Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
zach bidder ultra marathon runner
and coach who held multiple world
records in the 100 mile run
and other ultra endurance events he is
currently
training for a run across america which
for now
is planned for september this year like
many of the things
zack has done in the past this is a big
fascinating challenge
quick mention of our sponsors ladder
belcampo
noom and betterhelp check them out in
the description
to support this podcast as a side note
let me say that zach
has been advising and coaching me on my
own running journey
i want to mention that zach sent me some
running shoes from ultra
which i think is a company that sponsors
him when i put those shoes on
i feel like zack is watching me and i
get that extra motivation to make him
proud
and by that i mean i want to put a lot
of miles on those shoes
running is something that has always
been difficult for me but i love it
because it is difficult the hardest part
is i'm left alone
with my thoughts for one or two hours
some thoughts are dark like thinking
about mortality
my own and that of others some are
self-critical like
personal weaknesses or dreams not
realized
some are simply human feelings of
loneliness
personal and existential and yet
there are the moments during a run when
all that fades
and i'm left empty of negative thoughts
and full of appreciation
for the beauty of experience of nature
life
the whole thing this is why i return to
running
not to get in shape but to face myself
and to run through it
that's why i'm inspired by people like
zac and
by david goggins and others like them
who seek to find the limits of their
body
and mind this is the lex friedman
podcast and here is my conversation
with zach bitter where does your mind go
when you're running
an ultra marathon are there a lot of
positive thoughts
negative thoughts demons inspirational
things
maybe no thoughts at all yeah that's the
really interesting part of the sport i
think because you can
essentially what it is when we're
looking at like the hundred mile
distance or anything that's like all day
long
is you're gonna have the full range of
the full spectrum of emotions
of mental processes both kind of
positive negative and in between so it
almost feels like
you've lived multiple multiple lives or
a full life maybe
as it was way to say it in that one time
period so it's like a it's almost like a
simulation of what you may experience in
a long period of time in a very
condensed period of time
and i think that's just a weird mental
process to reflect upon and that's what
kind of draws people
back to it but i mean it's a battle too
because
if you're looking at it from a
performance standpoint versus an
experience
you obviously want to minimize the
negative mindset stuff you want to try
to keep those emotions and those
thought processes at a low and i think
when you can keep yourself from letting
those thoughts creep in
they you end up having better races and
it's it can spiral in either direction
like
i notice like there's there's kind of
like this scenario that occurs where
in the beginning like a negative thing
creeps in your mind it's like super easy
just to slap it down
say like get out of here uh you know
i've did the training i'm fit
i'm feeling fresh still you know
everything's going well at this point in
time
you get a little further along in the
race and you're starting to feel a bit
of the fatigue
i mean a little bit of self-doubt creeps
in you start asking yourself well you
know maybe i should done one more long
run or
did i did i not quite taper long enough
and those things can kind of spiral into
a negative way and if
if you let it keep going it keeps going
all the way to
like why am i here why am i doing this
this is stupid all the way to like
there's another one of these two weeks
from now i'm gonna drop out of this one
and sign up for that one instead and
then you just find yourself in the exact
same situation
so you kind of have to go through the
process i think
it's why i think the there's kind of a i
won't say it's a rule of thumb
necessarily but something i think is
fairly valuable is if you do a hundred
miler the first time
make sure you get it done even if it
means like
you know death marching is what they'll
call it in the alternate community the
end of the race
just to say like you got that full
experience you experienced the highs the
lows the full thing the starting
the crossing the finish line that
release of emotion when you're done and
all that stuff
uh so that when you go back to do it
again you have like a template to build
off of then you know
or you just have some data to pull from
about how your mind's gonna work as well
as your body so
that you can start practicing well what
do i have to do to kind of keep my mind
from spiraling in a negative direction
or how do i
catch some positive momentum and kind of
keep sending it that way
and things like that and that that just
i think you just
add to that over a career of running
them or a series of running them and
it would it's it sharpens it's kind of
like any sport with that where
you know you always have this balance
between the youthfulness that you may
have earlier in your career versus the
the wise intelligence that you have
maybe near the end of your career
so in terms of wisdom is there
mechanisms by which
you kind of observe the negative
thoughts and let them go
so you have people like the david
goggins
who kind of they he seems to almost like
separate his mind
into there's the weak
david that he hates and then there's a
strong
strong one i mean there's like a very
contentious relationship there
so he basically says like i refuse to be
that person and he's almost like angry
at that person
it's almost like sometimes literally
yelling at that person the weak version
of themselves
and then there's another more sort of
sam heresy approach
which is like just observe the thought
and let it go
maybe knowing that this too shall pass
like no matter what it this moment will
not last forever and kind of sort of
accepting the natural flow of things and
taking one
step at a time and allowing whatever the
negativity whatever the pain you're
experiencing
just to pass even if it means a death
march
which one is more effective for you
which one like would you say generally
speaking to the population is more
effective
yeah that's a really good question it it
it's probably unique to the individual i
wouldn't argue that
you know david is finding success with
his approach
some may argue it's an extreme version
uh you know sam has obviously thought
about these things and
and uh really probably you know i see
those guys as kind of
two ends of the spectrum and just the
way that they kind of come across
in general where like david's like
really at you kind of high energy
and sam's kind of this calming soft
presence
and he's just gonna slowly methodically
lay it all out there
and i think there's value on in both of
those i think
most people are probably gonna get a
benefit from
pulling some from each i mean there's
times where
where i need a kick in the ass and then
it's like have the strong zack tell the
weak zac to get moving
but there's also times where you know
it's just like you know
a subtle voice entering my head about
you know i don't know if i feel quite
right now should i
maybe pull back on the pace and i think
that
little subtle voice is best approached
with a subtle positive voice where it's
more like
okay well let's think this through here
for a second you're 40 miles into 100
mile race
you spent four months preparing for it
uh
you know from the workouts you did that
you're ready for this there really isn't
any real reason for you to slow down
or to fall off your goal your pace or
you know
reassess what you're doing let's just
give this another mile or two
and then we can reassess if we need to
in in order to kind of figure out if i'm
doing the right things or not
and i think like in that situation um
you definitely probably want to lean
more towards the sam harris approach
with that because there's really no
reason to
it's almost like the same thing you see
with like just
training and even nutrition to a degree
where like some folks they just want to
be like
kind of like drilled they want to be
like yelled at and said like get going
get doing this and that helps and that
motivates and that helps them stay
accountable
other people need some softer love with
it where it's like
you know this isn't necessarily your
thought your your fault you were put in
this environment that kind of created an
atmosphere of
lethargy and maybe poor nutritional
choices and things like that and
and like so but it's it's correctable so
we need to
we need to step away from that and we
need to kind of start heading in the
direction that we know is going to bear
fruit down the road
and that person may respond better to
that so
i think both those guys have great value
with their approaches they're just
probably polar ends of that of the
spectrum and
i think most people are probably going
to benefit like anything right you get
the polarizing ones and those are going
to work right for the polarizing people
but then most people are going to fit
somewhere in the middle so
they're probably going to be able to
kind of pull from both of those if
they're able to sit down and kind of
like
assess which one's going to work better
in which situation so the
quitting thing you mentioned the like
the final stage which actually i get to
much quicker than you seem to which is
like why am i doing this
i get there with basically anything i do
it's like this is uh this is probably
the stupidest thing i've ever done is
the feeling i get often
and then immediately you have these
excuses they're like
there's all these other better things
you should be doing
or uh or the other alternative that like
you said
i'm not prepared enough for this moment
i'll be much more prepared in two weeks
for the next event so like why let's try
this again
let's start over let's start over in two
weeks how do you deal with that quit
like uh so
maybe do you still go through that
process
and by way of advice for people that are
more sort of
amateurish like me uh how to deal with
that quitting boys
i think a lot of times when the quitting
voice kind of comes in
it what it does is it kind of just it
comes in
with the added disadvantage i guess
in this situation of being kind of a
narrow scoped view where you're looking
at like
uh what it's doing to you in the moment
or how you're feeling in the moment
versus how are you feeling about the
whole process
so one thing that i started doing in
and i think i don't think it's
necessarily
uh i think i think i think this was a
big reason why i had one of my best
racing seasons in 2019 that i had
to that date uh it was part of it was i
started i think
putting a little more emphasis on the
big picture versus
putting emphasis on like this is one
opportunity or one day
of work uh and this is one
one emotional kind of flare-up but how
does that actually relate to my general
broader picture so when i decide to do a
race
or an event or something like that it's
often four or six months out
ahead of time you're planning to like
kind of do a series of workouts and a
flow of things where you're going
through the process of getting fit
getting ready preparing for the
specifics of the day and all that stuff
and then you get to the race itself for
the event itself and
it's very easy to look at that and think
that's in isolation like i'm going to
run 12 hours today or i'm going to run
100 miles today or whatever it ends up
being
and it's a lot easier to quit when
you think to yourself i'm 40 miles into
100 mile race
you know that's just a 40 mile run which
sounds kind of silly
to most people but in perspective when
we're talking about the ultra marathon
running community
you know it's a lot easier just to say
like well you know i'll scrap this 40
miles and try again
it's a lot harder to say i'm gonna scrap
the entire last four months the entire
reason why i was doing it the countless
hours i spent in there
so i think i just try to reposition it
of like i'm in a bad place right now
maybe in my head or i'm not i'm hitting
a low point here
but i'm 99 of the way towards the goal i
set out four months ago when i add in
all the work i did leading up to that
so i think it's important to ask
yourself why
because i mean there are times when
you're doing something and you ask
yourself why you don't have a good
reason
and then maybe it is advantageous to
step back and
and really reflect on that and decide is
this something i actually want to invest
time and energy into because
you know someone like yourself who is
very much
into a variety of different things it
can be easy probably to
overextend and get i mean i'm a very
curious person so there's like
100 things i would love to do if i
wasn't doing what i'm doing yeah and i
know how to enjoy all of them
so at a certain point though you have to
say okay which one is gonna
be the most meaningful for me and if the
answer keeps coming back to saying i
guess this is still the most meaningful
to me out of that hundred things that i
could otherwise be doing
then then i know that i'm in the in it
for the right reason then i just need to
identify some other things like well
why did this one take the top spot out
of the hundred things that i could have
picked from
and keeping like a list of those in your
head so that when you get to that point
where you start
saying why am i doing this why am i here
you just have those kind of ready loaded
in your head to say
well i already took inventory on that
before i started this and i knew this
voice is going to come at some point
whether it's early
middle or late and and then you just
remind yourself kind of what you're
thinking when you had a little more of a
level head
well there's something about the thing
you mentioned when you mention the death
march it seems
extremely valuable to just never
quitting like in the moment if you
decide to do something
like never quitting even if it you do go
through the process and realize that
it's not
uh it's not the wisest thing to be doing
within the full context of your life
like once you decide to do it it seems
like never quitting
prevents you from sort of having that
escape
clause from other things in your life so
i've i've quit on a few things in my
life and
i think i still i deeply regret that
because it opened that door
it's almost like a muscle i don't know
so i
i think i'm i don't maybe everyone is
but i think i'm kind of a quitter
you know what i mean like um like i'm
really good at coming up with reasons to
quit
my mind is really good at that and i
it feels like i have to come up with uh
like really work hard to make sure
that there's no quit that never allow
myself to quit no matter how stupid the
thing i'm doing is
i don't know if any of that makes sense
but it just
maybe to rephrase this whole thing do
you think
is good to live life by the ethos of
never quit yeah that's a really
interesting thing and i think it
actually resonates with a lot of ultra
marathon runners because there seems to
be
a trend when you have someone who's been
in the sport for a long time where
there's a point where they start the
sport right and they're like
super excited about everything
everything's new uh
it's very easy not to quit because
you're like oh this is the first time
i've ever run a 50 case the first time
i've ever run a 50 miles the first time
ever in 100k it's the first time i've
ever
100 miles and so on and so forth and
when you're doing that for the first
time i think there's a heightened
uh motivation to not quit because you
don't want your first attempt to be a
failure
and then you get a little further along
and you start reflecting on the
landscape and all the opportunities that
are out there and you find yourself
quitting on an event
and there does seem to be a trend where
once you do that once now all of a
sudden
like you you described perfectly that
quit
pops up in your head maybe a little
sooner the next time yeah or maybe a
little bit before and i've certainly had
these experiences in my career as well
and
what happens i think if you stick with
it
um again i think it is important to
assess whether you really want to be
doing what you're doing
but if you start recognizing that about
yourself in a certain activity where
it's like
i think i might be pulling the plug
early on some of this stuff uh
i think you just need to kind of get
into a position where you just
at that point you need to make a
decision do i want to keep doing this if
the answer is yes
you hold yourself accountable to not
quitting and eventually what will happen
is you'll find yourself in a position
where
i'll use ultra marathons for example
where you're just clicking on all
cylinders for that day
and you still get those scenarios where
doubt creeps in your mind
you have these low points but for
whatever reason when those low points
come
you're able to push through them better
than you would have in the past and then
you push through maybe two or three more
than you did
after you had quit the time before then
it's accountability time
right because then you have to look back
at that and say
well why did this time was i able to be
mentally more strong
and kind of push through those those
those extra opportunities to quit when i
wasn't before
and it can be easy to look back and say
and live kind of like
retroactively in the sense where you're
like regretting well why did i drop out
of those races why did i do this
wrong there and and that i just think
that's where you have to kind of catch
yourself and say no those opera
those things happen to me in order to
put me in a position where i decided
well this time i'm not gonna quit
no matter what minus my leg falling off
uh
like i'm not gonna quit and then you put
yourself in position to have that day
where you push through more times than
you ever have before and you just
redefine what you're capable of
and then once i think you do that you
start looking at those earlier lessons
as
as lessons you know were they failures
on paper at the time
probably but can you pull things from
them to learn as to like well where is
your actual threshold where is the limit
actually for you
and then kind of start redefining that
stuff um
so i think like the never quit mentality
can be good
in certain situations but i don't think
it's necessarily like a
like a holistic thing where you need to
be in something where it's
never quit always do more because then
you end up in a situation where you find
this like margin of diminishing returns
especially when it comes to training and
workouts and things like that where
there are times where often there are
times where you want to
actually quit a little bit before you
would have to because the stress that
was required to elicit a growth response
has already occurred and
just to do more is just gonna require
more recovery time to get back and do it
again
yeah this is the tricky trade-off living
by the
never quit mentality you're not going to
achieve optimal performance
in your head you might
[Laughter]
it seems like when you look at the full
arc of human history
the people who do great things
are more leaning tones than never quit
like
uh i feel like at any one moment you're
more
in danger of quitting than you are of
being suboptimal
so like in terms of advice it just feels
like
never quitting is always the right
advice
unless you deeply know the person maybe
this is like wrestling mentality
i've seen too many and because i'm
annoyed with the current culture
telling me to relax and and have a
work-life balance and all those kinds of
things
uh we should all have a deep deep truth
to them
but the reality is like there's not
enough people
that walk up to me and like slap me and
say get your together
like don't quit work harder i think we
need to hear that more
i and like i remember that um
from the wrestling rooms like that
when you're pushed that way when you're
forced to the very limit and you don't
quit
that makes better humans i think people
need to get that
in their life i think they need to have
situations where
that becomes kind of the reality for
them so they can see that avenue
experience that avenue um where i think
it's maybe
to the extreme is if it becomes like
your entire
life philosophy where like every little
thing you do is never quit
but life is short zach like why
i mean this is the problem i have this
is probably the programming thing too
is over optimization is dangerous
uh it's like every once in a while i
mean you're
you do this kind of stuff you're not for
example with a hundred mile run you're
i mean you could just be doing that for
the rest of your life and do like the
most
optimal 100 mile run ever but you keep
taking on like new challenges
and there's a lot more chaos than that
and there
it feels like the muscle of never quit
will be much more important than the
optimality of your training
yeah so there's probably a couple sides
to me
with that kind of a thing where for one
i think
when we talk about the why so like i
think the why
can kind of shift a bit and it probably
will if you do something long enough
or evolve maybe is a better way to call
to put it and for me
like one of my big drives and one of my
big passions within
ultra running is to first of all find an
event that i
really really love to train for and
participate in so for me i feel like
i've kind of identified that to a degree
and that's kind of runnable 100 milers
so
once i found that it became more of a
driver for me to see
like well how fast can i run 100 miles
in a very controlled environment so
let's eliminate
weather let's eliminate you know
elevation
let's eliminate like having to wait
extra long to get crew or support
and that sort of thing and that's how
you find yourself on a 400 meter track
running 100 miles
but for me like the important part of
that is that
i can control the environment enough
where if i come back year after year
i can re-test myself and have a decent
ability to kind of say i improved or i
regressed or i stayed stagnant and i
think that's a big driver for me
um but one thing i've recognized within
that
is if you just keep doing that like if i
could probably pick
three flat runnable hundred milers a
year
and optimally prepare race recover and
repeat
without like burning myself out but one
thing i think i
learned also in 2019 was uh
that sometimes you kind of need to step
away from
some of these really really kind of
important
markers in your like your performance or
in whatever you're trying to do and take
a step away from it and try
do something a little different uh in
order to kind of hit the reset button on
just like
what i would call just like your mental
energy to be able to continue to do it
at a high level
so almost like happiness exactly well
and here's the example like i mean i
love running in trails too
most people would consider me a flat
road track runner runnable
ultra runner um but i like to do trailer
runs too so in
at the end of 2018 i
recognized that i had been kind of
pushing
the gas pedal on trying to run fast
hundred milers
for quite a while without really a break
in that where it was like okay i did one
now i'm gonna you know take a brief
offseason but then i'm gonna ultimately
build up in peak for another one i might
introduce some fun trail races in the
context
but they're gonna be b races they're
gonna be training races time on feet
type of stuff that are gonna kind of
mimic like a long run essentially
and uh but the main focus the always in
the back of my mind was like
getting on the track and seeing how much
faster i can 100 miles and that just
kind of
that energy that it takes to continually
think by that that
i think the motivation to keep that
stoke high enough to really meet your
full potential
fades if you don't step away from it for
a little bit so i took
essentially half a year away from
runnable stuff and just decided i'm
gonna prepare for the san diego hundred
mile
which is like a much more elevation
uh technical trail type of an event
isn't that trail run or no
yeah it's a trail hundred miler uh
actually just talking just outside of uh
uh san diego and yeah it goes through
it goes over part of the pacific crest
trail and stuff so it's very different
than running on a runnable surface so
to give you some context like i ran was
it i think just under 17 hours for that
race
whereas on a flat surface i can run 11
hours and 19 minutes so
just the environment alone added an
extra
you know five plus hours to the day so
um it's just a different experience
different skill set and what it did is
it allowed me to kind of step away from
kind of focusing on like splits on a
track
uh running flat stuff like preparing for
things specifically for a flat
environment and start training for
something that's more
climbing into sending more technical
running skill sets and things like that
and the cool part about it was uh first
of all you know when you step away from
something and enter something a lot
different i mean it's still running
there's still a huge
advantage i had from the running i'd
done in the past that was going to put
me in a good position to be successful
but there was a much higher uh
or a much bigger range of potential
improvement for me
so through the like you know four plus
months i spent preparing for that race
you know i noticed oh wow i'm getting
faster on this climb
or i'm getting better at descending this
technical trail it's one of the most fun
races i've run actually so it was kind
of a cool experience i ended up
taking the lead at like 93 miles so
you're racing racing like you were
trying to get first
so still a race yeah so what was the
enjoyable aspect of it
i don't think i recognized it so much
while i was doing it actually it
surfaced afterwards
i mean the enjoyment of the race itself
is like when you find yourself in a
position where you're sitting in
basically second place all day long and
then you take the lead at 90
i think it was like 91 or 92 miles nice
it's like
yeah that's kind of a cool way to race
um yeah
but afterwards i recognized a few things
just about kind of pacing
and you know how to maybe pace the first
half of a hundred miler
versus the second half i also recognized
shortly thereafter
uh once i finished recovered and decided
my next event was going to be a flat
runnable race
that wow i really was way more excited
to do the workouts
that i needed to do to get ready to run
a fast flat hundred miler
and i don't think that would have been
the case had i just tried to do another
flat fast hundred miler
earlier or during that year and end up
in a situation where like i
maybe had like normalized a sub-optimal
like uh outlook on like something that i
just done so many times already
and i recognized that just every workout
i did i was like i did this workout a
year ago and it was not nearly this much
fun
or you know you then the interesting
thing about these track hundreds too is
like
you find yourself doing like your
peaking phase where you're running your
long runs which for me are usually like
you know around 30 miles or so and i'll
do them on back to back days and you
know
i try to replicate the environment i'm
going to race on so i'm find myself on a
400 meter track
yeah and it's like when i started doing
that again i just felt like i was super
motivated to go out there saturday and
sunday and do those back-to-back long
runs and see the progress
and then head out again the next we can
do it again so i had some of my
more enjoyable long runs which are going
to be the most specific to race day
environment that i had
in quite some time and i think that was
really beneficial and kind of putting me
in the right spot to be able to push
through barriers on race day
and put me in a position where quitting
was going to be much less of a
likelihood
given the enjoyment i had in the months
leading into the race itself yeah even
the thought of quitting
yeah yeah so you mentioned the track
you've also ran 100 miles on the
treadmill and
the trail 100 mile broadly if we zoom
out
what does it take to run 100 miles
for for most of the world that seems
like a crazy distance to run
so maybe it's interesting to ask not
only is just setting the world record
but
purely running what does it take to run
that far yeah i mean i think people
probably overestimate what it takes
in terms of just getting it done i think
this is consistent
in just running in general i think the
marathon was always a big one with that
where people thought like well
you have to do this training or you just
literally won't physically be able to
complete a marathon and then we got into
an era of kind of like running as
more of an enjoyment thing versus a
performance thing and then you'd have
people running
granted much slower i think if you look
at the boston marathon average finishing
times it
goes from like or maybe it wasn't the
boston marathon it might have just been
marathons in general went from like
three hours to five hours or something
like that
so it's like people i think got past the
fact that
you can only do it if you're optimally
prepared to well i can do it and maybe
not meet my full potential if i'm gonna
like
not do much training which i wouldn't
necessarily advise but
uh i mean i've i've talked to people who
basically run 100 miles sometimes almost
off the couch and it's
like it's to me what that says is just
the human body is incredible
and what it can tolerate above and
beyond what it's been exposed to if it
has to or if it feels like it has to
so that's the basic sort of getting from
point a
from the start to the finish it's the
human body and the human mind is capable
of doing it without much preparation
but then you start to increase the
the goal of performance and you try to
get actually a good
like the most out of your body that you
can
how does that start to change then yeah
going from fun to performance
yeah i think uh once you start putting
marks or goals on outside of just
finishing that's where it starts getting
interesting because now you can maybe go
in with multiple goals where like if one
falls off
due to something that you didn't expect
then you have another one to target but
you can always build those up and try to
think like well i want to run faster
than last time or i want to
you know break a course record or an age
group record or something like that
and that that i think is just going to
be a little bit of a different mindset
because now you're looking at
every little thing from what do i need
to do to prepare as well as what do i
need to do to be efficient on the day
itself
so like transitioning aid stations and
things like that or
uh do i want a pacer or not or does this
race allow
someone to like hand me a bottle at a
certain spot or do i have to be in
specific areas to get that type of stuff
and
and what it ends up doing is it ends up
bringing a lot more variables to the
table
and i think it's it's interesting
because there's always going to be more
variables
on the day than you are able to account
for
so at a certain degree you have to kind
of find yourself in a position where i'm
gonna make sure i take care of the big
ones
or the ones that are like obviously i
need to be ready for like my fueling
strategy my hydration strategy my pacing
strategy
you know what workouts are going to put
me in a position to physiologically
have this process go as well as possible
how am i going to like
you know hold myself accountable in aid
station transition so i'm not like
having a ton of non-moving time uh
versus moving time and that's so cool
so there's these like big variables that
you're aware of and you're trying to
optimize over the space of variables
so you get to start to play with that
when you're looking for performance
it's almost like moving from checkers to
chess right you have like
or maybe even like connect four or
something like that
where it goes from just kind of like
well one foot in front of the other and
when i get to the next stage station
i'll just eat whatever looks good drink
whatever
you know quenches my thirst and then
move on to the next one to like
well which one of these food products is
actually going to make me move a little
faster the next aid station
or you know which one of these pacing
strategies is going to get me to the
finish line
faster than the other one and that sort
of stuff so
uh it gets more complicated more
interesting
and uh in my opinion anyway also there i
mean but there's a breaking point with
that too because
like i said there's an endless number of
variables you could account for
and as a distance gets longer that list
gets longer too so
you find yourself in this position where
where you have to at some point say okay
i've accounted for everything i can
reasonably account for
now i need to be in a mental space where
when something happens that i wasn't
able to account for
i'm able to respond to it with the right
decision and keep going and not dwell on
it
because that's another thing i mean
you're running slow enough when you're
doing 100 miles where if you make a
mistake
you can sit there and just fixate on
that mistake and say why did i do that
that cost me 10 minutes blah blah blah
when in reality what you need to do is
that happened everyone else out here is
gonna have a situation like that at some
point
mine happened now uh i need to figure
out how i can move forward
at the fastest sustainable pace and not
think about what happened back there
and that's where i think it gets really
interesting what uh
would you say it takes to set a world
record
in the hundred miler well first of all i
think you probably have to focus
on that specific event um i mean there's
the interesting about ultra running
where it maybe deviates a bit from just
other endurance sports
is there's such a wide range i mean we
talked about a little bit when i talk
with the san diego hundred versus
kind of flat runnable stuff so can you
maybe paint a picture of what are
there's a huge range of different kinds
of ultra marathon events
what are like the big ones in your mind
so marathon we know the distance from a
marathon there's
50k what are different kinds there's 100
mile
that in your mind like kind of these
islands were
where people gather often yep yeah so
there's a few that
really stand out i would say the three
biggest ultra marathons right now
even from a historic maybe not
necessarily a historical standpoint but
uh in modern day ultra running is going
to be the western states 100
that's the biggest most competitive 100
miler it's on the trail side of things
in the united states then there's ultra
trail mount blanc which is probably the
most competitive 100 miler on the planet
right now
in previous years it's been debatable as
weather western states are ultra trauma
and blacks more competitive i think in
the most
recent few years you're just seeing a
lot more like of the bulk of
international talent on the trail side
of the sport heading over that way
and then you have the road running side
of things where
the comrades marathon which is
technically 56 miles but they call it
the comrades marathon
uh is gonna generally be the most
competitive
ultra marathon the the weird thing is
the distance thing right because most
people
think of endurance sports they're
thinking about precise distances like
five kilometers 10 kilometers
and all that stuff and then then you get
into the ultra running world and it's
like sometimes it's the event so like
the western force itself is much more
important than the distance
right yeah so the western states 100 is
actually 100.2 miles
which isn't that big of a deviation when
you think about it especially when you
figure like tangents they're going to
probably account for more than 0.2 miles
on a 100 mile race
but the ultra trail mount blanc you know
that's
listed as a 100 miler but it's actually
i think like 100 and 405 miles
so you know it's more there's different
cultures too so the united states is
definitely more
motivated i think to try to get as close
to the exact distance you're gonna hear
maybe a little more grumbling if someone
says i signed up for this hundred miler
and it turned out to be 103 miles
uh versus like over in europe they don't
really care too much about the distance
they're more interested in like a
specific route or a loop
is consistency important in terms of the
exact length of the
of the route so like you can compare
performances from previous years
or are they a little bit more flexible
like they redefine the trail from year
to year
yeah i mean it's definitely hard to
compare i mean there's events that
um take for example i would say the best
ultra marathoner in the world today on
the men's side is jim walmsley uh the
reason i think jim wells is the best is
because he
is the most versatile and not only the
most versatile but he's
arguably the best at almost everything
up to 100 miles so
there's a race called the angelus crest
hunter miler they
the the trail has drastically changed
from when they originally had that event
and it's a different time of year so
it's much warmer on that course
and jim's not the kind of guy who would
uh
sit back and say like i can't chase that
record but i think angela crest when he
looks at the segments and the pacing for
that one he's like
that one is maybe not even the same
event anymore so you have that
you have some that are a little more
controlled and a little more kind of
like
preserved i guess you would say but i
think it gets really rare on the trail
side
i mean comrades is going to be very
comparable from one year to the next
because that's a road race
and that's where you get you maybe get
like the split in the sport from people
who really
want that kind of like i want to compare
myself to someone who ran this course in
1970. versus like someone who just says
i want to be competitive today and
you know maybe the weather is going to
be 30 degrees different from one year to
the next on this course but if i beat
everyone on this day then i'm the
champion of that big name race like
ultra trail montblanc or western states
100 and
my legacy will be cemented because i won
that big race and it doesn't matter when
or how the course was or what the time
even was to some degree
when you were optimizing for trying to
set the world record
in 100 miler were you doing like
analysis
of maybe like what were the variables
you were looking at
is it more in the realm of the actual
race day
the track what it looks like versus like
the variables of the training leading up
to the
to the race i mean it evolved a bit like
i think the
as i learned more about just like what
is required
to kind of really do that stuff so
there's some variables you can control
for
you know i try to control for as many as
i can the big one that kind of stands
out that you can't necessarily control
for
is it's pretty rare where you get an
event where they're just doing 100 miles
on a track it's usually
like a like an event of like a series of
different events where there might be
like
some people out there doing 50k some
people out there doing 24 or something
like the event i did that there's six
day folks out there they're trying to
see how far they can get in six days so
you have like this
much wider range of pacing just due to
like the distance
so you know track protocol is always
like
you pass on the outside so if you're
running
one of the faster paces of the day um
which when you're going up to six days
you're gonna and you're doing 100 miles
you're probably going to be running
faster than most people out there
then you know you just end up running
more because you end up running in lane
two around the turns and sometimes lane
three around the turns
so it's down to those little details
that have a big impact yep so i had to
build that into my pacing strategy i
also have to build into the pacing
strategy
like relative non-moving time uh
you know i did a race just recently i
was the us track and field hundred mile
road championships and i did not stop
once other than like i guess i
technically stopped like
in the aid station for like a few
seconds to like grab bottles and
get myself wet because it was like 94
degrees that day but
i didn't like stop at all during that
race from like
what i would say is like a long period
of time where we're getting up to like a
minute
but that's pretty rare even on the track
like when i ran 11 hours and 19 minutes
uh i think i stopped three times for
maybe a total of like i believe
i have to look back for sure but i think
it was like three to four minutes or
something like that so you gotta you
gotta
figure that into your pacing strategy
especially if you're chasing a specific
time
because you know if i'm pacing for you
know at the time the world record was 11
28 um so if i'm pacing for say
11 27 30 or something like that and i
don't account for that
three minutes of stoppage then i might
run the exact pace i had planned on but
then i'm a minute off of the world
record
so 11 28 we're talking about 11 hours
we're talking about 100 miles
can you mention what the world record
was what uh
what kind of world record you set can
you tell your own story here
of uh of what you were able to
accomplish that world record that i
broke actually just recently got rebroke
um by a guy um over in lithuania
uh alex sorkin um phenomenal race
i mean he's he's won the 24-hour world
championships he's won the spartathlon
which is another big historic
ultramarathon it's 153 miles so it's
getting a little more lengthy than
some of the stuff that i've
traditionally done um he ran 11 14
i believe it was 56 or 57. um so his
pace was 645 per mile mine was 647 and a
half
in terms of just like the pacing
strategy it's it's just really cool
because
for me the motivation
with chasing the world record was it was
multi-faceted i think there was
as i kind of moved through because i
mean it took me almost six years from
the day i decided i wanted to chase that
time
to the day i actually did it uh and
through that
five to six years i think i emerged from
just like my
number one goal was to try to break the
world record to my number one goal is
how fast can i run this thing and then
ultimately
um what needs to be done for a human to
break 11 hours and 100 miles because i
think that's gonna be
i think that's going to happen wow soon
i think it's going to happen
in the next few years would that be um
sub 11 would be i think like i
think it's like 6 35 right about per
mile you're moving
quick but not so quick that like you're
you're you know void of being able to
think about everything as it's happening
so what's the pace in terms of if you
look
for each of the one-mile segments
for the 100 miles is it pretty steady
six like in order to break 11 hours
would it be pretty steady 635 does it go
up
and down do you speed up at the very end
like what's what's the pacing if you
were to and maybe how much variability
is there in the pacing
for an optimal performance here yeah so
if you're talking about someone let's
say that there's someone well let's just
take me for example let's say that we
could just like
we had this infinite knowledge and we
knew for a fact
a perfect performance for me would
produce a 10 59 but i'm not going a
second faster
and i need to do everything right in
order to run a 1059. uh
i would definitely want to either have a
slight negative or a slight positive
split
so when um and i think there's i think
there's uh
there's a range in there where like
being a little bit faster the first half
the second half isn't going to
necessarily
change your outcome or being a little
bit slower the first half
and a little bit faster the second half
isn't going to drastically change your
outcome
so that's what you're referring to the
split is you're looking at the first 50
miles in the second 15 miles
and you can break it down as as tiny as
you want like i think
when you take out the outlier laps where
i stopped to use the bathroom which
would have been that like three to four
minute non-moving time that i talked
about before
my splits were really tight um i had a
couple that were
um it was weird because that that track
that i did that on was actually
400 and some weird number like 400 and
like 38 meters or something like that so
i actually like ran like my numbers
based on that so they're
they're normally i'm dealing with 400
meters and then it's a little more like
clean as to like what my lap splits
are gonna range from one event to the
next so we're talking about running 100
miles on a track
yeah and so that you can be really
scientific about
yes getting the the the the um
the pacing right and uh you're you're
running on the inside lane
or is there some kind of tricks to this
like are you
alternating directions
yeah they'll switch directions at most
events every four hours so
you'll do four hours one way and then
they usually put a cone out
and once it hits like like let's say it
hits four hours
you finish the lap you're on and then
you do a loop around and then you start
the next
your next laptop would you say you take
the exact same number of steps
like when you're really in the groove
when you're taking the pacing
are we talking about that level of
precision or is it a little bit more
feel you mean like foot strike frequency
yeah like
frequency then over the distance to the
lap would you say it's so precise that
you're like you get in this groove where
it's like perfect
yeah gosh you're making me wish i would
have strapped more like a foot pod to
mine
but like yeah so i think like my guess
is it's pretty precise like it's
is there a video of this sorry i keep
interrupting is there a video of this
because
i i've actually this is now three years
ago build a computer vision
algorithm that counts foot strikes oh
really yeah for fun
yeah i was trying to understand uh we'll
talk about that we have the same
definition of fun when
i've got my find myself on a track for
all day and you find yourself counting
foot strikes
i was trying to understand if if there's
how much variability there's
in uh extreme like elite performers
within a particular race but also across
races it was just interesting to me
from a robotics perspective if like
how much variability there is in the
human body in in the way they use legs
to move quickly
i think my guess would be that at the
individual level it's going to be pretty
precise assuming the pacing
is consistent so you get so my pacing on
that day
i ran two minutes faster the second 50
miles and i did the first 50 miles so my
splits were very even most of the day
i actually ran some of my fastest miles
at the end uh so there's going to be
probably a slight
variance from my fastest mile to my
slowest mile in
like your cadence or your foot strike
but probably not by a huge margin but
you might have a pretty big variance
from one person to the next
so you get someone whose gait is just a
little bit different so like for me
i supinate which means i kind of come
down on the outside of my foot
and i'm kind of more of a mid-forefoot
striker so that's going to kind of
impact my cadence to a degree whereas
you might have someone who
is kind of more mid to rear of their
foot or heel striker and they might
pronate where their foot kind of rolls
in
so that person may have a little bit of
a different cadence as well so
you get someone and i think you see this
in elite marathoning too which is gonna
probably
just be a much larger data pool uh much
much more probably precise from just
like a number of opportunities to study
this
and i think even their ranges from one
person the next can be
i wouldn't say drastic but you know to
the degree of like
10 to maybe even 20 steps per minute or
something like that from one person to
the next
but most people the faster they go the
higher their cadence is going to be the
slower they go the lower their cadence
is going to be
but there's going to be probably a range
of optimal
lowness and i don't know what probably
optimal
highness too than that if you can just
linger in 11 hours
the person first of all would you like
to be a the person that breaks 11 hours
and second of all the person that does
break 11 hours like what would
what would it take and third question is
is it even possible
and you're in yeah i mean i would def
i would be lying to you if i said i
didn't want to be the first person to
break 11 hours and 100 miles i think
that'll be
um would be a cool like barrier to be
the one to usher that in
but with that said i think i'm much more
motivated in
seeing it done from the sense that like
i think when when we're talking about
records it's something that
is inevitable that it's gonna get broken
so i mean we were talking about
happiness before this right so
i've contemplated this in the past where
i was thinking to myself like
if my motivation is to break a world
record or any record for that matter
course record
and have that be my defining reason
or my defining motivator i probably need
to do
an assessment of what i'm kind of where
my mind is at and where my
focus is at uh and just
reflect on how i'm behaving in life
because
it's gonna get broken right i mean i
could run
10 50 tomorrow and in
10 years chances are that's no longer
gonna be my the world record anymore
someone's gonna run faster than that
so if you're living to hold on to a
record versus
living to try to move the sport forward
which any time you break a world record
you're moving the sport forward then
then you have to look at that as like
that was my contribution
and whether i contribute again or not is
kind of besides the point
what you want is that your performance
your contribution brings
new people into the sport who are
excited motivated
and they can make their contribution and
then we can ultimately see well how f