From 5 Hour Marathon to Sub 3, Michael Ovens | The Extramilest Show #19

Get that diet right, get that sugar out of your diet. Patience is key, and just finding that time that works for you to train, that's one of the most important things. Keep the stress levels down, and I urge everyone just to set their alarm for an hour before they normally get up and just give it a go. It's really good.

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of The Extramile Show. My name is Floris Geerman. In today's podcast, I have a conversation with Michael Ovans. A 41-year-old runner from Leeds in the UK. He's not from Leeds, he's from Jersey in the UK, but I've had so many recent guests from Leeds that I'm getting confused here. Anyways, he's been able to improve his marathon time from 5:11 all the way down to 3:18, with his eyes set now on a sub-3-hour marathon goal. We all learn from our marathon mistakes, and I really like how honest Michael was in this conversation. He shares several of his painful mistakes and his ups and downs in training. During one of his marathon races, he bonked so hard that he thought he got hit by a bus with cramps all over the place. And so this eventually made him relook at his entire approach to training and racing, to actually go out there and train smarter and actually be more strategic about racing. Many members from the Extramileist Facebook community submitted questions for this podcast. So thank you very much for your input there. All show notes can be found at extramileist.com/19. This also includes links to all of the different resources mentioned as well as Michael Oven's own Strava account. This week I'm giving away a copy of The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing by Dr. Phil Methadone. It's one of my absolute favorite running books out there. To enter, all you have to do is let me know one takeaway from today's conversation in the comments on YouTube. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Michael Evans. Welcome to the show, Michael. I'm very excited that you're here.

Now, Floris, it's a pleasure following you for a long time now. It's really good.

Yeah, it was, it was really awesome to see because I came across your running journey when you recently shared your experience on the Extramilest website. For those listening, we have a page on there at extramilers.com/community, and a lot of different runners have been sharing their experience with low heart rate training over there. And when you shared your experience, I was blown away because I'm just going to quote it over here for a bit. You wrote, my first marathon time was 5 hours and 15 minutes, and now I'm down to a 3:18 personal best with my sights firmly set on a sub-3. Math and low heart rate training has revolutionized the amount I can run and I've seen such great improvements. I can now easily maintain a 7:30 minute mile pace, so that's a 4:40 minute per kilometer at math heart rate. That's incredible, man. Really well done on your progress right there.

Yeah, cheers, man. Thanks.

We posted basically this topic to the Extra Mileage Facebook group yesterday. With your running background and just want to see if anyone had any questions in particular. So there are a lot of good questions submitted. So this podcast we're gonna do a little bit different. It's still gonna be in a conversation form, but I wanna make sure that all of these questions are actually answered as well. So maybe we can dive in with the first question over here from Mariano Uberti, and he's asking, can you tell a little bit more about yourself, like your age, your background in running, and when did you start running marathons?

Yeah, of course. Yeah, I'm 41 now, just turned 41, and I've had absolutely no background in running at all. When I was at school, I tried to get out of athletics as much as I could. I played sports, played football, played some cricket, but athletic season was, ah, I pulled my groin, I've twisted my ankle, so I always tried to sit out of that. I remember the last year of school, I was made to run a 5K. I think I came last amongst the boys. I was very overweight and just continued that way, you know, my 20s, drinking, smoking, just living a really bad life, eating the worst food possible, doing no exercise. And then I guess when I turned 30 and my boy was born, so we had our first kid, I thought, do I want to be that dad that's out of breath trying to play with his kid? And I want to I don't want to live long enough to see him have kids. My lifestyle was poor, so what should we do? I spoke to my partner, she's like, yeah, well, why don't we do some running? And next thing's like, why don't we sign up for a marathon? It's a stupid leap to do, but we did. And we got just the easiest training plan you could find, a couple of short runs and a longish run on the weekend. No idea of pace, just running as hard as you can. Every run was horrible. Yeah, and the first marathon, it was a 5-hour 15, and I was just in no shape for it at all. Nutrition was nowhere. I was probably 2 stone overweight. I felt like my knees were gonna fall off about halfway through. Yeah, my hips were gone. Just literally crawled over the line and vowed never to run a marathon again, really. So that was the start of my running career, yeah.

Totally recognize that feeling. For me, it was also the moment I started getting a kid, I got into running, similar thing like you, also had my first marathon and swore I would never do it again. Here we are.

Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's quite addictive after a while.

Yeah, so what year was that that you ran your first marathon?

That was in 2010. Okay. Just turned 31, 32, yeah.

And how did it go from that marathon going to the next one?

Well, I didn't run another marathon for 5 or 6 years. I vowed never to run a marathon. This distance is too far. I'm too unfit. It's too bad for your legs. But I did have the running bug. I did enjoy it. It does give you that good feeling, the endorphins. So I thought, well, I'll stick to half marathons, build up slowly. So I think I took my first half marathon was a 2-hour 20. Again, very overweight, very poor nutrition, no training plan really. Every run was just run as fast as you can every time. Getting injured constantly, yeah. But I still managed to somehow bring my half marathon time down over the years to about a 1:50, a 1:48, which I was quite happy with. But yeah, every run was just the maximum intensity. Every run was trying to beat your 5K, beat your 10K. There was no plan at all. There was lots of injuries, lots of setbacks, and wondering why I wasn't losing any weight at all doing it. 'cause my nutrition was so poor. You can't outrun poor nutrition. So I was just getting setbacks and stopping for a few months here and there, but yeah.

[Speaker] And then from there on, what was your next marathon time that you ran from there?

[Speaker] Well, what I did was a colleague I worked with, he's like, why don't you try doing a triathlon? We live in Jersey, it's a lovely island, so there's quite a lot of triathletes over here, there's a lot of coast to swim around. And it's a good way of mixing it up. And it's the first time I got introduced to Joe Friel, have you heard of Joe Friel? Yeah, so I got his training, the Training Bible, it's a triathlete training Bible, but it could be just a running training Bible. First time I ever experienced just the simple things about, heart rate zones and running at low intensity and planning your week, planning, you know, stepping up the training and having rest weeks and just all the sort of basics for a good training plan. So that's what really got me into it. And I guess it was the start of my low heart rate training because swimming is low heart rate and cycling is low heart rate. You can't, it's quite hard to get your heart rate up on a bike. And then a lot of the runs were advised to to run at a lower intensity. So start off with your perceived exertion, but then it was very much get a heart rate monitor, get a watch, measure your, do a lactate test, get your lactate threshold, get your heart rate zones, and try and run at a low zone, zone 2, for most of your runs.

[Speaker] So what was that heart rate, at what heart rate were you training most of your runs at?

At that point? Before, when I, my lactate threshold is 165, so my zone 2 is around my max zone of 135 to 145 beats per minute. So before I had this knowledge, I was doing all my training in zone 3, zone 4, 10, 20 beats higher. So then after discovering this, this training method, it was always 80, 90% of my runs were in zone 2, feeling really good, injuries were starting to go away, improvements in pace, and I did the triathlon that day, the Olympic distance triathlon, it sounds fancy, but it's not that fast, is it? It's only a 1,500-meter swim and a 40K cycle and then a 10K run, but I did alright, I did 2 hours 30 in that, and I felt good, So from there I thought, well, I can tackle the marathon again now, you know, I've got this under my belt, let's do this. So I signed up for the same marathon, I did a 5-hour one in the Jersey Marathon. Again, no real nutrition, I was starting to understand a bit more about heart rate zones, but still nutrition was poor, the fueling was poor, and without realizing it, I went off so very fast. Looking back now, I got, I got to my lactate threshold or to 20 beats above my max, 25 beats of my max heart rate within the first 3 or 4 miles. So by, by mile 16, I was still feeling good. I was chatting to people. Yeah, I'm going to try to do a 3:15 or 3:20. I'm doing good. And I went to put my foot down and, uh, there's absolutely nothing left at all. And my legs seized up, and within a couple of miles I was shuffling, and a couple more miles I was walking, I felt like I'd been hit by a bus. I was cramping in places I didn't really realize you could get cramp in, like the groin, and it was an awful experience, the worst experience ever, and worse than the 5-hour marathon, just crawling to the finish. I think I got over the line in 3:38 in the end, which is good, but It was just a horrible, horrible experience.

And what year was that?

That was in 2000 and that was 2017, I think.

All right.

So then literally the Monday after, I was Googling, you know, what the hell happened? What's the bonk? How can you stop this? And that's when I first found your PDF about the low heart rate training and the maffetone training. Also the nutritional side of things as well, cutting out the sugar, trying less refined carbs, all these sort of things are just such a, such a massive boost to your training.

Good. Yeah, then it was looking at the whole picture and not just the running element, but all these other elements as well.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. And then, then from there on, how did it progress in your training? How did you feel on your next training runs and anything else that changed there?

Yeah, so I discovered the Maff method. My Maff heart rate is 180 minus 40, I guess, so call it 140, 130 to 140. You see a lot of people that get very vain about their heart rate. They wanna add 10 beats, they wanna add 15 beats to it. They feel like, you know, I should be able to do this and this, so immediately I wanted to add the 5 because I've been training for a while. But I think it's quite important for people to do a lactate test as well around the local track and just find out what their actual lactate threshold is and work out their own heart rate zones. And then so you know you want to be staying in your aerobic zone as much as possible.

How did you do that test? Can you describe that just for people listening?

Yeah, it's not a pretty test. You need to go to your nearest track or just a field, somewhere quiet, and you need to run at maximum exertion for 30 minutes. But exert maximum exertion for 30 minutes. Don't go off above 5K pace and then end up finishing worse than 10K pace, because you won't get the appropriate data. Turn auto lap off on your watch, turn auto mile off, and just warm up as much as you can, as much as you want, and then start your watch and just go hell for leather for 30 minutes solid, and then after 10 minutes, hit lap, and then your average heart rate for those last 20 minutes, that will be your, approximately, your lactate threshold. And then you can find tools online to calculate the rest of your zones. So yeah, my zone 2 aerobic happens to be exactly the same as my MAF zone of 135 to 145. So I don't know if that's the way it's supposed to be or—

I mean, it's nice when things line up. Even for me, when I went to a medical lab, things lined up as well. That being said, that's obviously not always the case. It is a formula that seems to work for quite a few people. However, there's exceptions as well. And this is where I think going to a medical lab sometimes too will actually give you a very specific, detailed, deeper look at this as well. I've seen for certain, for some people, especially at 60 years old or older, that sometimes the difference is gonna be larger. And so there's some adjustments over there as well.

Do they take you to your maximum heart rate when you do that test in the lab? Did you get up there or was it just for—

Yeah, yep.

Very nice.

It was painful, I don't get that too often.

Yeah.

But so then you started training mostly in that specific heart rate zone.— that came out of that.

Yeah, I just did everything at MAF from then onwards and I could run much, much further per week. My injuries all but went away. Yeah, it's really revolutionary and the way it's so counterintuitive, the way that you actually speed up. My pace has increased I mean, my first math test was quite good, 'cause I had all that low heart rate and triathlon training. It was quite good, it was a 7:40 or 7:45 math first mile for my math test, but then it's gone down without, just doing math, it's gone down to 7:30, 7:15, 7, 6:45. So yeah, it's really good, yeah.

Brilliant. [Speaker] Nice, that's really good. Have you noticed certain periods where you had no progress at all? And if you did, did you do anything to switch things up?

I kind of interrupted my own progress sometime by having a holiday and putting on a few pounds and getting unfit, so that will affect your math obviously. And diet is a massive thing as well. You know, I really affected my math by going keto. Yeah, I haven't had a training block where I've not affected it myself by accident to tell you if it's gonna plateau, but at the moment it doesn't seem to be, it seems to be steadily going down, which is great.

Good, tell me more about the keto.

Yeah, with Joe Friel again, he's a big fan of paleo, paleo diet, the caveman diet, which I started on that, It's a really good diet. It's just vegetables, fruit, everything that a caveman would eat. So no refined carbs, no bread, no pasta, no potatoes because they weren't discovered yet. So you are struggling to get your carbs in. You eat a lot of vegetables, a lot of green veg and broccoli and that sort of thing, a lot of fruit, and just lots of meat and fish. So that was a really good diet. I was really enjoying that. That was working well with the math. But then you sort of, you look online and you're Googling it and you're seeing how, well, you know, you want to increase your fat burning potential, so maybe you need to go keto so that you are just, you're using fat as an energy source, not carbohydrates, which seems to be the next step to take it. So I went down that route and initially, you know, it was, It was amazing, I lost a lot of weight. I got right down to my, I always struggle with my weight, and I got right down to below my weight, my race weight, looking very athletic.

What is that race weight, and what is your height, and what is your ideal race weight?

Yeah, I'm 6'3", and at the moment I'm about 15 stone, so, and according to BMI, which apparently is not a good thing to look at, I'm overweight still.

What's 15 stone in pounds?

15 stone, okay. About 205 pounds, 210 pounds. All right, good. Yeah, so my race weight's about 200 pounds. I'm probably 5 or 6 pounds over race weight at the moment. But when I went onto keto, I immediately went down to 195 pounds, 'cause you lose, 'cause you're not storing the carbs, you lose all the water. Yeah, and I felt quite good initially, but it does tank your, your math pace, your heart rate's high all the time, your resting heart rate 10 beats higher, math heart rate, it's hard to go at a decent pace. My math pace went from 7:15 to 8:15. You read online, you go on forums, oh, you have to wait to adapt, and once you adapt, it'll all get better again. And it did, it started to improve, not to the levels before, before when I was on more of a carb-based diet, but it did improve. But at no point did I feel like I was gonna go and smash this run. At no point did I feel I had that ability. And also I started to get quite bad symptoms, quite bad stomach symptoms, quite bad like just anxiety, panic attacks, really bad digestive problems. And my training was taking a dive. So I was like, what am I doing here? I'm at a good weight, but, everything else is falling apart. So I spoke to a sports nutritionist over here and he said, you know, it might work for 1% of the people that are doing 100-mile races that want to race very slowly and want to tap that fat burning, and that it could work for them. But if you look at all the professional marathon runners, all the half marathon runners, everyone's on carbohydrate. No one's a keto marathon runner, really. There might be 1%, but Yeah, so I got off that as fast as I could, and it took me a good few months to really come off it properly. The body takes a while to adjust. So yeah, I think the key is just, you need to respect your carbs. By all means, go low carb, but you need to have enough carbs to function. You can't, otherwise you, and also one of the doctors was saying there's a little grey area you could hit where you're not, you're having too much carbs to get in keto but not enough carbs to function, so you're in this horrible middle ground of nothingness, which I think I might have been hitting quite a bit.

How long were you experimenting with keto?

Oh, I really tried quite hard with it, yeah, it was probably 5 or 6 months in total. And I had a race coming up, the Mont-Saint-Michel Marathon, I thought it would be a good idea to go keto a couple of months before that, which obviously is not a great idea to change your nutrition completely before a race. In the end, I couldn't go anywhere near, well, I still managed to break 3:30, which was a PB at the time, and it was a steady race, it was good, I finished with energy, but I was trying to run at heart rate, and my heart rate was so high that I couldn't get, anywhere near the pace I wanted to.

Yeah, so I think it's a very fascinating topic because I do hear quite a few people talk about you have to be on keto for low heart rate to work, or there's all these different myths out there. I personally experimented with keto myself as well for about 3 times, and the first time when I did it for 30 days I figured, like I saw my MEF test go backwards significantly, and I'd read that that would be the case. And I experimented with it for 30 days and then it really didn't feel good. I saw my resting heart rate as well go up by at least 10 beats per minute, and it just didn't feel right. And so I took a break from it for a bit and then tried it again a few months later. And I even went as long as like 2 months and I still did not feel that it was doing me any good. I felt like something was missing where I feel like I'd cut back my carb amount too much. And I think this is where it's that fine line where finding what works well for you. Because even once you start training higher volume weeks, like whether it's 4 hours a week, 6 hours, 8 hours or more, at some point your body needs something. And even when I, when I talk to other people and I read what even guys like Zac Bitter are doing, although they might be in keto at times, they still have a certain amount of carbs in their diet to make sure that they're able to function properly. And when you pick up your training volume, increasing that carb amount with healthy carbs, is definitely beneficial there. So yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's, that's, that's one of those. I think the whole nutrition side is such a fascinating topic because there's just many different approaches there where the one person would say eating red meat is good for you and the other person would say it's absolutely the opposite and you shouldn't be eating any, any meat. And that's what it is. This is why I think experimenting with Whatever works best for you and what your body responds to best is beneficial. Just a few thoughts there. Talk a little bit more about that last marathon that you did. And so you ran the Amsterdam Marathon. How was that experience like?

Oh yeah, that was amazing. All my training for that was Was it just at Bath Heart Rate? I got a plan offline, I don't know if you've heard of Hal Higdon, he does some training plans online, you can just tailor them how you want. So I just took his structure and just did it at Bath. So you saw a medium run, longish run, medium run, and then a couple of longish runs. There he is, yeah.

One of his books.

Yeah, so I just followed one of his plans. Plan is just how it builds up and did everything at math. But life gets in the way. I got married the month before the marathon and we got married on a cruise ship. It was all-inclusive and there is a running track around the ship. I took my shoes and a few shorts, but I only managed to go around once. So that week was almost a write-off. All-inclusive, I probably put on a a good few pounds of weight as well. So that got in the way and then we traveled, 'cause we live in Jersey, it's a small island, it's part of the Channel Islands, it's near France but we're part of the UK, but every journey for us to get anywhere has to start with a flight from Jersey to the UK before we can go anywhere else, really. So we were traveling most of the day beforehand on our feet and you obviously know Schiphol Airport, it's a big old airport, I realized we were walking for half an hour just to get through the arrivals. So, uh, yeah, it wasn't ideal preparation. In the morning as well, the roads were closed. We had to walk a good distance to get to Marathon. So it's feeling pretty tired in my legs, but I just, um, I wanted to go off and just run, as you said from your PDF, just try and run 10 beats above your math for the first 10-12 miles, and then slowly let it go 10 beats above that for another 6 miles, and then you've got enough in your tank, you've got to go up, which would be my lactate threshold there, so I'm purely burning sugar, but you've got enough in your tank there to do the last hour at that heart rate. So things were working well, but by mile 20, I could really feel that tiredness in my legs, and I actually felt like I'd broken a bone in my foot. I hadn't, but it was very painful, and it was making me run strangely, and it was affecting my shin. Yeah, I managed to go over the line in a 3:18, which is a PB. I was happy with that, but I was definitely sub-3:10 pace for a long time. But also another thing that I didn't do correctly was I didn't sign up for the right pen. You know, when you sign up for MAF and you say what predicted time you want to do, and I think when I signed up 6, 8 months ago, I was 3:30 would be about right. I'll go in that pen. I don't want to go too fast, whereas you end up starting so slowly and you've got so many people there, you should almost just, just go in the 3-hour pen, especially if you want to run a 3-hour marathon, go in the 2:45 pen and just get out of the crowd. So the first mile or two was so slow, so tricky to navigate so many people that I was already way off the pace. So yeah, it's something to consider.

Yeah. What were— what are some of the things you're like in that last training block that you have done. Let's talk about the training that you, like, how it was structured. How much low heart rate runs did you do? How much higher heart rate workouts did you do? And what did they look like?

For the Amsterdam Marathon, I just did all math training. Apart from the odd long run, I might put in some race pace in the middle, just to get that feeling in my legs. It was all math. And then I was going to do a marathon in March this year and I thought I'd change it up, I thought I'd try a different plan. And you can get, I use a Garmin watch and you can get some good Garmin plans for free on the webpage. So I picked one of them up, a heart rate training plan, but it was very, very high speed. There was 2 interval sessions a week in that around the track and there was, a tempo run. Your long runs would be you run 6 miles or 60 minutes at zone 2, and then you run your next 60 minutes at zone 4. So you're really, really pushing it. And I just found over— I just felt like I was overtraining constantly. My mood was, was poor. Yeah, really grumpy with the kids and the wife and struggling, struggling to sleep and just feeling Feeling pretty naff, so while it's a nice change to do a bit of interval work now and again, do some speed work, I say it's so easy just to overtrain and to just pick up some injuries.

Mm-hmm, yeah. How many hours a week would you be running, or what mileage would you be aiming at?

I'm just trying to ramp it up a little bit now after watching your podcast with Jason and Joss, just saying how you really need to be running more than 40, 50 miles a week. If you want to go sub-3, you'd be looking at trying to do 60 or 70 miles a week. So I'm just trying to get there slowly now. I'm trying to back off my math pace, just take those 5 beats back off it, start running at 1:35, try and stay away from 1:40, 1:45, and that way I can It might be slower at the start, but I can increase my mileage and not risk any injury. So yeah, I've always gone at 40 miles was normally my max because I might be running a bit too fast, but I'm already up to like 40, 45 miles a week now, and I'm building 10% a week. And I find I can run every day now if I stick to the lower end of the math. You don't need those rest days. The recovery time is so much better now as well.

Yeah, that was one significant difference for me as well. Once I started upping my overall training volume, the amount of hours, but actually going even further below MAF, so not even at MAF, but sometimes 10 or 15 beats below it, it was much easier to feel good again the next day. And your, yeah, your recovery is so much faster. And it's that fine balance. I think with listening to your energy levels, with even if you start noticing some of these things, if you pick up your training volume too quickly, you might notice that you get way grumpy towards your kids or to other situations. So it's always that fine balance with what volume is right there for sure.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah. So what for your next challenge or your next goal you have mentioned is eventually to get under sub-3, right?

Yeah, that's it. I've signed up again for the Jersey Marathon. It's in October, so I've got a good few months before then. I'm also working with Josh Sanbrook now because I was really inspired by his podcast with you. It was really good. So yeah, I just find that whole time-to-prediction thing a really useful tool. You don't need to run fast, you could run 10-minute miles, but you have to do 100 miles a week. But that's, that's enough training load for you there. So yeah, yeah, so I'm just building up slowly now. So looking to get up to 60 miles quite soon per week.

That'll be fascinating to see what your next race is going to be like, because obviously you've run 6 marathons now, you're gonna run the next one, you have some more marathon experience. Now just increasing that training volume, but actually lowering the pace, that combination is gonna be really, really good right there.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing how just 6 months of pure math, seeing how good that's gonna be.

Yeah, absolutely. When you're training, and even when you're racing, what, here was one question that I want to make sure that I ask over here, it's from Johan Sandgren, and he is— actually, I'm butchering his name— from Johan Sandgren, and he asked, what watch settings do you have on an average run and on race day?

Yeah, I mean, just, just the, just the basics. Just the heart rate really is, is the key one, but I do like to see distance and, and pace as well. But I'm trying to get away from pace. It's still It's in the back of my mind from how I used to run before, is you want to be running that faster pace, you want to do this segment at the faster pace, which you need to get away from. So I enjoyed the way Josh said he's just got his heart rate now, just one screen heart rate, that's all you need. And I think I'm going to be getting to that stage at some point. But yeah, for now it's heart rate, distance, and pace.

Yeah, that's a good one. The other one I sometimes have is heart rate and time, just so I know if I'm going to be running for an hour that I'll turn around after 30 minutes look back that way. So right on. Do you incorporate any strength training in your, in your running program?

I do, yeah. I like to do, I like to do just a full body session in the gym once, once or twice a week, because especially now I'm over 40, you tend to lose that muscle mass quite easily. So although people say you don't want to be working your upper body because you're just adding weights and you're adding muscle and you have to carry that around while you're running. But yeah, I think being older and you need that muscle mass, just, it helps you burn more calories, it helps you have a better metabolism. So yeah, just, just a, just a quite an easy full body, incorporating the core, some squats, bench press, some shoulder press, just I have found it a bit harder now that I'm trying to up my, up my mileage. I find it quite, quite a bit harder to do much weights on the legs. It's almost become more of a stretching exercise now, just getting into squats with very low, low weights, get some lunges, some step-ups onto boxes and that.

Yeah, yeah.

But I know, and core, a lot of core work, a lot of planks I find are very good. You need to need that strong core.

So yeah. How many times a week would you do that?

I like to do it twice a week, 'cause if you can get your main runs done before work, then it frees up your lunchtimes or after work, you can fit in a couple of strength sessions a week. Also, I like to swim as well. It's obviously a leftover from all the triathlon training I did, but I find swimming to be such a great aid for running, you take the load off your legs, it loosens the body, it's low heart rate. Yeah, I find that to be really beneficial. I try and swim at least once or twice a week.

Yeah, good. Yeah, you're definitely getting quite a few workouts in then.

Yeah, yeah, it's good. Although I only tried my first double run last week and it wasn't as much fun as I thought it would be. I ran to work and it was okay, and then the run home I thought, oh yeah, I'll smash this, and after 4 miles I was like, what am I doing? Why have I taken the long way home?

It's trial and error, right? That's why we have, we try all this stuff in training runs and it just makes us stronger for race day, so that's good. Here's one question from Mark Copeland that I think it's a really good one. So you've improved so far from a 5:15 marathon to a 3:18. What do you think were the main factors that caused this improvement?

Yeah, it's gotta be, it's gotta be the low-intensity training. As soon as I discovered that I was running all my races, all my runs at ridiculous heart rate and feeling exhausted after every run, and I wasn't improving at all. So as soon as I found that, that low heart rate training coupled with cutting out all sugar. I say those are the two key things. Just cut sugar out of your diet completely. I used to have sugar in my tea and coffee and sweet tooth, chocolate and lots of biscuits. And it's quite hard to cut it out initially, but once you've got rid of it for a week or two, you really don't miss it. So I think remove all sugar, train at a low heart rate. Those are the two key things I think that's seen the improvements.

Yeah. What were some of the biggest obstacles on your journey so far, and what have you done to overcome this?

Yeah, well, having a family and busy work and busy life, the biggest obstacle is just finding that time to train. And I never thought I could get up in the morning and run, so my training was always squeezing in at lunchtime, which is not ideal, sweating. I sweat quite a lot. After work and then you've got the kids throwing it in your face, come back sweating, here, put them to bed. So yeah, it was around the time when I discovered low heart rate training, I discovered that, you know, what if I get up at 5 AM, 5:30 AM and just get out and do something then? And yeah, that is another thing that's revolutionized my training, just to find that time where you can just put stress out of it, you've got that hour to yourself, hour and a half to yourself to get up, just make yourself get up, have a cup of coffee if you want, just put your shorts on and then just get out there. And then you've got that smug factor, you've done your training for the day, you're finished, you can eat breakfast and you've got the rest of the day ahead of you. So yeah, I urge everyone to really give a really early morning training a try.

Yeah, yeah, no, 100%, I fully agree. It's been a game changer for me as well, waking up at 5 o'clock. I've been doing it for a while now and you just get that time, that hour and a half before the kids are awake that, yeah, you basically just added that to the day because at the end of the day you just don't have the energy levels anymore and you've already done a lot of things and yeah, you have to get creative sometimes with where you can fit your runs in, but that's a good time for sure.

Yeah, yeah, you want to be relieving stress and not increasing stress. Just finding that time for yourself where you can get it in.

Yeah, so walk me through one of your typical looking training weeks then. How would that look from a Monday through Sunday? Would you always do all of your runs early in the morning or would you do longer ones sometimes at different times?

Yeah, so everything will be early morning. Monday, previously I'd have Monday as my swimming day, just a good start to the week. Just get in the pool at lunchtime, don't do anything in the morning. Get a good half an hour in the pool, and then it'd be early morning Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then Saturday. Now that the kids are getting a bit older, you can fit a run in if you've got to take them to soccer or an event. You could fit in a run then. So I've been fitting in a nice run on a Saturday afternoon, and then yes, still the longer run on a Sunday morning.

Yeah. And then what days were the strength days?

Tuesday and Friday normally, or Tuesday and Thursday. If you mix up the, um, if you mix up the exercises you do, you can do Tuesday and Thursday. One day rest is enough. Just don't do the same exercises you do on the Tuesday on the Thursday.

Yeah, yep, yep. Here's one, uh, one question about race day from Saeed Khan. He's saying, when you run the majority of your miles at MAF, how do you decide what race pace to start with and aim for the marathon? So, you've briefly touched on this already, but I think it would still be good to jump into.

Yeah, for sure, yeah. And it was just basically what I picked up from your PDF. It's just, you really wanna go roughly 10 beats above your MAF, probably. To start with. And that way you can gauge what sort of time you're gonna go for just by your math test. If you're doing a 9-minute math test, 9-minute per mile math test, then you know roughly what sort of area you're gonna be running in. So, you know, 10 beats above your math, you'd probably maybe do an 8-minute per mile. So you look to start at 8-minute per mile and take it from there., but work it out from there. So yeah, and just try not to, try not to hit that lactate heart rate until you get nearer the end, because that's what leads to horrible bonking if you dive into that, your glycogen stores too early, so yeah.

Yeah, and I know that there's a few different approaches. I've heard certain people say, take 15 seconds off your MEF test time and that should be your go at goal pace, or some others are saying go 20 or 25 beats over, over your MEF heart rate. For me personally, this is what worked really well, but once again, this comes with quite a bit of experimenting as well. I've done several long runs where I've actually just gone out and kind of seen how my heart rate builds up, or I've done the runs where I go the first 15 miles at MEF and the last 5 miles I will go 30 seconds faster than marathon pace, just to experiment what your heart is doing as you go through these exercises. So it might not be a one-size-fits-all for this one, but this is what I think worked well for me, and obviously it seemed to have worked well for you as well.

Yeah, definitely. And you get that cardiac drift with every run you do. It's impossible to run the same pace at the same heart rate. So yeah, for sure. Definitely do some training runs, maybe a slightly higher heart rate, see how that feels, see how far you can maintain.

Yeah, did you do any like marathon pace runs throughout your training cycle?

I popped a few in just in between a long run, so maybe do 4 or 5 miles at math and then do 4 miles at marathon pace or slightly under marathon pace, see how that feels, and then pop back to to math to finish off. I think that can be a good, a good way of giving yourself confidence. Yeah, and good training.

Yeah, no, definitely. Um, and then let's talk about nutrition a little bit more. You mentioned earlier you eat loads of vegetables. What, what is like a typical meal like for you? Like what's in your fridge or freezer?

Yeah, um, I think you just need to have a good A good mix of all the macros, you know, you need to have— I try and use MyFitnessPal, it's quite a good tool to use just to see what macros you're doing. And I try and stick to around 40% carbs and then split the rest between the fat and the protein. So a lot of vegetables, a lot of potatoes, I'm back into potatoes, a lot of rice, I'm enjoying the brown rice a lot. And then just get your protein, a good bit of fish, a nice bit of chicken, or some, some decent protein source. I eat a lot of eggs, a good, good mix of fat and protein. Nuts as well, but they're so calorific, you only need a small amount just to really hammer the calories. So yeah, I'm trying to, trying to cut back on the nuts a little bit to try and get down to race weight a bit more.

So yeah. Yeah, right on. How about alcohol? Do you drink any beer, any coffee, anything there?

Yeah, beer's my one weakness. I need to speak to someone about beer and training and is it good for you or not. Surely it's carb loading, it must be quite good for you. But I don't think so.

It's funny, I had a 2:14 marathoner from Holland, I spoke to him a while back. And even when he was running 2:14 marathons, he was definitely still drinking beer.

So it's, uh, it's one of those. Yeah, I do enjoy after you've had a hard week and, you know, the kids and work and you're training loads. So Friday, Friday evening, nice to have a couple of beers. Just try not to go too hard, otherwise the weekend's, uh, the weekend training's ruined.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When you have races coming up, do you look at all at an ideal race weight that you wanna be at? Or is this just whatever naturally happens from following nutrition that works for you?

No, I've always struggled with my weight. I've got one of those metabolisms where you just have to look at a pie and you put weight on. So I've always struggled. So yeah, when I first started running, 2 stones, so what, 24 pounds overweight, or is it 26 pounds? And so yeah, I think my race weight now, I'm probably 6 or 7 pounds above it, so I'm gonna look to try and get to race weight really slowly, and just by going very small calorie deficit of maybe 100, 150 calories a day. So it doesn't affect your training, and it just brings you down half a pound a week. Kind of thing. And yeah, because you imagine 5 or 6 pounds extra carrying weight running around for a marathon, that's considerable. So yeah, I haven't run a marathon yet at race weight, so let's see how that goes in the next 4 or 5 months.

Yeah, I think that approach is good though. If you're able to lose slowly weight over time that way, it seems that you're probably able to maintain it a bit better as well then. And the increase in training volume once you're gonna go now from let's say a 40-mile to a 60-mile, that could absolutely help with that as well.

Yeah, definitely, yeah, yeah. So yeah, just trying to, it's obviously a fine line. You don't wanna be on a diet while you're training as much as 6 hours a week. You can really injure yourself. It's bad for your bones and that, you know. So just a very tiny, Very tiny calorie deficit, I think, is the way forward.

Yeah, yeah. How much sleep do you get per night?

Yeah, I try and get 7 to 8 hours a night regularly. So sometimes, you know, the missus can get a bit annoyed with me wanting to go to bed at 9, half 9, I'm tired now, knowing well I've got a long run at 5 AM. So, yeah, I probably feel a bit fresher for, sleeping a little bit less because I'm getting that good quality sleep because I'm training at a lower heart rate. I'm not as stressed. I'm not, you know, my recovery is better. So yeah, I feel pretty good for 7, 7.5 hours, 8 hours, and I'm golden. So that's amazing. Yeah, anything over 7 is perfect.

How do you, do you have any routines throughout the day to keep your stress levels low? Anything in particular? Do you do any yoga, any meditation, anything else?

No, I was doing a bit of yoga now and again, but, and I do enjoy it, but I'm just finding the time, you know, on top of everything else to fit that yoga in as well. So no, I find that, I find that snacking is good, having a healthy snack like an apple or a boiled egg here and there just to keep keep your energy levels up, that's a good way of lowering stress.

Yeah, it's so fascinating because I'm even now starting to think about, I'm gonna be racing again in December, and just like you, I have 2 kids, also busy with a full-time job, so how do you fit in all of these different things? Because yeah, you can do so many additional things there, from like, ah, sitting in the sauna is good, like getting 8 hours of sleep is good, doing strength training, doing yoga, meditation, all of these different things, yet you still wanna put your hours into running as well. And so it's always this fine line wherever you can find that balance.

That's right, yeah. I am worried that I'm gonna have to lose maybe one of the strength trainings or one of the swims for at least at the start just to get that mileage up, just to pop in a second run at lunchtime.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So your next race is, which one is it?

It's the Jersey Marathon over here. It's October 9th, I think, early October.

Excellent. So you've got a very exciting training cycle ahead of you right now. Yeah, definitely, yeah. That's good. Well, we have a lot of listeners in the audience and they're very inspired by your journey. And they also have their own different running goals. Do you have any closing thoughts, any tips, recommendations for other people looking to improve in their running?

Yeah, I mean, I think we've covered all the points already, but it's just get that diet right. Get that sugar out of your diet. It doesn't matter if you want to eat all the carbs in the world or try less carbs, but just cut out the sugar, cut out the refined carbs. Once you get the nutrition on point, just trust in the math process. Don't get, don't feel like you have to add 5 or 10 beats. Just the lower the heart rate, the better, and patience is key. And just finding that time that works for you to train, that's one of the most important things. Keep the stress levels down. And I urge everyone just to set their alarm for an hour before they normally get up and just give it a go.

It's really good. Yeah, keeping that stress levels low is such an important component as well. Absolutely, besides that running and nutrition, that stress can make a massive difference on heart rate right there as well. Yeah, definitely, yeah. Good. Where can people find you online?

Where can they follow you? Yeah, so I'm on Strava. It's Michael Evans on Strava. I'd say that's been another such a key part of the training is just seeing your training progress and being able to see your progression and just have all your data stored for you. It's such a big thing.

Yes, it's really nice that you're able to go back in training so far and sometimes even before a race when you get nervous, you just look back through all of the effort that you've put in there over the last 4 months and then you you realize how much work you've actually put into it. Yeah, that's a good one there. So awesome. I'll make sure to include a link to your Strava in the show notes. And, um, yeah, very, very excited that you were able to share all of your experiences over here. Thank you so much, and I hope we can continue the conversation again soon.

No, brilliant. Thank you, Claus.

It's been, it's been a pleasure. Absolutely. All right, we'll talk very soon again.

Cheers, mate.

Thanks.

Cheers. Later.

Bye. Thank you for listening. This week I'm giving away a copy of Dr. Phil Maffetone's Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing. All you have to do is let me know one of your key takeaways from today's conversation in the comments on YouTube. All show notes can be found at extramilest.com/19. On the next episode of The Extramilest Show, I have two very exciting guests. Kelvin and Josh Sambrook. Josh has actually been on the podcast several weeks ago and the response was very positive. Kelvin is his dad and Josh is actually coaching his dad. His dad ran his first marathon at age 50 in 2013 and he ended in a time of 5 hours. Under the guidance of Josh and with improved training and racing strategy, he's been able to shave down that time all the way to a 3:14 so far, and he's still looking to improve further. So we're going to have a deep dive into his training and racing approach. So make sure to subscribe so you're the first to know when new episodes drop. Have fun out there on your runs.