#22: Heart Rate Running, Nutrition and Mindsets with Zach Bitter

The way I look at kind of like a heart rate training or a maximum aerobic function training protocol as a whole is I think it's the optimal foundation to any endurance plan. Whether I'm training for a 5K, which I'm not really doing, but you know, someone who is could look at it that way, or if I'm training for a 100-miler, if I start with a foundation of my pace at kind of my maximum aerobic function output If I can get that as low as I can, once that starts to plateau, that kind of tells me that that foundation is super strong and it's where it needs to be, and then I can go any direction from there. And if I want to do something short and fast, I can add workouts that are specific to that. If I want to do something that's, that's long all day or something like that, I can start structuring workouts more specific to that. But that heart rate type of training protocol, I think, is really the starting point for almost anything.

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of The Extra Mileage Show. My name is Floris Gierman and today we're talking to Zach Bitter. Many of you are probably already familiar with some of the records that he has recently smashed, and some of you might not know who he is yet. Zach is an ultra endurance athlete and he's a running coach as well. And recently he broke the Guinness World Record of running 100 miles, running 106 61 kilometers, and he did that in an incredible 11 hours and 19 minutes. Just to put that in perspective, that's running 4 sub-3-hour marathons in a row. He averaged 6:48-minute miles, so that's 4 minutes and 13 seconds per kilometer. He smashed his record. He absolutely broke it by 10 minutes, and so it's incredible to see how he was able to accomplish this. We had a deep dive into his training, into his race strategy, into heart rate training, nutrition, mindsets, all of these different things. Very many takeaways for me personally, and I hope that you guys enjoy this show as well because I definitely think there's quite a few different things here that you can apply to your own training as well, even if you're not an ultra endurance athlete. I want to say thank you for taking the time to listen to today's podcast. And also thanks for those who have left me nice comments on YouTube or review on iTunes. It absolutely means a lot to me. All show notes from today's podcast can be found at extramileast.com/22. And this includes all of the links to some of the videos and some of the products that Zach mentions as well. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Zach Bitter.

Zach, welcome to the show. I'm very excited to have you over here.

Yeah, yeah. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, I want to— I just figured out that I hadn't started recording yet, so we're just doing this first few minutes over here. So absolutely appreciate your patience. First of all, congrats on your massive victory over here. You just ran two world records. We're absolutely going to dive deep into that. We're going to talk about heart rate training, going to talk about nutrition, the mindset, plenty of different areas to cover over here. So first of all, welcome on the show.

Yeah, thanks for having me on, and those are great topics, and I'll be excited to chat with you about them.

Yep, absolutely. Let's, just to get a good understanding of your background about where you're basically coming from, where you started before you're the ultra runner that you are right now, can you give us a brief breakdown of how it all started and your training throughout?

Yeah, my first kind of introduction to running in general or endurance sport was early on in middle school. Our class did the Presidential Physical Fitness, which had had the 1-mile run component to it. It is kind of interesting to see which events kids gravitate towards when you do those kind of all-encompassing type of tests. Typically at that age, I think you just head towards whatever one you're best at. When we finished the mile run, I think I was maybe the only one in the class who was like, "I kind of want to do that again." Everyone else was like, "I never want to do that again." I took that as maybe a sign that that was a good test. A good area to focus on. I didn't really take it super seriously or anything like that until later on in high school. I recognized that I had enough ability to make the state cross-country and track meet if I had a good year at a small school. I started training a little more year-round at the end of high school. By the time I got to college, it was really eye-opening about just the depth of methodology that you can dive into when trying to peak for specific distances and specific intensities and things like that. That's when I really started becoming a disciple of the sport, I guess you could say. One thing I really learned from my college experience was that if I had to pick my favorite workout during the week, it was the long run. When I was removed from that structured environment of peaking and racing more traditional distances, I started gravitating towards doing the ones I liked, which happened to be longer sessions out on the roads, the trails. When you kind of have that mindset, it slowly but surely funnels you towards ultra marathon.

Yeah, exactly. So, so what did you start like with some of your long runs when you started increasing the duration and actual distance? What were you working up towards that time? Like early on, was that like half marathon distances and marathon distances, or did you quickly transition higher than that?

Yeah, I did, I did what would probably be considered like a few kind of half-ass attempts at marathons and half marathons. Marathons, basically just more or less doing some base training and a little bit of speed work here and there. My best marathon training block was actually probably en route to 100K because I just saw those two events to be closely enough related where something similar with a few tweaks to a true marathon training plan would be, would be useful. But I really haven't ever given that a good solid go. It's something I would, I would like to do is just try to realize what my marathon PR would be with a good solid few months kind of focusing just on that versus say 100-milers. But it's also one of those things where no matter how fast I would end up being, I'd be an afterthought at any of the big city marathons. So it's weighing the balance of what do you want to be doing as well as what makes sense for my running career as a whole too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How old are you now, and when was it when you ran your first ultramarathon?

I'm 33 now, and I did my first one at the end of 2010, so I'd have been about 24 years old. It was a 50-miler in Wisconsin.

Right on. And how was that for you to race your first race? And what were some of your takeaways that you have taken throughout some of your first ultras?

Yeah, so I mean, to say I was ignorant going into that would be an understatement, but I knew very little about the sport. I just knew that I had signed up for this 50-miler and that that was the goal. I went in optimistic enough that I thought I could win it if I had a good day. That was kind of the goal going in. It was Midwest trails, so a lot of just really little rolling hills at most. Nothing technical really, nothing extreme in terms of climbs. I remember doing that race and getting— I think it was around 42 miles in, and there was this tiny little hill that looked like a mountain to me at the time. Going up that, I remember just thinking, "Why did they already put this right here? This is the worst spot for it." You definitely kind of learn things. You learn a lot of things just from doing these events over time, and then you kind of become— if you decide to learn about the sport while you're doing it, you start to appreciate the variety of different distances and surfaces and what it actually takes to truly specifically peak for any one kind of environment out there. The unique thing about ultra marathon, I think, is we put so many events types of things under that umbrella that you do at some point, I think, if you want to be competitive nowadays, kind of pick a specific type of surface or a specific type of terrain, whether that you maybe enjoy training for or feel you have a strength in, and putting a little more time and effort into that specific area versus trying to be a jack of all trades if you want to, I think, really be— in most cases, be really competitive. Exceptions to that that we see, um, on both the men's and women's side. But to me, that's kind of like a massive hat tip to those folks who are able to do flat, mountain, long, short, and everything in between and do it at a high level and come up on top of podiums doing a variety of that stuff. For me, it seems like, uh, I've always had to really focus in on the specific terrain, the specific environment, if I want to have my, my best shot at it. So that's kind of been my angle going forward.

Yeah, absolutely. So how, when was your first, I see that you're training at a specific heart rate quite frequently, like specific intensities. Can you talk a little bit more about when you first started dabbling with heart rate training and how you integrate this in your training at this point as well?

Yeah, no, that's a great question. I would say, I might work backwards answering this one a little bit just because I've evolved a little bit more or less with it, but the way I look at kind of like a heart rate training or a maximum aerobic function training protocol as a whole is I think it's the optimal foundation to any endurance plan, uh, whether I'm training for a 5K, which I'm not really doing, but you know, someone who is, uh, could look at it that way, or if I'm training for a 100-miler, if I start with a foundation of my pace at kind of my maximum aerobic function output. If I can get that as low as I can, once that starts to plateau, that kind of tells me that that foundation is super strong and it's where it needs to be. And then I can go any direction from there. And if I want to do something short and fast, I can add workouts that are specific to that. If I want to do something that's, that's long all day or something like that, I can start structuring workouts more specific to that. But that heart rate type of, um, training protocol. I think is really the starting point for almost anything. I got introduced to it probably the same way as most people from Phil Maffetone's strategies with his maximum aerobic function training programs and heart rate-based stuff. I'll get a little more specific about calculating the number. I know a lot of folks following that, they'll just do the 180 minus your age, whereas I'm a little more inclined to go and try to find out where my true max heart rate actually is at. I kind of go from that, use that as my kind of window of rate of heart rate exertion.

Please do tell us more. How do you do that? I'm very curious because this is one of the key questions that keeps coming up.

Yeah. I did a video on this a while back and I think the way I described it was like you can do the 180 minus your age and that's going to catch a lot of people. Most people are going to fit nicely enough within that context that they're going to be in the system they're looking to address by just simply using that equation. However, you're going to get folks that are maybe a little further to either side of the bell curve, so to speak, of their max heart rate. Those folks would be better served actually figuring out where theirs is at and then calculating from there. There's two— I mean, you can go into a lab and get tested, and that's probably the gold standard where you get precisely where things are at. Most people aren't going to do that, so I usually teach a couple different approaches. Using a hill. And essentially what you're doing is you're doing a good warm-up, you're kind of bridging the gap a little bit from easy to all-out effort, so you're not kind of going 0 to 100 right out the gate. And then essentially what you do is you, you find a hill that takes at least 2 minutes to get to the top of, you take a couple reps up there and just take a look at where your heart rate is peaking at throughout that. So that one's a pretty popular way to do it. It's easier to get your heart rate driven up running up a hill like that, especially if you're earlier in a training plan, you haven't been doing much speed work. Some people don't have a 2-minute hill to take advantage of, so I'll also do that on a track where they'll essentially do a nice warm-up and then they'll run a mile kind of at about a threshold intensity. For folks curious, that's about the intensity you could handle for 60 minutes of running if you were time trialing for that. That's just, again, to kind of bridge the gap between super easy and all-out intensity. And then do like a, basically a well evenly paced all out 400-meter and check your heart rate at, uh, 200, 300, and right before you finish and kind of get an idea of your averages with those 3 readings. And that can, can kind of give you what I would call your true 180 number or a number that can be more specific to you as an individual versus trying to use a catch-all setup. And to give you an example, if I go and do those 2 things, my heart rate is gonna come out to like closer to like 190 to 193 depending on the day. So for me, like, I'd rather work from that number than 180 because I have actual calculations that would indicate that that's where I'm kind of at versus using the formula, so to speak.

So is this not your max heart rate then yet, or would you define this as your max heart rate?

Well, I would define it as like your— it's kind of like your true 180 number.

Yeah, yeah.

Look at it because I mean I've had people on the other side of it too where they'll go and they'll do that workout and they may only hit like 165 or something like that. For someone who's going to hit 165 to do 180 minus their age might be— they may have like a— I mean I guess if they're really old and they're hitting 160 minus their age, they might fall into the right right framework, but, um, it's, uh, it can be, you can get those outliers and it's more or less just a self-check to kind of see where you're at with that. Yup.

Then the other method that you described was going to a medical lab, which you through the FASTER study and several of these other studies have quite a bit of experience with as well. I've, I've seen, like, I know that you're a lab rat with some of the data, which I love. To see as well. Can you talk a little bit more about what you would— like, before we dive into the FASTER study, because I think that, that's a whole other subject and almost a podcast on its own, really. When you would calculate like a max aerobic heart rate based on lab test results, like, would you look at a certain lactate buildup number in your blood? And if so, what number would that be? Would that be of like the 2, 2.5, 3. Is there anything there that you look at?

Um, you know, I, I haven't really done one of those in such a long time, so I wouldn't be able to necessarily speak exactly to what, what number they would spit out at or spit out to you for that. But, uh, I do know like you can just go into those labs and they'll, they'll do the gamma test though. I mean, they'll probably run up the VO2 max, I'm guessing, and give you a whole bunch of stuff outside of just these numbers, but they'd be able to kind of tell you where through the VO2 max. I mean, VO2 max essentially would be another way to do that field test, one of those two field tests that I described. They'd be looking at where your heart rate probably peaked during that, and that's the number they would use given that situation.

Right on. When you're training for, let's say, this last massive attempt, obviously trying to break a world record and having, having a massive goal ahead. That's not something you train for in just a few months. That obviously leads up to years and years of building up that aerobic engine. And at this stage, you're very fat adapted. Can you talk a little bit more about what goes into the training elements of that and how you truly prepare for a race like this?

Yeah, that's a great question. I think— I'll start out with what I kind of described. I'll be looking to maximize my pace at that intensity of the number I find out. I'm working from roughly 155 beats per minute, somewhere in that neighborhood. I'm going to just really lay that foundation for that and watch my pace drop at that effort. Historically for me, I'll plateau somewhere usually just under 6-minute mile pace if weather is decent. Once I get there, I have that foundation laid. Then I'm looking to do things— I'm looking to do more of a periodized approach at that point, but I'm going to be working from the compass of the most specific things to race pace or race intensity should be placed closer to the race itself. So that's where you get a little bit of a variation between the different distances that you can run, you can train for. So if I were in, if I'm training for a 100 miler, my 100-mile intensity is going to be quite a bit slower than my 5K intensity. So in a plan like that, I would maybe start doing some shorter interval sessions earlier on after I kind of have that foundation laid and hit that system for a bit, which would be like your traditional VO2 max type workouts. Personally, I like kind of like a 3-minute interval session, and then I'll just be building volume in that system. So the first week, maybe I'll do 3 by 3 minutes at that. By the 4th or 5th week, maybe I'm up to doing a total of 8 of those during the week, and it can be spliced into 4 by 3 one day and 4 by 3 another day, just trying to get that overall volume at that intensity in. Kind of a week's timeframe, more or less. And then I just move a little bit further away from that as I get closer to the race. So after that, I would be focusing a little more on threshold runs. So like that intensity that you can maintain for about 60 minutes. So I'll do a little bit of that stuff, same kind of principle though, where I'm building the volume of that intensity into my training plan by kind of like a weekly basis. And then once I get closer to the race itself, so maybe like 6 weeks out from taper, then I'm really putting a lot of my eggs into the race intensity basket, so to speak. So I'll be doing, uh, I'll almost be returning back to kind of that maximum aerobic function to a degree. Uh, technically speaking, from a pace standpoint, that's a little aggressive for 100-mile pace for me. But if I'm getting, you know, everything really dialed in, but with cardiac drift and just hydration levels fluctuating during the course of 100-mile race, My heart rate average at the end may not be that far removed from the heart rate average I'd have if I just went and did like a 60-minute maximum aerobic function run in cool weather when I'm fully recovered. From the heart rate side of things, I find myself doing quite a bit of that type of stuff in those buildups, those last final buildups, and then just really stretching out my long runs on the weekends because that kind of becomes the cornerstone workout at that point that I'm really trying to optimize. The unique thing, I guess, about this particular event I did a couple of weeks ago was I had myself in a bit of a unique situation where I've been— since I moved up to Phoenix, I've been kind of halving my year into a trail side of the year and then kind of a flatter, more runnable side of the year. This year, my trail side was the first half of the year, and I did the San Diego 100, which was early June.

That's an awesome race, by the way.

I really enjoyed that one. It's a great, it's a great course. It's got a few unique things that I really like about it too. And, um, but you know, that was going to be kind of my, my, uh, peak race for the first half of the year, trail-oriented. And then after that, I'm always good. The reason I do that is more or less just so it's a nice mental reset for me. If I'm doing like a totally different kind of style of training for the second half versus the first half of the year, you can get kind of fatigued from doing the same routes and the same type of running over and over again. So. When I split them 50/50, I'm almost chomping at the bit to switch to the next one when I get to it. It just makes the whole process a little more exciting and a little more enjoyable. With the timeline I had with this though, my thought was I would need most of June to bounce back from San Diego 100 and then start getting the wheels spinning on the flats a little bit more and ultimately gauge where my fitness was at within that specific mechanic of running the flats. I wasn't quite sure exactly how fast that would come back. Originally, my A race for the second half of the year is the Spartathlon, which is end of September, which gave me that nice 14 to 16 week window to really go through that full setup where I get my max aerobic function down to the pace I want it, and then add some short intervals and build backwards that way. The unique thing about this situation was the event I did a week and a half ago was kind of short on that timeline, so— and I actually didn't commit to doing it until partway into the training block. What actually ended up happening is this event was being mindful of not trying to step on the World 24-Hour Championships, but the World 24-Hour Championships were being pretty slow at naming a date and time. Or a date and location. So by the time they got all that squared away and put together this event at the Pettit Center that I did, I think it was, if I remember right, it was like July by the time I was aware that there was an exact date. And I know the race director quite well from running the Tunnel Hill 100 miles. Steve Durbin is the RD for that as well. And he just basically reached out to me and said, hey, we have this event in the Pettit Center, total climate control, 55 to 60 degrees.

That must be nice running at those cooler temperatures, especially with you living in Arizona, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, I did some of my peak training long runs when it was literally twice that hot. So it is a pretty drastic change. Um, but yeah, so like just looking at the logistics of it, it seemed to be one of the more dialed in controllable environments that I've had the opportunity to race in for some of these faster flat kind of time-based events. So I didn't necessarily want to— it's not an event that will necessarily occur every year either. So it was kind of like, well, if my fitness is there, I'm going to try to take advantage of this. And if not, it'll be a good tune-up for Spartathlon, if nothing else. So as I kind of got into the— so I guess to answer, to go back, like basically with that timeline, I just skipped all the short interval stuff that I would have normally put in and went straight into, more or less doing a lot of stuff right at that maximum aerobic function, basically trying to stack as many miles in the week that I could get at that without seeing too much of a regression. And then on days where I felt— I was pretty intuitive with this side of things, but on days where I felt really good, I would maybe do like a threshold type workout. Um, so it was just a lot of that. It was building up the long run, building up the number of miles per week I could spend at that maximum function. And then occasionally when I felt good, doing some threshold work. I just hammered that home for about 6 weeks total. When I really got excited about the Pettit Center in that specific event was I did a 4-week block of training that was 3 weeks of build and 1 deload week in the middle. That 4 weeks was a 130-mile week, 150-mile week, a deload where I regressed or I stepped back intensity and volume, and then another 150-mile week. And within those, I had 4 specific long runs, 2 of which were Saturday, Sunday back-to-backs that just went really well. It was like 100-degree temperatures. I was hitting 6:30 or a little faster per mile pace. And it just felt very smooth doing it in that heat. So I was pretty optimistic that I could handle sub-7-minute pace in cool environment at the Pettit Center at that point. And then it just became kind of a, just a pacing logistical kind of puzzle to solve, more or less.

Just looking at some of those training blocks, like running 150 miles a week, so 240K, and then also adding indeed, like I saw you running a sub-3-hour marathon on Saturday, running a sub-3-hour marathon on Sunday, plus then some, and even in those temperatures as well. Like, that definitely must have given you confidence as well coming out of those last few larger training blocks then?

Yeah, I would say what really got me excited was that back-to-back long run that I did. It was like 2 3-hour long runs, one on Saturday, one on Sunday, and I think I ended up with just over 55 miles total on those 2 days. And then, so I was pretty excited that I, the only question I had at that point is like, Am I going to be— like, where is, where is kind of my efficiency at without the speed work that I bypassed early on? But, uh, I went out the next week, I think it was the next weekend, and just did— and I was starting to scale back and sort of taper a little bit. So I was backing off some of those really long, long runs at that point. But I went out there and I did a 15-mile run and averaged like a 5:44 per mile pace, and it felt really smooth. So it was enough that in combination with how well the long runs went told me that I had gears, I had plenty of gears, more than I probably would ever need in a 100-mile race. So I was kind of confident that the pacing would feel comfortable because I think that's more, maybe more one of the psychological battles with a 100-miler as it is an actual physiological thing you need to have accomplished. But when you can really normalize the pace or make the pace that you're trying to target feel easier It just kind of makes the time pass quicker early on, and it just gives you less opportunities to kind of doubt yourself when you're feeling that good. And one thing I've realized from a lot of these ultra events, and then specifically ones where it's really transparent, you can see exactly when and where you slow down, is if you start kind of spiraling negative thoughts, it reflects in your pace. If you start spiraling positive thoughts, it reflects in your pace as well. And you actually sometimes have to be careful not to get a little too carried away early on when you're— if you're excited and you're feeling good. And, uh, you know, one thing I like to do for events like this, or I should say at least what I did at the Pettit Center, is I gave myself some parameters as to like, here's a range of splits I can hit per loop. And the loops were 443 meters, for those curious. And I was like, so my, my, my kind of target range was 1:48 to 1:52. So if I was bleeding much faster than 148, I knew I had to be kind of careful not to string a bunch of those together. And if I started having a few string together that were north of a minute 52, I knew I had to start kind of getting back down into that range or I would start losing sight of the goal I was trying to, trying to do, which was going under 11 hours and 28 minutes. Yeah.

Would you look at heart rate much throughout your run? Like, do you, Like, when you look at some of those early stage laps and your heart rate there and how it progressed throughout the race, would you look much at that at all or were you really time focused?

Yeah, at the, yeah, I can see some value and I've talked to people who've had a lot of success using heart rate a little more strictly during the event itself. I think there's some value maybe to it in the early stages if you're trying to just make sure you're staying within a specific kind of parameter. Of intensity, but once you get past an hour or two, I think you start running into a lot of variables that can maybe impact that, that wouldn't necessarily do you any good, so to speak, especially when you're chasing a specific time. Because at that point, if I look at my heart rate and I say, oh, well, I need to slow down in order to keep myself within a specific range, if that comes at the expense of my pacing goal, then you're kind of left at this thing, like, well, am I doing something that's unachievable here, or targeting something unachievable, or Do I need to just not let that enter my conscious at all and give me one more thing to juggle around or one more mental stress to deal with? I tend to not look at it much during the race itself. I use it enough in training where I know barring some extreme situation, my heart rate is going to be within the ranges that are indicative of what I've had in my training protocols. Really, the only big variance at this particular event would have been weather. I would have had much cooler weather, so if anything, my heart rate was likely a bit lower at the intensities I was doing than maybe I would have expected it to be from some of the training runs I did here in Phoenix.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You mentioned earlier the negative and positive mindsets and how that can impact your pace and your performance. How do you overcome tough spots both in training? Because you live in a very hot climate, so I would love to hear how you do some of that heat training yourself. But also, how do you overcome tough spots in, in a race as well?

Yeah, those are two great questions. Like, the race itself is one of the more fascinating things to me because I do think like, and I have, I think, you know, it's easy to look at my, my race at the Pettit Center and think, oh yeah, so like that's mental focus to another level. This guy must just be unbreakable inside his head. And it's like, no, you have to screw that thing up like 10 times before you get to that. But you know, thankfully for me, people see that performance. But I mean, it is interesting. I think the easiest way to describe to people is like, when you're doing an event like that, there's going to be numerous occasions where self-doubt creeps in. So it ultimately becomes like, what do you do with that? Like in the early stages, it's easy to kind of push past that and say like, all right, that's a negative self, that's negative self-talk. I need to get positive and just work your way back into a positive mindset. As you get further into race, those types of thoughts are just a little more aggressive in their frequency. They'll be popping up more often, so it gets a little more fatiguing, a little more difficult to be consistently pushing those back. Going in with ammunition, so to speak, of ways you can get yourself to think positive or to be grateful for what you're doing versus getting negative about it, I think are huge tools. For me, this was essentially a 6-year journey to get to that specific race of just chipping away at this. Finding the right pacing strategy, the right environment, the right training block, and then just the right mental energy to be able to consistently move past anything that crept in that would give me doubt. Really, the easy way to say it is you're always going to have those. The difference between me having a good day and me having a great day is however many times more I can push back that self-doubt past what I would normally get on an average day. Uh, so those pop up every once in a while. I think you have to be mindful of that too. So you don't get too addicted to having everything go right. Cause you know, you know how endurance goes, you might have a year that goes poorly and it's easy to look at that and think like, why am I doing this? But even a bad year of racing, if the training was sound, can still pay dividends down the road. So trying to keep an eye on the big picture from the training side of that is key too. The mental side of things, I think, is really helpful to practice during the training, and that's where you kind of get yourself to a position where you're able to push past some of that stuff in the race. For me, I had— the heat definitely helped. It just made training that much more difficult to do. It was a lot easier for me to say, "Well, 3.5 hours is what I was going to do, but since it's 105 degrees, I think 3 hours will be fine." Sometimes you'll do that. I've done that before. I've had training blocks where I find myself bailing out on on stuff that I probably could have done, whereas this one I was pretty focused on making sure I did it right. And I've had other training blocks that were more on, I guess, what you call like a mega-mile type of buildup like this. Um, you know, those are fatiguing, so I think you have to be smart about when and where you do them as well. For me personally, I took a ton of inspiration this year from being out at the Western States 100. I was crewing and pacing my wife there, and as I was doing that, I was paying attention to the men's field as well. And, you know, we had two guys come out there and just redefine that event. You know, it's the most tested 100-mile course in North America, and we have two guys come there and go under the previous course record, which was already a big improvement last year from what had been the course record before. And, and, uh, the Jim Walmsley and Jared Hazen were the two guys who went 1 and 2. And I mean, those guys put in a tremendous amount of work, so it's like It was unbelievable.

I was out there as well this year and seeing them come through some of the aid stations just booking it. Like absolutely, like 6 30-minute miles on some of the areas in the middle of a 100-mile race. These guys were on fire.

Yeah, and I think it's one of those things where you have to ask yourself, like, how much fire do you want to play with? And they could have trained at a lower volume, and probably gotten really solid days out of it, you know, or they can kind of take a little bit of a chance maybe and push that limit a tad and just see what happens. And you pay the price sometimes. I mean, Jared Hazen saw that last year. I mean, he was— I live just 2 hours south of those guys, so I have a good, decent enough idea of kind of what they're up to from time to time. But they, uh, Jared was super fit last year too. He just got hurt right before the start of the race, so he didn't make it to the starting line. And that's kind of the coin flip you're dealing with sometimes when you're pushing some of those those massive volume numbers is you might show up super fit, almost bulletproof, but you're maybe one week away from being dinged up and kinda not making it to the race to begin with. So everyone has to kinda weigh those, those odds and those preferences and all those things to decide if they want to kinda go about it that way or not. And I, I don't think there's necessarily a right or wrong answer. There's just, you know, what works best for you or what, what is, what is gonna make you kinda satisfied with the whole approach at the end of the day. So, uh, you know, I had some history in some of those bigger training blocks in the past. It had been a while since I did one that I would, that was the size that I did at this. But I just, like, I try to, I try to pay attention to a number of things and one is just the motivation to do it. So I had the motivation to do it this time. So I was like, well, let's take advantage of it and go for it and see what happens and played well, it played out nicely.

So I can't say I would have done it differently at this Good, good, good. And anything heat training related that worked well for you that some of the listeners might benefit from as well?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know enough about the science of heat training to really speak to it at a level where I can tell you this is exactly what happened physiologically to me by doing that, other than the people who are able to do that told me that that would pay dividends for me. Some people say it's relatively comparable to training at altitude and then coming down and racing at sea level. I think just the efficiency your body probably develops at cooling and blood volume and things like that, I would imagine, are affected by training in the heat. For me, going from 100 degrees fairly consistently during this training block to 60-ish degrees in the Pettit Center just meant like, first of all, let's get hydration figured out because it could be very easy to overdo hydration. Um, but at the same time, you don't want to neglect it and think like, well, I can get away with a lot of, a lot of things because it's cooler and then get behind. Cause if you get behind on hydration too far behind anyway, like you're gonna, you're just not going to catch up in time to rally a day when you're dealing with minutes potentially that are determined whether you reach your goal or not. But overhydration, you also want to be stopping and taking numerous pit stops and have that clock tick while you're not making any forward progress either. So that was a big one to kind of, I guess, manipulate a bit during the course of the day to try to make sure I had kind of dialed in appropriately. And, uh, my strategy was I was going to start out with a maximum of 16 ounces every 30 minutes and then flex up or down from there as needed. The nice thing about an event like this is I can get it every, every 2 minutes essentially. So if I screw something up or miss something, I can just get it really quickly thereafter. I can adjust things pretty easily and not really have that big of a shift in my kind of window of, of, uh, you know, when I want things. So what ended up happening is I ended up kind of starting out 16 ounces every 30 minutes, and then that seemed to be a little aggressive. I didn't feel like I was quite thirsty enough to be needing that much, so I would occasionally scale down to an 8-ounce, thinking like, I can take in the 8-ounce. If I decide 10 minutes later that wasn't enough, I can always grab another 8-ounce. And so I was just kind of like oscillating between 8- and 16-ounce bottles every 30 minutes during the course of that day, and that worked out really well.

And what kind of calories would you take in with that? Because you had a very specific strategy for that as well, obviously.

Yeah. Historically, like since I come into races, uh, probably with the scale of fat metabolism slid further than what you're going to see most endurance athletes, uh, I do kind of rely on a little less in-race fueling than what you maybe would normally see. For me historically, that's been kind of this moving target about 20 to 40 grams per hour. Um, so With this race, knowing that the weather was going to be a non-factor, I wasn't afraid to skew up towards the higher of that range, uh, just cause I knew like I would be able to digest 40 grams per hour pretty easily without dealing with any major stomach distress. So the way I had it kind of set up is I just had 20 grams of this product called Fuel 5 by a company named X Endurance that I'd have in every one of those bottles for those 30-minute intervals. Then once I hit 5 hours, I started entering a little bit of caffeine into the equation. I use a product called Unamate by a company called Unicity. They basically make— I really like yerba mate tea for racing because it has a little bit of a different effect, at least for me, compared to your coffee or other caffeine sources where you get that burst of energy and then it fizzles out.

Yeah, same here. I like the yerba mate. I haven't used it in a race environment, even during the day instead of drinking coffee, which might be more spiky for some people, actually more even caffeine.

I've always noticed, like I got introduced to yerba mate for non-running related reasons. I just was curious to try it and I did. And the thing I noticed was it didn't give you that kind of initial pop of like energy. What it gave you is kind of like a calm, focused energy. That didn't really wane off in a way that you can get a high from a caffeine spike and then a dip and put yourself on a bit of a roller coaster chasing that a little bit. The yerba mate I've used a lot more during races when I've been able to. The reason I like the Unamate products, they make these little sachets that have an instant version of it, so you don't have to sit there brewing it and sipping out of a gourd.

Fair enough.

That's nice. I'll just put that in. Starting at hour 5, I didn't want to start caffeine early because there's no real reason to start tapping that in the early stages when I'm plenty wide awake and the energy levels are relatively high. At hour 5, I'd start taking one of those little packets at the top of every hour. That was really all I did fueling-wise. It was my most direct, one-dimensional fueling strategy I've ever done for a 100-miler. Um, but it worked and I had a plan B if I needed it, but I just never got to it. Usually I'll get to a plan B just out of boredom or, you know, looking for something to look forward to that's different as you kind of get into the later stages of an event, especially one that's a little more harder to stay motivated in when you're just running short loops like this. But I think just knowing like that, I had a lot of respect for the training plan I did, and I had a lot of respect for the opportunity I had., and I also had a lot of, uh, motivation from previous events that didn't go as quite as well as I wanted them to, to really, I think, stay focused enough to not even really get to a point where boredom was an issue to the degree where I was looking for interesting little hacks to kind of break it by switching fuel sources or anything like that. So I just stuck with what was working and kind of hit that all the way to the end.

Yeah, well, and obviously it worked very well for you. It, uh, it definitely paid off. And now, yeah, I'm, I'm still blown away by running almost 4 sub-3-hour marathons back to back.

Yeah, it is kind of funny because like the general running community that isn't very aware or doesn't pay attention to ultra running, um, you know, they don't really probably understand what 11:19 for 100 miles is unless they really start to unpack it. But it is funny to watch people. Someone will say, "Oh, Zach just ran 100 miles in 11 hours and 19 minutes," and they'll be like, "Oh, okay. Is that pretty good?" Then they'll say, "Well, it's essentially 4 back-to-back sub-3-hour marathons or 4 Boston qualifying marathons in a row without stopping." Then they're like, "Oh, okay." They just translate it to something they understand. It is kind of interesting to see the reaction to that sort of thing.

Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk more about nutrition because like you obviously have the race nutrition is one thing, but the training being such a big part in the whole preparation of this, you've really much focused on low carb, high fat. Can you talk a little bit more about the actual nutrition strategy for you during training? Because I know it's not a— you're not following the same, the same approach day in, day out. You fluctuate with ketosis at certain stages, you take in more carbs certain peak stages than in other stages? Would love to hear a bit more about that.

Yeah, it's, it's a really good question. And it's one that's, I think it's, it's a little slippery for people to get their hands on sometimes because they'll ask like, well, what do you eat in a day? And then my response is usually, well, which day are you talking about? Because like, if you look at what I ate during that race at the Pettit Center or what I ate the next day, it's completely different. So, and those are the two ends of the extreme, you know, there is some consistency in the middle. The way I describe it is I follow a version of a high-fat, low-carb diet where fat is definitely the foundation of my nutrition. Protein is a pretty big foundation of my nutrition, and then I use carbs as a tool to kind of essentially hit the gas when I really need to. I view carbs probably the same way as a lot of people would maybe view caffeine, where if you think about it, like if I'm drinking a cup of coffee in the morning I'm going to get a nice little energy burst from that, and it's going to do what it's going to do if I do that on routine. Now, if I decided one afternoon to have a second cup of coffee, I could probably get another energy burst from that. Now, compare that to, like, say, someone who's drinking 4 cups of coffee in the morning routinely. You give them a 5th cup of coffee in the afternoon, they might hardly even notice that. I'm kind of working from that same basic principle where I'm getting fat adapted enough so I can really lean on that as the foundation of my metabolism, but I'm not doing it— I'm not sliding that scale so far over so that carbs are out of the option window either. I definitely want those as a tool when I need it, and that's worked really well for me. So, you know, the majority of my work is done aerobically, so I can do a lot of stuff burning high levels of fat, and I just haven't seen any evidence in my own workout in terms of hitting paces, hitting workouts that would indicate that moving from the amount of carbs I do have back up to, say, a more traditional high-carb approach of 60-70% is going to make any drastic improvements in my training that are going to get me another edge come race day. That's where my expertise on the matter is maybe most valuable, as I do have 10 years of training data that is north of 50,000 miles and countless races that I've been able to test these things. I always use performance as my compass. If I'm doing something and my performance is suffering, my workouts are suffering, I'm going to make a change. That's just where I've gotten to this more periodized carbohydrate approach is when I've gone strict keto or zero carb in the past, I see a lot of these— I feel great during the day, I feel great on these low-intensity runs, but if I try to hit the gas or if I am doing a hill interval or something like that, I don't have that pop. To me, that's not the best route for me if that's the result I'm getting. That's when I would start to play around with a little bit of carbohydrate and just find that minimum dosage, maximum return spot within that.

How do you do that? How do you find that minimum dose?

Yeah, so what I did was I did a pretty strict ketogenic diet and did what I guess you could maybe call like a hard reset where you just reset your metabolism to be moving as much into fat metabolism as possible. I did it on an offseason because I'm trying— I don't want to necessarily introduce a big physiological stress on top of another big one with my training load. So once I had a little bit of flexibility in the offseason to kind of do that, that hard reset Then once I started training, I just paid attention to those things I mentioned, like how do I feel in my workouts, how does it feel on an easy run versus a workout with some speed work in it. Then it's just inching it up a little bit. Let's say I'm following a strict ketogenic diet, I'm hitting 30 to 50 grams of carbohydrate per day, and I notice I'm a little flat on those peak days. Well, my next step then is just going to be let's up the carbohydrate a little bit and see if I get that pop back. Once I get it back, if I'm hitting the workout I need to hit, there's no reason for me to take more of it to try to run faster than my intended goal. It falls right in the same line as, well, just because you can do that interval faster doesn't mean it's in your best interest to do it faster. I find that spot where I know I need to be in terms of getting the training stimulus I'm looking for. Once I get to that, I flex whatever nutrients I need to get me to that place. That just happens to have been a little bit of carbohydrate but not a whole lot relative to what you're going to see a lot of people doing on a high-carb approach. People will— if you look at it from a percentage standpoint, when I get up to peak training, I'm flexing my carbs up to maybe 20% of my intake versus sometimes next to none during recovery phases or days off and things like that. It gets a little more You always going to keep unpacking it if you keep going down the rabbit hole, so to speak. The other thing to think of is also when my carbohydrates are their highest from a percentage standpoint, my workload is also the highest. When I'm doing back-to-back long runs, if you take for example that Saturday, Sunday session I did where I got just over 55 miles, I'm running a calorie deficit on those 2 days. I'm not going to eat enough to make up the energy I put out on those 2 days. My goal then is when I do those 2 workouts like that, I'm going to have a day the next day where I might take off completely. If I run, it's going to be very easy, kind of a recovery run. I'm going to kind of backload that calorie deficit makeup into that recovery day where it's a little easier to just overeat on a day where I'm not burning as many calories as opposed to trying to just stuff everything down my throat possible to make up the calorie deficit on the 2 higher volume days. When you look at it percentage-wise then, 20% carbohydrate intake on a calorie deficit is actually— when I'm looking at just energy usage percentages, it's probably lower than that. The only reason I mention that is because I think it confuses people sometimes because they think 20% intake would indicate 20% usage rate. There's definitely a little more to tease out with that. I usually share that I'm operating calorie balance more on a 3-day cycle versus what you'd normally see on a 24-hour cycle.

Yeah. Oh, this is like, this is like a 5-hour conversation because we get that, like, yeah, I've already, like, a lot of other questions, but I do want to be mindful of the time. We've already been talking for an hour over here. One thing that I do know comes up quite often is what nutritional approach is best for like this specific runner based on their distance, on their intensity, all of these kind of things. Obviously you are training to run long endurance events and you're going to be racing at lower heart rate, like relative lower intensity, right? If you would be racing a marathon and you kind of touched on this earlier for a little bit as well, or a half marathon or any of these, would you then at that at that phase re-up the carb intake pretty significantly, or once again until that point that you feel is the minimum doses?

Yeah, it's a good question. I can't necessarily speak specifically to my own experience since I haven't actually— I would like to go through a block like that and just kind of go about it the same way I did when I adopted a high-fat, low-carb diet in the first place and just respond to where the workouts are telling me. Things like that. What I suspect would be for me specifically, I would probably bring in more carbohydrate. The question would be to what level. Would I need to go up to what is recommended at that 60-70% range that you're seeing a lot of endurance programs advocate for? I don't think I would need to, but I wouldn't rule it out. I think— I really think when we look at— it's interesting to look at the lens of, well, what are the Olympic athletes doing? What are world record holders doing at those distances and that sort of stuff? I mean, you're going to see a lot of high carbohydrate diets. Then the question becomes, are we identifying individuals who are robust enough to take on that sort of a nutrition plan and compete at a high level without having any negative circumstances that would sideline their career? Then when someone has that situation not work for them nutritionally, they just fall on the wayside and we don't necessarily— point nutrition to being the root cause when maybe it is. I don't think we are necessarily exploring that in enough veracity to know for sure. What I would highly doubt is that you could take any of these Olympic athletes that are winning medals, breaking world records at those distances, and put them on a strict ketogenic diet and get the same result. That's where I think it gets frustrating for a lot of the exercise physiologists and the coaches out there who are coaching folks like that because they may see something like, "Oh, well, a ketogenic diet is great for endurance athletes." It can be for certain endurance athletes under certain circumstances, but I mean, we're talking about an incredibly unique tiny sliver of the pie when we're talking about Olympic-level medalists, world record holders at those sports. Um, so it does get interesting. Uh, where I find it really interesting too is like when you get intense enough, you know, your body becomes the limiting factor before nutrition does, or I should say like onboard fueling does. So like you get some of these super high-intense athletes where they're going to be going really hard for like 45 to 60 minutes a day. And then maybe have a 23-hour window before their next session. I'm curious as how low those folks could go carbohydrate-wise because they're not depleting their glycogen stores. They have ample amount of time between sessions to restock glycogen through fat and protein gluconeogenesis type conversions versus someone who's doing an endurance event where you might do a workout in the morning and then 5 hours later be doing another workout and then the next morning doing another workout. And kind of really tightening that window of recovery between and really amping up the amount of volume you're spending working out throughout the course of the week as well. Those are kind of the gray area ones for me where I think like it's that sliver of the athletic world that has a harder time necessarily saying like carbs good, fats bad, fats good, carbs bad, and then being like all black and white with it. I think there's, there's some middle ground there.

Yeah, and I do think experimenting a lot with this to see what works for you, because what, what works for one athlete might not necessarily work for the other as well, as you see every day as well, I'm sure, as a running coach. And that to me, I've seen as well. Some people perform really well with eating plenty of meat and other people like say their stomach gets upset and they respond better to a vegan diet. And yeah, that's So many different approaches there too.

Yeah, yeah, mm-hmm. Yeah, and then it gets even more interesting when you get someone who's doing a keto vegan diet.

Yeah, that's an interesting combination for sure. So one more question here that I think is quite important because you just mentioned already your body can become the limiting factor. How do you limit or avoid running-related injuries? Like, from what I've heard is you've only experienced one serious running injury over all these years, even though you're hammering out 150-mile week at some stage. Like, what do you do recovery-wise to optimize this?

Yeah, I think there's a few things going on there. I think nutritionally there's a lot to be said. I think endurance athletes in general oftentimes can find themselves into this, this almost negative view of food as— rather than looking at it as a fuel source and a recovery tool, they start looking at it as something that could potentially sabotage their power-to-weight ratio, or they're constantly trying to lose an extra pound or two, and they're never really actually getting to the point where they're optimizing their performance and recovery because they're always trying to kind of get into that ideal, in their mind, power-to-weight ratio. I think a lot of injuries are based off of just poor nutrition like that. I think when you really look into the protein science, a lot of endurance athletes probably aren't getting enough protein. When you look at the role protein plays in bone health and bone strength, I think that starts to shed a light on how much high-quality protein should an endurance athlete actually be getting versus what most are getting. That's kind of an interesting side of it. The other side is just the actual act of the training itself. For me, I think I've always viewed training as this kind of mindset where at no point during the year does it favor me, barring an extreme circumstance, to get completely unfit. At no point should I be in a position where I'm going couch to whatever.

Couch to world record.

Right, yeah. If I'm in that situation, I'm in that situation because I ended up there, not because I chose to. With that, there's another side of that too. There's also, I think, a problem in some cases where someone gets really fit, they PR, and it's really hard for them to let go of that fitness. They're like, "Why would I want to let go of this optimal fitness? This feels great. I can go out and run fast workouts. I can run fast races all the time." They're kind of turning an unsustainable lifestyle— they're trying to make an unsustainable lifestyle work year-round. What I've done is I rarely get more de-fit, I guess you could say, than say 80% or 90% of what I'm capable of getting to when I'm as fit as I possibly can get. I'm also never hanging on to peak fitness for more than a couple of months at a time before I'm going to take a step back and let that kind of resettle and renormalize. I think that helps out a lot too. Then at the little more of the micro stages, just being honest with yourself about what you're capable of handling. The reason I can do 150-mile weeks and not get hurt is because I've spent the last 10 years building up to that. The way I like to describe it is you want to be micro-stressing yourself consistently so your body is constantly making small gains but never trying to macro-stress. Macro stress yourself to the point where you need an extreme amount of time to bounce back from that at the expense of your next training session or at the expense of your health. Now I say that with a caveat because any race I do is essentially a macro stress, but that's kind of just the uniqueness of the sport, I guess, is to a degree you're going to be putting yourself at risk by just doing the event in general, and there's always a chance of getting hurt trying to run 100 miles. I think you just need to appreciate when and why some people pull out early on some of these events when we're looking at just health and long-term well-being and that sort of stuff.

Yeah. Any specific strength or mobility routines that work for you?

Yeah, actually I do do some mobility stuff and some strength stuff. A lot of that is anchored in the one injury I did have that was meaningful in any way. I had a, I had a stress fracture on my sacral ala back in 2017 that sidelined me for about 7 weeks from any real training. And, uh, it's really hard to pinpoint how and why those happen, I guess. But the doctors I talked to and I worked with when I was rehabbing it, they said what they thought was maybe happening is I had switched from doing a more flat-based training program to a very hilly one. Uh, because I was actually preparing for the Western States 100 that year. So I went from flat training to hilly training and I was a little bit more aggressive probably in the early stages of adapting to the mechanical differences of running up and downhill versus flat. And on top of that, all the flat running I had done had limited my range of motion in like my ankles and my hips a bit. So when we did some, like some tests to see where my range of motion is within there, they, they thought like. Possibly what was happening is I got a little too rigid within some of those areas, then some of the downhill running maybe put me in a little bit of a compromised position that resulted in the stress fracture. Knowing that, I just focused in pretty heavily on some mobility work to get my ankle mobility and hip mobility a little more— a little better. It's been a cool experience because it surfaced a lot. I used to be the type of person where I'd go out and run trails. Torqued my ankle, I might have to take off 2 days. But the ankle mobility alone, I've gotten to the point where now I'm able to get on the trails, and if I roll my ankle over, I mean, it hurts, but like I'll pop right off of it, and then a couple steps later I'm perfectly fine.

So I have very tight ankles, and that is something I want to improve. What sort of way did you work towards getting that more flexible?

Yeah, so I'll do this, this, this movement where like I'll be down and I'll be on like one of my knees with my other leg forward, kind of making like an upside down L. I'll do like these circular rotations with it in each direction and just really kind of try to slowly but surely improve the rotational capability of your ankle. I'll also do— like a lot of people will do like calf stretches, but I think sometimes they'll be like— they'll do like say like 3 sets of 10 seconds and they're not really getting that deep long stretch. So I'll find like a plank or a stair or something and I'll stand on that and just really let that back of my calf relax as I'm getting further. Sometimes I'll stand there for up to a minute just trying to get it further down and further down as I'm able to relax that. You just can kind of improve that flexion a little bit by doing it that way. I'll do some stuff too where I'll kind of sit on my shins so that my toes are poking back and just kind of rock back a little bit and just try to stretch it from that flexion point too and just get that little more— a little more range of motion within that. So that's been very helpful for me for that. And if you have tight ankles, I would recommend trying those ones out.

Yeah, that's really good. Got 3 last questions here for you. One is, there's quite a few people in the audience who are actually looking to improve their overall running. They're looking to become faster, stronger, healthier athletes out there. I know you're a running coach yourself. You work with different athletes. What are some of the things that you would suggest, just like high level? What are, what are some low-hanging fruits that, that people can improve on?

Yeah, um, I think the big one is just consistency. I think a lot of times, like, uh, what'll end up happening is people will, they'll be super motivated and they'll get in like a good training block, then they'll maybe lose motivation or something will get in the way, and then all of a sudden it'll like wean off. They'll find themselves constantly going back and forth between doing maybe a little too much and doing a little too little or a lot too little and kind of oscillating back and forth rather than looking at it from a long-term project and say, "Okay, let's find out what is sustainable for my current fitness as well as the time I have available to me and just really normalize that and then work on kind of making more gains if you're looking looking to either add volume or intensity or something like that. It almost comes back to that principle of if your goal is recovery, don't push harder just because you feel good necessarily, but if you're going to do a workout, do a real workout and get yourself to that point where maybe you actually do need a recovery day. Some of that stuff is individual to the type of the time of season when you're trying to do specific workouts and where the person's experience level is at and things like that too. Consistency is probably the biggest thing that I see mistake being made by folks who are just getting into it.

Yeah, absolutely. That consistency and just that gradual growth as well. Just like when I look through, like you have logged quite a bit of Strava data on your own as well, and I'll make sure to link back to your Strava and your YouTube channel and your podcast and these other channels. But yeah, you can see the amount of volume that is building up, but that's It's not overnight from one to the other there either.

Yeah, and it's easy to look at someone else's stuff and think, well, that's what I should be doing, that's what works, but you have to individualize it to a degree. I'm definitely a high-mileage guy. There's guys in the sport and girls in the sport who are crushing it on much lower volume with a slightly different strategy too. It goes back to what I said though. Regardless of Regardless of which program you pick, there's a lot of workable programs in my opinion. Staying consistent with it is usually going to be the one that bears the most fruit.

Yeah, yep, yep. Then real brief, high level, what are the shoes, the watch, and your heart rate monitor that you run with? I know people would want to know that one.

Yeah, so the shoes I use are— I use a variety of shoes from Ultra Footwear. I do, I like them because they're, they're a natural running shoe in the sense that they are going to put you in the position you would be if you were barefoot, but they're going to put the protection on the, on the shoe that would be required for whatever environment you're going into. So someone who is trying to really work on building up their lower leg muscles can start out with a more higher cushioned natural shoe versus someone like myself who's kind of done my homework in that and I've gotten my lower legs really strong, can go down to a little more lower profile version of that. I like the lower profile stuff. At the race I did at the Pettit Center, I wore the Ultra Solstice, which I would describe as kind of a beefy racing flat or an aggressive trainer. It's kind of in between the two. On the trails, I really like the Superior. That's kind of my go-to one on the trails. It's a little bit of a lower profile, a little more flexible. Shoe, but they got all sorts of stuff from max cushion down to minimalist, but all with that kind of foot-shaped toe box.

Nice. I just transitioned to Altra myself only a few months ago, and I ran in the Escalante 1.5, and I just ordered the 2.0, and I absolutely like them. They feel so comfortable around the feet.

Yeah, the Escalante is like a sock on your foot. That one is a That one is a fun shoe and it's been a big hit on their line for sure. But, uh, yeah, um, I love their shoes, their products. They got a variety of stuff from hiking to running to casual and all that stuff. So they've grown enough where they've got something for everything now, which is exciting to try out their stuff. Uh, for watch and heart rate stuff, I've been using the Coros Apex the last year or so, and it has the wrist rate heart rate monitor on it, which— I found to be accurate. Is that what you got too? Yeah. Nice. Yeah, it's been— I really like that product too. I know some people sometimes have a little bit of an issue with the wrist-based stuff, and I'm not sure, maybe that's a non-issue at this point as they've more or less evolved that technology. I've paired it up with chest strap stuff before, and I get a pretty consistent reading from the heart rate on that.

It is interesting. I've recorded actually a video a few days ago, and I haven't published it yet. With the CEO, with Lewis from COROS. He came over to my place. We're running buddies. We hit the trail sometimes over here.

Oh, nice.

And I asked him specifically that question about how accurate is the wrist-based heart rate versus the chest strap. And there's even certain techniques there. If you're— if you make your wristwatch a little bit tighter, it's going to be more accurate. And sometimes I noticed I made it too loose. Also, if you're running on a flat terrain, it's going to be quite more accurate than once you're hitting certain hills because of some of the cadence. He did mention the most accurate it is still going to be if you do end up having a chest heart rate strap, just to avoid some of these bounces or some of this additional noise, whether that's rubbing with the clothes or whether that's bouncing with the hills. But overall, yeah, they've definitely come a long way.

Yeah, that is interesting because I know when I go— when I'm just wearing the watch, I'll have it like 2 or 3 little eyelets looser, but when I'm running, I ratchet it down.

Yeah, yeah, he said specifically you shouldn't— you should barely or not even be able to get a finger behind it. So that's much tighter than I would normally wear it indeed as well.

Well, it makes sense too because if you put your chest rate strap on loose, it probably wouldn't be accurate either. So It's just kind of par for the course, more or less, in terms of user error.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, alright, good, good. Then I do wanna see where can people find more about you, because you just started posting more and more videos on your YouTube channel, which I can highly recommend to people, because you're doing an exceptional job explaining your training, your racing, your nutrition. Much more in detail than what we here talk about. But what are other areas that people can find out more about you?

Yeah, yeah, I'm probably most active on Instagram and Twitter. So my Instagram handle is @zackbitter and my Twitter is @zbitter. All the stuff from the YouTube videos to if you want to get in touch with me to setting up consult calls, all that sort of stuff can be done on my website at zackbitter.com. But yeah, if folks have questions, one thing I've been doing with the YouTube stuff is historically I haven't been very active on YouTube, but I've been putting more stuff out lately is I have a specific playlist on a channel that is questions that I get people to send me. So if you send me a question through my forum submission that you find interesting or would like me to address in more detail, that's how I'm picking those. And usually I'll pick ones that I'm getting more often first. Just, it makes it easier because, you know, I'll get these questions from time to time and after like the third time you type out the exact same response to a different person, it's like, maybe easier just to put a URL on here with a video of me exactly saying what they're asking. So that's kind of how that started. But yeah, if you want to check that out, my YouTube channel is available to anyone who wants to see that stuff.

That's awesome. And then the coaching calls that you were talking about, or the consult calls, tell me a bit more about what you have going on there.

Yeah, so I do, I do like 30-minute and 60-minute consult calls that people can just set up for on my website. I use an application called Calendly where basically you go on there and you click on it and then it shows you any open slots you can sign up for it. I do— that's probably one of my favorite things to do because it's just really interesting to see what other people are doing, kind of where their hiccups are, what problems they're trying to solve, and it— that one-on-one kind of problem-solving strategy sessions are a lot of fun to do. Yeah, so if people want to check that out, they certainly can. If there aren't slots that match your schedule, you can always send me an email. I usually have more flexibility than the calendar indicates.

So yeah, that's, that's where that kind of angles. Awesome. And I'll make sure to link to all of this in the show notes. Links to all of this. And then you have the Human Performance Outliers Podcast as well, right?

Yeah, I do co-host a podcast with Dr. Shawn Baker. We titled it Human Performance Outliers Podcast when we first started about a year and a half ago, and we didn't necessarily know what direction we were going to head with it. We have ended up talking to a lot of folks that are kind of had a career in like different forms of exercise physiology, nutrition, and then the occasional like lifestyle person, athlete, and things like that as well. So it's been cool to do some deep dives into things like protein and nutrition and stuff like that with PhDs and professors around, around the world.

It's been an exciting venture for sure. Definitely high-level deep dives into a lot of the subjects that we're interested in. So can highly, highly recommend that one as well. Zach, thank you very much for your time. Really appreciate it. And I look forward to connecting again with you soon.

Yeah, perfect.

Thanks for having me on.

All right, have a good one.

You too, take care. Hello everyone, thank you for listening. If you would like to receive my latest training tips and racing strategies, you might want to consider signing up for my weekly Extramile newsletter. In this weekly email that goes out every Friday morning, I share all of the different experiments that I'm running, the different products that I'm testing, so whether that is hydration, nutrition, or actual running gear, some of the different apps that I'm using, books and articles that I'm reading. In general, just a lot of ways to improve as an athlete and to become an actual stronger, healthier, and happier athlete. This email, you can sign up for it at extramilest.com. All of the show notes from today's episode can be found at extramiles.com/22. That is the number 22. Thank you for listening.

Have fun out there on your runs and your workouts.