How to Run Longer | Albert Shank, Extramilest Show 36

Try to enjoy your training. Try to enjoy your day-to-day and try not to be too obsessive for too long because that, that can really kill your running. I've seen it too many times over the years where runners get fixated on maintaining a certain pace or maintaining a certain mileage or whatever, and then they get broken, and that's no fun. Nobody wants to get hurt and not train. That's uncool. So enjoy what you're doing. Have fun, try not to over-obsess, and make most of your running very easy, and you'll be able to do those hard runs better. You'll get more benefit out of your training. You'll set personal bests.

Hello, hello, my name is Floris Gierman, and welcome to another episode of The Extra Mileage Show with Albert Schenk. It has been a while since my last episode of The Extra Mileage Show, so I want to give a short update from my end. Last few weeks has been a bit of a rough ride. I actually got injured, and it wasn't that I tripped or like I overtrained or anything. I actually was climbing a rope with my daughter, and as I came down, I was barefoot, I got a burn wound on the top of my foot, like a slight cut, and I didn't think much of it. Then a few days later, it totally got infected, and it got so painful to even stand on that I had to get to the hospital and They actually put me on antibiotics. I used that for 10 days and now slightly it's starting to improve. And hopefully in the next few days here I can start running again.

So that's good.

Several people have reached out that they would love to see more extra miles podcast. And actually one thing that I would like to do, I would like to hire an editor for the podcast and for the videos as well. So if you know anyone who might be interested in the role of a video editor and an audio editor, Check out extramilers.com/editor. There's an application form on there, and I would love to hear more about you that way. There's no sponsors for this podcast. However, if you're interested in finding out more about our low heart rate training programs, check out extramilers.com/training. Over here we have two different programs. One is the 5K to half marathon training program, and the other one is the marathon PR program. Both programs come with editable, flexible training schedules with a lot of different videos, with high-intensity workout options, and also with an entire community of like-minded athletes from around the world that are happy to help and support each other. Without further ado, I want to jump into today's podcast with Albert Schenk. He is an incredible runner from Arizona where he currently lives, and many of you might already be familiar with him from the Extra Mile Facebook group, or from the Maffetone Method Facebook group as well, where he's one of the admins. He has been running for more than 25 years and he has a tremendous amount of experience of ways to become a stronger, healthier, and happier athlete. And that's what we're taking a deep dive into. Recently, he celebrated his 52nd birthday by running a 52-kilometer distance in the Grand Canyon. So we have a discussion about his adventure runs and also his overall training and racing journey and all of the different things that he has learned over the years. So without further ado, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Albert Schenk.

Hello, Albert. I'm very stoked to welcome you to the Extra Mileage Show. Thank you for joining over here.

It is absolutely awesome to be here with you, uh, Floris. I kind of feel like a rock star joining you.

Super cool. No, like, it's been really fun because we had a little bit of a chat before this, and you and I have been in touch. Like, we have seen each other in like the different Facebook groups, from the Mephitone Facebook group to the Extra Mileage Facebook group, and we follow each other on Strava and Facebook. And so it's always fun to see like all of your, your knowledge that you're sharing across the board. And we have so many similarities in our overall approach to like training, racing, and life. And so I'm excited to take a deep dive into that right now.

Yeah, me too. Be prepared to talk. Cause I love talking. I love talking training.

Good. Absolutely. Let's do it. I want to kick it off a little bit because one thing that I've heard quite a few people dealing with right now at this point is people are running out there and it is quite hot. And if there's one person who can talk more about running in the heat, I thought that would be Albert because you live in Phoenix, Arizona. I checked today's temperature. It was 111 Fahrenheit, so 44 Celsius. Yeah. Recently you posted 126 Fahrenheit. That was 52 Celsius. How do you deal with that? How do you train? During these months of the year.

Yeah, so that 126 degrees, that was read with one of those little heat measuring guns. A park ranger was measuring the heat, the temperature of the surface, and then the air above the surface, and he took a little reading of it, and I took a picture of it, and it was 126. So the temperature right about, you know, at chest height was 126 degrees with the heat coming off the rocks. Yeah, trading basically from June up till September, October, depending on how long the 100-degree temperatures decide to stay, but especially July and August when we get the monsoon flow up from the south. So we get the humidity along with the high temperatures. It definitely presents a huge challenge. And really, taken from a very simple point of view, you slow down. And you keep your heart rate low. I keep my heart rate even lower. Like I have my, you know, my MAF is 128-ish, you know, so I add 5 for the hills, but, uh, somewhere around there, I actually train quite a lot lower than that for most of my training because it's just so hot. And if you do anything 90 to 120 minutes, it, it, you just, you're just debilitating. So in order to survive that and not feel awful the rest of the day, It requires, you know, a lot slower training, um, you know, 2, 3 minutes per mile slower than what you're used to when it's, uh, cool weather and consistent hydration, not just during the training, but after, before, uh, pretty much all day. You're making sure that you're hydrated, but not overhydrated. No, no one wants to get hyponatremia or anything like that. But, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's challenging and it takes when you, the first couple of weeks you're running in it, like we're kind of in that right now where we're in week 2, week 3 of the humidity and the heat. Um, it, you feel like you have the flu when you're running for a while. And then, but then you adapt and it's fine as long as you keep the intensity low. And then by September, you're, you're actually doing okay. You know, and then, and then the cool weather comes in October, November, and it's like this magical increase in speed is all of a sudden you're running fast again. You know, uh, it's, it's It's— you get used to it every year, you know. And of course, I'm not going to say I never complain. Now you can ask my wife, I do my fair share of complaining in the heat. I don't especially like it, but I deal with it.

Yeah, but when you're talking about hydration, are you adding anything into that for like electrolytes, or are you mostly water focused during your workouts?

Yeah, you know, definitely, uh, in this heat and the humidity, I take bottle with me, like let's just say I'm doing 2 hours, or like this morning I did a 2-hour outing. I call it a run-hike, a little bit of running, you know, some running, some hiking up some steep terrain, doing hill repeats at a very low heart rate. I park my car at the trailhead. There's a certain thing that I, a certain run that I do, I park my car right at the trailhead, I leave my bottle in the car, like right there at the trailhead, and then I go to the top, come back down, take out the bottle, drink a little bit, go down, you know, and repeat. Um, so in that bottle, it's, uh, 20 ounces of water and a half scoop of Tailwind. I'm a big fan of Tailwind. Um, I use that in all my drinks. I've tried other stuff, Gatorade and many others, and Tailwind just seems to— it just seems to taste good and work well, and it's not overly sugary. I mean, it is sugary, but not too much where it's, you know, it causes stomach cramps or anything like that. But, um, and then for longer runs, um, when it's warm, uh, I'll put a full scoop in there. It's about 100 calories, but, uh, and then some, some runs I don't feel like drinking it. I'll just have water. Um, you know, so nothing, nothing complicated.

No, no, no. And that all takes experimenting too, right? But what works well, what does your stomach respond to well? What are your energy levels like throughout? Exactly. What you were saying earlier is an interesting one because your body, especially at the beginning, the first few weeks of running in the heat, It seems much more challenging, not just for the body that the sweat glands are getting developed, but also for the mind. It's just like, and then indeed after about, I don't know, like 8 workouts, 10 workouts after several weeks, all of a sudden things start to become a little bit more manageable.

Yeah. You, you survive. I call it surviving better. You know, you're still doing those runs where the sweat's dripping off your fingertips and off your elbows, and then your shoes are soaked. Uh, that's when it gets to be the worst, but you know, but, but you're not, you don't feel completely hammered by, uh, by the end of the workout and during the course of the day, you know, you really do get used to it, but the trick is keeping your heart rate really low and just understanding you're not going to run what you were running when it was cool. You're not going to be running those same paces. You're going to be running at a significantly lower pace, but you're not losing fitness. That's the key is you've got to know in your head, okay, I'm running 14-minute miles up these hills when I'm running, you know, 10-minute miles up these hills in the cool weather. But I know that when cool weather comes, I'm actually going to be fine. I'm not going to lose anything. It plays with your head. You know, you think you're losing fitness, but you really aren't.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a good way to put it right there. How long have you been running? How did you get into running and how has your running transitioned over the years?

How many hours we got? No, I give you— I've got— I've got the basic thing is, so I've always been an active person. You know, I started, I guess you could say I started running back in high school. I was on the track team. I was incredibly mediocre and no good at any of the things I did. I ran the 800, I ran the 1600 relay, I did pole vaulting, and I was really bad at all of them. And I didn't particularly love running. And then I joined the military. I joined Virginia Army National Guard in 1987 when I was a sophomore more in college, and we had to run as part of training for that. All the runs were like 2 to 5 miles, nothing intense, and we had to do physical fitness tests. And I didn't like it. I didn't like running at all. And then I moved out to Arizona in 1993, and I discovered the local mountains. And all the local mountains here, they're really short, steep climbs, like 1.2 miles to the top, 1,200-foot gains. And I really got into that. So yeah, super steep. So, you know, mostly running on the way down a little bit, you know, some running on the way up and I got really into that. So for several years, I, I got into, you know, running up to the top of mountain and running down and sometimes doing multiples. And then, uh, uh, 1997, uh, a student of mine, I teach college and a student of mine, um, knew that I loved doing mountains. And I got, I had a conversation with him after class and said, yeah, you know, I kind of want to do more than what I'm doing now. I'm kind of feeling like I need to, do other things. And he told me about the Pikes Peak Marathon that he had done in 1988. And he gave me his 1988 runner's guide to Pikes Peak Marathon. So I started, I read that and I thought, oh, this sounds great. You know, 13.1 miles to the top, 8,000 feet of climbing, and then you run back down. That sounds exactly like what I want to do. So I contacted a local running group and said, hey, you know, I want to train for this Pikes Peak Marathon. And I remember the lady, her name is Linda Van, and I still know her. We still run into each other to this day. And I have her to thank to get me into a lot of this crazy stuff. She said, yeah, you can train, you can train with the running group, but honestly, you know, you can, you can do some of the local stuff we have here to get ready. And so she gave me a list of different races, and in particular, one of them was called the Mount Ford Marathon. Not an actual paid marathon, it was just a like a challenge that, you know, about 30 people get together. We call them, you know, fat ass runs. And, uh, so I said, well, that sounds really good. It's basically run from the bottom of this mountain 7.5 miles to the top with about a 4,000-foot gain, run down the other side of the mountain, come back up, run down for 26 miles and about 6,000 feet of climbing. I said, that sounds like what I want to do. So in the meantime, I start training, and my training was like very minimal back then. I ended up doing some half marathons, uh, and my first one was so painful. I— my longest run was like 7 or 8 miles, and you know, I was still doing the run to the top of mountains and run down thing and, uh, and a little bit of running here and there. And then I did this half marathon and I ran a spectacular first like 6 miles, and then the last 7 miles I just kind of hit the wall and just You know, I hurt myself, and I, and I finished actually with a pretty respectable time, like hour 50 or something like that. And it was very hilly because I always chose like hilly, hilly races. And, um, and I finished that race and thought, okay, this is cool. And I did a few more, and my intent was to do the Pikes Peak Marathon. Well, fast forward to end of 1999, I'm teaching, um, in a high school, and a friend of mine who was a He's a great, uh, uh, Ironman triathlete and an ultra marathoner. He says, oh, you got to do this race called Crown King. I said, well, what's Crown King? He said, oh, it's this 31-mile, 50-kilometer race from the, from the desert floor to the pine trees of Crown King, Arizona. And he told me all about it and got me all psyched on it. I said, that sounds great. So 2 months before the race, we're talking, you know, maybe 8, 9, 10 weeks before the race started. In March of 2000, I sign up for this race and I train for it, right? So, I get out and run and I'm still doing my run to the top of mountain and run down type of training and I include some running in there, although I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know anything about hydration. I didn't know anything about fueling. I just knew I had to run more than what I was running. So, I trained for, you know, like 7, 8 weeks and my longest run was like 15 miles to train for a 50K. Like I said, I had no idea what I was doing. So yeah, so I show up and I, and I start Crown King in March 2000. I start the race and I had an awesome first 15 miles, ran really well. I ran it in like 2 hours, you know, way, way faster than I should have. And, um, that was the first time that I really hit the wall, like the classic hit the wall, lose your energy, um, you know, crawl type of thing. Uh, about mile 17, 18, my calves seized up. Really, really badly because I wasn't hydrating properly, probably, and I wasn't eating anything. And, um, and then I, I kind of walk limped the last 13 miles in.

That's a long one.

It was long. It was a very long 13-mile limp walk, but I finished. And I, it was like 6 hours 42 minutes. And, uh, and I got to the finish line. I was in pain. I limped for about, I don't know, probably 5, 6 days after that. But I said, man, I got to do another one of these. So that's pretty much the background of me starting this whole thing. That was my first ultra marathon was Crown King in 2000. And from there I did a 50-miler, um, about another, uh, 10 months after that I did my first 50-miler in January 2001. And then, you know, one or two ultras per year pretty much since then with a few years off here and there and, uh, various other race distances. As well. And, uh, and I enjoy it. I love race distances from 5K up to 50 miler. It's all fun.

I love how your friends instigated you to get into like some of these distances. And I think it's such a common one, especially for some people who are like familiar with running some shorter distances or even getting into it. And then you surround yourself with just one of those friends that, that, that kind of opens your mind of like, ah, there's actually further distances than a 10K or a half marathon. I'm like, very often you don't even think further. Than that until you see some other people do it.

Yeah, and then you, and then you just go through and you make mistakes and you learn from them and you, you know, you, you try different things. It's all a process, you know. I don't even— to this day, I don't— I still don't think I'm doing it completely right, you know. So there's always something that I'm tweaking and changing and, you know, it's, it's been a fun, fun process for sure.

Yeah, and I think that whole part of like hitting the wall And like just going through that for the first time, you can have people talking about it, but unless you experience that for yourself and think like, I'm going to die, I'm completely out of energy, I'm cramping up, how am I going to get further? And yet still you find some strength to get over that again. And you can still find a way to finish like that. Then, then you feel like, yeah, you can do so much more than you think. Like you can initially accomplish that.

Yeah. And that's part of the, that's part of the fun and the addiction of of doing those types of things is you have those days that are just really bad and where you make all these mistakes and you learn from them and you try to grow from that. It's really fun to try to figure it out. You know, even after all these years, 20 years of doing ultra marathons and 27 being consistent with, you know, running in the mountains and whatnot, I still feel like there's so much more to learn.

So what have been some of those key— if you look like high level, what have been some of your key learnings over the years that have made a big impact on you?

Uh, so I think the biggest thing was learning that, you know, I in, in the early days, and many runners, uh, run too many runs at too fast of a pace too often. And that was one thing that I did is, as I, you know, I back then, I, I probably ran every single run medium to hard. I probably didn't do very much easy anything. And, you know, I've learned that the majority of your training should be should be ridiculously easy. And then you include that harder training in there at the right time, um, you know, and kind of avoid that middle zone where you're not doing the high intensity that gets you to improve a lot and not doing that low intensity to help you, uh, you know, recover and improve at that low intensity. Because in the ultras, you really do need to keep your intensity low from the very, very beginning because it's only going to get harder as you go. Up. And my— that was the big learning thing for me. Hydration is another thing, um, you know, getting enough hydration and figuring out the fueling. I'm still trying to figure out the fueling thing, uh, what works optimally, what kind of foods work, and so on. But that, you know, that's been a big thing is, yeah, for ultras, you kind of do have to take in calories. You can't— I mean, there are some people that, that don't need it, or they, you know, they— that guy that ran 100 miles on zero calories.

I saw that. That was mind-blowing.

He did 18 hours, and you know, yeah, to me that's, that's amazing. But, uh, yeah, those are some of the things that I've, you know, taken from this. The biggest things that I've learned— obviously there's been a lot of small things, you know, like figuring out, because I do a lot of really hilly terrain, and you know, you don't really need to run that hilly terrain very hard, and you don't need to run every step to be pretty quick at it. You know, as a matter of fact, you can train yourself to do a lot of the power hiking faster than what you would jog and at a much lower intensity, a lot easier on the body. So yeah, that's basically, you know, some of the things I've learned, the big stuff.

And so when you mentioned as one of the first things here, like low heart rate training, when was it that you started getting into this more, that you started experimenting with low heart rate training and what were some of the things you were going through in those early stages?

What was that like? So, in about 2000— so, just to put a little backstory to this, because again, it was a friend who got me into this, and he's a really good friend. He lives right down the street from me, and, you know, we still, we still run with each other, and, and he's still— he's an awesome friend to me and, and my mentor. Uh, yeah, he's responsible for a lot of what I do now. And, uh, 2002, I'm doing the Zane Gray 50-mile, um, ultra marathon, one of the toughest ones in the nation., for that distance. And now it's actually 100K, so it's even tougher. Uh, and, uh, it takes place, uh, a couple hours north of here and near Payson, Arizona. It's very, very tough single-track trail. First 4 miles is really rugged. You're going uphill. It's really rocky. And, uh, this guy comes up behind me before I start doing this big hill and he says, he says to me, hey, hey, slow down your pace. Uh, you don't want to do, you don't want to be doing intervals right now. Don't do intervals. And I'm like, who, who is this guy? So he, he passes me and he, you know, he ends He ends up finishing about an hour quicker than me, and I see him at the finish line. I had a good race that race for me. And so I finished, and I start talking to him, and then we became friends. Sometime in the course of the year after that, you know, I ran into him a lot at little races and also in the preserve, because I live really close to the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, and he lives right at the edge of the Phoenix Mountain Preserve. So he told me, here's how you train. And he didn't mention the Maffetone method specifically at the time, but he says make sure your heart rate is at this level— is like 130-something, I don't, I don't remember the exact number— and make sure that when you're training you keep it at that level and below. Okay, so I go out and buy myself a Polar watch with a Polar heart rate strap, and I start doing it. And oh my God, you can ask my wife, I was so slow. We went for a long run with some friends, uh, somewhere north of here, And I had that heart rate strap on, and I'm keeping my heart rate at or below whatever it was, at 135, 140, whatever it was at the time. And this was back in 2003, 2004. And I was walking like most of the time, and I was probably doing, I don't know, 14, 15-minute pace, 13. I don't remember exactly. I could go back in my running log and look it up, but it was ridiculously slow, and everybody was already finished. And, you know, I'm I'm sitting there jogging, and eventually I make it to, you know, there, and I'm like, oh my gosh, do I have to train like this all the time? Is this ever going to get faster? And then somewhere, you know, so all my runs were really, really slow with that, and my wife is, you know, just kind of giving me a bunch of crap for running so slow. And, um, and so I, I just, I kind of get into it. I want to learn more about heart rate training, so I buy this one book, and I honestly don't remember who the guy was, but he's a guy who is a heart rate training, uh, guy. And he has a certain method about it. It's, you know, it's something about getting your max heart rate and then going at certain percentages. I don't remember the name of the book. I gave it away to somebody a while ago, but the other one was The Maffetone Method. And it was the old school 1990s. I think it was, this one was published in 1998 or 1999, The Maffetone Method. It's a real thin book. And, uh, so I purchased it and I read about it and talks about the 180 formula. Um, and so I thought, okay, this makes sense. 180 minus my age. So at that time it was— I was like 35, 36 years old. Okay, so I don't run past 144. I can handle that. So I started doing that in like 2004-ish or so, maybe early 2004, and, um, I stayed consistent with it for, for months, and I noticed improvement. I don't remember what my pace was at that time on the flats. I think it was high 9s, low 10s, somewhere in there on the flats, which was still pretty slow, you know, for me at that time, because I knew that I ran the flats a lot faster than that without the heart rate. And then I started noticing at that heart rate that I was getting faster and faster and faster and faster. Between 2004-2006, I was kind of inconsistent with it. I would do it for several months and then get away from it for several months and and then do it for several months, get away from it. But I remember in particular in 2006, I was really consistent with it for, for several months, maybe 3, 4, 5 months. And I was able to achieve a pretty good pace. Uh, I did a math test. I believe my pace was 7:03. So I did my warmup. And then of course your first mile is your fastest mile. And I did a 7:03 and then like 7:08 and 7:10 and got progressively slower after that. So that was my fastest. So. I did, when I stayed consistent with it at that time, improve by quite a lot. And even to this day, so this is like 16 years later, I can, you know, when I dedicate myself to doing a flat math test, I can still get, you know, pretty decent, like 730 or so. So yeah, so I started out really, really, really slow in the whole thing. And, but I did see a great improvement pretty quickly.

Good. Yeah. And how did that, how did that translate to some of your racing? Did you notice anything else there?

Like, so yeah, I have to think back. So 2006, I ran some, for me, some pretty good races. I ran my fastest 10-mile race and I believe my, my MAF cone or my MAF test. Let's see, that race was in April and then my half marathon was in May and I was doing this in the spring. So, um, I hit that 7:03, I think sometime in March, early April. And then I ran a 10-mile race called the Roy Hay Mummy Mountain 10-Miler, and it was pretty hilly. Uh, uh, and I ended up averaging like 6:35 per mile, which for me was great. Um, at the time, that's, that's a very hilly course. And then the Whiskey Row Half Marathon, which was my first half marathon back in 1998 that I crashed and burned in. I ended up setting a personal best of like 1:35, uh, in, in that race. So yeah, it translated to a couple of really good, uh, racing times at the time. So at that time, so, and then in subsequent years when I was consistent with it, I didn't get fully 100% consistent with it until 2014. Um, I would be on and off between 2004 and 2014. I'd do it for several months and then not do it for several months. And then 2014, I stayed consistent with it. And the very first race I did, once I got consistent, it was a 50K, um, local here. And I did really well in the 50K. I felt like I could have done better. I, I went out just a little too fast. I even kept it at or under MAP, and that was still just a little bit too fast for that, but I ended up doing pretty well with that. And so I said, that's it. I'm, I'm, I'm keeping, I'm doing it 100% from now on. So. And no regrets.

Awesome. Right on. So when you go—

good, good racing.

Right on. When you go through like typical training cycles, or let's say you have a race coming up in X amount of months, what, like, because yeah, there's, there's the low heart rate training, but then you do, um, integrate some speed work possibly at some point as well. Like, can you talk a little bit more about that part of your training?

Yeah, absolutely. So I don't know if anyone will like hearing this, but I, I don't have a plan. I don't have a certain number of miles I want to hit or a certain amount of time or anything like that. My running is— I'm very kind of, when it comes to this, very free-spirited. I kind of do what I want. Obviously, if I'm going to train for an ultramarathon, I need more miles, so I do increase the amount of time that I am running, but I don't say, okay, well, Monday I need to I need to do 10 miles, and Tuesday I need to do 12 miles. I don't do anything like that. I just increase the amount of time, and if it's a hilly race, I increase the amount of hills. If it's a flat race, which I don't really do very much anymore, you know, I'll do more flat running. But, you know, I'll basically go through a period of time, several months, you know, 3, 4, 5 months, where I will do everything at max or below. And then about 10, 12 weeks before, I'll start introducing some fast running, some faster training. And I don't have anything in particular that I do. I don't do any track work because I don't honestly enjoy track work very much. I did do some in the early 2000s, and I didn't really enjoy it that much. So I kind of stay away from that. So I do everything on the trail. So I'll do hill repeats. I might do some tempo running, some fartleks, some— 2-to-1 interval training, you know, 2 minutes on, 1 minute slow, or, you know, uh, 4 minutes on, 2 minutes low, or something like that. I just, I play around with it. I don't do, I don't have any specific plan for that, but I do try to make it race-specific. For example, this year I was supposed to do, um, a marathon in May. And so all my training from January to April was supposed to be for that marathon. It was a very hilly marathon with about 3,300 feet of climbing, and I've done it Many times before. And so my training leading up to that, I included, um, some— I included 2 races. I did a 20K and a half marathon, and then a little bit of speed work in between, all on trails, all on hills, and all in short duration. That's the thing about the speed work is always keep the duration short, you know, anywhere from 5 minutes to 30, 35 minutes, but no more than that, because I don't— I really don't feel you get much benefit going any longer than that. I think it beats your body up too much. So I do it when the body says do it. So I don't say, well, on Tuesday I'm going to go fast. You know, I say, okay, I'm going to— I haven't gone fast yet. So tomorrow I'm going to see if my body is ready to go fast. So I always know within the first 10, 15 minutes if my body will do what I want it to do that day.

Um, that is so key right there. That, that part where you just mentioned of like, Adjusting your runs based on how you feel. And like, let's say you had a good night's sleep and you feel energized. All right. It's so much easier to get some of that higher intensity in versus like, yeah, you're feeling already low, like you're feeling fatigued. And then it just becomes kind of like pushing a boulder up the rock or like up the hill.

Right. If you try to, you know, follow some sort of prescribed training plan to the T, you know, where Tuesday you do track work and, you know, Wednesday you do your easy run, Thursday you do a tempo run. Well, what if on Tuesday? You had a really bad night on Monday, or you got in an argument with your girlfriend or your boyfriend, or, you know, you have a baby and the baby didn't sleep, uh, and you're going to get up and do intervals when your body is completely wrecked. That's not a very smart thing to do. So you have to be really, um, flexible with how you train. So that's, that's, that's how I approach things is, okay, I got to make sure I get some speed training in, but it has to be on the right day. At the right time and never the day before a long run.

That's for sure. And also what you said there earlier, the part of doing— like, you don't enjoy doing intervals, so you don't do it. Like, you don't enjoy going to a track. On the track. And I think doing that part also, right? Like, doing the things that you enjoy doing, doing the type of running that you enjoy doing will just make you a happier runner that way too.

That's such an important component to have that story. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and that's why I do it that way. I have absolutely nothing against track work. I know, matter of fact, I probably would benefit incredibly from doing track work. But the idea of going there and running circles around the loop just, you know, it just doesn't sit well with me. There's an indoor track at the gym that I go to, which is right— which is closed right now at my work, and it's a 1/12 of a mile track. So 12 loops equals a mile. And one time, I think it was 2016, 10, I decided, you know what, I'm going to, I'm going to see how many laps I can do. I ended up doing 24 miles on that little loop right there. And that kind of took it out of me. I said, okay, I'm never going to do that again. That was stupid. So maybe that's what got me soured to the idea of running, running track.

It's funny. Whereas I, like, I go to a track sometimes and I can completely tune off because I don't have to think about— I'm going to— I usually go run on the track like quite early. If I go, let's say, do like a test on the track or I want to do a specific workout. I usually go on my own early at 5 or 6 in the morning. And then when I go, I can completely somewhat zone out and I know there's no one around me. It's only me with maybe some local coyotes that are running around or some bunnies or whatever. Um, and I really find that actually enjoyable that I end up sometimes running for two, like I've done it where I'm running for like, let's say 90 minutes or 2 hours. Or 3 hours on a running track and I don't mind it at all. Whereas I know for other people it's completely, um, right. Not that enjoyable.

So yeah.

But then again, like at the end of the day, getting a nice road to run on or a nice trail to run on, I think sometimes for me also mixing terrain up, mixing between hills and trails and, and flat road and intensities and intensities too.

You know, I think a lot of people get caught into the mistake mistake that they need to run at, you know, when they're doing base training, run at their math every single day. And, um, I, you know, I don't do that. I run at my math maybe once, twice per week when I'm doing, you know, more intense training. I do a lot of my training well below, you know, 10, 15, 20 beats below, uh, because it's just so easy on the body. And then those days that I do math a little harder, and then when I do the intense training my body can handle it. And then the day after that, you know, I'll train a lot lower than MAF. And I think adjusting those intensities is great for your body and great for recovery.

Yeah. So how do you, how do you calculate your MAF zone right now? Because you are 52 years old.

52. So it's supposed to be 128. You know, I give myself around 130 or so because, you know, I know you don't have to take off one beat for every birthday. So I'm kind of resistant to, because 128 just seems so low, you know, but I can actually do a pretty decent pace at that, at that, uh, at that heart rate. But, um, I, I, I try to limit my— I give myself 5 beats on a really hilly run. Like this morning I did an 8-mile run with, uh, 3,300 feet of climbing. So pretty, pretty hilly. And I give myself up to 133, but I try not to keep it there, you know? So I try to keep it below that 128 threshold. But yeah, I basically do 180 minus my age, 128, and I give myself a little cushion., for, you know, a little spike in the hills. Yeah, there you go.

There you go. So I want to transition for a little bit because you are also one of the moderators or admins of the Facebook group for Maffetone.

Yeah.

How did that happen? And like, what are some of the things that you see? Like, I know there's quite a few commonalities between different runners that are posting. Like we see it in the Extra Miles group, we see it in the Maffetone group.

I'm curious to hear about that. Yeah, so I became an admin for them 4 or 5 years ago or something like that. And it was just, they asked me, one of the members who I already knew, 'cause I was already on the page, I was following the Maffetone Method group and making comments on there. And one person I know who's a local here in Arizona, she said, hey, why don't, we need a little bit of help with the admin. We have, you know, the group is growing, it's getting bigger, and we figure, you know, you're, your point of view and your approach is, you know, right in line with what we believe in. So would you be interested in becoming an admin? And I said, wow, okay, yeah, sure, I'd love to. I didn't know what it meant, but sure, I'll become an admin. And then, you know, then over time I figured out that it just involves moderating and taking out snarky comments and telling people, make sure you're nice to others, and, you know, keeping people on track and making sure people aren't posting anything that has any kind of, you know, financial conflict or anything like that. It's very rewarding, honestly. I never realized how rewarding it would be to be a member of that group. And then I discovered your group and I said, oh man, Extra Miles, these guys, they have the same exact same philosophy. This is all math stuff. So I joined your group and it's great. It's like, you know, it's almost like one in the same type of group and it's been really fun. You know, going, going to the point of commonalities, you know, yeah, you see a lot of patterns of different types of runners that come onto there. One of the ones I see most commonly is people who either A, they have been running for a while, or B, they're pretty new to running. Maybe they've been running a year or two or three, and they, they come into this method for many different reasons. Mostly it's injury. Uh, they've been injured and sometimes it's for performance. They want to be better than what they are. That was me. I never really had any injuries, uh, that caused, you know, caused me to want to do the Maffetone Method. More of it was a performance thing for me. I want— I knew there had to be a better way to run ultra marathons and marathons. So they come in and they, they do their first— they put on the heart rate monitor and they do their first run or their first MAF test. And they go, oh my God. I am so slow. And you know, I was running 8-minute miles before, and now I'm doing 13-minute miles. This can't be. And it's that type of runner that comes in and has to really slow down. And they realize that their aerobic development and aerobic speed are not what they thought they were. And it's kind of humbling for them. So that's, that's the most common thing I see. And then another common one is people who come in and ask, well, Can I do speed work? What type of speed work do you do? Um, and a lot of people ask, are there training plans, which there aren't any because it's a very holistic individualistic approach. Um, and yeah, those are, those are some of the most common things I see with people coming in.

The one that I see quite a few times is like, yeah, I'm starting out and I have to slow down significantly, but I'm very frustrated right now. Oh gosh. And the frustration, I feel that is almost one where it is like, does this training approach really work? Or is this number really correct? Or am I doing it right?

And yeah, and you get the occasional person who cops an attitude and says, well, this Phil Massitone guy, what does he know? You know, he's this and that. And you know, this is dumb. I'm going to go do something else. And yeah, the frustration is real. And I always have to remember, see, I teach Spanish as my career, and I have to remember that my students who are beginners, they're beginners. They don't know what I know. I have all this experience, and so I have to teach them, and I have to be patient with them and guide them along. And it's the same with these people who come in who don't know the method. I have to always remember, okay, these guys are new. They don't see the big picture like I do because they haven't been doing it as long as I have. They haven't experienced those benefits yet. You know, they're thinking very short-term. So yeah, the frustration that comes in, I probably see that several times a week, several posts per week in both, uh, Extramileist and in the Maptone group.

Very common. And when you, when you're talking about thinking short-term or long-term or some, some of these other elements outside of running, can you talk through that a little bit more?

Yeah, um, so it's my philosophy, um, that, you know, long term for me is maintaining your health. You know, pace aside and everything, your health is number one. Because for me, I want to be able to do what I'm doing as long as my body will let me do it. And I'm not going to be doing that by doing endless amounts of interval training and track work and everything constantly all the time and just beating my body into the ground. So it makes sense to approach it from a health perspective. So that means, you know, making sure that I don't run too hard and too much too often. Uh, I try to eat as much real food as I can— meats, fruits, vegetables, fats, and all that. Um, and, you know, maintain, uh, you know, good strength training program. I— we, we can get into a cross-training if you want to, if we have the time to do that. I very, very much believe in cross-training. And, you know, I believe that for short-term, I think it's very important to have goals. You know, it's okay to want to run a certain pace and to want to Boston qualify and things like that. You know, that's kind of what drives a lot of people is this desire to improve and to reach certain goals. So for short-term goals, you know, you can have those pace goals, you know, vertical goals, whatever goal you have, it's all good. But the really long-term goal, in my opinion, should be— at least the priority should be your health above all else, and then everything else just kind of falls in line. So that's my general approach to short and long-term goals, is health first, and then that way you can reach all those short-term goals that you want to reach, whether it's Boston qualifying, running, you know, somewhere in the Grand Canyon, you know, doing whatever adventure run you want to do. It doesn't matter. All goals are good.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, well said right there. And I would love to hear your thoughts about the cross-training that you were talking about earlier.

You're a huge believer in. Yeah. You know, so that's, that, that all, that's evolved a ton over the years. Lately I've really gotten into doing as many other things as I can. I really want to get into more biking. I did a little bit of biking when I was in New Hampshire and nothing, nothing crazy. My brother has this like, you know, mountain bike and didn't even have clip-in pedals, just regular pedals. And I did like a 13 and a 16-mile bike ride. I really enjoyed it. I want to get into this. So, and, you know, I went to Newport Beach several weeks back, and, you know, you probably saw I did a bunch of paddleboarding. That was a lot of fun. But my regular practices, I include some bouldering, you know, rock climbing but without the ropes, low level, nothing high. I don't do, you know, really high climbing or anything like that without a rope. I do, you know, I try to do that 2 or 3 times a week. I've been rock climbing climbing since 1994. I love it. So that's part of what I do for cross-training, and also weightlifting as much as I possibly can, 4 or 5 days a week, anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes. I really sincerely believe that cross-training, especially any kind of strength training, is vital to being a healthy runner. You know, a lot of people are worried, oh, I'm going to put on a lot of weight or anything, and I'm like, no, you really aren't. You have to take in so much, so many calories, and so much protein to put on that weight. You have to lift heavy and go to failure. And, you know, so that's not going to happen as a runner. A runner can do a really good solid strength training program and not gain all that weight from the muscle and be really, really strong. And it makes— and I personally, I believe that it helps ward off injury. It gets you stronger in other ways besides just running. And, um, you know, it makes you feel good because you're doing other things and it gets your mind off of the running. It, you know, you can get really stale if you're doing the same thing all the time. Uh, you, it can get really stale and switching it up and doing other stuff is, uh, really fun in my opinion. So that's what I do, uh, for the most part.

Nice. Yeah, you definitely do a combination of many, many different things there, which is nice to me.

Yeah. Well, my kids, my kids are grown, they're out of the house. I have time now. So You know, if this had been like 10, 15 years ago when my kids were still in need of me to be a taxi driver and get them from A to B and for me to be an ever-present parent, you know, I wasn't able to fit in nearly as much back then. I did what I could, you know, I ran less and I lifted less and climbed less.

Now I've got nothing but time. Yeah, it's that constant switch too, indeed. Like certain stages of your life and even certain stages of the year, you might have more time available to do, to like take on, like I have a wishlist of different things I want to do too, between strength training, mobility, flexibility, meditation, sleeping 8 hours a night, all of these things. And you never get it all done. Yeah. That's the reality. So it's like something has got to give at some point. And like, I can't tell, can't tell the wife, your kids that I'm going to go on a 15 hours running a week.

And yeah, no, no, you can't. And that's probably why some of my early ultras were really spectacular. They weren't failures. They were just, they were rough because I couldn't, put in the hours of training that I needed because I was working and I was, you know, I had the kids and everything, you know. Now I've got all the time in the world. So, but yeah, you have to juggle it. And I think it's, I think it's really important to have those other things and goals and things that you want to reach, you know. It keeps you alive and driving and, you know, motivated.

So 100%, absolutely. Um, during this entire pandemic that we're in right now, we've obviously seen a lot of different races get canceled. We see like different large marathons, different trail races. Some trails have been closed, some mountains have been closed, things have been opened again. And obviously a lot of different things have changed. How have you been able to continue training? And how do you think kind of about the entire approach of training for a specific race that might potentially not happen? Or how do you, how do you keep yourself motivated to continuously work out rather consistently still.

Right, so when the whole thing went down in mid-March, I had just gotten back from, uh, from New Orleans, and I got sick right after I came back from that. So did I have it? I don't know. But anyway, uh, so right then, uh, not too long after that, the marathon that I was supposed to do on May 2nd was canceled, and all the training I'd done, you know, well, it didn't make sense anymore. So I just, I shelved it all, and I just started doing whatever, you know, just, uh running, hiking, doing whatever I wanted to. And then, uh, this, uh, what was called the Limitless Vertical Challenge from AeroViper Running, uh, it's a local running company here. They're phenomenal. They put on some really amazing races. And they, they put together— they put together some virtual races, and then they put together this vertical Limitless Vertical Challenge. It was essentially from May 25th to May 31st, get as much vertical as you can in a week. And they had different levels that you could achieve. It was a Camelback Level, which is a local mountain here that's at 2,700 feet. There's that. Then there's the Mount Whitney, which is 14,505 feet. Then Mount Everest Challenge, get 29,028 feet in a week. That's the one I signed up for. Then the Double Everest, which is 58,056 feet. I got psyched about that because all the other virtual races, they really weren't appealing to me because it's like, go out and run a half marathon. I can just go out and run a half marathon now. Uh, but this get as much vertical in a week as you can sounded really, really cool. So, so I started training for that in late April, early May, and every week I was just increasing my vertical. And, you know, the most I'd ever done was like 21,000 feet. So I thought, okay, I'm gonna do 22,000 feet the first week that I start because I'm— I already do a decent amount of vertical every week, you know, like 14,000, 15,000 pretty much every week, and I take easy weeks. And so I did 22,000 and Okay, I got that. And then the week after that, I said, well, I'm going to try to do the challenge that I signed up for. So, I did 30,000 that next week. So, I went past it. And I thought, well, shoot, I can, during the challenge, I can do 40,000. So, the week of the challenge, I ended up doing 41,000 feet and also without really intending to, I ended up with more miles during that week than I ever had. I had like 91 miles. I'd never run more than like 75 in a week. And I did 91. So that was a really awesome week. And so that got me super motivated. So being that we don't really have many races to train for or any there, I think there are a few in Colorado and, uh, and, uh, Utah. They just had the Tushars this past weekend. Um, but anyway, um, I decided to set personal challenges for myself. So this year, um, I'm motivated to go do some stuff in the Grand Canyon. Uh, there's some off corridor things. Some trails that don't follow the main corridor that I'm interested in doing again. I've done them before, but I want to go back and do them again, maybe set some PRs, who knows. And just, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna do that vertical challenge again at the end of the year when it's not really hot and see if I can get that 58,000. So that's another kind of goal I have in mind. And then we'll visit the whole theme of races once the COVID-19 pandemic is over with and we're across the hump. So right now it's just setting personal goals and trying to do some really cool stuff between now and whenever everything's opened up again. Yeah, so that's basically it. The gym has been a challenge because here in Arizona the gyms closed in— when did they close? April, May sometime. So they were closed and then they opened up again, then they closed them again. So I've been lifting at home, which has been fine. I just, I prefer going to the gym. Uh, but anyway, so that's, that's been a little bit more of a challenge trying to get my weightlifting done at home. Uh, but other than that, I mean, you know, I've, I haven't been doing more training than, uh, than I'm used to because I think it's really easy to get stuck into this pattern of, well, I've got all this time now, I can train a whole lot more. So you end up training a whole lot more and then you get hurt, you know. Uh, so I've tried to, I've steered away from that mentality of, well, I've got more time now, I can train more. No, I'm pretty much keeping at what I'm doing, you know, and staying healthy is the number one thing and eating well. One thing's for sure, we don't go out to eat. We could if we wanted to, but we really don't want to. We're cooking at home and eating much, much better than we usually do. I mean, we don't usually eat bad, but we're eating even better, which is fantastic. He's gotten really good at using a Crock-Pot and—

There you go. I will say 40,000 foot of climb and over 91 miles. That is some climbing right there. Well done.

And the crazy thing was I felt really good at the end of the week. I didn't feel trashed. And that's the thing, I love this challenge because I kept it at or under math the entire time except for the last peak that I did. I actually ran it really hard just for fun, you know, just to end. I wanted to end it spectacularly. So the last peak I ran, I ran it really hard, but everything else was at or well below MAF. So I was able to consistently every day do, you know, 10 to 15 miles and, uh, and 5,000 to 6,000 feet of climb. No problem.

I wasn't killing myself. I like that perspective of setting some of these goals though, to go after and whatever level of those goals are, like just to somewhat motivate yourself. And yes, we can all train for certain races and we don't know if they're going to get canceled or not yet still. Putting a date on the calendar for something to train towards helps.

Yeah.

You don't need to have a race from a motivational level.

And even if that is like, yeah, like, yeah, go for personal bests on local mountains or, you know, set up a, some, you know, a trail that you love doing, go for your personal best there, or, you know, set a distance goal or, you know, do something, find some really cool trails and go explore them. There's so many things you can. You can do to motivate yourself, you know, a race that it doesn't have to be a race. You know, races are great, I love races, but they're not the be-all end-all, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. I like how you celebrated your recent birthday when you turned 52. Can you share a little bit more about the thought and how that day actually unfolded?

Yeah, I actually decided to do that probably 3 or 4 days before I did it because I was looking for something to do on my 52nd birthday, I was like, well, I gotta do something. You know, I don't know what to do. And, you know, a lot of things at that time, late June, were closed or not, you know, not accessible for one reason or another. The Grand Canyon had just opened and I thought, well, maybe I'll go do 52K at the Grand Canyon. So a couple of days before, you know, a couple of days before that, I told my wife, I'm gonna go run 52K on Friday. I actually didn't run it on my birthday. Ran it the day before my birthday so that on my birthday I could just chill. So yeah, I just, I parked at the top of Bright Angel Trailhead and ran along the rim to the South Kaibab Trailhead, ran down to the river. It was ridiculously hot. It was, I think it was 104 when I was down there. So really, really slow pace. I did a lot of jogging and walking just to keep my heart rate low and my core temperature down. And drank a lot of water, you know, and I carried a lot with me too with the tailwind and of course the calories. Made my way up Bright Angel and went on this other trail. I was going to do the Tonto Trail and it was too hot. I decided not to do that, so I went to this place called Lookout Point. Beautiful place. If you ever go to the canyon, go see that. And then went back to Bright Angel Trail and up. And Bright Angel, I chose that because Bright Angel has water along the way so I could refill my bottles and not worry about dehydration. And then I got to the top of the rim and ran more of the rim trail. I'd never done the rim trail in my life, and I thought it would be kind of boring and, you know, just a bunch of tourists and everything, but it actually ended up being really cool. I saw elk and deer, and once I got away from the Bright Angel area, there was nobody out there, and the paved part of the trail turned into dirt trail, and it runs right along the edge of the rim. So you have these amazing views the whole entire way. So it actually ended up being super cool. And because I didn't— I never pushed any part of that day because it was really hot. It was even hot on top of the rim. I ended up finishing feeling really good. I didn't feel beat up or anything. Just, you know, it was slow, but hey, that's okay. I finished feeling good, and I ended up, you know, being really satisfied with it. It actually kind of surpassed my expectations.

You know, it was, it was a good time. It's nice when you can finish a distance like that in those conditions and still feel like that at the end of it. Yeah, for sure.

Well, it's, you know, the key was hydration and not going too hard, keeping my heart rate— well, I kept it consistently 10 to 15 under MAP, and if you do that, you know, the heat can— it becomes much less of a factor. You know, even running at MAP heat can get you pretty quickly, especially here in Arizona.

It can be pretty, pretty rough. Yeah. So for any of the listeners of the podcast that might be into road running and they might want to start playing around or transition into trail running, or possibly they have run certain race distances and they hear you talk about ultras and they might want to explore ultras, like, do you have any suggestions or recommendations for people getting into trail running or ultra running?

Yeah, I mean, if you already run, it's just you're— be prepared to slow down a little bit. You're not going to run as fast on the trails. You know, trails undulate, they go up and down. You know, you're not going to run the same paces. You have to watch out for rocks. You know, you have to be— with running on the roads, you know, you can basically look straight ahead and kind of tune out, but on the trails you have to be a bit more mindful of where you're stepping. Otherwise, you're going to faceplant, which is never fun. But, you know, get out there and have no fear and explore and just put on your shoes and go. Really, it's not a— I mean, I could give all sorts of tips on, you know, how to run downhill, how to run uphill. You know, that's stuff that you kind of learn along the way. But, you know, just if you're a roadrunner wanting to become a trail runner, just get out there and do it. You know, it seems kind of simple, but it really is no more than that. And basically, you learn as you go. You know, in the beginning, you're going to be slow and you're going to be awkward and you're probably going to fall a few times. You definitely learn how to fall. Had some pretty spectacular falls.

Yeah, I'm part of that club too.

And you learn how not to put your hands out, you know, in front of you so that you don't break your hands. You learn how to run with the bottles in your hand and let your bottles do the work for you. And then you learn the art of the combat roll, which is always nice if you have the ability to do that on the trail. But yeah, I just, you know, my advice would be just get out there and do it and have fun and enjoy the experience. And don't worry about pace because on the trails you're gonna run slower. It's, you know, more variety of terrain. And just enjoy wherever you're at.

It's a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I love— like, I used to always run on road, and that was my, like, I didn't really think much about trail running. And purely, I don't know, I'd never really looked at that area much. And then once I started exploring a few of the trails, one thing that helped for me too is I signed up with a local running crew. And I just joined them. Like, on Saturdays we would go for like a group run together, and it wasn't a big group, but it was just kind of a consistent time to meet up sometimes with a few other people who had a bit more experience. And from there on, like you said, just going out there and doing it, and you will learn so much along the way that way.

Yep, yep. It has a learning curve, and then after several years you find, wow, my knees don't hurt, you know, my feet feel good, and you get stronger in different ways because it's a lot of twisting and turning and use different muscles to stop yourself. You know, you learn how to run downhill more efficiently, uphill more efficiently, and I think it makes you a better road runner. I think it makes you a stronger road runner and helps you avoid injury because road running is very repetitive, you know, the same motion, whereas trail running is constantly changing. So when you adapt to that and then go back to the roads, you know, I think you're a much stronger athlete and you have less of a chance of developing injury. Plus it helps you ward off injury because the ground is softer, it's it absorbs more of the impact.

So, so much easier to go for a 3-hour trail run when you're just looking at time on your feet versus 3 hours on the concrete.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I haven't done that in a long time. I don't think I'm going to be doing that anytime soon. Yeah.

All right. I want to be respectful over here. I have 2 more questions for you. Um, do you have any, in closing here, any more recommendations for athletes looking to improve and to become a stronger, healthier, and happier athlete?

The couple of really big things I would want to impart to people would be, number one, you, if you think you're running easy, you're probably not. You're probably running too hard. And it's tough, especially for a beginning runner who's used to running at a higher heart rate. You know, they think they're running at a lower level, a lower heart, a lower effort, when in fact they aren't. It's actually higher. You know, so that's the benefit of low heart rate training, of the MAPS method, is you learn what really is easy and you feel, you get to feel what really is easy. And most of your running should be at that level. It should be very easy running. You should not do day-in, day-out interval training, you know, that middle-of-the-road, you know, zone 3, zone 4 training. You want to make sure that most of your training is, at least 80% of it, is at that easy, easy jogging, you know, being able to converse. Some people say being able to nose breathe. I have a hard time with nose breathing, but, you know, that kind of running should be the majority of it. And, you know, the whole obsession thing, for me, the thing that kills a lot of runners, just kills their careers, is the over-obsession, obsession with mileage, obsession with pace, and it's okay to be obsessed with mileage and pace for a certain goal that you're trying to reach, and then you back away from that. But when it becomes unhealthy, when it becomes too much, that's when you get into an issue. So, you know, try to enjoy your training, try to enjoy your day-to-day, and try not to be too obsessive for too long because that, that can really kill your running. I've seen it too many times over the years where runners get fixated on maintaining a certain pace or maintaining a certain mileage or whatever, and, and then, and then they get broken. And that's, that's no fun. Nobody wants to get hurt and not train. That's, that's uncool. So enjoy what you're doing, have fun, try not to over-obsess, and make most of your running very easy. And you'll be able to do those hard runs better. You'll get more benefit out of your training.

You'll set personal bests. Love it. Very well said. Where can people find out more about you? I know you post obviously in the Mephedone group, in the Extra Miles Facebook group. I will link to those. Is there any other place that you post?

Yeah. Follow me on Strava, Albert Shank, A-L-B-E-R-T-S-H-A-N-K. Um, I'm public. So yeah, follow me if you want to see all the silly stuff I do from day to day and a lot of great stuff. Run up a hill, run down a hill, run up a hill, run down a hill.

Every day. Perfect. Awesome. Well, thank you very much for all of the knowledge that you have shared, and I look forward to continue the conversation again, uh, soon again.

Absolutely. This has been a blast. This was awesome. Boris, thank you so much for inviting me on.

All right. Thank you, Albert.

Have a good one. Thank you for listening. If you would like to find out more about some of the training programs that we offer based on low heart rate training and some of the fundamentals that we often talk about out here in this podcast, check out extramilers.com/training. And there are two different training programs available. One is more for the shorter distances, the 5K to half marathon, and the other one is more focused on the longer distances, which is the Marathon PR program. And this basically provides a whole lot of guidelines and templates for those athletes looking for a little bit more structure in their training approach. This also offers different base building schedules and different race-specific schedules with higher intensity workouts. And there's also a tremendous community with athletes from more than 40 different countries around the world happy to help each other out and support. Also, I'm looking to hire an editor for our podcast and someone who has experience in both video and audio. So if you know this person, or if this is you, check out extramilers www.extramile.com/editor, and we're really looking forward to bringing more frequent podcasts for the Extra Mile Show to you. Thank you for listening, and I hope to see you at the next episode again.

Bye now.