better way to just replicate
• 50:00
  that feeling of being dead and running hard then then running
• 50:04
  hard for, for 20 miles. You know, I think that's
• 50:07
  probably the single best workout that you can do.
• 50:11
  You know, some other things that we've done, You know, if I'm
• 50:14
  going to run like a long run hard is sometimes I might run
• 50:18
  3-4 miles, you know, just warming up moderate and then
• 50:21
  getting straight into like going like mile on mile off.
• 50:26
  Or sometimes I'll do 2 miles on mile off, you know, where I'm
• 50:29
  running pretty close to race pace and then back off to, you
• 50:34
  know, still faster than I would do an easy run.
• 50:37
  You know, for me that might mean like my offs are five 15520
• 50:44
  pace. My ONS might be, you know, four
• 50:47
  45450 pace and and alternating back and forth for that for
• 50:53
  like. For how many miles do you do
• 50:54
  that? You know, I've gone like 222425
• 51:00
  doing that. It just, yeah, kind of depends
• 51:02
  on what, you know, MM wants me to do.
• 51:05
  But definitely in that range, you know, that's a that's been
• 51:10
  something that I've done a lot of and and those if you're
• 51:14
  looking at one single work, I was going to give you your
• 51:16
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• 53:12
  Something that I remember, I feel like it's happened a few
• 53:16
  times in your career is you go out and you run like 1/2
• 53:19
  marathon in the middle of a build up and then you run a
• 53:22
  marathon weeks later at the same pace or so.
• 53:26
  Like it seems like you have to do a race in the build up, but
• 53:31
  you don't put that much stock into it.
• 53:33
  Is that fair to say that that's happened before?
• 53:35
  Am I remember it correctly like? It's happened.
• 53:38
  I mean, honestly, like I've had some really bad half marathons.
• 53:41
  Like that wasn't intentional. Like, oh, I'm just trying to
• 53:43
  jog. Like I just for whatever reason
• 53:45
  did not rumble. Like I would have loved to have
• 53:47
  run several minutes faster than those.
• 53:51
  So, yeah, that I wouldn't say this by design.
• 53:54
  You know, I'm trying to run those things hard and, you know,
• 53:57
  it's, it is tough to do that. You know, I think 1/2 marathon
• 54:00
  is a lot closer to like coming from a 10K background on the
• 54:04
  track. Like is way easier to run fast
• 54:07
  for 1/2 marathon than than when you're in the middle of marathon
• 54:10
  training and then trying to run really hard.
• 54:13
  It's just the volume and the, the, you know, you just kind of
• 54:18
  beat up from doing that marathon stuff and, and you have so much
• 54:21
  more speed when you're coming from the track or 10K.
• 54:24
  But the reason that I like racing is just, again, it's,
• 54:28
  it's getting that feeling of just working really hard for a
• 54:32
  really long time. And you know, again, those
• 54:34
  haven't always gone the way that I've hoped, but it's really good
• 54:39
  for me mentally to just remember like how hard this is and get
• 54:45
  that feeling of being out there. And even if you got to slog it
• 54:48
  out, you know, those last couple miles and a half marathon,
• 54:51
  knowing that that's going to serve you really well when you
• 54:54
  actually are like rested and tapered and, and ready for a
• 54:58
  marathon. It's so there's a physical part,
• 55:02
  but a lot of it for me is is mental too.
• 55:06
  Should I do a race or can I replicate something in training?
• 55:09
  I think a race would be ideal. You know, if you if you can't
• 55:13
  get someone or you can't do one, then yeah, like go in training
• 55:17
  and and try to just run one on your own.
• 55:19
  But there's, there's no workout that's, that can simulate a
• 55:23
  race, you know, and, and even, you know, I'll say when I was
• 55:26
  running on the track and then you probably know this too, like
• 55:29
  running some 8 hundreds, even if you got your ass kicked like was
• 55:32
  going to help you run a great mile.
• 55:33
  And, and sometimes that's just the necessary part of doing it.
• 55:37
  You got to look at the end game and you know, the end game's
• 55:40
  running a great marathon. I think if you could get in, you
• 55:43
  know, even a, a, you know, 15K20K half marathon, if you can
• 55:46
  get one or two of those in, like there's no, no workout or no
• 55:51
  better trading, that is going to be a better substitute than than
• 55:54
  going out there and race. In terms of fueling in workouts,
• 56:01
  do you fuel just is anything different?
• 56:04
  Do you test things out? I mean, something to know is
• 56:08
  like, I have a pretty mediocre stomach, you know, like I, I, I
• 56:15
  don't drink that much water during long runs because I
• 56:18
  cramp. I if I get a couple gels in,
• 56:20
  it's good. How do you approach it?
• 56:23
  And like, how do I just get better at it?
• 56:24
  Yeah, I mean, I think that that's something I'm, I'm glad
• 56:27
  you brought that up because, you know, training your gut I think
• 56:30
  is, is a very real thing and, and something that, you know, is
• 56:33
  going to help you tremendously when you go run Chicago.
• 56:36
  But you got to start doing it now and you got to practice it
• 56:39
  regularly. It's all the science and
• 56:41
  research and, you know, talking to various people like sports
• 56:45
  scientists and stuff. It's, it's absolutely something
• 56:48
  that you can train. You know, I was blessed with a
• 56:51
  pretty good stomach. Like I can put down a lot of
• 56:54
  liquid, I can put down a lot of calories.
• 56:56
  It just doesn't bother me, you know, like I can, I could eat
• 56:59
  dinner and go run 30 minutes afterwards and I'd be totally
• 57:03
  fine. But if your stomach, you
• 57:06
  struggle with that or you struggle getting in like a lot
• 57:09
  of gels and stuff like start working that in on, on all your,
• 57:13
  you know, harder training sessions.
• 57:15
  And that's something that I know is becoming more of a, a thing
• 57:19
  now in distance running. Or is you're reading about
• 57:22
  people that are taking in lots of carbs.
• 57:25
  You know, they're talking about, you know, 100 / 100 grams of
• 57:28
  carbs an hour. And, you know, I think that
• 57:33
  they're seeing there's a lot of big benefits in training, you
• 57:35
  know, to doing that. You're able to, to push a little
• 57:38
  bit harder when that tank is always full.
• 57:40
  And then you're also able to recover a lot better when you're
• 57:43
  taking in, you know, a lot of nutrition and, and honestly,
• 57:46
  that is something that I was not very good at doing a lot of
• 57:51
  times when I was running, you know, I, it used to be like I
• 57:54
  never drank, never did anything unless I was running 20 miles or
• 57:58
  longer, you know, before that, I never stopped to do any of that.
• 58:02
  I was talking to a friend the other day and we're we're
• 58:05
  talking to like a younger guy who just graduated college and
• 58:08
  he's saying like, you know, all the things that they do now.
• 58:10
  And it was like, why did it never cross my mind to just take
• 58:14
  a gel in the middle of a 15 mile day?
• 58:16
  Like just because it was on the track, it just never clicked
• 58:19
  that you should be fueling. And it's now looking back, it's
• 58:23
  like, how did we all miss it? Seems so obvious.
• 58:26
  Yeah, I, I know. And you're spot on with that.
• 58:29
  I mean, it we looking back, you're kind of being an idiot.
• 58:32
  Like we're just running and running and running and not
• 58:34
  taking anything yet. I mean, there were times I was
• 58:36
  like, yeah, I'd bring a Gatorade or something and sip on that,
• 58:38
  but I would not even get that down even for most workouts.
• 58:42
  I just didn't drink a lot and you know, it's so.
• 58:45
  Funny. Yeah, it is.
• 58:47
  And you know, I was, I was at a meeting with some other, you
• 58:51
  know, it was mostly like kind of like trail athletes or ultra
• 58:55
  athletes. I think there was a triathlete
• 58:57
  in there. And, you know, they're talking
• 58:58
  about nutrition and they're asking me what I did for the
• 59:00
  first couple marathons that I ran.
• 59:02
  And I was like, all I did was cut power.
• 59:04
  Like there was no specific formula.
• 59:07
  Like I took a, went to 711, bought a Powerade and had half
• 59:11
  water, half Powerade. And that's what I put in my
• 59:13
  bottles for like, I think the first 3 marathons, maybe four.
• 59:19
  Yeah. And they, it's like these kids,
• 59:20
  I mean, they're all about yard. It's like kids.
• 59:22
  But you know, I'm 40 now. So they seem like kids to me
• 59:25
  when they're in their early 20s. But they're like, it was like
• 59:28
  unfathomable to them that like someone that a human body could
• 59:32
  even function doing that. So it's it's definitely come a
• 59:35
  long ways, but you know, between.
• 59:39
  Picking up Powerades before marathons at 711 and putting
• 59:42
  plywood underneath your treadmill.
• 59:45
  Pretty blue collar, you know. I know we, we have a lot of toys
• 59:49
  for sure, but we, you know, you just get it done with with what
• 59:53
  you have. We did a lot of that too all.
• 59:57
  Right. So 40 years old versus 30 years
• 1:00:00
  old. I'm 35 and part of the
• 1:00:02
  motivation for me like getting somewhat serious as I feel like
• 1:00:06
  I'm at that age still. Like I have a small window here
• 1:00:08
  where like age isn't an excuse yet.
• 1:00:11
  Is 40 different than 30? Like is that an excuse for you
• 1:00:17
  yet? Like or is that in your mind you
• 1:00:19
  feel different? Like is it an advantage because
• 1:00:22
  now you have extra thousands of miles and like, how do you
• 1:00:25
  approach it? Or you just don't even think
• 1:00:27
  about it? You feel 20 still.
• 1:00:29
  No, I definitely don't feel 20. I think like mentally or like I
• 1:00:32
  have a sense of humor of a 20 year old, but my body certainly
• 1:00:35
  does not feel like it's it when I was 20 or 25 and I just I I
• 1:00:39
  don't recover, you know, like I do.
• 1:00:41
  It just, it takes me a little bit longer and I used to be able
• 1:00:43
  to Sprint all out and, you know, run some pretty, you know,
• 1:00:47
  intense workouts and come back two days later and, and be
• 1:00:49
  totally fine. And, you know, that's one of the
• 1:00:52
  things I think as I've gotten older is I just have to be more
• 1:00:56
  cognizant and, and better about, you know, being honest with
• 1:00:59
  myself and being honest with Mike.
• 1:01:01
  And you know, it's again, he's, he's helped me tremendously
• 1:01:05
  talking through and, and reminding me like, it's OK to
• 1:01:08
  take an extra day here and there.
• 1:01:10
  You know, you're, you're going to get so much more out of
• 1:01:13
  taking one more easy day and running a better workout than
• 1:01:17
  trying to cram more mediocre workouts in where you're not
• 1:01:20
  able to hit the times or you're not able to, you know, do as
• 1:01:25
  much volume. Like let's, let's get the most
• 1:01:28
  out of these hard days and, and keep those the priority.
• 1:01:31
  Everything else, you know, we'll, we'll kind of work around
• 1:01:34
  around that. And, you know, I think that
• 1:01:37
  certainly for a while, the, the speed stuff used to come so easy
• 1:01:42
  to me. I mean, I used to be able to
• 1:01:44
  Sprint all the time and, and that gets a little bit harder as
• 1:01:47
  you age, but part of that too is you running a marathon.
• 1:01:51
  You're just further away from that stuff that you're doing on
• 1:01:53
  the track. But I would argue that it's,
• 1:01:56
  it's more important as you get older to keep lifting hard, to
• 1:01:59
  keep doing plyometrics, to keep sprinting, you know, and putting
• 1:02:03
  your body in those maximum ranges of motion that, you know,
• 1:02:08
  a lot of people, I think just don't hit when they start trying
• 1:02:11
  to run for a marathon. And, you know, it's, it's one of
• 1:02:14
  those things like on an extreme level, you look at, you know,
• 1:02:17
  when, when my grandparents were still alive, you know, and they
• 1:02:20
  stopped getting up and walking and they just were sitting all
• 1:02:23
  the time. You just, you know, you see
• 1:02:25
  their bodies kind of shrivel up a little bit because they stop
• 1:02:28
  using them. And, and that's an extreme
• 1:02:31
  example. But if you stop sprinting and
• 1:02:34
  you stop getting to those like extreme positions that you do
• 1:02:37
  when you're running really hard on the track because you think,
• 1:02:40
  oh, I'm running a marathon, all I have to do is long and slow
• 1:02:42
  stuff all the time. Like you will start to lose
• 1:02:45
  that. And so I think as you get older
• 1:02:48
  it, it becomes more important to keep working on that speed and
• 1:02:52
  power and, and keep that elasticity in your muscles and
• 1:02:55
  your tendons, your ligaments that you naturally have when
• 1:02:58
  you're 20. And you don't necessarily have
• 1:03:00
  to work on, you know, when you're 20, your bigger
• 1:03:03
  deficiency is probably your cardiovascular system just
• 1:03:05
  'cause you're young and, you know, you just haven't run that
• 1:03:08
  many miles. And, you know, I would say it
• 1:03:11
  just generally, I think that, you know, you seeing a lot of
• 1:03:15
  kids now doing more threshold stuff and they're getting a
• 1:03:17
  tremendous bang for their buck because naturally they still
• 1:03:19
  have all this speed and power that that just comes from being
• 1:03:22
  young. But at a certain point, your
• 1:03:25
  cardiovascular system starts becoming your your bigger asset
• 1:03:30
  because you've just run for a really, really long time.
• 1:03:32
  You know, my cardiovascular system now at 40 is probably a
• 1:03:36
  lot better than it was at 20 because I've had so many years
• 1:03:40
  of running so many miles and, and doing all this stuff and,
• 1:03:44
  and for a marathon, you know, that's a great thing.
• 1:03:47
  But the challenge for me is still doing more of the speed
• 1:03:50
  stuff and those really intense workouts, you know, running 8
• 1:03:53
  hundreds, you know, in, in 2 minutes or two O 2 or two O 4.
• 1:03:57
  Like those aren't as easy for me now as they were when I was 2025
• 1:04:02
  years old. And I could knock those out all
• 1:04:04
  day. So I, I think at some point it
• 1:04:06
  kind of flips where your, your bigger asset becomes your heart.
• 1:04:10
  You know, again, I mentioned earlier, I, I don't think your
• 1:04:13
  heart distinguishes what type of exercise it's getting, when it's
• 1:04:17
  beating and it's working hard, whether you're running, your
• 1:04:20
  cycling, all that, it's continuing, your cardiovascular
• 1:04:23
  system is continuing to develop. And so that becomes a major
• 1:04:27
  asset the older you get because you've had all these years of,
• 1:04:29
  of doing all this stuff to get your heart better.
• 1:04:33
  But I would say that's why it's super important when you mention
• 1:04:36
  your training and just trying to extend things out.
• 1:04:40
  Yeah, we got to work on endurance, but we can't neglect
• 1:04:43
  sprinting and doing that speed and power stuff because that
• 1:04:47
  gets harder to do. And the the older you get and
• 1:04:49
  the further away you get from doing it where you go long
• 1:04:51
  periods without doing it, really, really hard to get that
• 1:04:54
  back. So.
• 1:04:55
  All right. It sounds like things have been
• 1:04:59
  going pretty well for you in this build up.
• 1:05:02
  I mean you're coming off 2O8IN Boston.
• 1:05:06
  Is it fair to say things are going better even now as you
• 1:05:09
  lead into Chicago? Absolutely 100% yeah.
• 1:05:13
  I mean like my, my workouts have been a lot better.
• 1:05:15
  You know, I've been able to run better speed, work better, you
• 1:05:19
  know, kind of those moderate intervals, those, you know, 8
• 1:05:21
  hundreds KS miles, like those are all faster as a whole than
• 1:05:26
  what I was doing before Boston. And I'm running more miles.
• 1:05:29
  You know, I I don't think I ever ran more than 100 miles before
• 1:05:32
  Boston and a week. And and that was by design.
• 1:05:37
  You know, again, I'm coming back from, you know, some, some rough
• 1:05:41
  surgeries and just issues with my body and my health.
• 1:05:44
  And you know, we, we said, you know, mileage has got to be
• 1:05:47
  secondary right now. We've got to hit these workouts
• 1:05:49
  because if you can't run these paces like you got no chance
• 1:05:53
  going into a marathon if you can't run these paces.
• 1:05:55
  So let's focus on hitting these paces that you need to hit in,
• 1:05:59
  in your hard sessions and and keep the mileage down.
• 1:06:02
  And then after that build, you know, Mike and I were talking
• 1:06:05
  and it's like, all right, now it's time to start up in the
• 1:06:07
  volume and trying to get a little bit more.
• 1:06:09
  And so now I'm doing more in this build where, you know, I've
• 1:06:12
  been up at 1:10 to 1:20 just outside miles and then some
• 1:06:17
  cross training on top of that. And so things have been going
• 1:06:20
  significantly better. And and you know, that's as an
• 1:06:23
  athlete, that's exciting when you can look at it and say, I
• 1:06:26
  ran two O 8 and my, my speed works better.
• 1:06:29
  My my training, my workouts are better and I'm doing more
• 1:06:31
  volume. So, you know, logically you
• 1:06:33
  would say, yeah, I'm in a lot better shape heading into
• 1:06:35
  Chicago. So I guess final parting
• 1:06:40
  thoughts for me, how are we feeling is 2/22?
• 1:06:46
  Can you get me there? And well, how, how do you feel
• 1:06:51
  about our current trajectory or like what you're being handed
• 1:06:54
  over right now? I feel good, you know, I I think
• 1:06:58
  that you you got, you got a good base.
• 1:06:59
  Yeah, I think that again, if we can start hitting those long
• 1:07:03
  runs, because it sounds to me from talking to you like your,
• 1:07:05
  your biggest concern is just endurance.
• 1:07:07
  You know, it's the speed work. You said you can still, you
• 1:07:09
  know, fake that stuff and and still run fast.
• 1:07:12
  So you still got good speed. Like I think we need to touch on
• 1:07:15
  that every once in a while. But the endurance is going to be
• 1:07:18
  be the big thing, you know, and if you can consistently keep
• 1:07:21
  your mileage, you know, up what you're talking about 7075, if
• 1:07:25
  you can like getting some extra cross training in, whatever that
• 1:07:28
  is, you know, if it's going on a bike ride or if it's going on,
• 1:07:31
  you know, wearing a weight vest and walking or going on a
• 1:07:34
  Stairmaster, whatever it is like that's only going to help you.
• 1:07:37
  And I think that those are very low impact activities that
• 1:07:40
  aren't going to add to more pounding and stress on your
• 1:07:43
  body. And then again, doing those long
• 1:07:46
  runs are going to be huge for you.
• 1:07:48
  I think just psychologically those are going to give you more
• 1:07:53
  confidence than than any track workout you're going to do.
• 1:07:56
  So keep the priority on those. You know, do several of them
• 1:08:00
  hard. You know, maybe like we're
• 1:08:01
  saying, 1 is just time on feet where you're running 2025 miles.
• 1:08:06
  The next one, maybe you're doing a little bit more focused where
• 1:08:09
  you're adding in some fast stuff, but getting used to that
• 1:08:12
  feeling of being out there for a long time and running hard
• 1:08:16
  towards the end of being on your feet for a long time is going to
• 1:08:19
  serve you so well. And, and you know, one other
• 1:08:22
  thing I think that I want to bring up that I really want to
• 1:08:25
  encourage you to do is just spend some time each day
• 1:08:29
  mentally like thinking about this, like going over, I've said
• 1:08:33
  this before, but if you can just have like a couple goals, like
• 1:08:36
  2, three goals heading into every training session, like
• 1:08:38
  what's your goal for today? Is it, is it, you know, I'm
• 1:08:41
  trying to work on my speed, I'm trying to work on my power
• 1:08:43
  efficiency, I'm trying to work on my endurance, I'm trying to
• 1:08:46
  work on recovery. Like remember what you're doing
• 1:08:49
  and have a purpose for every single day what you're going
• 1:08:52
  out. It doesn't have to be
• 1:08:53
  complicated, but give yourself two things, three things that
• 1:08:56
  you're going to try to work on for that one day.
• 1:08:58
  Even whether you know, could be something with your mechanics
• 1:09:00
  could be something with your mind too that you're going to
• 1:09:02
  concentrate on. And then afterwards, like put it
• 1:09:06
  in the context every single day, but take 510 minutes after
• 1:09:10
  you're done and, and think about how this is helping you for a
• 1:09:13
  marathon. You know, I, I think that so
• 1:09:16
  much and I know with me it just helped a lot.
• 1:09:19
  Like thinking about this stuff, you know, I probably obsessed
• 1:09:23
  over it most of the day. But the more you can start
• 1:09:27
  building yourself up and your confidence, you're going to get
• 1:09:30
  the most confidence from reflecting on these concrete
• 1:09:32
  things you're doing in training. So when you're doing a long run,
• 1:09:35
  have a goal for it and then spend some time afterwards.
• 1:09:38
  And you doesn't mean you're going to hit your goals all the
• 1:09:40
  time. You know, you might die in one
• 1:09:42
  of these long runs, but you know, when you're having a hard
• 1:09:45
  day mentally or physically, I should say, make that a mental
• 1:09:49
  workout day. Like see how close you can get
• 1:09:52
  to your best that day, even if physically it's not there.
• 1:09:56
  And remind yourself afterwards be like, all right, this could
• 1:09:59
  be something that I'm going to deal with in the race.
• 1:10:02
  You know, when I'm out there doing a long run and I feel
• 1:10:05
  pretty bad at 15 miles in and I still have 5 miles to go or I
• 1:10:09
  still have 10 miles to go. Like practice working through
• 1:10:13
  that in your head. And, and when you mention
• 1:10:15
  headphones, you know, I think that for me, that's one of the
• 1:10:17
  big reasons I don't run with headphones a lot is it's
• 1:10:20
  important to be alone with your thoughts a lot and learn how to
• 1:10:24
  work through those. You know, you don't need a
• 1:10:27
  distraction all the time. Sometimes it's good.
• 1:10:30
  It's not a bad thing to run with headphones any, you know, every
• 1:10:32
  once in a while, but you need to learn to be alone with your
• 1:10:36
  thoughts. And and those issues that come
• 1:10:38
  up during long training sessions, like those doubts are
• 1:10:42
  going to be there on race day. And you're the best way to
• 1:10:45
  prepare for them is, is facing them head on and working through
• 1:10:49
  that in training. And then when you get there in a
• 1:10:51
  race, you can say, hey, I've been here before.
• 1:10:54
  Like I've worked through this. Yeah, I've chunked this up or I
• 1:10:57
  didn't think I could finish, but I did this in these training
• 1:11:00
  sessions. And that is such AI think
• 1:11:03
  neglected thing that most people be like, I just show up for a
• 1:11:06
  workout, I hit it, that's it. You go home, you don't think
• 1:11:09
  about it again, like everything needs to get put in the context
• 1:11:14
  of preparing you for a marathon, good and bad.
• 1:11:17
  And that's how you know you learn from the bad.
• 1:11:19
  You those are just learning opportunities where you say,
• 1:11:21
  hey, what could I have done better?
• 1:11:23
  Why did I fail here? What can I do differently?
• 1:11:26
  And then you try that again the next time.
• 1:11:28
  And it just it, it's again, everybody talks about your
• 1:11:32
  brain, it's a muscle that you need to keep training and you
• 1:11:36
  need to work on that mental side too when you're going through
• 1:11:38
  this to get ready for Chicago. So that race day comes and, and
• 1:11:42
  you're, you're already dialed in because you've been doing this
• 1:11:44
  for 9 weeks now. It's not, oh, it's the week of
• 1:11:47
  the race now I got to really think about what I'm going to do
• 1:11:49
  and try to put all this stuff together a little bit.
• 1:11:51
  Each day is going to go such a long ways to preparing you when
• 1:11:55
  you have those you know difficult or doubtful moments in
• 1:11:59
  a marathon in Chicago. You OK?
• 1:12:01
  It's been a while since I've been coached.
• 1:12:02
  I kind of like it, all right? I've just been messing around
• 1:12:07
  and now I'm getting like positive reinforcement from
• 1:12:10
  someone else besides myself. All right, so I'm, I was going
• 1:12:13
  to run long tomorrow. Do you not to put you on the
• 1:12:16
  spot? Do you?
• 1:12:17
  Do you know what I should do or do you need to follow up?
• 1:12:21
  Well, how far were you thinking of going?
• 1:12:23
  You've gone 20. I was thinking of, I've gone 20,
• 1:12:26
  I was thinking of going 20 or 21 with some sort of tempo thing
• 1:12:31
  either at the end, maybe second-half, OK, somewhere in
• 1:12:35
  there. If you're, if you're going to
• 1:12:37
  run hard, let's not change too many variables at a time.
• 1:12:40
  You know, if you, if you've gone 20 before, but now you're going
• 1:12:43
  to do something hard at the end of it, let's stick with 20
• 1:12:46
  miles. Let's run, you know, let's say
• 1:12:49
  anywhere from 12 to 15. Just make it like an honest
• 1:12:52
  effort, not hard, but not just jogging either.
• 1:12:55
  You know what you would do on a normal training run, Do that for
• 1:12:59
  there. And then let's work on the last
• 1:13:01
  five miles, like cutting down. You know, maybe you do something
• 1:13:03
  where you know if you're doing 5 miles hard, you're going to run
• 1:13:09
  say 545-545-3055. Thirty.
• 1:13:15
  How many is that? Is that four?
• 1:13:18
  And then the last one, let's see what you can do something like
• 1:13:20
  that. You know, where you're just
• 1:13:20
  cutting down gradually, but you're getting down to, to that
• 1:13:23
  race pace and, you know, see what you got that last mile,
• 1:13:26
  It's OK to to push it. You know, one mile at the end is
• 1:13:28
  going to kill you or wreck you. And so but yeah, I think don't
• 1:13:34
  change too many variables at once.
• 1:13:35
  Let's not try to add distance and go longer than you've gone
• 1:13:37
  before and add in something hard.
• 1:13:40
  You know, that's that's kind of a recipe for disaster.
• 1:13:42
  So you know, stick to 20 on this one, get some hard efforts in
• 1:13:46
  and then the next one, maybe we're just doing time on feet
• 1:13:49
  where you're going 2223 miles that day and then then you come
• 1:13:53
  back and we're going to do something hard the next long 1
• 1:13:55
  you do after that. All right, sounds good.
• 1:13:59
  I'll let you know how it goes. And.
• 1:14:00
  We'll we'll we'll check back in in the series at some point.
• 1:14:03
  We'll do here in the coming weeks and do another, I guess,
• 1:14:08
  public chat on how things are developing as we get closer to
• 1:14:11
  race day. But GAIL, this is awesome.
• 1:14:13
  I'm I'm pumped. I'm like, I was already
• 1:14:15
  relatively motivated but this is definitely upping it all right?
• 1:14:19
  Well, hey, I'm here for you. This is going to be fun.
• 1:14:21
  We're going to we're going to get you down to low 220.
• 1:14:24
  Let's just say that publicly. All right.
• 1:14:26
  If you need any advice for me, you know this could be a two way
• 1:14:30
  thing, but I think you're in you're in good hands.
• 1:14:32
  With, yeah. So you can help me with the
• 1:14:33
  short stuff, then maybe I'll ask you for some things on that.
• 1:14:36
  Although I can't fake it like you, I don't think anymore like
• 1:14:38
  I could. I don't know if I could fake it.
• 1:14:40
  I might pull something real quick.
• 1:14:43
  Yeah. All right.
• 1:14:44
  Well, again, thanks so much. Appreciate it.
• 1:14:48
  We'll get ready for October. Let's do it.
• 1:14:50
  All the best, man. All right.
• 1:14:51
  Thanks man. See ya.