#102: STOP Buying the Wrong Running Shoes! Listen To This First

All the brands have a basic trainer that you start off with. And I think that they sit down with their team and they're like, this is our staple offering.

So yeah, there are different categories. There's road running shoes, there's trail running shoes. And then once you get into those sectors, there's daily trainers, there's race day shoes, there's tempo shoes. And yeah, recovery shoes. It can be pretty overwhelming.

Getting really seriously into the sport. You're going to get so much more enjoyment out of having a rotation. If you choose a shoe on the looks alone, there are some very good-looking cheap running shoes. I mean, people end up in lifestyle shoes. Yeah. You see people running in lifestyle shoes. If you go to running shoes on Nike's website or Adidas, it'll return every athletic shoe that they have. Pretty much. You could get the Pegasus on sale for $80 and it'll be almost the same price. And it's a totally different experience.

Today, a conversation with my friends from Believe in the Run, Thomas, Megan, and Robbie. They are one of the largest gear review platforms, and they're as legit as it gets. I love their honesty, and I love their attention to detail as well. They've reviewed thousands of running shoes over more than a decade. They have an extensive knowledge about apparel and accessories, and today we're really taking a deep dive into those topics: how to find the right running footwear for you, what are some of those underappreciated but important running gear items that can really make a difference. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do as well. This episode was brought to you by LMNT. LMNT is a delicious electrolyte drink mix that I drink daily, especially now in the summer months when I'm sweating a lot more. I'm also adding in some more sauna training. I'm drinking at least one or two packages of electrolyte drink mix a day. They just came out with a new flavor. It is LMNT Lemonade Salt, and it is absolutely delicious. It has potassium, magnesium, and salt, and none of the dodgy ingredients. Element Salt is only available for a limited time, so grab yours before it's gone. Head over to my link in the description or go to drinkelement.com/flow to get a free sample pack with any purchase. And if you're not satisfied, just hit up Element Tea and they will happily send you a refund. Hope you enjoy my conversation with the Believe in the Run crew. First of all, thank you guys for coming on the show. Seriously, it's been really awesome watching the progress of Believe in the Run over the years. I remember it was, for me, it was probably 2017, 2016 or 2017 when I first came across. At the time, I believe it was just like Tom was writing up a blog with like every now and then I saw like other people on that, but it was literally just photos on a kitchen table, it felt like at the beginning. And then seeing what you guys have grown into over the years now, be one of the largest gear review websites, like a thriving community. You guys are literally at every world major and every race. I see you guys out there. So first of all, I want to say massive congrats on your success. It's really cool to see.

Oh, thank you. Thanks. It's been a fun journey. It's kind of like whiplash.

When did it start for you, Thomas? Because I believe it was way before 2017, right?

Yeah. It started in 2009, but it kind of evolved from being a— I was actually going to run the TransRockies and I was raising money for a local charity. So I started a website and as I was documenting my training, people kept asking me what gear I was using. And because I started talking about the gear at that time, the brands didn't have any outlet like that. So a couple like forward-thinking brands started sending product and sending stuff and it kind of just snowballed from there.

It's kind of funny how these things always start from a passion project, or very often, and that's kind of like the best way I think some of these things—

that's how I feel. Like, it, it's almost like, I don't know how you guys feel about, but when we see new people coming in the space and they're coming in it as a business, and we started this as far from a business as you probably could get, you know, it was just a hobby and it turned into a business, but it wasn't the original intent. It still isn't the driving force, I think, behind the things that we do. And I think all three of us kind of keep each other in check with like, hey, why are we doing that?

Yeah, no, but that's good though. Like, and I think very similar here, I started making skate videos that turned into making YouTube running videos, and then people started asking to coach them. From there I was like, oh, let's see where this goes. It was never the intent. It was just like doing something you're excited about, you would be doing in your free time. And here we are. Like, so yeah. Yeah. When did Megan and Robbie get more involved then?

Why don't you tell it, Meg?

So Thomas and I met at a social media marketing firm. And what year was that? 2012?

Probably. Yeah.

So around 2012, and I saw that he was getting these shoes for free and reviewing them, and I was like, how do I, how do I get in on this? And he was like, look, I'll give you an email. And he's like, and you can go and try and find, connect with these brands and see if they'll seed us some shoes. And so that was like the most exciting thing in the world to me. And I was like, okay, I'm going to do this. So I remember I had figured out this way to either create or like find someone's email address through their first and last name and their business. And so I like had created this whole system of how I could find someone's email through LinkedIn and through some crazy things that I did. And one of the first people I reached out to was a woman at New Balance. And I remember it was like an immediate yes. And she sent over like 6 pairs of shoes and I thought it was the craziest thing in the world. But yeah, and so it kind of just snowballed from there and I got more involved.

But it was fun watching Megan to decode the emails because she would get super excited. I'd be like, what's going on? She's like, I got another one. Cause like Google would show you the picture of the person if you got there right.

If you guessed it correctly.

Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, okay. It created a monster.

What about you then, Robbie? When was it that you got involved?

Well, I started reviewing in around 2017. Was the Epson watch the first? I think it was either— yeah, this horrible Epson GPS watch, which, uh, is that still up on the— actually, I'm pretty sure I still have it at home somewhere. It's like a relic of, I don't know, running. It's like a typewriter on your arm. Yeah. Um, I— but I started running about 10 years ago, so I didn't start running until I was 32 or 33, and then, uh, A little while after I started running, I found the Faster Bastards, which is the running group that Thomas started in Baltimore, and started running with them. And then, you know, found obviously Believe in the Run through that. And I have a background in English and writing, so I started, you know, obviously I also wanted free shoes. I think the Brooks Launch 5 was the first shoe I ever reviewed for the website. And then from there, I just kind of started like volunteering my services a little bit more and trying to, you know, make the reviews, punch them up, edit them and everything. And then turned into, uh, offering, trying to figure out a way to get on board full-time. It was over beers and pizza, watching the Browns game. Yeah. Uh, Robby's like, hey. And I'm like, hey, like, all right, let's try this. Yeah. And then I came over full-time 2019 and then basically, which was great because right when Robbie came on, we lost our biggest. So we kind of had the Believe in the Run wasn't the main focus for a long time. We, Megan and I started a company called Big Run Media and that was basically marketing for races and running events and that kind of stuff. Obviously the pandemic put a little bit of a hurting on that, which forced us to kind of shift into Believe in the Run. So it was actually a good thing. But Robbie came on board and we lost one of our biggest clients and got kicked out of the space that we were working out. So I hired Robbie and I was like, I don't know if we can pay for this guy. Robbie was our second hire. We had one other girl that was here. And then, so Robbie came on, I'm like, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to afford this, but I'm sure we can figure this out. And that's when we lost our big client and lost the space we were working in. I was like, all right, let's see how this goes. And it just like coming on right at that time. So yeah, it ended up obviously working out, but it was a little hairy at the time.

Never a dull moment, man. And I think sometimes when your back is against the wall, you're forced to make some of these hard pivots. That's actually when the magic happens. When you're in the middle of a shitstorm like that, it feels very scary, but sometimes it's absolutely the best thing that can happen to you.

So yeah, it's definitely for, I don't know about you guys, but for me, like the memory of kind of like figuring stuff out and coming out on the other side or doing something scary that we figure out along the way. I mean, even like our Grit series, which is pretty popular, that came out of like kind of almost a panic moment.

Well, I was, I would say, I think that's the pandemic for us is it was this really scary, uncertain time where like Thomas was saying, we, we did marketing for endurance events and all of those all of a sudden were gone. And it was like, how do we, how do we maintain what we're doing? And it forced us to focus on Believe in the Run. And lucky for us, everyone was at home on their computers going to the website. So, and we came up with this idea of a virtual distance challenge to kind of replace these events that weren't happening. And so to your point, it's like when that chaos and it forces you to make these decisions that maybe you wouldn't originally, but it, it worked out for the best for us.

Yeah. And at that time, Robbie and I were probably goofing around with Believe in the Run a lot more than we should have been. But, uh, yeah.

Yeah. But that, but that's good. Like when, when your energy gets drawn to something, it becomes easier to work on it or even like I mean, to wake up early or stay late at night or in the weekends or whatever, it just becomes natural. Like, you enjoy doing it and it's so much easier than trying to push a boulder uphill.

Like, so there is an economy that now around kind of like producing content, which wasn't there 5, 6 years ago. It really was something that was sort of new. So we were kind of embarking on this thing where, like, when we— Robbie and I used to go to meetings with people trying to figure out, we're like, we got this website that has a ton of traffic. We have a YouTube channel that's pretty successful. We're going to different marketing companies and asking, we're like, how do we turn this into something that's spinning off revenue? Because at the time, we're paying for hosting, we're paying for all the video equipment, making the videos, a lot of investment was going into it. And it was like, zero return. So a lot of what we were doing, Maggie was really focused on the Big Run Media side and generating revenue that was paying for Believe in Run to be in existence. And Robbie and I were like trying to figure out how can we turn this? And then now that brands and people are willing to spend money on content, it kind of flipped it around. But for a while we were like at a loss and now we see people come in And they immediately, like, we'll talk to someone who has, you know, not a very big following or something like that. And they'll be like, I want, I want to get paid. I want that. And you're like, geez, man. And also people now are all, they see Instagram and social media and think that that's just the, like, that's the path of success, but nobody wants to do the slow and hard stuff. Like the website is still like traditional media, traditional website. It crushes, but nobody does want to do that.

Everyone wants to— Let's not tell anybody about that.

It doesn't even matter. 'Cause nobody wants to do it. Yeah. Like they just, they just want that quick hits from Instagram and that getting those followers, follower counts up. I think a lot of people think that because they see us at all the majors or they see us at different events that we're just out here having a great time and that, you know, it's just travel and maybe— I mean, we are taking pictures. No, we are. But there's a lot of work that goes behind that. Like today we come into the office, Robbie's working on, I'm sure you're working on an article or something for the website. Yeah. And, you know, we— it's constant, you know, at this point we have a flow of gear that comes in and I don't— I really don't think there's a small team like us that has tried as many running products as we have.

Several, like, you guys have been there for— well, Robbie, 2019 full-time, 2017 got on board, like Megan, obviously Thomas even longer. How many shoes have you reviewed or how many shoes have you tried over the last decade like that?

It's got to be thousands, right?

Yeah. At this point, definitely. Because right now, how many shoes do you think we get a month? And we can't— I can't even keep— I used to try to review every shoe that came in. Robbie, when he came on board, got all the shitty shoes I didn't want.

I love the honesty here, too.

I mean, that's what people want to do reviews for. And when you start, you're not gonna get, you're not gonna get a Vaporfly Vaporfly for your first shoe review. Yeah. You, you're getting a, you know, a Nimbus. But if you hang around long enough, enough people will fall, fall off that you don't, you'll get something. You can move up the chain. But like, yeah, I would say I was telling this to someone the other day, we're probably one of 10 people in the whole world who have tried every, pretty much every running shoe for the last 10 years. I'd say that there's a small handful like it. And when I think about it, I think of, uh, Matt Splurr. Brian Metzler. I think of Jeff Dengate and possibly even Sam Weinbaum. He's been doing it for a while. There's other people that have come up since then that are there, but like, it's always fun for me. Like, we're about to review the Rebel 5, and I was there when they were sending out basically the proto of the, you know, the first one. Or, you know, when we look back on different, like the Clifton, we just did a thing. We've had, we've been there since the start of the Clifton. So we just reviewed the 10 and we pulled up old clips of when we got the one, you know, it was like, yeah, those were kind of embarrassing, but I love the embarrassing ones. I love it. Like Robbie pulled me over one day. He's like, did you do something to your hair? And I like looked at the video and like, I've got it. Like I was like the worst haircut ever. I'm like, ah, no, that's just Bad haircut. Yeah. As far as the amount of shoes that come in, we have a team, we have a whole team of reviewers. So we have people all around the US on both trail and road that review the shoes. So it's not like we, obviously we're not going to review 300 shoes a year, which is probably about how many we get, maybe 200 or 300. So, you know, we do what we can. We put in 20 miles minimum to each shoe, and then that's sometimes more depending what it is. And then that's the review. Obviously there's some limitations to that, but I'd say 80% of the time to 90% of the time you can figure it out within.

So let's talk through that a little bit more though, because there's quite a few people listening and the question comes up a lot. How should runners narrow it down? Like when picking a shoe, what are like 2 of the 2 or 3 of the things they should prioritize when looking at a running shoe?

I mean, I would— there's certain characteristics now and there's certain silos of running shoes that I think it's easier nowadays and harder because there's more options. But once you find your preference, and I think that's where the personalities of the reviewers come in, especially like the 3 of us are going to do the majority of the reviews. So I can tell you Robbie leans a little bit more to the firmer side. Megan's going to be your, your cushion and speed shoe, like, person. And then I'm sort of in between the two of these where I think that I'll be more likely to like a shoe that each of them like and they may not like it. So does that even make sense? Yeah, we know what you're saying. But the thing that I think if you're asking what they should be looking for, That's where it comes down to, like, you have to be trying the shoes and you have to see, you know, I think you start off and we, we can always say, okay, there's basic shoes that we could say, hey, here's the starting point. Neutral, simple foam, great upper. Start there. And then you start to, it's almost, I think people get into watch collecting or into whiskey or stuff like that. And I think that you have to start with like a staple. And then you start to figure out what it is that you like about a shoe, whether it's having a little bit of plate for stiffening agent and propulsion, or you like the super cush because you like to just cruise, maybe a rocker bottom versus something with a drop. So you start— it's almost like you find— like if you were going to collect whiskey, you find a group of friends or us online. And we're going to say, OK, if you liked this aged barrel whiskey. Guess what? This one is phenomenal. Yes, it's a little more expensive, but here's what you get for that. And it starts to become kind of like nuanced in, in taste. So it's really something that I don't think you just go to the store and pick out, okay, I want this, this, and this. When you start off running, you kind of need to find, get into the sport, start finding your people. To review stuff that you're like, yeah. And we tell people all the time, like, if your style doesn't align with our, our picks, go find someone else who does. I'm not telling you you have to read our reviews. I want you to find— I still want you to find the right running shoe. So sometimes that means you might watch a different shoe tuber or read other reviews that are more aligned with your style. 'cause people love to bash us and tell us that we're wrong. And I'm like, it's, at the end of the day, it is subjective. You know? I like when they bash us before the shoe's out. So they don't know. They're like, there's no way. I'm like, what has been your experience in running in this shoe? But just for an example, like a Cofuzi or I'm trying to think of somebody else who I know that we'll disagree with every once in a while. He's somebody that I respect his opinion. I think he, also very good at this. And there's times where I'll be like, he got that wrong. And I'm sure there's times where he looks at our review and he's like, they got that wrong. And it is subjective. It's not, you know, it is going to come down to the runner. I do think though, there is a bias on performance versus shoe reviews. And I kind of think of it as like, and I'm going to bring alcohol back into it. I always say it's like being a wine sommelier or a somme, I guess. But you don't have to get drunk to know and figure out what a wine is about, the flavor, the complexity, and all that stuff. You can take a sip, a smell, a swish, and spit it out. That's our— and I would equate that to almost our 20-mile review. I think it's just enough where if you have a bad first run, you get another run in, you know, okay, maybe the shoe breaks in a little bit and you kind of figure out that shoe. But for 90% of the time, I do think we put on a shoe almost immediately and we're like, that's it. Yeah.

What about like, because obviously a lot of brands, all the brands are available online right now too. Like there's quite a few people listening from the US, but there's quite some people international as well. They might have access to different shoes than like, so how do you go about, would you normally say though, initially go into a store, try on a few different ones and from there on you get an idea of what some of those basic things were, what you were saying with like, this much cushion, this much stack height, any of those things, or would you just say, make your best guess based on what some of the reviewers are saying and and try it on, get it at home. And because that's the thing, right? Like with the whole like ordering it online, then you get it mailed to your house. If it fits right, like then it's nice. Sometimes you don't know until you run into it, or sometimes you can go to an event and you try on demo shoes. Like, tell me a bit more there.

I mean, I would— I'm going to throw it to Robbie here in a second, but for me, they're all the brands have a basic trainer that you start off with. And I think that they sit down with their team and they're like, this is our staple offering. And from there, it kind of goes off in different directions, whether it's adding plates, stack height, softness, whatever. But every shoe kind of has that. And I think there's two ways you can find that. One, you can go into the store and tell them that you're new to running and you just want an hopefully they put you in a neutral. Yeah. Nike Vegas is your white paper. Brooks, show them this. Yeah. But the other thing I used to do— sorry, Asics, show them this, or Brooks. Brooks goes.

Yeah.

Yeah. The other thing I used to do was I would order 4 or 5 pairs of shoes from Running Warehouse when they had the free returns. And so basically what frustrated me is I would go to the local running store and they wouldn't have colors I wanted. And they would say, hey, do you want me to order that for you? And I'm like, I can order it myself. So Running Warehouse has a big selection. I would just order 5 pairs of shoes. I'd try them all, figure out which one I liked the best, send the other ones back even before it hit my credit card. And, you know, would experiment that way. Unfortunately, some people may abuse that, but I don't know, Robbie, how would you say, like, if someone was coming to you, like, because you have a lot of friends that start running, what What do you normally put them in? I, yes, I basically just tell them if anyone's starting to running, starting running, I usually just say something basic like the 1080 or I guess 880. Yeah. Or 880 or Ghost or I usually, I used to say Pegasus a lot. Now not so much, but cause I just feel like it hasn't changed much in the last 10 years.

I can't believe neither of you have said Evo SL. I was waiting for that to be the first thing. It is.

I mean, we love that shoe, but that's, That's like a unicorn in the space because it's better than any beginner should get on their feet. You should probably have a shitty shoe to start with. That's honestly what I was thinking. I was like, I don't want you to experience the best running shoe in the last 5 years for the first thing. You need to earn your stripes. Yeah. But yeah, then there's shoes like that that are just— I mean, Clifton 880, Nimbus, Even now, like the Novablast, like there's a whole host of like right down the middle. I usually tell people Novablast, and that's a perfect— the shoe, it's got a nice level of cushioning. It feels great. It looks pretty good. It's not super expensive. It's lightweight. And that's the beauty right now. There is— I think there's more choices in the $140 to $150 range right now. That are like really good shoes than ever before. I feel like they're, it's always been like they've moved that up to the $160 to $180 price range. Yeah. But right now I'm like, I love the $150. It's probably my favorite section of shoes right now. I was just thinking this morning, I was like, there's the four horsemen of the apocalypse in the $140 range. It's like Novablast, Evo SL, Mizuno Neo Zen, and then New Balance SB V5. I think there's no— not Elite, I mean Rebel V5. I think those are like the 4 right now that in that— what'd you say, Mizuno Neo Zen? Yeah. Okay, $140 to $150 range. Those are the 4 that I'm like, if you get any of those shoes, you're probably gonna be pretty happy.

It is wild to see though how some of those prices of those shoes have changed over time, as in like, I remember indeed around $100, then $150 you could get pretty much all of the shoes, and then it started going up. I think once the carbon plated shoes came out, like, that just became a whole nother level of pricing right there.

Yeah, I mean, Vaporblast also helped lift the bar for everybody. Yeah, I mean, that— it came out at $225 and everybody was like, it's not even a race day shoe, this is ridiculous, crazy, why are they— we got so many comments that it was too expensive, and every time that shoe came out it was gone off the shelf. Like, yeah. On the flip side, you know, the Vaporfly came out 8 years ago and that was $250, and you can still get shoes just as good as the Vaporfly for $200— the first one for $250. So in, in some ways it stayed the same, especially at least on the higher end. I know they're starting to inch up and there's some $300 shoes and whatnot, but But for the higher-end racing shoes, it's been largely inflation-proof over the last 7 years. And I think about it, and Meg, when you look at race day shoes and you think about how much time you spend training, how much money you spend on nutrition, and we talk about the price of the shoe, but in reality, compared to some of the other costs, race entry, all that stuff, don't you think it's kind of worth it?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I'm someone who, trains in their race day shoes. We'll use it for a marathon and then put it in back into the training rotation and use it until it's completely dead. 'Cause I love the carbon plated shoes, but so I think you can, you can get your money's worth. Yeah.

So, so let's, let's zoom out a little bit here. There's, there's some people who have more experience than others listening to this. Like when I first got into running, I just thought a running shoe is a running shoe. And then all of a sudden I realized Hey, they make different shoes for trail running than for road running. And then you mentioned race day shoes and carbon plated shoes. Can you just zoom out a little bit and maybe Megan, you can share a little bit more about the different types of shoes high level there?

Well, I laughed when you said that as a beginner, you realized there was different shoes because the first pair of shoes that I purchased, I got because I saw them online and they looked pretty and I was strictly running on roads, and this was an Under Armour trail shoe. I wore it one time and I got like the gnarliest blisters. And I—

did anyone tell you not to buy that shoe?

Thomas did advise me, and I was like, he, that he doesn't know, whatever. Um, but so it's— I get it, it's, it's pretty overwhelming, especially as a beginner runner, to come in and know nothing about shoes. Um, so yeah, there are different categories. There's road running shoes, there's trail running shoes, and then once you get into those sectors. There's daily trainers, there's race day shoes, there's tempo shoes, and yeah, recovery shoes. It can be pretty overwhelming.

Max Cush.

Yeah.

The craziest thing now is, especially on the trail side, you're getting into like some really granular stuff, like the gravel shoes and the, there's just like terrain specific, like the, the bro, what's the Brooks shoe? The Agile, Catamount Agile, which is just for vertical kilometers. I'm like, This is insane. But it's super interesting, especially in trail, because I feel like for a lot of trails, you could get away with a Puma DV8 Nitro or a Nike Pegasus. If you have a shoe with decent traction, you can kind of get away with it. I'd say it depends on the— when we go out west and it's like the buffed down trail— That's what I'm saying. Out west, you could pretty much get away with a road shoe on most stuff. Yeah. Like out here it's a little more gnarly, but it is, I do love the, the different marketing for the many different varieties of trail shoes. I would say though, to add on to what Megan's saying about the different shoes, like typically what we'll recommend to someone who's actually getting into the sport and really loves it, like if I have a friend and he's like, I'm doing 20 miles a week, I'm like, just get yourself a good daily trainer that Maybe something like a Boston 13, where it's got a little pep if you need to do some speed work, or you could even use it for a shorter race or something like that. But then as you start to transition into like getting really seriously into the sport, you're going to get so much more enjoyment out of having a rotation and being able to pick a daily trainer for your easy run, then hit up a speed day shoe, which is going to feel much lighter and agile. Than you'd feel in your daily trainer. And then having, after you've had a tough workout or a long run, being able to throw on a max cushion shoe that just kind of dampens like the shock to your body from running is like the sweet spot for me. Mm-hmm.

What, what is your take on carbon plated shoes for recreational runners? Like at what point do you feel it makes sense?

I, I think it's really up to the individual runner because Look, they try to make it seem like, oh, it's putting so much extra on. Your foot is hitting the cement at a certain point. That's not moving. Inflexible. So the carbon plate, you know, you put that into a shoe, and depending on what they're using it for, I mean, sometimes it's just a stiffening agent to, you know, kind of take a little bit of that squish out of a very soft foam. And sometimes it's for propulsion and moving forward, which is going to put a little bit of strain on your Achilles. Or something like that as a lever action. But Meg runs in, like, you would run in plated shoes every day if you didn't have to test other shoes, right?

Yeah, I do love carbon-plated shoes, which I know is like kind of polarizing right now. It feels like a lot of people are like, you can't run in those every day. But at the same time, I think the brands recognized how much like fun a carbon-plated shoe is and that we don't just want it for race day, which is why all of a sudden we have what we call these super trainers where you have technically a daily trainer, but with all the features of a race day shoe. So it's got the really great foams, it's got a carbon fiber plate, and, but it's more of a structured, like daily trainer that you can use every single day.

And like a better upper.

Yeah. And so I'm in the camp of if you enjoy it and you're healthy running in carbon plated shoes, then why not use them all the time?

What about you, Robbie?

Yeah, I mean, I feel the same way. I'd say run in anything as long as you're not getting injured running in it. I mean, I've run in— like, that's the interesting thing here, especially because we run in so many different shoes that I don't run as many miles as Meg. I run half of that at most usually. So I run 25 to 30 miles a week if I'm not training for a marathon. You know, that's, I'll run in, because we review so many shoes, you're talking about I'm running in a different shoe each week pretty much. And sometimes that's, not sometimes, I'll have a workout and I'll run in something faster that we're testing out, like a race day shoe or in like the Nike Streakfly 2, which I've been running in. Or I'll, but I'll have these different shoes with 10mm drop and a 4mm drop and I don't go down to zero. I've learned my lesson from that. I leave the ultras to a different reviewer, but anything, it's always fluctuating and I've never, I mean, I haven't been injured, knock on wood, in several years, anything that would put me out for longer than a couple days. So I just, I don't put much stock in it. I feel like if, as long as you're not getting injured, then do what feels good. And especially since we've learned that carbon-plated shoes offer you that, that, that kind of all-around tool where you can go fast and do workouts and do long mileage, but it saves your legs for the next workout or the next day. Whereas if you're doing flats and running a hard workout at, you know, an 8-mile workout, you might— you're opening yourself to more injuries in that way if you're trying to stack mileage, you know. And that's a good point that Robbie brings up because a lot of people are like, oh, you minimal shoes strengthen your feet and this and that. I've been doing this long enough that I used to run marathons in basically racing flats. So I was running in the Fast Twitch or the, yeah, the Type A from Saucony. My PR's in the Kinvara and I remember You know, you used to run a marathon and your legs were just beat to hell afterwards. You felt like crap and you really did need that week off. Now you have to tell people to settle down because they're ready to go 2, 3 days after a marathon. They're, and they're probably fine to go run, but it's because these shoes now have, where you used to have to get the low weight from a shoe without a midsole. Now you can have 40 millimeters of stack under your foot. Feel great, get that cushioning, it's better for your body. So when people say, hey, you shouldn't be running in the carbon plate, I'm like, you guys, come on, man.

I said, no, no, totally.

The minimal shoes are the ones that broke my metatarsal. Yeah. But I even look back behind me, I don't know if it's on camera, but the DV8 Nitro is up there. And it's a shoe that is meant for daily training. It's got a great nitrogen-infused foam, and it's got a TPU plate in it, or a carbon— I think it's actually a carbon-infused plate. And that's the other thing, when we talk about carbon plates, the more we dig into it, the more we realize carbon plates are— there's nobody's making a pure carbon plate, it's always blended with something for— so it doesn't snap. But, you know, that's a great— that's a shoe that I would say to somebody starting off, Hey, put that shoe on, you're going to have a good time. And by the way, Mizuno has been doing plates for 25 years or longer, and nobody's complaining about that. Nobody was complaining about that. That's because I was wearing them. Yeah, exactly.

When the carbon-plated shoes first came out, I remember running one of my first races, and there was a very quick transition of no one had carbon-plated shoes to all of a sudden you would be at the start of a race. And I remember vividly, like, the noise it was making. It was all of a sudden very loud.

Yeah.

And I remember even running CIM back in the day, and sure enough, the whole front field was all like, click, click, click, click, click.

Yeah.

Then I ended up, um, probably after about 18 to 24 months, one of my friends gave me a pair. And like, finally, he was like, dude, like, just try these shoes. I promise you, it's so much better. And sure enough, once I ran in them, I was like, oh wow, what a difference this was. And then, yeah, I could really did tell that it was feeling more efficient. It felt like the pop, you get propelled forward, and yeah, it just generally felt really good.

So, you know, people say they're cheating shoes. I don't see them as cheating because you still have to be fit. Like, I'm still not running a sub-3 when I throw on my Vaporfly, um, unlike, uh, Meg here. But, uh, the, the thing about it is that it's the recovery I think is making it so people can train harder, they can train deeper and make it to the race healthy than they could before. And I think that's the, the real benefit of these shoes is how they treat the athlete's body as they're doing training and getting themselves to the start line.

For all three of you guys, what is the number one mistake you see runners make when picking running shoes?

Listening to one of our competitors. Yeah. I mean, Megan gave you a perfect example. It's like following the look of the shoe rather than being, you know, I will say that's a big one. Yeah.

But I'm going to defend myself a little bit here because I think it's really important, especially as a new runner, to be excited to lace up your shoes and get out the door because when you first start running, it sucks. Like, no one likes it. It's hard. And until you get a little bit of fitness built up, you, you have to be like dedicated to go out there and, and run again. So I think having a pair of shoes that aesthetically look nice but also perform well, uh, is important.

I'll say the biggest mistake I think, uh, new runners make though, is they buy the shoe size that they wear for casual shoes in running shoes. And here's my big gripe with the running industry in general. If you know everybody needs a half size up, why isn't that just a 10 instead of— why do I got to go 10.5? I should just be wearing 10. But like, they got to make it more complicated, and everybody's got to go up. But if you don't go up when your foot expands, obviously, you're going to get bloody toenails, blisters, all that stuff. And I do think, you know, as much as we try to help people online make choices, it wouldn't be a bad idea to go to your local running store and get fit to make sure that the shoe is fitting correctly. I don't say you have to always, you know, maybe stay in that ecosphere, but, you know, there's definitely like local running stores that I look up to and stuff that I think are going to try to put runners in the best shoes, not just what's being spiffed or they're incentivized to be selling. Yeah.

So, so how much, how much bigger would that be just for, just so we have a general answer here, like US size, one, one size bigger? Half size.

Half a size. US usually seems half size. Yeah. US. Yeah. Obviously though, different from runner to runner. Dude, I tell you the European one though, we got Kiprun, we went out there and they gave you, I have no idea what size shoe I put on. Yeah. Like They started me with a 44 and I think I ended up in a 42 and I'm like, I don't know what that is. Yeah. You need like a physics degree to figure out how to fit into European shoes. I have no idea.

Don't even get me started about miles and inches and Fahrenheit, man.

Fair.

I'll give you that. I could see that too. I mean, I feel like the US sizing is much more— wait, don't you think Fahrenheit kind of works? It's 0 when it's really cold and 100 is really hot. Celsius, I'm like, where am I? Completely arbitrary.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, in a way. I mean, we're right, of course. Yeah. I would say the biggest mistake is, I don't know if this is the biggest mistake, but going cheap on running shoes. Like part of, part of also choosing why, if you, if you choose a shoe on the looks alone, there are some very good looking cheap running shoes. I mean, even like, dude, I, people end up in lifestyle shoes and you see people running in lifestyle shoes. Yeah. So that's, and I would say like, that's, it's tough for anyone to know that because you just see a shoe and you're like, Well, it says on, especially this is a problem with Nike. If you go to running shoes on Nike's website or Adidas, it'll return every athletic shoe that they have pretty much. And it is impossible to discern from the Nike Juniper trail shoe or the, what's the, what's like the very budget one for Nike? It's like the Windflow or something like that. Yeah, like the Windflow versus something that's, you could be on sale. You could get the Pegasus on sale for $80., and it'll be almost the same price and it's a totally different experience. And that, that's also a good point that Robbie brings up is that if you are on a budget and even $150 might seem like a lot, we get two bumps on the website. We get when a shoe first comes out, everybody wants to learn about the shoe, so they come and read the review or check it out. Sometimes Robbie does like first look, and so there's like all the information about the shoe. Maybe we haven't finished our miles in it or whatever. But then the second bump comes when that shoe goes on sale. All of a sudden we see the traffic on those reviews go back up. It's kind of like an echo. And there is like, if you wait a year and on a shoe and you get it on closeout, you're still getting it. If we reviewed it and it was a great shoe, I guarantee when you pull it out of that box, the foam's going to last that 6, 7 months, 8 months, a year. That it was sitting on a shelf in an air-conditioned warehouse. And sometimes the newest version isn't better than the last version. So that's another reason I think it is good to read the reviews. We'll tell you like, hey, it feels different this time around. We even say pick up this on sale now. Yeah, we'll say it. And a lot of times you can— now shoes like the Superblast, that's never going to go on sale, but you can get some other shoes that especially some of the base model type things for, for a lot more reasonable price.

I have to remind myself though, even, even picking up like some older Alpha Flies and like trying to find them online and just buying like 3 at once, uh, just to load up.

That was a perfect example of one that we did not like, the Alpha Fly 2. So Meg and I were big proponents of preaching Go get the Alpha Fly 1. So we had—

that's exactly what I did.

Yeah. Yeah. We had people DMing us all the time. Where can I get, you know, this, do you know anybody who has it in stock? This and that, because they're the same people. We're like, okay, I like that. Now the 3 came out and I think it's an improvement over the 2, but I still think the 1 is—

I think I'm fully on board with 3 now. Okay.

Yeah. I mean, and honestly, if you're really, really on a budget, you can find some pretty good deals on. Poshmark or eBay, like, yeah, they might have 50 miles, but some shoes, people, there are a lot of people that buy a lot of shoes and that have a lot of money and they just say, oh, this shit didn't work for me. I ran 50 miles in it and they offload it for $50, you know, $40. And you can find some great pickups. The best deal though, that I know of those platforms is if you come to the Believe On Club, because we put our old, like, types of shoes. In a box here and say 3. If you're a men's 10.5, women's 7.5, or men's 7.5, come to Lead Run Club Thursday nights in Baltimore. Probably pick up something.

Earlier, Thomas, you mentioned some of your earlier shoes that you've ran in, like you ran marathons in very flat shoes, little cushion. It got me thinking, when I experimented with all sorts of different shoes and I ran in some of the Vivo Barefoot. And I was like, let's just give this a try. I was wearing them for daily wear and I was like, forgot my running shoes at one point. Let's just go for a run. And at first it was a few miles and then later I was like, oh, let's just go on a 10-miler on like this minimal drop shoe or like minimal shoe. My feet were so tender and so sore and like it literally took several days to recover from that. And yeah, I think once again, everyone is different, but also like having to your body takes a long time to adjust to some of these things. And I think sometimes I hear these stories out there of like, yeah, minimal shoe is the best and it's like you should be running in this and people literally get injured because of it. And I would kind of like to hear your guys' perspective on minimal footwear, zero drop, wide toe box.

Just— Yeah, I mean, I think for me, I went through the minimal phase. So like when I started the website, it was right after, or right after I started it, Born to Run came out and people really, the minimal craze went nuts. Vivo barefoot. I used to run in the Merrell Trail Glove and the glove at that time, you know, I was using a lot of low stack or even zero stack, you know, minimal shoes. And I ended up breaking a bone in my foot and just overuse without having any kind of cushion. Now that turned me off to it, but I do see the advantage for people who want to strengthen their feet or do that. But I, I think like the way that I would probably go about that is if I wanted to do that, maybe go to a field, like a soccer field or something like that, take your shoes off and just do a couple laps back and forth on the field. I wouldn't necessarily, and just kind of that, that should be enough to get if you really want that. Free feeling and strengthen your feet. But yeah, then when we get into Altras and I hate the wide toe box shoe.

Yeah.

I mean, I just, yeah. I like a shoe that looks good. Like, I hate to say it, I like a shoe that looks good. And I don't think, I know they slimmed down since they were bought out, but it's— But like foot shape is so— I just don't, I can't get with it. My foot is not shaped like that. Like I do know people who have Barney Rubble-shaped feet. Yeah. Jared, like Jared should be in Altras all the time, except for they're too narrow in the arch area. Yeah. And I'm not against anyone who wants to go barefoot. I just have friends and know plenty of people who go. I have friends that run barefoot. You will not know any, you don't know any. No, it just sounds like that. You know, like, oh yeah. Like, I know people who like the, barefoot world are crazy. What's crazy is that it's come back around. Like it's now hot again, which I thought it, it's like Mumford and Sons. I thought they were going to die off and now Noah Kahan's big again. I thought it's the same deal. It's like, I thought barefoot running would die off and now it's come back around where it's huge with Vivobarefoot or Xero or any of these other brands. Like we're, I'm having people review barefoot running shoes because there's a huge interest in it.

See, in my mind, they're coming back for those people that didn't get them in the first round because like we know, like running is becoming bigger. Like I, like Thomas, I ran a marathon in the New Balance 1400, which was like a, there was like, like no midsole.

And I remember it was, it was basically, it was probably like 7 millimeters.

Yeah. And I was in so much pain. My feet hurt at mile 18 and I was like, no, no wonder this marathon thing is so hard.

I mean, it was probably 15 millimeters with a 5 millimeter drop, you know, like in 5 in the front.

But yeah, so I think for those of us who were running during the minimalist movement, I mean, at least personally, I would never go back to it.

But it's even outside of running though, and the general public has become a huge thing. I mean, in the last 3, 4 years, Matt Choi and his brother love the Vivobarefoot one. And I get it that coming from the gym culture and saying this will help strengthen your feet. I don't know if you're going to buy into it, but they do look a little bit better than they used to. They look a little bit better. But I'll just say, like, cushion feels great. And there's a reason why shoes keep getting taller right now is it feels so good and you can get more miles in. So if your body can handle more miles and do more training, I think it all depends also what you want. If you really want to put high mileage in, I wouldn't recommend a barefoot style shoe or a low midsole shoe because you're going to just beat the hell out of your body. And it's also, do you want to spend the next 3 years of your life committing to that ecosystem? Because you can't do both. You can't do minimal and then go to a 40mm stack, right? Like, you need to buy into that whole world.

I think the only way that I do it now though, Robbie, is like I wear like a Vivo during the day or when I go to the gym and then like when I go on a run, I have like some more stack on. Makes sense.

So it's kind of, kind of— I see people lifting with them who don't wanna wear lifting shoes. Robbie and I are lifting out and I'll tell you what, that's a case of like me going from an area where I know footwear to where I don't. And we went to the gym and I wore like a CrossFit shoe the first time. 'cause all I had for lifting and trying to do squats in it compared to doing it in a real weightlifting shoe. That's the kind of difference I don't think people understand in running shoes. If I hadn't had someone say to me at that gym, no, you can't use that shoe for what you're doing. You want this shoe. It changed the whole way that the lift felt. So that's the kind of thing that I forget when we're talking about running shoes and we give advice. We can change your experience. We can help you get the most out of your running and feel the best. And, you know, that's, I think, the main goal of what Believe in the Run is doing is we're trying to expose people to what's available out there and that's going to make running more enjoyable, whether it's finding a style you like or even apparel that you like, down to a feeling once you hit the cement.

So well said. I want to transition for a minute like to a few other items, meaning are there any other like underappreciated or underrated items within running? Something that might not be flashy, but that can really improve your running experience. And I will bring one up. For example, for me, discovering what a good headlamp can make a difference, like having a proper bright headlamp that adjusts based on like distance or based on like brightness. That really changed for me, like the running experience of early morning runs, late evening, or late evening runs. But curious if there's anything from your guys' end.

I'm a headlamp dork, so I'm totally with you. Wait, I have to— How do you run in the city where there's lights? I have, dude, I have to look at the ground the whole time because I'm afraid of losing my ankle.

What's your, what is your go-to headlamp actually since you are a headlamp I like the Petzl's, like the, like I have one of the old school Petzl headlamps and they've, they've updated them a few times over the year. I don't like the one with like the separate battery pack. No, I don't like that one either. Just a simple one with, that works pretty well.

That, the Actic Core or the Actic, yeah, I think. Yeah, I believe that's what it is. My favorite is the Black Diamond Sprinter. It's like the, or Sprint 225. It's like a little tiny square. It's like super intuitive, has multiple— you can like hold the button in so you get different brightnesses. It's like $35, maybe it's more. That's my favorite. But then I think the— I would say as far as more underrated items that improve your run, obviously PATH Project's running shorts. Yeah, no, I would say I, this is actually my favorite thing. And I, I would say Merino is just, especially during colder weather, is such a lifesaver in every respect. Like I have, I use it, I have Smartwool gloves. I use the Smartwool neck gaiter, which is, I think is my favorite thing for cold weather running. Cause you can turn it into like headgear or. Cover your face during when you're starting out, keeps your neck warm. That's my favorite piece of gear. Or just like a merino base layer. It changes everything. You're giving like advanced right now. Like, I think if you're talking to a beginner, people don't invest in socks. They wear like a cotton sock. Yeah. And you're like, hey, you know, you get a much better feeling and you spend— it's funny, you can spend $300 on a shoe or $200 on a shoe. And then someone will cheap out on the socks. Yeah. Well, that's what I'm saying is that you'll get, people will just buy a, you know, $30 thing at the outlet, like a New Balance running shirt, which is fine, but it's going to, especially in the wintertime, if you're sweating and trying to wash it all the time, it's going to, it's going to, that stink sets in after a while. Like, dude, you don't, Robbie will wear, he'll like, You love the Tracksmith Merino Wool base layer. And Robbie can wear it multiple days without washing it. I wear it one time and it smells like an onion farm. Like, I don't know. I don't understand. I actually don't understand how it's possible.

Yeah.

But I think— is there— did you not wash it before and like leave it in the hamper and it has it in there? Maybe I let them marinate too long. Yeah. Because I have other, and Tracksmith's only like 50% Merino. So there's other Merino that I have, it's 100% that is, yeah, I feel like I could wear it for 2 weeks straight without washing it. Yeah. And it doesn't get anything. You're a fortunate man. Your body odor is low. I don't know. That's my favorite though is, yeah. What about you, Meg?

Yeah, Meg. So this doesn't apply to any of you guys unfortunately, but a sports bra with a pocket. In fact, now they've got like multiple pockets, but the one that I love is the, just the back pocket where you can slip your phone. It's just so convenient and nice. But now there's Bandit and Rabbit and a few other brands have made them where they also have the gel pockets on the side. So you don't have to carry like a Spy Belt or anything extra on you. It's just all built into your sports bra, which is lovely.

Can I give you one other thing? Isn't that my favorite? I love talking about gear. So the Janji Multi-Pass Sling Bag is probably my favorite running accessory, which I use all the time. He does use it all the time.

If you had a pocket sports bra, though, would you use it?

Maybe not. Yeah, he would, because he's— Robbie doesn't use it just for running. Yeah, so like, I brought it. I was hanging out with some friends this past weekend, and I didn't bring my running water bottle. I was like, why would I need that? But I brought, I had that bag and one of my friends wanted to go on an 8-mile run. And I'm like, I just grabbed a 20-ounce water bottle, filled it up, put it in my sling bag. And it was like perfect for just, you know, when we're, especially when we're traveling and going around and you want to carry, like I like to carry a camera or something. It's great for that. Oh, most overrated piece of running gear, sunglasses. I think. I think a good pair of sunglasses is good. I think Goodr's are a little too cheap, but you can find a good sunglass for less— sunglasses for less than $100. And I think once you get into that other range of like District Vision, some of the $300, $400 sunglasses, it's— I don't think— it's like kind of like wine, like you said. I think a nice mid-level bottle of wine is all you need. And after that, the You're not— the gains aren't worth the price. Yeah, I would agree. I don't know. See, I'm watching it from my son starting to run now. So I'm, I'm seeing like him discover like what he needs. And obviously like everybody should have a decent pair of gloves, but you can go again. It's like the wine thing that Robbie's talking about. You can get— we, we sometimes will just buy like on Amazon, like a 20-pack of like those, knit, like gloves. And those are fine for like a lot of stuff, like for, I'd say, especially in the fall and the spring and definitely for races, 'cause you can toss them. Yeah, that's the best. $3 a pair. But then, you know, having a good pair, like the kind that you can pull a shell over your fingers if it gets too cold, definitely winter running, like a solid glove will save your run. Like it will make a big difference. Yeah. And then, you know, and this also is an area where you need to figure out what level you're at, but a GPS watch, something that you can track your runs, makes running more enjoyable. And so some people will say less enjoyable, but it just depends on how you use the data. And you, like, I don't dig too deep into my data. I kind of check, okay, where's my heart rate today? On that run because that run felt a little harder than normal. Yeah. Okay. Maybe my sleep elevated my heart rate or something like that, but being able to participate in stuff like Strava and have that data so that you can kind of— I don't think you should be daily checking your data and measuring yourself against it. What I think though, I like about the Strava, you can see your fitness over time. And you can go, okay, what's different about what I'm doing now that's working? What's different that wasn't working? I know you're big into the heart rate training, so obviously a good GPS watch and probably a heart rate monitor would be something. I mean, I do like my Coros. Yeah, the Coros, man. The Coros Armband is the best, in my opinion. And the Coros, that's another thing that I think most runners just will be quite fine with something like the Coros Pace. 3. Would you go Pace Pro or Pace 3? I like the Pace Pro because it— for the brighter display. But even the Pace 3, it's like, that's all— that's really all you need. And it's great accuracy, great battery life. You get your GPS correct. I would say the only thing is when people start stepping up into ultra distances and you want to make sure that you have a battery that if you're like Robbie and forgot to charge your battery before you're going to do a 50-miler, it'll still get you through it, or a 5-miler.

Yeah. I will add to that. But the, I, I do think the external heart rate monitor is a big one too, purely like if you want the, if you want the data, like I hate the chest strap. Yeah. So this is where I think the arm strap, like, yeah, like Coros or Polar or some of these others have, like, is a really good option there. It's just less restrictive with the breathing and it works well.

Dude, do you find those to be pretty accurate?

The, yeah, like what I ended up doing, like when, when Coros came out with their armband, Ended up running a marathon and I had one with a chest strap with one watch and then one with the arm strap with the other watch. And we overlapped the data in one of the softwares that they had for Coros and it was literally mostly the same up to 1 or 2 beats difference throughout the whole, like a 3-hour marathon.

So, so yeah.

Yeah.

That's, that's good to know. Yeah. My, my coach hates me whenever I forget to wear my armband, which is 50% of the time. Well, because you mentioned it the other day, I wasn't like, I haven't been religious about it. And the other day you mentioned it. And so I like threw it on for my, that trail run thing. Cause I was like, I want to see, you know, my heart shot out of my chest. But I've also, the nice thing is like Coros made that open-ended so you can use it on like other devices. So I was using my Wahoo. Treadmill and the heart rate, thanks to their app and thanks to Zwift, thanks to all that. Yeah. And that was good to use because you, you can see it in live time what's going on. And I could notice, like, I could change my heart rate by just taking a deep breath and like letting it out. Like there's like, I found that I had like ways to kind of like concentrate on lowering the heart rate as I was running, even if I was —add more to that.

Makes a big difference for me. It's sometimes even like not overthinking it. And the more relaxed I am, even if that's 4 or 5 miles into a run, I all of a sudden start seeing the heart rate drop versus like at the beginning it's kind of all over. But yeah. Yeah. I wanna be respectful of your guys' time. I have 2 last questions. One, Megan, I remember seeing you run the Chicago Marathon. I was there, I believe it was 2023. I first saw Sifan Hassan coming through. And then she was flying. She ended up winning the race, and then you were coming through, and you were absolutely— Right behind her. Right behind her. No, seriously, like, I knew you were a fast runner, but seeing you flying through like that, I was cheering from the top of my lungs. So that was really exciting to see. I'm just curious for all three of you guys, have you ever, or what has been been like one of the breakthrough moments for you in your running? Like, if there's been one part of training that you remember that stood out to you, or one part of race day that stood out to you, has there been anything that was like a very special moment to you?

Oh, I love Chicago, and that's still my PR right now. And it's funny you said I was flying in there because I felt like I was jogging it at the end there. But in 2022, I sort of changed our whole diet around running and realized that I was underfueling and not hydrating, hydrating enough during especially like the long runs with maybe some marathon pace work in them. And all of a sudden I was going out for these 20, 22-mile runs and not only hitting my paces, but feeling totally fine afterwards and great for the rest of the day and like a normal functioning human. And stacking those over and over again, um, throughout training for one block. I remember I had like a 6-minute PR in Boston, which is not typically a PR course. Um, and it was the best I had ever felt in a race. And I, I literally stopped my watch at the end and I was like, oh man, I must have paused my watch somewhere in the middle of the race cuz there's no way I just ran a 2:48, like absolutely not.

And, and, and it's, I think it all goes back to fueling properly.

That's can make, make or break a race for sure.

That's a big one. So yeah. I don't know about a breakthrough. I do feel like, you know, I, as you know, I started doing the heart rate, heart rate training that you, you recommended on your podcast and your program that a couple years ago, and I haven't been 100% dedicated to it. I think there's just a lot of variables there with some of the stuff we do, but I will say that my easy runs are now, since then, have been way easier. So I think it's interesting when I'm training for marathon, marathon, like last training block in the fall where I did, where I did get a PR in Berlin. You know, my long runs or training runs would be in the 9:15 to 9:30 range, which probably to a lot of people, I, I do often wonder that if they see my runs with Strava and think like, I don't know, it seems very slow when you're going for a, I don't know, 7:40 pace marathon. But it is. And even when you're running those paces, you feel, but I, I look at Kapusi and he opened that up for me. Yeah, he does a good, yeah, he does great with it. Yeah. And I think, uh, even, even when I'm running those, I sometimes, and you feel, and you have a day where you feel terrible when you're running a 9:30 pace for 5 miles. I'm like, how am I gonna do this for a marathon? Yeah. But it all comes together in the end. It's really, I feel like that was really cool to see. And I had really haven't been injured, like I said, much, especially since I've kept it, tried to keep it slow for most of my runs. So that's been really helpful, uh, for me. I'm going to go back in time for mine. When I first started running, probably the first 3 marathons, I just did mileage. So it was, you know, I'd look at it and the coach would say, okay, run this many miles. And I didn't have any speed work. So I finally got a coach and like, like a person that was Caleb Mathlin at the time. And Caleb's like, hey, you need to incorporate speed work into your training. And I think when I started working with him, my marathon, it was like a 3:59 something. And I started working with him and I dropped it down. I did the Arizona Rock and Roll and I dropped it down to 3:45. And I said, you know, I think I wanna try to go for a BQ. And at the time, the BQ is still pretty much the time it is for me now, which is ridiculous. But it was 3:20. And so, uh, we trained for it, we ran Marine Corps, and he actually paced me for it. And, uh, we ended up hitting 3:20. Unfortunately, they moved the time that year, and, uh, I was a month late, um, on that time. But it was really, you know, I kept thinking that I would just get faster doing the same thing every day. Like, if I ran 6 miles every day and then a long run on the weekend, I would get faster. And all it did was keep me— I was like consistently at one pace. And then adding in tempo runs and then some speed work into the long runs, all of a sudden I saw huge gains from that almost immediately. Unfortunately, since then I haven't seen anything that's helped that much, but I'm kind of the opposite as the elder statesman in the room. My, like right now I'm just, I'm trying to maintain and not lose everything and just kind of stick with it. So I'm actually going to try something that I've never tried. I'm working with the Eternal team and out of you, they have New York and I think San Francisco right now for places that you can get. Basically, it's a team of people that they do all the testing on you, blood work, physical, Everything, DEXA scan, and then they all work together to try to figure out a plan for you to be your healthiest and strongest in the sport that you choose. So you're going to keep you alive forever. That's the thing, actually, it's one of the things I brought up to him. I was like, I don't want to live forever. Like literally, I just don't want to, like my biggest fear and like, I don't know about you guys, my biggest fear is lingering. I don't want to be someone with a disease that is incapacitated and is not participating in life and sticking around. Yeah. Like I've told Meg several times, pillow over the face.

You know, I, I, so I think we'll know how it happened.

Yeah. I do have a shotgun if something, if I get like a bad diagnosis.

Oh God. See, you're going to go the Brian Johnson route.

You're, you're going to go the Brian Johnson route. I was thinking, I was thinking Yeah, it'll be one round. I'll go someplace outside the house so you don't have to clean it up. I'll volunteer. I have enough practice with the rats in my alleyway.

Thomas, how about, have you played around with like, all right, whatever you did to get to 320 shape, and so probably the combination of indeed some of the heart rate training and then lower heart rate training than the higher intensities. But then even, I don't know how much you have played around with heat, like deliberate heat exposure, like 4 times a week up to max exertion, like in the weeks leading up to the race and then taking a break from that. And even high altitude training. Like if you're talking about these last dials, like I think there's some fascinating things happening in like the, the heat exposure, like probably combined with cold exposure, but to a lesser degree.

I keep telling Meg I want a sauna.

Man, is that what you're— like it's the best investment. I bought one like 12 years ago. I've had a few different ones, but it's definitely—

I need recommendation for sure.

Like, we'll, there's like a variety of different ones. You just gotta decide if you want like a dry hot one or if you wanna go like the infrared one.

But I would do a dry hot one. I like dry hot. Yeah. That's, that's—

So you're using that post-run or post-workout?

So what I even do is I do my long run or my inter higher intensity sessions, come back and already have the sauna warm and just jump in it. And like, it's a really nice way to— like, you're already sweating and you just kind of keep going. And then like, in an ideal world, like, you build it up over time. But if you do like a few different sessions in there, like, I like going in it for 20 minutes, come out for a bit, go back again for 20 minutes.

I just be— I feel like I'd be dumping like Gatorade cores of Element, like, just— I'm into this, the whole box. I just like this, like, even Even if it did nothing for performance.

Oh no, but I, so you're saying that this is like helps your race day.

Okay. I will say before you answer that question, my best race, my best 2 races, it was in the 30s when the race started.

Well, the, the interesting part is you just improve your sweat ability. So more of your body's temperature goes to, or like your energy goes to cooling your body down. Well, like a lot of energy. Like if, if you just look at the cardiac drift that's happening and you can have less cardiac drift happening 'cause your body can cool itself down, there's absolutely benefits for that. And you can do that whether you do that through sauna training or you like ended up wearing like extra layers of clothes and you go on some high intensity sessions. There's a variety of ways you can do it. But yeah, I definitely think it's one of the dials that you can play around with.

I will say last, because I was training for Berlin in the fall and, uh, I pretty much procrastinate every day and push my run back to as late as possible. So I was quite often running in 85 degrees with humidity in the afternoon. And, uh, I do feel like, I don't know, anecdotally maybe, but I felt like that helped a lot come race day when we got that 45 degrees. And yeah, I mean, I mean, it's the same. We, you know, if you don't train, if you're training through the winter and then you run a hot day in Boston, it's absolutely miserable. Dude, remember, remember training for New York and then we had that hot day? Yeah. Oh geez. And it was like, I mean, London was warm. Yeah. I mean, it, it was, it, I'm like, I mentally was prepared for a hot day, so I was okay with slowing down and just being like there. If I had, if I had been in my phase where I was like, it's gotta be this, I need to have this time, I would've been freaked out. Yeah. And then do you, after you do the sauna, do you jump into your, your chest freezer filled with ice in your garage?

Actually, actually often I don't because I feel like it just cools me down too much. Okay. So I, I often just go out for like 30 seconds or a minute and then go back in again.

All right, we're getting a sauna. Bobby, you wanna come over and hotbox? Office sauna? Your neighbors already talk about it enough.

There you go. One last question over here. There's quite a few listeners, like recreational runners, just looking to improve in their running. So do you have any closing thoughts, any advice to become a stronger, healthier, happier runner?

I mean, it sounds corny, but for me, it's it's really concentrating on your enjoyment in the sport and not comparing yourself to peers. Or I think what happens is it's not like you compare yourself to Eliud Kipchoge or, you know, one of, one of the other top people. You compare yourself to someone who's maybe similar abilities to you and you start going, okay, I see they did a 20-mile run and they ran it at this pace. Maybe I should You start to like doing this comparison in your head, and what it ends up doing is just taking any enjoyment out of your own run. And, and you become either envious or prideful depending on where you're falling. And with running being as fickle as it is, you're gonna be on both ends of those sticks sooner or later. You're gonna be having a good day, you're gonna be having a crappy day. But if you're comparing yourself to other people or concentrating too much on the end result for the pace or something like that. Some of my best runs have been the ones where I've just not cared and I go out and I just feel good. And, you know, I, I can guess where the pace is going to be, but I don't care. And I'm just rolling and it just feels great. And some days those are fast runs and some days those are— I think I'm going, you know, 7-minute mile and I get home and it says 9:30, you know, it's like, whatever. But that you have to For me, it's getting back to the— I really love moving my body, being out in the world. Like, we live in a beautiful place by the water that, you know, kind of knowing that I'm out in the morning getting my exercise, it's like, that's— it's— what do they say? If you can't pay for it, it's invaluable. There you go. Priceless. That's the one I'm looking I don't know. What about you, Robbie? Uh, yeah, I would say I kind of the same thing. I, when I did the heart rate training for you the first time, I felt like that broke me of the Strava mindset because I was running so slow. I was like, ah, I just have to like not care what other people see on Strava or think. Um, cause I think even these first few years of Being with Believe in the Run, there was even an imposter syndrome, like, oh, I'm not a real runner if I'm not running a 2:30 marathon or something. And then you just have to let that go. And after, when I was doing the heart rate training and just kind of just gave up on caring, it's been so much better. Like, I, I actually don't even really check Strava anymore. I just, I'll still upload my runs so I have the data. Just to see how much I ran that year. And I think people like to see what shoes we're running in. But I don't, I feel bad sometimes because I don't know what any of my friends are running. Like I'll hear 2 months later that they ran a marathon PR, happy for you, but I had no idea. And so I think that's, that helps a lot is just dial back from the Instagram influencers or just in general. I do think that you bring up an important thing though, like The reason why I do show my Strava workouts, my paces, everything, I want to be as transparent as possible is because we are asking people to trust our opinion on product issues. So I use Strava as a transparency of, okay, here's how many miles I'm running right now. Here's the, you know, the paces we're putting in and stuff like that. So. In, in that case, I, I think it's a valuable tool for just kind of transparency. Yeah. But the comparison thing you just gotta let go of because you just, you're never gonna be, it's, you're just gonna be who you are and what your training is. It's not gonna, uh, it doesn't do you any good to compare yourself to others.

Um, I would probably piggyback off of both of those things and say consistency is the most important, which you're not gonna be consistent if you're not enjoying the sport. And cuz I think everyone likes to have that like one flashy workout or like really good race or something really exciting, but it, that all stems from just getting out the door every single day and getting in some miles and doing some really mundane, boring workouts and just stacking those on top of each other, which I think maybe doesn't look very exciting. But I think just keeping consistent over time is how you're going to see the best progress.

What about hydration?

That was a big thing for you.

Also fueling. Fueling is very important. Staying hydrated.

And Megan, it's even going to become more important when you guys have the new sauna in your house.

True. Very true. So before we leave, Floris, before we leave, I got to say, as much as I love running shoes and everything and reviewing running shoes, as a skateboarder, The still the best shoe of all time is the Eric Koston 1 from back like 1997, '96. Still the number one best shoe of all time. I don't know if you saw the New Balances just came out with a new skate shoe and I did. Yeah. Then the Andrew Reynolds one, I think Andrew Reynolds is doing one with New Balance.

But then again, going back to the S1, I instantly, the moment you say that, I already think about Eric Koston video part of Manic Matty because that was the shoe he was wearing. And oh yeah, going back to Megan's point, it's so important. Like sometimes the way gear looks on you, like it makes you feel a certain way. And even that, like, so instantly when you said that, I can relate.

So yeah, yeah. Well, I think it's funny that all three, you know, three of us have a strong attachment to skateboarding. And obviously I think that was a starting ground for the type of vibe that we wanted to have. Whipple Lead in the Run was similar to that love of gear in skateboarding where trucks mattered, wheels mattered, the grip tape way that you put it on your skateboard mattered, the clothing that went along with it, having the right gear to then signal to other people that, you know, where you were in the sport. All that mattered. And then combining that with what I used to love about like the skate shop the record store, that it wasn't a place that was like for commerce. It was a place to hang out that just happened to have stuff that if you wanted to purchase it, you could purchase it there. Yeah. And that's kind of like, I don't know what we do intentionally to make that happen at Believe in the Run, but I think that that is part of our DNA.

Yeah. No, so well said. And I think it comes from a very authentic place and it naturally draws to people that are in line with that. So awesome. Thank you guys so much. Seriously, really enjoyed this. I don't know, when are we gonna run some miles together again? I know Robbie, you and I ran in Austin. That was nice. Sure, we'll see each other.

Yeah, unfortunately, where are we now? Unfortunately, you're on a different coast. Where are you right now?

You're in California?

Yeah, I'm in Southern California. So we'll be out there for Western States.

All right. That's June, right? So yeah, maybe, maybe we'll see you at Western States or otherwise.

Yeah, you can watch me suffer at high altitude. I'm gonna have to use the sauna. Are you running it? Oh yeah, I'm definitely running it. So I'm gonna climb to the top of, whatchamacallit, the first lookout space. I forget what it's called. The Floris Gierman. Yeah, the government. We went to it last year and I don't think that Carl and I were ready for what that was. So, I mean, we'd even run a race on that mountain the couple days earlier, but they were like, oh, you, you get up at 6 and you go to the top of the escarpment and catch the runners. I think we got up at 4, 4 in the morning, and you hike up to the escarpment. And this is just the beginning. This is the first, I don't know, 3 miles of the Western States 100 miles, right? And we, like, it, it, it was something like we were, Taylor was even a little tired going up there. I think probably not that bad. Yeah. He was probably just trying to be nice. They did the whole thing in the dark without headlamps, by the way, cuz they're fools. Yeah. Now this year I'm gonna get that black diamond thing that Robbie's talking about because literally going up I think Carl may have twisted his ankle once, I think, just going up it.

Yeah, it was, it was a hike. Awesome.

Well, my, my TR there then. So what, what do you do? Are you going to do JFK 50?

Won't be a JFK 50. We have a, we have a few other ones lined up. Um, that one this year.

So I'm trying to get as many friends together to do. I think we have like 10 people. Yeah, we have a lot. When is JFK 50? Uh, November. Last week in November, I think, or right before, a week before Thanksgiving. Yeah. I'm thinking that we do New York City as a training run. That's what my coach recommends. Yeah, he did. All right. But he also says not to do a fast full marathon. Oh, well, he doesn't want you getting injured. He's a good coach.

Yeah. I, I, there you go. Good. Well, thank you guys.

We'll, we'll connect more soon again, so. All right. Sounds good. All right. Thanks, Floris.

Thanks, Floris. Bye. The Believe in the Run guys are awesome, and I hope you enjoyed this conversation as well. There were a lot of different products mentioned, a lot of different links. Some of these are still going to be relevant when you listen to this episode. Some might get outdated over time. I'll try my best to add some of these links in the description below on YouTube. I would love to hear from you. What was your favorite takeaway, lesson, or quote from this episode? Please let us know below in the comments on YouTube. If you would like to find out more about our running coaching program, check out pbprogram.com. And if you would like to receive a free weekly newsletter that I send every Friday, you can go to extramilest.com/subscribe. That is extramilest.com/subscribe. There was a lot of information to digest. I'm about ready to go out the door for a run. Have fun out there on your runs, guys. Talk to you on the next one. Bye now.