How NIKE Pro Running Coach Alex Ostberg Reframes Running Nutrition — Donuts as Rocket Fuel, the Durability Lag, Building Injury-Proof Mileage & What To Do After A Bad Race

0:00A quick note before we hop into today's remarkably insightful conversation of the podcast with Nike professional running coach Alex Osberg Alex writes a newsletter for me every Thursday completely free It's completely free to sign up to subscribe to I've left a link in the show notes as I do in every single podcast episode But this should be the top link at the top of the show notes if you scroll down whether you're watching on Spotify listening on YouTube Apple podcast doesn't matter. It's in the show notes It's on my social media as well if that's easier for you to go and find it But this newsletter every Thursday breaks down actionable tools that you can directly apply into your running to become a faster runner a better runner a more Sustainable runner. It's the best bang for your buck even though that phrase shouldn't even apply because it's completely free But it's the best bang for your buck resource in this part of running to get better I firmly believe that every addition is a three to five minute read every Thursday Free in your inbox written by one of the greatest coaches running coaches in the entire world and without further deal If you don't believe me, just listen to God talk in today's conversation. Appreciate you all

1:01Ladies and gentlemen, we are hopping right back into a another monthly breakdown of the rundown by the running effect written by multi-time all-American world-class coach Friend of the podcast Alex Osberg Alex. Let's kick them off with a piece that I loved from you and for those who are New to this podcast of a month we break down four additions from a world-class newsletter that that Alex writes for the running effect Best place you can go to if you want to have you know a five-minute free edition every single Thursday in your inbox that will help you become a better runner One of those core pieces is always going to be nutrition and I always love when you're right about nutrition Love this title a little provocative in 2026 the case for junk food as a runner And I love this because we all know the runner who is like Monopoly focused on quote-unquote clean eating and can't fathom reading a piece like this So Alex speak directly to him. Where did this piece come from? Yeah, sounds good to the origin of this piece is that I started this semi-regular tradition I don't do it every week, but I do it many weeks is I will

2:03I'll drive to voodoo donuts before our long run and then you know after the athletes finish up their 90 minutes to two hour long run A lot of times with some intensity. I'll pull out this giant pink box of donuts from the back of my car and hand him out to the team And it's always a massive hit everyone loves it And whenever I tell non-runners this story They look at me kind of puzzled and they say like how can you give donuts to like Olympic level runners? Aren't they supposed to treat their bodies like a temple and I'm like you really don't get it like For a for a sedentary person who has minimal movement Yes, like donuts are probably considered a junk food That can lead to metabolic dysfunction But for a runner who has massive caloric turnover on a daily basis and is moving Continuously that same donut can really be rocket fuel and we can kind of dig into why that is So I think a lot of the best newsletters have asked a provocative question or they've caused me to they've caused me or other people to go

3:04Hmm, like I wonder what's going on there? And so that was kind of the impetus for for writing this piece and it was fun to break down the physiology of You know what happens with active people and how you process carbohydrates differently and why it ultimately could be a good thing to refuel with Potentially refined carbohydrates when those things are generally conceived or are perceived to be evil in most of the health influencer industry I want to take a little bit of a detour which I like to do on these conversations because I don't like to get out all the substance You got to go subscribe and read these editions if if you haven't and this is more of a general overview of this podcast is on what Alex writes about Selfishly when I get you on the phone or get you on Riverside it's an occasion for me to ask things I'm curious about so this question stems from the piece itself We live in a in a day and age where all these you know health and wellness crunchy mommy accounts are popping off on Instagram And it would make it seem like you're gonna get cancer if you eat a donut from voodoo donuts From your best understanding you would I'm putting words in about to agree disagree elaborate

4:08You would agree that it's yes if you had them every day for breakfast or after every run It's probably not the most sensible choice But once in a while these things can be used actually as a tool and having a food die once a week is not the same as having it for three meals a day Yeah, that's 100% accurate I think the things that you do on a regular basis to define you much more than the things that you do occasionally I think the other place where there's kind of a fundamental misunderstanding is that there's a difference between eating For health and a difference for in difference for like eating for performance There is overlap there for sure I'm not going to deny that like athletes still should be striving for the majority of clean You know whole foods But when you're training hard and you're racing hard it changes what the body needs and how it's probably and how it processes and stores calories The thing that most people understand is that you know Most endurance athletes don't have a food quality problem. They have a delivery problem You know you you are burning through so much energy typically in the store in the form of stored fat and carbohydrate

5:11That your your muscles are an incredibly demanding consumer of of of sugar essentially and or and or stored fat And so the questions that you should be asking are not what's the cleanest food that I can eat especially not on your hardest training days Really the question you should be asking is how do I get enough fuel in consistently and how do I do that in a way that doesn't upset my stomach So that's really the use case where these more refined carbohydrates that are like you know simple sometimes even processed foods come in and enter the picture Devils advocate. I asked you a question You know it it's not bad to eat once but it would be bad to eat every day and the devil's advocate to that would be Well, if you shouldn't eat it every day, then why would you eat it at all? Yeah, I mean so so here's the thing like The body let's just go like from first principles like what's happening in the body during exercise because that would probably be a useful argument here carbohydrates are consumed normally And if you're not active those carbohydrates are then broken down into sugars and then they enter the bloodstream and those those sugars circulate around the body

6:20um and Typically you then are going to secrete insulin from the pancreas to shuttle that sugar Into storage format somewhere in the body um a lot of times we live in a world right now where there's a mismatch between caloric intake and physical activity The human species evolved in an environment where food consumption and movement work very tightly coupled behaviors But nowadays you can just tap a button on your phone get like a 2000 calorie meal delivered to you And you can eat it without moving it really without moving more than a hundred feet So we evolved this there's this highly conserved response from an evolutionary perspective with Actually when you move what happens is rather than needing to secrete tons and tons of insulin The muscles actually become a sink or a drain for where that glucose can go There's some I won't go into like the exact details But there's there's a mechanism called like a glute four transporter which when you have a lot of muscle contractions or you're in a crazy name What'd you say? Crazy name. Yeah, yeah, glute four. It's called like I think it's glucose like transporter type four or something like that

7:23And these basically act as little doorways or trap doors that shuttle glucose from the bloodstream into the muscles themselves And so Essentially what you're trying to do is after a really long run like a marathon or you know half marathon or any kind of long training run Your body is craving carbohydrate immediately because you've depleted the stores the best way to do that is to take a very simple carbohydrate Maybe sugar even it's in its most pure form like it whether it comes in gatoray whether it comes in a gel Consume it. It'll pass through the stomach very quickly and without a lot of fiber in the mix there You break it down quickly it goes into the bloodstream and then those glute four transporters suck it right into the muscle There's no major insulin response. There's no huge risk of you know type two diabetes from that The only risk comes from when you eat a lot of sugar and you don't move a lot Then it circulates around again. You secrete tons and tons of insulin. That's how type two diabetes starts and ultimately That's when you end up storing a lot more of that Carbohydrate ultimately then gets stored as adipose tissue in fat So I think that you know, if the devil's out of it can argument is that there's actually just different fueling demands required

8:29When you're training really really hard and you want the simplest you want the simplest mechanism from it going from mouth to muscle And that is refined carbohydrates not complex carbohydrates or tons of you know food with fiber In my conversations with registered dietitians and I'm sure I've made this point multiple times you Alex Little key tip for the listener generally don't follow people who call themselves nutritionists not illegally protected term Registered dietitianist so it's a good thing to look out for but my conversations with those RDS They make this argument that I think backs up what you say, which is like the body when it's in a deficit So your athletes some of them are doing a gosh, which trials up to 22 mal 120 a week Like 20 from the long run. Yeah, okay 24 mile long run That dude's body doesn't know the difference between a voodoo donut and a bagel right it doesn't It's all digested similarly It's all goes to your muscle all the words fancy words that that I don't know a very similar processes similar for me I just got done with a run Not saying this is the best you know meal or snack post run of all time

9:31But you know rush to do this podcast. I'm having a little Protein shake from VPN who I work with before heading to the gym after this The difference between a protein shake and a protein bar my body recognizes it as protein If I had a cookie with a ton of protein again Protein is protein any thoughts off of that in in regards to just how athletes think about food where it's like Maybe think less about the food itself when you're in a need or a deficit and more about what's the mechanism Whether it's carbs or protein that I need and if the thing suffices for that specific category great Like don't don't overly stress what the mechanism is yeah That's a great point I write in the in the newsletter that when the goal is rapid refueling and the limiting factor is just intake your body cares Much more about carbohydrate and calorie delivery than what the packaging looks like and whether that packaging is totally clean Your muscles don't care where you bought your carbohydrates from right it cares about whether it has enough glycogen to do the work That's that's really what it is at a base level

10:35I will say like I kind of think about that from from two different perspectives and in the piece I say it's like kind of like a two layer diet I think the majority of your days especially like the easy training days and the rest days you should focus on Like getting your carbohydrates and protein from good sources colorful foods foods that have a lot of vitamins and and micronutrients Because if you're just consuming protein shakes all day you're just taking in protein in its isolated form Or if you're just taking in gels you're just taking in glucose in its isolated form There are so many wonderful things that come from food Beyond just like the carbohydrate the macronutrient numbers themselves the grams of carbohydrate the grams of protein like with with Let's just say like spinach you're not only getting in you know Some carbohydrate, which is the primary macronutrient in that food But you're also getting in lots of vitamins and minerals that are really good for supporting overall health However on your really really demanding training days your point I agree with completely when you're when you're prone to being in a deficit Just take the calories and it doesn't really matter the body doesn't know the difference There's another phrase. It's very memorable, which is um

11:36I heard this in high school. I don't know who originally said it, but it's something along the lines of uh If the furnace is hot enough anything will burn in other words, it doesn't really matter what what where you're getting your calories from Just take it in there's a great study done in 2015 that that looked at a group of cyclists They did a 90 minute ride that was glycogen depleting so at a pretty high intensity Then they recovered for four hours and then a meal right after the ride and a meal two hours later And they refueled they split the group and refueled with two different types of things in one group They did like top-of-the-line sports nutrition products and in another group They refueled them with McDonald's style fast food meal and they were matched for total calories and macronutrients They then did a secondary time trial again uh Which was 20 kilometers and there was no meaningful difference in the glycogen restoration rate or the time trial performance between the groups So like it just doesn't need to be perfect You know like you can afford to eat some things that are not Quote-unquote perfect foods when you're in that deficit. That's absolutely true Well, I know for the listeners don't drink protein shake with the lid off I almost put it on the computer and the podcast uh what I had to what I had to stop

12:39May have never seen the light of day. So praise god for quick reflexes my parents born With genetics Final thought for you now that my thoughts are scrambled Um, it's a saying you said multiple times When we've talked about nutrition on the podcast in the past Overfueling and then quote unquote negative benefits of that or negative detriments of that are always gonna outweigh the the negative Detriments of underfueling underfueling you don't want to mess with that and I think you generally agree with this statement like It's the three meals a day or however many meals a day where you can focus on you know getting in your vegetables or getting in your lean protein or whatever that might look like That's when I don't think it make I don't think it matters But if you want to obsess over whether your ground beef is grass-fed or grass-finished great But after a hard workout or a hard hard long run like it's okay have the donut. It's like your pride Yeah, and actually like there's some evidence out there too like even just the type of meat you're consuming

13:39So let's just say for instance, you're taking a steak and you know steak is kind of like a little rough Like you actually have to cut it into it and then you take something like ground beef Which is essentially a little bit pre-processed There is evidence that the pre-prote like the ground beef will get what is protein that will get into your system a lot faster than the steak itself Just because that that food has essentially already been pre-processed by a machine So in general you want the least like you want food that has been minimally processed But again there are points and times when your body demands you know those you know The protein and carbohydrate in that in that window after exercise it where it's really important in in a time critical sense to get it in And hey in that case like ground beef might be better than steak for instance And then yeah, just a hammer home your point. I've said it many many times You're far better off to miss on the high side. There's an asymmetric risk Between overfueling and underfueling if you overfuel by a few hundred calories Maybe you're a pound heavy on the starting line, which like I can assure you is not really going to make a huge difference I don't even like the idea of race weight. That's that's a topic for another time

14:41Alternatively if you're underfueled you're now playing a very very dangerous game That's a slippery slope where like you might be you know a stress fracture might be waiting for you around the corner You know, and it kill these tendinitis that isn't healing properly is because you're not getting in enough you know macronutrients in protein So yeah, you always want to make sure that you've nailed adequacy first before you start optimizing for quality And just to finish on a memorable note There's a sports scientist named Trent Stellingworth who's phenomenal He's done a lot of research into nutrition and exercise And his rule of thumb is if you can't eat grandma's apple pie on Thanksgiving or Christmas We have a problem, you know And I don't mean to say that like in like a flippant way, but like you know Because this is a real thing like orthorexia like an obsession with clean eating is if they're very common is a fairly common thing for runners to have So I'm not really not necessarily being facetious, but I do think that You know everyone can afford to eat You know some dessert every once in a while or or on a daily basis if you so choose and you will be okay

15:43The best thing I know eat ice cream maybe not every night, but uh, yeah, they all enjoy it. So Alex next piece what not to do after a batteries why one outcome shouldn't rewrite the plan I'll paint the picture for you You didn't in this piece, but I'll give you an example every high school cross-country kid has 10 weeks straight of racing or A bunch of races sometimes one week off and then six weeks on It's impossible or nearly impossible to get better every single week and high schoolers have that mindset And they almost always come out with Minimumly one bad race in the middle of the season and they panic. What should they not do Yeah, I see this all the time and it even extends to the professional level um I think there's this interesting thing where we I think we overreact to losses Um and and we we underreact to wins We we don't treat wins and losses is equals You know just imagine the scenario where you have a bad race um

16:43So many times what I've seen is like You do this fine-tooth comb analysis of everything that came beforehand like the race is the most publicly visible part of the training block So if it doesn't go well It you you basically are going to do a forensic analysis on everything that happened beforehand You're going to consider the counterfactuals like what if I tapered more what if I ate this differently? What if we did this workout instead of that worked out um, you know, everyone's been there it just It can be a never-ending and exhausting cycle of analysis And then on the on the alternative when you have a good race you almost just brush it off It's it's like oh This must have gone well like the the plan is just assumed to have worked the coach thinks they're a genius and the athlete feels invincible And and kind of what I want to Encourage people to do is is to meet somewhere in the middle um I like to think that every race is one draw on a distribution and a lot of times I'll use the the um I'll use the example of like okay if you run a race Nine times out of ten what's the outcome that you expect?

17:45And there are going to be times where that one in a hundred chance or that one in ten chance something freakishly happens You know that that could go wrong Um, I think what you have to do is start to disentangle that sometimes bad luck and variance enters the picture And it it forces you to have a bad race and you know It's possible that you're going to have a better race next time just by letting things unfold on their own timeline You know Extreme outcomes tend to be followed by more average ones and you'll cluster to some some type of mean level of performance And over enough races that mean we'll expose itself um, and and I think a lot of times we treat one One bad race is not a trend, but we treat it like a verdict and we want to we want to reinvent the wheel afterwards And that's what I'm telling people that they probably should not do all the time anecdotally, I don't know if you have a study to pull up from this uh, so maybe anecdotally what Are the negative effects of an athlete specifically one who races often of an athlete who lingers too much on a bad

18:49Because I imagine and we could even say with your pro athletes right like a US championships Excuse me a lot of times you only have like a day between races And if the 5k or the 10k goes wrong and you got to prepare for the 5k pre-lim Like over sitting in the bad result Will completely ruin the next race yeah, it's pretty common I mean, there's a couple of things that I can say in theory that are probably a little bit harder to practice um We we've talked before on the podcast about like a 24 or 48 hour rule We're like usually you can allow someone to like wallow in their own misery for a little bit But at some point time you just have to get back to the work You know, the miles aren't gonna run themselves you have you have to just like pound the pavement and get it done Um, but alternatively what I try to remind people of is I usually bring up examples from their own past You know when you're when you're in the immediate aftermath of a bad race It's so easy to start catastrophizing and wanting to do something completely different But I'll just typically bring up examples of like hey remember at this race last year

19:50You had a subpar performance and then you were able to correct it a month later Like people fail to recognize that these things happen when you when you feel like you're slipping You think you're just gonna like kind of faceplant and that doesn't always happen there There is there's plenty of time and opportunity to to write this ship Um, alternatively you can bring it up with other athletes too I mean even the best fall down sometimes, you know And and they will recover um, but I do think that athletes have a tendency to imagine that like when something goes poorly You know, it's it's the end of the world There is some interesting research you'd ask about if there's any research I believe there was some research in NBA teams where they looked at um Or maybe it was just professional sports more generally But they looked at when teams had a win by either one point or a loss by one point So by all accounts if like you won by a point or lost by a point It's really like it could have gone either way Everyone who's like humble enough has to appreciate that like hey, this is not a blowout or this was not like a massive defeat Um, a little bit of luck turning like if luck had just entered the picture it probably could have gone either way

20:54It turns out that Coaches are much more likely to make changes to their strategy or their roster or their lineup in the aftermath of a one point loss than a one point win And so it's just interesting to think about how we overreact there's also interesting research to pull from another domain Where fidelity the investment the finance and investment company looked at They're uh their highest performing accounts over a period of time And they found that the highest performing accounts were actually from the users who had forgotten they had accounts Or were just totally inactive and so that because there's this interesting thing right where you have day traders Who are just constantly reacting to the market and are doing all these real allocations based on what they're seeing And then you have people who just put their money in an index fund and leave it there for years The person who like puts it in index fund is almost always going to outperform the people who are trying to day trade And I usually try to say the same thing to athletes. It's just like you know Don't be day trading your fitness like don't be making these emotional reallocations based on every little tiny change that you see in your performance Like trust the plan and be willing to see it through

21:57Because more often than not if you stick with a strategy that has only failed one time It's probably gonna read it's probably gonna you know fix itself If there's an ongoing trend of poor performances sure then reevaluate, but certainly not after one I love this reframing or this example that a ferd psychologist give before where they have a person in a room and they ask them to Call out everything that they see is red and they the person names that all the things they see is red and and they'll like glaringly the then they'll say like oh well, you know Did you see xyz and they didn't because all they were focused on was Picking and finding out what was red. I find it's very similar Not just for life, but very specifically for running in this case Our brains fixate on what they want to and so if a race goes poorly Maybe you did something poorly or maybe the result was poor, but maybe you got out really fast like you talked about You know with your coach at the beginning of the week during practice or maybe you search well or maybe just other people in the race were better than you

22:57And you lot you place forth at USA's But the other three people in front of you was just like a historically crazy crazy year or you know NCAA's in the mile Maybe you didn't hit the qualifying mark of 353 but like you did everything you should have or could have If you're just focused on the negative that you didn't make it or the result end result wasn't as pot like there's almost and I think you Agrew with me unanimously. There's always at least one positive thing You can draw from from a race and if there's not you're you've got to fix your mindset Yeah, but either that or you genuinely ran the worst race fault Yeah, one second and It's a well-documented phenomenon in psychology. It's called confirmation bias right like you look for facts that are going to support your pre-existing beliefs And we're very bad at you know finding a run cover encounter intuitive truths or at least things that we don't believe Um, I will say there's there's another great example that I have to bring up It is totally possible in life to make high-quality sound decisions and still have a bad result the park the the example that I reference in this piece

24:01Is the 2015 Super Bowl which people listening may remember was between the Seahawks and the Patriots I believe like fourth quarter like you know Seahawks are on the on the one yard line with seconds remaining Pete Carroll calls a pass play right instead of handing the ball to Marshawn Lynch When ends up happening is the Patriots enters that the ball they lose game over and like it was it was at the time People were like that's the worst coaching decision that's ever been made and it's like well Pumped the brakes for a second here like if you actually look if you build a reference class of decisions in that scenario A pass plays actually totally a defensible decision like a short pass in that scenario actually had historically has an extremely low interception rate So and what that would have done in an incomplete class would have obviously stopped the clock for another place So like it was actually a good decision that led to a bad result and it's crazy that like you know so you know You know the same decision could have been made Patriot like the the Seahawks score a touchdown and no one would have ever analyzed that loss that that decision

25:03I want to say that was an remarkable comment that they were going to run the ball Totally covered Have you ever heard the um the the phrase like the Monday coaches basically the day after the Sunday games Suddenly come up with all the issues. Yeah, I mean everyone's like an armchair quarterback to some extent right like it's it's hard to It's a totally different thing being in the arena So I guess the the experience there is like, you know You don't want to over learn from your own or others good or bad experiences because the same action under different conditions can lead to different consequences I think that's a big lesson that you have to learn so again go hunting for the positives to your point because I'm sure they're going to be there Any final takeaways for for the audience for the listener What not to do after a bad race? Yeah, I think sometimes language that I hear a lot in in athletics is like I should have known I should have known better like I wish I could have done that and it's like You have to sometimes give yourself some grace to recognize that You have to evaluate the quality of a decision based on the information you knew at at the time

26:03It's very easy to look at information that comes to light after the fact and say oh, I should have done this Well, it's like no at the time when you made the decision that information wasn't yet available So I think that's one place where I think people need to be a little bit more forgiving with themselves The second thing is you always want to skip like I think the best coaches and athletes are methodical belief Updaters if things don't go well They don't just like burn down the entire plan And if they win they don't think that like the plan is canonized and like should be repeated on you know forever There's there's always this really important thing to have the temperament of never getting too high or too low And to methodically update your belief So you really want to scale your belief update to the size of the evidence one data point should make you curious But it shouldn't make you overhaul the entire plan if you're consistently seeing a negative trend That's when you should actually reevaluate and potentially make some more significant adjustments And real quick for you a 30 60 second response It's early season at March 25th when when we're recording this very directed question at you

27:05What should an athlete do season opener doesn't go to their expectations? What's a shift they should make or I thought they should have Well When I say to athletes is like the best place to be when walking away from a season opener I think it's hungry hungry for more like if you're if you're lighting up your season opener Uh, I mean you might and you might have a great season, but if you've been running for a while You've you've put in several seasons worth of work It's hard to be like in personal best shape at race one compared to where you were a year ago on race 10 You should get fitter throughout the season you should get sharper throughout the season your racing brain should get more callus And so I think that a lot of times people walk away from a season opener feeling a little bit underwhelmed And usually what I tell athletes is great. That's where we should be like we have more work to do We're going to get we're going to refine the skill set over time So if you want if you walk away slightly disappointed and hungry for more that's exactly where I want you to be right now Next edition the best way to guarantee improvement maybe the best title ever written

28:08I'm hooked immediately everyone else is hooked immediately That's a million dollar question you seem to have solved it tell us tell us your ways How can we guarantee improvement Alex? I think we're we're always bombarded with improvement strategies And sometimes it's really hard to sift through and figure out well What should I actually do? I have a finite amount of time and energy like what what should I do to actually get faster in my training time um And I think a good question to ask yourself or what I asked myself in writing this newsletter was okay If everything else in my training plan remained the same What's the single change that would create the greatest improvement? And I kind of hinted at this in a previous newsletter which I called the hierarchy of endurance needs I'm like what's the most foundational requirement for a runner that has the highest probability of being successful It's not really a new workout. It's probably not more intensity although that may feel counterintuitive It's probably not a new supplement It's what the research would very definitively suggest and what I would say from my own personal experience is that more training volume at an easy intensity

29:12Probably moves the needle way more than you expect And so throughout this piece I basically break down all the studies that that convincingly demonstrate that this is the case And then I talk a little bit about what's the underlying Physiological requirements that like lead to the fact that easy running can be so powerful What's your rebuttal to the intensity kings out there who you know track coach Kids around 20 miles a week they're doing 800 meter workouts and the kids are running fast and stuck in their ways Well, I mean you can always make claims like I would just say like well, have you considered the counterfactual, you know like if you've just done a strategy Like they're you know data is not the plural of anecdote is something that I like to say often You can test this strategy But if you haven't scientifically compared it to something else then how do you definitively know that it's better If you can't prove something to be right then it's also a good scientific theory that has credible evidence has to be falsifiable You have to say how could this be wrong If people are just saying like it's this is my one method

30:15It's the one method that works that I would just quickly start poking holes in their argument and be like well How do you know that like higher volume isn't better if you haven't tried it Um, and so I think that when you look at large enough sample sizes and you take hundreds of thousands of runners Which the science has done and we now have the ability to crunch numbers at scale that we never have before by pulling Garmin and Strava data What you begin to see is that there's very definitive evidence that Faster runners A run more and they actually spend a higher proportion of that time running easy And so like there's a strong directional signal does it necessarily mean that will it will work for every single runner who walks this earth Maybe not maybe there are individual tweaks But I still think for an athlete that's running anything from 800 meters and up volume is so foundational to developing the aerobic system Which contributes so much energy to all these events that we're talking about that you have to do it you cannot neglect it So you mentioned the events we're talking about you have this cool graph in the newsletter I suggest people check out which is the aerobic first anaerobic conversion um and percentage of event and

31:19Starting with the the 800 meter you start to see it's more aerobic than anaerobic 60 to 70 percent the fifth the 1500 75 85 percent I always saw this chart um Growing up a little school high school And I thought in practice I understood what it meant to this day I couldn't really explain it What is the difference like 30,000 foot view between aerobic and anaerobic and what's the like practical Use case for understanding that chart Yeah, so the aerobic in the anaerobic systems are energy generating systems in the body um What we need what you need to understand is that in order to move the thing that the things that powers muscular contractions in your body is something called ATP Adenine adenine triphosphate. It's basically cellular energy currency and every movement Costs something and it costs a certain amount of ATP. So the aerobic Um energy system is a system that it relies heavily on Shuttling oxygen from the ambient air in three-year lungs into the bloodstream and it burns lots of fat

32:23That's like that's the main thing and and you need you basically need oxygen to power that pathway um And the anaerobic energy system is for much more much higher intensity exercise Where you might actually be in an oxygen deficit So you cannot deliver enough oxygen Um for those oxygen derived pathways to actually be effective So what you end up doing is breaking down glycogen Um or any stored ATP and use that immediately for energy So what's important is that in long duration events which tend to be a little bit slower The aerobic energy system is contributing the vast majority of ATP to the muscles And then when when the aerobic system cannot keep pace with the demands of what the muscles are trying to do In other words, you're running faster or you're trying to put more power into the ground Then you need to rely on faster sources of energy with which comes from that anaerobic energy system So basically what the graph and you should check out the newsletter is showing is that You know when you get to the 800 meters to 1500 meters and above The vast majority of the energy that powers that movement is coming from the aerobic system

33:28So what I argue is that You know you generally should prioritize training for the system that powers the event And if the aerobic system is is providing the majority of energy for for performance That's the safest place to invest the bulk of your training time It's like the highest probability of success strategy that aligns with the events underlying physiology What's the biggest practical Take away for a mile or a 30 200 meter runner or a college kid running the 5k 10k I just throw out a bunch different events some of you you'd say is different for for those different things But these events again as I said 1500 meter up are way more predominantly aerobic than anaerobic What's the what's the takeaway there like what should be the takeaway? You know because you can get lost in the sauce with scientific terms. Yeah, and For the for the explain this to me like I'm a sixth grader. What should I be doing if I'm training for the mile is maybe the best way to put it I think I think an endurance sport You know performance is rarely limited by how hard you can go in any single bout

34:30It's almost always a slow burn and you're limited by how long you can sustain a high fraction of your VO2 max And so I think You know The sprinting like sprinting and like you know high intensity intervals Sharpening you up pretty quickly right like in matter of four to six weeks. You can see a big improvement there Um, but it's also something that's like it's pretty costly It's pretty damaging on the body and it's not necessarily a repeatable stimulus that you can rely on year round the aerobic system Um, so you can reach your ceiling pretty quickly with that stuff right or at least you're ceiling for what your body is capable right now The aerobic system is a little slower moving It it takes it relies a lot more on structural changes in the body building up new blood vessels building new mitochondria They're really really powerful things but they take a while to build I have it's very rare for a young athlete to have reached their aerobic ceiling There's almost more always more headroom that you can push in the aerobic event whereas you can tap out your anaerobic gains pretty quickly

35:33There's a sports scientist Steven Siler who says like anaerobic training is like kind of like buying fresh fruit like once you require it It doesn't last very long. It has an expiration date. You really can only enter that window of the year where you're doing high intensity intervals for a fixed amount of time before you kind of start to stagnate off of it Whereas the aerobic system or aerobic type training is something that you can stack week after week after week year after year after year Um, and uh, you know, I I bring up this this metaphor at the end of the piece which is like you know if we assume that Um aerobic or anaerobic training is like fresh fruit. That's that's perishable and expires quickly and aerobic type training is like the bulk goods that you stock in your pantry What you always want to do is like stock the pantry with tons and tons of like dry preserved goods Um, but you can rely on year round So that would be the aerobic training and then as you want it or need it for certain recipes go and like buy some fresh fruit You know like go go acquire it when you need to so I guess like I strongly believe that like aerobic training should be the foundation of everything you do throughout the year

36:39And then you periodically dip into these phases of time where you're going to rely more on anaerobic training Um, I think that works pretty well. There's there's one caveat to this which is that You know strides or like kill sprints things that are really short are not necessarily all that taxing But they can be very good for just a maintenance stimulus for power and speed So like there's a difference between a 10-second stride which is great. You can do that year round It's not very costly not very damaging and like all out two-minute repeats which like that has a shelf life that that's not a sustainable strategy to rely on year round This piece transitions really well Which the kind of core theme is run more right run more volume Transitions well into the next week final piece will go through today five rules for building mileage without getting injured Why just run more is bad advice Yeah, so I kind of I break it down into into five rules. I think that um You know We need to try to operationalize this question in other words I kind of got a lot of feedback from from the audience after the last piece which is like great

37:42I know that I want to run more But there's always seems to be this risk associated with higher mileage like how would you recommend that I actually do this in practice So I did want to get a bit more actionable in this piece and just like kind of provide some ground rules Some of it even grounded in numbers that could be helpful for the audience and we can just kind of run through them I can give a high level overview of a few of the rules the first is that The distance that you're training for kind of dictates the demand of mileage that's required People who are running half marathons and marathons generally speaking need to run more because your body needs to develop The durability to handle thousands of foot strikes on the ground sure you can run a marathon off of like low mileage It's possible. I've seen it done you've done it like you know it you can do it But if you want to be good over a long period of time or you want to maximize your chances of being good in the marathon You can't really do that off of like low mileage so to speak You need to be trying to push into new frontiers of volume Whereas if you're doing the 800 or the 1500 or the the mile or the 3k

38:43You probably can get away with like a little bit less mileage and like more cross-training for instance I've seen some people pull off some miracles in like you know the mile or the 3k Like you know six weeks after injury because they just hammered cross-training And like they were miraculously able to race well I've almost never seen that in a long distance event like good marathons Our contingent on like really high-quality building blocks that Where like you just can't get around the fact that you have to run a lot of miles That's that's for number one any questions on that Again, I'm going off the beaten path, but I think I'm like what's an interesting question to ask you Is there any modern-day technology whether it be shoes or wearables or normal tags or whatever It's like your least fair question all the time because it's all the stuff that you don't like but uh that you genuinely think is helpful Like with your athletes. Have you noticed do super shoes play a role in athletes ability to run one of these days? I think I think the answer is yes

39:46I do think that You know, there's there's a mechanical advantage to having a shoe that um Changes some of the impact forces for instance I anecdotally people report and I can say this from personal experience I ran 10k's in college when we didn't have super shoes. We didn't have super spikes I do think that there's and I would love for this to be scientifically tested You definitely accumulate a little it seems like you accumulate less damage from putting on super shoes Which by extension that should mean you can run more um I think that like the biggest advances here though are probably and the biggest thing that contributes to durability Um, which goes back to newsletter number one today is is like nutritional interventions probably have Are probably the biggest difference maker here um if you're not fueling for the work required Um your body is gonna break down Uh if you're trying to run a hundred miles a week you need a fueling strategy to support that and I do feel like That is entering kind of the mainstream conversation finally these days, which is like

40:47You have to just have you know the fueling Plan to support how much you're gonna run. So I'd say that that that probably matters more than like any other thing You could think of whether it be like shoes supplements recovery strategies, etc You'd talk about this in the piece. Um, I'm throwing a lay up here. What when should people start doubling if at all Yeah, so um, I think if you're listening to this and you're a new runner uh The first lever that you should pull when you're trying to increase your mileage is frequency So if you're running three days per week I think the first move before you start doubling or doing really long runs is just to run more Um, it distributes the mechanical load a little bit more across the week Which I think is safer from an injury reduction standpoint So I would just say like hey if you're running three days a week for 30 minutes Like rather than extending those 30-minute runs to an hour I would just add in a fourth or a fifth day at about 30 minutes first That's like that's usually step one and I would consider that to be like if you're in the range of anywhere between zero and 25 miles per week um I think when you get into the middle range there

41:49So let's just say like 25 to 60 miles a week You can kind of pull on two levers which would be a frequencies If you're not running six to seven days per week you can probably go there first and then start adding length to the runs So if your average run is 30 minutes while maybe you move it up to 35 40 incrementally Lastly, I think doubling is mostly an effective strategy when I don't think you need to be doubling until you're probably above 60 miles per week Um, that might be a hot take it might not be but I just don't think you need to be getting out for two runs a day Until your mileage is like cross the threshold about you know 50 60 miles per week Are all miles created equal by that I mean Is the benefit of an eight-mile run better than the benefit of you know two four-mile runs or someone who runs a hundred miles a week in singles Are they going to be better equipped for the marathon than someone who does a hundred miles a week in doubles? That is a loaded question my friend Uh I I think I'm I actually have a newsletter that's I'm planning to like answer that question specifically uh my answer is

42:50No, I don't think all miles are created equal um, I actually wrote a newsletter piece I think with that exact title not not all miles are created equal last fall where I where I look at how certain Runs whether it be certain speeds of running or distances of running carry more risk from an injury perspective Um, so go back and read that if you want to um, I am going to politely defer that question for my newsletter where I answer it um, this is great marketing. He's learning guys He's learning from me learning. This is great We have these buzzwords by the way because earlier you know what you said you said uh Fuel for the work required and that was totally a piece. It was a piece. Yeah, guys subtle go subscribe to the newsletter if you don't already um Great rule rule number three type consistency above everything um running one week of high mileage means very little Stacking months and years of appropriately high mileage means everything I'm sure they've done studies on this and Me myself when I look back on my high school career, which you were somewhat tapped into like

43:51I I tried to find the line too often which I don't think you should be doing in high school And I think the best thing you can do as a young athlete or young athlete or like older getting into the sport I think pro different conversation find the line or maybe even college but like Four years of consistent running for me at a mileage. Let's say 50. I built up to 50 kept 50 Four years of a mileage that I knew I wouldn't get injured at is infinitely better Than to your point of rule three then like 60 65 injured for a year So then I got to build up I see the best people in this sport of running the reason they're so good the reason we were time out before the podcast started Grandfisher the reason that guy's been good. He barely gets injured. I don't really get centered. Yeah. Yeah, I 100% I mean Consistency compounds and unfathomable ways right that you can't necessarily appreciate I think if you're you need to leave a little meat on the bone so to speak And I think that we've seen that you know a lot of the athletes

44:52We've talked about this on the podcast like I think one of the reasons that Coach Milt is such a phenomenal like not only talent identifier But talent developer is because he leaves somewhere for them to go at the professional level Like he will challenge you in college no doubt But when you get to the professional level you know that like there's some unexplored territory where you can go and you're from a training perspective But you're right for the majority of athletes, you know, we're not talking about professionals here Um, I do think you know, it's oak you would rather leave a little bit of fitness on the table Because you know backing off periodically you're doing a little bit less than you think you can do is really a hedge against the risk of overreaching or overtraining or injury Sure, it might kind of dampen some of the short-term gains But it's also an investment in long-term durability And I think all the time we tend to overestimate what we can do in the short-term and underestimate what we can do in the long-term And short-term gains or short-term optimization often means that you're You could be hiding long-term consequences that don't emerge or aren't as obvious

45:54So kind of like the fueling question that we talked about earlier where like you want to miss on the high side from a caloric intake perspective From a mileage perspective, I think you'd rather miss on the low side Because the risk of leaving a little bit of fitness on the table is far outweighed by the real risk of actually like running at your breaking point for too long So, you know, I mean you and I've seen this over and over again Like most driven distance runners aren't feeling because they do too little It's almost always because they do too much, you know, and so Look at the averages like and and you know and know that that's that's usually where people break and where they go wrong A greater discreet. That's okay. Um, that's why we have the podcast I think of the top level high level of the sport. It's it's what you do outside of the sport like I brought this up in my Conversation with Grant, which will be out by the time this podcast comes out that Mike is coach Has this banger's line every time we do a podcast you go I always ask and what separates his high schoolers who are very good By the way compared to Grandfisher and he goes I can tell you exactly what Grandfisher is doing right now

46:56Without even calling him or texting him and it's what you do the 23 hours outside of the hour You're training a day that dictates a lot of the success because at the top level of high school at the top level of college at the top level of the pros Everyone's running mileage. Everyone's doing some intensity. Everyone's doing some gym work And so it's like what what are you doing outside of that including what are you thinking? What do you believe? What are you visualizing? To make this very actionable High schoolers We'll say again Excluding high level college and professional people let's say a high schooler like has developed junior senior has developed healthy consistency of mileage What's the the level that like you would personally peak them at and once they get to that level and they're feeling good and seemingly there might be more work To add you just stop there and wait till there's like you know college next level to add more or is that where you add in a little bit more intensity or gym work or like how do you think about let's say perfect scenario where an athlete reaches the upper echelon of like what makes sense for them at that stage do you add in anything else that's not not mileage or volume

48:02That's a really great question I think that as we've talked about before I would rather have an athlete run a little bit more mileage than do more workouts per week I usually think it's a little bit safer So if you're talking about all those variables, I think I would I would push the mileage I would like try to max out on mileage before you max out on an intensity and just drop in you know phases of intensity as you go I do think that that gym work is important I have yet to write a newsletter about strength training, but I I will at some point in time You know, but the thing that gives you the biggest bang for your buck Probably it's just like another easy bang for your buck with low risk It's probably another easy mile and so like if I were coaching a really good high school athlete who has no injury history And I showed no signs of overtraining or overreaching and they're running 60 miles a week I always think about okay, how over the next calendar year can I consistently get them up to 70 miles a week before I think about making their workout significantly harder or before I think about like

49:06You know, you know getting in getting them in the gym. So I think you have to evaluate the historical and personal context of each athlete Before you make those choices Nothing is a perfect scenario. There's always going to be limitations that you bump up against Uh, especially with people who are running as a hobby where they can't design their life around the sport Um, but I think You know again a high probability of success strategy is invest a little bit more time in easy mileage run one more day per week, you know Uh, rather than doing extra hard intervals Rule five you need to earn the right turn more mileage I think this is a great great thing to close off on the first line underneath row five biology moves more slowly than your ambitions What a line yeah, this actually sound like cloth. It's got some this got some attention um You know, I think people want to graduate from Their ability level or their you know mileage target very quickly like Once an athlete is running pretty well. I think they almost feel like they're entitled to a more demanding training plan immediately

50:09Uh, like right after a breakthrough and I'm like, yeah You probably can train a little bit harder, but like what got you to this breakthrough Like just steady consistent training is usually what got you there. We don't need to like automate like you've been Okay, perfect example that coach meant we'll bring up all the time if you're training like a 14 15 5k runner And you go run 13 55 That's great like you're training at a level and then you're able to race above that I don't think it's necessarily appropriate to the next day or the next week start training Like a 13 15 5k runner because the strategy that got you to that breakthrough was like probably like Just being a little bit undercooked and then being able to race above your ability level. So that's not You know, that's not necessarily true for everybody, but I think it's true for a lot of people um I digress a little bit. I think that uh You know One of the things that we are really bad at as runners is we don't think that average is apply to us I wrote a newsletter about this the all the cognitive biases. We all think we're above average and everything We think that we'll heal faster than most people. We think we'll adapt faster than most people

51:13um You know no matter how mentally strong or optimistic you are biology is always going to win Biology has some timelines baked baked into our genetic code which just are kind of immovable So I write in this piece right if you have an impending bone injury Your bones aren't going to remodel or adapt 10 times faster just because you want them to right biology has its targets And it knows what it's doing a lot of times what I see happen is that Because people are ambitious and they feel rushed in their training There's something that I've noticed which I call the durability lag where like cardio vascular fitness improves faster than the musculoskeletal system can adapt So in other words, I feel like a lot of runners walking this earth right now are cardio vascularly overdeveloped They have really strong heart and lungs But their bones muscles and tendons are maybe a little bit underdeveloped on the whole The reason for that is that the cardiovascular system can respond really really quickly

52:14It can adapt within a matter of weeks, but like bones and tendons don't move that quickly It can take 9 to 12 months to meaningfully change bone density That tissue just doesn't turn over that quickly So a great metaphor that I'll close with is a lot of times I think about the engine and the chassis right So like you have this high performing sports car Like what let's say you took the engine of a Ferrari and put it in a Prius like something's going to short circuit Right because like the chassis of the Prius the structural components of that car can't really support that engine And I feel like that mismatch is there in a lot of runners where they have like You know, they have an engine that is really really powerful, but not the chassis to support it. So I always like to say to people like in all likelihood You need to build a little bit slower because you have to allow the chassis to catch up to the engine And so I think that's just like my two cents or like my my takeaway message is like Just incrementally build the mileage do it slowly do it methodically like don't take any major swings in short periods of time Because usually the body can't adapt to how quickly you want to progress

53:18Great thoughts another great podcast in the books. I did want to bring up Sort of marketing strategy on on my end. I want to start developing You know some of these posts in the threads Instagram's version of X or or tweets or whatever they call now with it being Being X and the funniest was I will do this on occasion We'll have a little extra time turn it into like a you know carousel post whatever and I did that on threads And did that with the I meant to bring this up But and you know this because that takes you about it But with the voodoo donuts thing and it was it was quite neat. We got this both from email and on this Like just some hilarious comments people sharing You know the traditions they have with their team or with their family or with their kids I love this comment. It got 270 likes underneath the post whoever is surprised at runners eating donuts has never seen a pack of wild cyclists pull up to a gas station Like this one also life is short. You could be hit by a bus tomorrow go for go for the run eat the damn donut Um, I thought this was true. I did a 50k ultra. This is 100% true Have you ever seen an aid station during ultra coax chocolate case the Diaz M&M's etc

54:22There's a reason it's not bananas and water Um, but then the best and I think I brought this up to you but someone was like Basically was like yeah, that's why I have my post run beer and I just I couldn't help myself by commenting It was like the person was about done. That's not about beer like you're not ready for that conversation Totally different thing. Yeah, but I always I always love As I'm sure to you and you do a great job staying on top of it engaging with with people So if you're listening leave a leave a comment on this podcast and If you have any questions about any of the newsletter additions or or future ones leave a comment on on sub stack or over email And we'll be sure to get to it. Absolutely. Uh, it's been a pleasure. I'd like for to the next one. Hey man Two good and co-coffee creamers are made with farm fresh cream real milk and contain three grams of sugar per serving That's 40% less than the five grams per serving and leading traditional coffee creamers for a rich delicious experience Whether you enjoy your coffee hot cold Bold or frothy two good coffee creamers make every sip a good one two good coffee creamers real goodness in every sip

55:28Find them at your local croaker in the creamer aisle President Barack Obama Virginia We are counting on you Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to raid the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years But you can stop them by voting yes By April 21st Help put our elections back on a level playing field and let voters decide not politicians Vote yes by April 21st paid for by Virginians for fair elections USA a knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and side jigs or auto and home insurance with USA You can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10% tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at USA a dot com slash bundle Restriction supply see you then