#18: Dr. Mark Cucuzzella on MAF HR Training, Running Form & Injury Prevention

Yeah, I progressed from like 11-minute mile at heart rate 150 to pretty close to a 6-ish minute mile over the course of probably 4 months. If you finish a training run and you don't think you could do that again, you're probably training too hard.

Welcome to The Extra Mileage Show. My name is Floris Gierman, and in this show I talk with inspiring guests about ways to become a stronger, healthier, and happier athlete. Let's dive right in. Today's conversation is a big one. It's with Dr. Mark Gugazella, and this interview has been in the works for about 4 years now, although he probably doesn't know I've been chasing him for that long. In 2015, I interviewed Dr. Phil Maffetone for the first time, and after this conversation, I really want to interview Dr. Mark Gugazella next. The only thing is, it's easier said than done. Dr. Mark is one of the most productive, yet one of the busiest guys that I know as well, with a very impressive background in a variety of different areas. He's a doctor and a professor of family medicine at the West Virginia University School of Medicine. He has been a competitive runner for 30 years with a personal best of 2:24 in the marathon. He ran the Boston Marathon 25 times and he has also been able to finish a sub-3-hour marathon for 30 years in a row, which is the longest streak in history. Also, he finished 22 years of marathons under 2 hours 35, and this was spread out over a 4-decade time period. And even today, he's still running on a national level as a master runner, so he has a very impressive running resume. He's also a Lieutenant Colonel in the military reserve, designing programs to reduce the injuries in military personnel. Besides that, he owns a minimalist footwear store, Two Rivers Strats, in West Virginia. He's the race director, he's the executive director of the National Running Center, he's an author of the incredible book Run for Your Life, he teaches several clinics together with Dr. Phil Maffetone and others, and the list goes on. His work has been featured in many outlets, including New York Times, NPR, Outside Magazine, Runner's World, and many other health and media outlets. In today's episode, we take a deep dive into low heart rate training with the MAF180 formula. We talk about running form and injury prevention, minimalist footwear and stretching, and so much more. All show notes from today's episode can be found on my website extramileist.com/18. Because we're already on episode number 18 in the podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode with Dr. Mark Gugazella. Welcome to the show, Mark. I'm very excited to have you over here. I've been following your work for many years from your website, the YouTube videos, and even your running book, Run for Your Life. I'm very, very impressed. And I just want to start out with saying thank you for all your hard work that you've been putting out there.

I want to thank you, Floris. I've been following you too, and we wrote about you on my blog a couple years ago. 'Cause you're the human experiment and you're interviewing all these really cool people that are their own experiments. And I think the science all connects, you know, when you go backwards into what, you know, a lot of the people you've talked with and what yourself, what you're doing, and then have some fun.

Yeah, absolutely. I think for the audience listening, it would be really good to hear some more about your own running background as well. So maybe we can start out there because you have transitioned quite a bit in your training and your racing. So if you could, give us some more information there.

Yes, I probably started running like you did. You know, you grew up in the Netherlands and were a skateboarder, so I was like one of those kind of kids, you know, like whether I was on my skateboard or running in the neighborhood or playing tag for hours or, you know, running around the football field, you know, we just played sports all year round. We didn't have organized sports other than in season, but probably 80% of our sporting activity, if you'd call it that, was not organized. It was just backyard play. I was always like the kid who would be the one who would win the recess field days and stuff sprinting. I could sprint pretty well. Played a lot of football until I became too puny for that sport. They used to have— Floris, they used to have weight limits in America to be able to run the ball just so that the kid who was like the massive kid in the 8-year-old football couldn't just run over everybody.

No way. I didn't realize that.

Yeah, like in soccer I guess, your football. I mean, it is what it is. But in American football, you know, I mean, these days, gosh, there's some 8-year-old kids who could probably like play on a D1 team now. You know, they're in like the weight room at age 6 with dad. You know, I don't think that's a good idea. Yeah. But then once, once I got to about 7th or 8th grade, you know, I was like on the smaller side and I started to run a little bit with my older brother who was running cross-country, um, for his high school. That was a couple years behind him and we'd be on the beach and I would just hop in for some run. You know, that was about the only time I ran is if we were at the beach, and it was barefoot of course. And I think I was maybe like 11 or something, and he decided to do a 10-mile run on the beach barefoot, and I jumped in and did a 10-mile run on the beach barefoot. You know, it wasn't a big deal. You know, that was what we did every day, but not in one stretch. You know, if we played, we probably covered that kind of mileage. And about age 13, my dad decided to— you know, I was, I was like probably an ADD kid, Floris. You know, you I would open the door and it would calm me down. He decided to line me up in a race, myself and my 11-year-old brother. There weren't many races then. This was 1980 and there was a half marathon. That was like the one race in our area. I lined up for that. I didn't really know what a half marathon was. It's like 13 miles or something. I think I'd run like 10 miles on a training run. I showed up there and I had like 3 other buddies my age and all 4 of us, we all ran this thing in like under 1:25. I ran like a 1:23, and my 11-year-old brother ran like 1:31 or something. That wasn't like weird, you know, we were just kids. And, and, but at that point, you know, I was gonna— I went into high school, and that was actually like a national standard time. So, so the coach is like, you know, you can run, you know, that's, that's good time, you know, look, it's best in the country for your age, you know, to do that. And, but that was probably the biggest mistake I made in sports was to become a single sport athlete, so to speak. So now we know that's not really good for kids at an early age to— I guess I'm the type of person who I'm all in, so when I decided I was going to run, I was all in. Then I decided to train like a runner, which was probably bad because for a 13-year-old— when I didn't train as a runner, I ran pretty well. Never got hurt. That's just sprinting around and playing outside and running around a lot. But then when I started to put miles in my legs, I'd start, and then you're growing at age 13, but the way we really trained to run then, I had a really awesome coach. He had like every Runner's World magazine and his name was Brother Cawthorn and we still stay in touch. We're trying to figure out training, so you'd pick up like a Runner's World and Bill Rogers is running 10 miles twice a day, so we figured, well, maybe 10 miles once a day is cool. That was the training plan. It's like 10 miles once a day. You know, you'd have success and then you get hurt, have success. I spent probably half of my high school running years in the swimming pool, you know, with this, that, or the other injury. But then, you know, maybe it's— it had some effect, you know. So when I started running, you know, it was either barefoot or in these things called Keds, you know, you probably knew, skateboard shoes. Skateboarding, you know, they're like Vans, you know, these flat shoes that, you know, I think I ran my first race, like Puma Clydes, you know. But then we— this was the day in 1980, so all these running shoes, the Cortez, the Nike Waffle, New Balance, Brooks, all these shoes were designing the modern running shoe, which would of course elevate the heel, flare the heel. They used to have these things called flared heels, and we know now that's a disaster. But, but so I adapt, you know, I started buying these running shoes, and I probably changed way I ran without knowing it. You know, I start putting a lot of miles in on these big cushiony elevated heel stiff heavy running shoes, but no one knew any of that stuff. And you know, we just— I had a whole closet of orthotics. You know, I was hurt. You know, my dad take me to the doc and they'd make more orthotics and all this, you know, the usual trail of tears. You know, did well enough to go on and run in college. And again, like, like probably over half my team You know, was probably spent the majority of the time in the trainer's room hurt. We had no focus, and I don't think we were unique. We had no real specific focus on injury prevention at University of Virginia. You know, we did a lot of strength training, but it was pretty across-the-board strength training that you would do, you know, for football, you know, for soccer. We all did a lot of this stuff, but really nothing specific for running. And we, we put in a lot of miles.

And but you were still able to run very fast marathon times at that point, right?

Yeah, yeah. Well, I didn't run marathons till after college.

Okay.

But yeah, I was always— and once I got out of, you know, I was hurt. I did okay in college, but it was probably never could string more than 6 months of training together. And then when I got out of college, you know, kind of had the, the Gump moment, you know, the, you know, I'm done running. You know, I was maybe, uh, guess what, probably like 21 at the time. And I took the summer off completely. I went out to LA, you know, I had to work. I was working out L.A. And it was probably good because it was at that time the smog was just horrible, Floris. And I was living in Glendora. I actually tried to jog one day and like my lungs hurt. It was just bad, you know. I thought people were just making it up. Oh, they're just a bunch of wusses out there, you know. Oh, you know, the air's bad. I get it. That was like 3 months no running, you know. I probably put on like 20 pounds just because I ate runner's diet without running. Got back to med school and You know, I found that I needed to run then to be able to do my studying, so I just put my shoes on and started jogging again. And that fall of my first year in med school, a buddy of mine was gonna run the Marine Corps Marathon, so I decided to do some longer training runs with him. And with a couple, you know, a couple decent long runs, 15 or 16 miles, I went to the Marine Corps Marathon and ran at 2:34. That felt pretty easy actually, you know, I didn't I didn't know what a marathon was and that kind of caught me hooked on running a marathon.

That's an incredible fast time for experimenting with a marathon.

Yeah, but the next one didn't go too well. So you probably would know this mistake, Floris. So I was just farting around, ran that 2:34 and I had these super skinny shoes. I went back to the basics. I had these super skinny shoes. They were called like Nike Dualist. They were like— weighed like 5 ounces and I qualified for Boston. Boston Marathons the next spring. I'm like, okay, now I'm gonna train like a real runner. You know, do all my serious training, get ready for Boston. And I got really good shape, get ready for Boston. And again, wore these super skinny shoes. And I don't think I knew much because I trained in the big bulky shoes. You know, we all trained these big bulky shoes. That was, you know, we had training shoes and racing shoes. That was the way it was in my era. And Boston's this downhill course for the first 15 miles. Have you done Boston?

Yeah, I've done it a few years ago.

Yeah, so you kind of know, and I was up in, you know, pretty high corral, you know, like with, with the fast dudes. And I went through halfway in like 1:08 for half marathon, but it didn't feel cardiovascularly that hard. You know, that was like, you know, way less than like track pace. But at about— but you know, you're flying down these hills and breathing okay. And but then at about 15 or 16 miles, you know that place you're going into Newton Lower Falls? That last big downhill, I was like, "Something ain't right. Something is not right here." I couldn't even feel my quads. I was like, "This is just— something ain't right." So I kind of jogged a bit over those Newton Hills and I got to Boston College where they're all drinking beer.

Yeah, high-fiving.

Yeah, and I'm like, "Okay, I think I'm done." So I DNF'd that first Boston, but learned my lesson and gone on to run 25 more. Boston Marathons pretty well, but I think you got to go make that mistake because I wouldn't have understood it. And you look back and you know those mistakes. So if you're listening to this and tempted to run Boston, you know, really fast the first 15 miles, don't, you know, glide those first 15 miles.

Yeah, or make sure to train some of the downhills as well as the uphills.

Yeah, and I had actually trained some of that. I lived in Charlottesville, Virginia at the time. I had these beautiful mountain runs, but I just, you know, went way too fast, you know, sucked in, you know, running the downhills. And the next, the next year I went like super mellow and ran like a 2:30 flat. So went nice and mellow the first, first half. So we all learned that. But yeah, then I, you know, ran for marathons, you know, all through med school, residency. It was kind of my mental therapy. After residency, I was, I was blessed to be part of the Air Force, and they had a travel team. And this was really cool. We got to go to all these international races running cross-country marathons. Track races. It was fun. It was like being in school again. You'd be hanging out with the Europeans over there. We went to the Netherlands a couple of times and your host would always have the big banquet and all this local beer. It was. No one took it too— it wasn't like college where you're expected to win. If you did kind of win, it was like a rugby match. It was cool. We won. You have a drink with your with your comrades there. So, but I got a lot of, a lot of injuries, a lot of injuries. And about the year 2— and I was trying to make the Olympic trials, it's pretty close. I had 2:24 and you needed 2:22. So I decided to up my training a little bit, maybe 1999, and was gearing for Chicago. It's a pretty flat course and, um, ended up running about a 2:20, 2:24:40 there. And so I missed that by a couple minutes and was pretty broken at that time. I'd been struggling with injuries, pretty much every injury, you name it, I had it. My feet were killing me, all kinds of plantar fascia joint pains in the big toe joints. And went in and got some x-rays with the orthopedist at the Air Force Academy, and my large toe joints were pretty much like fused, trashed. My shoe— my foot looked like a track spike, you know, big toe bent, looked like ballerina foot. I didn't understand that the big toe is actually important, you know, we didn't learn that stuff in med school. Had an operation to kind of clean up the bone a little bit, straighten it out a little bit, and I was kind of given the opinion, most medical opinion is when you got something broken and the running was contributing, don't run. Kind of back to the Gump time, after a few months of that, I think my dog was more sad than I was because she was an off-leasher in the trails in Colorado. Got back jogging and actually this is when I came across the Maffetone stuff. I was sitting on an airplane and I pulled up You've interviewed Mark Allen and this United Airlines magazine I think changed my life because I picked— you're just flipping through it, 3 days in Portugal or something, some wine review and then there's this article. It was called Get Fast, Run Slow and it was written by Mark Allen. I think that was the name of it but it was about the Maffetone Method and it was Mark Allen. You could link to that. To that show. But it's his story about pretty much getting that Gump moment after he had lost 6 Ironmans to Dave Scott. And then he went, you know, went out and found the shaman, you know, Phil. And, you know, and I'm listening and, you know, kind of going to Yoda. And, you know, he talked about his progression with the MAF heart rate. And I'd never, you know, heard of a heart rate— might have heard of them, but I'd never used one. And they were pretty bulky at the time. I went and got one and beep, beep, beep.

That must have been such an eye-opening experience for you as well.

Yeah, I started jogging again because I pretty much ignored most doctors' advice through my life because I am a doctor and I realized most of our advice is wrong. When the doctor said not to run, it's kind of almost like you assume that the opposite is true. No offense to doctors, but we learn the treatment paradigm. We never learn how to kind of cure the mechanics or the biology. That's just the way it is. Yeah, so I slowed down and my progression was steady. I think— to describe the Maffetone Method is you take 180 minus your age. I was 30 at the time, so I set it at 150, and you start jogging. As soon as it goes over 150, you slow down.

Did you adjust it at all with anything at that point?

No, I didn't know any of the fancy— I just read that article. I didn't buy any books or anything. I just read that article and said, "That sounds interesting." Bought some $50 heart rate monitor with chest strap and went to my local park and it was like, I don't know, 11-minute-ish mile, you know, grandma running by me and it's beeping. Now I think, you know, you probably— you interview people, Floris, that, you know, were competitors and they have that kind of brain, you know. So for people that are competitors, you know, I probably am one, you know, we're all Type A and that's because that's kind of why we ran, you know, that's why we run in college and race, you know, because we have that and it's in our genes, right? We just want to go do that. It's very difficult for people like that to slow down. I was drinking the Kool-Aid. I'm like, "Well, if Mark Allen's doing this—" It made sense. It made complete sense. That just makes too much sense. It seemed like a good idea at the time just to slow me down because I'm recovering from surgery and it's like, "Well, this is all good." Yeah, I progressed from like 11-minute mile at heart rate 150 to pretty close to a 6-ish minute mile. Over the course of probably 4 months. And, you know, just running around this little park in Denver, didn't know anything about the shoes yet. But, um, yeah, then I lined up at the Marine Corps Marathon that fall. And for the Air Force, they had kind of waved it off, but one of the— there was an injury and they called me up like a week before if I wanted to run. And I said, sure, but I haven't done any workouts, you know, I don't know how I'm gonna do, because I had no idea what I would do in like a race or anything. It was just a weird experience because I went out and— At that time, I'm running like a 6-minute-ish mile at a heart rate of 150, jogging around this park in Denver. I hit halfway in like 1:15 in that race, a big race, like 30,000 people. It was weird. Usually, I used to run these marathons. Usually, you're working a little bit halfway and you're kind of hanging on. Maybe by 16 or 18, if you're running it on sugar. You're kind of just hanging on for dear life. But I hadn't even felt like I started running yet. It was weird. And around mile 15, I'm like, this just feels like super crazy. And I like picked it up and, you know, ran the back half in like 1:12, 1:13, and finished in 3rd place in like 2:28-something, 2:28:05. But what was crazy, Floris, was, you know, you finish these things and you're like flat out most of the time. You're like, I'm done. I finished that and I felt like I could do it again. I think that's really the message. Training, I think if you're someone listening and training is like an addict, so maybe race day you wouldn't necessarily think you could do it again, but if you finish a training run and you don't think you could do that again, you're probably training too hard. Every day you come back from training, no kidding, if you had to. I think Eliud Kipchoge who just ran 2:02 in London.— was it like his 10th straight major win? I mean, that's crazy. So I was reading an article about him, Floris, a week before, and he says he never runs more than 80% effort in training. Now for you or me, that would be a full sprint, but that kind of tells you he just understands that hard training beats the shit out of you, right? It's what it is, and if you want to keep doing this year after year after year because it's good for your brain, Then you have to— you're either gonna like listen to me now, hear me later, hear me now, or listen to me later. Because you see so many people just break, pound themselves. And a lot of the cardiac stuff is very interesting too. You know, I know so many runners who are my age, you know, have atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, you know, cardiac arrhythmias, just from doing constant hammering like year in, year out, like when they're in their 30s and their 40s and their 50s. And it's like, no, don't do that. Maybe when you're 20 20, you know, on a college scholarship or something, you know, but because that's like how you're going to get your tuition covered.

But outside of that, yeah, totally. It is so, it is so recognizable what you just said. And I see it over and over again with people that at the beginning they have to slow down that time. And Mark Allen said that, you said it, I've personally experienced and so many people around me too. You're almost skeptical if it's going to work. You slow down your time and you feel like you have to leave your pride at the door because very much slower people than normal would just pass you left and right. You know that you can be faster. You just have to accept that, that that is the case in training at the beginning. But over time and pretty quickly, if things line up, you start to speed up and everything changes from there. So that's awesome to hear.

Reading Mark Allen, so no kidding, if Mark Allen says this is true and he won 6 straight Ironman, I think that's— it's like if you're not listening to Mark Allen after that, you're like, "You're a knucklehead." I'm like, "Okay." Maybe some physiologist or doctor spells it out who doesn't run and they don't understand the thing, right? But okay, Mark Allen, he gets it. Absolutely. Absolutely. If you don't trust him, don't listen to me. Listen to Mark Allen. What I did, just minor leagues compared to Mark. I've gotten to speak alongside of him, and that's such a privilege when he shows those videos, and Dave Scott keeps passing him, passing him, passing him, and Mark's defeated. Then the year where he sees the light, and it's like mile 23, and he sees the shaman light, and it just— he goes. He wins by 50 seconds. It's incredible to watch. On Dave Scott's best day, right? That's what he says. It was just— they took 18 minutes off the Ironman record that year.

I'll make sure to link to that video as well because it's an amazing video of that. Yeah, epic. So you have experienced personally a lot of running injuries, but you have seen it around you as well. You have a running footwear store in West Virginia, and this is all focused on minimal footwear. You see a lot of different athletes coming in there and a lot of people have had injuries. So I'm very curious to hear from you, what are some of the most common running injuries that you see? What are some of the causes and how can you prevent the pain and the injury?

Yeah, I think it goes, if you're gonna really prevent it, it goes back to kids. Like you have a 2-year-old and a 6-year-old, Floris, is that right? Yes, correct. Do not put them in modern shoes, right? I mean, did you ever have any kind of injury when you were just a kid growing up and skateboarding? And I mean, you could—

well, skateboarding, absolutely, but that was jumping downstairs, but not from the shoes.

Yeah, I got like— I'll take my hat off if I did a shave cut. I've got some— we didn't use helmets then either. Had some nasties. My dad had a couple ER, you know, unexpected ER visits, but that's okay, we somehow made it through. But yeah, so if you're a parent there and you have a child You know, the foot has 26 bones, 33 joints, 100 muscle tendon insertions, and it's a— it's a neurologic organ basically. There's 200,000 nerve endings, you know, that send messages locally and centrally to control all your movement. So if your foot can't heal the— you know, feel the ground, you know, you've got like— as an adult, not a kid, but you have 3 feet of shocks on your body which are kind of mitigated by what the foot's telling. 3, you know, going up to, you know, you got your plantar fascia, you've got your ankle, you've got your knee, you've got your hip. All this functions as a big shock absorber, you know, and it's all activated by the foot. And that works beautifully. You know, I just came back now. I went out for about an hour and 20-minute barefoot run on the roads and get my feet— kind of went really slow because my feet haven't— they're kind of like tenderfoot because it's spring. You know, you're in shoes all winter because it's cold, right? And then you— but I love barefoot because you come back from a barefoot run and it's crazy. You— I've never not felt like a million bucks. Coming back from a barefoot run because everything kind of resets itself, you know, and your body will tell you how fast or slow you should go, you know, because if something's uncomfortable, your body just adjusts and slows down. But yeah, so if— when soon as you brace that foot or make some adaptation, say you brace something or put an arch support in or raise the heel, you make an adaptation in one part of the way the foot interfaces with the ground, the body's going to compensate and make an adaptation somewhere else. That's really against the human biology. I would just throw this out as kind of a null hypothesis of how we got there. When I started running, so 1970, every running shoe was like this little flat. They're like the Onizuka Tigers. That's what it was. They all won the Boston Marathon in these shoes. They're just like slippered little shoes. Then somehow there was a hypothesis that it would be better to create— I don't think anyone really intended harm. Bill Bowerman thought that if you put a heel on the shoe, you could you could stride longer, you know, you could reach out longer because you could, you know, kind of blunt that impact force. It seemed like a good idea at the time. So really what the modern running shoe was was a solution for a problem that never existed. So I'm not like— look, but looking back, you can say that, like, what was the problem they were trying to solve? Runners didn't get hurt then. So maybe the problem they were trying to solve was set a world record, you know, because that was the goal of Bill Bowerman, you know, he— and getting people out there, maybe it seemed a little more comfortable. I don't know. Like his original— Bill Bowerman's original book Jogging, 1971, you see the pictures of people jogging and they're all in like Keds, right, because there's nothing else, or Dunlops or these tennis shoes. So that was kind of the beginning of the modern running shoe, was maybe there's a problem. I mean, it probably is similar to the food pyramid. You know, maybe they thought there was an obesity problem, which there really wasn't then, and here's the solution to it. Is get rid of fat and eat more grains or something. That experiment didn't turn out too well. It's like turning a school of fish. How do you go— how do you steer a school of fish in a different direction because that school of fish gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger? Yes, I think you got to unwind it and kind of fix the biology. That's what we try to do in our store is try to really— the human posture, when you're in a heel, your posture, the way your back, hips, Knees are aligned, you know, then you're looking at a screen and texting. I'm at a stand-up desk now, and you know, everyone's in here. Yeah, yeah, I can tell. But everyone's in these kind of zoo-human, you know, positions, Homo domesticus. So then they want to go run for 30 minutes, you know. But there was just a study last week showing the amount of time humans are sitting is increasing. So I think that's what I write about in the book. I mean, if you're sitting 12 hours a day and you think that you can do a couple foam rolling exercises and go run 30 minutes and you're gonna do that wonderfully well without getting hurt. I think it's the rest of the day, you know, how you just be more of an ancestral human. Nothing weird or paleo about it. Just, you know, stand up, move more, lift heavy things, you know, do lunges. I mean, just do things to open your hip if you got— I mean, just walk, you know, calisthenics, plyometrics, skips, jumps, all the things that we did as kids on the playground. Just recreate that into your day. Yeah, but I'm running injuries, you know, so I mean, I think people get degenerative injuries and then they run and then they hurt. So a lot of things, Floris, that are categorized as running injuries really aren't, like plantar fasciosis, for example. You know, that's ubiquitous in the sedentary population. So it's not really— it's a degenerative injury, not even— it's a degeneration of the plantar fascia, mostly from weak feet, dysfunctional feet. Obesity and inactivity. These people have more plantar fascia, you know, people taking nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, you know, people shooting cortisone injections into their fascia. So if your fascia is weakening, you know, by the things we're doing medically to it, bracing it, more orthotics, it's kind of sending you in the wrong direction. So we always want to kind of look at the foot, assess the foot, give them some simple strengthening exercises. You know, we use Correct Toes a lot if they've got that bent big toe. I use them. There's an awesome little insert called Barefoot Science that doesn't brace the arch, but what it does, it gives a little cue to the intrinsic muscles to kind of help you shape. And that's— that's insole, we can link to that. It's freaking crazy that we've probably, you know, sent about 1,000 people out of the store with this. You know, they all have plantar fasciosis, and it progresses them through a series of these little pods that start to reshape the foot, because every step they take, they're kind of activating these muscles. It's like, if in a month this isn't helping you, just bring it back. I mean, they know where I live. We take everything back. I've not seen anyone. And then you'll just see people randomly, like they'll see on the street. I'm in a small town, you know, they'll see at the farmer market and they're like, they're like, Mark, my feet, they don't hurt anymore. One day they wake up, you know, people have plantar fasciitis, like that first step just sucks. And then one day they wake up and it's gone. And then you hope it won't return. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, there's no guarantee, but I think if you fix it naturally without some brace that's going to come— well, that— now my plantar fascia is okay, but now my knee or my tib posterior, you know, some other—

you're just migrating the injuries around. And you're still wearing those Correctos at this point as well sometimes, right?

Yeah, if I'm going to race or want to run faster or just I feel like putting them on my I still have— when I had surgery, I had probably like a 20 to 30 degree angle of my big toe. Now it's probably maybe 10 degrees. So it's not perfect but like this morning I went out fine jogging barefoot without the Correctos but for the marathon, Boston Marathon, I wore them because just having that toe a little more aligned, if you want to run faster and if you're applying more power to the ground, especially the road, your foot is going to behave like a better spring if that big toe is in a perfect position. So anytime I would want to, you know, do something quicker, I'll put the Correcto's in. They can even be worn barefoot. Like, I've got a couple pair with a little hairband around them, and they wrap around the big toe so they, you know, I can go run in the beach barefoot, you know, with these in, and they stay on.

Perfect. So to those listening, it's basically a small little silicone item that spreads your toes It's like a pedicure thing that fits in your shoe. Yeah, really focused to align and strengthen and restore that foot to the original function. I actually have a pair myself as well. It does take a little bit getting used to at the beginning, but it definitely makes a difference for sure.

Yeah, and kind of like the Barefoot Science, we've probably had thousands of these leave the store too, and I've never had anyone Bring it back. Yeah, I said that really, that didn't help me at all, you know. So, and then we go through a lot of just— each person needs an individual assessment, you know. So if you can't get down into a deep squat without falling backwards, you know, you need to work on some mobility in your calf area, soleus, gastroc, Achilles area, you know. So hip extension, massive deficiencies there. I have all kinds of stuff in the book on the assessments and corrections and the webpage. You know, you just have to figure out where your weakness is. Single leg strength weakness— so many people can't stand on one leg, you know, more or less hop on one leg, which is running. You know, running is a series of single leg hops. So if you can't stand on one leg without teeter-tottering and you think, you know, you're gonna run 26 miles— yeah, I mean, I think the magic test is actually testing people under fatigue. You know, we tend not to do this for customers in the store, but if I've got a, you know, high school kid who's hurt or college a more high-level athlete, I want to see what happens when they're fatigued. They could do 10 single-leg step-downs and they look pretty good, but they just came off the couch. I want them to go do even like a 4-minute calisthenics shuttle run, squat jumps, something 4-minute kick-your-ass type of thing, burpees, and then they do it and they're like all over the place. You've probably seen pictures and maybe people listening, like at mile 1 you look pretty good And maybe mile 10 you look okay, and mile 26 it's like your hip is down, your arms are out trying to balance you, you look like, you're like, do I look that bad? It's like, yeah, that's, yeah, that's strength deficiency.

Yeah, but I have seen the difference as well over the years though, when I look back at photos from 10 years ago, and you indeed see half the dead march or like a complete weird angle.

Yeah, the body's like crooked.

Yeah, versus I looked at a few photos the other day from Boston mile 25, and I was surprised actually. Comparative. No, I actually look good in that one. Like, it might be a bit odd to say that about yourself, but I looked at the future.

Good day, because that was probably—

yeah, it was, it was a good day. But the few people left and right of me, it looked like they were about to die, and I actually looked like I wasn't dying in that photo.

You went right by them. Yeah, you were good.

That was, uh, that was funny.

Well, which year did you run?

This was 2015. Okay, so it was—

I mean, I've run the last 18 straight, so I'm sure I was there trying to They all kind of are like a blur at this point.

Oh yeah, you were probably, probably well ahead of me on that one because even, even now, and this is one thing I want to mention to those listening, even now you have continued your streak of sub-3 hours for 30 consecutive years, correct?

Last year I fell off. So last year I ran 3:04 at Boston. Wow. In the monsoon. Oh, but that doesn't count. I tried again at Marine Corps and I ran 3:02 at Marine Corps. There you go. So this, which is fine, you know, like, because I didn't know that I had that really going on. It just would show up and run. But when it actually becomes an effort to do it and you have to sacrifice other parts of your life to try to hit this goal, then yeah, just let it go. So 30 years is fine. Too bad, because like at 3:04 in that, most people were like 15 minutes slow last year, you know, 30-mile-an-hour headwinds, the pouring rain. But it's probably good because this year I just ran it as a friendly. I ran 3:14 a couple weeks ago and had no, you know, it was back in the corrals and having fun. Like, I had no aspirations to try to put my body through any discomfort. Just wanted to have a good time. Yeah, float through it.

Yeah. What is your age right now, Mark? 52. 52. Wow, incredible. One thing I do want to mention as well, you just briefly referred to your book, and the, the book Run for Your Life, I've read it several times from front to back. I can highlight—

Several times?

No, like I have. More than I've read it. No, like honestly, it's one of those books that I keep going back to because I think the good part, you do talk a lot about not only the injury prevention, but some of the different exercises as well to strengthen your springs, to awaken your springs. And I find that so fascinating because we can focus all we want on putting in running miles, but if the springs are not working accurately, then you're still gonna be inefficient in running.

Yeah, you're like a hacky sack hitting the ground. That's not a good thing. You wanna be springy. That's just the way it is.

And you have a lot of good videos on the actual website for this book as well that show good examples, but maybe you can talk briefly about a few of the different ways that people can wake up their springs and really strengthen it.

It's a great question, and again, everything is— even the old school, they used to call it, you know, plyometrics, you know, so that was the Russian method of training. You know, and it's, it's powerful method of training, but you know, you can do light plyometrics. So I think the first thing you have to do is have, have healthy tissue, you know. So, you know, one of the focuses that I think we're starting to become more aware of is just the effect of nutrition and inflammation as an effect of bad nutrition has on our tissues, which is this fascia, which is this connective tissue.— so think of it like your Achilles tendon, for example. Think of it like little vermicelli noodles, and they're in coils, and then the coils are bundled in more coils and more coils, kind of like a big cable, and they all slide and glide nicely, like a beautiful bungee cord, but with thousands and thousands of little internal rubber bands that make up the big bungee cord. So if you have type 2 diabetes, for example, and we call it glycation if your glucose levels are high, that's affecting every protein, every cell in your body. They have this level of inflammation, this stickiness. If that tissue is not healthy and you're trying to jump rope or do calisthenics or jumping jacks, it's like you're like a thud. Fix that nutrition is super important. You need healthy fats. I mean, I think healthy fats are like motor oil, maybe not motor, but like lubricant, something WD-40 in that tissue. You need those healthy fats and they have omega-3s and they're going to be the fats from good quality dairy, good quality animal products, good quality seafood, olive oil, any kind of fat that if you tasted it— ghee. If you taste the fat, coconut oil, if you taste it and it tastes good, it's a good fat. If you take— I don't think anyone listening would take like a teaspoon of safflower oil or corn oil or canola oil and drink it. You'd be like, "That's horrible. That stuff's inflammatory." That's all the omega-6 heavy, highly refined, highly processed oils. They trigger a process in the liver which Causes oxidation. You hear of like ox-LDL, but it's just— it's bad. So that's like fire. The good stuff tastes good. So, you know, upgrade your diet and your tissue, wake up feeling better. So that's a key part. And then, you know, the things that you all did as kids are the things that help the sprints, you know, jumping jacks, you know, plyometrics, you know, any type of like burpees, anything that works. I do a lot of single-leg running, like at the end of almost every run, I'll You know, for a couple hundred meters, just one leg, hop, hop, hop, other leg, hop, hop, hop, hop, hop, hop. A lot of skips, you know, they're on the website, you know, the old track skips. So I still do all these track drills, A skips, B skips, D skips. Sprinting really helps your springs, you know, not sprinting till you feel like you want to like puke. It's like little 40 meters. I'll finish like this morning, you know, I'm beautiful grass and my bare feet, you know, did like 8 50 meters. And by like that 8th one, your strides like opened up and And that's like dynamic stretching. So that's like, you know, hitting a lot of buttons, these— doing these short sprints, you know, get your coordination, opens your hips. A little bit of strength training works on your spring. You know, we've got some videos in there called the Wake Up Your Springs, Lunge Matrixes, things like that. But if your— your foot has to be in a good position. So if your big toe is bent in and your foot's not functioning like a spring because it's all messed up. So you got to look at the foot too. So we'll always assess people's feet. Their feet are good, get their feet in a good position, then progressively, you know, stair hops. There's all kinds of, you know, little— you could make on your kitchen floor, you could make a little square, you know, just kind of hop, you know, from like you got 4 little boxes there, you know, almost like hopscotch. You would just try it. It's really hard, you know, and I'm not talking about, you know, land stick Lands, stick, you know, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, you know, like really quick things like that. You know, start with two legs and then move to one leg because running is a series of single leg hops. And it's actually one of the assessments we use now. We're doing some stuff with the Air Force basic training trying to prevent the injuries because in Air Force basic training, 40% of the ladies and 25% of the males will have a musculoskeletal injury which removes them from their training. And you're like, wow, that's crazy. It's self-inflicted. I mean, they're getting injured on supervised duty time. So we have a little 5-step assessment on, you know, here's— we can identify some easy deficits. And, and one of those drills is a single-leg run. And you want to see how they can get off the ground, you know. So if they kind of hit the ground and stick, like they can't do hop hop hop hop hop on one leg, then we got to go sort out why that is. Is their foot Is it just they were weak? You know, and then get them to do that, you know, but make sure there's not like a hardware issue.

Yeah, we've been jump roping quite a bit with my kids outside and just hearing you say it as well in the book, I was like just continuing that as well.

If you're in a hotel, I mean, none of this stuff takes a gym, which is beautiful. You know, I travel with a jump rope, you know, throw it in my bag and you never know what resistance band, just bring these things with you.

Yeah. What are some common mistakes that you see in running form with people? Because I think that's another very important one.

Yeah, I mean, the most common one is people overstride. You know, they got a big heel on and they throw their leg out and they hit the ground with this big impact force. You know, so they're not using their 3 feet of shocks, they're using 1 inch of cushion. You know, so you have a choice. You know, you put this big cushion on and you land with an outstretched leg with your foot kind of in checkmark position, you know, your knee and your hip have to take that impact. And you know, you might get away with that for a while, but then we're seeing these degenerative injuries. You know, we're seeing knee arthritis, hip arthritis. These, these are the bad ones because, you know, those are ones that might not just go away. And so we know that if you're in an elevated heel with this form, the forces going through your knee, across your knee and your hip, you know, are higher than if you're landing in a more natural fashion. You know, it doesn't need to be forefoot, but you're landing more with your foot under you. With your shin vertical, you're landing soft. Irene Davis has this statement which I think makes sense. Your goal is to land soft and land stable. Land soft and land stable. Now that could be a little forefoot, could be a little midfoot. You might touch and roll off the heel, but you're landing soft and you're landing stable. We have an awesome tool. It's called a TrueForm Runner. I've got 3 of them in my store right now. It's got a little bit of a curve.

I don't know if you've seen that, Floris Gierman. Yeah, yeah. I've seen it on like the—

It kind of a trap meal videos on that. Yeah, it's on the page. Yeah, so it's not an aggressive curve because that just makes you kind of run like Fred Flintstone trying to chase this curve down. But it's got a little bit of a curve and no motor. So if you overstride on this thing, it just stops. Or if your posture is bad, it just stops. So you got to learn to run over the ground, not into the ground. So arm position is really key. So we use this little 99-cent kind of 36-inch rubber band. So if you watch like Eliud Kipchoge run, and you know, whether he's running like 4:20 pace or 10-minute pace jog, and his knuckles are like right at his nipples, like at his chest, you know, he's kind of right there. And that puts his body in the right position. And most people, like, if your arm is swinging way out in front of you, your foot's gonna swing way out in front of you. So a lot of people have a difficult time just neurologically thinking about their foot, but maybe the hand's closer. So we just put these little rubber bands on them, and then they go run. And you'll see people take like, you know, say they're just running around the block, you know, they'll take like a minute off of their time just by fixing their arms. They're like, oh my God, that makes so much sense. You know, another thing you could do, you get like a little, uh, just like a little garden stake, you know, just a little flimsy thing. And you know, your arms are in kind of that, that position, you know, knuckles to your sternum. And that little triangle, you know, where your elbows are behind your back, stick that little rod, lock your elbows there. It'll keep you from throwing your arms forward. But those are just a couple little things you could do because you could kind of tell someone don't do this or don't do that, but unless they have a cue, it's really hard. It'd be like, Floris, if you're at the driving range and if I just said, well, don't slice the ball, and like, well, just how do I do that? You know, just Move your hips a little. It's very hard, you know, you, you got to have some cue, and then you have to start slow, right? You got to like be willing to slow way down. Yeah, master the art running ridiculously slow well before running fast. Yeah, that's, you know, that's the basics of it. I think it's take your shoes off and run barefoot. You know, you need to do a lot, but it's very difficult to run bad barefoot because it really hurts.

Yeah, well, and you automatically, like, I do it sometimes, I take off the shoes and I go for a 1 or 2 mile run, just very, very short, but just over here outside. Because honestly, I have to still transition into it as well. It's not one thing you can just go out and go run for an hour. You do have to, to some extent, or at least I personally have to get used to it a bit. What about cadence? I get quite a few questions asking people like, what cadence should I be running at? And especially when I run at lower heart rate, it's very hard for me to get a cadence of, let's say, 180.

Yeah, it probably is. That might be a little too quick. So the cadence that someone's going to pick is the cadence that they're springy. And if they've been running at like a 150 plotting cadence, you know, they got to train up their spring. So it's going to take them a while before their cadence gets in that 170 range. But reducing the shoe really, really helps. Getting them in a thinner shoe environment, then they can't really overstride and stick on the ground. They've got to shorten their stride. If you just take the shoes off people, their cadence will go up on average about 8 to 10. Not that they're gonna do all their running barefoot, but just that, 'cause it just shortens their stride up a bit. So you could do a little bit of a shoe experiment. Little metronomes, you know, the phone have apps like Metro Timer. Couple other— there's, yeah, you could— Metrotimer's one, and you just like, if you're running now and your cadence is 155, maybe just dial it to 160 for a week, see how that is. Okay, that's cool. 165 the next week, gradually ramp it up while you're doing things like jump rope, jumping jacks, hips, little sprints, working on that spring, reducing the shoe. You know, it's a good opportunity to work on your mechanics. Off-season is great. Like, off-season, you should just be working on, on the skill. Work on your form, work on your weaknesses, build your aerobic capacity again, get off the sugar, and then when it comes time to— if you have some events that you're trying to peak for, your body is healthy and well, and then you're good to go. If you're not healthy, it's all going to fall apart.

Yeah. Can you talk a bit more about the transition into more minimal shoe? Because quite a few people at this point, they have their toes jammed into their current shoe. You have experienced this yourself and you've seen it every day in your running store. And I read about 80 or 85% of your power comes from that big toe. And when you restrict that, so if people want to transition into a different kind of footwear, How would they go about that?

Yeah, I think Floris, the most important shoe is not your running shoe. It's just your day shoe unless you run all day, but I think most of the people watching your show, listening to your show, have a job and have a life and they run for their recreation, but they're on their feet at work. You need to get a nice wide flat, pretty thin shoe at work and then you're really training your foot all day. There's all kinds of shoes that you can wear that look kind of semi-corporate now. You know, Lems have shoes, Viva Barefoot, you know, that you can wear with a suit. You could even wear like total business corporate. Military, I helped with a boot called the Mini Mill, so you could wear a nice wide flat boot, you know, for duty. And that, a lot of cops, law enforcement guys will buy that, that shoe because it's a black— they wore the black one. So train your foot all day. And a good test you could do, so if you take the insole out of the shoe you have right now, and if you're listening, go Go ahead, take the insole out, maybe hit pause. Take the insole out of your shoe and put your foot on that insole and spread your toes out really wide. If any part of those toes are spilling over that insole, you can call my store and we'll get you a new shoe. No, but that shoe is too small, right? You're just cramming your feet into that shoe. You got to get that nice day— that's what's kind of epiphanal for people when they get that wide day— that daily use shoe, they're like, "Oh my God." I'm not tired at the end of the day. You know, they've been wearing like— if they're in the hospital and someone told them to wear like these big stiff Danskos or something which don't bend, which are really designed if you're gonna stand at an OR table for 8 hours, that might be a good shoe because you're just standing on a platform. If you've got to walk 20,000 steps in a ward, it's horrible that people just think that's— well, that's a hospital shoe, but no one's ever told them You know, Crocs were like massively popular because people's feet felt really good. They were all over the hospital culture. They've kind of fallen out of vogue, but, um, it wasn't because they looked good. Like, why did every kid love them? And they actually would wear the Crocs. Like, every other shoe they throw away. I mean, they were kind of squishy, but they were super wide, you know, and they allowed the feet. So that's— now, if you've I think this is why like what you're doing with your own kids is important. If they never transition out of a barefoot environment, there's no— you really need to transition into a modern running shoe. People don't talk about that. Like if you're like, say your kids at age 13 decided to run cross-country and their coach believed, well, they need a running shoe, a proper modern running shoe. They would need to transition their body into a modern running shoe because they're perfect now and now you gotta fuck them up. So if you don't— like, we have this huge emphasis to not mess up the kids. I mean, my kids are just normal school kids, but my daughter, she runs track and she can't wear anything other than the Merrell Vapor Glove. Yeah, her body will reject it. She's— she's been through like 8 pairs of these Vapor Gloves and she will wear them till they're gonna fall off her feet, and that's the only shoe she will ever wear. She doesn't like the look of the 5 fingers.

She thinks it looks creepy.

They do look kind of funny. Yeah, yeah, you know, she's a 14-year-old girl, so she's cool with Vapor Gloves. They got really nice colors. But yeah, Vapor Glove, for those listening, it's— there's no midsole. It's a piece of rubber. It weighs 4 ounces that you could roll up and put in your pocket. My son is— he started to get into the New Balance Minimus. You know, the old first one, that Minimus Trail, you know, looks kind of guy, looks You know, looks good. You can do soccer, do everything. So he's probably gone through about 6 pair of New Balance, the original old-school New Balance Minimus Trail, the MT-10. It's got this little bit of cushion, but you know, after like a month you've beaten that down like a tire tread. And he'll wear those so that they don't— like, it's easy buying shoes for my kids. They just kind of upsize, you know, if they need it. Same shit. But they cannot wear— like, they'll their bodies will reject other shoes. That's, that's interesting. Without washing, they just— that's the way they are. And that's like a lot of these other kids you go to. It's really fun, you know. I'll be going out Friday to track meet and at my daughter's school, it's like all the distance runners are in— they're either in like a, like a Topo ST2, you know, they're in the Vapor Glove, you know, they're all in some super minimal. And that's what they train in. It's not like they're training and racing in different things. They're They're all running in these, you know, what I call just normal running shoes.

Yeah, I can highly recommend checking out, for those listening, TwoRiversTread.com. It's the name of your running store.

Two Rivers Treads, and you could call us. And you know, I'm not against cushion, so we'll put a lot of people, especially older walkers, in like a— like a wide shoe, like an Altra that's got cushion, or Newton, because they're— they need a little— they're used to that and their body's tuned to the cushion. But it's flat and it's wide and the toe box is super wide. It just has a little more— or people like doing really aggressive trail running, Floris, you know, you're bombing down the Appalachian Trail. It's really hard to do that in like a 5-finger or a sandal. So that's— you train your body in a minimal environment and then, you know, come race day or whatever the conditions. But yeah, so that— and for balance too, you know, so I think that's really important too. We probably— half of our customers Most customers don't run, they're just walkers, but as you get older, the worst thing that can happen is you fall. Your balance is off and you break your hip. But people put those Ultras on or Topo Zero Drop or something super wide and they're like, oh my gosh, I— because they're super— yeah, they're like they got this foundation now.

It's great. Yeah. Wow. That's really good info. I want to be mindful of your time here, just finishing up with the last few questions. One thing that I find interesting is you have, you're focused on the strengthening, on the springs, the importance of the feet and barefoot walking, not sitting behind your desk all day and keep moving. Then you do talk a lot about mobility and stability, and you have certain exercises with stretching that you do mention, more like the dynamic stretching. However, I also hear several different sources talk about being very careful with stretching. So I would love to hear your thoughts on that.

Yeah, I think the better word is mobility. You know, so first you have to assess your mobility. So if you're good, you don't need to stretch, you just need to maintain mobility, you know. So there's too much and too little, and then there's a sweet spot. Being too mobile isn't good because then you're probably going to be unstable. So you need to be stable and have just the right amount of mobility. The place where people tend to be super tight is the hips, you know, because we're sitting. It's those muscles in the front, you know, the iliacus and psoas, which are the deep hip flexors, or, you know, the rectus femoris, which is quadricep mechanism. So in the book, you know, there's a number of the lunges, you know, just doing walking lunges, anything that can open up your hips— lunges, walking lunges. You could even sit in a chair with like on the side with one leg. Say you have to sit at our corporate board meeting, you know, sit on the edge of the chair with like your left butt cheek on the chair and put your right leg kind of behind you with your foot tucked back. So you're kind of opening up that hip. And then, you know, half hour into the meeting, switch out to the other side. So you can kind of work around your, your day job. Foam rolling every morning, I have a routine where I roll out my hip flexors. I'll do windshield wiper exercise that gets that internal external rotation of the hips. But if you keep your hips mobile— as we get older, the hip capsule, which is all fascia connective tissue, that stiffens. You know, so say an example would be like if you had your arm in a sling for like a week, that it's called frozen shoulder. You wouldn't be able to move your shoulder. All that fascia, like, it's stiff. But if we don't put our hips through that full range of motion, not just forward, which is flexion-extension, but internal and external rotation. So you got to mix that stuff in, you know. As you get older, you got to be more mindful of, you know, and it's, it's not sexy, right? Maintenance isn't sexy. All the treatments, the fancy widgets, you know, maintenance is just maintenance. And but I believe maintenance is— that's where the money's at, is maintenance. And then find, you know, get a good, you know, therapist. Get a good PT, a fascia therapist, massage therapist. Someone who could assess you to say— it's hard to pick up a book because you'll see like 40 exercises, but what are the 3 or 4 that would be most relevant to your individual weaknesses? But the big rocks are the hips. So if you were to take nothing else away, you know, don't sit all day and keep your hips open.

Yeah, absolutely. Last question, but before I do, where can people find your book?

Yeah, so it's on all the usual book sites. It's on Amazon, Barnes Noble. You can actually get it through my store if you have a purchase of— I think it's $130 to buy a pair of shoes, we throw the book in. So the book's website is runforyourlifebook.com, and that'll have links to where you can buy the book and link to my store. So if you like supporting small business, you know, that's really why I'm in the running store game, is, you know, everything's now big corporate stuff, but small running stores, you know, that's what keeps community running alive. You know, we put on races, group runs, seminars, do gait analysis, like all the stuff that a big box store can't do. So if you're listening to this and it might be $5 more at your local running store to buy the pair of shoes, you know, when was the last time like a Dick's Sporting Goods or, you know, Amazon put on a local race or sponsored a local race?

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Very, very important. And then last, last question over here. So a lot of runners in the audience are looking to improve their race time and really become stronger, healthier, and happier athletes. Do you have any closing thoughts on further improving in these areas?

Yeah, I think between your ears is probably the biggest thing. So having fun, like if you're not having fun and you don't wake up looking forward to going outside You know, then you got to sort that out. You know what's going on? Sleep deprivation, stress in your life, you know, because running should just give you time in your day, right? It shouldn't take time because if you go out and run and it's movement meditation and your sunlight— so I mean, what we're understanding now about sleep, lack thereof, circadian rhythms, you know, stress. So running shouldn't be another stress in your life. I think that's just gonna backfire. I mean, I run to recover from life, you know, so every day is a recovery run because days are like super busy and crazy. I got kids and, you know, so if running wasn't recovery— so maybe just that's your takeaway. So running should be your recovery. Now some days you might feel like a million bucks and you run like super fast, right? You feel like a superhero and you're flying. And other days that recovery— and then you feel great, right? You could go out and do it again. The other day you're just out in your bare feet slogging along super slow, just breathing. But it's got to be fun. The day you wake up and you don't feel like running, you got to kind of figure out what's going on and take a day off.

Maybe you just need a day off. Very, very well said.

Mark, thank you so much for all of the information. Yeah, maybe I'll get out to LA sometime and see you.

Absolutely. When you do, we'll go for a run. I'll let you know next time I'm on the East Coast too.

Cool. Yeah, I'll keep your kids barefoot.

All right, will do. Thanks again.

Okay. Have a good one.

Ciao. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening. I'm giving away a copy of Dr. Mark Gugosella's book, Run for Your Life. To enter, I would love to hear from you on YouTube in the comments. What was one of your key takeaways or lessons that you liked from this episode? Please let me know and one winner will be picked at random. All show notes from today's episode can be found at extramilest.com. 18, so the number 1-8. We have another very exciting episode coming up soon, which is with Michael Owens. He ran a 5:15 marathon, and so far he's been able to bring it down to a 3:18 marathon, and he's working that down further towards his sub-3-hour marathon goal next. So make sure to subscribe and you'll be the first to hear when the new episode drops. Until then, Have fun out there on your runs.