#104: How Changing Your Mindset Helps Crush Your Runs | With Alex Hutchinson

What if your biggest gains as a runner have nothing to do with fitness and everything to do with how you talk to yourself through discomfort and pain?

Most people have very negative self-talk in the midst of, you know, endurance events, in the midst of running. This is really hard. This sucks. This is stupid. Where's the next place I can get a cab back to the start line? Or like, is there a subway stop up there? But if you have the positive thoughts, this can change your perception of effort, which can enable you to Run faster.

This is Alex Hutchinson, bestselling author of Endure and The Explorer's Gene, and someone who has spent over a decade uncovering the hidden truth about human performance.

What's always amazing to me is realizing how many of those people graduate from university, they're 22 years old, and they're like, okay, I'm done running, now I'm going to go do other things in my life.

In this conversation, we dive into why your mind is holding you back more than your body, how to embrace the unknown without being reckless, and the counterintuitive truth about why slowing down might be the hardest thing you'll ever do as a runner.

I will be seriously bummed if it ever gets good enough that you can predict exactly how well you're going to run before a given race. That unpredictability is essential both as a fan of running, of watching elite runners, but also as a participant.

This conversation will change how you think about discomfort and adventure forever. This episode is brought to you by Function Health. Many runners track a lot of the data— their pace, their heart rate, the distance that they run— but they don't know what's going on inside of their body. Do you ever feel like you're doing everything right but you're still feeling low on energy, burned out, or overtrained? I've been there myself, and sometimes it's not taking more rest, taking additional supplements, or sleeping more. There might be something else going on. Your body is talking to you, and Function Health gives you the numbers to understand what it's really saying. They test over 100 biomarkers across your entire system: hormones, inflammation, metabolism, nutrients. For me, it helped connect the dots between things like thyroid function and stress hormones that were holding me back in training and in recovery. Several members in our Personal Best Running coaching program have been able to identify and turn around their low energy levels when they found out that they had low iron, low vitamin B6 or B12. Things that they never would have discovered otherwise. Use functionhealth.com/floris and use gift code Floris100. The first 1,000 users to use my code get a $100 credit towards their membership. More details and links can be found in the description. Hope you enjoy my conversation with Alex Hutchinson. I want to start out by saying, when I was reading The Explorer's Gene, It was— there were several different things that came up about leaning into the unknown, doing things that sometimes might initially scare you. And it was really funny. I was reading the book, and right at that moment, I got a text message from my friend Jeff Pelletier, and he said, you want to come pace and crew me at Badwater? Which, for those listening, it's a 135-mile endurance race through Badwater. And my initial response was, oh, that's going to be really challenging and scary and it's hot. And right at that time I was reading your book and it is one of those things where I think sometimes the universe aligns these stars and this was one of those. So I ended up deciding to do it and I ended up going out there and definitely leaning into discomfort. But one of the reasons was reading your book and actually knowing that in that unknown territory a lot of growth happens sometimes. So thank you.

Well, I apologize for sending you to Badwater because that seems like a nasty trick to play on anyone. But I'm guessing that if it played out like a lot of these kind of situations where you make the choice to overcome that initial hesitation, there will have been times when you were out there that it was miserable and you asked yourself what you were doing. But now that you're back safe, you're really glad you did. You're really glad you had that experience.

Absolutely. And I think maybe we can start out with that part. Why is it that sometimes our initial reaction is like, no, or is like kind of almost like a protective safety mechanism of the unknown, the fear of the unknown? Yet at the other hand, that's where the growth happens and that's where we feel most alive. Can you speak through that a bit more?

Yeah, I mean, I think we're all pulled in different directions, right? Like, so look, I wrote a book called The Explorer's Gene, and so I'm all in favor of pursuing the unknown, but not always, right? Like it's not that every time you get a chance to do something that scares you, it's like, man, jumping in front of that car would be really scary. That doesn't mean you should jump in front of the car. Like we have a push and pull between the desire to find out what's down that path that we've never traveled, but also the desire to be safe, to be comfortable, to, you know, take advantage of the resources we have. This tension kind of plays out throughout our lives. And not to go too far down the rabbit hole, but it's like, in neuroscience, there's a big idea called the free energy principle, where the basic statement is that we want to avoid surprise as much as possible. That to stay alive, it's not just humans, any living thing, the goal is avoid surprises, because surprises are what can kill you. And so on the one hand, that's just, we should never explore. We should, and in fact, in the neuroscience literature, there's this thing called the dark room problem. It's like, hang on, our theories suggest that all we should want to do is to lock ourselves in a closet with the lights off because then there'll be no surprise. But that's in the short term. If we want to, if we really want to survive, we have to learn about the world to avoid surprises in the future. So I, this is sort of a meandering answer, but All of which is to say there's a tension between the short-term and the long-term. We want comfort and predictability in the short-term, but in order to know about the world in the long-term, we have to embrace uncertainty and surprise and sometimes fear and discomfort. And so both of those are important and we should listen to both those voices. Not, it's not that one voice is always right and the other is always wrong.

Yeah, for sure. And I think there's different steps you can go through as well to to lean into some of that unknown to grow. For example, for a runner, if you've never ran a 10K before, it would probably be wise to run a first 5K and get familiar with that. Same with like just leveling up in the distance, leveling up in the intensity and the duration of an adventure. And sometimes I come across athletes who watch some sort of like, ah, here's a Cocodona 250-mile race, and now I get inspired to sign up for either a shorter distance or sign up for something beyond their current capabilities. And I think that it's this fine line of setting yourself up for success or like pushing so far beyond that you're almost setting yourself up for failure. Can you talk through that a little bit more about the ways to go about this in, in a well-thought-out way?

Yeah. I mean, when we talk about like we're kind of wired to want to pursue uncertainty, there's a sweet spot, right? Like we don't want things that are boring and predictable, but we don't want things that are totally like beyond our capabilities to grapple with. We want the kind of uncertainty that we can learn from. And what's really cool is that, that we're hardwired to be pursuing this kind of middle ground. You can take 8-month-old infants and you show them a sequence of shapes or toys or whatever. If it's a totally predictable sequence, they get bored easily and you can track their, you can look at their, when they look away, you can do gaze tracking and it's like, if it's totally predictable, they're bored. If it's totally random, if it's just like a different shape every time, there's no predictability, they also get bored. But if there's an intermediate level of uncertainty where there is a pattern, but it's not obvious, that's what keeps their attention the longest. So I think, you know, this is something that's wired into us to look for opportunities that are uncertain where we have a potential to learn something about ourselves or about the world. But not that's just gratuitously like I'm going to hit myself in the head with a hammer just to find out what that's like. And so the challenge as adults, you know, as babies at 8 months old, we're just kind of instinctively driven. We do what feels natural. As adults, we're constrained by expectations, our own expectations, societal expectations, responsibilities. And so the challenge is to sort of tap back into that. Feeling of, is this a challenge that's kind of within my capabilities but not gratuitously beyond? I mean, not to, not to make the answer like a 5-minute answer, but the one other thing I'll say is I think running is one of the world's best laboratories for practicing the art of, uh, of accepting challenges that feel uncomfortable initially. Because look, I've been running for whatever, 30, some years, every morning I wake up and I'm like, do I really want to go for a run? Like, you know, the— especially, look, I live in Canada, you know, in, in December when it's pitch dark, freezing, and icy, like, do I want to do this? And I have to experience that tension between the— what I would— what feels comfortable right now, which is stay in bed, and what I know will make me happier in the long term, is— which is to grapple with the uncertainty of how today's run is going to go. So I think on a daily basis, we're, we're kind of strengthening that muscle of, of being able to, to, uh, take chances and, and embrace challenges.

Yeah, and I think that this goes hand in hand with short-term gratification and longer-term gratification. Or in, in the very short term, the bet feels comfortable. In the long term, you know, you're so glad you did it because of the feeling you get during and after one of these runs too. Um, when When we're trying to talk a bit more about like exploring as a runner and mixing things up, like I come across quite a few different athletes. We have a running coaching program, the Personal Best Program, and there's athletes going through there that are experiencing with different techniques in the running, or they're starting to explore low heart rate training, or they're just going through. The emotions at one point of like looking at a training schedule. All right, there's a 45-minute run on the schedule and I'm going to go out and run on my same bike path where I normally always run. And, and at some point, like in the initial stages of training, it can be really exciting. You sign up for this race, you go through this goal, and like the first few weeks there's that positive momentum. And then at some point it becomes monotone. And what, what advice based on the, the science of like you've gone through the sports literature, you've read the, or you wrote the book Endure, you wrote the book The Explorer's Gene. What advice do you have to someone experiencing that at some point in their training?

Yeah, it's, it's, I mean, look, this is a, one of the great questions in, in, in running because it's one thing to sign up for your first K and, and be excited about finding out if you can do that. But then the question is, as time goes on, what, what is it you're discovering? And So, I mean, as background, I started running in high school and ran pretty seriously and ran through university. And so I was with a cohort of people in university who, for whom running was, if not the most important thing in their lives, pretty close to it. Very, very serious people who lived and breathed running. And what was always amazing to me, or what's always amazing to me, is realizing how many of those people graduate from university. They're 22 years old and they're like, okay, I'm done running now. I'm gonna go do other things in my life. It's like, but you know, like you, you've experienced the transcendence of running. Like what do you mean you're done? And so for them, I think, and, and look, these are some of my, my, my best friends, so I'm not like, it's not that that's necessarily a wrong decision, but I think what that reflects is a failure to find other goals or other ways of exploring. They're, they started out wanting to know how fast can I run in this particular training program at this university during my 4 years. And when the 4 years ended, they had no secondary goal. They had no other thing they were interested in exploring. And so there are other people, lots of other people who come to running from different places or fi— or people like me who 30+ years after university are still running. And that necessarily involves running has meant different things to me at different points in my life and continues to do that. And it's a conscious form of evolution. Now, that's not to say that I don't do a lot of repetition. I have a beautiful river trail a block from my house. Most days I run on the same trail that I've been running on since I was 15. 'cause I'm living in the same house I grew up in. So it's like, I know this really well. And so it's not that I have to find novelty in every aspect of running, but so for me, for example, I mean, there've been many ways that I have changed up running. So I was a, I started out as a track runner running 1500 and 5 kilometers. I've done a lot of cross-country. Then I did mountain running, I did road running, I've done orienteering, I've done adventure races, I've done longer distance races, I've done shorter distance races. The last few years, what I've gotten back to is cross-country as a master's runner. There's a few attractions to that. One is that time is not the main focus. So look, I'm 49. Usually when I, you know, when I consult my watch, it's bad news. Like the watch is never telling me that I'm getting faster. Cross-country is about an internal battle. How, you know, it's, it's about how, how hard can I push? And it's also a team event. So I've got a group of friends that I train with and we go to master's cross-country competitions where we're competing against other teams. And that's something that I sort of hadn't experienced since I was in university. It's not that I have to have something new every year, but there has to be something that I'm trying to find out. There has to be some unknown. It has evolved over the years, but there's always something that I'm wondering at the beginning of a season. Whether it's how fast I can run a 5K or how much mileage I could do, or how, you know, how this cross-country season is gonna go, or whether I can run up a mountain if it's something I've never done before. You started the question with like, what does the science say? I don't know that the science says a lot about that other than, so what I just said is, is, is like my experience is right. But what the science says is that it's more interesting to us if there's, if there's, if it's not clear, obvious. Like, if you ask me, Alex, can you run a 5K? It's like, yes, I can run a 5K. I know I can run a 5K. There's no uncertainty there. So there has to be something beyond just do it because I know I can do it already. So you have to introduce some level of learning about the world.

So well said. And I think that part, the unpredictability of things, this is why I do feel there's quite a growth in the sport of trail running at this point too, that more and more people are start out with road running and at some point want to get into other areas and you can only go run so much longer and longer at some point, just mixing up the terrain, the unpredictability, like not being a flat surface, but there being other challenges, whether it's hills or heat or wildlife you come across or just more of the unknown part.

Yeah, I think that's really true. Like, I think that's, it's absolutely, it's undeniably true that trail running is, is having a big boom. And I do think a lot of it is just that it's like there's an X factor. You don't know how that run is gonna go. You don't know how a given trail, like what a trail looks like. And I think it's interesting that this trend is happening at the same time that we have this, an explosion of like data and wearable tech that's in a sense trying to make running more predictable. We're, you know, we're gonna tell you everything about every heartbeat, you know, so that you never have a bad day. You never, you, you, you never misspace, you know, misjudge your pace, you never overcook things. And there's this trend that technology is trying to standardize and, and know running perfectly. And You know, maybe there's a connection between that and like people are like, okay, well if you're gonna monitor me, I'm gonna go run on this trail with, you know, different surfaces, different terrain, different grades. So try and predict that technology, AI, see, see if you can make my run predictable with that. And, and you know, I'll add to that, just this is a soapbox I, I often stand on. It's like I write about the science of running. I write about, you know, wearable technology and algorithms and trying to understand the limits of human performance. I will be seriously bummed if it ever gets good enough that you can predict exactly how well you're gonna run before a given race to, to the, that unpredictability is essential both as a fan of running, of watching elite, elite runners, but also as a participant. If, if I knew how I would run a gi— on a given day, I would never, I, I wouldn't bother doing the run that you do the run in part to find out what you can do. And, and that answer remains fortunately at this point unknown.

And that's the beauty of it all. We literally went to Badwater with a goal of trying to get our friend Jeff Pelican chair to podium over there. So get in the top 3, which would mean a sub-24-hour finish at a 135-mile race. And we started off at 10 o'clock on Monday night and every 2 to 3 miles, so every close to whatever, 3, 4, 5K, we would meet up with him. We would cool him down because the temperatures were up to 44 Celsius, so 112 Fahrenheit. So you would meet up with him, cool him down, ice in the neck, hydrating well. And fueling well. And at the beginning, that was all going well until there's factors coming through with like, yes, you're running through the night and the temperatures are cooler— cooler meaning like it's still 100 degrees Fahrenheit, whatever that is, 30 Celsius. But at some point, the fatigue starts playing, and some people are more trained to that than others. But the combination of heat and then with being fatigued and then with just more and more unknown territory— it's a lot of road running, running instead of trail running. And so at some point, we started getting off base, and it's like, how do you keep train on the rails at that point? And at some point, we ended up, like, Jeff being so exceptionally tired that we just had to start taking some naps. And this was unpredictable. Like, he did not expect this. And eventually, we got to, on Wednesday morning, 2 o'clock in the morning, we're at Lone Pine We're already many hours off schedule, and it was almost to a point where he started contemplating, shall I drop? Shall I like get out? This is like, he wanted to go to the room for 30 minutes to just lay down. And at that point, it was a complete reset of like, let's just lay down, let's take it minute by minute. And then afterwards, we ended up at Lone Pine with still about 14 miles to go.. And from there on, I was like, okay, new day, fresh legs, or fresh legs. And ended up pacing him for more than 4 hours up all the way to the portal of Mount Whitney. And he ended up finishing the race in 32 hours, 44 minutes. So this was like 8 hours, 45 minutes slower than his initial goal. And there was the entire roller coaster of like, this wasn't the race I was supposed to have. But like you're saying, it is so unknown. There's so many different things that are out out of your control. And I think that's the exciting part too. We still had a fantastic time out there. It wasn't what we initially had hoped for, but you just make your B goal, you make your C goal. And I think one of the goals just being to get to the finish line or getting to complete a project, even if it wasn't initially how you thought it was going to be, is there's a lot of growth in that as well. Absolutely.

And yeah, there's— it's interesting, like I was saying before, if you ask me if I can run a 5K, It's like there's no interest in that. But as the distance gets longer, it's like, yeah, completion or, or if you're, you know, for beginning runners, it's like completion is a, is, is a serious goal at some point. And, and, you know, time becomes something beyond that. But it's like, yeah, to complete Badwater is absolutely unknown. I don't think there's anybody who can come to the start line of Badwater and guarantee that they're gonna finish, you know, without serious, like, you know, in less than 2 days or whatever, that, that you never know how, even for someone who's experienced in those conditions, the human body's unpredictable. And that's, you don't have to go to Badwater to experience that. You can, you can get smaller doses of that, it, it, you know, it, in, in a, in a million different ways.

Yeah. So well said. What do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions that recreational runners have about endurance training that's holding them back to become become a stronger and happier athlete.

For runners, for people who are just starting running, you know, if you take someone who signs up for their first 5K and, and they go for their first few runs, they're gonna stop pretty quickly. 'Cause they have this feeling in their legs, like their legs are on fire and they can't catch their breath. They're worried that they're gonna pass out 'cause they can't, can't catch their breath. And as time goes on, as the weeks pass, their bodies get stronger, their muscles get stronger, their heart gets stronger, and so they're able to run faster and farther. And I think a big misconception that people end up having is that all that progress is physical, that they've improved their fitness. Whereas in reality, what happens even at the highest levels is that they're improving their ability and willingness to tolerate discomfort. They're understanding that that burning feeling in their legs doesn't mean that their legs are, you know, melting. And that, that feeling of being out of breath is just a feeling of being, they're not actually out of oxygen. Their brain has plenty of oxygen. They're just having to work harder to supply the oxygen. So they're panting. And so it's like if you could teleport yourself back, let's say you've been running for a couple of years and you do a hard workout. And at the end of that workout, if you could, if you could teleport your, your beginning running mind into your body at that point, your mind would be blown. You'd be like, oh my God, I can't believe how much discomfort I'm tolerating. Are you sure we shouldn't be checking into the hospital? And it's like, no, this is just Tuesday night. We do intervals on Tuesday night and this is what it feels like. It, like, I can remember even like, actually I was gonna say I can remember when I started running in high school, but that's not true. I can remember when I started running in high school. I can remember in college, I can remember in my twenties doing hard workouts and getting to the end of it and thinking, it's like, how many people in the world suffer like I'm suffering right now? And you know, look, that sounds kind of gauche to say it that way, 'cause I, my life is very easy compared to many people in the world, but it's like, how many people voluntarily choose to experience that? But it's also an amazingly empowering thing to say, I, you know, it's Tuesday night and I'm going to go to the track and I'm going to enter into this cave and deal with it. And I'm going to come out on the other side. So sorry, I, I've wandered off the, the, the topic here, but about misconceptions of running. But I, I, I think that's a really powerful one is understanding how much of the progress in running involves learning to deal with discomfort. And that even for experienced runners, when you do slow down in a race, when you do stop, that usually it's, it's a consequence of, uh, the feeling of discomfort. Not that you're about to have a heart attack.

Yes. And, and this is trainable to some extent, right? But once again, we have to train it in a way. If all we would be going out there is like doing zone 4, zone 5 workouts all day long, like our wheels would be coming off within a few days, a few weeks, right? And so, but if all we would be doing is comfortable, easy runs, we never get to that spot of training for a harder workout, which is gonna happen on race day.. And so it's, it's this fine balance of being able to put down the foundation, pushing hard enough, recovering well, and then leveling up to the next level of discomfort almost.

Yeah. It's interesting, you know, one, you know, as you know, one of the big sort of perennial topics of debate in the running world, and it's a big topic these days, is, you know, how much hard running should you do? How much easy running should you do? How hard should the hard be? How easy should the easy be? There's a lot of talk about zone 2 training. And there's a, there's an effort to really put this on a physiological or metabolic footing to say that you need to do this much zone 2 because that's what you need for your mitochondria. And by doing some zone 5, you're gonna stimulate this other metabolic pathway, which is going to, you know, provide another mechanism for blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I write about that stuff and I, you know, I think it's interesting, but I don't think it's at the core of. How you put together a training program. I think, I think again, not to be too like, it's all in the head about it, but there's a psychology of like how much, um, training stimulus can you accumulate of different types. And it's not just that if you try to do zone 5 every day, your legs will fall off. It's also that your mind will shut down that, you know, that, so you, you what, what elite athletes are doing and the way they've sort of stumbled into these patterns that recur like 80/20 kind of polarized training, that kind of thing. It's how much of the hard stuff can I tolerate? And then how can I fill in the rest of the gaps with as much volume, as much easy stuff as possible? And, and both, both are essential. And there have been people in the past, I was going to say anyone who tells you that this is like, this one thing is all you need, is, is I think missing, missing an important point there. And there have been, you know, there have been schools of thought in the past that you should only do intervals or you should only do long slow distance. And it's like, why wouldn't you do everything? Why wouldn't you take, you know, take, take from as many plates as you can?

Even one, one example from my world, thinking about what you just mentioned over there is I did my first lactate threshold test in a lab like 10 years ago. And at that point, it's, this was still relatively new. Kind of early when I started getting into really consistent, like, marathon training and going through several cycles. High-intensity running and pushing it that hard to get close to, if not at, max heart rate, it's uncomfortable for quite a few runners. And I do think a lot of people tap out before they get to the actual true max heart rate. And even with myself, in some of the— in one of the first tests, I just thought I couldn't go any harder. Like, my lactate levels were above, or like, were close to 10, and my heart rate was way up and everything was burning and screaming and telling me to stop. And then going through several training cycles and doing a similar test again a year later, all of a sudden I was just able to tolerate more lactate, like much higher. I was like 4 or 5 millimole higher lactate before I tapped out. And like, I was just able to push it further. And not just the pace that improved, but also just the way of being able to handle some of the suffering. And that was for me one of the biggest aha moments of like, I truly thought that I was at my max capacity. Be at that point, and that might have been at that point, but then having built on top of that, to actually see that it can be pushed further. But like I said, like, I think too many people, I feel, push way too hard too early on and not build on that foundation. And at that point, you might have to watch out with overtraining, burnout, injuries, any of those kind of things.

Yeah, exactly. Like, the, the best way to learn to tolerate really hard efforts is not just to do really hard efforts over and over again. It's, it's building the, the, the base of the pyramid. And like, I can remember the first time I did it, um, like it just seemed like a horrific thing. You want me to run till I can't anymore? It's like, I, I, I never do that. Like I'll, um, and, and later, you know, a few years later, I, I had started working with a different coach where the, the workouts were a lot harder. And I, so I was going to the well more regularly. And at that point, doing a VO2 max test didn't feel as hard to me because I was actually putting out that kind of effort twice a week. The interesting thing is that I didn't run faster. In that second program where I was going to the well. I had some of my best results of my, of my overall career while I was in university in my later years when I was training relatively light. I was training hard, don't get me wrong, but, but I wasn't trying to see God twice a week. I was doing workouts that were hard, but, you know, but not all the way to the wall. And I think These days there's a lot of interest in like threshold-based training, uh, the Norwegian double threshold model, things like that. Leaving aside the details of how that's implemented, which are, I think, not super useful for most people who aren't training full-time. I think the underlying philosophy is that you don't have to see God at every workout. Yes, you have to work hard. Running is always at a high level. It's always going to be hard. But I look back at my, my history and it's like, wow, in my mid-twenties, I really learned to like dig hard in workouts. And so VO2 max tests didn't seem hard anymore, but I didn't race any faster because I was using up some of that juice like twice a week instead of— it used to be that when I showed up at a race, it was like, okay, now, now I'm gonna really go deep. And instead if you're going deep all the time, at a certain point, there's no extra gear. You don't have anything special to bring out on the race day.

Yeah. And you have to, you have to watch out for that for sure. What do you think is one practical mental strategy, like whether that is self-talk or visualization or any other technique that recreational runners can use to really boost that resilience during tough workouts or races?

To me, the number one strategy is self-talk. Like that's maybe partly because I think, you know, as a science-based guy, all the sports psychology stuff is hard to test. Like it's, it's, you can't have a placebo group, or at least it's very hard to have a meaningful placebo group for sports psychology interventions. Yeah, the evidence is tricky to accumulate, but among the various interventions you can think of, self-talk has some reasonably interesting evidence that you can alter your perception of effort, your subjective perception here. So let's say you're running at a given pace and I ask you, how hard are you running? And you say it's 8 out of 10. Well, there's, there's evidence that with an appropriate self-talk intervention, you can be running at the same pace. You haven't gotten any fitter, but now you're like, ah, it's 7 out of 10. And if that's true, it doesn't mean you can go and set the world record just by telling yourself you can, like it's, it's, you self-talk operates within the constraints of physiological reality, but altering your perception of effort makes a huge difference and you'll be able to sustain a higher pace. You'll be able to say, okay, well then I can keep going for, for longer. And so, and the idea, like maybe it's worth just kind of backing up and saying that, you know, saying a word about subjective perception of effort. You know, the, the old, the old view might've been that how fast can you run? Well, it depends what your lactate levels are. It depends what, you know, your oxygen, the oxygenation of your blood is, how hard your heart is pumping. And that, that's, that's true in a, in a indirect sense. I mean, of course, if your lactate levels are too high, you, you're not gonna be able to keep running. But the way you make your decisions is not based on your lactate levels. It's based on, How hard is this? Can I keep going? That subjective sense of effort depends on your lactate levels and your heart rate and your breathing rate. It depends on, on all the physiological signals coming in, but it also depends on what's going on in your head. If you're telling yourself, this is so hard and it's also pointless, running is a stupid sport. Why did I sign up for this? Blah, blah, blah. Then if you're asking yourself, how hard is this? You're like, man, this is 10 outta 10. It's so hard. I, I like, I just said that to myself. Of course, you know, it's hard. And if you're telling yourself, This is really easy. I could go forever. It's also that, that's not gonna be helpful either because it's clearly a lie. You can't, you can't fool yourself. But if you're telling yourself, this is challenging, but it's what I've trained for, this is exactly, I'm ready for this. Everyone else is feeling the same way. I know I can make it to the next mile. Let's do that. Then the evidence suggests that this will, this will influence your perception of how, how high the dial is turned. And, and I guess the, the other point to make is that most people have very negative self-talk in the midst of, you know, endurance events in the midst of running that if you, if you, there have been studies of like, what do marathoners think about when they run? Most of it is like, this is really hard. This sucks. This is stupid. Where, where's the next place I can get a cab back to the start line? Or like, is there a subway stop up there? All these are unhelpful things to think. It's, it's not easy to just say, stop thinking. It's stop thinking about, don't think about a white bear. If you're like, don't think negative thoughts, you're gonna think about those negative thoughts. But if you come up with a repertoire of positive thoughts, of mantras, of encouraging things that work for you, it's gonna be different for everyone. And you practice them in training. Then if you have those in your head, they can crowd out some of the more negative thoughts. You, you know, you, you're still gonna have negative thoughts. It's, it's pointless to try and like, marathons are fundamentally hard. That, that, that thought is gonna cross your mind at some point. But if you have the positive thoughts, this can change your perception of effort, which can enable you to run faster.

Yes, the mind plays such a big role in all of this. And I even see it when some runners start out with zone 2 training. There's quite a few people who are saying this is very frustrating, this is challenging, this is hard to have to slow down this much. And this is where I think we're often wired of like pushing ourselves and it's only a workout if you put in the effort and like you have to feel it when you're done and completely be exhausted, that part. Whereas, yeah, quite a few people, once they can start going over, I see this evolution almost in people starting with zone 2 training. They've often trained in a zone 3 or zone 4 and then learning that, ah, slowing down, there's something to it as well. It builds other systems and it can actually feel quite good, but at the beginning there's that real big pullback of like, this is frustrating, this is challenging. And it takes about, I would say for some people, 4 weeks, for some people, 6 weeks, 8 weeks, sometimes even longer to all of a sudden realize like, oh, this is actually quite joyful. And I can look around me and actually observe what's going on and it's a relaxed way and I don't feel beat up and my injuries are not flaring up all the time. So there's that roller coaster of emotions where I think once the mind is in the right place of actually getting to an enjoyment state of like an acceptance stage, then all of a sudden things start to click. But if there's constantly that frustration of like, this is so frustrating, I'm giving up all of the— it's like your mind plays a big role in your outcome here.

It's a big leap of faith to, if you've been used to running at a given pace to say, go slower. And you, you have to trust whoever's telling you to do that, whether it's a coach or whether it's you're reading it in a tweet or whatever, which is maybe not, not, not the best place to get training advice. But it's difficult and it, and it is funny when people characterize it as too hard to slow down. And over the years I've trained with lots of people who, whose easy run pace is substantially faster than mine, even if their race pace is slower than mine. And, and, and I, you know, I've heard that many times, like, no, I can't run slower. Like, my, my legs, like, the biomechanics are off. It just, like, I, I can't go slower than this. And I'm like, come on, that's, that's a load of crap. Like, you, you can go slower, you just have to choose to go slower. You, you have a compulsion that's telling you to go faster, and if that compulsion is too strong, we're not going to be able to run together because I, I'm not going to, you know, race my training runs. But, but yeah, to to characterize going easier as harder. It's, and, and you know, it's like they're genuine. They genuinely feel like it's a struggle to slow their pace down. It's like, that's pretty good evidence that your perception of what's hard is about what's going on in your head, not about the physiological, not just about the physiological challenge.

I wanna explore the topic of, of, of exploring a little bit more because I do find it absolutely fascinating and, and I get a lot of fulfillment out of it and I see many other runners runners and adventure seekers experiencing the same thing. So talking about recreational runners though, how can they cultivate more of that exploratory mindset even if they're naturally not that risk tolerant? Like what, what is one way to start here? And maybe you can provide a bit of a framework here.

Yeah. And maybe the first thing to say is that exploring and risk don't have to be synonymous. I'm actually quite a risk-averse person. I, I, I like exploring, but I don't like, uh, you know, danger. So, so for example, I, you know, one of the ways I like to explore is I go on backcountry backpacking and canoeing trips with friends and family. And when I do whitewater canoe trips, uh, I'm probably the most experienced whitewater canoeist. I'm definitely the most experienced whitewater canoeist of the people I canoe with., I'm also the most, the least likely to want to run a given set of rapids. So I love being out there, but I, I have no desire to, you know, really test my limits in a remote setting in rapids where the consequences are high. So, so in other words, if people are thinking about like, how can I be more exploratory? It's not like, how can I be more like foolhardy? How can I, how can I take more risks? It's more like, how can I put myself in a position where I might have an experience or find something that's unexpected or that I didn't plan out in advance. I will give an example. I was in Paris recently because this, you know, this is something that doesn't always come naturally. Like I run the same routes every day around my home in Toronto, but I was like, okay, I'm going to go for a run in Paris. I'm not going to map it out in advance. I'm not going to dictate exactly where I'm going to go. I'm going to take a look at the map. I'm going to figure out, okay, there's the river there. I'm going to try and make my way down from the hotel. Eventually I'm going to hit the river. I'll turn right. I'll see how far I get. I'll see how I'm feeling. I'll see if there's bridges that look fun. Which side am I going to go on? Well, we'll see which side the path looks best on. Like where the shade is. I tried to have a less regimented, more exploratory run. And, and one thing that that forces you to do is to look around. Yeah. Like if you're just, if you're not sure where you're gonna go at the next intersection, then you're looking really carefully to see, well, what's down this street? How does it look? Would it be fun? Does it seem like it's going in the right direction? As opposed to just saying, okay, stay on the Champs-Élysées until you get to the Seine, turn right there, go there till you get to Notre Dame Cathedral or whatever. That's a simple way of, of just like, and, and look, I don't want all my runs, I don't want all my runs to be runs of discovery. I, I, you know, I'm tired sometimes. I just want to get out the door and have a mind-off, mind-wandering run. But, but that was a good way, I think, for me to explore a city is not, not just to get, I've always said, you know, getting out for, I think everyone says this, you go to a new city, you go for a run, it's a great way to explore it. But to take another step up and say, I'm, I'm gonna let the city dictate where I run. Now I will say, getting back to my hotel, I got hopelessly lost. You know, I was like, I'm gonna try and navigate. I know where I left this in. I think I could, but all the streets are like all these different angles. And you know, eventually I had to take out my phone and, and, and oh no, I need to go that way.

Readjusted.

Then, you know, 10 minutes later I took out my phone again. I was like, crap, I ended up another, you know, like a kilometer north of my hotel. No big deal. Like I wasn't late for a meeting and I had my phone with me. So like, I, I, I often say, like, I, I do think that GPS navigation phones make us less exploratory in a lot of ways that, that you follow the turn-by-turn directions. It's like being the passenger in a car. You don't even see where you're going. You're just seeing where your phone tells you to go. But having the phone in your pocket frees you up to explore because then you can always reset. You're not going to then end up being like, you know, 7 hours later still looking for your hotel.. So yeah, being willing to get lost a little bit, it doesn't come naturally to me, but it's something I'm working on.

I love that part because when you're lost, you are indeed very present. You have to be like, pay attention to what's going on and kind of zoom out from time to time and see the bigger picture in your mind. I grew up skateboarding. I grew up in Europe. So for the summer months, we would often take the train down to Barcelona, to Paris, or to other places. And we would there was one way to explore the city, just grab your skateboards and cruise around. And there was a lot of exploring. And after I turned 30, I didn't skateboard much anymore, and it became running. And from there on, it was you go to a new city and you would just explore, and you go sightseeing while running. And I think that's the beauty as well, when you forget about, like, don't look at pace, don't look at distance. Like, make sure you have some of the fundamentals covered. If I know I'm going to be a bit longer, I'll typically bring a water bottle, I'll bring some nutrition. But even that, like, if you go explore in a city, you can easily stop somewhere and get some water. You can easily just go buy some food. It's like the whole thing. Initially, I was always like, when you're running, you run from here to there without stopping. And that was the initial mindset of how I grew up with running. And then later on, it became more like, let's just go and stop along the way or take some photos or take a break or whatever you feel like doing at that point. It becomes much less about pace or distance.

Yeah. And I would say, look, there's there's a time and a place for different kinds of running. And, and let's say I was hypothetically, which is not gonna happen, or no, let's say this, not even hypothetically this fall, let's say I'm gonna run cross-country again and it's 3 weeks before the National Masters Cross-Country Championships. I'm gonna go out and do a run with very specific goals. I'm gonna map out where I'm gonna go, what I'm gonna do. Like there's a time and place for that, but it's like not every run has to fall into that. That template of like, it's life or death and I have to track it and plan it and all that. So I think just being open to those moments of like, oh, what's down this? You know, I got an email from someone just last week or a few days ago who had just read The Explorer's Gene and it was simply me. I was just saying I enjoyed the book. And you know, since I read it, I run the same route every day. I've just been like, you know Maybe I should explore my neighborhoods, you know, explore my city. And so he is been running in different directions and it's like, it's very different and it's really fun. And again, like I, it's not that I do that every day or anything like that, but yeah, like, and, and look, we've been talking about geographical exploration, so exploration in a, in a, a literal sense, and that's an easy way to talk about it. But there's other ways of exploring through running too that, you know, signing up for, like we talked about this, you know, at the start of the conversation, but signing up for different, race distances or different terrains, trying things that just take you a little bit out of your comfort zone. Again, for me, it's like I've run a lot of 5Ks in my life. It's kind of in my sweet spot. I've run one marathon. I didn't really love it. It was, it was, I found it challenging.

No one loves that, Alex. No one loves that first marathon. I could tell you that more. It's just time for you at some point to sign up for your second one. And it's a whole different experience.

At some point I should, but what I will say is that I'm 100% glad I run a marathon, even if it's not gonna— not doesn't end up being my passion. And you know, we talked about mountain races or whatever. It's just like, there's ways of exploring to, that are still fundamentally the same as whatever it is you, you love about running now. It's not that you, it's not like you need to explore by taking up juggling or something like that. It's like, no, it's still running, but you can change the context, change the goal, change the environment. Maybe it becomes great. Now, if, if, if someone's listening and saying, but I love my running the way it is now. Yeah, no problem. Like that's, that's fine. Like, um, most of us struggle with, with motivation or, or kind of figuring out what we're doing at some point. And so if you come to that point, a little exploration is, is, is useful. But if you're happy the way you are, that's, there's no like a moral obligation that you have to change.

For sure. One thing that I thought was really cool when I was at TrailCon, a trail running conference recently. In Olympic Valley a few days before Western States. There was a conference and they were just talking about some of the things that were happening in the road running space and the trail running space. And one thing that came very clear was the amount of different types of races. It used to be there was the local 10K, half marathon, marathon, and then some ultra distances. And now it became like the Vert Challenge of a kilometer climb. There was the whatever last man standing challenge. There was all the relay events. So many different things that you don't have to always stick with the same, like I'm signing up for another marathon and going through that training cycle. This was one of the things that came up with my conversation with Ryan Hall that I had in Flagstaff, where he is— he was a very elite marathoner, half marathoner, and he had done a variety of different races. Then he retired from road racing, and now he's really— he got really into strength training. But then now he's really into exploring backyard adventures. So he would literally look at what is that mountain in the back over there and let's find a way to explore and get to that, that he has always been looking at. And I think that's the beauty of, of, of just trying different things, of not just being so stuck to one specific thing. I'm a runner and so I got to sign up for a marathon. But there's all these other options out there now too.

Yeah. And, and look, let's be honest. Running often attracts a certain type of person and I'm one of them who, who loves routine, who loves like predictability, who loves collecting data. And it's like, yeah, I wanna be able to, to compare today's run to the one I did 4 years ago on the same course in the same conditions. And it's like, look, that, that's okay. But, but if you come to a point where it's starting to feel like, eh, a little stale, it's like it can be fun to try. And you know, what you said about Ryan and like, look at the, the peak over there and see if we can get up it. To me, that's like, so I did, I've done some mountain running. It's been a little while 'cause I live, I don't live anywhere near any mountains unfortunately. But I love races that have a sort of geographic logic to them where it's not like, okay, here's the start line in the city and we're gonna go through an arbitrary bunch of streets making an arbitrary bunch of turns to get, to get to a finish line in, in this distance we've predetermined. It's more like, Yeah, like there's the peak of the, the local hill. Let's do that. There, there was a race I did in Australia, I guess 15 years ago. Um, and it was, uh, it was called the, the King of the Hill Race, the Lithgow King of the Hill Race. So Lithgow's some tiny town in the, the Blue Mountains of Australia, and they have the tallest hill nearby. And for since time immemorial, the, the annual town fair has had a race to see who can get to the top of the hill first and back down. And so my, you know, my wife and I drove out and competed in this race and it was so cool cuz it's not like, you know, the course briefing is, is super simple. It's like, okay, everyone look up there. You see, you see the top of that hill, you get to there and then you come back down. And, and yeah, to, to me there's a, a ton of fun to those sorts of adventures. And the thing is you can do that outside the context of ordinary races too. You could, you can be, you know, out for a hike or out, you know, for the day and be like, huh, I wonder if we could make it to the top of that. Let's, you know, so with my kids over the winter, we did a little bit of that. There's a river valley near us. So we, with a friend, we took snowshoes down to the river and then it's like, all right, let's find the steepest part of the river valley and see if we can make it up this slope to the very top, the highest point on the river. And, it was like some of the most fun I've had and it was like 4 blocks from my house.

Such a wonderful way to integrate play and adventure together right there. For anyone listening, if you, if you have either kids or a partner or a family member or a friend that might be somewhat curious about it, but also feels intimidated about some of these things. Do you have any advice? Do you have any thoughts? Because I'm in a similar way. I have two young kids. I would like to get them out from time to time. Sometimes there's some pushback. Sometimes there's a lot of curiosity. But do you have any thoughts to share about getting other people around you out into the unknown?

Yeah, I mean, it's particularly tricky with kids, right? Because, you know, so I take my kids on, you know, we go on adventures in the, you know, hiking and backpacking and things like that. And it's like, these sorts of adventures, there's a point where they get tough often, or where there's uncertainty in the unknown. It's tricky when the kids didn't really sign up for it, right? So, you know, my wife and I can say to each other, well, this is what we chose to do for our vacation. The kids are like, I just wanted to go to Disney World, you know? Like, so, and you know, you have to meet people where they are. Like, you can't assume that what floats your boat floats everyone else's boat., but I think, I think maybe the best advice I can give is that it comes back to play. And if you can, if, so for those of us who go out and do really hard runs or hikes or whatever the case may be, fundamentally we're doing it because on some level we find it fun, right? So we have found a way for that to be fun. And if, if you're bringing someone else along with you and they, and to them it has, it doesn't feel like a game. It's just like, this is what Alex wants to do for his vacation, then all it is is a slog, a brutal long slog without the fun part of it. You need to think about— so, so I mean, again, going back to this like snowshoeing thing, I, of course, like every parent, right? You know, I'm desperate to like, come on, get my kids off a screen. Can we, can we go outside and do something that's interesting? And so rather than saying, hey kids, let's get the snowshoes on and go 10K along the river trail, which or, or snow the skis on or whatever, which frankly wouldn't have been my first choice or my first instinct. It's like, what would be fun for the kids? It's like, see if we can get to the top of this crazy slope with, with deep snow on, and then it becomes an adventure and then they want to do it because they're seeing the fun in it. And from there, maybe you can scaffold up to say, okay, well that was fun. How about we do a 2-week trip like that? You know, Like, and it, of course it doesn't happen immediately, but yeah, it's, it's, it's tricky for sure. Like, cuz people, people find different things fun and, and you know, like as runners we have to remember that some large fraction of the population is like, why the hell are they doing that stupid thing? Even, and, and we're not talking about like, uh, Badwater, we're talking about like, why are they going out for a 20-minute run? That seems awful and terrible and just punishing. And so there's, there's a, there's a translation gap. And so you need, you, you need to think what, how, how would, you know, this child or this partner or this friend in my life, what would be kind of a fun adventure for them? Even if it seems really small and tame to you.

So well said. I have a few more questions. I do want to be respectful of your time over here, but over the years you've written for more than a decade about sports science and you have now taken a deep dive into exploring, discovering new territory. What advice would you have to your younger self? Like, you've taken on a bunch of different lenses over here, but I'm very curious to hear if you would have to give some advice to Alex in his early 20s or in his early 30s. You're 49 years old right now. You have a tremendous amount of running experience. You've explored many places of the world.

I'm curious to hear where you would take this. Yeah, it's so, I mean, actually there's an easy answer to that question, which is not 100% true, but the easy answer is to say, I would say keep doing what you're doing, kid. Like just follow your nose because it's definitely possible. Like here I am now where I am at 49. And if you draw a line from where I was at 19 or something to where I am now, there's some much more linear paths, right? Like I took a lot of detours that I could skip and so I could have gotten from there to here more quickly. And maybe I, you know, I'd be 40 years old and I'd have done the things that I've done. The big lesson for me from the thinking I've done about exploring the, and the value of following your instincts for where interesting areas of uncertainty lie, that's where the fun is. And so to the extent that my detours, that my spending, you know, whatever I spent 5 years or 6 years in as a physicist. I could, I could have cut that off, but that seemed interesting to me at the time. And so, uh, like the goal of life isn't to get to the end of it as quickly as possible. Uh, you know, I, I hate, I hate to speak in clichés, but it's to enjoy the journey. And so my advice would be like, hey kid, young Alex, you're going to go do a PhD in physics and then you're never going to use it again. Like that, that, that time is going to be quote unquote wasted. Enjoy it. Have a good time. Like live in, live in that moment of your 3 years or 6 years as a physicist. And don't worry about whether at 49 you're still gonna remember Newton's laws. You know, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. You, you're gonna enjoy that time. Now, are there things I would do differently as a runner? Yeah, for sure. Boy, Alex, like take the mental side of running seriously. We, we had, when I was in university, we had a sports psychologist who did some workshops with us for the, the, the track team. And we all thought it was just a joke. Like we thought the only thing that mattered is VO2 max and lactate threshold and blah, blah, blah. We didn't, we didn't motivational self-talk, which we talked about earlier and I said how important I thought it was. They tried to teach that to us and we ignored it. We didn't, we didn't take it seriously at all. So sure, I would maybe like say, psst, Alex, like try to get your head together. Cuz I, you know, I, as a runner, as a competitor, sometimes I was an excellent competitor, like really tough and rising to the occasion. Other times I was a complete flop and I, you know, my mind held me back. I think I could have done better if I'd taken that, taken the mental preparation side a little more seriously.

And sometimes there's a time and place that we're open to receiving some messages too, right? Where there's some teachings that in hindsight, it was a very important part, but at that point you weren't open for it or you weren't ready to receive that message. Yeah.

And I think that's, you know, Going back to my initial answer of like, I wouldn't change anything because you can't, you have to travel the road to understand it. It's like maybe, you know, 19-year-old, like I go back in the time machine, I find 19-year-old Alex and I'm shaking him by the shoulder saying, take the mental side seriously. 19-year-old Alex might've been like, get out of my face, old man. Like, you don't know what you're talking about. Like sometimes exactly as you say, you learn by doing and sometimes that's that's too late in some sense. But if it was easy, if we all knew everything we needed to know at the start, again, it would be boring. Then there's no— it's just like I was saying before about if technology, if running science could tell us exactly how fast you'd run a race, it wouldn't be interesting. And similarly, if we were all perfect right from the start and knew everything, that would be less interesting than learning it as we go.

Yeah, totally. That being said, I think sometimes surrounding yourself with people who have gone through some experiences can help fast-track at least being aware of some potential mistakes. Like, meaning, when I drove up to Badwater on Monday, I was honestly scared. I was nervous, although I've been sitting in the sauna a few times a week. Knowing that like heat can kill you and that people should not underestimate what it's like, not just to be a runner, but even being a crew member, being out there for 30+ hours in the burning sun. I just called a few people who had completed Badwater or who had paced Badwater or crewed Badwater. And all I did was ask the question, knowing what you know now, what are some of the things I should keep in mind? Or what are some of the potential dangers and how can I How can I catch that earlier on or prevent that? And I think some of those things, and once again, it comes back to the unknown. Like, you want to lean into the unknown, but you also want to do whatever you can to somewhat prep for potential risks that could be coming up that might even hold back my runner. I don't want to become a liability on someone else's running crew, you know?

Yeah, that's an important point. And actually, on reflection, I want to dial back this idea that you can't learn anything. It's impossible. You know, you have to learn everything by your own mistakes. That's obviously not true. You should definitely be learning from the experience of others and trying to understand best practices. I think ultimately you're, you have to be comfortable with the idea that you're still going to make some mistakes and that you shouldn't be aspiring to get everything perfect, but you should absolutely try and learn. And I think, you know, I read an advanced copy of a friend's book recently that Talks a little bit about exploring and one of the lines he had in it was like, it looks just like the pictures. Is there a sadder phrase in the English language that the— this is Jonathan Goodman for anyone who wants to get his forthcoming book, that the idea that if you go on a great voyage in the backcountry and your response to it is, great, it looks exactly like I expected. That's super disappointing. At the same time, if you go on a great voyage in the backcountry and you're like, oh, I don't want to spoil it by looking at the pictures. And so you don't do research and you end up getting lost and dying. That's also not a victory. And so there, there's a sweet spot and, and you know, some types of preparation are absolutely important. Knowing how not to die in the heat is absolutely important. I think what's happened in the age of the internet and where you advanced research is so easy. The trap that I was falling into is I was doing so much preparation for my adventures and explorations. There's always a trip blog that has pictures of every— that I would know everything about a trip before I went on it. And I've, so I think that I'm dialing it back, but not to the point that I'm just like, what the hell? Let's go into the jungle and see what happens. You want to, you want to research the important stuff, but, but you don't have to know everything about everything before you do it sometimes.

The, the act of discovery is what's fun. Yeah. So well said. The act of discovery is what's so much fun for sure. Alex, where can people find, like, I loved reading your book Endure. I read that one many years ago, several years ago, and I reread it again recently. And then also your book, The Explorer's Gene, which only just came out. Where can, where can people find both of these books?

Where can people find your books? They should be available at your local bookstore as well as on Amazon if you want. I have on my website, which is alexhutchinson.net, I have a link to retailers around the world because of course different places or different ways of buying books.

But yeah, find bookstores everywhere. Great.

What social media channels are you most active on? Social media is the challenge of my life these days, figuring out where I should be active and with whom. But I'm on a whole bunch of them. Again, there's links from alexhutchinson.net, but my handle is Sweat Science on X and Threads and Facebook. It's Sweat_Science on Instagram. Oh, sorry, on Threads and Instagram. And on LinkedIn, I think it's Alex Hutchinson YYZ.

But yeah, you can get the links on alexhutchinson.net. For sure. And I'll make sure to link to that in the show notes as well. I have one last question over here. There's, there's quite a few recreational runners looking and listening to this, and they're looking for ways to become a stronger, healthier, and happier athlete. Do you have any closing thoughts that you would like to share with them?

I think the number one thing to bear in mind is that it's very easy to overestimate what you can accomplish in the short term, but to underestimate what you can accomplish in the long term. So, you know, the path to frustration is to set super high goals in a race that's like 6 weeks from now. You should dream big in terms of what you can accomplish if you're consistent for a year or 2 years or 5 years or whatever the case may be.

We cannot underestimate that if we show up consistent and, and enjoy that process as well. Alex, really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for sharing all this and, um, looking forward to going on some of the— oh yeah, actually, I did mean to ask you this. You've explored, like, in your book you talk about so many cool adventures you have been on with your family, with friends, on your own. What is one— what is one trip that you think would be a really good one? Like, as I'm building out my bucket list myself, is there one that stands out to you that you would highly recommend?

It's hard to narrow it down to one. I I would say one of the most rewarding places I've been is a place called Wilmore Wilderness Area, which is in the, in the Rocky Canadian Rockies north of Jasper and Banff, which are the famous, the big famous parks which are overrun in the summer. So you get the same mountains, you have to work a little harder to get there, but there's very few people there. So I'd highly recommend it. Look, Nepal is beautiful, like the Himalayas. You can't beat that. Papua New Guinea was wild in a place in ways that I can only, you know, I can't really describe.

But yeah, Wilmore Wilderness Area in northern Alberta. Yeah, but I really like that advice that you, or like the thing you have mentioned in the book is like, like there's often the main location and then there are spin-offs of it. Same with yesterday, I was at Mount Whitney Portal, and there's Mount Whitney, but then there's a lot of other peaks around it that only 1% of the people go to. And I thought that that was a really good takeaway for me as well.

I would much rather see that the second best site in the region, if it's, you know, 1/100th as busy.

Yeah, for sure. Awesome. Thank you so much, Alex. We'll talk more soon again. Thanks so much, Floris. Have a good one. Thanks for listening. I re-listened to this conversation during the editing process and realized how tired I sounded. This was literally recorded the day after Badwater. So for 2 nights, I barely had any sleep, felt like an absolute train wreck. And we had already scheduled this conversation for the Thursday. So I didn't want to postpone, I didn't want to cancel it, but did realize it sounded quite haggard at times. Thanks for bearing with me there. Would love to hear from you. What was your favorite lesson, takeaway, or quote from this episode? Let me know in the comments on YouTube. Several different exciting episodes in the works. Stay tuned. Next one is going to launch in about 2 weeks. Have fun out there on your runs.

Bye now.