Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running | Lex Fridman Podcast #205

The following is a conversation with Zach.

Bitter, ultramarathon runner and coach who held multiple world records in the 100 mile run and other ultra endurance events. He is currently training for a Run Across America, which for now is planned for September this year. Like many of the things Zach has done in the past, this is a big, fascinating challenge. Quick mention of our sponsors, Ladder Bel Campo, Noom and BetterHelp. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that Zach has been advising and coaching me on my own running journey. I want to mention that Zach sent me some running shoes from Altra, which I think is a company that sponsors him. When I put those shoes on, I feel like Zach is watching me and I get that extra motivation to make him proud.

And by that I. I mean I.

Want to put a lot of miles on those shoes. Running is something that has always been difficult for me, but I love it because it is difficult. The hardest part is I'm left alone with my thoughts for one or two hours. Some thoughts are dark, like thinking about mortality, my own and that of others. Some are self critical, like personal weaknesses or dreams not realized. Some are simply human feelings of loneliness, personal and existential.

And yet there are the moments during.

A run when all that fades and I'm left empty of negative thoughts and full of appreciation for the beauty of experience, of nature, life, the whole thing. This is why I return to running. Not to get in shape, but to face myself and to run through it. That's why I'm inspired by people like Zach and by David Goggins and others like them who seek to find the limits of their body and mind. This is the Lex Friedman podcast and here is my conversation with Zach Bitter.

Where does your mind go when you're running an ultramarathon? Are there a lot of positive thoughts? Negative thoughts, demons, inspirational things? Maybe no thoughts at all?

Yeah, that's the really interesting part of the sport I think, because you can essentially what it is when we're looking at like the hundred mile distance or anything that's like all day long is you're going to have the full range of the full spectrum of emotions, of mental processes, both kind of positive, negative and in between. So it almost feels like you've lived multiple, multiple lives or a full life maybe is the way to say it in that one time period. So it's like a, it's almost like a simulation of what you may experience in a long period of time, in a very condensed period of time. And I think that's just a weird mental process to reflect upon and that's what kind of draws people back to it. But I mean it's a battle too because if you're looking at it from a performance standpoint versus an experience, you obviously want to minimize the negative mindset stuff. You want to try to keep those emotions and those thought processes at a low. And I think when you can keep yourself from letting those thoughts creep in, they you, you end up having better races. And it's, it can spiral in either direction. Like I notice like there's, there's kind of like this scenario that occurs where in the beginning like a negative thing creeps in your mind. It's like super easy just to slap it down, say like, get out of here. You know, I've did the training, I'm fit, I'm feeling fresh still, you know, everything's going well at this point in time. You get a little further along in the race and you're starting to feel a bit of the fatigue. I mean a little bit of self doubt creeps in. You start asking yourself, well you know, maybe I should have done one more long run or did I, did I not quite taper long enough? And those things can kind of spiral and to a negative way. And if, if you let it keep going, it keeps going all the way to like, why am I here? Why am I doing this? This is stupid. All the way to like there's another one of these two weeks from now I'm going to drop out of this one and sign up for that one instead. And then you just find yourself in the exact same situation. So you kind of have to go through the process. I think it's why I think the, there's kind of a, I won't say it's a rule of thumb necessarily, but something I think is fairly valuable is if you do 100 miler the first time, make sure you get it done. Even if it means like, you know, death marching is what they'll call it in the alternate community, the end of the race. Just to say like you got that full experience you experienced, the highs, the lows, the full thing, the starting, the crossing, the finish line, that release of emotion when you're done and all that stuff so that when you go back to do it again, you have like a template to build off of, then you know, or you just have some data to pull from about how your mind's going to work as well as your body so that you can start practicing. Well, what do I have to do to Kind of keep my mind from spiraling in a negative direction or how do I catch some positive momentum and kind of keep sending it that way and things like that and that, that just. I think you just add to that over a career of running them or a series of running them, and it. What It's. It sharpens. It's kind of like any sport with that where, you know, you always have this balance between the youthfulness that you may have earlier in your career versus the. The wise intelligence that you have maybe near the end of your career.

So in terms of wisdom, is there mechanisms by which you kind of observe the negative thoughts and let them go? So you have people like the David Goggins is who kind of. They. He seems to almost like separate his mind into. There's the weak David, the. That he hates, and then there's this strong one. I mean, there's like a very contentious relationship there. So he basically says, like, I refuse to be that person. And he's almost like angry at that person. He's almost like sometimes literally yelling at that person. The weak version of themselves. And then there's another more sort of Sam heresy approach, which is like, just observe the thought and let it go. Maybe knowing that this too shall pass, like, no matter what, this moment will not last forever and kind of sort of accepting the natural flow of things and taking one step at a time and allowing whatever the negativity, whatever the pain you're experiencing just to pass, even if it means a death march. Which one is more effective for you? Which one, like, would you say, generally speaking, to the population is more effective?

Yeah, that's a really good question. It. It's probably unique to the individual. I wouldn't argue that, you know, David is finding success with his approach. Some may argue it's an extreme version. You know, Sam has obviously thought about these things and, and really probably, you know, I see those guys as kind of two ends of the spectrum and just the way that they kind of come across in general where, like, David's like, really at you kind of high energy, and Sam's kind of this calming, soft presence, and he's just going to slowly, methodically lay it all out. And I think there's value on. In both of those. I think most people are probably going to get a benefit from pulling some from each. I mean, there's times where. Where I need a kick in the ass, and then it's like, have the strong Zach tell the weak Zach to get moving. But there's also times where, you know, it's just like, you know, a subtle voice entering my head about, you know, I don't know if I feel quite right now. Should I maybe pull back on the pace? And I think that little subtle voice is best approached with a subtle, positive voice where it's more like, okay, well, let's think this through here for a second. You're 40 miles into a 100 mile race. You spent four months preparing for it. You know, from the workouts you did that you're ready for this. There really isn't any real reason for you to slow down or to fall off your goal or your pace or, you know, reassess what you're doing. Let's just give this another mile or two and then we can reassess if we need to, in, in order to kind of figure out if I'm doing the right things or not. And I think like, in that situation, you definitely probably want to lean more towards the Sam Harris approach with that because there's really no reason to. It's almost like the same thing you see with like just training and even nutrition to a degree where like, some folks, they just want to be like, kind of like drilled. They want to be like, yelled at and said like, get going, get doing this. And that helps, that motivates and that helps them stay accountable. Other people need some softer love with it where it's like, you know, this isn't necessarily your thought, your, your fault. You were put in this environment that kind of created an atmosphere of lethargy and maybe poor nutritional choices and things like that and, and like, so, but it's, it's correctable. So we need to, we need to step away from that and we need to kind of start heading in the direction that we know is going to bear fruit down the road. And that person may respond better to that. So I think both those guys have great value with their approaches. They're just probably polar ends of the, of the spectrum. And I think most people are probably going to benefit like anything, right? You get the polarizing ones and those are going to work great for the polarizing people, but then most people are going to fit somewhere in the middle, so they're probably going to be able to kind of pull from both of those if they're able to sit down and kind of like assess which one's going to work better in which situation.

So the quitting thing that you mentioned, the, like the final stage, which actually I get to much quicker than you seem to, which is like, why am I doing this? I get there with basically anything I do, it's like, this is, this is probably the stupidest thing I've ever done is the feeling I get often. And then immediately you have these excuses. They're like, there's all these other better things you should be doing or, or the other alternative that like you said, I'm not prepared enough for this moment. I'll be much more prepared in two weeks for the next event. So like, why, let's try this again. Let's start over. Let's start over in two weeks. How do you deal with that? Quit like, so maybe do you still go through that process? And by way of advice for people that are more sort of amateurish like me, how to deal with that quitting voice?

I think a lot of times when the quitting voice kind of comes in it, what it does is it kind of just. It comes in with the added disadvantage, I guess in this situation of being kind of a narrow scoped view where you're looking at like what it's doing to you in the moment or how you're feeling in the moment versus how are you feeling about the whole process. So one thing that I started doing in 2019, and I think, I don't think it's necessarily, I think, I think, I think this was a big reason why I had one of my best racing seasons in 2019 that I had had to that date. It was, part of it was I started, I think, putting a little more emphasis on the big picture versus putting emphasis on like this is one opportunity or one day of work and this is one, one emotional kind of flare up. But how does that actually relate to my general, broader picture? So when I decide to do a race or an event or something like that, it's often four, six months out ahead of time. You're planning to like kind of do a series of workouts and a flow of things where you're going through the process of getting fit, getting ready, preparing for the specifics of the day and all that stuff. And then you get to the race itself or the event itself and it's very easy to look at that and think that's an isolation. Like I'm gonna run 12 hours a day or I'm gonna run 100 miles today or whatever it ends up being. And it's a lot easier to quit when you think to yourself, I'm 40 miles into 100 mile race, you know, that's just a 40 mile run. Which sounds kind of silly, I think, to most people, but in perspective, and we're talking about the ultramarathon running community, you. You know, it's a lot easier just to say, like, well, you know, I'll scrap this 40 miles and try again. It's a lot harder to say I'm going to scrap the entire last four months, the entire reason why I was doing it, the countless hours I spent in there. So I think I just try to reposition it of, like, I'm in a bad place right now, maybe in my head, or I'm not. I'm hitting a low point here, but I'm 99% of the way towards the goal I set out four months ago when I add in all the work I did leading up to that. So. So I think it's important to ask yourself why? Because, I mean, there are times when you're doing something and you ask yourself why and you don't have a good reason, and then maybe it is advantageous to step back and. And really reflect on that and decide, is this something I actually want to invest time and energy into? Because, you know, someone like yourself who is very much into a variety of different things, it can be easy probably to overextend and get. I mean, I'm a very curious person. So there's like a hundred things I would love to do if I wasn't doing what I'm doing.

Yeah.

And I know how to enjoy all of them. So it. At a certain point, though, you have to say, okay, which one is gonna be the most meaningful for me? And if the answer keeps coming back to saying, I guess this is still the most meaningful to me out of that hundred things that I could otherwise be doing, then. Then I know that I'm in the. In it for the right reason, Then I just need to identify some of the things, like, well, why did this one take the top spot out of the hundred things that I could have picked from? And keeping a list of those in your head so that when you get to that point where you start saying, why am I doing this? Why am I here? You just have those kind of ready loaded in your head to say, well, I already took inventory on that before I started this. And I knew this voice was going to come at some point, whether it's early, middle, or late. And then you just remind yourself kind of what you were thinking when you had a little more of a level head.

Well, there's something about the thing you mentioned when you mentioned the death march. It seems extremely valuable to just never quitting, like, in the moment. If you decide to do something like never quitting even if you do go through the process and realize that it's not the wisest thing to be doing within the full context of your life. Like, once you decide to do it, it seems like never quitting prevents you from sort of having that escape claws from other things in your life. So I've, I've quit on a few things in my life and I think I still, I deeply regret that because it opened that door. It's almost like a muscle, I don't know. So I, I, I think I'm, I don't, maybe everyone is, but I think I'm kind of a quitter. You know what I mean? Like, like I'm really good at coming up with reasons to quit. My mind is really good at that. And it feels like I have to come up with, like, really work hard to make sure that there's no quit, that I never allow myself to quit, no matter how stupid the thing I'm doing is. I don't know if any of that makes sense, but it just maybe to rephrase this whole thing, do you think it's good to live life by the ethos of never quit?

Yeah, that's a really interesting thing. And I think it actually resonates with a lot of ultramarathon runners because there seems to be a trend when you have someone who's been in the sport for a long time where there's a point where they start the sport right and they're like super excited about everything, everything's new. It's very easy not to quit because you're like, oh, this is the first time I've ever run a 50 case. The first time ever run a 50 mile, it's the first time ever on a hundred case, first time ever in 100 miles, and so on and so forth. And when you're doing that for the first time, I think there's a heightened motivation to not quit because you don't want your first attempt to be a failure. And then you get a little further along and you start reflecting on the landscape and all the opportunities that are out there and you find yourself quitting on an event. And there does seem to be a trend where once you do that once, now all of a sudden, like you, like you described perfectly, that quit pops up in your head maybe a little sooner the next time or maybe a little bit before. And I've certainly had these experiences in my career as well. And what happens, I think, if you stick with it again, I think it is important to assess whether you really want to be doing what you're doing. But if you start recognizing that about yourself in a certain activity where it's like, I think I might be pulling the plug early on some of this stuff, I think you just need to kind of get into a position where you just, at that point, you need to make a decision, do I want to keep doing this? If the answer is yes, you hold yourself accountable to not quitting. And eventually what will happen is you'll find yourself in a position where I'll use ultramarathons, for example, where you're just clicking on all cylinders for that day, and you still get those scenarios where doubt creeps in your mind. You have these low points, but for whatever reason, when those low points come, you're able to push through them better than you would have in the past. And then you push through maybe two or three more than you did after you had quit the time before, then it's accountability time, right? Because then you have to look back at that and say, well, why did this time? Was I able to be mentally more strong and kind of push through those, those, those extra opportunities to quit when I wasn't before? And it can be easy to look back and say, and live kind of like retroactively in the sense where you're like, regretting, well, why did I drop out of those races? Why did I do this wrong there? And. And that. I just think that's where you have to kind of catch yourself and say, no, those, those things happened to me in order to put me in a position where I decided, well, this time I'm not going to quit no matter what, minus my leg falling off, like, I'm not going to quit. And then you put yourself in position to have that day where you push through more times than you ever have before, and you just redefine what you're capable of. And then once I think you do that, you start looking at those earlier lessons as lessons. You know, were they failures on paper at the time? Probably. But can you pull things from them to learn as to like, well, where is your actual threshold? Where is the limit, actually for you? And then kind of start redefining that stuff. So I think, like, the never quit mentality can be good in certain situations, but I don't think it's necessarily like a, like a holistic thing where you need to be in something where it's never quit, always do more. Because then you end up in a situation where you find this, like, margin of diminishing returns, especially when it comes to training and workouts and things like that, where there are times where often there are times where you want to actually quit a little bit before you would have to because the stress that was required to elicit a growth response has already occurred. And just to do more is just going to require more recovery time to get back and do it again.

Yeah, this is the tricky trade off. Living by the never quit mentality, you're not going to achieve optimal performance in your head.

You might.

It seems like when you look at the full arc of human history, the people who do great things are more leaning towards the never quit. Like, I feel like at any one moment you're more in danger of quitting than you are being suboptimal. So like in terms of advice, it just feels like never quitting is always the right advice unless you deeply know the person. Maybe this is like wrestling mentality. I've seen too many and because I'm annoyed with the current culture telling me to relax and, and have a work life balance and all those kinds of things which all have a deep, deep truth to them. But the reality is like, there's not enough people that walk up to me and like slap me and say, get your shit together. Like, don't quit, work harder. I think we need to hear that more. And like I remember that from the wrestling rooms. Like that when you're pushed that way, when you're forced to the very limit and you don't quit, that makes better humans.

I think people need to get that in their life. I think they need to have situations where that becomes kind of the reality for them so they can see that avenue, experience that avenue, where I think it's maybe to the extreme, as if it becomes like your entire life philosophy where like every little thing you do is never quit.

But life is short, Zach. Like why? I mean, this is the problem I have, this is probably the programming thing too, is over optimization is dangerous. It's like every once in a while, I mean you're, you do this kind of stuff. You're not, for example, with 100 mile run, you're. I mean, you could just be doing that for the rest of your life and do like the most optimal 100 mile run ever. But you keep taking on like new challenges and there's a lot more chaos in that. And there it feels like the muscle of never quit will be much more important than the optimality of your training.

Yeah. So there's probably a couple sides to me with that kind of a thing where for one, I think when we talked about the why? So, like, I think the why can kind of shift a bit, and it probably will if you do something long enough or evolve, maybe is a better way to call to put it. And for me, like, one of my big drives and one of my big passions within ultra running is to focus, first of all, find an event that I really, really love to train for and participate in. So for me, I feel like I've kind of identified that to a degree, and that's kind of runnable 100 milers. So once I found that, it became more of a driver for me to see, like, well, how fast can I run 100 miles in a very controlled environment? So let's eliminate weather, let's eliminate, you know, elevation. Let's eliminate, like having to wait extra long to get crew or support and that sort of thing. And that's how you find yourself on a 400 meter track running 100 miles. But for me, like that, the important part of that is that I can control the environment enough where if I come back year after year, I can retest myself and have a decent ability to kind of say I improved or I regressed or I stayed stagnant. And I think that's a big driver for me. But one thing I've recognized within that is if you just keep doing that, like, if I could probably pick three flat runnable 100 milers a year and optimally prepare, race, recover and repeat without, like burning myself out. But one thing I think I Learned also in 2019 was that sometimes you kind of need to step away from some of these really, really kind of important markers in your, like, your performance or in whatever you're trying to do and take a step away from it and try do something a little different. Different in order to kind of hit the reset button on just like what I would call just like your mental energy to be able to continue to do it at a high level.

So almost like happiness.

Exactly. Well, and here's the example. Like, I mean, I love running in trails too. Most people would consider me a flat road track runner, runnable ultra runner, but I like to do trail runs too. So in, at the end of 2018, I recognized that I had been kind of pushing the gas pedal on trying to run fast 100 milers for quite a while without really a break in that where it was like, okay, I did one, now I'm gonna, you know, take a brief off season, but then I'm gonna ultimately build up and peak for another one. I might introduce some fun trail races in the context, but they're gonna be B races, they're gonna be training races, time on feet type of stuff that are gonna kind of mimic like a long run essentially. And. But the main focus, the always in the back of my mind was like getting on the track and seeing how much faster I can run 100 miles. And that just kind of that energy that it takes to continually think by that, that I think the motivation to keep that stoke high enough to really meet your full potential fades if you don't step away from it for a little bit. So I took essentially half a year away from runnable stuff and just decided I'm going to prepare for The San Diego 100 mile, which is like a much more elevation, technical trail type of an event.

Is that a trail run or no?

Yeah, It's a trail 100 miler, actually. Just kind of just outside of San Diego. And yeah, it goes through, it goes over part of the Pacific Crest Trail and stuff. So it's. It's very different than running on a runnable surface. So to give you some context, like I ran, was it, I think just under 17 hours for that race, Whereas on a flat surface, I can run 11 hours and 19 minutes. So just the environment alone added an extra, you know, five plus hours to the day. So it's just a different experience, different skill set. And what it did is it allowed me to kind of step away from kind of focusing on like splits on a track, running flat stuff, like preparing for things specifically for a flat environment, and start training for something that's more climbing and descending, more technical running skill sets and things like that. And the cool part about it was, first of all, you know, when you step away from something and enter something a lot different, I mean, it's still running. There's still a huge advantage I had from the running I'd done in the past that was going to put me in a good position to be successful. But there was a much higher or a much bigger range of potential improvement for me. So through the like, you know, four plus months I spent preparing for that race, you know, I noticed, oh, wow, I'm getting faster on this climb or I'm getting better at descending. This technical trailer. It was one of the most fun races I've run, actually. So it was kind of a cool experience. I ended up taking the lead at like 93 miles.

So you're racing, racing like you were trying to get first. So still a race.

Yeah.

So what was the enjoyable aspect of it?

I don't think I recognized it so much while I was doing it actually, it surfaced afterwards. I mean, the enjoyment of the race itself is like when you find yourself in a position where you're sitting in basically second place all day long and then you take the lead at 90. I think it was like 91 or 92 miles. It's like, yeah, that's kind of a cool way to race. But afterwards I recognized a few things. Just about kind of pacing and, you know, how to maybe pace the first half of 100 miler versus a second half. I also recognized shortly thereafter, once I finished, recovered and decided my next event was going to be a flat runnable race, that, wow, I really was way more excited to do the workouts that I needed to do to get ready to run a fast, flat 100 miler. And I don't think that would have been the case had I just tried to do another flat, fast 100 miler earlier or during that year and end up in a situation where like, I maybe had like normalized a suboptimal like outlook on like something that I had just done so many times already. And I recognized that just every workout I did, I was like, I, I did this workout a year ago and it was not nearly this much fun. Or you know, then the interesting thing about these track hundreds too is like, you find yourself doing like your peaking phase where you're running your long runs, which for me are usually like, you know, around 30 miles or so. And I'll do them on back to back days and you know, I try to replicate the environment I'm going to race on. So I find myself on a 400 meter track. Yeah. And it's like when I started doing that again, I just felt like I was super motivated to go out there Saturday and Sunday and do those back to back long runs and see the progress and then head out again the next week and do it again. So I had some of my more enjoyable long runs, which are going to be the most specific to race day environment that I had in quite some time. And I think that was really beneficial and kind of putting me in a right spot to be able to push through barriers on race day and, and put me in a position where quitting was going to be much less of a likelihood given the enjoyment I had in the months leading into the race itself.

Yeah. Even the thought of quitting. Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned the track. You've also ran 100 miles on the treadmill and the trail 100 mile broadly. If we zoom out, what does it take to run 100 miles for most of the world, that seems like a crazy distance to run. So maybe it's interesting to ask, not only is just setting the world record, but purely running. What does it take to run?