How to qualify for the Boston Marathon | Extramilest Show #24 with Jeffrey Silver

I'm down now to basically under 5 minutes. Like, I couldn't get over that. I cracked a full, probably a full minute and 20 seconds difference from what it was from just 90 days earlier. Like, it was unbelievable. And I looked on Strava and every run that matches the same run, I could see that I was faster than I was 30 days ago or 60 days ago. It was pure joy for me. I never felt that before in running. Like, it was really— I never had where I, I guess, the struggle of the idea of saying that, you know, I got to go out and do this other, you know, this other 6 or 7, 8 or 10-mile run. It wasn't about that. It was just that I really, I love the idea to say, can I run and keep my heart rate down? And can I get faster? I mean, that was really what was my whole perception of running, and I enjoyed running more so then than I ever had enjoyed before.

Hello, hello, welcome to another episode of The Extra Mileage Show. My name is Floris Geerman, and today I have a conversation with Jeffrey Silver. He's a 54-year-old runner from Toronto, Canada, and he has had a goal to qualify for the Boston Marathon for a long time. In 2013, he ran his first marathon in 4 hours and 12 minutes, and over time he was able to shave off several minutes, but he didn't improve until the level he wanted to. He also experienced several medical challenges that set him back significantly in his training and racing as well. Then recently, he actually started training more and more with low heart rate training, and he increased his training volume as well. In today's episode, we have a deep dive into his training and racing and how he was able to not only qualify once, but actually twice in just the past 6 weeks for the Boston Marathon. I just saw him last weekend in Chicago where he was flying by at mile 24, breaking his marathon PR again. Geoffrey is a part of my Marathon PR Training Program. This is an online training program for those athletes looking to improve and take their training and racing to the next level. This is a very diverse group of runners, from those looking to run their first marathon to those wanting to qualify for the Boston Marathon, or those going for a specific time goal like a sub-4 or a sub-3-hour marathon. More information can be found at extramilers.com/marathon. All of the show notes and all of the links from today's episode can be found at extramilest.com/24. That is the number 24. I hope you enjoyed today's episode with Jeffrey Silver.

Welcome to the show, Jeffrey. Very happy that you're here.

Happy to be here.

Absolutely. You just qualified for the Boston Marathon after trying for a while now.

Very, uh, a couple of years for sure.

Yeah, I'm very stoked for you on your journey so far and absolutely want to take a deep dive into that. Just for the audience listening to this to get a better understanding of who you are and what your background is, maybe you can tell us a little bit more about like what is your age, where do you live, what, how long have you been into running? Just a bit more background there.

Yeah, certainly. I mean, I, I, I was always like, I mean, I was always running. I never really kind of ran distances, I guess I'm trying to say. And it wasn't really until my daughter was born in 2012. And, um, it was kind of said to myself, I'm going to go back to the gym and start running, you know, working out again. And so now here's, you know, January of 2013 and I'm in the gym and I'm I'm working out and I'm going on the treadmill and I'd come home and I'd say I ran 5 kilometers on this treadmill and I'd say to my wife and then okay next week I said I ran, you know, 9 kilometers and all of a sudden I'm running like 15, 16 kilometers on a treadmill as we come into February, March. My wife says, what are you crazy? Like get outside. Like what do you, what are you running on a treadmill like that? So I go over to this running group, The Running Room, where where it is I'm running. And, uh, I, I run with them. And then I come— I guess it's now like the first week of, I'm gonna say, March, and I'm running like about 20 kilometers or so. And I come home and I say to my wife, I'm going to run the Chicago Marathon. Like, I'm crazy. Like, all of a sudden I went from doing nothing to, okay, I'm gonna run a marathon. So that's, that's what really started it at all. Um, it was kind of like I just Oh, I, I guess my, my beginning of running was really just, oh, I could run, you know, 15 kilometers, but can I really run 17? Can I run 20? Can I run 20? Like, I never— I— the whole perception of running for me at the beginning was just, can I do more mileage? I never had this notion of really understanding anything else except for what the mileage was. Can I, you know, and then And all the training I started to do, I couldn't— like anybody who starts, I couldn't understand how can you— well, how come you never run 42 kilometers or 26 miles in any of your long run trainings? Because like, I think my longest run was 35 kilometers, and I thought, that doesn't make sense. Like, how could I run 35 kilometers but I still have 7 kilometers to go? But running Chicago for me was, uh, you know, for anybody in your first marathon was really over the moon. And I finished at 4 hours, 12 minutes.

Okay.

And yeah, and I was, I was elated. It was over the moon. And so this is like October of 2013. And I'm feeling great and everything's wonderful. And 8 weeks later, I'm at home. I live in Toronto. And it's a winter day here now at the end of November, and I'm feeling fine, but I kind of wake up that morning and I really don't feel very well. And my daughter is now 10 months old, and I'm at home alone with her. And all of a sudden I have this kind of strange feeling come over me. I don't even know what it was. I was kind of feeling like, wow, I feel like my I felt like I had some sort of voodoo doll or something on me. I couldn't move my arms, couldn't do anything. And the next thing I noticed, I had— I mean, I don't remember the whole story, but I had one called this ambulance come in. And I guess I thought I was having a heart attack. I couldn't understand what was going on. I rushed to the hospital. And I come out the next morning. And I found out that, uh, I'm told that I had what was called a hemorrhagic stroke. And so for all your viewers to understand this, uh, a hemorrhagic stroke is your brain, whereas 98 or 99% of all so-called strokes are ischemic strokes, which is your heart. Um, so, you know, when, when they say the word stroke, which it thinks people have this perception you had a heart attack, which it has nothing to do with that. It has to do with your brain. And what they found out is what I had, which was a cavernoma, malfunction of the brain. It's a cluster of abnormal vessels. Um, so mine— and, and a lot of people have this, just take a step back here— don't really know they have it. And which is fine. I mean, they, they wouldn't really know, uh, if they had— unless they had an MRI with contrast, would they ever know that they had this? But you could live a whole— your whole life having it. It's not a problem. But, but with you, your whole body acted up and Well, because it bled, that cavernoma bled, and that's which triggered a grand mal seizure. Like, I had a grand mal seizure triggered because of this bleed. So fast forward to this whole point, you know, I did not— we didn't do anything then. And I was, you know, I always knew that there was something I'd probably have to do. I didn't run all of 2014. I like, I stopped, I put my feet up and didn't run at all. And I kind of just kind of played it by ear, basically feeling how I would feel. And then fast forward to, um, 2015, I started running a bit again. And then in 2016, I decided I'm going to run the Chicago Marathon again. I decided I'm going to exercise my demons, I guess I'm trying to say.

You felt all right though? You felt like you— it would be safe for you to run again at that point?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, the only thing I, I, I, ever knew the difference of what I had was that I could— I had to, and I still today for this matter, um, have to really be cognizant of knowing that I have to have my electrolytes up more so than I had before. So I mean, even in the coldest days, I guess what's very difficult for a lot of us, you know, to kind of consider taking water with us or, or taking any kind of electrolytes, whatever it is, I probably take more today than I probably ever did before I just think about it more than I ever did. And I just kind of make sure that I have to keep my electrolytes up. And what that ever might be, I don't know exactly. I just, I gotta stay hydrated more than anything, which is probably a good thing more than anything. So that was one of the things I had to kind of do. And I started running again and I felt good and I'm Training very, very well. And I get to this point where we fast forward to the, you know, the fall of 2016. And 2 weeks before the Chicago Marathon, I've decided I'm going— we have some very, very good friends of ours in Munich, and I'm going to take my wife to Munich. She's never been. And we make a quick stop in Milan. And in Milan, Italy, I—

this is—

I take a step back here. This is where I always knew that my neurologist always told me that if this ever happened again, which at some point in my life it may, that if it ever happened again, wherever I was in the world, whoever saw my— want to call it— saw the brain, I guess, like the picture of it, basically will say, oh my God, we have to do surgery. And sure enough. So I'm boarding a plane in Milan and the exact same thing happens to me where I just, I go into a full chronic grand mal seizure as a result of my cavernoma bleeding once again. And now I'm stuck in a hospital in Milan. And this is like literally, it's 8 days before the marathon. I, like, I was on full taper, everything that I, I was, you know, I was in perfect shape, I guess I'm trying to say. But I was just— this is 8 days before the marathon.

And wow, talk about a derail right there.

Yeah, exactly. And, and, and, you know, you couldn't defer the marathon 8 days like early, like none of it. You couldn't have any of that. So, um, that, you know, I'm stuck in this hospital in Milan, and we're— and I say to anybody, like, if you think We don't have good healthcare in North America, sorry to say. It's not easy being in an Italian hospital where you don't speak any English. And sure enough, they want to do surgery. So I credit my wife basically speaking to hundreds of people back home and also at 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning because of the time difference. So long and short of story, I was able to get airlifted out of Italy back to Toronto where I had surgery the first week of, of, uh, October. So now I, I have surgery, I have the cavernoma removed, and, um, and, and I'm fine. But the issue is I have today— I mean, what's— and just to put it all to respect of all your viewers, I mean, I I have surgery, uh, I guess it's, yes, it's the first week of October. I go back to running basically by the end of November. Um, I, I, I, I literally was able to, um, feel better. I mean, I, you know, I mean, I remember being in the hospital. One of the things was, uh, they, they couldn't understand why my heart rate was so low, whatever it is. I have to explain to them I was supposed to run a marathon today. Like, um, But sure enough, I was able to recover very quickly. And I think of, you know, I look at a lot of these people that, you know, had brain surgery and probably some people have never recovered for that matter. But I, you know, I decided, I just, I knew I was always going to live my life, that I just didn't want to be that way. I wanted to, you know, to know that You know, put one foot forward, you got to keep moving. Um, and I guess that's really how I've always lived my life.

And were there any recommendations from doctors telling you not to do certain type of exercises anymore, or were there any people who told you to stop running or—

Well, it's a good point. My, my, um, my neurologist, and even today, um, you know, he's wonderful basically. I don't think he ever advocated for me to run marathons, but he never really ever said don't run a marathon. I, you know, his preference would be, you know, go run 10, 15K because that's what he does, you know, basically. But there, the stress on your body to train for a marathon is, is unique and it's lots. Where I, where I do might have, where I may have an issue and I, and I You know, if you do strength training and then put it in perspective this way, if you're kind of lifting weights and the exertion of your body when you're doing that, there's a lot of blood flow that goes to your brain when you're doing that. Primarily when you're running, blood flow doesn't go to your brain. I mean, I shouldn't say that. Blood does go to your brain, but not in the way the exertion of pushing blood to your brain when you're exerting, the exertion of lifting weights over your head or that type of thing. And for this case in point, when you talk about low heart training, for that matter, when you go into a gym and you're doing strength training, you're going to have your heart spike very quickly and come down very quickly. That's great, but it's going to spike very quickly. I'm medicated. I'm at about a 60 to 70% risk of having another seizure unmedicated. So saying that, I'm on, uh, you know, medication of anti-seizure meds primarily for the rest of my life. Um, and, uh, and I, and I'm today I'm on the lowest possible dose of anti-seizure meds. I take in the morning, take in the evening, and they have no effect whatsoever on, on myself, uh, on my running or any of that stuff. It, it's just, it's a part of just kind of keeping keeping myself at bay, I suppose. That's really what it is.

So how did the training go after that? Because all of a sudden you've had two of these major events happen. Obviously that's in the back of your mind as well. How did the training go from there and some of your races?

Well, so now this is like fall of 2016, and as I said, I started running you know, several weeks after. And into 2017, I decided I'm going to run another marathon and I decide to run New York. And so this is late in November and I can run, you know, train through the summer and, you know, you have a lot of time to train for New York. So I'm going to train for New York. And, at this time, this is before the BAA changed the 5-minute schedule, and I'll get to that in a sec. So my time, because I would have— my age today is 54, and in April of 2020, I would be 55. And so I— my time at the time was 3:40, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, 3:40. And so I didn't really have in mind that I would be able to run a 3:40 marathon. I thought, well, that's wonderful. I guess really for New York was me— for us, um, I really wanted to kind of break 4 hours. It was like the first marathon I'd ever— second marathon I'd ever done. It had this mist of rain all day long, finished at 3:50, 56, 57, I think it was. And You know, that was— I cracked 4 hours and I thought, wow, this is just unbelievable. It's amazing. Um, and so now I, I, I think it's distinctly possible if I really add on miles, and I think I can really kind of do this, can I get down to 3:40? So I decide, um, that I'm going to run Cleveland now, which is now the third week of May into 2018. Um, and Um, I trained very hard to this point and I run Cleveland and I think— I can't remember, I think I finished, uh, let's say I think it was like 3:51 or 50 if I'm not mistaken. So I was 10 minutes still over my, my time. And I figure now I'm, I'm so close that I, I really think I can— I, I think this is all about training, that I can run this and get close. I'm going to run Chicago now again. So this is now going to be 3 marathons in 11 months. Um, when I, when I've done that, um, and I go back about really my, my running beforehand, uh, as I get into the equation of what, uh, Maffetone and Lohardt training has done for me is my training always before was this. Um, I would have, um, certain— my long runs were on Sunday and we would have, um, tempo training. The only thing we had as a group was tempo training on Tuesday nights. So Tuesday nights was essentially tempo training, was anywhere from 8 to kind of 10 kilometers, up to 6 miles, where you're running at about, let's say, 30 to 45 seconds, let's say, below your race pace, hypothetically. Um, and so I would run these tempos and you would huff and puff and, you know, blow the— blow your door down. And I remember, you know, coming— I would come home on a Tuesday night, whatever it is, and my wife would like look at me and look at like, you know, I'd probably— something just smacked me over with a baseball bat or something. And I come home and I think my legs were burning all night when I was going to sleep. Like, I think back at it now about what temple training was. Not that it wasn't bad. I don't mean it's not good for you, but I think about it, whereas how unnecessary I guess it was, because here it is, I run Chicago, and 2 weeks before I run the Chicago Marathon, the BAA announces, by the way, your time is now going to be 3:35. We're adding 5 minutes to all your time. And I go, oh, this is remarkable. So I run in Chicago 3:37, So I would have qualified if at 3:40, and I'm now, I'm now 2 minutes over my time instead of being 3 minutes under my time.

Um, but at least you were heading in the right direction. It just seemed like it was a heavy effort right there.

Yeah, I was, I, my training load started like I was really running well. I was training very well, but my training was all about, um, you know, and this goes back to the mantra that we all think about is, you know, no pain, no gain. Because I would run everything and anything I could hypothetically as fast as I could. I would look back at my Strava and say to myself, wow, I ran a 4:50 pace or 7:30 pace, and I thought, wow, that's super duper. I guess I could probably run that. Can I run that for 26 miles? Yeah, I think I could. It was just in your mind, you think you could do that. So I run 3:37 in Chicago and yes, it's a PB and the progression is working. And now we fast forward, I'm going to run Cleveland again and I'm running Cleveland again this year. So as I guess it's probably, let's say, I guess February or March or so, I get the equation of kind of I'm thinking, and I find, well, your channel, I suppose, on, uh, YouTube, and I'm looking at all these runners of about what low-heart training is. Um, and I'll take a step back. It's not like I never heard of low-heart training, but I think one of the things that I, I thought about was, I, years earlier, I read, um, Rich Roll's book Finding Ultra.

And great book.

Oh, it's phenomenal.

Yeah, it was very eye-opening. Yeah. And he wrote it like 10 years ago or something. It's been out for a while, and I think he just came out with an updated version too.

Yeah, he did, he did. Um, and there's one of the things that took me, uh, back from this before he ever did the Epic Five. He's one of two people in the world that did, you know, five ultra on five islands in Hawaii, like Yeah, 5 Ironmans, 5, like within a 5 or 6 day period.

Very little sleep and yeah, that was a lot of coordination.

Incredible. It's unbelievable. But one thing that struck me about when he started training, a friend of his told him to start running and run slow. So he writes that he originally starts training at about a, I think it was 10 and a half minute mile. And, and within 4 months or 3 months, he's now running an 8 minute mile. And I thought to myself, like, that's just incredible. And I remember at the time, so I'm not— this is probably, you know, 2015 or '16, I can't— when I read it, I'm thinking to myself, like, maybe this makes sense that you should probably run slower Could I run slower to get faster? But I never really adopted it. I never really understood it. I never really researched it. I never really did it, I suppose, but it was always in the back of my mind. So fast forward to today when, when, when my— when I decided that I'm going to run Cleveland, and I made it a point to myself, and I said to all my friends, my wife, and everything, that no matter what happens in Cleveland Whatever the result is, good or bad, I'm going to adopt low heart training going forward. I decided that I— this makes sense to me and what my mind put together. So I trained very hard for Cleveland. I get into Cleveland and I run Cleveland at 3:35:30. I'm 30 seconds over my BQ. But again, another BQ. So now, um, I decide as I, as I made this, regardless of what was going to happen, I'm going to adopt Mathitong-Lohar training. And so I start my Mathitong-Lohar training, I think the last week of May. I go and do a math test, and, um, I think I was like, I think my first test I was like 6:10, um, kilometer, uh, and And all my runs, and I realized my math, my math rate is, I figured it out, was 131. I take the 180 plus the progression I've had in time and, and, and I add 5 to it. So it comes to 131 and I run every single run under that time.

And, uh, yeah, yeah, that one thing.

And I, I start to, you know, this is now I do my first math test. I think it's the 29th of May, and I do another one on the 29th of June, and all of a sudden I see results. I think my second one, I think I gained like 15 seconds or something like that. But there's no doubt, like, I was the first— I guess the first, say, the first 3, 4 weeks, it is painfully slow. Like painfully, painfully slow. I was running an 11-minute mile or something like that. Like, I would run the same place that I would run all the time, and It's kind of through a park that's here, a cemetery park, and then it goes up a kind of a trail. And it's about, I guess I'm going to say about 8 miles, 14 kilometers or so from my house, basically from back and forth. And, you know, and like what Dr. Maffetone used to say, or used to say, like, you know, you don't, you're not going to run with your friends anymore. So I would say to all my friends, like, if you're going to run on Saturday or Sunday, I'm not running with you guys. I'm going to run at a different time or I'm going to, but I just, I'm going to load all this stuff onto Strava, I guess what it is, but, but painfully, painfully, painfully slow. There's no doubt about it, but I realized that quickly, uh, I am going to get faster. And so, um, I, math test after math test. So this is June, July, and then August, I'm down now to basically under 5 minutes. Like, I couldn't get over that. I cracked a full— probably a full minute and 20 seconds difference from what it was from just 90 days earlier. Like, it was unbelievable. Um, and even on the, on the same track that I'd been running, I was never even— I never really got down to that math because it's also— there's elevation, there's this and that, there's a couple hills you got to run. But, um, I I certainly— my runs, and I looked on Strava, and every run that matches the same run, I could see that I was faster than I was 30 days ago or 60 days ago. Um, so here it is, I come into the Erie, Pennsylvania marathon last Sunday, and, um, and then above all, here's the other thing I think is so amazing is I didn't I didn't go— I didn't train any speed work whatsoever over this summer. I didn't do any so-called tempo training that we spoke of. I didn't have any of that. And I think I probably adopted what from the Marathon PR program, what you often said is some of your best long runs where, you know, you kind of take the last 25% and run them fast. So I had a couple of, um, say 30-kilometer-long runs still to do, and I decided, okay, I'm going to run 10K of them or something like that at a faster pace. And I did. And I think I, I thought to myself, well, this is great because I feel good and I feel like I can finish strong. But going into the Erie Marathon, the only kind of anxiety I had with it was, um, what is my pace? Like, I really didn't know. I knew I was faster how much faster I am. And I know that if you, if you, if you're running at a math rate, you probably can run a marathon a little faster than your actual metabolic rate, basically, in that sense. So I kind of have something in my head, but I don't really know what that is. And I go and run the Erie Marathon and I run the Erie Marathon in 3:26:20. 28, which is 9 and a half minutes less than I ran Cleveland. So put it in perspective, I, I think to myself even today that I finished literally 10 minutes difference in 90 days, or 96 days to be exact. And I— 8 months earlier it was 2 minutes. Like, I— and I think now today, um, more than anything is I ran this marathon. I ran it completely by the same pace, literally from mile 1 to mile 26. I had the exact same pace, give or take 1% or something like that. I had no huff and puff. I never felt any pain. I just, I ran remarkably. And, And, and I read about this as well. Here's the most thing I think about now today is, uh, I was saying to a friend of mine earlier that I remember when I finished Cleveland or even, you know, Chicago, Cleveland, I think our hotel was, you know, 600 meters from, uh, from the finish. And yet when I finished, I think it took me 35 minutes to walk back to the hotel. It was like, like all of us, we run these marathons.

I recognize that feeling.

Yeah. Yeah, you can't move. Yet, eerie, when I finished, my wife's looking at me, "Is there something wrong with you?" Like, I'm walking around. Like, I was sitting down and walking around. I, you know, generally you'd feel like, you know, you go back to the hotel, have a shower, and you have to take a nap. And I didn't have any of that. We're gonna— we have to drive back to Toronto from there, which is about a 3.5-hour drive. And the perception is, well, we're gonna stop every half an hour so I can get out and stretch, whatever it is. Didn't have any of that. Forget it. Let's just keep going, go home. And, uh, I didn't nap at all. Like, I think I got home and by 9:30 at night, that's when I crashed, but I felt fine. Like I've never had recovery as good as I've had, um, post this marathon, basically. It's fascinating.

So when you look back at the last 6 months, basically of your training, With the two different marathons, the two different training approaches and everything, what are some of your key takeaways from this and how do you plan on training even moving forward now? Because you did qualify for Boston, you have the Boston Marathon coming up. Very curious to hear about that.

Yeah, and as it is, I mean, this was back in the Beginning of the year, I actually signed up for Chicago again. So I'm gonna run Chicago again in 3, 4 weeks.

Yeah, I'll see you out there. Looking forward to it.

So Chicago for me now is really— I have no goal. I mean, whatever Chicago will be, if I run it fast, great. If I run it slow, I have no goal. I really don't care because, you know, what I did in Erie and BQ'd. But looking back at my training, today from 6 months ago, what I think is really unique. And, uh, as an example from Lohar training, uh, if I look at what I ran Cleveland in, um, as, as again, I'll go back, I ran it 3:35:30. It was a very hot day in Cleveland that day and very windy, but my heart rate was substantially higher. As a matter of fact, from the last 10 kilometers Um, so 32 kilometers to 42 kilometers. So last 6 miles, uh, my heart rate in Cleveland was about 178. Like, it was peaking. Like, and I don't remember that, but I probably was, you know, certainly huffing and puffing and, you know, trying to, you know, to get to the finish line basically. And I do remember that. Like, I remember it was a real struggle. To get to the finish line, but I finished. Today, when I look at my heart rate between those two marathons, my average was— I was running about an average of about 155. So I'm probably about, like, say for example, 20, call it 23 basis points over my math rate. And when it comes to the last 10 kilometers, my heart rate went up to about 160. 160, 165 maybe at max. And I never felt anything. And as it is, um, this was the first marathon that I actually was able to step on the gas when I saw the finish line. I've never had that where I thought like, I'm about maybe about 1.1 kilometer out. You can actually see the finish line in Erie. And I say to myself, I have this, I'm going to get it. Like, you know, and I'm I'm going and go for it. Like, so I don't run that much, much faster, but I run faster. Like, and, and yet my heart rate doesn't change. Like, I think my average heart rate for the whole race was, I think about, call it 30 basis points over my max. And as I said, I, I just didn't feel, uh, anything that bothered me in any of my race. I just didn't feel any huffing or puffing or or have any pain, I suppose. I didn't bonk in Chicago, but the strangest thing happened to me is, um, I'm— I think I'm running very well and I think I'm doing very, very well. And I, I have this pacer comes by me and I'm running this pacer and he, he's a, um, a, a 3— I think he's a 3:30 pacer. And I say to him, how you doing? He goes, yeah, we're doing great. And he yells out to his group and he says, yeah, we're about 2 minutes under the gun. And I said, oh, that's great. Like, you know, I'm about 2, 2.5 kilometers to go and I'm running with him and that's fine. And then I slowly start to slow down to about a minute and a half later. I don't even see them anymore. They're gone. Um, and I basically bonked with about 800 meters to go. Like, it was the strangest thing I ever had. I actually saw the finish line and I don't know if those who know Chicago, you got to go up this little hill at the end. It's not a hill. It's, it's a bit of, it's like a, it's like 2 steps, but after 40 kilometers, it feels like a hill. And I probably gave up a good 2 and a half minutes right there. Like it was bizarre to me. Not that I would have qualified even there, but I'm just saying how much that was from the difference. 8, you know, now fast forward a year later, basically, and being able to run quicker at the end.

Nice. Yeah, you absolutely developed that aerobic engine very well, using much more of your actual body fat for energy, which is like a very nice way to finish strong that way. So what was your overall training volume like? Because it sounds like you increased your training volume overall time and distance-wise, but yeah, you lowered your intensity. It would be good to hear a bit more about that.

Yeah, my training volume year over year, uh, was— it's like, I, I look at right now, uh, and I, I, I also look every day at these Elevate for Strava extension, and my training volume from there shows that I, I'm about, uh, 450 or, or 500 kilometers more this year than last year. Um, and so my training volume for this last marathon in Erie no doubt was, was more. I decided that I'm going to run approximately 70 miles a week. And in the heat of the training and through the heat of this summer, um, I was able to get up at the crack of dawn and let's say go run 15 kilometers. And then I would do a double day, uh, let's say on a, on a Tuesday and then maybe again on a Thursday and run another, like, so I'd run 30 kilometers in these two days, whatever it is. And I would finish off, um, at the end of the week at 112 kilometers. And that was the most I'd ever run. I, I think, um, I think I, I think when I was training for Chicago earlier, the, the longest week I ever had was about, um, I suppose, I think maybe 100 kilometers, if I'm not mistaken. So this is, this is a good 15 kilometers more. And I did this consistently for about 3 or 4 or 5 weeks, if I'm not mistaken. I was about Over an 8-week period, it was about 850 kilometers. And then I, I, I decided that, and, and I learned this from the Marathon PR program that I, you know, you've got to take a week down. So now come beginning of August, I take it down to about 45, 50 miles. And for the last 3 weeks of training, I think I, I brought it down to 60, 65 miles, basically. So, um, I, I went into the marathon with certainly the largest training block where I was running about 10 hours a week, um, where, um, and, you know, and I say for everybody, it's not easy. I mean, what I, what I would have done is, you know, having a 6-year-old at home, it's not easy. My, my, uh, my wife, she goes to the gym every morning at 6 AM. It's incredible. But she would come home, right? I would walk out the door the moment she'd come home at 7, and I would run for an hour and be home at 8:15 or something like that type thing. And that's what I would do every morning. And actually, one of the things I really enjoyed about— and I go back to this whole training aspect about low-heart training because it— and I talk about the enjoyment. I love the availability to— and not everybody has this, to be able to go out first thing in the morning and get your run done. But, but above all, it— like, what I think about the increase of volume that I had and the increase of hours that I had, it was, it was pure joy for me. I never felt that before in running. Like, it was really— I never had where I, I guess the stress struggle of the idea of seeing that, you know, I got to go out and do this other, you know, this other 6 or 7, 8 or 10 mile run. It wasn't about that. It was just that I, I really, I love the idea to say, can I run and keep my heart rate down? And can I get faster? I mean, that was really what was my whole perception of running. And I enjoyed running, um, more so then than I ever had enjoyed before.

Yeah.

It just It brought that love back to it.

Those morning runs are really magical sometimes, or most times really. Even this morning, I woke up early, ended up going on a 5:30 morning run as the sun was rising, and at least you get an hour in already and the day is just getting started. Very often, I talk to a lot of other runners who are in similar situations, It's between you, Michael Ovens mentioned it as well, one of the other podcast guests, and so many people are just waking up a bit early. At least you get that, that hour in or 45 minutes or whatever it might be. And I think the more you do that consistently, you just start with so much happiness hormones in your body throughout the day already. And very often too, if I push it out, I notice the chances of me going for a workout later on in the afternoon if I haven't done it in the morning, sometimes the chances are just smaller because there's other fires that are coming up or the kids.

Or the other thing is you've probably eaten more, you've, so you've had, I mean, so much, but you've eaten more, but I'm saying, but you've now gained more into the day and you've had more going on exactly what you said. And then you have to really kind of squeeze in time 'cause you know, whether that be, you gotta be home for this or be back for that call or this meeting. I just find that, agreed, I find the morning is majestic. Like it's, it's, uh, now as we get into fall and there's a lack of sunlight, it's, it's, it's, it's far more difficult than it was, you know, 2, 3 months ago in that sense.

Yeah, exactly. We've got to bust out the headlamp again or get more creative for sure. Earlier you mentioned the Elevate by Strava app or plugin, which is one of my favorite plugins for Strava as well. Let's talk through that a little bit more, how you use this tool in your training and what were some of the takeaways from that?

Sure, well, I think it was one of your podcasts or whatever it is, someone talked about this.

Yes, Jason Jereman. He was the one who first brought it up.

Okay, all right. So when I remember listening to this and I thought about, well, okay, let me take a look and I see that I go and I put it onto Chrome onto my computer basically and see how this— and it's not like at the beginning it wasn't easy to install, but then when I started using it, the remarkable information that you can find from it, it's almost like as if it's I guess the way I talk about it today is it's almost Strava Plus. It's like what Strava should be, I guess I'm trying to say. Um, because, uh, more than anything, it actually, it, it helped me understand my training load. Um, because I don't think that a lot of runners are, and myself included, really understand the true training load and the fatigue that you're putting onto your body. So here I is, I'm running, you know, 50, 60. You have runners on your show who are running 150, 200 kilometers. Basically, the fatigue that you're putting on your body— I mean, a lot of runners can do it, and that's great that they can. Um, I mean, even me, when I, when I started after Cleveland, increasing my mileage, I only increased it every 10% a week. So I, I wanted to ensure that I, I, you know, I didn't increase too much. But when when I increased it. Um, but I look at the training load and then what Strava Elevate shows you is it shows you your fitness, which is great that everybody can see what your fitness is and can you push your fitness to be higher. Yeah. Okay. That's great. But your fatigue, I think, is the most important part of it all. Cause the fatigue shows you that, you know, here it is 3, 4 weeks before my marathon. I think I had a, I think my fitness was showing like 53 or 54, I can't remember exactly, and my fatigue was like 75. And yet you feel fine, like you think you're okay, you feel perfectly fine, but you get the notion of understanding that you have to kind of bring— and certainly as I think you've shown in the, on your marathon PR program, that when you ran Boston, that the 3 weeks prior to your— in your taper, that prior to your race, you have to bring that load down. You've got to bring down the fatigue number. And how you do that, if that means, you know, you got to reduce your mileage, if— how you got to reduce your hours. Because I went into Erie, as you've mentioned it before, I think my fitness went down by 3 or 4 points, whatever it is, but my fatigue went down by almost 30 or 40 points where it just, it was just the opposite. And then I went into Erie, um, completely fresh, I suppose.

Yeah, it is, it is so fascinating to see the fitness. Like you do a workout and you see the fitness level go up maybe by half a point or a point and gradually consistently over over time you see this trend heading in the right direction if training is going right. But then indeed the fitness level, if you go out tomorrow on a hard workout or you work out for an hour or 2 hours, the fatigue level could jump up rather quickly. And then when you do that back to back, you even see it getting to a point and then there's a third line, that's the orange line that actually shows you the form. And I will make sure to, in the blog post in the video to actually show some of this as well, some of the graphs, so you can actually visualize it. But once that form goes negative, it goes from an optimal zone into like—

Into freshness, from neutral into freshness.

And then you can even get in that overtraining zone where you know, like, alright, it's time for me to step back a little bit. And even when you and I had some conversations, because during the peak of your actual training volume, you were doing 10 hours a week, you were adding some speed work to that as well, and that fatigue level was kind of getting higher than the fitness level, little bit further than we wanted that to be, then it's nice being able to recognize that, taking a step back, and rather quickly, within a day or two, seeing the fatigue level drop again and the fitness level not really impacting.

Yeah, because I, I, I think, you know, uh, when you and I were talking, you're right. I mean, there was, there was a point probably by about the end of July, I think it was where I probably was really close to overtraining. Like I wasn't overtraining, but when you look at Strava for Elevate, it kind of shows you, um, that you, you are on the boundary of push of overtraining. What that might mean, I guess I'm trying to say, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't mean, okay, tomorrow you're going to walk out and you're you're going to hurt yourself, but you run the risk, you run a greater risk that you, you could. Um, and that's what I think. And the other thing, even those lines, I think when you look back at the Elevate options that you can see in a lot of things about your heart rate and, and to quantify how much your heart rate is on hills and to quantify how much your heart rate is on this stretch or 75% of that, like it's really, there's a lot of information that you can Garnett. I mean, there's some people that can digest this remarkably, I guess I'm trying to say, and see huge information from it all. But the basis of it all, I think everybody, uh, every, every cyclist, every runner should be using Elevate for Strava because it will tell you information you will never see it in Strava. Like you'll never see it in any program basically for that matter. It just doesn't, it's not available. This is remarkable, the way this program works.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm a big fan as well, and I'm actually excited to soon interview Thomas, the developer of the app, on the, on the Extra Mileage Show as well.

Wonderful.

We're definitely going to find out some more as well of how he put all these calculations together, how he developed the backend in different ways. That'll be an interesting one to find out some more there too.

Yeah, beautiful.

Going back a little bit more to the conversation of what you start— you mentioned earlier, so when you got into low heart rate training, you were training at— you used to train very many of your runs at a 7:30 minute mile, and all of a sudden you had to slow it down to about an 11 minute mile, and there were quite a few frustrations involved. Can you describe, or like maybe you have some suggestions for people going through that similar experience as well, people looking to start out with low heart rate training, like yes, you describe it as a frustration, yet still you found a way to overcome this. Do you have any suggestions, recommendations, or ways that you approach this?

I think it's, for me personally, I think I have to take out the word frustration. There's no doubt about it, it's frustrating. There's, there's, uh, when you start it, it, it, it is for anybody, it's painfully slow. Um, so here it is, like I'm running, you know, for example, uh, you know, as, as you say, a 7, you know, 7:40 mile or so it is. And the next day I'm going out and doing a run that's like an 11-minute mile. Like 11 minutes for me to run an 11-minute mile today, it's like I gotta walk a lot of that, or, you know, I gotta jog, I suppose, not run. I guess that's what it comes down to. But, um, it's one of the things I recognized rather quickly was how it's not how easy these runs were or how easy any of the runs are. Um, it's that there was no, you know, one of the things I, I kind of think more than anything that I, I said to myself when I came into Erie after all of this this is the first training block I think I came into. I know I came into with no wear and tear on my body. Like I didn't have any, you know, even in, you know, many times when you go into taper and you have this kind of feeling of that or that, this, I didn't have any of that. So I think back at the beginning for a lot of runners, if they can understand, um, that there is for, for, for many ways, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. And for a lot of runners, it's kind of how fast it will come. There's some, it might take much longer than others. Um, there's some who can do it very quickly. It depends. I mean, I was fortunate that I probably had a lot of, um, uh, you know, I had a lot of training anyhow. I just finished the Cleveland Marathon. I had a lot of fitness capability. Um, so for one runner starting today that doesn't have the fitness or, or probably hasn't run a lot or just starting to, whatever that might be, it might take them, he or she, longer. But whatever they do, if they stick to it, and if you absolutely stick to it, you will start to see a progression of change. There's no doubt. Like, it's— and for some, it'll be, uh, change very quickly as the numbers will drop. Some might just see a change of a little bit, but it will change.

Yeah, yeah. And, and that's a very good point right there. I think some people indeed have to de-stress first, where they might not see any progress, or they might even slow down further as their body gets used to it. Yet I think it's that switch in the mind that you talk about as well, when you don't see it necessarily as a frustration, but it's more like, okay, this is a challenge. We leave the ego at the door and We're just going outside and it's more about being outside, being in nature, actually becoming one with your body. And it's the time on your feet, not the distance you're running. And I think that was a big shift for me as well. Once I started looking at like, now I got half an hour time, I'm going to go outside for half an hour, whether I run 5K or whatever I might be running, it doesn't matter. And even, even now, like going through through another training cycle and I'm doing everything time-based. So last week I was running 6 hours, or then 6.5, and then 7, and gradually like that, looking at the time. And eventually I'll start looking at distances and paces some more, but still in the early stages, it's very nice to be time-focused there too.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, I never really got into the whole perception of looking at time, but I will agree that I never really looked at at the beginning of how much I ran or how long I ran or how many miles or kilometers I ran. It was more about how long or how far I could run feeling good, I guess I'm trying to say. And, and, and that was— and the other thing, I, I even have this today, this— I ran this morning and I had this today. I think one of the things that I think is so, um, it's, it's unique because we were all there. I was one of these people. But you're running, and then behind you, you hear he or she huffing and puffing, whatever it is. And I think to myself, like, that was me. It's almost like you want to turn around to them. I always kind of think, why isn't everybody doing it? I guess I'm trying to say, because, like, I want to turn around and say, you know, by the way, you can change all this if you want. But But there's a whole lot of misunderstanding, I think, that a lot of people— that, as I said, it goes back to that mantra of that kind of no pain, no gain, because that was me. I was there for the vast majority of my life. There's no doubt about it. It was part of what I did, you know. But today, I don't— I don't feel any of it. I feel that— I feel, as I said, I go back to the whole point of I run with a bunch of friends of mine now. Like, I say, example, I ran this morning and I have a tremendous amount of joy of running again. Like, it's, it's, it's just— it's brought out that, that ability to feel not so much the elation of the fact that, you know, you're BQ'd and all this stuff, but just the ability just be able to go out and run and not have any wear and tear on yourself. You don't feel it, is what I'm trying to say. And it will, it'll happen to everybody. It's just, it's just a part of what they have to look at. And I think that the other thing that I think you and I talked right at the beginning is kind of, um, and certainly, uh, Dr. Mathetone's adoption of understanding it through nutrition and all that stuff, because I listen to a lot of, uh, your podcast and all that kind of stuff. And I've 5 and a half years being on a plant-based whole food diet. I'm completely— I probably just the opposite of— I think you had Zach Bitter there yesterday, great show by the way— who's all these people who are on low carbohydrates. I'm probably— I don't count anything, to be honest with you, but I'm probably on a very high carbohydrate carbohydrate diet. Like, I, if I probably look at it, I probably am, and I don't care.

But at least when you look at the type of carbs you put in your body, you're not putting a whole bunch of processed junk food in your body. It's still, when you and I spoke through it, there's a lot, a lot of vegetables and fruits and whole foods involved here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I probably always think of myself, I have the I probably have the same breakfast every morning. My breakfast is probably more— I don't count it, but it's probably more protein, more fiber, and more complex carbohydrates than most people have all week, never mind all day.

But please tell me more.

Well, I have a slow cooker, and every single night I put in a cup of steel-cut oats and 4 liters of water and cook it 8.5 hours overnight. I get up in the morning, I take a bowl, I put in crushed walnuts, flaxseed, hemp seed, strawberries, blueberries, and bananas if I have all those, whatever that might be. And I put in a scoop of, of, of organic peanut butter. And then I put in maybe teaspoon. I can't even— I don't even measure it. A teaspoon of maple syrup and Ceylon cinnamon, and that's it. That's what I have every single morning.

Sounds delicious.

It is, it's marvelous. But when you think about it, add it all up, there's probably about 10 grams of protein because just from flaxseed, from steel-cut oats, from walnuts, from all that stuff, but I don't count it. There's an abundance of fiber. It's probably one of the things I don't think we have any of that, enough of it. And, and that's all complex, probably low glycemic carbohydrates. And that's exactly probably what the vast amount of my diet might be from the carbohydrate point. Cause you're right. It's not genetically modified, you know, um, crap that a bunch of us are eating. It's, it's really just, um, uh, low glycemic carbohydrates, but there's a lot of them in a lot of the fruits and vegetables that you're eating basically.

Yeah. Well, and you have experimented a lot too, and it seems like you've found something that's working well for you. Like not only with your regular nutrition, but even on race day as well. Maybe we can talk about that, that some more as well, because I think that's, that's some really good information there.

Yeah. I mean, um, my, I would say that, you know, being on a plant-based diet for me, what it's done, it's, it's made, I think it's given me more energy, more vitality. Uh, I, I sleep much better than I ever did before. I'll get to that in a second because I think that's utterly important. But, uh, race day, um, um, I, I, I wasn't— and I did this even in the area— I don't really go and carb load. I'm not one of those people who sign up and go have a plate of pasta the night before or whatever it is or something like that. But what I thought I found, um, and I, I, I— this worked very well for me, whatever it is— that the, the night before, and I'm saying the night, I think you go for dinner around 4:45 5 in the afternoon, but try to go to bed so early. But I started adopting eating sushi the night before. Now, I don't eat sushi that predominantly— all of us, they don't have fish or anything like that. But this would be sushi, like, let's say, with plant-based stuff of avocados and sweet potatoes and things like that. Things like that. But the reality is, I don't know, like when I think about it, have you ever had sushi and then put— step on a scale the next morning? Don't do it because your weight is going to be about 2 or 3 pounds heavier. Why? Because of the amount of sodium that's in sushi. So when you think about it, so I started to kind of adopting this, and I, so I have sushi the night before, and, um, and I think to myself, well, I don't know how much sodium I need for a race or don't, and the air is cool where I'm running, but I probably have a vast amount in my, my body when I start this race. And I run with, um, uh, the Martin gels. Um, and I use the Martin gels. I take, um, I take, uh, 4 of them, but I've never taken 4. I I have on my, uh, an app I run with my iWatch, and I run with an app called Work Outdoors, which is a spectacular fitness app for anybody who wants to use your iWatch. And one of the benefits of the, of the app is that you can actually time it for nutrition, which I think is remarkable, uh, because you can set it— let's say you want to take it for, uh, every 8 or 10K. So I have it set for every 45 minutes. And in the past, what I found is like when you're running a marathon, you know, 45 minutes and then 90 minutes, but you kind of, you kind of lose sense of time or you get a little disoriented, you know, that I take it 45 minutes ago, that I take it 3. So now when it has this thing that flashes up my watch, it says eat, I, I take it. And so I don't, I really only take 3 of them because the last one comes up basically, you know, you're at— I think I said that 35 or 36 kilometer run, and I think to myself, I don't need one for the next 4 kilometers or 5 kilometers. Um, but during the race I would drink a lot of water, um, Gatorade here and there. Like, I don't think— the other thing is when I'm running these races, I don't think anything about calories. I couldn't care less. I don't know what, um, if I took in 300 or 400 calories, if I— all I know is you're going to burn 3,000 calories or whatever it is. So I, I, none of this stuff really ever— I don't care about things, what I'm trying to say. Because the other thing, being on a plant-based diet, I think my weight's probably fluctuated 2-3 pounds in 5 years. That, that's it. It does— it just doesn't move in that sense. So I, I I really don't care. So I don't look at that, but, uh, I do believe that nutrition is vital when you're running. And I think for a lot of runners, it's all different. And I think, um, you know, depends what you use, what you don't. One of the things I found with the Martin gels is, uh, the Martin drink mixes, for example, um, the, the morning before the marathon, and I've done this before long runs, if you use the 320 mix, that's— now this is predominantly sugar, I guess I'm trying to say, but it's, it's, it's 99 grams of carbohydrates. And your body can really only take in at any given time about 100 grams of carbohydrates. Like, that's other than your, your body getting sick. So I would drink this over a period of half an hour or so, feel fine, like, you know, I'm okay. And And, um, and when you, when you think of that, that's about the equivalent of about 4 gels. Like it's, if you had 4 gels, that's the same carbohydrates added to 4 gels in one drink mix. So it's a heavy, heavy load. So you're going to now, um, build a huge glycogen load at the beginning of a race if you were using something like that. Or whatever you're going to use, I guess I'm going to say, and they build that glycogen load. So I don't, like, I don't think about building carbohydrates, but when I look back at it, I probably am. It's not something I ever signed up for, I guess I'm trying to say, but I, but I do.

Yeah. I've, I've experimented to some extent with the Martin, uh, at some samples and it did feel quite comfortable on the stomach actually. I did the mixed drink as well. I haven't tried the gels yet. At this point, I'm experimenting with the Yukon, and I've, I had a sample pack over here, and I've done it before a few long runs just to kind of see how it sits on the stomach, and it seems to work quite well as well. The one thing that I'm sometimes cautious about is when you take certain type of nutrition and you combine it with nutrition on the worse as well, or with other type of nutrition. Just, this is where I always try to experiment in long runs and even at some higher intensity runs just to see how some of your intestines really take it.

Well, so I, you bring up a good point because if you, you take whatever gel you're taking, but in this case, you know, Martin Gel, if you take them and then let's say hypothetically take Gatorade, it's a mix of whatever that is and the mix of sugars or that. So how much is that going to upset your stomach, or is it going to upset the stomach? So I would primarily, when I took a gel, whatever time that was, for the next probably half an hour, I'd be taking nothing but water going forward. And then I would start to take, um, the next 2 or 3 stops, I would take, um, Gatorade. So I would mix it up like the Gatorade. I would take about, you know, call it 30, 40 minutes after I took the gel. So that you had something already that, you know, you settled down in your stomach, I guess I'm trying to say. Um, so, but it didn't bother me, but, but I can see how it can bother some people. Um, and, and I agree that you should probably train with this, uh, in your long runs. I think you should do any of these kinds of trainings in your long runs to see how, how they, how they work. Um, cause, uh, I think that The thing I personally like about the Martin gels is there's no flavor to them. It's not like you go out and get bubblegum flavor or cotton candy or whatever it is. There's no flavor. I mean, there's a little bit of a lemon flavor to it, I suppose, if you could say that.

Yeah. So you've had a goal of wanting to qualify for Boston, and when you and I have spoken previously, I know you're very goal-oriented, as in, I'm gonna go get to Boston, like, it's gonna happen and we're gonna find a way to make it work. And so you're obviously very excited, passionate to get going on race day. Tell me a little bit more about your race strategy, because you knew what time you had to run and you'd been training at lower heart rate. How do you go into the pacing? How did you do this from like an execution standpoint on race day?

Um, well, to answer your question, I, I did something different I think than I've done in any other race day. I, I don't know if the execution was this, like, because you're right, I am quite goal-oriented, I guess, I suppose. But I— this race day was different, uh, and and will, will be different this way going forward because, um, I didn't, as I said, I really didn't run any speed work going into this run. And predominantly, I would say if I look back at Strava, every one of my runs would have been about, about an 8:15, 8 to like a 5, like a 5:25 kilometer. Like, that's what my runs would have been. And so I, I never really had a so-called race pace. I, but I had a goal number in mind and my, my goal, my number was to be under 3:30. I want it to be, let's say 5 minutes or so under my BQ.

Um, which is just in case, uh, because there's more people signing up for it. So you need to be. Fast, right?

And I think, you know, um, you got to be cognizant of knowing that whatever your race is, uh, you got to kind of add plus 3 minutes, plus or minus what you're going to be. So if I think I'm going to— I'm saying to myself I'm going to run a 3:29 marathon, I'm 3 minutes, you know, 3 minutes up and 3 minutes down, I'll get in, I guess I'm trying to say. Um, but I, I guess what it is is when I started running my race, uh, I, I ran the— and I've done this with every race where I ran the first 2 or 3 kilometers slower than the rest of— like, I, I don't— I mean, all of us run out real quickly at the start line, and I've kind of, you know, realized I've done this in a lot of my races where I run the first 2 or 3 kilometers slow. Now, slow would have been like 5:10, 5:05, whatever it is. And then all of a sudden, about the 2.5 kilometers, I, I don't— I guess somehow I just picked it up and I start running a 4:50 pace. And I ran that pace for the whole, the rest of the whole race, like 4:49, 4:48, 4:47, back to 4:49, sometimes 4:50. Like it, the whole race, the whole way. Um, and so going forward, what I think is, I think that you, you have to understand it. And specifically in this low heart rate training is that if your math rate is basically going to say, I'll just for argument's sake and say your math rate is 5 or 7, whatever that, you know, 7-minute mile or 5-minute kilometer, whatever that might be. In theory, if you've been doing all this training and you have this, you want to call it aerobic energy, you probably can and should run faster. How much faster you should run, you really wouldn't really know until you get into that race, uh, because, um, it could be 5 minutes faster. It could be 10 minutes. It could be 15 minutes faster. It depends. And, you know, so there's, there's a lot of caveat there for a lot of people, but there's no doubt about it. Like, I think in my mind, uh, as being goal-oriented, I'll think of this way. I have 8 months to, you know, to train for Boston. I'm not going to take 8 months to train for it, but let's say I'm, I'm 8 months between now and Boston. Uh, I, I could probably say to myself, Well, if I keep on this low-hard training, I can be like a 3:15 marathoner in Boston. Like how many people PB in Boston basically for that matter. I, so I think about that's, you know, what I think I could do, but I, I think that the execution to the training is what brings you to the start line basically, and how you get yourself to the start line, I guess, trying to say.

So at this point you're 54. For Boston Marathon you're going to be 55. Yeah. Your plan is to some extent like still a high volume from my understanding. How do you, how do you deal with recovery, with rest, with sleep? Do you do any stretches? Is there certain hours of sleep that you're trying to hit? Obviously you still have a young daughter at home as well. How do you go about all of this?

Well, I mean, so after every run I have, um, every single run, I come home and I roll. I use a roller and I roll out my, my legs, uh, for a good 10 minutes, every single run, um, good or bad. I just, I roll them out. Um, and so that's primarily my stretches that I, that I do. Um, now when it comes to sleep, I, I, I think that sleep is utterly fundamentally important for all of us, certainly as we age, whatever it is. And I think there's one thing that people misunderstand about sleep. So I try to get 8 hours of sleep. I think on average, let's say, and I have an app that I use and I sleep with my watch as it is. And I use an app called SleepWatch that tells me, not only does it tell me, oh, your heart rate or tell you that, or how long you slept. And I think I'm an average, let's say, 7:45 or so for the past 8 weeks or so. But the fundamental most important thing that you have to think of in sleeping is your sleep rhythm. And that means that you've got to train your body to go to sleep essentially the same time every night, give or take within half an hour. So for example, if you're going to bed at 10:00 10:30 at night or 11, whatever, whatever that might be, that you are going to sleep essentially that same time. There's things are going to change, you know, I mean, you have this tonight, you went out for dinner with that, that's all going to change. But 85% of the time, you should be able to sleep on a certain rhythm that will allow you to go to sleep at the same time that will help you get to sleep. And that's how your body gets into that rhythm. But the rhythm is utterly important. And I think it's vital that you have to kind of learn how to sleep properly. I think we know today how it's beyond more healthier than any one of us can truly understand.

It always fascinated me when you have had a good night's sleep, how good you feel you feel, not just energy levels throughout the day, but even on your runs, and how so not motivated I have to run sometimes after, yeah, a very short night of sleep. Or sometimes it takes me much longer to get into it, or my heart rate might spike. Sometimes I also think, yeah, you're almost in survival mode after, after an extended period of, of little sleep, that, yeah, that additional stress It's definitely not good.

Yeah. It's like, I feel the same thing too. Sometimes, you know, I had a lousy night of sleep or whatever it is, and I'm going to get out at 7:00 AM. I'm going to go to run. And it's a struggle, like you, but then you start to get into the rhythm and you're okay. And you start running, you're fine, but you don't, it's not as, it's not as well a run, I suppose, as you're right. If you wake up rested, feel good, and you can walk out the door feeling that burst of energy that you should have. A lot of people misunderstand is they think, well, I slept, you know, 4 hours last night. I'm going to sleep 10 hours tonight. I'm going to try to make it up. That doesn't work. The makeup doesn't work. It's not about— your body needs the rhythm that you need to keep that rhythm in line of how you sleep. And that rhythm is over a 10 10-day period. So you could be, you could have slept 4 hours last night, but the next 3 nights you got to sleep 7, 8 hours basically to get that rhythm back.

Yep, yep. Right on. Well, we've been talking for more than an hour already. I want to be respectful of your time here. So there's just in closing here, there's quite a few people listening who have different goals. Like these are men, women, older runners, younger runners, many of them are looking to improve in their running, whether they want to better their time, feel healthier, stronger, or even qualify for Boston or any other large goal out there. Do you have any closing thoughts, any high-level recommendations from your end?

Well, okay, so as I said right from the beginning, As I go through this all and I think about this all, and I've been running with another runner, a friend of mine who's, uh, he's 63. He's run Boston before and qualified again this year. And I, when I started my, my marathon heart rate running, um, I, I, I brought him in with me. And so here's a guy who's, you know, who ran like a 5:58 in Boston. I'm sorry, 4:58 in Boston. And back in the day, you know, he would have been a, let's say, a, um, a 3:30 runner, hypothetically. So now today, you know, he, he probably will— in my mind, I, I don't know, but I can see his training— he's going to get down to easily 20 minutes faster when he goes to Boston next year, give or take whatever the weather might be or whatever it is. And Boston never really has the best weather. But one of the things that, you know, we always think about and is I kind of think if this is so good, why isn't it adopted by everybody else? And I think that it's not, it's because we live in an environment, we live in a world that is structured by this whole no pain, no gain. And it's, it's kind of getting people to really understand. Like, I think that the fundamental thing that I learned in all the training, that the thing I never did before, and I think if I could say this to everybody, and probably your coaches have probably told you this, slow down your long runs. Like, that's the, the one thing I think— I mean, you can talk about the weekly runs and call them the junk runs or whatever. I don't know. I never called them that, but I would go out and do my long runs and I would do them— not that I would do them super fast, but I would do them fast. Um, and thinking that's, oh, this is going to be my marathon. And I think I'm going to run well. And yet, um, I think for a lot of runners, like even runners today that are, you know, a, um, let's say a, 3:10 marathoner or 3:15 marathoner. You've had everybody on your show who predominantly are sub-3-hour marathoners. But even those people, like, I have friends of mine and runners I know who can run super races of 3:05, 3:10. And I thought to myself, well, if, you know, if you really would adopt this or could adopt it or or even adopt some of it, you might even crack 3 hours easily, I guess I'm trying to say. And therein lies, I think, that what I think we all have to understand is the aerobic energy. And one thing I'll take from the last marathon is here's what I looked at my heart rate and analyzing my heart rate. The marathon probably is predominantly going to be 90% aerobic and 10% anaerobic. And that's exactly how I ran the last race. 8% of my heart rate was in anaerobic zone at the last 4 or 5K, which means that, well, could I have run another 3 or 4 or 5 miles? Possibly, but I probably was going to be redlining at some point, you know, but the fact that you can run it like that is something that a lot of people have to understand. You know, I, I, I think you were talking in one of your episodes and you think about all the people that you ran on a show. I remember watching this one guy that was, um, I guess he was a good probably 500 meters in front of me and all the whole race and he's wearing one of these Nate— I remember him because he's wearing one of these Nathan backpacks and 35K I'd blow by him like ran right by him, whatever. Now probably I'm running the pace and he is, he is slowing down. Like, that's really what happens. So I think one of the things I would just say, I went back and one thing in my mind and realized about this all is back in January here in Toronto, I went to a school, a university, and I actually went to have a full metabolic test. Test and a VO2 max test done. This is in January prior to my so-called Cleveland Marathon. And I think back and I look back at it today, it's not much different than my math test today. It's, it's probably 2, 3 basis points. But I'm sitting with the guy from the place there and he says to me, he goes like, and if you think in theory that if you took some very obese person and if they ran at their metabolic rate, this obese person, he or she, could run indefinitely. And I look at him and I go, what are you talking about? And he says, well, because if you're running in your fat-adapted zone, they would run entirely, he or she, on their own fat and carb— and for carbohydrates. And it was in my mind thinking of that, like, how does that make any sense? Sense, but it does. And I, I get it now. It makes complete sense that you are running strictly using your own source for energy. And if you keep running and you keep running for the joy of it, you will just, you know, get better. You'll become a better athlete and become a better runner. And in, in turn, you'll become a faster runner. How fast, it's different for everybody. I mean, there are some people that will run a 2:20 marathon. There are some people who, you know, in my mind, my goal would be one day to get below 3 hours and I'm confident I'll do it.

Yeah, exactly. It's the patience and the consistency and the buildup to gradually over time get there. Absolutely. And I think quite a few people look too much 2 months out of like, what can I accomplish in 2 months? And this is where I think that long-term vision of 6 months, 12 months, 24 months, look at every month if you gradually improve in a bit and some months you might plateau or go back a bit. But in general, as long as you stay healthy and you don't, even like Zac Bitter said, like you don't let that fitness level go out of the window, but you still maintain a decent level of fitness. And from there on, that building will just continue going. So I'm very excited to see what's gonna happen the next few years over here as you continue to adapt this. So definitely, where, where can people find more about you?

Strava, I suppose. I have an Instagram page. I'm not a huge social media person.

No, no, no, but you post frequently on Strava and it's fascinating to follow it. So I'll make sure to link, link to Strava as well. The Elevate by Strava app and a few of the different tools that you have mentioned over here, I'll make sure to link that in the show notes as well, just in case people wanna look at that.

Yeah, I think the other thing I, you sent me, 'cause originally one of the, also I'll go back to one of your podcasts about when they were talking about the Tanda race predictor.

Race predictor, yeah.

And then the update, I guess, not so much update, but the update to that, And the race predictor that now I think what it's called, uh, I have it here that links to your Strava that gives you, uh, so what I think is unique about it, it shows you your, um, your past. It shows you what you potentially could run today and what it is today, what it was a week ago, 2 weeks ago, 4 weeks ago, and 8 weeks ago. Um, and I prefaced everybody in all these predictors that take it with a grain of salt. It doesn't mean that you're going to run that, but it means that you might have the fitness to do that if you execute yourself properly to run that day.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yep. Great. Well, thank you very much for, uh, for sharing your story, Jeffrey. I wish you all the best and I'm excited to follow the journey further out.

So thank you. Thank you.

All right. Have a good one.

Pleasure.

All right, bye.

Thank you for listening. I would love to hear from you. What was one takeaway for you from today's conversation? Please let me know in the comments. This episode was recorded about a month ago, and just this past weekend I saw Geoffrey running the Chicago Marathon, and he shaved off another 3 minutes from his PR over there, and he ended up finishing in 3 hours and 23 minutes, which is very impressive to see him flying by looking strong at mile 24. More information about the Marathon PR program that Geoffrey is a part of can be found at extramilest.com/marathon, and there are many different tools, different strategies, different training programs based on first-time marathoners, sub-4, sub-3:30, sub-3-hour marathons and different base building schedules as well, all around a holistic heart rate based training approach over here. So more information at extramilest.com/marathon. All of the show notes from today's episode can be found on my website at extramilest.com/24. That is the number 24. And there are many more episodes of the Extramilest Show in the works. Tomorrow I'm interviewing the founder of Chi Running, Danny Dreher, on the podcast, and there are several other very exciting episodes coming up soon. So make sure to subscribe and you'll be the first to know when a new episode drops. Thanks for listening and have fun out there on your runs.

Later.