0:00

The science and practice of

0:02

enhancing human performance for sport,

0:04

play and life. Welcome

0:08

to Perform. Hello friends, I'm

0:10

Dr. Andy Galpin. I'm a professor of

0:12

kinesiology in the Center for Sport Performance at Cal

0:14

State Fullerton. In today's episode, we're

0:16

going to be talking about specifically how to

0:18

improve your VO2 max. In previous episodes,

0:20

we talked about the heart. We went

0:22

over what it is, how it works, why you should

0:25

care about it. We also spent some

0:27

time going over the three I's, so how

0:29

to investigate or assess your overall cardiovascular function,

0:32

how to interpret that to know whether it's

0:34

good, bad, terrible, or potentially a world record,

0:37

and then how to intervene, so what to do

0:39

about it and how to improve its function. If

0:41

you missed that previous episode we did on the

0:43

heart, please go back and check that out. But

0:45

I'd be remiss to not remind you or tell

0:47

you for the first time about how important VO2

0:49

max is. If you want

0:51

all the studies, direct links, specific details

0:53

on the statistics and values, you can

0:55

see that in the previous episode as

0:57

well as the show notes for that

0:59

episode. But really quickly, your

1:01

VO2 max is one of the most significant

1:03

predictors of all cause mortality that

1:06

we know of. In fact, if

1:08

you compare it to more traditional markers like

1:10

blood pressure, smoking history,

1:12

cholesterol levels, while those are

1:15

all very important, VO2 max can be

1:17

two to three to even up to

1:19

four fold higher predictor of

1:22

survival and mortality than those other

1:24

traditional markers. So it's insanely

1:26

important and in fact, many

1:28

folks would argue it is the most important metric

1:30

to pay attention to if you

1:32

want to know how long you're going to live. Now

1:34

I apologize for being overly dramatic about

1:36

that, but really it is that astounding

1:38

about how important that number is to

1:41

determining how long you're going to live. The

1:43

other important point about this is there is

1:46

no upper limit such that the

1:48

higher your VO2 max, the higher your

1:50

chance of survival continues to go. It

1:53

really doesn't seem to get to any point of diminishing returns. And

1:56

so it's a metric that is within your control. It

1:59

is arguably not. be one of, if not

2:01

the most important metric for how long you're going to live.

2:04

And the higher, the better. And

2:07

so focusing on this, whether you want to

2:09

run a marathon or want

2:12

to play sports, it really doesn't matter.

2:14

If you want to live longer and better, VO2

2:17

max should be one of your top priorities.

2:20

But in today's discussion, I wanted to do something

2:22

a little bit different. And that is really

2:24

spend our entire time going over practical applications. I

2:27

want to walk you through exact programs

2:29

and protocols, giving you

2:31

both the concepts as well as

2:33

specific methodologies as samples to help you

2:35

get guided in either developing your own

2:38

program or helping others with theirs. In

2:40

order to do that, I need to start

2:42

with a very quick overview of what we're

2:45

trying to actually accomplish when we're improving our

2:47

endurance or VO2 max. So that

2:49

you understand the different components that tend

2:51

to be pretty similar amongst all different

2:54

styles and training approaches. I

2:56

promise we'll keep that very brief. After

2:58

that, we're going to jump right into a very

3:00

specific protocol for improving your VO2 max. And

3:03

then after that, I'm going to share with you

3:05

a specific protocol a friend of mine used to complete

3:07

his first ever marathon. Now before we go too

3:09

much further, I'd like to take a quick break and

3:11

thank our sponsors because they make this show possible. Not

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this thing is because Dan

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that starts by going

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to vitalityblueprint.com/perform. Let's

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go. So to get us started, I really

6:29

do think it's important that we zoom out

6:31

just a little bit. When we say improve

6:33

our VO2 max, we have to acknowledge that

6:35

that is only one component of endurance. So

6:38

do you truly mean VO2 max or do

6:40

you mean your ability to have more energy

6:42

throughout the day, to feel less fatigued? Those

6:45

are really different conversations, all important.

6:47

But in this particular example, I

6:49

want to focus on really improving just

6:51

the VO2 max. Okay. So then

6:54

thinking through that, I like to use a

6:56

method called first principles, which says, let's zoom

6:58

all the way out. Let's think about everything that

7:00

would have to happen for me to have a high VO2

7:02

max. And then number

7:04

one, analyze my own self to figure out

7:06

where in that program am I fatiguing

7:09

or lacking? And then how do I solve

7:11

it? If you don't know,

7:13

then you would actually just do a program

7:15

that addresses all potential areas of failure. If

7:18

you do know your area of failure, then you would probably

7:20

hedge a little bit more towards that. What do

7:22

I mean? Well, we could come up with any number

7:24

of examples here, but let's say you are

7:27

feeling like you're just not running as

7:29

fast as you used to. Well, that may

7:31

not be a VO2 max issue. It may be a

7:33

speed issue, maybe a mechanics issue. Let's

7:36

say you're having a different issue where you're feeling fatigued

7:38

in games if you're an athlete. Well, this

7:40

may actually have to do with your warmup. It

7:42

could be nutrition related. It could be sports psychology.

7:45

You are upregulated or downregulated or

7:47

something like that. And so when we really

7:49

go into solving problems for high performers, I

7:51

would encourage you to not just grab a

7:53

program like this, put it in place and

7:55

assume it's going to work for everyone. It

7:58

may work for many. Obviously, I'm going

8:00

to present to you programs I think are very effective.

8:03

But I really would encourage you to think

8:05

through the performance of you and your

8:07

individual situation. In

8:10

my experience, it's not always a

8:12

physiological issue. There could be other lower hanging fruit

8:14

that improves your performance in a way that you

8:16

care about. That's not necessarily

8:18

just physiology. All that aside, let's

8:20

go ahead and dive into VO2 max. Remember,

8:24

what we're talking about here is a

8:26

central and peripheral issue, meaning central,

8:29

as in your cardiovascular system, specifically

8:31

really your heart, and peripheral

8:33

as in your musculature. So there's

8:35

two sides to this equation. VO2 max, the

8:37

equation I like to use

8:39

the modified Fick equation, which we talked

8:41

about and described in the previous cardiac

8:43

episode, is your VO2 max is

8:46

equivalent to your heart rate multiplied

8:49

by your stroke volume. That's also heart rate

8:51

times stroke volume is known as your cardiac

8:53

output, multiplied by your AVO2 difference. And

8:55

so it's how much blood you can get out of

8:57

your heart per pump, how many pumps you

9:00

can get away with, that's the cue,

9:02

that's the cardiac output, multiplied by your

9:04

AVO2 difference, which tells you how much oxygen

9:06

you can extract from your blood

9:08

into your working tissue. All right, so I'm

9:10

going to stop right there with the details. That's really what we have

9:12

to think about. And so

9:15

along the way, then we start thinking, all right, where is

9:17

my point of failure? If I'm

9:19

limited in my stroke volume, why? Is

9:21

it because my heart's too small? Okay, well

9:24

solving that problem is

9:26

a different style of training than if

9:28

my issue is extracting oxygen into tissue.

9:31

There's a different training solution for that. Maybe

9:34

your issue is mechanics of your lungs. So

9:36

maybe you're not breathing properly, or maybe your

9:38

intercostals or diaphragm fatigue. Maybe it's

9:41

posture related. And so there's various components we

9:43

want to get into to really

9:45

address this. So high endurance

9:47

athlete or endurance performance solutions are

9:49

individuals who can dive into that

9:52

stuff and figure out, hey,

9:54

your most your biggest hole here, your

9:56

biggest problem is this particular area. And

9:58

so we're going to design your protocols to

10:00

solve that problem, right? Nonetheless

10:03

though, let's assume you don't have any of

10:05

that information and we'll just move through with

10:08

one quality example. I will reiterate just

10:10

one more time, there are many, many,

10:12

many ways to improve VO2

10:14

max. I've talked to and know a bunch

10:16

of high level endurance coaches. There's a ton

10:18

of research in this as well. And so

10:21

you could pull up just endless amounts of

10:23

protocols. My goal is to not tell you

10:25

that the protocol I'm about to present to

10:27

you is the best or better than anything

10:29

else, but it is just a sample of

10:31

one protocol that I know works very well.

10:33

And so depending on your goals and situation, you

10:36

may want to make many changes or use an

10:38

entirely different setup. All those

10:40

caveats to say, now let's finally jump into

10:42

the protocol. Remember, when we say VO2, I'm

10:45

assuming you mean VO2 max, which is

10:48

that maximal capacity or

10:50

ability. Maximum heart

10:52

rate, maximum oxygen extraction, maximum

10:54

stroke volume, et cetera. You

10:56

may actually be more interested in something

10:58

like a sub-maximal performance. So how can

11:01

I cover more distance at a

11:03

given heart rate? Or how can I run my race

11:05

faster? Or how can I perform better without getting so

11:07

tired in my given event, in

11:09

my pickleball or canoeing or volleyball or

11:11

whatever I'm playing? Those are

11:13

different conversations. We're really gonna talk about how to

11:15

maximize the VO2 right

11:18

now. We'll cover the things like performing better in your

11:20

marathon a little bit later. So

11:22

VO2 max training then per

11:24

se says, all right, we've got three major

11:26

components to discuss. The very first one is,

11:28

what is your modality? In other

11:31

words, what's your exercise? If you

11:33

are exercise agnostic, then you really,

11:35

you can pick anything you want. You can push

11:37

a sled, you can sprint, you can

11:40

swim, you can bike, you can use an assault

11:42

bike, you can use whatever you would like. If

11:45

you're trying to improve performance and again,

11:47

a given race or

11:49

your VO2 max for a fight or a

11:51

competition, then you're gonna wanna pick the mode

11:53

specific to that. Again, if you

11:56

are simply after the VO2 max, then

11:58

you are mode agnostic. In fact, you could... probably

12:00

use a combination and probably should use a

12:02

combination of different modalities. What you want to do

12:05

is pick something that accomplishes two things. One, allows

12:08

you to execute sufficient effort so

12:11

you can do this a bunch at a high effort

12:13

or a high intensity or long duration or high focus

12:15

or whatever we're gonna want to do there. And

12:17

then secondly, one that's not limiting your technical

12:20

proficiency. So if you're not good at

12:22

running I wouldn't recommend doing this.

12:24

One of the common and largest mistakes

12:26

folks make when trying to improve

12:28

their VO2 max or endurance in general is

12:30

they hop into things like running and then

12:32

they just start adding volume. So they do one

12:34

mile today and two miles the next week and

12:36

three or etc. or

12:39

intensity. So they do you know 30 seconds

12:41

of hard work and then they do three rounds

12:43

of that and the next week they do four rounds

12:45

and five rounds. We start building this intensity and volume

12:47

on top of either truly

12:49

dysfunctional or suboptimal movement patterns

12:52

and that results in a lot of injury

12:54

and a lot of excessive fatigue. Okay so

12:56

you want to be really careful pick something

12:58

you are technically proficient in if you are

13:01

modality agnostic and something

13:03

you're not going to be broken down or

13:05

injured with. The

13:08

next thing then is the intensity and

13:10

the volume we're gonna want to play with. Every

13:12

coach defines these things differently. They

13:16

think you should spend a different amount of

13:18

time in different zones. You can kind of

13:20

think of this though almost all coaches acknowledge

13:22

there's at least three potentially four

13:25

areas that you should train in. The

13:27

bottom easiest level if you'd like to call

13:29

this zone one or zone two you can. I don't

13:33

honestly candidly don't use that stuff much.

13:36

You can call these gear one or gear two

13:38

if you're Brian McKenzie or someone like that. You

13:41

could call these things just more like blue

13:43

zone. You could call them

13:45

RPE or relative perceived exertion. How hard does

13:47

this feel on a scale of one to

13:49

ten and call this you know something

13:52

like two to four on a scale again

13:54

of one to ten. So there are lots of different

13:56

ways people shake this up. Just to give

13:58

you very rough examples this is probably

14:00

something like 60 to 65% of your heart

14:02

rate. Again,

14:06

some folks will define those numbers a little bit differently.

14:09

Um, this could be exercise that

14:11

you could do while maintaining a conversational pace,

14:13

so lots of different ways, uh,

14:15

to go about it. Um, you could make an argument

14:18

for many of them being better than others, but this

14:20

is just getting you the basic idea of lower

14:23

intensity exercises. After

14:26

that, you move up to your next zone

14:28

or area. Again, could be a combination of

14:30

zone two or zone three, maybe gear three,

14:33

on that system, maybe others

14:35

call this a green color. Uh, this

14:38

is probably something like an RPE of

14:40

five to six, maybe up to seven.

14:42

You're kind of in this moderate, uh,

14:45

intensity zone. Heart rates are going to range here

14:47

between that, you know, 65, all the

14:49

way up to like 85% plus or minus,

14:51

you know, something in

14:53

that neighborhood. And then finally, all

14:55

the way at the top, you're now at 85% plus of your heart

15:00

rate, typically, um, you're now into gear

15:02

four, uh, in that way

15:05

of defining it and others would call

15:07

this red. Okay. So you're really moving really, really

15:09

hard. You're definitely not a conversation pace. You're almost

15:11

surely not going to be able to breathe through

15:13

your nose alone. Um, you're going to have to

15:15

open up your mouth and you're moving here. Now,

15:19

depending on how trained you are, those three

15:21

zones, kind of blue, green, and red might

15:23

be enough. If you are highly

15:25

trained, um, and you're comfortable or even moderately trained,

15:27

you might add a fourth one on top of

15:29

that. I like to call this one infrared,

15:32

and this is kind of your 95% plus. So

15:35

there's a difference. And most folks would know this that training at

15:37

80 to 85 or even 90% of your

15:40

heart rate is challenging, but

15:43

manageable. When you cross that threshold of 95, 96,

15:45

97, it is really honestly a different thing. 97%

15:48

is not the same as 87%. And

15:52

so I kind of call that last 5%

15:54

the infrared zone. So with

15:57

all of these things are pros and cons.

15:59

Okay. The global. general benefit of

16:01

the really high intensity stuff is it

16:03

creates a tremendous amount of physiological adaptation

16:05

in a short amount of time. Right,

16:07

so you're talking minutes to seconds of

16:10

work. This could be things like

16:13

high intensity intervals, this could be maximum

16:15

all-out efforts, lots of different stuff there,

16:17

typically 20 seconds, so maybe you know

16:19

like a couple of minutes at most,

16:21

and then you're gonna repeat that effort

16:23

time and time and time again.

16:26

The moderate stuff is a little bit different, it

16:29

requires not as much

16:31

effort, not as much pain, not as much

16:33

suffering. It's gonna be a little

16:35

more time demanding, but it's not quite as

16:38

intimidating or hard or mentally difficult to get

16:40

into for a lot of folks as the

16:42

red stuff. The bottom stuff

16:45

is the opposite, also effective, easier

16:48

to do, you don't necessarily have to have

16:50

as diligent of a warm-up, your

16:52

injury risk is pretty low, but you're gonna have

16:54

to go for a longer period of time. I

16:57

think you're gonna have a difficult time making

16:59

a cogent argument that you could stick in

17:01

any one of those zones for all of

17:03

your training and optimize your VO2. I'm

17:06

not really sure I know of any research

17:08

or high-level coaches that pick one zone and stay

17:10

in it entirely. In fact, I think you're gonna

17:12

run into a lot of problems with that. And

17:14

so most are gonna use a combination of these

17:17

you know three to four areas in

17:19

various pieces, and ideally you're

17:21

gonna find you can

17:24

maximize the benefits of one of the

17:26

areas while minimizing consequences and that's how

17:28

you blend your program together. Really

17:30

quickly as an example, the downside of

17:33

lower intensity stuff is it doesn't create

17:35

a lot of stimulus for adaptation, so

17:37

it requires a long amount of time.

17:40

Okay, the more time you spend in

17:42

a movement pattern, the more likely you

17:44

are to have tissue injuries, you're just

17:46

simply creating more contact time or more

17:49

overall exertion. And the

17:51

biggest reason people don't exercise number one

17:53

by far is adherence, and the number

17:56

one driver of adherence is time. Okay,

17:58

so downsides there. If you go

18:00

to the other end and you go to that infrared

18:02

stuff, well that's great. The total workout can be under

18:05

20 minutes, but it

18:07

really, really taps into your

18:09

recovery reserves. It is way

18:11

harder to recover from 95% than it is even 90%.

18:16

And so it's not a linear increase in

18:18

recovery with an increased intensity, it's exponential. And

18:21

so you really have to be concerned with

18:23

dosing that stuff too much because it really

18:25

takes away your ability to recover, which means

18:27

it's going to eliminate your other training.

18:29

So that's really the game we're playing with trying

18:32

to improve our VO2 max. We

18:34

also have specificity we need to pay attention to.

18:36

So if you want to get

18:38

better at your VO2 max in a given modality,

18:40

say this is on a rower, then

18:43

you're going to get faster at that by

18:45

rowing. We see that very clearly. There's

18:47

excellent research on if you take people and train them

18:49

on a rower and then have them do a VO2

18:51

max test on a bike or running

18:53

for that matter. Then you compare

18:55

that to their VO2 max on the rower. They're

18:58

going to have greater percentage increases in their

19:00

VO2 max on the rower than

19:03

they will on the bike or on the

19:05

treadmill, simply because they became more efficient, they

19:07

became more relaxed and motor patterns were better,

19:09

etc, etc. So specificity is a

19:11

way to get an extra, you know, small

19:13

but important percentage increase in your VO2 max

19:15

by simply working on that modality. So that

19:17

all being said, let's go ahead and dive

19:19

into this sample program I've got prepared for

19:21

you. Candidly, it

19:23

is a little challenging to follow just hearing

19:26

my voice or watching this in the video. And

19:28

so please go to the show notes, you're going to be

19:31

able to download this program. There's a

19:33

lot of graphics and explanations and stuff that's going

19:35

to really help you use these things better. But

19:38

it would be pretty challenging for me to just

19:40

explain this entire thing to you step by step,

19:42

rep by rep for the entire eight weeks, just

19:45

verbally here. So you have more resources

19:47

there if you're having a hard time or maybe it's

19:49

not as crystal clear as you would like it. I'm

19:51

going to do my best though to walk you through

19:53

it so that you can get some usable information, just

19:56

simply listening or watching the video just

19:59

for a little bit of context. The program I'm

20:01

about to explain to you was developed to improve

20:03

VO2 max over an eight week training phase. I'm

20:05

going to get into the details here

20:07

in one second, but it's important to

20:09

recognize this is probably best for people

20:11

who are of a fairly low training

20:14

age or physical fitness to up to kind

20:16

of moderate. It can absolutely be used for

20:19

high level and elite endurance athletes,

20:21

but it's not optimized and designed

20:23

for that cause. To give

20:25

you an example, the program starts off

20:27

pretty conservative and works your way up.

20:30

If you're highly trained, you may want to be a little more

20:32

aggressive than that. Just a

20:34

really easy example. If you've listened to

20:36

the previous episode we did on the

20:39

heart and cardiac tissue, you may remember

20:41

the story of the Norwegian cyclist, Oskar

20:43

Svensson. His print training program

20:45

was something like 75% of his time. He

20:49

worked in the 60 to 82% heart rate

20:51

peak range, right? This

20:54

program is not going to get you that high that fast. So

20:56

Oskar spent 75% of his time, kind of 60 to 82%, 20%

20:58

of his time between 83 to So

21:05

again, that's a differentiation that we're not even going to

21:07

make in this program, that kind of like mid upper

21:10

range, and then only 5% of his time in that

21:12

88% plus. All right.

21:15

So, um, we're going to have a similar theme

21:17

and again, I think you will see most programs

21:19

will do that. You're going to use a combination

21:21

of this low, moderate and high intensity stuff. You're

21:23

not going to spend that much time at high

21:25

intensity. You're going to dose it appropriately and you'll

21:27

probably spend the bulk of your time in lower

21:29

intensities. But the percentages here are really going to

21:31

be different than the percentages I'm about to explain

21:33

to you. So that's the point I really wanted

21:35

to make. Um, you may want to

21:37

start if you're moderately or just

21:40

new to training at a little bit lower intensity, and

21:42

there's a lot of reasons for that, but

21:45

we'll get into those at another point. So

21:47

let's dive right into it. This program

21:49

is called metamorphosis and it was developed by

21:51

Joel Jamison. Joel has been around for a

21:53

very long time. A legend

21:55

in the field of conditioning. If you will, he's

21:57

got a fantastic book on conditioning.

56:00

It helps them with cravings, digestion,

56:02

and many other benefits. I

56:04

especially personally like taking AG1 when

56:06

I'm on vacation or traveling because

56:09

it helps me just sort of stay on track with

56:11

my nutrition. I know that missing a

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few days of getting the proper vitamins and minerals and

56:15

other micronutrients is not a big deal at all. That's

56:18

not really how those things work. But

56:21

for me, again, I just like knowing

56:23

that I'm kind of staying somewhat on

56:25

track when I'm definitely not making the

56:27

best nutrition and food choices of my

56:29

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56:40

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56:44

plus K2. So

56:47

let's move on and talk about our training for our

56:49

first marathon program. Now a little bit of a back

56:51

store here. This is called Faster in 50 because it

56:53

was designed to get you to a marathon in 50

56:55

days. Really important

56:58

though and actually you could say the same for the previous

57:00

program. Just because that was eight

57:02

weeks long and this one's 50 days long. They

57:04

don't necessarily have to be that. There

57:07

are two big components of Faster in 50 which we'll talk

57:09

about in a second. And they're broken

57:11

up as phase one is 25 days and phase two

57:13

is 25 days, 50 in total. But

57:17

they could be much longer. So if you're not in the

57:19

same position that this individual was in for

57:21

25 days and you need

57:23

longer for that foundation piece, make that foundational

57:25

piece 50 days. Make it 150 days.

57:28

Make the second piece longer. It's absolutely fine. All these

57:30

programs are meant to get to a certain place. So

57:33

if you're not there as fast as

57:35

this individual was or you're starting off in a

57:37

different spot which almost surely is the case, please

57:39

want to make sure you understand this does not

57:41

have to be done in just 50 days. And

57:43

also definitely does not have to be done in

57:45

50 consecutive days. So we can

57:48

extend this thing out to be meeting

57:50

you where you're at and your needs for improving

57:53

your marathon. Now, as we take

57:55

a quick step back, when we look at

57:57

success in a marathon, there's three specific components.

57:59

We just got done talking about a program

58:01

designed to improve your VO2 max. But

58:04

that's only one of the three major predictors

58:06

of success in a marathon. The

58:08

other two are your lactate threshold and

58:11

then your movement efficiency. Okay, now we

58:14

also have to think about whether you're trying

58:16

to maximize your performance in a marathon or

58:19

simply finish it. Those are also very

58:21

different goals, right? Many of us, in

58:24

this case, this program was designed for somebody running

58:26

their very first marathon ever. It's

58:28

just trying to accomplish all 26.2 miles

58:31

without having to fail or stop or try

58:33

again. If you can already

58:35

do that and you're highly successful, say you're already running a

58:37

three hour marathon and you're trying to get a faster, that

58:40

really is a different approach. Okay. So really

58:42

want to just walk you through this program

58:46

of faster and 50, again, designed to help people

58:48

go from zero to

58:50

their first ever marathon in 50 days.

58:53

As we've done before, you can have direct

58:55

access to this full program and there'll

58:57

be links to this in our show notes as well

59:00

as the actual program and you can go check it

59:02

out. Faster and 50 was

59:04

developed by two individuals, Mark Bell and

59:06

Dan Garner. And so the backstory

59:08

here is Mark Bell, if you don't know him,

59:10

is a lifelong power

59:12

lifter and bodybuilder. He

59:14

has been training for probably 30 years. He's

59:17

competed in numerous powerlifting

59:19

events and competitions and bodybuilding

59:21

events. He is outward about

59:23

his long use of anabolic

59:26

steroids and many other agents.

59:28

But really what's interesting about this is you

59:30

have an individual who's probably six feet tall

59:32

or so, has weighed certainly 300 pounds

59:35

or more and has spent his

59:37

lifetime either maximizing muscle growth or

59:40

strength. Anything in the realm

59:42

of conditioning was completely off the table.

59:44

Mark was very anti-running, very anti-conditioning for

59:46

a long part. And if he did

59:48

do it, it was higher repetition range

59:50

lifting. No running that I

59:53

know of really before he started this,

59:55

certainly very minimal conditioning at

59:57

all. And so for whatever reason, Mark

59:59

decided he wanted to. take up running. So

1:00:01

he had done this for a while. I can't remember how long, maybe

1:00:04

four or five months or something like

1:00:06

that. And then decided because he's Mark

1:00:08

Bell, that he wanted to go

1:00:11

from just running to running a marathon. And

1:00:13

that first marathon needed to be Boston. And

1:00:15

so this is the actual program Mark used

1:00:17

to run his first ever marathon at probably

1:00:19

230 pounds. So what he did is realized

1:00:24

he couldn't handle that himself. So he reached

1:00:26

out to a guy named Dan Garner, was

1:00:28

a human performance expert, and he asked him

1:00:30

to build him a comprehensive program to run

1:00:32

his first ever marathon. This included his nutrition,

1:00:35

his supplementation, his recovery, sleep,

1:00:37

lifting, running, and all of

1:00:39

that. It's all in that

1:00:42

free program. I'm not

1:00:44

going to go into the details of all the supplements

1:00:46

and nutrition and everything else right now. So we're just

1:00:48

going to focus on what the training program looked like

1:00:50

for those final 50 days. Again, do

1:00:52

want to reiterate, he didn't start at zero.

1:00:54

Here he was already running for

1:00:56

a while. He was somewhat fit. This is

1:00:58

kind of like their last final push. And

1:01:00

so if you're literally starting from nothing, you

1:01:03

may want to take this first phase, which for Mark

1:01:05

was only 25 days. And that itself might need to

1:01:07

be 50 days or 60 days or

1:01:09

even 150 days for you before you're ready

1:01:13

to move on to the second phase. So caveat

1:01:15

aside, let's jump into what faster and 50 looks

1:01:17

like. The first thing to pay attention to here

1:01:19

is just like in the previous program, there is

1:01:21

a dedicated and specific warm up for each day.

1:01:23

So in this case, there's an upper body lift,

1:01:26

a lower body lift, and then of course you're running.

1:01:29

And so you can see the full details in the

1:01:31

program if you choose to check that out. But just

1:01:33

really quickly, the upper body warm up is going to

1:01:35

be things like cat camel

1:01:38

exercises, bird dogs, push ups,

1:01:40

jumping jacks, YTW's and

1:01:42

things like that. Same idea,

1:01:45

usually one to three sets, eight to

1:01:47

ten repetitions per exercise. So a full

1:01:49

body, full joint upper body dedicated warm

1:01:51

up. For the lower body,

1:01:53

it's a similar approach, but now you're talking

1:01:56

about things like mountain climbers and fire hydrants

1:01:58

and walking lunges and sing a leg hip

1:02:00

thrusts and things like that. Same

1:02:02

kind of repetition ideas. Really

1:02:05

what we're getting at is a combination of what's

1:02:07

called unilateral. So this is one of the two

1:02:09

joints moving while the other one rests as well

1:02:11

as bilateral. So both moving at the same time.

1:02:14

Easy example of this, a goblet squat

1:02:16

is bilateral, both legs, where

1:02:18

a step up is unilateral. So somewhere in your

1:02:20

warmup you want a combination of these things and

1:02:22

you want pressing and pulling and you can want

1:02:24

to ask the joint to kind of do everything

1:02:26

that it's supposed to do in its normal range

1:02:29

of motion. The running warmup

1:02:31

is gonna be a combination of

1:02:33

very low intensity aerobic exercise, so

1:02:35

skipping, jogging, cycling, stuff

1:02:38

like that. Maybe some

1:02:40

full body goblet squats or kozak

1:02:42

squats, some skips and hops, some

1:02:44

low level plyometrics and really other

1:02:46

things that you would consider to

1:02:48

just be general basic calisthenics. As

1:02:50

I mentioned, the program is built into

1:02:52

two unique phases. The very first one

1:02:55

is really meant to build your foundation.

1:02:57

It's the tissue tolerance we talked about

1:02:59

earlier. It's general conditioning, it's work capacity

1:03:01

and it's getting you physically prepared to

1:03:03

handle the training necessary to run the

1:03:05

marathon. The second phase

1:03:07

is really specific marathon prep. So

1:03:10

you're gonna start getting understanding of your race pace. How

1:03:13

do you know if you're going too fast or too slow? How

1:03:16

is that stuff feeling? You're gonna work on

1:03:18

your fueling and recovery. What should you be

1:03:20

eating or drinking? At what time? What upsets

1:03:22

your stomach? What makes you feel great? And

1:03:25

all those other things that go into actually

1:03:27

running a marathon that are not just your

1:03:29

physical training program. So those other components often

1:03:32

get forgotten left about. In fact, I'll never

1:03:34

forget as a doctoral student, I

1:03:36

was sitting in my cubicle and another one of the students

1:03:38

was getting ready for, I think it was his first marathon

1:03:40

actually or if not his first, he was second or something

1:03:43

like that. And he was talking about and strategizing over what

1:03:45

he was gonna use for his fuel during

1:03:47

the race. And he came up with this

1:03:49

plan and all these young scientists are talking about

1:03:51

the research and what should be taken and what amounts and

1:03:53

all that stuff. And I was like, oh, that's really cool.

1:03:56

And he was pretty close, I think it was maybe a month out. And

1:03:58

I asked, I'm like, well, awesome. What do you do in training right

1:04:01

now? And he looked at me

1:04:03

blankly, he's like, wow, I just run. I was

1:04:05

like, wait, wait, so like, you're gonna spend

1:04:07

all this time developing an optimal training and

1:04:09

fueling strategy, but you're not even gonna

1:04:11

practice it? And just like the

1:04:13

look on his face as he stared and realized

1:04:15

like, oh my gosh, like, how did I forget

1:04:17

that part? I'll never forget, it was quite amusing.

1:04:19

So the point I'm getting

1:04:21

at here is you wanna absolutely try

1:04:24

every component that you're gonna use, your

1:04:26

warmup, your cool down, all this stuff

1:04:28

should be tried prior to the competition.

1:04:30

So this last month is really about

1:04:33

practicing the race in all of its components.

1:04:36

So what's the structure look like of these

1:04:38

different phases? Let's start off with phase one,

1:04:41

that foundation. It's broken up into seven days.

1:04:43

Seven day, by the way, is optional, easy

1:04:45

to do recovery run or totally off. So

1:04:47

very similar to the VO2 max program. Day

1:04:50

one is gonna be an upper body

1:04:52

lift combined with interval running, and this

1:04:54

is also where definitions matter. They don't

1:04:56

necessarily define intervals and tempo and things

1:04:58

like that, the same as the previous

1:05:00

ones. So I'll clarify what they mean

1:05:02

by that. So again, day

1:05:04

one is an upper body lift combined

1:05:07

with an interval training. Day two is

1:05:09

a lower body lift plus tempo running.

1:05:12

And then day three is more of

1:05:14

that classic fartlec running style. Day

1:05:17

four is the second upper

1:05:20

body lift. So very similar, two days for

1:05:22

upper body, two days for lower body, little

1:05:24

bit of a different workout here. So

1:05:27

upper body, the second one, as well as a

1:05:29

recovery run. Day five

1:05:31

is lower body lift, as

1:05:33

well as a cross training, and I'll explain what

1:05:35

that is. And then day

1:05:37

six is a long, slow run. Now

1:05:40

remember, this is designed specifically for a

1:05:42

marathon. It's not for VO2 max, and

1:05:44

so you'll see some subtle differences there

1:05:46

that matter, but really conceptually, they're doing

1:05:48

the same thing. A little bit of

1:05:50

lifting, running in different zones,

1:05:53

some higher intensity stuff, some lower intensity

1:05:55

stuff. In this case, the goal is

1:05:57

to run for 26 straight miles. So

1:05:59

you have... have to practice running for

1:06:01

longer distances at some point. That's not

1:06:04

a requirement, though it can work,

1:06:06

but it's not a requirement to improving your VO2 max.

1:06:09

So slight differences here, because we're

1:06:11

actually after a different target, but

1:06:14

a lot of the same concepts. The

1:06:16

second phase is a little bit different.

1:06:18

So day one is now a total

1:06:20

body lift plus intervals. Day

1:06:22

two is a longer fart look strategy.

1:06:25

Day three, a total body lift again

1:06:27

plus a tempo run. Day

1:06:30

four is a shorter, higher intensity fart

1:06:32

look. And then day five

1:06:34

and six are longer, slower runs. And

1:06:36

then finally again, day seven is off. Now you'll

1:06:38

notice they've cut the lifting in half, and they've

1:06:40

extended the long runs. They've doubled those in fact,

1:06:43

and they've actually doubled the far looks. And this

1:06:45

makes a ton of sense. You're trying to run

1:06:47

a marathon. Lifting is important,

1:06:49

but running is more important. And so they've

1:06:51

doubled down on that, and we've said instead

1:06:53

of having upper body days and lower body

1:06:55

days, we'll just combine to have

1:06:57

total body days. So each muscle is

1:06:59

still getting two per week. But we've

1:07:01

de-emphasized that because we need to over, again,

1:07:04

continue to emphasize actual

1:07:06

running. We need to practice running long

1:07:08

distances slow, and we need

1:07:10

to practice running distances fast. Both

1:07:13

of those are going to be required to successfully complete

1:07:15

your marathon. Cool. Now you got

1:07:17

the big picture. Let's go in and cover a

1:07:19

couple of specific samples. Again, you're welcome to download

1:07:22

the entire program completely free. So

1:07:24

I can't go through all of it, but I will give you

1:07:26

some examples to make sure these

1:07:28

things make sense and clarify some of the terminology.

1:07:31

So let's just go into day one of

1:07:33

that first phase. Remember, this is an upper

1:07:35

body lift. Very

1:07:37

similar, rather than programming the specific

1:07:39

exercise. It's done by concept. So

1:07:42

you're going to have a horizontal press. You're

1:07:45

going to have a unilateral horizontal press on top

1:07:47

of that. And so this would be something like

1:07:49

a bench press with a then

1:07:51

single armed dumbbell press, something like that.

1:07:54

Now you're talking three sets or so

1:07:56

for five repetitions plus or minus. We're

1:07:58

trying to go. little bit heavy. In

1:08:01

this case, not all the way though. What we're

1:08:04

trying to work on is strength. So we need

1:08:06

that. We're going to get endurance and muscular endurance

1:08:08

along duration endurance from our running. And

1:08:10

so what we're trying to get with our lifting is the stuff we

1:08:12

can't get. All right. So we're trying to get a

1:08:14

little bit more strength development here. Not

1:08:17

maximal strength. We're not competing in power lifting or

1:08:19

weight lifting, but we are trying to get closer

1:08:21

to that end of the spectrum. So three sets

1:08:23

of five here for your horizontal press and three

1:08:26

sets of eight or so per side for

1:08:28

your unilateral press. You

1:08:31

then follow that up with a vertical press, so

1:08:33

something overhead, and then basically do the same

1:08:35

thing for the pulling. So you do your three

1:08:38

pressing exercises, horizontal, bilateral, horizontal,

1:08:40

unilateral, and then vertical. And

1:08:42

then you combine that with horizontal pulling, unilateral,

1:08:45

horizontal pulling, and then

1:08:47

the same thing. In this case, they chose

1:08:50

a medial delt. So same basic idea here.

1:08:53

Upper body is now taken care of. After this, we're going

1:08:55

to go into our running exercise.

1:08:57

Now you notice they've chosen to lift first

1:08:59

and then run after that, but the upper

1:09:02

body lift is not going to interfere with

1:09:04

our running really whatsoever. And so the running

1:09:06

here is going to be three one

1:09:08

mile runs with a three minute

1:09:11

walk in between. Also keep

1:09:13

in mind, you're talking about an individual

1:09:15

here who's certainly over 230 pounds. I don't

1:09:17

remember exactly who he was, but maybe

1:09:19

a little bit more. So they're going to have

1:09:21

to approach this running and distance stuff a lot differently than if

1:09:23

somebody was 160 or 70 pounds. That's just a lot more

1:09:27

mass on the joints. And

1:09:29

so if you're wondering as this program evolves,

1:09:31

why certain things are done this way, say

1:09:33

you have more experience with running or coaching,

1:09:36

this is the large component of it. Making sure

1:09:38

Mark get to the race healthy, and then

1:09:40

of course complete the 26 miles. But it's

1:09:43

a little bit different from somebody who's historically been 270 to

1:09:45

over 300 pounds for most of

1:09:48

his life. Even though he's lighter

1:09:50

now, we're still a pretty large individual

1:09:52

here and a typically large for

1:09:54

a marathon. So nonetheless, the endurance training,

1:09:57

like I said, it is three one

1:09:59

mile runs. with a three minute

1:10:01

rest in between. So you would run a mile,

1:10:04

rest for three minutes and then repeat that.

1:10:06

So you're going to accumulate three total miles

1:10:08

of running. You're not going to do these

1:10:10

at fast pace at all. You're probably nasal

1:10:12

breathing or close but you're not

1:10:15

walking either. This is a fast jog and

1:10:17

you want to think of this as more

1:10:19

of like seven to maybe eight out of

1:10:21

ten in terms of perceived speed. So you're

1:10:23

moving here. You're going to be fatigued. You're

1:10:26

not going to be having an easy light

1:10:28

jog here. We're trying to accumulate high work,

1:10:30

some rest and get a lot of volume

1:10:32

in without having to beat up the joints

1:10:35

too much. So you'll do that, those

1:10:38

three one mile repeats and then you'll do the

1:10:40

same thing but instead of being a mile you'll

1:10:42

do a half mile. So three

1:10:44

half mile repeats with 90 seconds

1:10:46

of rest in between. Still same

1:10:48

effort up there. So if we do that we've

1:10:50

accumulated four and a half total miles of running

1:10:53

which is actually pretty good. So you think

1:10:55

about this for somebody at the first phase

1:10:57

here. Four and a half total miles accumulated

1:10:59

but you're able to do that at a

1:11:01

pretty high pace. Generate a

1:11:03

lot of endurance in a lot of different

1:11:05

areas while also getting some

1:11:08

miles in. Day two is the lower body lift

1:11:10

combined with what's called tempo. Now in this case

1:11:12

again tempo is means a different thing than what

1:11:14

we talked about earlier. The

1:11:16

lower body lift follows a very

1:11:18

similar structure. Three sets of

1:11:20

five for the most part. You're going to do

1:11:22

some unilateral stuff and some bilateral stuff. Some

1:11:25

sort of squat variations. Some sort of

1:11:27

lateral lunge or lateral movement variation. Some

1:11:29

sort of hinging and some

1:11:31

sort of carry and then in this case some

1:11:34

sort of anterior rotation of the

1:11:36

core. So your core tends to rotate and you're

1:11:38

going to stop that from happening. Lots of different

1:11:40

examples of that. And your endurance

1:11:42

work is going to be a 30-minute tempo run.

1:11:45

So this is going to be like steady jog

1:11:47

pace if you will. I think

1:11:49

seven out of ten. What you're trying to kind of

1:11:51

get used to is what that marathon

1:11:54

pace is actually going to be. So

1:11:57

if you know you're half marathon time you

1:11:59

can actually use that pace for the these

1:12:01

tempo runs, but you're kind of just accumulating

1:12:03

race pace volume. If you come from an

1:12:05

endurance racing background, this is probably what you

1:12:07

associate with tempo runs. It's kind

1:12:09

of like race pace a lot of time,

1:12:11

but for a shorter duration. So that would

1:12:13

be our endurance piece for day two. Day

1:12:15

three is that Fartlic run. I've already explained

1:12:17

what that means, but as a reminder, it's

1:12:19

kind of that cyclic variation of intensities that

1:12:22

are not true off period. So it's going

1:12:24

to be 45 consecutive minutes. And within that,

1:12:26

you've got nine opportunities to cycle up for

1:12:28

one minute, but you can do those whenever

1:12:30

you'd like. So it doesn't necessarily matter if

1:12:32

you go kind of three minutes at an

1:12:34

easier pace and then one minute higher and

1:12:36

time it out. It doesn't really matter. You

1:12:38

can kind of feel this out. You just

1:12:40

need to accumulate nine of those one minute

1:12:42

bursts before that 45 minutes is complete.

1:12:46

During those one minute bursts, you're going to go hard.

1:12:48

This is kind of like nine out of 10. You

1:12:51

want to push the pace here and then you're going to slow

1:12:53

back down. During that recovery, it's

1:12:55

not walking, it's not off. It

1:12:57

is still back to kind of your slow jog,

1:12:59

your slow movement, but you're going to cycle those

1:13:01

things up and down. That kind

1:13:03

of recovery pace, think of that as like five or six

1:13:06

out of 10. Day four is

1:13:08

another upper body lift, similar to the first

1:13:10

lift, as well as a 30 minute recovery

1:13:12

run. This is really as low and slow

1:13:14

as you need it to be. You're

1:13:17

just really trying to build a little more

1:13:19

tissue tolerance here, as well as some general

1:13:21

physiological recovery. Almost always, we're going to

1:13:23

want this to be nasal only to keep you nice and

1:13:25

slow. We just want to get out and move a little

1:13:27

bit. Day five is our

1:13:29

second lower body lift, combined with a

1:13:31

30 minutes of what Dan calls cross-training.

1:13:34

This is really just active play.

1:13:38

It could be done on multiple different things.

1:13:40

A lot of times you'll do five minutes

1:13:42

on a row or five minutes on a

1:13:44

treadmill, five minutes on a bike. You may

1:13:47

do something like play basketball or do light

1:13:49

jujitsu drilling or whatever is the

1:13:51

case. We're not again really trying

1:13:53

to stimulate adaptation here. It's mostly used

1:13:55

for recovery and pacing and blood flow.

1:13:57

You want to accumulate 30 total minutes.

1:13:59

You just want to be moving at

1:14:01

a very light intensity. Ideally, it's not

1:14:03

just running. You're going to be putting

1:14:05

in a lot of miles on

1:14:08

that specific movement pattern. So if you can open up the

1:14:10

system a little bit more and choose some other movement patterns,

1:14:12

that's probably a good thing to do in this case. Day

1:14:15

six is when you'll do your long, slow run.

1:14:17

You want to keep these at an intensity of

1:14:20

something like six out of 10 on your RPE

1:14:22

scale, and you're going to slowly increase

1:14:24

the miles over time. So you get a sense. You

1:14:26

might start off with like six miles week one, and

1:14:28

then week two, move up to eight miles and then

1:14:30

a 10 and then a 12 or

1:14:33

something like that by week four. So pretty

1:14:35

straightforward here. You're going to go out, go

1:14:37

easy, but you need to just accumulate the

1:14:39

ability to run for that many

1:14:41

consecutive miles. Day seven, our final day is

1:14:44

optional slash recovery. If you want to go

1:14:46

do 20 to 30 minutes of very light

1:14:48

movement, you can. You're also welcome

1:14:50

to skip that. I would though

1:14:52

recommend as Dan does here to pick

1:14:54

at least what we typically call recovery

1:14:56

accelerators. I like to have at least

1:14:58

two or three of these. This could

1:15:00

be anything from a massage to thermal,

1:15:02

so cold or hot treatment, breath

1:15:05

work sessions, movement, acupuncture,

1:15:07

something like that. That's going to really aid

1:15:09

in recovery. So typically we'll pick at least

1:15:12

again, two to three things from that list.

1:15:15

Could be very short, but that's going to get

1:15:17

you set up for the next day of work

1:15:19

and really the following week in general. As

1:15:21

you cruise through weeks one to four, you're

1:15:23

going to see slight increases of intensity and

1:15:26

variation throughout all the days. You can see

1:15:28

all that detail in the program, but

1:15:31

really as we get into week five or second

1:15:33

phase, things do change. I talked a little

1:15:35

bit earlier about how the structure changes in

1:15:38

general, so you can refer back to that

1:15:40

or look at the PDF if you're actually looking at it

1:15:42

right now. So to walk

1:15:44

you through really quickly what we're looking like here.

1:15:47

So now, for example, on day one

1:15:50

of our new phase, our

1:15:52

endurance training, instead of looking like those

1:15:54

three one mile repeats, like we

1:15:56

had in our first phase, plus

1:15:58

the half mile repeats from. Remember we totaled four and

1:16:00

a half miles there. Now our endurance

1:16:02

training is something like 10, three

1:16:05

quarters of a mile repeats with three minutes rest

1:16:07

in between. All right, so we're

1:16:09

doing these as fast as possible, but not all outpace. This is

1:16:11

nine out of 10. And so we've

1:16:13

done a similar structure, but we've really added it. Instead

1:16:15

of going a mile and a half a mile, we're

1:16:17

really at three quarters of a mile, and we're doing

1:16:20

a lot of them. 10 of them is gonna accumulate

1:16:22

a lot of work. Day two's FartLick run has gone

1:16:24

from 45 minutes all the way up to 90 minutes.

1:16:27

And so we've added a bunch of more work there.

1:16:29

And so again, you can really see the concept as

1:16:31

we're just slowly building these things over

1:16:33

time. We've got our lifts in there, we've got our

1:16:35

tempo runs. Those have now gone up to 45 minutes

1:16:38

where they were previously 30 minutes. And

1:16:40

we're just again slowly accumulating volume over

1:16:43

time. We've got our now two

1:16:45

additional days. So in this phase, day five

1:16:47

and day six are for long runs. Day

1:16:50

five for the first week of this phase is

1:16:52

gonna be at eight miles. Then

1:16:54

the next week we'll progress up to 10 miles. And then really

1:16:56

we'll kind of back off from there and keep it at that

1:16:58

eight mile range or so. We're really trying

1:17:01

to move volume here, but this is not the biggest

1:17:03

day because on day six, we're

1:17:05

gonna be at 14 miles for

1:17:07

week one, 16 miles for

1:17:09

week two, 20 miles for week three, and

1:17:11

then really week four will be all the way up to

1:17:13

24 miles. This is basically

1:17:16

marathon practice, okay? Those

1:17:18

additional 2.2 miles really do matter on

1:17:20

race day. Trust me, anyone who's done a marathon will

1:17:22

tell you, yeah, it doesn't sound like a lot, but

1:17:24

those last 2.2 miles are a bunch. So

1:17:27

it's not a full marathon, but we've

1:17:29

walked ourself up this hill slowly enough to where

1:17:32

we should be able to handle that. You're gonna

1:17:34

be tired and fatigued, but it shouldn't completely break

1:17:36

you, smash your toes

1:17:38

or put you in really big injury risk or

1:17:40

anything like that from running those 24 miles. From

1:17:44

here, we've gotten all the way up to our final

1:17:46

week. And so let me walk you through what those

1:17:48

seven days look like, or what we'll call

1:17:50

peak week with a little bit of a taper and

1:17:52

marathon prep. Day one

1:17:54

is gonna be that phase two total

1:17:56

body lift, plus a very short 15

1:17:59

minute or so. recovery run. Day

1:18:01

two, another total body

1:18:03

lift with a short recovery run and

1:18:06

really we're not trying to press adaptation

1:18:08

here, we're just trying to keep the

1:18:10

system activated, keep blood flowing, keep feeling

1:18:12

really good and start tapering and optimizing

1:18:15

for performance. Day three is

1:18:17

an easy five-mile run, start

1:18:19

out at a really easy pace here and then

1:18:21

really only target your race pace for the final

1:18:23

two miles. So we just want to kind of

1:18:25

feel it, right? This is like a golfer who

1:18:28

goes out and just hits a couple of shots to remember

1:18:30

what those feel like but you're not going to spend hours

1:18:32

on the range really getting all the

1:18:34

way up to maximum speed. So five miles in

1:18:37

total, you kind of just moving and cruising for

1:18:39

the first three, feel out that race pace for

1:18:41

two miles and then shut her down. Day

1:18:45

four isn't completely off as

1:18:47

well as maybe a couple of those recovery strategies

1:18:50

as day five is. These often tend to

1:18:52

be travel days too, if you're going to

1:18:54

the event and getting a hotel or something

1:18:56

like that but you're really now just maximizing

1:18:58

recovery. Day six or

1:19:01

what is actually the day before the marathon, you

1:19:03

might want to do like a 15-minute recovery

1:19:05

run, get loose, stretch out a

1:19:07

little bit but not excessively and

1:19:09

then really really recover because day seven you

1:19:12

wake up and you run

1:19:14

your first-ever marathon. As I said

1:19:16

this was the actual program Mark used, he

1:19:19

did run the Boston Marathon, he did complete it

1:19:21

in a time of six hours and according to

1:19:23

Mark it took him six hours to run

1:19:25

the marathon and only six hours to recover. Which

1:19:28

is sort of funny but if you've actually ever run

1:19:30

a marathon you realize that's actually really fast. He

1:19:32

actually told me personally the next day he

1:19:34

felt great, wasn't even sore and then ran

1:19:36

the next day which is also

1:19:38

very weird and so six hours is

1:19:41

not a fast time for a marathon, in fact it's

1:19:43

like close to the range where they'll cut

1:19:45

you off and say you can't go anymore but

1:19:47

that wasn't the point here. He's not trying

1:19:49

to run the fastest marathon, he could, he just

1:19:51

wanted to run one and complete it and

1:19:54

so I think the program is

1:19:56

clearly a success. If that's something

1:19:58

you're interested in doing just wanting to accomplish. tasks like

1:20:00

that, I have no doubts that the program would

1:20:02

work for you as well. It's also

1:20:04

worth highlighting that while Mark ran the marathon

1:20:06

at what some might call a little

1:20:08

bit of a slower pace, I think it

1:20:11

came out to be about a 14-minute mile

1:20:13

or so. That doesn't mean

1:20:15

you can't use this exact program and run as

1:20:17

fast as you want for the most part. What's

1:20:20

actually going to determine your time is

1:20:22

going to come down to, in large

1:20:24

part, what paces you're able to manage

1:20:26

across this entire program, particularly the pace

1:20:28

that you can handle during your tempo

1:20:30

runs. While Mark used

1:20:32

it to run his first ever marathon

1:20:34

and run at a pace that was

1:20:36

effective and economical for him, you can

1:20:38

use this to run as fast or

1:20:40

slow as you'd like. To

1:20:43

wrap up, I know we covered a lot of ground

1:20:45

here, so please do check out these programs in the

1:20:47

show notes if you want to

1:20:49

see them or actually follow them yourself. Please also

1:20:52

check out the people, Dan Garner,

1:20:54

Mark Bell, and Joel Jamison, who are kind

1:20:56

enough to let me share with the world

1:20:58

for free their full training programs. Check

1:21:01

out their material as well. I

1:21:03

also wanted to mention a resource I have

1:21:05

found particularly helpful over my career is a

1:21:08

book called Unbreakable Runner. It is a phenomenal

1:21:10

place to learn more about training specifically for

1:21:12

running in drones without getting hurt. I

1:21:15

hope you enjoyed this episode. It's a little bit different than

1:21:17

normal and something we're going to consider doing

1:21:19

more often if this is something that you appreciate. Please

1:21:21

do let us know if this is

1:21:23

something you'd like us to try again. Thank you

1:21:25

for joining for today's episode. Our goal

1:21:27

is to share exciting scientific insight that helps you

1:21:29

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1:22:06

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1:22:08

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1:22:23

for listening. I never forget, in the famous

1:22:26

words of Bill Bowerman, if you

1:22:28

have a body, you're an athlete.