ERF 1,047: How to Get Better at Running Without Killing Your Gains

If you're somebody who wants to get better at running without sacrificing your strength, muscle, and lifting gains, then I'm going to tell you exactly what I am doing to do just that. I'm going to give you the exact plan I'm following for lifting and running. I'm going to tell you how long you should be running, how many days per week you should be running, when you should split them up between your your running days and lifting days. And a quick credentials check, I just finished my first ever solo HYROX race in 72 minutes, and that put me in the top 1.6% of my age group. So I have a little bit of background. Although it wasn't my goal, I did okay, and I think I'm able to teach you about how How to get better at running, 'cause I've also coached over 25,000 clients in the past 10 years with their workouts as well. Before I give you the exact plan that I'm following that you can steal for yourself, I wanna first talk about what my training used to be like and what it is going to look like moving forward. So some of you who have followed me for a while, Which, thank you. I'm getting a lot of messages from people being like, Eric, you said you didn't like cardio. You said you don't need cardio. And let me be very clear, I still don't like cardio. I still don't like running. And you don't technically need to run based on what your goal is. So, For the 30 years of my life before the last few months, I didn't have a goal to get better at running. My goal was to be strong, was to build muscle, was to have a good body composition, and just to be overall healthy. So if your goal is not to get better at running, you don't have to run. But recently, My goals have changed. I started doing my HYROX races, and the HYROX race is an endurance race with over half of it, depending on your time, being running. So if I wanna get better at the race, I gotta do it. It's not an option for me. And so that's why just walking and lifting weights isn't going to be enough for my goals. Current goals. But I don't want you to get confused thinking that you have to go start running. It is not a necessity, especially if you're trying to lose fat and build muscle. If that's your only goal, or only goals, plural, then lifting weights, walking, maybe some incline treadmill walking, that will be enough for you to get to your goals. But if you're someone like myself who now you want to improve your running, whether it's For a race, whether it's to get faster, or whether it's just to get better at something and, you know, see yourself improve at a skill. Maybe it's also you want to improve your cardiovascular endurance and your heart health. Whatever the goal now is, if this is you, then this is what you can do about it. But I don't want you to think that you have to do it to lose fat. And the second Piece of this is, without getting too sciencey on you, there are 2 different, basically, energy systems that your body can use during exercise, and that is called the aerobic system and the anaerobic system. So the anaerobic system, think of this like a Credit card. So it's like very fast cash. You can swipe it and get a burst right now, but you only get about 20 to 30 seconds of spending before the bill comes. And then the interest on that credit card is going to burn your muscles and usually leaves you gasping for air. Your aerobic system is your checking account. Maybe it's a little bit slower, it's not as flashy, but it typically funds everything all day long. So every step, every rep, the recovery in between your reps. Think of the anaerobic system more as pushing hard, Like lifting weights, like sprinting fast, doing the bike very fast. Then think of your aerobic system more as that slow and steady continuous pace. It goes on for a long period of time. Maybe it's not the most intense, but it's just kind of there and you're keeping That pace the entire time. What I was doing before starting to train for my HYROX races was a lot of anaerobic work, and this showed in my stations. So for the stations that favor power and strength, I did really well. So The ski erg, I got first place in my age group. The sled push, I got first place in my age group. Sled pull, second place in my age group. Farmer's carries, seventh in my age group. Rower, I think it was fifteenth in my age group. So those stations that really benefit and maybe give you a lift when you can have more power and more explosive strength, I did really well at those. Why? Because that is— although I'm doing it for a longer period of time, I can tap into and use that anaerobic system, that strength and that power a bit more because I've already laid the foundation of my strength. I've been working on my strength since I was 16. I am now 30. So the last 14 years I have I would like to think, at least in terms of HYROX races, clearly a pretty decent foundational base of strength. But the gap is being able to keep a high level of intensity and speed for a long duration. So that's great that I got First in the SkiErg, first in the sled push. But when I went to go do my runs, it was very hard for me to keep a fast running pace without getting very exhausted. Because to be able to maintain this certain level of effort for a long period of time, My aerobic system has not been built up yet. So what happened? I had to run slower than I would have liked or needed to to get a better time. So the thought process here is if I improve my aerobic system and what I'm learning is, which by the way, I'm still really learning a lot about this, which I'm also fine— like, I know about this, but I'll be very transparent. I was always just so focused on learning about strength and muscle building that, like, whenever I would go through my courses or my certifications that involved really any cardio, I'm just kinda like, skip. You know, like on TikTok when you're scrolling, you're like, this isn't interesting, and you just kinda go past? Uh, that was me with cardio, 'cause I just— Didn't find it interesting. But now I do find it interesting. And I'm actually, myself and Coach Tara on my team, who also did the HYROX recently, we're both getting certified in HYROX certified coaching. So super excited for that. So if you are maybe somebody who you want to do a HYROX, you want to even just improve your cardiovascular, you wanna start training like a hybrid athlete, where you're doing both lifting and running and some other forms of cardio, we're going to become even more efficient and proficient at doing that. So super excited to start to help our clients with that as well. So if you are interested, you can click the link in the show notes of this podcast and apply for our 8-week challenge, which is our one-on-one coaching. And we will build you a fully personalized Workout plan, cardio plan, nutrition plan, recovery plan. Because really, if you're gonna train like this, you, you have to be very dialed in and very intentional about both the workouts and the cardio and the nutrition. And I'll talk about some of that a bit later in the podcast. But like I said, if you're interested in getting all the guesswork taken out for you and a plan built for you, you can click the link in the show notes of this podcast. But like I was saying, I didn't really find it very interesting, but I am now finding it quite interesting. And the reason I started all of that was people call it base building. So like you're building your base of aerobic capacity. So you're trying to— the way I visually think about this is you're almost like expanding your capacity. You're, you're, you're expanding what is able to be accomplished via an endurance perspective with combining that with strength. And that's kind of where the HYROX really lies, is it's an endurance race. But I believe if you have a certain level of strength and you stack endurance on top of that, you become very efficient. You become very proficient at— The HYROX race. And just, you know, you can even think about this in general where if you're really strong, it's gonna make it easier to do a sled push, a sled pull, farmer's carries, walking lunges. And then if you also have a very good base of aerobic capacity, now it's easier because you're strong and it's easier because you've built your aerobic capacity and your heart rate isn't gonna get as high. You're not gonna build up as much fatigue. When your heart rate doesn't get as high and you don't build up as much fatigue, there's not as much lactic acid in your muscles when you're doing this type of exercise, which the lactic acid can really slow you down because that's like your legs are burning after a set of lunges, or, you know, you're— the burpee broad jump, your muscles are just getting super fatigued. So all of this makes it easier to be more efficient at these sort of races. So that's the difference between the aerobic and the anaerobic capacity. And again, it's not just about a HYROX race. This really can transfer into anything— excuse me— really transfer into anything, which is walking up and down a flight of stairs, chasing your kids around the yard, carrying groceries to your third floor, and you're out of breath. So this can transition into everything. And When we talk about building the aerobic capacity, and this is going to tie into the running, you want to stay in something called zone 2. So people who are watching this on YouTube, I am pointing to my new Garmin 570, Forerunner 570 watch that I got because I need— I'm going all in. I am going to get better at this no matter what. So what is zone 2? And maybe you've heard it before, but in plain English, it's a pace that, let's say you're doing running, a pace that you are running, you can still breathe through your nose and/or talk in full sentences without gasping for air. If you can't say a full sentence If you can't sing it, then, I'm sorry, if you can't say a full sentence, you're probably above that zone 2. But if you could like sing a sentence or sing a song, you're probably still in zone 1. So it's kind of that in-between where like it's a little bit challenging, but really not that challenging. Also, it's about 60 to 70% of your max Heart rate. So you can find, you can just Google, you know, Google your age and just type, what is my max heart rate? And it'll come up for you. For me, it's usually about 130 to 150. Uh, for you, it, it may be different. And I would say the, the numbers matter. You wanna make sure your, your heart rate is where it should be. Like today I was doing 30 minutes of zone 2 rowing. Mm-hmm. And I, you know, would look down and kind of check my watch a couple of times to make sure my heart rate was where it needed to be. And a couple times it was a little bit higher, so I pulled back on the intensity to make sure I was in zone 2. And you want to be able to do this. And it's funny because this is why a lot of people don't do this. And it's, it's kind of crazy to think about. A lot of people don't do this Because they think it's not a workout. They think if you're not pushing really hard, then you won't see adaptations. But like we said, we're not trying to build max speed or max strength. We're trying to build aerobic capacity. We're trying to build endurance. And when it ties into Running, that's great. You might be able to run, run hard and run fast for 5 or 10 minutes. But if you want to be able to run for 20 minutes, 45 minutes, 60+ minutes, then you're going to need to have the endurance component along with it. And that's where staying in zone 2, it may not— it may— think of it like if you widened your driveway. It doesn't make your car any faster, but right now, if you have a 1-car driveway, you widen it, and now 3 cars fit. There's more blood that's able to pump through your entire body. There's more oxygen that's able to pump through your entire body. There's more room to do work. More cars can fit on the driveway. So again, putting this back into wanting to get better at running or doing a HYROX race, if you're able to pump more blood, you're able to have more oxygen flowing. It's more work and it's less effort. So you're able to do more without as much fatigue. Both those 2 things are typically what make you better. So speed work can And it will make the car faster, which I'll talk about a bit later when we talk about what my runs are gonna look like. But zone 2 is what builds the road and allows the road to be wider. And if the road is only one lane, it doesn't matter how fast the car is because at some point there's gonna be another car in front of it. There's gonna be a buildup, there's gonna be a tree that's down, there's gonna be something that gets in the way. So you're trying to build again that aerobic capacity. So now heading into what is my plan? So I've talked about the aerobic versus anaerobic. I've talked about making sure you understand what zone 2 is. And now what is the exact plan that I'm going to be following? Well, there's a couple of different bullet points that I'm going to cover, and then I'll talk exactly how I will work this into my weekly workout routine. And a caveat right now is I'm going to be training 7 days a week for now. I don't know if I'm going to keep doing this. I don't know if I'm going to make some tweaks to it. So take what I'm about to tell you with a grain of salt. And if you can't work out 7 days a week, that's okay. There's other ways to make this happen, but just stick with me and don't just dismiss it because I'm going to tell you my workout schedule that is 7 days a week. All right. So the first bullet point that I wanna cover is I'm going to be doing at least 2 hours per week of dedicated zone 2 running in specific. That is my minimum, and that will likely be broken up into 2 longer runs per week. I'll tell you what that looks like here in a second, but 2 hours per week of zone 2 running. Specifically, I'm also going to be working in more zone 2 cardio that is not running, and this will likely be on the rower and the bike. So total zone 2 for the week is probably going to be around 3-ish hours to start. Maybe I will increase this and progressively overload. This, which I'll talk about later in the podcast as well, but that will be the floor. And now, why am I incorporating 2 hours of zone 2 running and then an hour of zone 2 that is not running? Couple of reasons for this. HYROX is a running race. You, you, I don't just need the engine and the aerobic capacity. Yes, I do need that, but I also need the skill of running in and of itself, and I need to make sure I can maintain that skill efficiently even when I start to get exhausted. So if I only did the bike or the rower, I'd be building the engine but not the skill. And so I need to make sure I'm getting both running and overall zone 2. And the only way I'm going to get that is by doing it. You need to get better at the skill, just like if you were to improve a bench press or a squat or a push-up. It's a skill-based movement, so you need to improve the skill. And then why am I picking specifically The bike and the rower for my other zone 2 throughout the week? Well, I'll probably, between all of my running workouts for the week, I'm actually looking at my watch right now, between all of the running workouts for the week, I'll probably be logging in the beginning, maybe 16 to 20 miles per week of pure Running, which, to be very transparent, that is more— that is more than I've run in my entire life in one week, probably. And I'm gonna do that every single week. So that is— it's a lot of volume and running on my legs and my knees and my feet and my joints. And while I need that, I also wanna be able to Get more zone 2 in to build the aerobic capacity without putting as much stress and pressure on my joints. So both the bike and the rower are very low impact on my joints, and they are actually what we call concentric-only movements. So every time I take a step and every time you take a step in running, You're eccentrically loading your legs. So every time you take that step, it's like there's, there's pressure and there's weight that is being put going down on your legs. The bike and the rower, it's just you pushing. There's no eccentric loading on your legs. Why is this important? When you can get the concentric movement, This is what pushes blood into your muscles. And if there's no eccentric loading, that means there's no muscle damage that comes along with that. And if you're trying to balance lifting and cardio and running, being able to push blood into your muscles is actually a really good thing. That's what helps you recover. And if there's no muscle damage, That comes along with that, then you're actually recovering— excuse me— you're actually recovering that entire time and not adding any damage to your muscles. And because you're in zone 2 and not zone 3, zone 4, zone 5, you're also not putting a lot of stress on your body and your central nervous system because the intensity is low. So you're kind of getting the best of everything. And so when I tell— when I talk to you about my weekly workout split, you'll now be able to understand how I'm gonna work out 7 days a week. And it is working out 7 days a week, but it's almost not working out 7 days a week. And I'll explain that a bit later. But that's why I'm also throwing in the bike and The rower for more zone 2 without any negative side effects to my runs or my lifting. Because like I said in the beginning, I still want to be strong and lift 'cause I still love that and I enjoy doing it. I just did an upper body workout today and like, I like lifting heavy weights still. I did, uh, I did 265 for sets of 6 on bench press, I think, or 7 maybe. Um, And so if I'm wanting to also, let's say, do leg day, well, I don't wanna just go into every single leg day exhausted and my legs are dead and I can't lift heavy. So this is how I'm gonna be able to split all this up and, and kind of do both, right? So I'm gonna be doing 3 main dedicated runs per week, and then I'm gonna do 1 HIIT day. So let me tell you what this looks like. Run number 1, is going to be about 60 minutes and it's going to be zone 2, maybe even a little bit of zone 1 where I'm just going for volume. I'm going for miles. I, again, I want it to be easy. I want to be nose breathing the entire way. The second run of the week is going to be speed because If I can be faster, then I'll— my floor of running will then be faster. So I'm just gonna make things up right now. Let's say on the treadmill, I can run at, I don't know, a 15 speed. That would be very fast, right? Well, if I know I can do 15 speed and I get better at that over time, now my— Zone 2 run might be at a 7 speed instead of a 6.5 speed, and then it might be a 7.5 speed, and then it might be an 8 speed. And now I'm able to run faster without increasing my heart rate and getting as fatigued. How will that help me with running? Well, now I can run longer and I can run faster at the same time Without getting as fatigued. So that'll be the speed day, and this will look something like 20-second all-out sprints, so as fast as I can, for 4 to 6 rounds, usually resting 1 to 3 minutes in between each sprint, because I want to fully let my heart rate come back down, fully be able to push as hard as I can in those sprints. And again, it's only gonna be, let's say, 6 of 'em. Mm-hmm. Max. So that's run 2. And then another— so the run 3 will be another long run, which will be about 60 to 90 minutes. And this will be pretty much all in zone 2. I don't want any zone 1. I'm going to try to make it all in zone 2 running. So those are my 3 runs for the week. And then, like I said, the other zone 2 I'll be getting is the spin bike. for 30 minutes and the rower for 30 minutes. So what is this gonna look like over the course of a week? Well, and I'll incorporate lifting and running and cardio. So what it is right now, and again, this is my first full week of this, so I may make some adjustments depending on my recovery, depending on how I feel. And a quick side note here before I go into telling you exactly What I'm doing. This is also how we approach our clients when we coach them. And, you know, if you don't have a coach and you're trying to coach yourself, number one, I wouldn't recommend that. But number two, I would look at it from this perspective, which is you set a plan, but then you be adaptable to the plan based on the feedback. So if let's say I run this week of workouts and like I do it for 2 or 3 weeks and I'm like, dude, I am exhausted. I'm tired. My legs are shot. I just feel fatigued. I'm gonna have to take a look at, okay, what are my workouts doing? Should I switch those up? What if I increased my calories? What if I increased my calories specifically on long run days? What if I try to optimize my sleep a bit more? What if I focus on recovery by doing some Sauna, cold plunge, massage therapy. Like, I might have to make adjustments, and that's okay. That's what I'm supposed to do, and that's what you are supposed to do. So you set an initial plan and you have to be willing to make adjustments and adapt to that plan. That's, in my opinion, what really good coaching is. It's not just, here's your plan, go have fun. Each week you're looking at, Your biofeedback, you're looking at your recovery, you're looking at your performance, and you're saying, is this working? And not even is this working, what parts are working and what parts aren't working? What parts are working? Awesome, let's keep that. What parts aren't working? Cool, let's refine and tweak those. And that's what I think you should be doing, which again, if you want someone to do that for you every single week and take out all of the guesswork and just tell you what to do, Click the link in the show notes of this podcast to learn more about our 8-week challenge that is one-on-one, fully personalized coaching. Now getting into the week of workouts, finally. Monday, lower body workout plus 30 minutes of a zone 2 bike ride. And the reason I paired those 2 together is because, again, the zone 2 bike ride is going to be a concentric movement after leg day, which can help push blood into my muscles, which can help kickstart the recovery process even faster while getting in some extra zone 2. Tuesday is upper body plus speed run. So the one I talked about where I'm sprinting for 20 seconds, that'll be done on that day after my upper body workout. Wednesday, off from lifting in a 60-minute zone 2 Zone 1 run. This day is also a bit of recovery since I'm not gonna be doing anything high intensity. Yeah, I'm probably gonna log 5-ish miles, 5 to 6 miles on my legs. But again, it's gonna be in zone 2, so it won't be a lot of intensity. Thursday, lower body, no cardio this day. Friday is my dedicated HYROX session. And what I did yesterday was— 800-meter run, 10 burpee broad jumps, 25 wall balls. I did 4 rounds of that. And then I did walking lunges with 53 pounds and farmer's carries with 53 pounds. There's a little area in my gym where you go down and back. So I did that 2 rounds. So overall, that took me about 36 minutes, I believe. And most of my heart rate was in zone 4 and zone 5. So that is a— that's a hard day. That right there is a high-effort day. Saturday is an upper body workout plus a 30-minute zone 2 row. And then Sunday, off from lifting, but that is my long run day. So my 60 to 90-minute zone 2 run. Run. So now you can see still lifting 4 days a week, still setting it up to where I can push myself in my lifting and at the very least maintain my strength, if not maybe squeak out a little bit more strength gains. But I'm also running 4 times a week and I'm doing cardio, whatever it is, 6 days a week, 7 days a week, 5 days a week. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 days a week. Whatever, you get the point. It's a lot of cardio, which is more than I've ever done in my entire life. So as I say that, I also wanna say this. Remember, if you are somebody who, you know, right now I am dedicating my life to get a, to finish a HYROX race in under 60 minutes. That's like, I'm not gonna stop doing this until I get that. And I'm sure even when I get that, then I'll move from like the open division to the pro division. So we'll see. But that's— if that's not you, you don't have to go this crazy with it. So for example, you may not need 3 hours of zone 2 aerobic capacity work per week. Maybe if you just wanna get better at running, maybe you start with, okay, I'm gonna get 60 minutes of zone 2 running per week, and you could maybe split that up between 30-minute run here, 30-minute run there. You also may not need to do any speed work. Maybe you don't really care about getting that faster at running. Maybe you just want to, again, improve your zone 2 and improve your heart health. Okay, cool. Then maybe you can skip out on the speed work. I would say if you're just somebody who And this is where it's hard. And also, you may not need the extra zone 2 of the bike and the rower. That's okay. This is where it's so person-dependent, depending on your goals, depending on where you are currently, because people are at different fitness levels as well. So if you're a complete beginner, maybe you have a running background. So it's very hard for me to tell you exactly, like, what your specific training routine should look like. But I would say if you're just an average person average person and you're looking to get a little bit better at running, I would say 2 to 3 runs per week is a great place to start. And quite frankly, I would make the majority of that at your zone 2. If you do 2 to 3 runs of 30 minutes, 45 minutes, and it's in zone 2, you will get better at running for sure. And if you start to do that and then maybe you wanna throw in Okay, I'll throw in a speed work at the end of my upper body workout. Awesome. Throw it in and you'll get even better at running. But just make a floor, make what is realistic and what makes sense for you right now with your running, and then just kind of build off of there. And again, if you want a coach to do this for you, you can click the link in the show notes of this podcast to build your plan. And now, You know what the week is going to look like, but how am I going to now actually improve? Well, you may have heard me or somebody else talk about progressive overload, and we know what this is for strength training, where we're trying to lift more weight, we're trying to do more reps. Those are the 2 main and best ways to progressively overload for strength training. How do we do that for running? How do you do that for running? Because for me personally, leading up to my previous HYROX that I just completed, I didn't really intentionally progressive overload. I just kind of like tried to get better and I tried to just go faster. There wasn't like a real clear plan with it, but now— Again, after doing research and after learning a bit more, and, and to be very transparent, I'm still learning at it, so I'm still trying to get better at it, but I have a better idea and understanding of what this may look like. So let me walk you through the steps of what I'm doing, which you could steal for yourself as well. So step 1, I want to get to 60 straight minutes at my current running pace. Staying in zone 2. So whatever that pace is, and I think, um, on my run on Wednesday, my pace was like 11 to 12 minutes, somewhere in there, um, per mile. So I wanna get to 60 minutes of doing that straight. Once I can hold that, I wanna try to work that up to 75 minutes and then work that up to 90 minutes. So Staying at the same pace and still staying in zone 2. Once I can get to 90 minutes of that pace in zone 2, what I'm gonna try to do is drop back down to 60 minutes, but try to pick up the pace a little bit more, but still stay in zone 2. So for example, make this very easy. If I was running an 11-minute pace, I would then try to go to a 10-minute and 50-second pace or a 10-minute, 45-second pace, just a little bit faster, still staying in that zone 2. And then once I do that, I wanna build up to 75 minutes of that, 90 minutes of that. And it's just kind of, I'll get a little bit faster and I'll work up the time. I'll work back down the time. Get a little bit faster, work back up the time. So I— and I'm gonna try to repeat this every 2 weeks if I can, maybe up to 4 weeks. And I think between the speed work that I'm doing, the Friday High Rock session, and the 3 total hours per week of zone 2, I think I'll be able to do this. And I think I'll be able to run Faster while my heart rate stays the same. And that really is the game. Because if I can do that, if I think back to my HYROX race, I averaged a— for my 1,000-meter runs at the race, I averaged about, out of all 8 runs, probably like 5 minutes and 15 seconds, somewhere around there. So if I can shave off a minute of that, that right there will, I mean, get me very close to my goal. My goal for this next race isn't finishing in under 60 minutes. I mean, if I do that, that'd be incredible, but that is not my goal. But that alone, I can shave off a minute of time, which that would be a lot. I know people who are runners out there are like, that's really hard, Eric. And that's what I know for sure. But if I could even shave off 30 seconds of that and I can get to 4 minutes and 45, Seconds as opposed to 5 minutes and 15 seconds, combined with as long as I maintain my strength and I'm still able to push at my stations like I did, and I can still have that power in the same velocity. Well, now we're talking definitely under sub-70, maybe under sub-67, 67. Um, so yeah, that, that is the game. And I think at this point it's just, it's just work. It's just like getting to work. And I The one thing I will say, it's— the way that this is gonna go is very similar to strength training where you don't walk into the gym and just like you're squatting 100 pounds one week and then you go squat 200 pounds the next week. Like you add 5 pounds to the bar, you do that for a week or two and make sure it feels good, then you add 5 more pounds. And so I'm viewing running the same exact way. It's just you add time. You hold your pace, and then you decrease the time, and then you increase the pace a little bit while maintaining your heart rate. It's literally just like lifting weights. If I was— if when I'm teaching someone to progressively overload in strength training, we'll usually give our clients rep ranges. So if it's an 8 to 12 rep range, cool, you're doing 50 pounds. Do it for 8 reps. Do it for 9 reps. Do it for 10 reps, 11 reps. 12 reps. Once you can do it for 12 reps, decrease the reps back down to 8 and then increase the weight to 55 pounds. And you do that again. So running is going to be the same exact thing. It's, it's very just small tweaks, small improvements. It's repeatable over time. You get better with it. So that's how I'm planning to improve my running and how you can implant— plan to improve your running. as well. And there's a couple of other notes here that I wanna hit on, which is I know a lot of people are all or nothing. And to a degree, I am that too. Like, you can probably tell, and I told you, I'm just gonna fucking train like a maniac right now to try to get this done. 'Cause I'm just obsessed with it. But I also know I need to be realistic because, again, my entire life, I have not ran. Like, the only reason I would run is for sports. And like, we would run suicides in basketball, for example. It's the only time I would run. I never would go out on my own and go do a run. Never. Other than these past, you know, obviously, couple of months. that I've been training. And even then, I would only do it for the 1,000-meter run that I had to do for the race. I have never— like, the first time I ran for longer than 1,000 meters was probably— and this is gonna maybe sound crazy to some of you— The first time I ran longer than the 1,000-meter runs was Maybe 3 weeks before my race, I ran for an hour. That was it. Like, that was my first time doing any sort of long endurance run, which you could be like, that's kind of crazy. And when I say it out loud, I also think it's kind of crazy that I was able to get the time that I got. But I had a very good base of strength training beforehand. But If you're gonna go from running 0 miles per week to 20 miles per week, don't do that. You're gonna get injured. You're gonna hurt yourself. It's gonna be fucked. I would not recommend. Even me leading up to the race, to be very transparent, I would not— I was maybe running 5 miles. I don't know. Probably 5 to 7 miles per week was probably what I was running in total, 'cause like I said, I was only doing— The 1,000-meter runs. So maybe 5 to 7 miles. And now that'll probably get bumped up to like 16 to 20 miles, which is— that's a, that's a big jump as it is. But if you're gonna go from 0 miles to 20 miles, you're gonna get injured. Just like if you went from not lifting at all to lifting 6 days a week with high intensity, you're gonna get injured. So I would just encourage you with where you're at right now, Start where you're at. And once again, this is where having a coach can really come into play for you because they will just guide you on where your body should be right now. You won't have to think about it and you won't have to feel bad for not doing enough because like you have to build up. I know you probably want to go full steam ahead, but that's how you get injured, both full steam ahead from a mileage perspective and also from a speed perspective, because Let me be very honest with you as well. When I first started getting more running, I just was like trying to go as fast as I could because I'm like, well, I got to be fast to get my time down in my HYROX race. And what happened? I started to get a lot of shin splints. I started to get a lot of hip pain. And that's when I had to take a smarter approach to it and not go as fast and change up the days of the week that I was running. And just kind of, again, take a smarter approach. So that's what I'd really try to encourage you as well. Don't go from 0 miles to 20 miles. Go from 0 miles to 4 miles per week or 5 miles per week. And then you do that for 1, 2, 3 weeks. Then go, maybe go to 8 to 10 miles per week and then go to 10 to 12 miles per week. So you wanna be smart about this so you don't end up injured. 'Cause if you end up injured, all the stuff that we've talked about really Doesn't freaking matter. So if you're somebody who wants to get better at running, that is what I would do. You're gonna build your aerobic zone 2 capacity. You're gonna run 2 to 3 days per week, primarily in zone 2. You may add in some speed work. You're still gonna lift weights. And by the way, you're still gonna get your daily steps and you're still gonna walk. But you're going to add in this extra running. And typically, depending on how your weekly workout routine is set up, you can do this. There's a saying that you want to keep your hard days your hard days and your easy days your easy days. So for example, on Wednesday, when I'm doing my zone 2 run, I'm doing no other high-intensity work that day. That is an easy day. Same thing with Sunday. I'm doing no other work other than a zone 2 run. So those are my easy days. I'm going to keep those my easy days. And then I have my high intensity days. I'll keep those my high intensity days. So that is how you can split this up. And again, if you're interested in having a coach on my team build all of this out for you, and again, I haven't even talked yet about Nutrition, calories, carbs, protein, sleep, recovery, how to actually set your workouts up, because that's a whole different topic of how do you now set your workouts up to still be able to get stronger and build muscle without overdoing it. So there's a lot more that could be done to this. I wanted to focus primarily on the running aspect of things, but if you want a full laid out plan, you can click the link in the show notes of the podcast or just Google Eric Roberts Fitness 8-Week Challenge to apply to see if you'd be a good fit for coaching. And if you're somebody who enjoyed this podcast and you would like me to do a follow-up episode on how I'm gonna do lifting or how I'm gonna do my nutrition, let me know. Take a screenshot, put it on your Instagram story, send me a message on Instagram, let me know in some way, shape, or form. I would be happy to do that for you if that is what the people want. All right. I appreciate you guys. Love you guys. And we'll chat next time. Bye.