#5: Mark Allen Interview on Heart Rate Training and Racing

I said there is no perfect race, but you can race perfectly. You know, that's a big shift in how you approach it. The heart rate monitor strap breaks, the race is delayed 20 minutes. Just managing it and dealing with everything that comes up in a very calm way as opposed to freaking out about it. That is racing perfectly.

Hello, this is Floris Gierman from the Extramilest podcast, and I'm super stoked because today I'm going to be interviewing Mark Allen. He's a 6-time Hawaiian Ironman World Champion, and he was named the greatest triathlete of all times by Triathlete Magazine. In 1997, Outside Magazine also named him the World's Fittest Man, so he was and still is a very fit athlete. For those of you who are not familiar with Ironman distances, it is a swim of 2.4 miles, so 3.8 kilometers, a bike ride of 110 miles, 180 kilometers, and a marathon run, so 26.2 miles or 42.2k. The distance of the event combined with the very hot and windy conditions make this one of the world's toughest single-day athletic events in the world. Mark has worked very closely with one of my all-time favorites, Dr. Phil Maffetone, and in this podcast, Mark and I are going to dive into 3 different areas. We talk about training your mind, training your body, and we'll also touch base about Mark's seminars, his coaching programs, and his latest books. So let's jump right in.

Perfect. Is this your office in Santa Cruz?

Yeah.

Right on.

Where are you located?

I'm located in Costa Mesa, California. We're not that far apart.

Yeah.

So I'm very excited, first of all, to have you on the show today. I first found out about your training approach from Dr. Phil Maffetone. Um, and there was a podcast about heart rate monitor training and he actually mentioned several athletes that he had worked with, including yourself. Um, and when I first started training with heart rate monitor, um, I had to slow down my pace to about a 9-minute mile to stay aerobic. Um, and what stood out to me was that at your peak you were able to run a pace of 5-minute 20 seconds per mile at an aerobic heart rate of 155. That honestly blew my mind and it really motivated me to try this heart rate monitor approach. So thank you for the motivation and inspiration right there.

Well, when I actually started the very first time, Phil took me to the track and had me put on the heart rate monitor and we timed a couple miles. My pace was 8:45.

Oh wow.

So I started at almost the same point that you did when you put yours on that first time. It was a shock because at the time I had been trying to go, you know, at some point in most of my runs under 5:30 pace, 5:15, 5:10, even for a quarter mile. And that was just the mentality back in the early '80s to go hard all the time. And clearly that was going to be a shift if I was going to follow that. And it took patience, but In the end, it really did become one of the main ways of training that enabled me to actually keep progressing and get faster every year all the way through my 15-year career.

Yeah, how long did that take you, like from kind of going at 8:45 minute mile, like how fast did you see a progression there?

You know, it got faster very consistently for about 3 years and then, and then it kind of, you know, the very top-end speed slowed down. You know, at some point you're not going to get any faster. Yeah. And so after about 3 years, I was pretty much at the end of the season able to run somewhere between 5:30, 5:45 miles at, let's say, 155 beats a minute. But what continued to change over time is that, you know, some years I would get a little bit faster. Eventually I got down to almost a 5:20 mile at 155 beats a minute. What did change though is that the fall-off from mile to mile became less and less over time. So, you know, you might do your first mile if you do that on the track at, let's say, 5:30, and then the next mile's 5:45, and then 6:00, 6:10, something like that. Over time, that fall-off became very small, so I could run 2 or 3 or 4 miles and the fall-off might only be 10 seconds total. So you start at 5:30, And by the third mile, you're still running at 5:35, 5:40. And so, you know, there was different levels of fitness. You know, there's speed and then there's the ability to hold speed over time.

Well, and I honestly recognize the exact same thing as what you're saying. Like, when I first started with it, I was like, my drop was pretty significantly there as well, with mile after mile, sometimes a 30-second difference. And one of my last math tests that I just did before I ran Boston was like a 6:12 average pace. And that was only a matter of a few seconds apart per mile over there. That's great. That made a lot of difference for sure. So I kind of want to jump into 3 different subjects in this conversation. The first is training your mind based on one of the latest books that I've read from you. The second part is training training the body, and the third part about the training program of MarkAllen.com, MarkAllenCoaching.com, that you're currently working on. Does that sound okay to you?

Yeah, perfect.

Perfect, that's good. So I read your book Fit Soul Fit Body, and I've been absolutely fascinated by how you've approached your training in more of a holistic way. And over the years, you've worked closely together with Brent Secunda. He's a world-renowned a shaman, a healer, and a teacher in Mexico. And in the book you explain that having a fit body is very important, but then having a fit soul is also key to help reach happiness, fulfillment, and inner peace. Can you explain what is a fit soul and how can an athlete work on this in their training and racing?

Yeah, that's, that's a great question. We all know what a fit body is. When you're going faster and you feel better and you're stronger, you have less body fat. Those kind of measurable markers, that means that you're gaining a fit body. But a fit soul is more what's going on in your internal landscape with your internal character. Are you focused on fear or doubt or anger or jealousy even? Or are you focused on positive qualities like just feeling peaceful in the midst of whatever's going on? Are you able to quiet your mind when the challenges get tough and that voice starts to go off in your head that's telling you, "No, it's not worth it. I can't do it. I should have never started this sport." We all know that voice. Yeah. To be able to quiet your mind in those moments is what enables you to get past them and to move through them quicker. And that's having a fit soul. Also, having a fit soul is really starting with a real trust in life itself. Yourself. You know, a lot of times people, it's easy to set goals and feel like, okay, if I can achieve that goal, then I will be happy. You know, if I can win an Ironman, then my life will be worth living. And in 1989, that was the first year that I made a connection with Branch Secunda. You know, that whole dynamic really shifted around, and you know, through studying with him, studying Huitzilopochtli Shamanism, which is what he teaches, you know, I saw that the real starting point is to have a true trust in life, that things are always going to work out the way they're supposed to, that it may not necessarily always be easy, but if you stay connected to that, you know, that sense that everything really is in the right place at the right time, even if in the moment you don't understand it, then you have this amazing trusting power that enables you to work at your best level at all times, whether it's in an athletic event or in your job or dealing with relationships. And, you know, that was a key switch in how I focused, you know, to go into an Ironman feeling like, you know what, I'm the luckiest guy on the planet because look what I get to do today. It's not going to be easy, I know that. It will never go the way I want 100% of the time. But I have this chance to truly live and to express kind of a gratitude for being alive. And that's having a fit soul also, is having a real gratitude to have another day on this planet. I mean, even with all the problems, you know, some days it's harder to feel that gratitude. When I have a tough day, especially, you know, maybe nothing seems like it's going right, I'll just stop for a second and say, okay, What's one thing that I'm really thankful for right now? And that totally takes, that totally shifts your focus and your mindset, and all of a sudden it feels like you're able to grasp the answers of how to manage all the things going on. And that's really important in an endurance event like an Ironman because there's a thousand moments where you want to quit. There's a thousand moments where you feel like there's no way you're ever going to have the day that you had hoped to out there. But if you can have that trust in life, then it brings you back to a real center point that enables you to stay fully engaged in the moment at hand. And that really is where your energy needs to be in an event like that. Take that next step, take that next pedal stroke, get to that next aid station, look around and see this amazing place in nature that you're able to compete in this event. And that's another element of having a fit soul is to get outside, look around, see the flowers, see the trees, smell the air, see the sunrise, see a sunset, swim in the ocean, you know, run on a trail and look around and feel that gratitude. That's a lot of what Brant taught me to do.

That's really good to hear for sure. And actually going on about what you were just saying, one thing that I've noticed that one of my very one of my running coaches, Jimmy Dean, actually taught me was that going into a race, even in advance, already knowing that the race is never gonna be perfect. There's always gonna be obstacles. And even just knowing that, like, for one of my first races when I tried to run sub-3 hours, I was very nervous, I was very focused, and all of a sudden the race started 25 minutes late because the course wasn't ready yet. It was the Long Beach Marathon. My heart rate monitor broke, and there were all these things that could completely mess with my mind. But just knowing going into that race, like, it's gonna be okay, you've trained hard for it, and now it's just a matter of executing and staying calm. Like, that right there, like, helped significantly.

You know, I always tell my athletes that I coach that I said there is no perfect race, but you can race perfectly. You know, that's a big shift in how you approach it, and it's exactly what you were talking about. The heart rate monitor strap breaks, the race is delayed 20 minutes, just managing it and dealing with everything that comes up in a very calm way as opposed to freaking out about it. Yeah. That is racing perfectly.

Yeah, exactly. That's good to hear. And then following up on the Ironman success, because I've already mentioned something about all the Ironman successes you've had over the years in my introduction prior to this, but From 1982 to 1988, you placed in the top 5 of the Ironman World Championship in Kona many times. And then from '89 to '95, you've won this race 6 times in total. How were you able to get the strength and motivation to keep trying to win this race even after year after year you came in 2nd, 3rd, 4th place?

You know, in those first 6 years that I did Ironman, I, I I was trying to win, clearly. And I kept going back because I felt like I had the potential to win, but eventually that focus changed to just trying to have my best race. I thought, you know what, I've gotten 2nd, I've gotten 3rd, I finished in 5th. I've been in the lead early, I've been in the lead in the middle of the race, I've been in the lead up toward the very end, but I've never been able to put it together and come across the finish line. Finish line in first, but more importantly, I felt like I had fallen apart toward the end of every one of those Ironmans. And there was just this desire inside to go back until I actually had my best race. And that was really my focus in 1989, my 7th Ironman, was to go there and this time just see if I could pace it correctly, that I could prepare correctly so that I could go there and have a little bit more of a peaceful mindset in the event. To deal with and manage the difficult moments a little easier, a little smoother, and just see if I could have a really steady race all the way through. And that ended up being one of the most amazing Ironmans of my career. And I ended up racing side by side with Dave Scott up until hour 8 and then was able to pull away on the last uphill. And more importantly, there was a moment in the race where Dave, on the marathon, we were about halfway through it Yeah, he dropped his pace down to a 6-minute mile.

That is unbelievable after all that.

Yeah, and I kept waiting for him to back off and I realized he's not going to back off. He's going to hold 6-minute pace. So you had to. Closing 13 miles of this marathon and it completely blew my mind because nobody had done that before.

And not at that temperature either and that distance into the race.

Yeah, and I finally, you know, my mind was going nuts with stuff that wasn't helping me out and finally it got so hard to stay with him that my mind went quiet. And the instant my mind went quiet, I remembered this image that I had seen in a magazine 2 days prior for a workshop taking place in Mexico that Brant Secunda and his adopted grandfather, Don Jose Matsuo, were going to be giving in Mexico. And in the ad, they both had photos photos, and they had this look on their face that was very peaceful and powerful, sort of like that sense of you're happy just to be alive. And in that moment where my mind went quiet in the middle of the marathon, Don Jose's image came back to me, and it was like I was just seeing him right there with me, and I got this just surge of strength because I was thinking, you know what, that old guy doesn't need to win an Ironman to feel good about his life. He is happy just to to be alive. And suddenly, you know, I looked around and I mean, I was with Dave Scott. He was the best guy in the world in '89. He won the race 6 times. Nobody else has given the guy a run for his money. There were still 13 miles to go in the marathon. Something might change. And I just started to fill up with that, you know, trust in life and that gratitude to be out there. I mean, I was looking around going, wow, this is my office. The lava fields of Kona, how amazing is that? And I just got stronger and stronger from that point forward, and then eventually, you know, being patient, was able to pull away on that last long uphill, and it was the move that stuck, and I was able to win the first of 6 titles that year.

What I was most surprised about was when I see that moment in the race around mile 24, like after you go past the aid station, and you actually see you guys are booking it, you're going really fast, and still you're able to pull away. But then if you look at the shape between the two of you, you could see that in your eyes it already seemed that you had won. Like the way you were running at that point, even though it probably would have taken every little bit that you had left in your body, still you were running very easy, it looked like. And there, no, and there it might come in, like the whole aerobic versus running anaerobic, that you had been keeping some reserve for the end, that this time you did have that in you from the 6th hour, 7th hour, all the way to the 8th hour, and that previously might have been missing. But that was incredible to see.

Well, I guess I'm a good actor because I did feel pretty good at that point, but I was very, very uncertain whether I was going to be able to pull it off. I started pulling away from Dave, and he's an incredible runner on the downhills. When you get to the top of that last uphill that we were going up at that moment, there's a long downhill on the other side, and I just knew that I had to get to the top before him, otherwise he'd be able to pull away from me. There was that thing inside that said, I have to make the race happen right here. If I wait until we get into town, he's got it. And I got to the top of the hill, I kept running, I didn't look back. I ran as fast as I could down the hill, hoping that my legs wouldn't cramp, that my quads wouldn't cramp. And I got to the bottom, and then I looked back, and I couldn't see him. And it was at that point that I knew that I had it. There was— I knew there was nothing that was going to happen, and there was no way he was going to catch me. So I had about a little over half a mile to to really just savor it, knowing that now all I had to do was finish it up. And, you know, I came across the line and it was, you know, it was this amazing feeling of relief and complete ecstatic excitement of finally having that race that I'd hoped to have, having it on what ended up being Dave Scott's best day ever in Kona. He broke his previous world record by almost 18 minutes. Yeah, that was great. You know, and the difference in our times is 58 seconds. And, you know, it was— I won, he was second, but the real story of the day is what we were able to accomplish together. You know, we pushed each other to this level that nobody had ever done before. Prior to that, it seemed like Dave Scott was racing and everybody else was surviving. And 1989 showed that, no, you, you can have competitors racing each other to the very end of that event. And It changed the mindset of how that race was approached.

So quieting the mind was a good thing in that race.

Absolutely.

That's great. Personally, I've been meditating for about 3 months now and I've noticed many benefits in both my performance but also just in my personal life with reduced stress and increased attention and really more living in the now. My question to you, do you meditate? And if so, what form of meditation works well for you?

Well, in Huichol shamanism, they don't use the word meditate, but one of the main things that in that tradition you're trying to develop is the ability to quiet your mind. And so at any point of the day, in anything that you're doing, you can try to find that quiet place. And so, you know, as an athlete, for example, you know, any training session that I was in, when I started to get into the part of the workout where it's starting to get tough, it's starting to get long, I'm not feeling as good as I'd hoped that I would, and, you know, the little voice starts to go off in my head, that's when I would just try to pull everything back, take that one breath, okay, there's the quiet place, and then keep going again. And it just takes an instant to do it, you know, and the more you practice it, the more that becomes the place you kind of go almost with every breath that you take. I didn't wait till the race to practice it, you know, and a lot of athletes don't pay any attention really to what's going on with their thoughts, with their mind, and, you know, it's even one thing to be quiet, let's say, when nothing's going on. And that's sort of a starting point to learn how to be quiet, you know. You can meditate, you can go watch a sunrise or sunset, you can sit in the woods, you can watch the ocean, you know. Immerse yourself in nature is the easiest way to quiet yourself. And then start to translate that sensation, that feeling, into finding that place when you're actually in motion, when you're in action. And that's the real test, to see if you can do it when you are, when you're in the tough moments, when things aren't going the way you hope, when it's not ideal, when you're not sitting on your couch. And that was why I loved the Ironman, because it really was a test not only of getting your body ready, but also of if you could develop that ability to find that quiet inside and utilize it in the race, then it's like you You tap into this energy or this life force that it just gets blocked if you're noisy or if you're paying attention to fear or if you're worried or you're having too much doubt or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, I can totally see that. Let me see, then kind of going more towards the training your body part. So you came from a background with swimming, with a lot of heavy workouts, and that's kind of how you initially approached triathlon training as well, with all your training at a very high heart rate. Can you explain how you used to train and how this changed once you started working with Dr. Phil Maffetone around 1984?

Yeah, you know, I started racing in 1982. I was 24, I'd been out of college for 2 years, and I had a swimming background. I swam from the time I was 10 all the way till I graduated university. And back in the '70s and '80s, you know, the coaches just had us do hard all the time. There was no aerobic easy stuff. It was just throw us in the pool, dream up the toughest workout you could. Get to work. Yeah, and go as hard as you could. And, you know, somebody's going to do well off it, better than others. But, you know, I was very disciplined and I actually did really lousy off of it because I just went too hard all the time. That was my framework of how I thought you had to train for everything. So when I started training for triathlon in '82, I did hard bikes all the time, I did hard runs all the time. Sometimes I did have good results in the races because you get a certain type of fitness out of that. But long-term, it was burning me out and I was starting to get some sort of little minor injury things that I'd have to take a few days off. After every race, almost every race I'd end up getting sick. And then when I finally met Phil and was introduced to that concept of developing that aerobic system, you know, the fat-burning system, which is low stress on the body as opposed to anaerobic high stress, all of a sudden I saw that my workouts were more steady and then my race results were more steady, and it took less time to recover after the races were done. And, you know, It just clicked.

And it probably was more pleasant as well then, right?

Yeah, definitely pleasant, you know, and in the beginning I thought, oh, I don't know if this is working because I'm not— when I would get back from a lot of the workouts that in the past I'd be completely trashed, I actually got back and felt good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, that was a different— that was a shift in paradigm, a shift in mindset to realize that you can come back from a workout and actually feel better than when you left.

Yeah, that's definitely, that was one of the biggest differences as well. Even though the first few months, I have to say, the whole patience thing was pretty tricky for me where some of my other buddies that I would run with, they would run way faster than I would and I would have to slow down because my heart alarm would be going off. And over time, as you become faster at the aerobic pace definitely got easier.

Yeah, you know, with the guys I trained with at the time, like on the bike, you know, every hill they'd pull away and then I'd catch them on the downhills and then they'd pull away on the next uphills and they'd go, "You're no fun to train with anymore." And, you know, it definitely took patience and especially running since it's weight-bearing, you know, your perceived effort at an aerobic heart rate, if you don't have a well-developed aerobic system, that pace can seem really, really slow. Perceived effort can seem really, really slow, but physiologically you're stimulating the development of that fat-burning aerobic engine. And the bigger that is, the better you're gonna do in an endurance event. And physiologically, any event that's over 4 minutes is technically endurance. So if your Ironman is gonna take you less than 4 minutes, then you don't need to worry about developing your aerobic system. But obviously you know, for a triathlete, a runner, a cyclist, swimmer, well not swimmers necessarily, but you know, that aerobic system is what really, that's what determines the size of your athletic engine. Then when you fine-tune it with the speed work, which you definitely have to do if you're going to race well, then you get these incredible results.

Yeah, so that's kind of my question. My next question, because I've read Phil Methadone's books, I've spoken to him, I'm now talking to you after also reading your materials. There's a lot of similarities, but I also noticed a few differences where Phil was saying kind of a 3 to 6 month base building period. Then he said eventually if you slow down in your progress, you add 1 to 2 times a week interval training of 15 to 30 minutes only for about 3 to 4 weeks, and then you go back to aerobic again. And then when I was looking at your advanced training programs over there, I saw kind of a 6 to 12 week building period, and then it was still like almost every week, like 2 times a week speed work. When an athlete is healthy and fit bit, is 2 times a week speed work, is that still good to help improve the body or do some people already struggle with 2 times a week speed work, just that it's too much for their body?

You know, it depends on your overall life stress. People who are younger can handle more speed work than people who are older, they can absorb it. People who are younger can handle more weeks in a row of speed work than somebody who's older. And the reverse is true when it comes to developing your aerobic system. So somebody who's 20, 22, 24, they might sort of plateau aerobically in, I don't know, maybe 1 or 2 months, but then they can manage speed work once or twice a week for 6, 8, 10, 12 weeks and still continue to absorb it. Somebody who's older, if they're training aerobically, they might see that they are continuing to get faster and faster for 3, 4, 5 months without any kind of speed work. And then they'll plateau and then they add in the speed work, but they might see that they can only absorb that for 3 or 4, maybe 5 weeks. So part of it's age dependent. And at Mark Allen Coaching, you know, I take that into consideration. So I don't give, you know, somebody who's 60 the same number of speed works, same number of weeks of speed that I would somebody who's, let's say, 20.

Yeah, no, that's really good, like that it's all individualized that way. Yeah. And then one thing talking about getting older over time, one thing that you mentioned that when you turned 33, you started noticing some of your strength in your muscles kind of becoming a little weaker. So you started going to the gym to preserve muscle strength and to maximize your agility and your power. And to be honest with you, like, I've been running 40 to 80 miles a week for about the past 2 years, and I haven't done much strength training at all outside of just some hill repeats. And I know that there's several other guys that I run with who don't do much strength training at all. Um, like, what are your recommendations to implement this into someone's training schedule? Like, how many days a week do you think works best, or are you more into the heavy weights with a few with only a few reps or more like doing a lot of reps with lighter weights. Like, I'm curious to hear your thought about strength training.

Yeah, I mean, like you said, I, I started implementing strength training about the time I was around 33 because I saw that it didn't matter how much I swam, biked, or ran, that I, I just didn't have the same snap and strength that I had in prior years. And so I knew that, okay, now it's time. I have to I have to add that back, I have to add that in if I'm going to continue to keep building my performances. The program that I suggest for people who are endurance athletes is, you know, 2 days a week doing a program that works basically all of the main muscle groups in the body. You can do that in 30 to 45 minutes, it doesn't have to be long. I think it's good to do slightly lower number of reps than a higher amount. If you do over 15 reps in a set, you're generally having to lighten up the weight to the point where, you know, if you do 20 or 30 reps in a set, it doesn't give you the same strength response that you get if you do a set of 8, 10, 12, 15 reps with a weight that challenges you by the end of that set. And if you go more than that, you lighten the weight up, and then it starts to become more of an endurance stimulation than a strength stimulation. And, you know, runners, cyclists, swimmers, we're already doing enough endurance work. We don't need that when we get in the gym. So I think anybody who's over about 35, and everybody, everybody could benefit from 2 days a week, but especially when you hit your mid-30s and going forward from there, without strength training, I just don't think there's any way you can truly maximize your performance without it.

Yeah, no, it's, it's definitely something that I'm going to be working on myself as well this year. Yeah. So, um, then one question about speed work, just because you mentioned that's a very important part as well. Like, what, what are some of your favorite speed work, um, out there for, for swimming, for like riding your bike, and for running? Like, for me personally, for, um, for running 400s and 800s I think are good, but I'm very curious to hear what your thoughts are.

Yeah, you know, when I raced, one of the main track workouts I did was 8x400, and with a half jog lap in between each 400, and people would say, well, that's not very much, and I'd go, yeah, I know, but if you do it right, it's a very intense workout, and it works that whole range of anaerobic There's a bunch of different ranges within anaerobic. It's not just all lumped into one thing. There's kind of like a lower, middle, upper part of your physiology that gets worked, and 400s will do that because you start out and the first 400 you might not be able to get your heart rate up so high, you know, but each one as you progress and you keep getting faster and push it a little bit more, you know, you can get, you can approach your max heart rate on that last one. So anyway, but there's no magic formula for what's like the most ideal for cycling or running or swimming. When somebody's doing anaerobic work, I recommend that they don't do much more than 15 to 30 minutes total of hard stuff. So the workout might take you an hour, hour and a half, but the amount that you're actually going anaerobic, going above your max aerobic heart rate, shouldn't really exceed much more than 15 to 30 minutes.

So it's the warm-up, it's cool down, the time in between.

Yeah, you know, and you can do, you can do longer stuff, uh, that's not quite as intense but still anaerobic, sort of more like a traditional tempo style workout that's moderately anaerobic. And that'll really help develop that sustainable speed that you need in a race. And then, then you need to also do true speed workout where at the end of the main set you really are starting to approach your, your max heart rate. Running, you have to get a little bit higher to get the same results than you do cycling, and then cycling a little bit higher than you do swimming, but that's kind of the general theme of how I like to structure it.

Yeah, that's very good info to know. Then, like most athletes, they have got a very busy personal and work life, and occasionally they have to miss a workout. I read that about 20 minutes of aerobic activity activity a day already helps keep all the fat-burning psychology ignited. For competitive athletes, do you feel that spreading out their workouts over 6 or 7 days is better than trying to fit everything in just 4 or 5 longer days? Or would you say 4 or 5 days, if that works best for you, that could work as well?

Well, that's a good question. You know, there's the key workout each week for for a triathlete or a runner is gonna be your long endurance workout. Whatever your, you know, your long run, your long bike, your long swim. That's what builds about 80% of what you're gonna need for the race. You get that in that one workout. And then the second workout that's really key or critical is gonna be that workout that's a little bit faster paced and eventually when you're moving into your speed set part of the phase of your training, that'll transition into being your speed session. And then there's a third workout that I think is very key, is going to be your, your 2 strength sessions each week. So anything you do above and beyond that, you know, if you do some medium length rides, medium length runs, some recovery stuff, anything extra is only going to be beneficial if It's not pushing your body over the edge as far as— if you are needing more recovery and you're still going out and working out and you're getting really tired and you have a job and you're getting up early too many days out of the week to try and squeeze these workouts in, they're not doing you any good. So you have to kind of look at the benefit of the training versus the stress that it's putting on your body or the stress it's putting on your family and your work and your schedule and figure that all in and ask yourself, is it really going to do anything for me or is it just going to exhaust me even more? And then the second thing I like to have people kind of keep in mind is that, you know, let's say you do 2 swims, 2 bikes, and 2 runs in a week. It's good to sort of spread them out so that you only have 2 days off of training between any 2 workouts in a sport. Let's say you swim on Monday, you take Tuesday, Wednesday off, it's good to also swim again then on Thursday if you can. Once you take 3 days off in a sport, your fitness starts to drop a little bit. So if you can fit in a workout, even if it is a 20, 30-minute short session on that third day, then it will help keep all of that sport-specific physiology active and going. So that's something else to kind of keep in mind when you structure your weeks.

Yeah, yeah, and those are 3 different types of fitness then?

Yeah.

Yeah, okay. So, right on. Then I just want to jump into the third subject, and that would really be what you're currently working on, because that's very exciting as well. You're currently coaching a variety of athletes from beginners to pros. Can you explain how you work together with your athletes? Through your coaching training program on markallencoaching.com?

Yeah, people, they go online, they answer questions about their current fitness, their past training history, their age, their main goal race that they have coming up in the next, whatever, 10 to 20 weeks, something like that. And then they put down the days that they want to do their key workouts and the number of workouts a week that they'd like to do. And then I have a backend software that generates training plans based around all that information. And it's really good because, you know, if you look at— people say, well, it's not that customized. And I go, it is very customized because there's no template, there's no thing, there's no schedule that they're getting shoved into that's the closest thing to what they've input. They actually get it based on what they want. What, you know, they want to do the long run on Friday, they're going to get that. They need Thursdays off, they're going to get that. You know, whatever it is. And most coaches end up cutting and pasting anyway. You know, there's certain things that you just kind of have to do to get fit. And, you know, so there's going to be similarities obviously between the different programs for people, but it's customized for them. And then they get unlimited email support And so anytime, you know, somebody has questions, they email me and then I get it, get right back to them with my thoughts on what's going on.

That's good. And they can move their days around and stuff as well?

Yeah, yeah, you can move things around. It's, it's, it's, uh, I retooled all the programming over the past year and it's finally working pretty well now. Then we have plans for a lot of features that are going to be going, they're going to be implemented in there for for the clients over the next 6 months or so to make it really something that nobody else has. So I'll just leave it at that.

Yeah, no, definitely have to keep an eye on that. That's exciting. Where can people find out more about you and your work and your videos and books?

Yeah, great question, thank you. The coaching is at markallencoaching.com. If you're interested in more about the Fit Soul Fit Body, you can go to fitsoulfitbody.com, and there's information about the book that Brandt and I wrote together and also upcoming workshops that we have. And you can also email us anytime if you have any questions about the content in that book. There's also a new book that I came out with just about a year ago called The Art of Competition.

Can you explain a little bit about that? Because I saw a combination of quotes and photography from nature.

Yeah, the backbone of the book are 90 quotes quotes that I wrote that bring a real thought-provoking look at competing and personal challenge and overcoming obstacles and achieving personal excellence. And each one of those photos is paired, or each one of those quotes is paired with a photo from nature. And I did that just to give people more of that sort of Soul Fit Body feel to the content within the book. And then there's There are 6 chapters that I wrote on things like change and fear and what do you do when you get stuck. And then the final chapter is called Art, and it describes my bookend Ironman victories, my first in 1989 and my last in 1995, and how I was able to change something that could be just an athletic event into something that I truly feel is kind of like art. And art is really when you go to that point of personal perfection, whatever level it is. So they can see that book on art-of-competition.com. And I have two versions. One's the standard edition. It's hardback. It's a coffee table book. And then there's a limited edition that's available. There's only 600 copies in print. They're all signed and numbered, and there's a bonus 48-page section in the back where I expand on 24 of the different quotes in the main body of the book. And that comes in a boxed sleeve. It's pretty cool. It's a collector's piece.

That's awesome. I'll put a link to that, to all those materials in the show notes as well. Great, thank you. Do you have any parting advice for athletes looking to improve their performance? Any last advice on your mind?

You know, the best advice I can give is be patient. Give yourself a timeline that's realistic. Everything Nowadays it's happening at the speed of Twitter, and you know, our genetics were set up thousands of years ago, and so our bodies change gradually and slowly over time. But when we create those slow changes, those are the significant changes, whether it's fitness or how we approach the world or our mindset. And so, you know, be patient, enjoy the process, hook into a community of people who are trying to focus on the same things you are. It's great to do this kind of work, you know, training and changing yourself with other people. And if you need help, reach out. You know, there's a lot of people out there who have gone through the same things that you're trying to attempt to do and who can guide you. And that's kind of what I like to do. I know that's what Brandt does in his work at shamanism.com. He has retreats all over the world. We actually just taught a Fit Soul Fit Body retreat at a Kripalu at the Apollo Institute in Massachusetts last weekend.

Oh, how did that go?

It was really great. You know, we ran with the people, Brandon did ceremonies, we discussed the 9 keys that are in our book, and a lot of people came that had no idea what to expect and went away with a smile on their face.

Good, good, good.

Perfect. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. This was very helpful, and I know that the readers from my website will really enjoy it. I hope you enjoy it as well. And yeah, I wish you all the best with the coaching programs and the training.

Great, thanks for having me on, I appreciate it.

Okay, thank you so much.

Hey, what's up guys? I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Mark Allen. This week you have a chance to win a copy of his latest book, Fit Body Fit Soul. All you have to do is to go to extramileist.com/contest and there's going to be a new giveaway every week there. So his book is really solid and I can highly recommend it. So check out that link extramilest.com/contest to win a copy. Many more episodes of the Extramilest Show are in the works with world-class athletes, coaches, and ruckus makers. So make sure to subscribe at extramilest.com/subscribe. Hope you guys have an epic rest of your day and look forward to connecting with you soon again. Have a good one.