How To Crush Your Goals: Must-Know Running Tips | Jimmy Dean Freeman

Turn those feet over, everything you got left. You're not saving anything else.

Come on, baby!

That is incredible to watch him fight over here.

Let's go!

Now's the time to battle, Mike. The wall isn't there to stop you from your dream. The wall is there to see how bad you want it. You have to be able to roll with the punches. You have to be able to follow your dream. It's there to keep the other people out. And if it were easy, everyone would do it. It wouldn't be as meaningful. So the wall is there to test how much you want it. And if you're able to overcome the wall, that's what makes a marathon finish, a 100-mile finish, a PR. That's what makes it satisfying is that you had to grind through something really difficult. You had, you had to take your fear and your doubt and stare it right in the face and continue doing it.

Regardless, that was Kofuzi, Coach Jimmy Dean, and I at the Los Angeles Marathon 2022. And just to give you an idea of the type of guy Jimmy Dean is, he was standing at mile 23, so about 35K in at the race, spectating the LA Marathon with his family and his wife Kate Martini Freeman. At that point, I ran by at about sub-3-hour marathon pace, and he decided to join me here for a second.

What's up, homie? Yeah, Jimmy.

Right at that moment, we caught up with Kifusi, and without warm-up and without hesitation, Jimmy actually ran with us for the last 3+ miles to the finish line. And like, yeah, we had a lot of fun over there, like really cheering each other on and supporting. So yeah, that's the type of guy that Jimmy is. I'm excited to share this conversation with Jimmy. He's a good friend, and we have shared many road and trail miles together over the past 10 years. He has a tremendous amount of running experience from the 5K, 10K, and half marathon to the longer distances, the marathon, 50-mile, 100-mile. He even finished the Badwater 135-mile race. He has trained many different athletes over the years. I believe it has been 2,000 athletes that he has coached right now, and that actually includes me. In 2013, when I really got into running, um, I actually signed up with his running coaching program. And in 2013, early 2014, I trained with the SoCal Coyotes, and I learned a lot of things from him along the way over there. Another way that Jimmy has helped me is in 2014, I decided to run my first 100-miler, and this was basically from my house in Long Beach to San Diego. I filled up a backpack with water, brought a bunch of snacks, and without really knowing what was going to happen, I decided to run south. The first 50 miles went fairly fast and easy. 50 miles done, we are nearly halfway. That's an exciting feeling, and the sun is coming out, so it's soon going to start getting warmer. However, around mile 82, so this was 135k in, I completely thought that I was done. But mile 82, my legs are done.

I can no longer run. I'm just going to walk.

It's just like as soon as I start running, my legs are just killing me, so I'm just gonna walk it out. It was a self-supported run, so I actually ended up not really knowing what to do at that point. So I just called Jimmy and I was like, Jimmy, my legs are not working anymore. And this is what actually happened after that. Just talked to Jimmy about what I was feeling, what I was going through. He recommended getting a coffee, getting some caffeine in.

CVS is about the only store I could find, so see if they have some mocha.

Starbucks coffee, Red Bull, Skittles, M&M's, and water.

Score!

I'm running again.

Unbelievable.

How the hell did I wake up from that? So yes, the person who was there for me at my very lowest point was Coach Jimmy Dean. So he has definitely played a big role in my running, and I know in the running of many other runners around me as well. I will link to those videos from Kofuji at the Los Angeles Marathon and my first 100-mile run because there's both two videos of that on YouTube too. I've learned so many things from Coach Jimmy Dean about the mindset, about being patient, about going after big goals, and we talk about about some of these things in today's conversation too. We also talk about some things I don't often talk about, about how to deal with injuries or with sickness. How about setting yourself up for success also mentally? Like, what are some of these things that you can do when you experience challenges both in training and in racing? I really had fun with this conversation. An exciting update over here: I've hired a podcast director for the Extra Mileage Show and a video editor too. And the main reason is that I want to bring out more consistent videos. I'm spread pretty thin myself between our full-time startup PATH projects, the running coaching program, the Personal Best program, two kids, my wife, she wants some time to play pickleball. And then, yeah, I'm doing my own training as well. So for me to be able to bring out more content, I decided to bring some people on board to help me with that. To offset some of the cost, I'm going to be running some ads for YouTube. YouTube and the podcast. No, I'm not going to go overboard with it, but I do want to bring in some additional help here just so that I can bring out more consistent content. 2022, I actually took a 6-month break from making more videos purely because it was getting quite overwhelming, the amount of work that was going into it. So I decided let's get some people on board and really have exciting plans over here for the next This year, for next year, 2025, coming out with a book with a summary of a whole lot of podcast guests. There's, there's a lot more coming. So stay tuned on that. One more note, we have set up an Extramile List Facebook group with 7,000 members from all around the world, very helpful community that you can join for free. And you can just find that by typing in Extramile List in Facebook. Also, I have a weekly newsletter that I send out every Friday at extramilelist.com/newsletter. Subscribe with a lot of running insights and running tips. For those looking for training schedules, for training videos, and for my actual running coaching, check out pbprogram.com. I'm active daily in the Facebook group for this, in the Strava group for this, and we do weekly Zoom coaching calls too. For those wanting specific one-on-one coaching, I can highly recommend checking out Coach Jimmy Dean at coyoterunning.com. This is where he trains like it's his running coaching training program. He takes time one-on-one, and his wife, Kate Martini Freeman, is actively involved here too. So I would highly suggest that. I'm going to stop talking right now. Hope you enjoy my conversation with Jimmy Dean Freeman.

Thank you for coming out over here.

Absolutely.

I'm glad. I think this was well overdue.

Oh, getting me to talk about running is not a difficult thing to do, but getting me to talk to adults is a very low percentage of my, uh, week.

Yeah, there you go. So I think it's, it's fascinating. I really got into running in 2013, and you have played a really big role in that.

Only because you found us and signed up for our program. I feel like it was just luck of the draw there.

Well, I know that was one of those things, right? I think the timing was right over there, and you guys had created a really good training program for both road running and for trail running, I think it would be quite helpful to get a bit of an understanding about you and your background as a runner and also as a running coach, just to get a bit of a better idea.

Yeah. All right. Well, Cliff Notes history. I have been participating in athletics, team sports since a very, very young age. I've got a dad who was a collegiate football player, a mom who has been athletic and played all different sports her whole life. And as a young child, they were still very, very active. My dad was playing a lot of tennis. He was running races here and there. And my mom was also playing tennis and engaged in a lot of workouts. So about the time I was, I'd say 9, um, I had played 4 or 5 years of team sports, soccer, football, baseball. And my dad and his buddies, actually one of the other baseball coaches, um, they used to do a 10K every year and in our general area. And one year he said, hey, you want to come run this race with us? And I was kind of a yes man to anything outdoorsy and athletic. And I said, sure, not knowing what I was getting myself into. My dad said, well, This is, this is a long race. So if you're going to come do this with us, you have to come train with me for a month. So for probably 4 weeks, I went out with my dad to the high school track, 9 years old. He would tell me how many laps to run. We'd probably do that 3 times a week. Race day comes, it was called the Devil Mountain Run and it was in San Ramon, Danville, California. And, uh, Race day, he goes, hey, do you want to run the 5K or the 10K? And I didn't know what that meant. So I just said, what are you, what are you doing? He said, I'm doing the 10K. So I'm like, okay, I'll do that one. And I remember I had a goal. My goal at 9 years old was to not walk. It was to run the whole race. Um, I finished the race and I actually beat one of his buddies. I think I was a little bit more than an hour. Um, but it was close to an hour. And I remember that it was very— I loved it. And it was, it was like an experience with all these people around and it was a road race. And we went back and did that race almost every year. And, um, I remember my first experience of doing something well. And now, I mean, how many 9 and 10-year-olds are running 10Ks? Like my division was probably pretty small, but I was always, you know, in the top 3. And I remember I was motivated to, to place higher, to run faster. And each year, you know, I got a little bit better. And then high school, it was one of the first sports that I signed up for, you know, my freshman year, um, fall season cross country was the first thing I did and I loved cross country. So I went from road racing from 9 to 14 years old to cross country, which was, you know, running hills and trails and dirt and grass. And I think that that right there set the stage for me to love— excuse me— running everywhere. You know, I liked road running and it was, it was part of me. And, um, I got into track in my junior and senior year, um, and liked racing, liked runners, liked the distance running. Structure, but track racing was my least favorite of the 3 disciplines. Now I grew to love it more in later life. There's nothing like the mile on a track. It's just, it's a really perfect symmetrical special event. And whether you're running the 1500 or the mile, like there, there are a lot of similarities between the 2, but now, you know, in my forties, I love running on a treadmill. I love running on the road. I love running on a track. I love running on the trails. And people ask me, you know, what is your favorite? And I'm like, my favorite is variety. Yeah. You know, I don't, I don't like marrying myself to one thing above everything. I had to do that in my relationship, of course, you know, but you know, what's my favorite whiskey? Variety. What's my favorite type of terrain to run on? Variety. What's my favorite race? Variety.

So because you have done all of the different distances, anywhere from 5K to like a Badwater 135 miles competitively, I've raced everything from the 1500 meter, both track and road, all the way up to 135 miles.

Um, and every type of terrain, every type of condition other than— I don't think I've raced in snow, I think, but everything from freezing rain to mud, to pavement in 170°F.

Yeah. So how many marathons and how many ultras, if you would?

No idea.

Really?

I don't even think the internet knows. Marathons, races that I've trained for and tried to run fast is probably somewhere in the 3 dozen. Range.

Yeah.

Um, actual completed marathons registered and completed days where I was coaching and running back and forth, helping other people, probably more than 75. Um, I know my 100-mile number, um, 100-mile or longer number is 28, 28 starts and 23 finishes. Um, and then ultra distance, you know, everything over 50 kilometers, um, including a couple of stage races.

Um, Chicago to LA.

I don't count that one. That's not, I mean, that, that wasn't a race.

Yeah.

Running Chicago to LA was, was, you know, my own thing. Um, one time I attempted to run from, um, Brentwood to, uh, Chino or Corona. Um, that was, that was long, which is how many miles? It was almost exactly 100K.

Yeah.

Uh, DNF'd. That was quite an adventure. That was probably one of my most memorable non-races, running through East LA at like 2 or 3 in the morning with a film crew who interviewed me at one point. And it didn't even occur to me until we were like getting into downtown LA and passing through and it's like 1 in the morning. And they're like, hey, what are your thoughts and feelings about going through East LA? In dolphin running shorts and a headlamp at 1 in the morning. Candidly, I was like, more worried about you guys. I don't have anything of value on me. People are going to look at me like I'm nuts.

You're holding the camera.

You're holding the camera. So yeah.

So when was it then that you started getting into running coaching?

So I look at my life in— running in 3 phases. There was my childhood running, there was my high school running. I stopped my late senior year and kind of put running away for the better part of 6 or 7 years. Came back to running in my adult, like mid-20s. And after training for an attempt at my first marathon, I got a phone call really serendipitously out of the blue, and a guy was looking to hire a running coach in my area. And he had specifically tracked me down through a theater company that I had done some shows with. And it was, it was a very random set of circumstances, but, um, the short version of that is we got into contact. I helped him, um, develop some locations for a marathon training program in Northern California. And he was based in LA. And that particular program I was going to help coach, but I was also in the process of moving to Los Angeles. So, um, September 11th happened, this program got canceled, I moved to LA, uh, 4 months later, and, uh, the second month I lived here he called me and said, "Hey, are you in LA now?" And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "I have a new team I want to start in Long Beach. It's yours if you're interested." And I— so my first job when I moved to LA was coaching a marathon team. Ironically, I had not yet run my first marathon, but I had been in a very advanced level program with a university-level coach in high school. I understood the, the tenets of periodization. I understood the tenets of motivation. And I had trained for a marathon. I had not raced and completed one, but I executed his program. It was his training paradigm. And I was just there to lead the practices. And so I coached a team to run the Kona Marathon in the summer of 2002. And 3, 4 months later, I ran the Chicago Marathon. That was my first crack at the distance that I finished.

There you go. You will always remember your first.

You, you do. And unfortunately, I really, really remember the last 13 miles of that first one. Every painful step.

Yeah, that seems to happen. Absolutely.

Marathon's quite a distance and, and no matter how many of them you do, marathon is one that even the elite Olympic class guys, you never master it. You never get it where you can go, okay, I can run this time and then that's how it goes. Like it's a distance that will always be a little bit elusive.

And every time you get too confident, that's when you get your ass handed to you as well.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think that in my experience, overconfidence has been the main culprit. Overconfidence sometimes leads to getting focused on the wrong things. And, uh, we'll, we'll talk a bit about this, but, um, it— in my later stages of coaching, you know, after about 10 years of coaching, I whittled it down to what I call, um, process orientation versus outcome orientation. And when we're really confident what we get really focused on is mile-by-mile splits, the time that we want to run. And independent of how confident we are, you have to focus on the process. What am I going to do this mile? What am I going to do in this 10-minute block? What am I going to do in this hour that sets up the next hour? And process orientation in many ways ignores the goal. It ignores the mile-by-mile splits. It's the idea is if you focus on what you have to do right now, if you can stay present, you're more likely to have your peak performance. And that it's funny, especially in the 100-mile distance and, and in the marathon distance. When I have sometimes not even had a goal, like, ah, I'm gonna kind of just focus on the race experience and the race process. Um, my performance has sometimes come out of the blue, really surprised me. And some of my most fit times when I was confident, but that confidence led me to, to look at, you know, I know how fit I am. I can run these splits. And you know, each mile you're checking in every half mile, you're looking at your pace and there's just too much mental energy. Put in the wrong bucket.

Yeah, that's very well said. And I think that part right there of running sometimes by how you feel and running by effort versus having to hit certain splits and being very focused on that— yeah, that final goal.

Well, I, I do want to hold one thing independent because, um, process orientation is definitely not running by how you feel because We all know if you've raced enough long distance races, how you feel is going to be awful depending on where you are in the race. And, you know, yeah, I've, I have a little thing that I do with, um, many of my runners before their big A race, which is called what I call the war room. And it's a race planning session, which is as much mental prep as it is logistical. Um, you know, when to take your calories, um, if it's a long, long race, what to put in your drop bags and where. Um, the idea is if you want to run faster than you've ever run before in your life or further, you have to be willing to suffer more than you've ever suffered before. Now, running by feel, um, has become a bit, um, cliché in the running world and sometimes running by feel. In training gets collapsed by running by feel during a race. And you should always be running by feel, like you're going to have feelings and you're going to have, um, you know, biosensory feedback that you should be paying attention to. Um, but our pain receptors, our brain, you know, are there as kind of a warning system. And when things start to feel really awful, the message being sent by your brain is shut it down, slow down, stop. You're gonna hurt yourself. And in distance running, many of us know that to set your personal best PR PB, to do a distance further than you've ever done before, there's going to be a suffering that you haven't experienced yet, or more of it than you've experienced before. And you know, the, in the Coyotes, we like to use the phrase hurt locker. You're gonna have to go into the hurt locker. And be there and not only be there, but it's not that you have to welcome suffering, but you have to at least allow it to be the passenger in the vehicle. And, and, you know, some people will, will revel in that discomfort a little more than others and some people will resist it. But in either case, if you're going to, if you're going to perform well and you want to be, have that performance be at the peak of your ability there, the longer the distance, the more you're gonna hurt, or, or the, the longer duration you're gonna hurt. Cuz actually to me, the most painful race that exists is the mile. Mm-hmm. Um, but it's, you know, it's gonna hurt for what, 4 to 6 minutes?

Yeah.

So, um, but it's a very acute discomfort.

But then knowing in advance before you go to the race that you are going to get into a discomfortable place. And like, that's what I will often remember is you've mentioned that to me, like when we were, you were coaching me before I ran my first sub-3, you were clearly telling me like, oh, you could feel a 2 out of 10 the one moment and very quickly that can shoot up to a 9 out of 10 discomfort level the next moment. Visualizing that in advance already. And like even for New Year's this year, I was running a race and at mile 16, I was feeling so good and I was feeling so comfortable and you almost become overconfident. But then at that moment, realizing that you probably feel a 2 out of 10 and you could shoot up to 9 out of 10 quickly. And sure enough, that's what happened. But at least I went up mindset.

I've had this happen a number of times in 100-mile races. And, and one of the last ones that I performed well at, uh, that I can remember Cascade Crest in Washington. I had a moment of flow. And there's a moment where you feel almost outside your body. Like you feel too good for the moment. And what's hilarious in that distance for me is the times that you start to flow, so you start to forget the process. And I'll have an hour of just gliding in this effortless running, but then I realize when I go from a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10 to a 9, oh, I haven't eaten for an hour. I haven't done the things to set up this next hour. So yeah, the don't count the chickens before they've hatched, you know, when you're at mile 16 and feeling great, you're like, I feel better than I've ever felt at any mile 16. And then mile 17, the proverbial, you know, shit hits the wall, hits the fan, being sort of mentally and emotionally nimble will allow for the nonlinear experience to happen. And I think that, you know, from my perspective, those who get good at that flow in their races and long-distance races and in their training find a way to apply that to their lives. Because life is about as nonlinear as it gets. You know, one month you're, you know, on top of your bills and your savings and you're doing great. And then the next month, some tragedy happens and throws things sideways for a while. So learning to, deal with whatever comes up. And, you know, it just comes back to, um, a little saying that I say to myself, what can I do right now? Um, I, some, some races I actually put the letters on my hand, W-C-I-D-R-N, what can I do right now? And the idea is whether things are going great or whether things are going bad, what can I do right now to make the next moment better? What can I do right now to make the next this hour better? What can I do right now to make this race better? Um, it gets you present again. And then it's not about what's gone wrong. Cause we can sometimes get focused on the negative. It's what can I do to move through this? Um, Winston Churchill, that's one of my favorite quotes is if you're going through hell, keep going. You know, we oftentimes freeze or get stuck or paralyzed when things are bad. And we stopped that momentum.

Yeah. And it, it is, you don't that often, like you've obviously raced a lot over a 30-year period.

250+ races.

Yeah. But when you look, for example, at one of those distances of marathon and the later stages, like mile 20, 32K in, that is not typically an area that you hit that frequently in training. So for many people—

It's not productive to put your body through that space.

So for many people, that terrain is indeed a new and unknown. And so there's going to be a lot of firsts and a lot of adjusting the plan to what comes up over there.

Yeah, I mean, the common experience physiologically is that There's something about the way we've conditioned our bodies and the way that we eat and our metabolism that in a marathon, it's somewhere around mile 20 that we exhaust our glycogen supply. And the body goes from kind of a normal state to a ketotic state. And that's where the body starts to metabolize muscle proteins for energy. And it's very uncomfortable, maybe even acutely painful. And I think that. It's just, it's not productive to simulate in training because, you know, it's, it's very destructive to the muscle tissue. It's, it's something that takes a good bit of time to recover from. So you want to restrict that type of experience to race day, because it's like you only got so many bullets in the gun. And if you want your peak performance, you don't want to put your body through that a bunch of times. So when you get to that state of ketosis, you know, you're blood sugar is low, and that both means you've got less fuel for the engine to run. And oh, by the way, whenever you're feeling a bit cranky in life, one of the most common responses you're ever going to get is that you're probably hungry or you're hangry, that you need something. So when your blood sugar is low, your brain has less energy to power, and it's a very frustrating, angry place. And when you combine you know, hope, or maybe even the introduction of doubt with pain and, you know, a little hangry. It's a negative place. And to find your process orientation, to find your drive to stay on task and stay on the goal when it's hurting more and you're in that space, That's what makes that event, the marathon, magical. Pushing through the wall, finding a way around it, over it, under it, through it, whatever it takes. One of my favorite videos that I can watch that refills my inspiration tank is a lecture by Dr. Randy Pausch. And it's, I think it's called The Last Lecture. And it's a series of lectures at Carnegie Mellon University. And the idea was if you could only give one more lecture as a professor, what would the topic be? Well, this particular man was diagnosed with terminal cancer and he was a relatively healthy person and he had young kids and he was told, You've got 5, 6 months maybe before this takes you. And so when he gave his last lecture, it was more literal. It wasn't in the space of what it was created for at Carnegie Mellon. It was like, this is going to be my last lecture. So what he did was he wanted to give a little instruction book to his kids. And it's really powerful. And there's two versions of it. You can actually find the Carnegie Mellon, like, hour-plus version of it. Oprah brought him on her show and he did a, you know, a briefer version of it that hit some of the big bullet points. And the idea behind The Last Lecture and kind of how it can apply to our lives is, you know, you You have to be able to roll with the punches. You have to be able to follow your dreams. You have to be able to— the main point of why I brought this up is he's like, the wall isn't there to stop you from your dream. The wall is there to see how bad you want it. It's there to keep the other people out. And if it were easy, everyone would do it and it wouldn't be as meaningful. So the wall is there to test you. How much you want it. And if you're able to overcome the wall, that's what makes a marathon finish, a 100-mile finish, a PR. That's what makes it satisfying is that you had to grind through something really difficult. You had, you had to take your fear and your doubt and stare it right in the face and continue doing it regardless.

And that's both in training and in racing, like big time.

I think, I think sometimes people get so hyper-focused on race day. When really, you know, for the sake of argument, 6 months of training leading into it, if you can survive that and get to the race, you know, healthy enough and fit enough and motivated enough, you're 90% of the way there. The race day is, is, you know, critical. You have to execute on race day. You know, there's no, there's no faking fitness. If you're fit enough, you can do it. And if you don't hit the time, it doesn't mean you weren't fit enough. But surviving the training block is, is an even bigger piece than how you execute the race, but both count.

Yeah. I've heard you talk numerous times about training your mind and about a glass ceiling that you can push and move around. Can you talk about that a little bit more?

Yeah. Um, I think that people get really, really, really focused on I have a goal and let's say the goal is to qualify for the Boston Marathon. There is a time associated with that for my age and my gender. And whatever that is, that's a common goal in the running world or to break 4 hours or to break 3 hours, whatever it is, we start by seeking information as to what are the workouts I need to do in order to make that happen. And there's a chicken and egg conversation, right? I've noticed people doing the workouts to achieve a goal for many, many, many years and not seeing a tremendous amount of improvement. And, you know, back into the conversation of, you know, outcome versus process orientation, one of the main elements of of this experience and how to really drive the most out of your body is your mental process. How are you thinking about it, both in training and during the race? Now, the glass ceiling in this particular realm is a level of achievement we think we're personally capable of. And we all have some idea of, I think I could do this. Now I've experienced a lot, um, through my athletes. I've coached over 2,500 individuals now for an endurance event. And that, you know, I've done couch to 5K programs, couch to 10K programs. I've probably coached 2,000 of those 2,500 to marathon, either their first or their fastest marathon. And obviously I've helped people do 50 and 100 and doing 135-mile races. So each person has some level of doubt, and there are different times in our life that the doubt may be louder or the glass ceiling may be thicker, but there is a limit to what we think we're capable of. Um, and I'm going to start with a very, um, in the family example, my wife Kate, I coached her to her first marathon. She was actually on my first marathon team. It's not how we met, but she ran 4 hours 59 seconds and 4 hours 59 minutes and 51 seconds. You know, so in her first marathon at the age of 20, she snuck under the 5-hour mark. And, and that was an all-out effort for her in great shape. And, you know, fast forward a couple of months, I ran Chicago with the intention of qualifying for Boston. And at the time I needed to run faster than 3 hours and 11 minutes. And I ran 3 hours, 11 minutes, and 11 seconds. So. In order for me to qualify for Boston, I needed to shave off 12 seconds in order for Kate to qualify for Boston. She had to shave off. I think she had a 3:40 time at the time. So she had to shave off 1 hour and 20 minutes, something.

Yeah.

So 12 seconds versus 80 minutes at the time. Kate's like, I'm not a distance runner. I ran a marathon. It was very painful. I can't imagine running a lot faster. I know I could, but like an hour and 20 minutes is a big chunk of time in a marathon. Um, so I was very focused on Boston and it took me a couple more years. It took me, I think, 2, 2 and a half years after that 3:11 to get it down under 3:10. And Kate went with me to Boston. My dad flew out. And the two of them jumped around the course and they were so moved by the experience of the city of Boston and how that, the history of that race.

That city is so incredibly alive. Like a million people on the sidelines cheering everyone on.

Like, it's incredible.

And she was caught up in that electricity. And what's funny is she kept running marathons in that two years. And as I shaved I think I ran 1 minute faster to get into Boston. She went from 4:59 to 4:24, from 4:24 to 3:55, and suddenly shaving off 10, 15 minutes looked a little more realistic than an hour and 20 minutes. And she was galvanized by being at Boston. And she'd said to herself, I'm gonna be here next year. Year. And it was, it was a preposterous thing to think for a 5-hour marathoner to run 3:39, you know, and she did, she, she focused on the next 6 months. She, you know, really consistent. And, um, at, I want to say it was at Long Beach. Um, she had a crisis because her training buddy who was a lifelong runner was going to qualify for Boston for her first time. And her training buddy got violently ill somewhere around mile 18 or 20. She's on all fours throwing up.

Oh no.

And so Kate's dealing with glass ceiling, doubt, pain, and the loss of her motivating running buddy. And I remember running her in and she was, throwing up as well. And she did it. She snuck in under, you know, 3:40 and went to Boston and we both ran it together the next year. It was pretty amazing and special, but that glass ceiling for her, you know, when she started was the idea that like, oh, I'm Boston's not for me. Boston's for serious runners. Boston's for runners with more talent. And, you know, she's since gone on. To run sub-3. She's a 2-hour and 58 PR and was top 10 at a major marathon, at the Los Angeles Marathon. She was the 10th woman. She had 7 pros in front of her and 2 amateurs. And no one would ever imagine that when she did a 4:59, you know, for her first one.

So incredible.

So the glass ceiling idea is We all have an idea of what the lid is on our peak performance. And to be honest, we don't know. Science doesn't know. You know, we can project, but if you were to kind of live and train with that as a question mark, instead of knowing what you think you're capable of, just giving, giving up the idea that you have any idea. And saying, you know, I'm going to treat this as an adventure and as an exploration and see. And for me, that question, you know, manifested in running Badwater. It manifested in running the original Six Hundos Challenge, doing the six original 100-milers inside of 13 weeks. Like, I didn't know if I could do that. Really believe one way or another. I just went, for this summer, I'm gonna live the question. And that's really— it's not about achieving it or not. It's, it's about what quality your life takes on when you're in the space of adventurous inquiry. Yeah. And, uh, you know, you're either living on the edge, you're either living a daring life, or you're kind of wasting it.

Yeah, yeah. I think there's, there's a few interesting quotes around that as well, along the lines of, when I'm at the end of my life, I want to look back on a life where it's not that I said like, I surely lived a safe life, but truly lived a life full of adventure and unknown, and I gave it the fullest everything that I could.

Yeah, you have to— we live with risk every day.

Yeah.

And I think that, you know, we take for granted how dangerous life is. You know, just getting in our car is probably the most dangerous thing that we do, honestly. And, you know, we see things that happen, you know, people skiing or, you know, crashing in a plane is a possibility. You know, there are a lot of risks out there and shoot, somebody could go to a restaurant and eat a bad piece of chicken and that could be it. Like, So we have to assess risk in our life. And for each person, the level of risk is independent of the activity. You know, you have to be inspired to do something. You have to be excited about it. Um, an activity that I personally love is downhill skiing. I stopped doing it about 10, 12 years ago because I was a high-risk participant in, in running events. And I, I feared getting hurt in a non-running event affecting my ability to do the thing that I was most passionate about. So, you know, some of the stuff that we do in the realm of running, especially ultra distance, it's risky. And a lot of the stuff that we do isn't even quantified by science yet. Ultra running hasn't been around long enough for us to know definitively what the long-term effects are. We know people that have had renal failure. We know people that have had endocrine systems go sideways and adrenal fatigue and all that stuff. So you have to determine what is most important to you and what level of risk you can palate. And to be frank, I'm 43 now. And the level of risk is lower now that I'm a primary care parent for two little ones. And when my little ones aren't so little, that risk might go up. I might be able to do some things that are a little more adventurous, if you will.

But so if you look at all of the different athletes that you have coached, like, you see some aiming high and reaching their goals while others are missing their goals. What do you feel are some characteristics for, for people actually able to accomplish some of their goals? And what do you think are some general characteristics or similarities between people either giving up or not reaching what they set out to do?

Yeah, I think there's I think there's two major factors that play a part in goal achievement. Some people have the disposition to go very hyperbolic. They're going for the top shelf out of nothing. I've never run before, I've been running for two months and I want to run Barkley. And then there are other people that are like, I've been running marathons for 15 years and I just want to run 5 minutes faster. You know, so, um, one element of, at least in our sport, there's a genetic predisposition and you have a baseline VO2 max, how well your body produces, uh, processes and utilizes oxygen is a big factor in long distance running. Um, another factor is just your physical durability. Some people can handle very stressful workouts and recover from them quickly. And, um, we're younger, we can bounce back quicker, but each individual person, body, um, body type, um, their biomechanics leads to, uh, less injury or more injury. You know, some people's bones and tendons hold up better than others. It's just, it's just the nature of the game. And then there's the mental side. You know, I think that. In our day and age, present day is very swipe left, swipe right, you know, move from this career to a totally new career. Relationships are disposable. Instagram, Facebook, social media, people are really impatient. You know, I see more people that sign up for a running program that haven't done a marathon that are already talking 100 miler. This year, you know? And I think that, um, there's a long game that we need to play. And I think the thing that I got hooked into, both by a really great high school running coach and by some of my early influences in the sport, was you want to pick a goal that is going to take 5 or more years to achieve. Like, something that you can't even imagine yourself doing right now, because the process of exploration and discovery and perseverance you're going to have to go through to get there will put your life into a very distinct space in the day-to-day of chasing after that. And this idea that, you know, I'm going to set this goal and I better achieve it this year or I'm done, you know, and people that get injured and quit right away, this just isn't meant for me. So So I think that that's the main thing is that a pandemic condition in our society is impatience and wanting it all right now. And there was a quote that I really loved and I don't remember who it was by, but it was, "You can have it all, but you can't have it all right now." And this idea that, you know, you can work towards something, may or may not come to you quickly. And you know, that, that can be in the realm of education, that can be in the realm of profession, that can be in the realm of relationship. Like, you want something, you have to be willing to work for it, and you have to be willing to overcome adversity to get to it.

Yeah, I see it all the time too, that people overestimate what they can accomplish in the short term and they underestimate how much— like, when you think, think 12 months ahead, 18 months, 24 months, 5 years, And that, yeah, that's definitely thinking further out and gradually being patient to work, chip away and improving.

Yeah. If I could take my 43-year-old self and talk to my 23-year-old self, you know, I can think of a number of decisions that I made that threw me into the space of injury or despair just because I didn't wait another day or another week to get back after something. You know, The short-term patience, you know, is a challenge for everybody. And even the most Zen-like patient people have those moments of like, I should be there by now. Like, I gotta get— hurry. Yeah, we're all in a hurry.

Well, and, and that's indeed how quite a few people get injured as well, right? I think that's another—

that's what I was thinking of— to jump into very individually, um, after that 12-second miss at Chicago in 2002, I signed up for a marathon less than 2 months later and was back into workouts 8 to 10 days later and hurt for more than a year.

Yeah.

So yeah, the, the not listening to our bodies and, um, having that big, you know, bigger picture, longer-term goal. Um, is it trips a lot of us up and running is a high impact sport. You're going to beat your lower half up at the very least, and sometimes parts of your upper half. Um, but one of the things that we talked about was you were interested in what injuries were common and, and, you know, beginning experienced runners. I find that, that there are some injuries that. Transcend, beginning, advanced, like they just pop up, but it's really an individual thing. And that I've seen a lot, like all of the injuries, I've experienced most of them myself. And I think that, as I said, that the biggest culprit is impatience and not listening to our body in the day-to-day and in the moments. And if I were to throw it you know, outside of the realm of like specific, um, training too hard, doing too much mileage too soon, not giving ourselves enough time for recovery. Um, the one other culprit that I see is overstriding. It's probably the most common, um, form dysfunction. And for many, many years, I hear people vilify heel striking and I do not believe that heel striking is the culprit, but if you're overstriding, you'll be heel striking. So I think that that's part of the collapsing of that particular villain. If your feet are landing directly under your body, it doesn't matter if you're forefoot, midfoot, or heel, because you're not going to land on a straight leg if your foot's striking beneath your, your body, beneath your body mass. So That overstriding, working on that efficiency, an active stride versus a passive stride, that's one of the things that I really focus on with people because I believe that that can lower injury risk for certain types of things. Iliotibial band syndrome, hip pain, even lower back stuff that can be related to tight hamstrings and shin splints and ankle peroneal type of injuries can all come from, you know, being fatigued and overstriding.

Yeah, I think what sometimes goes, goes hand in hand as well with a natural way of running is the, the whole part of running relaxed, right? Like, like running mindful, being present, but running relaxed and having that natural flow that you were talking about earlier as well.

And, and people again get stuck in like, if I'm running fast, I can't be relaxed. It's I'm in the Hurt Locker. That's not relaxing. And it's like, no, even when you're running as hard as you can run, you can focus on relaxing the breathing to a point. Like, you know, it's not going to be a state of relaxation, but you can focus on relaxing it more and being present. And again, it goes right back to my process orientation. If you're focused on what you can do right now that's going to make this better, it will help everything work better.

Talk to me a little bit more about the listening to your body part, because what, what would it specifically mean or in what sort of ways? Like, when would you back off and when do you feel it's okay? Because it's that fine line between, yes, you're going to push to some level that stress because that's where growth happens as well. But you have to learn when to back off as well, right?

There are quite literal ways to measure it. And then there are ways that are a little more experiential. One of the pieces that I give to a lot of my clients, people that I'm working with one-on-one, is to find your baseline resting heart rate. And true resting, like when you haven't even sat up in bed in the morning, finding your, you know, 60-second count. And when you measure that over 2, 3 weeks, you're going to find a number that's kind of the low mark. And when you start to go off of that mark, if you wake up and you're 5 beats higher than normal, no matter what's on the schedule, you take an easy day. And that easy day might mean less intensity. It might mean less duration. It might mean both. If you're 10 beats over, It's an off day. And I think that, you know, in terms of managing wellness, which isn't just, am I sick or not? It's, you know, you could be on the cusp of injury. You could be on the cusp of a flu or a cold. Our bodies don't distinguish between different types of stress. If you're stressed out, about a deadline at work, if you're planning a wedding and your wife or your wedding planner is, you know, all over you about something that you got to do, you're stressed about bills, you're stressed out about kids, it's the body, it's all the same. Yeah, you know, your cortisol levels are elevated, your heart rate is elevated, your instrument is under a higher level of stress, and it— you only have so much physical and mental stress your body can take before it breaks down. It's like if you think of it in the realm of the RPMs of a car, if you drive the car above the red line the whole time, the engine will eventually just explode or just fall apart, right? So, you know, at the lower RPMs, you're getting better gas mileage. And if you're stressing your body less, you have more endurance, you have more longevity, you have better health.

It is so fascinating, that correlation between stress and athletic performance. Oh, big time. And sleep as well, right there. Like, I see it all the time. People improving those two things, and all of a sudden they start running so much better.

Yeah, I think that sleep is an easy thing to point to because we're all all not getting enough. It's, you know, that's another societal condition is, you know, we stay up too late. We get up, you know, early anyway, especially the alphas, the goal-oriented, you know, anybody who's a distance runner, there's no betas. Like, they're all masochists and goal chasers. So yeah, I think that, you know, getting— it's not just about getting more sleep. It's about increasing the quality of our sleep. I used to be a relatively worry-free, carefree individual, and as you know, with kids, the number of fears and worries and concerns tenfold minimum. So I lay awake at night thinking of things, and so that's certainly not putting me into the category of restful REM sleep. Sleep isn't the only thing that our body does for recovery. It's, it's an essential piece, but, you know, our diet's a major factor. How, you know, even like, I know you're a big advocate of meditation and focusing the mind on the important things and kind of getting away from the noise. You know, I— we have to find ways to recenter our thought process on, on the things that are essential and are gonna make a difference versus getting stuck in the worry and the fear. 'Cause that's a stressor too. So some people supplement, you know, taking, I take some recovery amino acids and some things that will help me with tissue regeneration. So there's a lot of different ways to do it, but Managing stress levels and not just looking at the workouts, but looking at the stress levels in our lives, like travel. Flying on a plane is physically stressful. I tell people, don't fly on a plane and get off and do a workout. It's just not a good thing for your instrument. Structuring and planning the sleep so that you can get more quality where it's available. You know, eating well, hydrating, both regular daily life and during the run. You know, some people do long runs and don't drink much and don't eat much. That stresses the instrument more. So focusing on those things, you can quantify it during the workout with a heart rate monitor and knowing what your zones are. I don't find that that's essential, but I do find that the people that do that have a very clear bit of biofeedback that you can't argue with. You'll know when your body's more stressed out. You'll be like, oh, I just did an easy run today, but my heart rate was, you know, my whole zone was one zone higher than it should have been.

And sometimes, like, on let's say a flat terrain or when the temperatures are reasonable, I have a very good idea of where my heart rate is. It's typically once there's hills involved or it gets warmer or I'm in the later stages of a run, that it's very hard for me to sometimes even gauge. Like, yeah, you can listen to certain signals of the body, but sometimes I look at my watch and I'm like, wow, I'm much higher than I thought I would be, or the other way around. Yeah.

And you can't argue with, with the, the, the biofeedback that when it's there and it's a quantifiable number. Yeah. I, um, have done long training cycles with heart rate stuff. I've been tested. You know, at certain times in my life. And then I've raced on it in certain key races and used it as a tool. But now in my 40s, like, I have a physical experience, a level of exertion and discomfort that I can quantify with zones. And it's not going to be perfect. You know, you're off sometimes, but I have a pretty acute sense of where I'm at, how fit I am, what zones I'm in. And I think that like, I have a lot of times lately, I don't even run with a watch. Like I don't even know how many miles I ran. If I know how long I ran for, it's only because I looked at the clock before I started and when I got back to the car, but I'm less attached to those numbers and I'm more attached to my experience. Am I doing this consistently? Am I enjoying it? Do I like the people I'm around when I'm doing it? Do I like the location that I'm at? So that, you know, my priorities have shifted in the current phase I'm in, in life and in training. But I'm still conscious to, do I need an off day today? Can I push it harder today when my schedule says that I need to? And managing those stress levels, managing, you know, the recovery tools, and upping the quality of things. For me, it's less about the quantity of training, the quantity of stress, and more about the quality. Do you do it enough to make a difference? Do you recover from it well enough to get the benefit?

Just a part of like in line with the whole listening to your body, and actually now we're in the middle of the winter.

Yes, frigid outside. I think, what is it, 70 degrees right now?

Welcome to California. Um, so quite a few people do at some extent, uh, experience either a cold or a flu throughout their training cycle, or even during that taper phases right before a race.

And those who have children experience 6 a year.

You do tend to be a bit more vulnerable to it. So do you have any thoughts of how athletes can best deal with that throughout their training cycle? Do you, do you still run? Do you take a break?

What are your suggestions there?

It goes back to our conversation about being in tune with your instrument, managing stress levels, being focused on that quality recovery. You will lower your risk. We're all going to get a cold. Most normal human beings are going to get a cold at least once a year. And those of us that are stressing our instrument on purpose, trying to achieve a personal goal, you're likely to get sick 2 or 3 times in a year. Normal non-children individuals. One of the baseline rules that we have, we call it the neck rule. This is more in line with colds than flus. Flus are a different animal and hopefully we don't get many of those, but you know, you're going to get a cold every training cycle or so. The neck rule is, are the symptoms above your neck? Stuffed sinuses, slight headache, runny nose, cough. If that's the case, you take a day and you make it easier. So lower intensity, shorter duration, or both. If the symptoms are below the neck, you're coughing up colors, you know, you have that, that bronchial burn, um, or maybe you're throwing up, that's below the neck. Um, it's an off day and it, it's not a universal thing, but it's a pretty good place to start. Um, and you know, sometimes if your symptoms above the neck are particularly bad, yeah, you might benefit more from an extra rest day. Um, and, but if you break the below the neck rule, generally you're not getting better and you're certainly not getting much benefit from the workout.

And that recovery is just going to take longer. You're going to be sick longer.

Yeah, you knock yourself down. Because just like, you know, performance enhancement, you know, when you do a workout and you want to get the benefits from that stress, it's not the stress itself that improves you, it's the recovery from the stress. So when your body is sick, it's a little beat up, it's a little torn down. Um, and you're trying to recover from that stress. Now that stress is not going to necessarily improve your performance, but if you've ever tried to run a race on a fever or coughing up colors, it's not hard to imagine doing better if that wasn't the case.

Right.

So, um, recovering from sickness is, is a performance enhancer. The, the body is telling you it's, it's had too much of something. Too much stress, not enough recovery, too many germs or whatnot. It's also interesting that something happens, very, very common to go through a really stressful training cycle and to be totally healthy. And the moment you start your taper to come down with something. And it's weird, there's something psychological that has to be at play where your body is in that sort of survival Because our primal self, our genetic, our DNA is conditioned for endurance and conditioned to survive. And so there's something about when we go into that training really seriously and really hard and we're putting our body through the wringer, sometimes it hangs on and you don't get those symptoms. And then the moment you take your foot off the gas, the body's like, okay, we can get sick now. Now, if, if I were to plan a time to get sick, if that were a possible thing to do, like you have to get sick once this training cycle, when will it be? The very beginning of the taper is the absolute best time to do it. Assuming that it's not like a devastating, you know, 3-week flu. Um, because I've had times that I've gotten sick in the training cycle and I wasn't fully recovered by race day and I've run those races and it's not not the most pleasant experience, but, uh, yeah, it's, it's very normal to get sick. And if you're taking the long view, you realize that there'll be more races, but a newer runner or someone that had a particularly good training cycle, that's really excited to, to do well at a specific race. It's, it's emotionally devastating. You know, you really are, you know, hoping to be your best. And it's interesting because I, you know, I ran probably my biggest marathon PR, my biggest time. I went from a 3:10 to 3 hours flat, and I was so sick on race day. You know, I was coughing up all sorts of colors throughout the race. And I, I, it's not, again, it's not hard to imagine that I could have run faster if I wasn't sick.

Yeah.

But, uh, you know, you, you got to get focused on those stress levels and the quality of recovery.

And that during that taper, indeed, that first week of the taper, it's typically when your stress level— you have maxed out the stress.

Yep.

At that point, you're ready for step back week. And I do suggest usually taking extra good care during that period of time with your vitamin C intake, being extra careful of washing your hands proper, vitamins, supplements.

Exercise, diet, sleep.

Any of those things, like, yeah, especially the sleep part as you get older.

Every area that you can control. You know, you can't control whether you're going to get sick or not, but you can lower the percentage chance.

And the other thing is too, even if that happens during the first week of your taper, you look back and you've just put 3 or 6 months of training in, right? So all of that, that fitness level is not going to go away overnight. Nope. It's just more allowing the body to recover. That race day you can give there.

Yeah. And this, this sort of a side note to all of that, um, in my extensive racing experience, I've also found that if you're really committed to performance, 21-day taper is significantly better than 14. And, you know, a lot of people take their cue from the professionals and the elites and the world-class. And some of those athletes are doing 14-day tapers and they're like, "Well, I'm in great shape and I'm in best shape." They can also sleep 12 hours a night and they don't have a stressful life with full-time jobs. Their job is running, their job is recovery. And when you factor in our 40, 50, 60-hour work weeks, being parents, Um, all of the other accountabilities that we have because we're not a professional runner. Um, you know, very specifically the summer that I ran 6 100-mile races, some of those races were 19 to 21 days apart. And some of those races were 13, 14 days apart. And the race experience physically, uh, the pain thresholds, I learned very definitively the difference between 2 and 3 weeks of recovery. Yeah. And from that point forward, if there was an A race that I wanted to do well at, both for myself and for my clients and my athletes, strong staunch advocate for the 21-day taper. You might get in one good last run 3 weekends before the race, but even doing it on Saturday instead of Sunday can make a difference.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So with recovery, we see to some extent a correlation with age as well. Like athletes in their 20s and 30s, they can get away with a lot more than athletes in their 40s, 50s, 60s and above. Do you have any different kind of training approach both for different ages but also between different genders as well? Is there anything different there?

I mean, there's, there's definitely science behind that. Um, my approach is a little bit more case by case. Um, because some of my athletes in their forties, fifties, and sixties are brand new runners. So they're not coming off of any experience set where they knew how they were recovering in their twenties and thirties. And conversely, you know, I'll have people that, um, have been running their whole lives and, you know, they're newly 40 and they're experiencing some different aches and pains based on how they've been training. At the end of the day, um, I find that the people that are a little older are typically more in tune with their body anyway. Um, and they're also a little bit more patient. They're less, um, aggressive on pushing through when they don't feel good. Um, Um, so I don't find that, that I focus a lot of my coaching there because it's sort of like people come in that way, you know, we all know that getting older is harder and recovery is longer. Um, I'd say that in my, um, personal coaching business with one-on-one clients, oftentimes, um, I'm giving less quality or less frequency of workouts to an older athlete. Than someone in their 20s. But that's also, you know, a lot of times when someone in their late 20s comes in, they have more hours to train, more hours to focus on self-care, whereas someone in their 40s, you know, they have more commitments and the, the running is less of a frontline priority and more of a thing that they do because they really enjoy it. And that doesn't mean that they don't have goals, but you know, when we stack the top 5 priorities in our life, you know, the, the execution of the training and the recovery for someone who running is the second priority is going to be very different than for someone where it's the fifth or the sixth. And, uh, so yeah, it's, it's always case by case, you know, each person, if they're in tune with with their instrument and their body and the biofeedback that they're getting. And sometimes we have to make a mistake to learn how to do it the right way. It's just human nature. Even with a coach telling you, "Don't do it that way," people are still going to do it that way. And then they go, "Oh, that's why my coach said that." Now the lesson is locked in.

Like my first 100-miler, when you told me, "You should start out really slow," which I partly ignored. And afterwards I called you and said, "Thank you for that lesson.

I will listen next time." So yeah, I mean, look, I find that I'm not a running coach primarily because I want to help people run faster. I'm a running coach because I know what difference running has caused in the rest of my life and the quality of the way that I live. And I find that if I can help people be better runners, through the right process that it's going to bleed into the other areas of their life. And yes, I love running. I geek out on it. I want people to be the best runners that they can be, but I'd rather you be a good person and a better person. And like, to be honest, I'm a raging douchebag. And running, you know, the more that I run or the longer the race and the more that I suffer, it cuts a certain percentage of the douchiness off. And if I can help people be a better version through running is my access point to that. And I definitely, you know, geek out on the science of it and how to help people better. And there's something to working hard for something and achieving it and the experience of grinding through the process to get there that translates to everything, you know, career, relationship, finances. You know, we, we learn these lessons in running and then we apply them the rest of our lives, whether we know it or not. And so, you know, if there's any one major takeaway here, it's that running will help stabilize you as a human being, and it will help give you a set of tools that will give you a higher access to a higher quality life. Everywhere else, and there's nothing more valuable than that.

Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's really interesting, the component of what you just said earlier as well, where sometimes athletes first have to make certain mistakes, or they sometimes have to— whether that's injury or just have a few bad races— before they realize that there's other approaches as well, that they have to like be realistic and that you sometimes see athletes run their best races later stages of life and not necessarily in the earlier stages.

And youth is wasted on the young.

Yeah. Do you have any closing thoughts? Any, any recommendations for athletes? Any other recommendations? Because you've already shared a lot over here for athletes looking to improve in their running.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of what we do in the early stages of our running is guesswork. And my attitude towards running is it's an experiential sport and we're going to learn the lessons by making the mistakes ourselves. Accountability is a big piece of it. So accountability structures can show up in your life in a number of ways. You can hire a coach, you can sign up for a training program, like Extramileist. You can go to a running club and have a regular, you know, run with people where you're all engaged in sharing your goals with each other. It can just be something that you share with your spouse, you know. Having a defined set of goals and a timeline, you know, gives you that map to the accountability. If there isn't a set goal, if there isn't someone to hold you accountable outside of yourself, The snooze button looms large. So true. The I can do it tomorrow mentality creeps in.

Yeah.

I find, you know, my 2019 was the first year I've had since 2003 without a race of any distance. It was the first year since 2005 I didn't do a triathlon. Start a 100-miler. It was the first year since 2008 that I didn't finish a 100-miler. So, um, the fact that I didn't have a race on the calendar, there was nothing to be accountable for. And I worked out less last year than I ever did. I was still coaching. Yeah. But, um, my personal accountability wasn't there. And now again, back to the priority set, you know, running used to be my number 2. Priority. And right now it's probably number 7. Yeah, but I'm putting a race on the calendar and that accountability is coming back. And I still have goals, still things that I want to get after. And, and it's not just for me anymore. Now I have goals that are important to me, but I also want to model for my kids, like, this is what it looks like to go after something that's hard, to be disciplined and focused on it so they can see that, you know, everyday activity, physical fitness is important to us, achieving something is important to us. And, um, hopefully that they get that lesson whether it's a conscious or subconscious thing.

Yeah, very well said, Jimmy. Thank you so much for sharing all of this.

Thanks for having me, it was a pleasure.

And, um, yeah, we'll talk soon again.

Get out there and run.

Thank you for listening, and I'm glad the microphone issue from some previous episodes has been fixed. A few closing thoughts, a few closing thoughts here. For those wanting specific one-on-one coaching, check out Coach Jimmy Dean's training program at coyoterunning.com. What was your favorite lesson, takeaway, or quote from this episode? Please let me know in the comments on YouTube, and one winner will actually win a $100 gift card from PATH Projects. This is the running clothing that I use, like, on my runs, but it's also the clothing that I wear every day outside of running too. Check out the YouTube comments and just leave a comment with your favorite takeaway to enter for that. Please be careful for the scammers out there. There's numerous fake YouTube accounts that pretend to be me with my profile photo I saw several fake Telegram accounts have been created with my name. Like, I will not reach out from any of those channels. I will only reach out if there's a winner for my own personal YouTube channel. So just be aware of that. And then I want to say thanks so much for listening. Have fun out there on your runs, and we'll be back with more episodes very soon. All right, bye now.