#111: Pushing Limits in Running, Adventure & Business with COROS CEO Lewis Wu

There's a moment that every runner faces. The body says stop, but something deeper says go.

You won't realize the beauty of life until you really try hard. I hated running at the very beginning. I found it boring. I love data. The accumulated mileage and improvement over time, that got me actually excited, you know, focused to achieve something. When I say achieve is really want to touch the limit of your personal performance. When you feel it's very difficult, when you feel like you cannot hold on, you want to quit, just remember your competitors are going through the same process. I think I'm in my pain cave. It's hard. My leg doesn't work. And I just tell myself I just need to finish it. Yeah, the pain always exists, and it's the pain tolerance that went higher and higher over training, over experience.

From hating running to completing a 100K mountain race, Louis Wu, an ultramarathoner, a climber, and CEO of KOROS. He proves that breakthroughs are built, not found.

But the key thing is make sure you sleep well the week before, because in the end, what decides your total body performance is your weekly average sleep, not the night before.

This is about discomfort, performance, and becoming the athlete you're meant to be through focus, resilience, and smart data. This episode was brought to you by LMNT. Whether you're running miles, hitting the gym, going for steep hikes on the trail, or just want to stay sharp throughout the day, hydration isn't optimal, it's essential. When you sweat, you're not just losing water, you're losing electrolytes. So sodium, potassium, magnesium, the stuff your body actually needs to perform. That's why I use LMNT. No sugar, no junk, just science-based electrolytes that help you go longer, recover faster, and feel your best. One packet before workout, hike, or busy day keeps your energy up and your body in balance. You can get a free sample pack with any order by going to drinklmnt.com/flow. That is drinklmnt.com/flow. Hope you enjoy my episode with Lewis Wu. Before this conversation, I was thinking back through several of the different adventures you and I have been on, but also some of the different conversations that we have had with different elite athletes together with Eliud Kipchoge, for example. You and I flew out to Oregon and we had coffee with Eliud and with Sifan Hassan. And just some of the behind-the-scenes conversations offline without recording necessarily were very helpful and eye-opening over there. Do you have any You spent quite a bit of time with Eliud Kipchoge over the years as well as one of your COROS athletes. Any favorite memories that stand out to you? Anything in particular about Eliud that comes to mind?

Well, I think he's one of the best, maybe not one of, he's just the best human spirit, like, out there, which is very pure. Going after like performance, enlarge the barrier of human limits. And he doesn't care about a lot of common things in life. He just wants to have his simple lifestyle and then help the humans to run. That's like the one thing I really admire him. And he sent me, you know, encouraging messages from time to time, you know, to my phone. And then we just been talking, I think I didn't get much time of like spending actual like mountain time like I spent with Kilian because he has a lot of obligations to his shoulder. So all I have is like short conversation, coffee time, and here and there with him. But every time I see him face to face, like I see what he is pursuing, that actually motivates me to keep going.

For sure. I've already planted the seed with you, but I will plant it again. I think it would be really fun for us, for you, Eliud Kipchoge, Kilian, and Jakob Ingebrigtsen to set up a roundtable conversation and talk about training.

That's a big dream. Just to get these three big people together. Like, I can't imagine how is that possible, but maybe.

Then again, we got to, we got to aim high.

Yeah, high.

It'll be, it'll be a fun podcast.

Yeah.

Yeah, totally. I've seen you grow as an athlete, both on road running, on trail running, on mountain running. When did you first get into running and how has your journey evolved from shorter distances to now to recently completing your first 100K mountain race?

Well, it's a long story. I don't remember exactly the year or the date I started running, but I can tell you I hated running at the very beginning. I found it to be boring, just repeatedly put your foot in front of each other, right? Not as exciting as other sports. Until there was a birthday, my friends gave me an REI gift card. I went on, bought a Garmin, and I'm— I think my personality, I love data at the bottom of my heart. So the accumulated mileage and improvement over time, that got me actually excited. Then make my running, make my running seems more interesting to me. And I need to give Garmin credit. It helped me. They helped me to start running. And I remember I finished my first 10K. That was exhausting. I honestly, I don't remember exactly which year. Maybe it's 2015, around that time.

So about 10 years ago.

Yeah. And then I kept running, you know, I found, My endurance was holding up fine, so I just all run by myself longer and longer, you know, completing half marathon, completing— I mean, in training run, not in a race. My first actual race was actually a 50K. So I skipped the marathon, skipped everything. My first ever race was a 50K, which I was not qualified, just to be fair, but I'm a friend of the race director. He was like nice enough for me to be part of it. Uh, that was, uh, which year was that? That was the first year I joined COROS, actually. Must be 2018, April 2018. That was my first race over in China, actually at my hometown, is when I grew up. My parents' apartment is like 10 minutes away, walking distance from the start line. So it's like cool to go back home, hanging out with my parents, my family, and then they supported me for this race. So I still remember that time I won a Garmin on my left, a new Coros on my right wrist, because like we, we didn't actually officially launch that watch yet, so there's some sort of a testing firmware that's still running. So I'm— I was not 100% trusted the Coros device by the time because it's in beta. So I had two watches. It ended up being a pretty, pretty pretty fun race.

So tell me, like, so for you going from 10K to like increasing your distance to running your first 50K, you said initially you didn't really enjoy running, but through some of the data, seeing some of the progress, you ended up discovering somewhat of a new joy.

Totally. Yeah. When I did my first 10K, I forgot how, how much time I took, but it's just pure joy to see improvement, uh, from like every 5 minutes, everyone I improve 5 minutes and on and on, right? And then until at the point I couldn't run faster, so I just increased the distance to be like 15K, 20K, whatever.

So was it mostly running pace, race distance, or race times? Were you looking at heart rate at that time as well? No, until later.

I don't think I understood heart rate training by the time being just a new runner. Distance and time was where I focused at that time, and they're super straightforward, right? Running longer or running faster.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell me a bit more about— so you go do your first 50K race. What were some of your thoughts going into it, and what was actual— sometimes we have expectations of race day, and then real race day happens, and it— there's sometimes a bit of a mismatch there. So tell me, how, how did the race day unfold?

I don't know if I have any expectation other than finish it, right? That, that is my hope. And I still remember, that was a good memory, call it out. A friend of mine joined me for that particular race. He was a much better runner than I did, so he was literally waiting for me at every aid station and eating a lot of snacks. So he ended up gaining more weight after the race because I was so slow. That was funny, right?

That's a good friend.

It's a very good friend. And him and I raced the second race again together. It was an 80K race, same, same race but different courses, different year, a year later. And I became much better that time. I was faster than him because he was more focused on the marathon distance running, and I particularly trained for ultra race. So I ran, I ran a little bit better than him for that time. But it's amazing to see like how much improvement you can make over just a year, of course.

So what do you attribute some of those improvements to? Was it more training? Was it more consistency? Did you switch up your approach to training?

A big change was I was coached by Hayden Hawks for the second race. So you know the secret source. Because by that time, the CARLOS business was growing, right? We were fortunate to have him as part of the CARLOS pro athlete team. He was super strong. He also ran a coach business. So he was was nice enough to coach me for— well, by the way, I actually invited him to China at this time to travel with me.

I remember you guys did that race together.

Yeah, he won the race. He won the race and I finished it, I mean, 35th, 34-ish placement. So I was pretty happy about it. Definitely this training approach that he laid out my training plan, he's what I'm going to do for the week, sometimes the hill repeats. He told me long runs are extremely important. For this distance, so I had to cave out a lot of time, like 30K up to 40K, I believe, before the race at my peak training time. So it was extremely helpful.

So it's much more structure, much more training volume, probably heavier days on the weekends that you get used to that cumulative fatigue.

Yeah, exactly. And I have to give credit to the weather as well on that particular race day. It was pouring rain, and then the whole course got extremely muddy, and it almost became like a ski trip because you're sliding down, you're not actually running down. And a lot of runners struggle with that. And I think I was like probably the best skier out of other participants, so I know how to ski. So I was just like, they were just using two of my poles and get down the hill easy, right? So that helped my ranking. I, I don't think that helped my total time, but it worked.

This is kind of an interesting one. You're a pretty diverse athlete, meaning you're talking about skiing. I know you're into mountain biking. You're— I believe you have a road bike as well.

I have a gravel bike.

Yeah, gravel bike. You're into climbing as cross-strength training. You've been climbing a ton. Tell me more about your approach there, because it seems running is only one of your sports, right? Why do you take such a wide interest in a variety of sports?

Well, I think it goes all the way back to like when I grew up in elementary school. I was like a year and a half younger than other kids, so I have no way to compete with physically. It's just much better than me. So I lost interest in competing with other people, but instead I started competing with myself. And it's those mountain sports, right? You don't really in the competition with anybody, but you want to do better than yourself. You want to go back home safe. You are naturally talking to the nature, right? You're not talking to other people. So I enjoyed those type of sports. And then like, I see myself, my primary sport is climbing. When I talk climbing, it's not competition climbing. It's like big wall mountain climbing, adventurous climbing. Where I spend days on a big wall, hanging on the wall and trying to finish that route. That's like my favorite type of activities.

Yeah, I've seen you taking me on trails that are almost like walls climbing and you go up easy.

I die. That's some of the advantage from technical climbing that I learned. So yeah, I enjoy that. But for me to perform really well in those big walls, big mountains, I need the aerobic fitness to support that. So running obviously is particularly— trail running is the most efficient aerobic training I can find, sometimes cycling. But nowadays, looking at the past couple of years, I realized my sport journey has largely tied with the Carl's product roadmap, which is, you know, let's call it lucky because the company, you know, we make business decisions based on business brain. What has the biggest potential, what we can do better, and I will launch product accordingly. And then a year before we launch a product, I got to spend time to try it myself, to test it, to really provide feedback and work with team on how to improve all these things. So like before we launch the overall, I think we call it EvoLab training system, which is like a road marathon training system. I ran a full marathon training myself. It was COVID, so there's no race, but I did it. Oh, you paced me on that day. I remember. Yeah, that was the only road marathon, I should call it, that I've run. It was pretty good. It was like 3:20-something for my first marathon.

That was amazing. Yeah, I love it. I was gonna join you for 10 miles or whatever.

And you just finished the whole thing with me. You were like talking to me, encouraging me, you know, every step. I really appreciate that. Um, yeah, so I, I tried it just to, to validate the experience of our future product, upcoming product. So it worked well. And before we launched the bike computer, I, I bought a new bike and then I start riding again. Um, so yeah, that's, uh, that's actually what I learned over the past years. Yeah, those seems very fun, right? You got to try every different things, but Without the focus, I end up not achieving anything in my like sports performance goals. Like I did my big wall climb, the Nose in a Day in Yosemite back in 2020, and it's almost like it's 5 years already. And between the big wall climbing and my 100K race, which just happened last week, I didn't achieve anything. And then the biggest reason was I wasn't focused enough. I was trying all different things. So at the beginning of this year, I, I rethought my approach and I think I need to, I need to focus. And that's why I picked up running as my primary sport, at least over this summer.

And I think it's an interesting one you bring that up because we can talk through that a little bit more. It's like on the one end we see people who are pretty much all of their time they're doing running in this case. And at the other hand, there's quite some people when they want to like, they like a variety of different sports and they do a little bit of everything. And from there on, Sometimes it complements, it supplements, but sometimes it kind of takes away from the focus.

Yeah.

At the other hand, though, you and I have spent quite some time together on different trips with Kilian Jornet. We were there with him the night before Hardrock. We recorded a conversation in his Airbnb. We just spent some time with him in Colorado as part of his Summits projects. And through those conversations, we've also seen that he is an athlete. There's a lot of running through the summer months, spring, summer, and in the winter months he's doing a lot of ski mountaineering. Mountaineering and climbing and other things.

Very European.

Very European. So for him it's basically those two things and they keep it interesting, they keep it exciting, but it's still like a focus over there.

Yeah, I think ski mountaineering and trail running are very typical two sports to go, one for summer, one for winter, especially when you live close to the mountain that can ski. It's really good to type, like they serve the same goal. It's all type of running legs, uphill fitness. But for the sports that I do, they're almost completely different, or they may conflict with each other, like climbing and running. Because climbing, some places you have to build up your muscle to be able to— we call it power endurance during climbing. It's really how you can perform within 3 to 5 minutes at your best performance, that's enough for like one single route sport climbing. But for running, like, we don't run 3 to 5 minutes, right? We run 3 to 5 hours. So it's different. The whole aerobic systems was built different. It's a conflict. But when you come to like big wall climbing and you spend days, or at least a full day in the mountains, you know, the fitness that we built over running is helpful. Just needed to have some smart planning and smart balancing. And my lesson this year is, you know, I was trying to put one primary sport for the season and then use others as a cross-training or support it. Like when you are on the recovery day of running, maybe you go climbing just to keep your whole body like stretched. Um, but like during my prime training weeks like almost 2 months before the race, I just don't have time to go climbing at all. I think people say like finish up an ultra or run a good ultra is actually easy, but run a good ultra with a full-time job and family things and all other things in your life, that's difficult.

So let's talk, let's talk about that. And this can apply to people running an ultra, this can apply to people running and training for a marathon, a half marathon, a 10K. As a busy dad, CEO of Koros, like, you're still trying to get in your training. How do you combine it all? Like, is it early mornings? Is it late nights? Is it during the day? Flexibility?

It's tough. It's like the hardest part. There's definitely some creative work that I need to put into my scheduling. My main time for training is actually in the morning. Right between 6 to 8 AM. That's like, that's when the climbing gym opens at 6, and I usually I'll climb from 6 to 8 when I do climbing training and then shower at the gym and go to work. So that's one option. And the other option is like between 4 to 6, which is very much of like personal schedule because we have a lot of business in Europe. So I have to, in the morning, I have to work with Europe sometimes Asia hasn't slept yet, so early morning work with them and a lot of work in the mornings of the US time. And then interesting enough, 4 PM is everything dies down and 6 PM is where China wakes up. So between these two are like another window that they could use to go out for a quick run or something. So that's one part. And then I think the other big challenge is is traveling. Especially for climbing, travel destroys a lot of, you know, climbing training cadence. It's just so hard because you are not lucky enough to be like next to climbing gym when you book your hotel. I tried it, I tried it really hard, but not always you have the luck, the fortune to be able to be around there. And then even climbing gym training isn't particularly the same as the outdoor climbing training because you won't be on the actual wall to gain experience and get better. So that sets me back a lot from the previous few years for climbing training. Like, my best climbing performance happened like March 2005 this year when I had like 6 weeks no travel. So I got to visit climbing gym every day and I climbed the hardest route in my life. During that time. And as soon as I start trying, start traveling, done. So, but running is possible.

That's the beauty of running. Yeah, it's so simple. You can do it everywhere.

I'm not going to lie, I picked the running for this summer also part of that because this really, like, with the travel schedule, I just— no way for me to maintain the climbing performance.

So, so to anyone listening, like, you've learned quite a few things over the last 10 years going from running your first 50K to now completing your first 100K and doing a bunch of different races in between. What is some advice to your younger self? What is some advice to people listening who are in the earlier stages of their running journey?

You know, focus. We talk a lot about focus. If you really want to achieve something, or when I say achieve is really want to touch the limit of your personal performance, right? I shouldn't call trying different things not an achievement. That's an achievement as well, like being able to Do 5 different sports relatively well is a big achievement, but to do one sport extremely well, it's— I'm generally very curious about my personal limitation. Like, where is the limit? Although Kipchoge said no human is limited. At some point I was limited, but I love to try that. I love to try hard. Like, you won't realize how the beauty of life until you really try hard. So that's one. If it's an advice to ultra running, like to a younger version of myself, is really to learn about the mental part of ultra running because it's going to be a struggle, right? No matter how good you are, if you're podium runners or if you're the last finishers, it's going to struggle. I think that's part of the reasons not too many young people actually go after ultra distance. One, they're attracted by the power, right? They can run extremely fast, so they don't bother to run long. But on the other hand, I don't— I think older people generally, like, they train their mental better than young people. They know there are struggles in life, there are struggles in the races, there are tough points, tough spots in, in training, right, you need to go through. And then the lesson I learned from ultra running, it applies to my business operation as well, right? When you feel it's very difficult, when you feel like you cannot hold on, you want to quit, just remember your competitors are going through the same process. It's just a matter of— nobody enjoys it, but it's a matter of who stays in the game and who will last to the end.

It's so interesting you say that. And one thing that comes to mind is with training, with racing, but even in daily life, it is not about the superhero efforts and putting everything out. It's just about showing up consistent, even if you're able to only do X amount that day, but still keep moving forward in one way or another.

Exactly.

And yes, some days that might mean for your training you might need a rest day or you might need a mellow day, but for other days when you're feeling good, you can push it harder again.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. The other part is about risk management, and it applies to trail running also. It has a big weight in climbing, right? When you're on a big wall in the mountains, you always have to make decisions. Decisions, just like you always have to make decisions in business. There's some bold decisions you can take, but you better do it in a safer environment, right? Don't, don't push your limit in a place where if things don't go well, like you end up calling rescue, or you may not be able to call rescue at all. So, um, there's a lot of risk in business too, right? So it's, let's know your boundary, know your limit, and know how much extra bandwidth or extra inventory you still have. You know, if this one doesn't work, I can still turn around and do other things.

This morning I had an interesting Zoom coaching call for a personal best program, and one of the topics came up. There were a few first-time marathoners and a few second-time marathoners, and the topic of race day nerves came up of like, I'm so nervous about race day, I couldn't sleep the night before, I had stomach ache, just, or my back started hurting purely from nerves, right? And then we talked through it and I asked the question, what is the worst that can happen during your marathon if it doesn't go according to plan? It is not that you're free soloing or you're on one wall like 5 hours up in the air. You literally could take a walk break. You can walk, you can step on the side of the course and you will survive. Whereas with climbing, sometimes the risks are much higher and there's not an easy way out versus with, with road running. Sometimes with trail running too, but in a different degree. Like at least the risks are much different. So I think sometimes putting it in perspective can help you there.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Talking about like race day nerves, I think I've learned something as well. I remember at my 80K race I was talking to Hayden like, hey, my legs just all of a sudden doesn't feel well the day before the race. And he told me like, this is totally fine, totally fine, because your brain knows you're getting into something very difficult tomorrow and your brain doesn't want you to go there. So it starts some odd pain in some parts of your body, but all of those will go away tomorrow. It happened.

It is so fascinating you say that. Literally before my first marathon, it felt like someone— the night before, like someone was jabbing a knife in my back. And I was like, I can't run tomorrow. I'm like, and it was pure race nerves. And sure enough, next week I'm flying to Amsterdam to run the Amsterdam Marathon with my sister. And I talked to her this week and sure enough, she's like, yeah, my back is hurting. I'm like, there you go.

That's your body.

So that's exactly what happened to you.

That's fascinating. Like, I didn't know this, but it actually happened. So I knew this worked very well. And the other thing is like a lot of people don't sleep well the night before the big day. It's totally fine. And I learned this over time, like, I just don't expect a good sleep the night before anything. But the key thing is make sure you sleep well the week before, because in the end, what decides your total body performance is your weekly average sleep, not the night before. So I usually plan to— like, I always just drop all my get-up-early plan the week before, and then particularly the 2 nights before the event is like very well. So I try to just sleep as long as I want. And then for the night before, I don't care, 2 hours, 3 hours, they're fine.

Just don't look at your sleep tracking before your race. Just ignore it.

Yeah, ignore it. I knew it's that like, because oftentimes I go to like high altitude before the night before because next morning I'm gonna start over there and you are not going to have a good sleep anyways. So yeah, just forgot about it, enjoyed it. And if you can sleep start thinking about like, I will illuminate a GPS track, just go by itself in my brain that helps me to calm down. I focus on little, little line to grow and I'll sleep well.

Tell me, tell me more like about the mental component though. Like, yes, there's the race day nerves, but then even on race day itself, it gets tough and you have to work through that. How do you, how do you work through that? Totally.

I just seen the 100K race happened and there were some unexpected— like it was a high altitude race, so everything we prepared was like big warm clothing just in case the storm hits and all these things. But what happened was it was a hot day when you are down from the top all the way to the bottom of the valley. Like I was wearing the same apparel as I was on it, 15,000 feet, like same. So it was extremely hot and then everybody struggled. And then I had to like put my head into the mountain springs whenever I see it, just to get wet for the whole thing and keep walking. I think I was cool. Um, not to say good things about Carlos here. I really liked the, the voice paint, new voice paint feature that we introduced a couple of months ago. Is like I talked to the watch when I was in this low moment. I might forgot about all these emotions, right? When it's done, like exciting, I finish it, I forgot this low. But I actually recorded my voice. It was like, I think I'm in my pain cave. It's hard. My leg doesn't work. My leg would destroy after long descent downhill. It was like running, uh, 12 or 15 miles on a paved highway downhill straight. It was extremely tough. Um, yeah, I, I recall this and I just tell myself maybe I will give up on my desire to go like really high in ranking. I just need to finish it. That's what I told me, uh, to myself. And then by the time I get to the next aid station, I heard something very interesting because 2 of the top runners got disqualified because the mandatory gear wasn't carry correctly. So my ranking bumped by 2. So like, that gave me hope again. All of a sudden feels like, um, yeah, you get— you just keep to go, need to keep going if you desire to get a good ranking. There are things that unexpected happen to other people and they will drop out, and then you will be bumped out. And then I still ended up achieving roughly the same ranking as I were like with my fresh legs. So it was cool. It's good learning, like, just keep going. That's, uh, that's all I need to have.

It really, really is. And the moment, even when we're suffering, to put one foot in front of the other when you can, obviously in a safe way. But indeed, you often after the fact, once you've gotten over that hump or you've gotten over a bunk or over a challenging time, you sometimes even forget, or you just put away like the low parts. And even though we can learn from those low parts as well, and I've literally just sometimes grabbed out a camera or grabbed out my phone. I was like, yeah, this is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. It seriously feels like I just ran up 10,000 stairs or something.

And you just have the footage.

Yeah, you just record it because you end up forgetting how negative your mindset was or how— and the last thing you sometimes want to do is show that. But even if it's just for yourself, it's kind of Yeah, it's fascinating.

It's so real. And I also like another quote I got from one of the other athletes that Carlos worked with. I think she was trying to climb the 3 biggest walls in Yosemite within 24 hours. So the night before, she posted on Instagram like, "We decided to give it all tomorrow." And that's her just repeatedly telling herself like, because we know like, we're not climbing big walls, we're just in a race. And the race has so many safety protocols and all these things. My plan was whatever matters, I need to go to the finish line even if that means I couldn't even walk after that, right? Because I knew it's safe. Once I know it's safe, I just need to try everything I can to get there, right? Um, so that helped me. And then because my desire was like, I need to run a really good race, and I'd lower my expectation and lower, lower, and get some mental bump again. And near the end, I still remember the last, um, like 12K, for some reason my legs just recovered. Like I was able to run as my normal pace as in my training run. Like my legs doesn't feel any fatigue at all. I still don't know why, right? I asked AI what happened. It says, yeah, your body is just in a good balance of all the consumptions, you know, food consumption you have. Your brain knows you're about to finish, so give you extra boost and Yeah, in the end it was the final 2 hours of that 12K with 2, still 2 pretty sizable climbs. I was totally enjoyed it.

So it's like the second wind or the third wind. It's such a— because you can't, in your darkest places, sometimes you can't picture that it gets any better.

No.

And sure enough, looking at what is it that's holding you back, sometimes it is drinking a Coke with some caffeine. Sometimes it is some electrolytes, some carbs, or whatever it might be. Yeah. And then you surprise yourself.

Yeah, yeah, totally. It's good learning for me too. Good experience again. So now when I get to the next race, I know the middle part might be tough and then in the end you will have a good moment. So you can just keep running expecting the good moment to show up. Totally.

You just mentioned something interesting about your friend who was saying she was giving it her all. And this morning, literally with a conversation with a second-time marathoner, he was sharing to a first-time marathoner about his experience. And he said, first marathon I did at mile 17, my leg started hurting a lot. And he said, I dialed it back significantly. And from there on, it was not very good to the finish line. Second time around, his expectation of discomfort, of pain tolerance, of knowing that he was okay, when that happened, he was able to get through mile 17. And yes, he had paced himself differently. He had taken a different approach in training and nutrition. But still, when it got uncomfortable and it was a few months, a few miles later, he was able to push through and he was able to deal with it. And kind of going back to what you said, giving it your all, like in training, yes, you're going to hold back and you want to be able to do it again the next day and you want to recover well. But on race day, too, leave no stone unturned and to give it your all. Like, a lot of people don't get to that stage of giving it your all, but I think when you mentally go into it of like, I'm going to do everything I can to do the best today.

Yeah, the pain always exists and it's the pain tolerance that went higher and higher over training, over experience. And I love those learnings that I can apply to life because sports, you know, endurance sports particularly, they are like life, because life is an endurance sport as well.

It really is. And I think there's so many benefits from the training that you do, because even having seen what you have done over the last 6 to 12 months running-wise and taking running much more serious, or that being your primary focus, the amount of back-to-back longer runs and overall training volume— tell me a little bit more about how you go about recovery, because I've seen you do some, some significant pushes. How do you recover well from this?

Yeah, well, this time I didn't have a coach. I coached myself. I thought it planned out quite well. From January to April, I didn't really run as much. Running is more like a recovery from climbing. And I established a goal for myself to run from the town of Mammoth Lakes to Yosemite Valley. By the end of June. So that was one of my personal desires, personal goal. I want to— these two places are two of my favorite places in the world. I want to connect them by foot. So I had my two of my friends, they both work for Carl's, so we were able to set up some car shuttles. So to make it happen, and then so I started training for the month of May, month of June, and ended up finishing that. That's like a 50-mile run myself. So the first half, like 50K-ish, was done with them, and the final 30K was my— me soloing through the night. The final descent was pretty tough because it's again very steep downhill with, uh, paved trail. But anyways, I finished that. By the time I finished, I was like thinking, shall I go back to climbing, or I've made this far already with some running fitness built in my body, why not look for a higher goal? And then I discovered this 100K race and signed up. I found this could be a really good one because one, it's a high altitude, and I really like high altitude myself. And for where I live in Southern California, it's relatively easy to get to like above 10,000 feet. That's how I plan my 3 months of training afterwards. One is I took, I think, 2 weeks of recovery week, reduced my, uh, running, total running volume. Um, just to recover from the 50-miler from Indian Yosemite. And then from week 3, I started picking my distance as well, because generally there's a rule of you need to be able to accomplish the same volume as a race day in the week during your training, right? So for that race, I need to at least do 100K per week and with the similar volume of climbing. It was when they advertised the race, it's like about 8,000 meters, which is, I don't know, 24,000 feet of the climb. It's massive, unbelievable. I set my goal as I need to climb 8,000 meters for a week, for my primary week, but I need— it takes— it took me some time. So 2 weeks of increasing the running distance and maintaining at 100K, um, the— now it comes to week 5, I started increasing total elevation gain. I think it was week 7 that I actually set up a small challenge for myself to do this whole week as Everesting. So like total elevation gain equals the Mount Everest, uh, 29,000 foot. Yes, 29,000 foot. Also, I literally beat that like on the Sunday morning on my final run, and I had been doing this little hill repeats, so I achieved that, so that was a win. Um, and after this big, uh, climbing week, the next week I moved that into, um, like more of an intense because I want to run faster. So I took that chance the week, try to go against the Strava segments in my local areas. I know some of them will hope you have the KOM, right? I couldn't be that. You super fast by that time. Uh, but I was like, compete with myself, trying to improve it. So I got a lot of PRs on my Strava segments, uh, during that week. Actually, I did 2 weeks around speed, uh, just to— because I knew I need to run between like 140, 150 heart rate to get a good, um, final number. Um, and then with the days closer to the race week, I switched my attention to high altitude because I need to get there. So I ran a lot in Mount Baldy, in San Gorgonio, like— so higher mountains, yeah, higher mountains, for myself. And then I went to Eastern Sierra. They have 14ers out there, so I did a little bit of one in Mount Whitney and then, you know, the surrounding mountains. I think everything executed quite well, probably except the final, like, altitude week. They do do a variety of I didn't accomplish the training goal that I had, but nothing should be perfect. So I think the final good surprise is like we went to Colorado to run with Killian. That's another 14er that we did, spend almost the majority of half day with him. That was super inspiring, seeing him being able to finish all these things and seeing him run into the darkness and finish it.

Like, so you and Kilian ended up like, we met up with him on the bike. We saw as he was taking on 72 summits of 14,000 feet or higher between Colorado, California, and Washington. We met up with him in Colorado like he was biking in, transitioned, went to the camper van, and then you and him went up the technical route. You have climbing experience, so does he. I didn't want to go that route, so I ended up going to easier route. Easier.

Not easy driving.

So I ended up driving an hour around the mountain, ended up going up the easier route, had to be on the summit before you guys would get there so that we would have an opportunity to record a conversation and to spend some time together over there, which there were different lighting storms coming in. You guys were hiding on your side of the mountain, I was hiding on my side of the mountain. Eventually we met near the summit and it was phenomenal to just see the way Kilian is moving through the mountains with such ease, with so much experience. And once again, I feel, yes, he's the greatest mountain athlete of all time and he moves with fluidity, but he just becomes one with the terrain. He has done it so much with so much repetition that he is— he was there literally when I saw him with both of his hands in his pockets while I had one hand on my camera, one like out and about, and he just made it look easy. And I was hanging on for dear life. And he called it non-tech technical, and for me it was almost technical.

No, yeah, it wasn't technical. If you see his— some of his— oh yeah, later footage clips, like in California, 14ers, that's real technical.

Oh yeah, yeah. So when you see that, what were some of your key takeaways and lessons from that day climbing, or like spending time in the mountains with some of the world's best athletes like that?

Yeah, I guess the biggest thing, you know, technically he taught me how to deal with thunderstorms. Like when the thunder rolled in, him and I were hiding under a cave, like on a huge rock with over-arching cave. That helps, like, because the thunderstorms are going away quickly, like 10 minutes, it's fine, right? Don't keep moving. He had a very good quote. I still remember, like, better slow than sorry. So, you know, I thought those mountain athletes, like when you're trying to break the world record or something, you better move fast. But no, he doesn't. He's like, I need to stay safe and going back home safe. So the waiting for 10 more minutes isn't a big deal at all. So that's one of my biggest learnings out there. It's like you don't have to always take huge risk is to achieve something. Keep moving, right? Even that means that you, you, you take, hit a pause sometime. That works too. Two is I think his brain has been trained to go through those nights without a problem. Like for us, we're heading back to hotel, we're going to eat McDonald's or something. He's keep moving, right? It's unbelievable. But for him, it's like going back home. Like darkness is his home. He knows how to move through the mountain throughout the night. And he doesn't seem to eat a lot, which, which is amazing.

That was just wild. He was like— and I think that stood out to me was that he was very dressed warm because he is in such a low heart rate zone. He was literally in zone 1 when we were with him. And so he's not burnt. Like, he's a very light sweater. He only brought half a liter of water for an 8-hour adventure.

Yeah.

Before he got refueled. Even do that. And he— yeah, he's one of a kind. So it's, it's fascinating. I want to talk a little bit about— I think this is interesting. We talk on this YouTube channel quite a bit about heart rate training. We talk about measuring data. You mentioned earlier that in the earlier stages you found some of that data quite helpful, even for you, from a motivation standpoint. Sometimes I think when athletes see they're improving or they're getting faster at the same heart rate, that can, can be helpful. Sometimes it can also be like a realization of like, hey, I might be plateauing, I might be going backwards, or it might like just being aware what's going on. Like, yes, we can listen to our body, but sometimes having some data to back certain things up or to give perspective can be helpful there too. What are some of the things that you have seen change over the years? Like, for example, with Kilian, you guys are now able to provide very clear mapping, very clear routing. A lot of things have improved over the years. What are some of the things that you're excited about that is currently available, but even what is coming available in the near future?

I think for, for training, my favorite feature within the COROS ecosystem is our Base Fitness system. So basically it's an algorithm that takes in your heart rate intensity, your duration that's in the zone, and then multiplied by different days. So like your total training load from the past 42 days, or the number called base fitness, because it's like a whole body has gone through for the past 6 weeks. I use that a lot. I believe a lot of athletes are using that. I think the winner of UTMB in 2024, he's like He's a full-time employee of Hoka, just showed up, won the race, and he was a Karos user. He relies on that too to coach him to gain there. Like, for my past season, I knew I need to get to 1:50 base finish in order to finish my, like, Mammoth to Yosemite run, because I look at a historical look at my data, like In my 80K race back in 2019, my base finish was roughly like 160 to 170, and then the Yosemite run was, was not as intense as the race, so I thought 150 should be a good range. I ended up getting 150 and stayed there to finish the run and then move on to my 100K race, I knew I have to beat the 80K base fitness because I needed to get fitter. So I think my record high was 188 for my training, uh, and then of course through tapering it went down, and then on the race day pick up a little bit, but the peak is 188. So it set up a really good benchmark for my future adventure. If I want to get something even bigger than 100K, or I want to run faster in my next 100K, I better beat that as my base level of training volume.

So for those listening, right, and this will be an interesting topic for a minute. Sometimes the watch afterwards would give, like any of the watches I hear it from, from Coros users, from Garmin users, from Strava users, from people across the board, they might give feedback on, on the run that you've just had. And with more and more AI getting in the mix, sometimes it would say, oh, that run was productive. Some days it might say you need more recovery. Some days it might say like different things, right? What is that based on? Is that based like, so you're talking about a base fitness, that's a 6-week period for 42 days, and that takes into account your overall training load. So the volume and the intensity, and then you probably have already had to set some of your heart rate zones.

So you have to know your zone before we can determine like you're actually working really hard and at this heart rate or you actually haven't recovered.

Yeah, because for some people 160 is zone 5, for other people might be zone 2 or zone 3. Yeah. So the setting of the zones is an important one. So let's, let's just talk through some technicality over here.

Yeah. Yeah.

Like for anyone who doesn't really know, someone is starting to like starting to get into running or wants to be more accurate with some of this, how do you first of all go about calculating your max heart rate? What are some of your recommendations and set the zones correctly?

Sure. Yeah. The easiest way is just to start using the watch for regular running, like because the watch has a default setting, but it will calibrate as you have more running data into, into the watch. Like, it should give you a relatively good accuracy in terms of zones after you use it for like 3 to 4 weeks, even if you haven't hit like your, your max heart rate. It's, it's— no, you don't have to hit the max heart rate at all. Like, it just, it'll be better if you have a variety of different intensity. If you're always in zone 1, right, it's obviously more difficult. So it's relatively, just relatively accurate. However, if you really want accurate data, we actually introduced a feature about about a year ago called fitness testing.

Yes, tell me more about that because this is an interesting one, I think.

Yeah, so basically it's like once you start fitness testing, the watch will walk you through different— like, now start running, uh, start increase the intensity a little bit, and then do like a set of a little bit faster running, and then recover a little bit, and do even faster, and recover, and do even faster., right? But it won't tell you to hit it on max heart rate. That's, that's just too much. I'll go to design this fitness testing features that like allow you to only run about 80% of y'all like max intensity, but still give you a very accurate, like almost as accurate as the lab testing data, um, to determine your threshold, determine your max heart rate, to determine like all different zones. And we recommend customers or users to use this fitness testing maybe once a month if you're actually in activity training periods, because you want to know the improvement that you have. And doing it too frequent doesn't make sense because it— you, your body won't change or won't improve as, as faster. So that will set you a very good foundation of the accuracy of your overall performance. Or if you are lazy, you just don't need to run it and you don't have to run it.

You know, one interesting one, and I'm not even sure if I've shared this with you, but I've done some of these fitness tests where it gives an indication of like I had to give an indication of, I believe this is, I think, the shape I'm roughly in. And then like the app would also give me some kind of indication. And so I go out and do a fitness test and I think there's some users who are a bit more fast twitch and some users who are a bit more into the longer distances and that's their strength. Whereas for me to hit some of the marathon paces and indications were very doable. The shorter the distances became, like the 5, the 10, the half marathon, the 10K, the 5K, it became more and more challenging for me to even get close to some of these numbers. And I see vice versa some of it as well, whereas I see some marathoners who are very fast in the short distances and they might run, let's say, a 1:20 half marathon, but they cannot carry that through to the marathon distance. So I think that's sometimes interesting as well, how you're trying to do the best you can, I think, as a company to lay out guidelines to do as much as you can to make that applicable.

Yeah. Yeah. We, we wanted to give you a good snapshot of your overall fitness and overall different zones like you, it will tell you one zone, one zone, two zones, three zone, four. It doesn't mean you are better in any of those, right? The fitness test doesn't tell you that. Uh, you need to pick the particular training goal for yourself and really to train yourself in that particular zone. For me to run longer distance, I mean, zone 2 is important. Sometimes zone 3 if I like trying to battle an uphill. It never goes beyond that, right? I, I mean I have to give another credit to Tim Tofsen. It was out of a Strava comment he had with one of his followers. Like, the guy asked him, like, what does it take to finish Mammoth 200? And his answer was extremely simple: make sure you can be in zone 2 for 15+ hours. As simple as that, right? So it, it's a really great answer. Like, it answers the question, like, why, why do you train? How do you train? Training is to mean to simulate your race day environment, but also allows you to recover as much as you can. That's, that's training. Um, so zone 2 is important for a lot of people, right? And even if you are training for like extremely fast and shorter distance, to lay out a foundation of the base fitness in that zone 2 is also very important because you don't want to get injured.

Do you look at certain data to see if you're recovering well, meaning resting heart rate, HRV, any other?

It does, it does. But sometimes, you know, yes, you want— ideally you want to elevate HRV, you want to have a good sleep, but the reality is you just couldn't have it. Like, I had to travel like over 10 different time zones to get to the race town. Like, my sleep is going to be horrible no matter what. So for that situation, I won't even look at it. But I think HRV for me, the most useful is it has an early indication of you getting sick or me getting sick because some virus, it stays in your body and doesn't affect your— and it doesn't give you symptoms until, I don't know, 3 days later. But your HRV might be able to tell you like 2 days in advance if you see low HRV for 2 nights. But this doesn't seem to be other things that's happening to, you know, bring you this low HRV. There's something might be wrong in body. So that's, that's the main way I would use it. Otherwise, you know, stress exists everywhere. So don't be too stressed out if you see a low HRV.

Yeah, I think that's a, that's a good point because sometimes, and I think there might have been a study about this as well, sometimes the results of the data can impact Exactly how it is. I heard of a study with two different groups, and one was a group that was said you have slept for only 5 hours, and one group was said you've only slept or you've slept for 8 hours. And both groups, I believe, had only slept 5 hours. Exactly. And sure enough, the group that was told they slept for 8 hours and it was good, like they're completely different.

Oh yeah, totally. I woke up 2:37 AM this morning. I was still jet lagging from my trip. I knew I have an interview with you this afternoon. I started worrying about as soon as I saw 2:37. I knew like, how do I make sure I go through the day and still, still energy, with energy to talk to you? It does keep bringing me some of stress. And I just know if I woke up seeing, okay, 6:37, I'll be be totally cool, like, oh, I had a good sleep, so I can do whatever today. So learning how to manage the mental impact of data is also another lesson. But from, from the car's point of view, how do we make sure we presented data in a less stressful way?

It's another— I think that's a good one because realistically, when an app is telling you, like, I've literally gone on a 20-mile run and some of the feedback that I saw from the Strava AI was you had an unproductive run or something along those lines. So it was like a low intensity 20-mile run and it was just a comfortable jog and it didn't show anything that I did for my fitness level in the Strava app at one point. And it basically just told me that it was a useless workout, even though not in those words necessarily. But you literally hear sometimes the feedback of your workout was unproductive.

Isn't that the classic Garmin? Yeah, unproductive.

I don't want to hear that. Like, and, and I hear that quite a few times from people on coaching calls where they—

I need to, I need to argue for Garmin in that particular way. When this says it's unproductive, it is pretty much unproductive. But the problem is just telling people unproductive is not enough. You need to tell people what they need to do. Just don't tell them you do something.

But to argue that though, right? If someone has a high injury-prone risk or has been overtrained or any of these kind of things, and just the fact that they're out there moving in a consistent way, whether that's for 30 minutes or for an hour and a half or whatever. Yeah, it is. It is a fine line.

That is one thing we are improving as well. Like, we need to consider people are going through injury and just got started again. You know, how do we deliver the correct message? I'm not saying like overly encouraging, like we don't have to sugarcoat a bad training and to be a good training, but to give them some useful information, right? Consider that.

As I've seen on, for example, the Oura Ring, there was a thing where if they indicate that you're getting sick or they indicate something is off, you can turn on a certain mode and it basically doesn't tell you that you slept horrible. It basically just tells you like, hey, you might be fighting something over here. Like, it becomes such a balancing game between input from data and your own intuition and how you merge both. In the right way possible.

Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, adding a switch is one option, or the other way is if users are getting used to entering voice pin, maybe the AI, the Chorus AI, may be able to read it. Okay, the user told us something like my legs won't feel, doesn't feel well, or I got injured. So you don't have to manually go turn on the switch, like it should know it by itself.

I think the journaling part is one of the most interesting things as well, even that has come across from the conversations with Eliud Kipchoge and Kilian and many other athletes who are just mentioning they have been journaling on a consistent basis, and that's been super helpful for them to identify early on what's going on. And I think indeed, if you're able to merge that from an input of here is some of the data that's showing, here are some of your own voice notes or written notes or any of that and combine that? I think that's—

yeah, currently we call it adventure journaling, but the reality is like it can be adventurous and can be training journaling. So both parts. So they are information. We just need to continue to fine-tune this feature and make sure our AI is smart enough to read and understand our customers' overall fitness and wellness to give them a better recommendation. That is the ultimate goal.

Yeah. I think that's an interesting one. I've been sleeping with one of those Eight Sleep mattresses, and even there, there's certain tags that you can put on where it literally like just lets you indicate of like, I ate a late night meal or I did this or that. So like, it's not just the data, it's like the input from the user as well.

They need to build a microphone in the mattress so you can tell them like without entering something on it.

Funny enough, it even has a feature that recognizes snoring. Oh, it does? So there might be, I don't know.

There might be a microphone?

I don't know if there's a microphone or not.

Hopefully the privacy control of that company is good enough.

What excites you after you've just completed a 100K run? Like, there's sometimes like the race blues of like you train towards a certain goal and then all of a sudden the goal happens and then here we are. I know you and I have started talking about potential adventure in Colorado at some point.

Oh yeah.

But tell me a little bit more. Where is your mind at in the future?

Well, my brain is still processing, you know, like what's happened. Also, what should I do for the next I don't know, next 6 months or next year. I still have a big wall climbing goal myself, but considering how busy life is and then how difficult training could be, um, I don't know. I haven't made my final decision yet, but seems like there's a lot of fun stuff. It could be, uh, uh, some Eastern Sierra long traverses that I can do like in the kidian style, right? Or It's a rock climbing Yosemite trip, or maybe it's Colorado. Like, just look at how— what Kilian has done. He left us with some really good GPS tracks, so maybe I can replicate one part of it, and, you know, for a day or two, that could be something really fun as well.

I do like the fact though, recently, I think it was last week when you and I were talking right after your race, it's like, okay, let's go back to the drawing board. And it's like, what kind of excites us? What is— and I think that is an important part for athletes to do from time to time instead of just showing up and putting in another training cycle or signing up for another marathon. It's like it's really taking a step back, seeing where does your energy get drawn into, where do you feel like, what do you feel excited about? Yeah. And for you, it's interesting. I often see you getting drawn to the mountains and I will get the call of like, hey, you want to go to San Gorgonio up this 11,000-foot thing this weekend?

And it's—

I see the excitement that you have around the mountains and the outdoor, and I think leaning into that is so important versus just signing up for another thing.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm just generally excited for any— anything in the mountains that I can spend a day or 2 days or 3 days. It's funny, like some of my climbing friends send me DMs, say, hey, are you doing the wrong sport? They saw my running training. You are doing the wrong sport. I said, no, I think I'm doing the right thing. I'll be back, be patient. And then I messaged another climbing friend I had 2 days ago. Hey, are you ready for climbing with me on Sunday? He said, sorry, I have a new partner now. I can't climb with you. That's all those things, the funny things happen. But, you know, it's funny. All these, these are challenging and these are fun, fun activities that I am sure will, will get some adventure together and we'll enjoy what the remaining of 2025 and 2026 for us.

For sure. Two more questions. Where can people find more about you? I see you're quite active on Strava.

Where else? Yeah, Strava. I mean, I post more frequently on Strava than any other social platforms just because I generally, I love talking to people like athletes to athletes, right? Because there's a lot of language only runners to runners you can understand and you feel like you, you're talking. Um, you know, Instagram, sometimes I have an Instagram account, but I don't post very often unless I, I met a coyote on the trail or rattlesnake. I'll grab us like video clips and post on your stories, but not as much. But, uh, yeah. But I can be reached on both platforms via DM or post. In fact, a lot of Coros customers send me DMs, hey, my watch doesn't work as I should, you know, how can you help me? And I always try my best to help them.

There you go. There's quite a few people that are listening, recreational runners, they're looking to improve in a variety of different ways. And this can be mountain runners, ultra-endurance athletes, but also recreational runners on the road. Do you have any closing thoughts you'd like to share?

Running is one of the best things in life that I discovered. I hope we all share the same joy. It will be very cool and very enjoyable to just keep running, and running could be a lifetime-long sport, no matter how old you are. So I'd love to see you all on the trails and maybe share some mileage altogether. You know, maybe it's on the race or on some local hills. Oftentimes I got to meet people on shows. It's always super cool.

I have to set up another group run at some point over here. I know we've been talking about doing a group run with Billy Yang at some point over here in the LA mountains or possibly around some of the world majors that we'll both be at.

Yeah, sure. That'd be fun as well.

Totally. Good. Louis, thanks so much.

I thank you, Floris.

We'll have to go for another run again soon.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me today.

For sure. Nice one. Thanks. Thanks so much for listening. I have a few big announcements coming up soon. I can't share too much yet, but it's something I'm very excited about. I've been working on for quite a while in the background and it's getting ready for launch here soon. Probably by the next podcast episode I'll be able to share more. Also, I'm flying out to the Amsterdam Marathon probably by the time this episode is getting released. I'm going to be only in Amsterdam for about 48 hours. So this time there's no shakeout run that I'm setting up. Going to be spending time with my family. It's my sister's first marathon. So really excited to help run that with her, do some pacing along the way. And I'm still laughing out loud because I told my sister probably for the last 10 years about this low heart rate training. And finally it clicked with her. And sure enough, she was like, you know, there's something interesting about this low heart rate stuff. And I'm like, So anyway, it's going to be a blast. Looking forward to that. And then I'll interview her on the podcast too. So that's going to be a fun episode where we talk through what is it like for her to go from a half marathon to a full marathon, different things that she learns, different things that I observed from the background. And so, yeah, I think that's going to be a fun conversation there as well. I would love to hear from you. What was your favorite lesson, takeaway, or quote from this conversation with Lewis? Let me know in the comments below. And then I would say, have fun out there on your runs. We'll be back soon for more.

Bye now.