0:00

Ready, set,

0:03

go! This is episode

0:06

379 with 220 marathoner,

0:08

professor of social anthropology at Durham

0:10

University, and author of the new

0:13

book, To the Limit, the Meaning

0:15

of Endurance from Mexico to the

0:17

Himalayas, Michael Crawley. Welcome

0:28

to the Strength Running Podcast. We

0:30

surround you with the same experts

0:33

as pro runners. So keep listening

0:35

to hear coaches, physical therapists, strength

0:37

experts, dietitians, sports psychologists, and other

0:39

thought leaders give you the best

0:41

guidance possible to take your running

0:43

to the next level. I'm

0:45

your host, Coach Jason Fitzgerald. I ran

0:48

a cross country, indoor, and outdoor track

0:50

for Connecticut College. I one time ran

0:52

a 239 marathon PR and

0:54

now I'm the head coach of

0:56

strength running and a monthly columnist

0:58

for Outside Magazine. You can

1:00

learn more about me and strength running

1:02

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1:04

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of amino acids. love

10:00

to embrace the solitary nature of

10:02

running. And I do

10:05

find it a bit counterproductive

10:07

to progress and really

10:09

getting as much out of the sport

10:11

as possible. Because, you know, like once

10:13

you have that experience of

10:15

training with a group, of working

10:18

toward a goal with others

10:20

and having that shared experience,

10:23

it's really hard to go back to just

10:25

training by yourself and, you know, just having

10:27

a dialogue between you and Strava. You know,

10:29

that's just not the same. Yeah, and I

10:31

think that's kind of exactly why I don't

10:33

want to just make this comparison of the

10:35

West versus the rest here. Because I

10:37

think, yeah, cross-country running in the States is a perfect

10:39

example of it being something that looks

10:42

a bit like an individual sport, but actually it's

10:44

absolutely a team sport and every position matters in

10:46

a cross-country race. So one of

10:48

my favorite books about running is actually Running with the Buffaloes,

10:52

which follows a college cross-country

10:54

team. But

10:56

yeah, it seems that there's something that

10:59

running together or moving together, so I also look at

11:01

cycling and things, it seems that for some

11:03

reason doing that kind of rhythmic

11:06

exercise together, for some

11:08

reason it really kind of accelerates social

11:10

bonds between people. And

11:12

all I've been able to do is really kind of observe

11:15

that and try to write about it. But to

11:17

give an example, I did an ultramarathon in the Lake District,

11:19

which is it goes from the very north to the very

11:21

south of the Lake District, which is a national park in

11:24

England. This is about 55 miles,

11:26

something like that. And so I

11:29

did the run and then I

11:31

sat on the finish line afterwards for about

11:33

four hours watching people come in. And

11:35

what I noticed was that people didn't come in on their

11:37

own. It was always pairs or groups of three or four

11:39

people would arrive. And

11:42

there was one particular moment that stuck out where

11:44

two guys came across the line together and they

11:46

have this big, sweaty hug, which lasts for ages

11:48

where they're really tired on the finish line. And

11:51

then one of them says to the other, you

11:53

know, like, thanks,

11:55

man, that was amazing. And they kind of, it's

11:58

just it looks like they've known each other for ages. walks

12:00

off and the other one's like, well, it's nice to meet

12:02

you as well. So it was like, they looked like they'd

12:05

known each other for 20 years and actually they

12:07

just met like an hour ago, probably in the

12:09

dark and the fell somewhere in the lake. So

12:12

it seems that it, yeah, just doing these

12:14

things together brings people together in really interesting

12:16

ways. So if we can find ways of

12:19

sort of engineering those kinds of connections again, I

12:21

think that would be really good, rather

12:25

than seeing this as an individual pursuit.

12:27

Yeah, and I'm admittedly looking for those

12:29

opportunities now as a 41 year old

12:31

master's runner these

12:33

days, because, you know,

12:35

having that cross country and track experience

12:38

and now having some of

12:40

my best friends come from the sport that

12:43

I still stay in touch with today, you know, there's

12:45

something about sweating and suffering

12:47

and working so hard together that

12:49

that really does bring you closer

12:51

to others. And I

12:54

think it's just such a wonderful aspect of the

12:56

sport. I'd love

12:58

to talk about a part of your

13:00

book, you know, part one of the

13:02

big themes of your book really asks the question,

13:05

why do we voluntarily do

13:07

exhausting things? And, you know,

13:10

Mike, I have to admit, you know, this is something

13:12

I ask myself regularly when I'm lacing up my running

13:14

shoes, you know, what

13:16

am I doing? Why am I doing this again?

13:18

You know, I was just having a conversation with

13:20

a few runners, how every time

13:22

you know, you're on the starting line of a

13:25

marathon, you just sort of have this like little

13:28

out of body experience, like, what

13:30

am I doing here? Am I

13:32

really about to run another marathon,

13:35

like hours of this sort

13:37

of anxious suffering? And, you know, like, why

13:39

do we do these things? So

13:41

what did you learn during, you know, your

13:43

research for this book? Is there a broad

13:45

theme of why people around

13:48

the world love to tire themselves out?

14:00

to Mexico and towards the Raromuri,

14:02

who are kind of characterised as being

14:04

born to run and just loving running. I

14:08

sat chatting to Silvino, who's featured heavily in

14:10

Born to Run, and he was also asking

14:12

the same questions. He was sitting on

14:15

the bonnet of his car sipping tequila. I

14:17

asked him and he was like, oh, I

14:19

don't know. It's suffering, isn't it? And our

14:21

feet get all torn up on rocks. And

14:23

why do we do this? So everyone seems

14:25

to be asking the same question. One of

14:27

the primary answers that I got to it,

14:29

so I would ask this question as I

14:31

was running with people in ultramarathms and things.

14:33

I quite like trying

14:37

to do the interviews whilst also moving

14:39

because I felt like people were less

14:42

inhibited and they were able to talk really openly

14:44

about what they were doing in those

14:46

kinds of situations. Often what

14:49

they would say is that it's a reaction

14:51

to feeling like

14:54

life is very complicated basically. It's a way of

14:56

stripping back all of that kind of stuff. One

14:59

person described as life pollution, scraping off

15:02

the life pollution and getting back to

15:04

something really simple. That being kind

15:07

of a really therapeutic thing

15:09

that gives you a broader perspective on the rest

15:12

of your life once you get through it, I

15:14

guess. That was normally the

15:16

way that the ultramarathon runners

15:19

talk about it. Yeah. Well, Mike, let me

15:21

ask you, what do you find so luring

15:23

about endurance running? Because you're someone who's been

15:25

running for a long time. You're also a

15:28

very accomplished runner. I think your marathon PR

15:30

is 220. Why do you continue to do

15:32

this? Well,

15:36

I think for me, it's always just made me

15:39

feel really good. It's always felt like something

15:43

that I'm supposed to do, I guess, to a

15:45

certain extent. I think I need to do it

15:48

to feel good physically and mentally

15:50

to a certain extent. But

15:54

then what I found was similar

15:56

to what you were saying about your experience

15:58

with cross-country, in Ethiopia, I

18:00

think about it, you said, I've always felt

18:02

like I have to run.

18:04

And I have felt

18:06

that way as well. Now, certainly not in

18:08

like the first couple months of my running

18:10

career, but I've always

18:13

just felt really drawn to run. I

18:15

feel compelled to run most days of

18:17

the week. And

18:20

I'm one of those people who have come

18:22

to believe that running

18:24

is just built into our DNA as

18:26

humans. It's who we are. And if

18:29

there's any physical activity that people are

18:32

really built for anatomically, physiologically,

18:34

it's either walking or running,

18:37

relatively slow running. We're not the fastest

18:39

runners out there. So yeah,

18:41

I'm in that born to run Dan

18:44

Lieberman mold of humans are running animals.

18:47

That's probably why you see running

18:49

and more broadly endurance featured so

18:51

prominently in cultures around the world.

18:54

I'd love to get your thoughts on that

18:56

thesis. Yeah, sure. So I've got, yeah, there's

18:59

a whole chapter on this in the book

19:01

really. I don't know. I

19:03

think the jury's really out on whether

19:06

we actually evolved to do persistence hunting.

19:09

So I talked to a few evolutionary

19:11

anthropologists about this who think that probably

19:13

for that that

19:16

idea to be realistic, we'd have had

19:18

to evolved in hot environments

19:21

where there was not much ground cover for

19:23

animals to hide in. And if you kind

19:25

of reconstruct the landscapes that most

19:27

humans evolved in, they don't actually look like that. There are

19:29

places for animals to hide and all those kinds of things.

19:31

So whether we actually evolved to

19:33

run or not is

19:36

up for debate. But it seems like for

19:38

a lot of people, we feel like we did or that

19:41

it's important for us to feel, or

19:43

it's important for us to believe that we did evolve to

19:45

run or that this is something that we're supposed to do.

19:47

And that's something I can definitely relate

19:50

to. What I've kind of focused on in

19:52

the chapter on the Rara Muri is that

19:56

the inborn to run Chris

19:59

McDew will kind of focus focuses on

20:01

things like the fact that they run

20:03

barefoot and focuses on these

20:05

kind of evolutionary ideas

20:07

which sort of look at the Rara

20:09

Murray as representatives of the Stone Age.

20:11

So he calls them a near mythical

20:13

tribe of Stone Age super-athletes. What

20:16

I've tried to do is focus less on the physiological

20:19

side of things and the evolutionary side of

20:21

things and to look at what

20:24

it is that makes running so

20:26

important to the Rara Murray, which is

20:28

not necessarily these ideas

20:30

about evolution. It's more to

20:32

do with running as like this really

20:34

culturally important practice. So I've kind

20:36

of tried to build on McDougall's

20:38

work a little bit, I suppose, to

20:41

ask those questions about what kind of the

20:43

spiritual meaning of running. So what

20:45

I found was that basically running

20:47

is this really, really important way of bringing communities

20:50

together in Mexico. So you'd have

20:53

the Rara Hippory competitions, which are

20:55

these lapped races where people kick

20:57

a ball around a loop. They

21:00

would be usually two opposing communities that would

21:02

come together. Everyone would bet lots

21:04

of money and sometimes horses and various other

21:06

objects and things on the outcome of the

21:08

race. So it would make all of

21:10

the, everyone in the community has really invested in what

21:13

happens. And then you've got these groups

21:15

of people running for sometimes 180 kilometers

21:17

at a time, who are also

21:19

followed by musicians who are playing instruments as

21:21

they're going along with them, and

21:24

also people from the village running together. So it

21:27

has this really important function of bringing

21:29

people together. And also, it

21:31

is a, it

21:33

functions basically as a form of prayer. So the way that

21:35

people would talk about it would be that

21:38

God really likes to see people run or dance

21:40

for really long periods of time. So the longer

21:43

you can keep a race going, the

21:45

happier God is about it basically. And then the more

21:47

likely it is that He'll make it rain and that

21:49

you'll have a good harvest and all this kind of

21:51

stuff. So running is also a part of people would

21:53

conceptualize it as a way of keeping the world turning,

21:56

which is just like, I don't know, I

21:58

find that way more interesting. 15%

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forget code strengthrun10. It'll

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save you 10%. Let's

25:07

switch a little bit to technology

25:09

and how that has changed

25:11

over time. You know, look right now, I

25:13

don't think you can be a runner without

25:15

embracing technology, it seems. You know, you've got

25:18

to have your smartwatch and you've got to

25:20

have your Strava account and there's

25:22

endless ways to optimize everything

25:24

from your pace

25:27

to how much vertical you're getting and

25:29

your diet. Um, can

25:31

you talk a little bit about how technology

25:34

factored into your, your analysis of the meaning

25:36

of running throughout these cultures? Yeah. So, so

25:38

what had the way I approached this chapter

25:40

was basically to, to wear a whole load

25:43

of different wearable technologies, basically, and then to,

25:45

to sort of reflect on my

25:47

own experience of using them. So I had a, a

25:50

WOOP band, which measures HIV, a Digarmin

25:52

that was doing heart rate and obviously

25:55

GPS and things. Um,

25:57

I use super sapiens, which is like a glucose.

28:00

by the riverbanks in Durham because he would have not

28:02

wanted to have that kind of data on that kind

28:05

of run because it's not what it was for. Which

28:07

is the same in Ethiopia, people would say, we use

28:10

the GPS watch to run really quickly on the road, but

28:13

for easy running, we want to leave that at home because

28:15

what we want to be

28:17

doing is recovering and exploring and doing

28:19

something a bit more creative. He

28:23

told a story actually, one thing, I was

28:25

telling him about HRV monitoring and how people will

28:28

sometimes look at a readiness score and decide not

28:30

to train that day as a result of numbers

28:33

on a watch. And

28:36

he said, there was one evening

28:38

he drove through to the track and Gates had to do a

28:40

track session and he warmed up and he just

28:42

didn't feel great. So he basically just

28:44

put his trains back on, warmed down,

28:47

drove home. And then the next

28:49

night he drove back to the track and did the session. But

28:51

what he said was he

28:53

always felt that that was a really important decision

28:55

to have made and that it was really important

28:57

to him that he'd made that decision himself, that

28:59

he'd been able to listen to how he was

29:01

feeling and be like, no, I can't do the

29:03

session tonight. I'll go home. I'll do it tomorrow.

29:06

And so he drew quite a sort

29:08

of straight line really between

29:10

being able to make that kind of decision in

29:12

training and then being able to make the

29:15

right kinds of decisions in the heat of the moment in

29:17

the last few miles of the Olympic marathon. And

29:19

so he was saying, I really wouldn't want to watch

29:22

to make that kind of decision for me, basically. So

29:25

it really made me think, you know, so yeah, on

29:28

the one hand, we have all

29:30

these new insights from all these

29:32

new data points that we would never have had

29:34

access to. And those numbers, that number of data

29:36

points is just growing bigger and bigger, basically. I

29:40

suppose it's about evaluating what's really useful and

29:42

what's just kind of noise that's making us

29:44

confused about what we should be doing, I

29:46

guess. Yeah. I think that

29:48

we should cover some of those metrics

29:50

that are useful to either high level

29:53

runners that you talk to or

29:56

some of these other cultures who

29:58

might be embracing a bit more

30:00

of that. technology? Are there things

30:02

that the rest of us are

30:04

focusing on that other people simply

30:06

are not? So

30:10

in Ethiopia, which is the context I know best, people

30:12

will use GPS watches,

30:14

but they're not using any fancy

30:16

recovery stuff. They're not monitoring HIV.

30:19

They're just focusing on basically the... I

30:22

think a lot of the time what we do is we

30:24

focus on the last percent before

30:27

we focus on the 99% of

30:29

what's going to make us better. So in Ethiopia,

30:31

they're focusing on getting good

30:33

nutrition, on training well, and on sleeping as

30:35

much as possible. And I

30:37

guess in some ways with the kinds of extremely

30:40

busy lives a lot of us lead, we can't necessarily

30:42

focus on those things as

30:44

well as we might like to. So maybe we focus on

30:46

other kinds of data instead. But

30:49

yeah, what struck me was with a lot of the interviews

30:51

I did, people

30:54

talked about being selective about the

30:56

use of this kind of stuff.

30:58

So I also interviewed the cyclist,

31:00

Thal Gegenhardt, he won the Giro

31:02

d'Italia a

31:04

few years ago. And he said that he was going up...

31:06

With the first stage that he won, he was going up

31:08

a climb and he looked at his computer and it had

31:10

numbers on it that he'd not really seen before. And

31:13

it kind of scared him. So

31:15

he just decided to turn it off and

31:17

not look at it. Because he was like,

31:19

you're basically just placing limits on yourself if

31:21

you look at that data in the

31:23

moment, basically. And I thought

31:26

that was really interesting because

31:28

we give maybe too much up

31:31

to these kinds of numbers. There was also an

31:33

interview with Mark Cavendish, who's just retired yesterday.

31:36

And he said he wouldn't have made it as a

31:38

pro cyclist today because if they'd looked just

31:40

at his numbers, which is the way that they tend to do things

31:42

now, he would have been dropped from

31:44

the team because his numbers were never that good. So

31:48

basically, what I'm arguing is that there's loads of stuff

31:50

that goes into being a good endurance athlete that can't

31:53

be measured with the kinds of devices that we have.

31:55

Yeah, it strikes me as it's very

31:58

surface level. And it's strictly... you

32:00

know, an estimate of certain

32:03

metrics on a certain day

32:05

and it's not taking into

32:07

consideration the broader context of

32:10

your history as a runner and

32:13

all of the other kind of like softer

32:16

details that might impact your ability as

32:18

an athlete. Can you maybe talk about

32:20

that aspect of things? Like the things

32:22

that you can't really measure that are

32:24

going to make you a good

32:26

runner, you know? And I'm sure, you

32:28

know, some of these endurance oriented

32:30

cultures are chock full

32:33

of some of these unmeasurable

32:35

qualities that make them just

32:37

amazing athletes that really embrace

32:39

endurance. And here we are

32:41

in the United States and maybe the UK

32:44

and all we're doing is just staring at, you

32:47

know, the numbers on our watch all the time.

32:49

And I feel like we're just missing something with

32:51

that. Yeah, I think often it comes down to

32:53

kind of relationships with people really. I

32:56

imagine this kind of future scenario where we've got devices

33:00

that are measuring, you know, GPS

33:02

heart rate, lactic, all

33:04

the kinds of sort of variables that we tend to

33:06

measure with running, feed them into

33:09

an AI coach online.

33:11

And the AI coach can look at that

33:13

data and tell you exactly what you should

33:15

be doing the next day to optimize your

33:17

performance or, you know, kind of, you

33:20

could have a completely automated system.

33:23

But I think that really would miss a

33:25

lot of what's important

33:27

about running. So I remember my

33:30

coach saying to me, sometimes when I

33:32

was really busy, I tried to reschedule training and I'd say, you

33:34

know, I'll just go and do that session on my own at

33:36

a time that's slightly more convenient. And he'd

33:38

say, no, no, you have to come, we have to be there on

33:40

the track together because I need to be able to, you know, look

33:42

into the whites of your eyes and actually see how you're doing. I

33:46

need to be able to ask you how your day was, you know,

33:49

how things are going with looking for a new house. It

33:51

was like, you know, that peripheral stuff is

33:54

just as important basically as the measurable

33:57

data. of

34:01

looking at other cultures, I think with

34:04

the Rara Muri, like it's the

34:06

emotional side of running is really important.

34:08

So like people will, people

34:10

run and there are musicians playing

34:13

all the time during those long races. And

34:16

the point of the musicians is to build

34:18

this kind of emotional quality to the running

34:20

basically. And that scene is

34:22

being, you know, that's something that

34:24

God is said to like, so that he likes the kind

34:26

of, you know, emotional side of things. But

34:29

it seemed to be, you know, people were

34:31

deliberately looking to kind

34:34

of alter their state of mind to a certain

34:36

extent. So people would also run with like bells

34:39

on their ankles and things to create like jingling

34:41

noises and to kind of deliberately lull themselves into

34:44

a sort of trance state. So

34:47

yeah, I don't know if that answers your question exactly, but people are

34:49

looking, you know, there are other things

34:52

that we can look to beyond just

34:54

an obsession with the numbers. Yeah, well,

34:57

I think it speaks to the

34:59

real value in learning to

35:01

run by feel and just really learning to

35:03

be more in tune with your body and

35:05

the signals that your body is giving you

35:08

and not being overly reliant

35:11

on external factors. And,

35:13

you know, I happen to be one of those

35:16

runners that started running before GPS

35:18

watches and all of this technology.

35:20

And the only time that we

35:22

ever actually knew how fast or

35:25

how far we were running is when we were

35:27

on the track. And, you know,

35:29

I like to say the track never lies.

35:31

Your GPS watch can maybe tell a fib

35:33

or two. It cannot give you the whole

35:35

picture. But if you're running on a track

35:37

and you know how to use that piece

35:40

of athletic equipment, you're gonna know exactly how

35:42

far and how fast you're running. And

35:44

that's really all the feedback that I think

35:46

runners need because, you know, much like the

35:49

Ethiopians, the easy runs are not really there

35:51

for, you know, going

35:54

a certain pace or getting an

35:56

exact heart rate. And so we've

35:58

really, I think, got to compartmentalize.

36:00

mentalize the purpose of certain runs

36:02

and when to focus on certain

36:04

things. I'd love to

36:07

double click on something you said

36:09

earlier about the periphery, the peripheral

36:12

issues in your life that could be affecting

36:14

your running. And it really brings me back

36:16

to my college cross-country days

36:19

because I was very fortunate

36:21

to have a good coach who would

36:24

know when we had midterm exams, would know

36:26

when some of us might be taking a

36:29

standardized test like the LSAT

36:31

on a Saturday before a

36:33

workout. And one thing that

36:35

we did quite regularly is he would quite

36:37

simply call it a, how you doing, what

36:39

you thinking? And it was just a

36:41

time for anyone on the team to share something

36:44

that's going on in your life, whether it's good,

36:46

whether it's bad. And so it was

36:48

his opportunity just to get to know us

36:51

better and what was going on in our

36:53

lives so that he could look

36:56

into the whites of our eyes, like you

36:58

said, and just better understand where we're coming

37:00

from. And I think that is almost

37:03

like the art of coaching. It's

37:06

not the science of coaching, your watch,

37:08

that's a little bit more science oriented.

37:10

And I think this approach and your

37:13

book and these cultures are more about

37:15

the art of running and some of

37:17

the softer, more ephemeral

37:20

issues that you can't measure. And

37:23

I honestly think are some of the best

37:25

parts of running. That's sort of why I

37:27

fell in love with the sport was I

37:29

liked how it made me feel and I

37:31

liked working hard and improving and just kind

37:33

of being with a group, a team

37:36

and feeling that hard

37:38

work toward a goal. That's something

37:40

that I just don't think

37:42

you can ever replicate. Yeah, I think

37:45

for me, it's always both in art

37:47

and the science and I think they

37:49

kind of interweave in an interesting way

37:51

sometimes. So if you think about the

37:53

history of distance

37:56

running, it's not necessarily been coaches coming

37:58

up with really innovative. stuff

38:01

that is then applied to runners. And it's definitely

38:03

not sports scientists coming up with innovations. You

38:05

know, like Steve Magnus the other day, well,

38:07

quite a while ago now, he tweeted that

38:10

the sports science is always like 15 years

38:12

behind what the best coaches are doing. So

38:14

basically, the sports science is just kind of verifying what the

38:17

coaches have worked out. But I'd

38:19

go even further than that and say, actually,

38:21

it's it's often the athletes that are innovating

38:23

and the coaches are learning from that and

38:25

adapting things. And if you look

38:27

at the history of running, it's been sort

38:30

of citizen scientists sort of

38:32

explore it like, yeah, experimenting on themselves. So

38:34

if you think about Emile Zatapek, when he

38:36

started doing loads and loads of intervals, people

38:38

thought he was crazy until he, you know,

38:41

wins three Olympic golds and then people were

38:43

like, oh, hang on, maybe there's something going

38:45

on here. So I think it's, you

38:48

know, that whether he's, you

38:50

know, expressing himself like an artist in that

38:52

situation or whether he's acting like a scientist

38:54

experimenting on himself, I'm not sure. But there's

38:56

definitely either way, it's it's

38:58

a creative process. It's not just applying a

39:01

kind of a scientific principle to to

39:04

your physiology, right? It's like there's something

39:06

creative happening, I think. Yeah,

39:08

I love that that creative pursuit

39:10

because it's a creative pursuit that

39:13

is is yours and yours alone.

39:15

And you get to dictate where

39:17

it goes. It's

39:20

funny that you mentioned Emile Zatapek. I have a poster

39:22

on my wall. I'm looking at it right now and

39:24

it says, today we die a little. And

39:26

this is his famous quote from the starting line

39:28

of, I think, the 1962 Olympic

39:32

marathon, but I could be a little wrong on the year.

39:35

Not sure when he already won the 5000 and the 10000 and

39:37

then he was running a marathon,

39:39

I think it was that was it the first

39:41

marathon you'd run? Yeah, it was the first marathon

39:43

he ran. Another funny story of that race is

39:45

he he turned to his competitors and asked, like,

39:48

is this a good pace? Is this supposed to

39:50

be hard? And I think they said

39:52

yes, and he just sped up. Incredible.

39:55

Yeah. Well, Mike, I'd love

39:57

to ask you, you know, I

40:00

know we've kind of hinted at this and we've

40:02

touched on it in different ways, but to really

40:04

kind of put a bow on this, you know,

40:06

what are us modern runners really

40:08

missing from our running and our practice

40:10

of running and our approach to the

40:12

sport that prior generations and

40:15

other cultures had and can we

40:17

get it back? Um,

40:21

yeah, I think we can. And I think, well,

40:23

I try not to be too, I'm not completely

40:25

critical of, of using data and I know that

40:27

for a lot of people, that's like kind

40:30

of what they, what they find really fun about running

40:32

as well is like looking at that, looking at the

40:34

data and kind of comparing things and, and

40:36

drilling into it. And that's, you know, for some

40:38

people, that's a really compelling part of, of like

40:40

telling themselves a story about what they're doing, I

40:42

suppose. So I don't want to be really critical of

40:45

that, but I think the things that we can look at are really,

40:48

yeah, finding, finding people to run with, surrounding yourself

40:50

with the community of people. And I think that's

40:54

something that, I mean, to be honest, I struggle with it

40:56

at the moment, because I'm so, if you're really busy and

40:58

there's lots of pressures on your time and things, that becomes

41:00

more difficult. But I think that's, that's definitely one thing. Um,

41:04

the other thing that I've sort of write about towards the end

41:06

of the book is the fact that when we, when we tend

41:08

to look at, um, our

41:11

ancestors, you know, if we look at hunter gatherers

41:14

and the way that we used to live as

41:16

a species, for example, um, people

41:18

would tend to, um, to pick

41:20

out things like, uh, the

41:22

paleo diet or, you know, barefoot running, where

41:24

there are kind of marketable things like barefoot

41:26

running shoes and particular, uh, nutritional supplements and

41:29

things that go with it, but

41:31

they don't tend to focus on the fact that, you know,

41:33

for a lot of people, um,

41:36

you know, endurance running or, you know,

41:38

just doing things that are difficult, we're just

41:40

everyday parts of life and it was part

41:42

of getting around really. So, um,

41:44

that would be something that I think, well,

41:47

it's becoming more important to me as well as just making

41:49

it part of, part of how you do the

41:52

rest of your day, basically, I guess. So,

41:54

um, like when we finished this

41:56

conversation, I'm going to run home just because

41:58

it makes it faster. I'll feel

42:00

more relaxed when I get home basically, but

42:03

just building it into your everyday life in

42:05

a way that… I

42:08

think it can make all

42:10

kinds of things better. It

42:12

improves your mood. It means you're not sitting in

42:14

a car polluting the environment. It's

42:17

good for loads of different reasons, I

42:19

think. Those are the kinds of things that

42:21

I would pick up on. Yeah. I'm much

42:24

more interested in how we make our lives,

42:27

maybe for lack of a better phrase, more difficult with

42:30

exercise because I think we're quite

42:32

pampered in modern life. If

42:34

we want to, we don't have to move very much. We

42:36

can spend a lot of the day sitting down. I'm

42:39

constantly thinking about ways to walk

42:42

more, to include a little

42:44

bit more running, to go for

42:47

a hike instead of doing some indoor

42:49

activity and just being

42:51

a little bit more connected to movement

42:53

in that long-term, sustainable

42:55

way. Do you have any other

42:58

practical ways of injecting a little bit

43:00

more endurance into our everyday

43:02

lives in a way that's not like, okay,

43:04

I've got to set up my six watches

43:06

and carve out a

43:08

three-hour block of time for my interval

43:10

workout? I think sometimes we

43:13

do put our training on this pedestal. It

43:15

has to be perfect. It has to look

43:17

a certain way. Our

43:19

Strava run has to be super sexy, so we

43:21

get all the kudos for it. In

43:24

reality, training is messy. If

43:27

we can make it more sustainable, then it's

43:29

going to be a bigger and better part

43:31

of our life. Yeah, I

43:34

think the main one is really just commuting as much

43:36

as possible through running and cycling. I

43:40

think that could just make a

43:42

lot of places much more pleasant places

43:44

to be as well if we oriented things

43:47

around allowing people to

43:49

get around via active transport.

43:52

There's a few initiatives which I think are interesting. One

43:54

of them in the UK is called Good Jim. I

43:56

don't know if you've heard of it, but

43:58

basically it's set up by a guy called right

48:00

the way down an hour and a half or so to the bottom. He

48:02

was like, oh, my brother lives here, we'll go in and see

48:05

him and have a cup of tea and stuff. Then

48:07

we'll run back. So basically, taking

48:11

an anthropologist for a run also wasn't a good enough

48:13

reason to do it. He had to turn it into

48:16

an opportunity to have

48:18

a little social encounter

48:20

with his brother in

48:23

order to then run back. In that

48:25

part of Mexico, people don't train in

48:28

the way that we train. They just his

48:30

life is just busy. He's constantly

48:32

walking or jogging to go and

48:35

do things. He's chopping wood a lot

48:37

of the time. He's doing stuff that is physical most of

48:39

the time. So if he has an ultramaritan

48:43

in three or four months, he's not writing a training

48:45

program and training every day for it. He's just living

48:48

his life and his life is preparing him

48:50

to do it. So I thought that was

48:52

interesting that there was no sense of training

48:54

as a separate thing from

48:56

everyday life. Oh, that's just fascinating. And to

48:59

imagine that your life is structured in a

49:01

way that if you just live it, you

49:03

will be prepared for an ultramarathon,

49:05

I think is just such a testament to that

49:08

kind of a lifestyle. You

49:10

said something really interesting earlier, you know, you kind

49:12

of had to reconfigure your approach

49:14

to running ultramarathons as, okay, this isn't

49:16

a race. I'm not trying to hit

49:18

splits and run a certain finish time.

49:21

It was more I'm having an adventure

49:23

out in the woods today. And I

49:25

think that's just a maybe

49:27

part of the solution to both

49:30

of our changing relationships

49:32

with running is that, you know,

49:34

I am personally a little bit

49:36

more interested in adventures these days,

49:39

I want to go, you know, run

49:41

around a mountain here in Colorado and

49:43

just have that kind of adventure. And

49:46

I'm not thinking about the pace or

49:48

that anything like that at all. It's

49:50

more that I just want to be

49:52

out in nature with people I love

49:54

and experiencing that and using the

49:57

fitness that I have from running to have. It

52:00

should be widely available. Oh, wonderful. Well, there'll be a

52:02

link in the show notes if folks want to check

52:04

it out. I highly recommend it. Is

52:06

there anything else that you'd like to add that would

52:09

add a little color to this discussion, something

52:11

that I missed from our

52:14

conversation about these topics? No, I didn't

52:16

think so. I think the questions were

52:18

great. There's nothing to add,

52:20

really. Oh, great. Well, Mike, thanks so much.

52:22

I really appreciate it. And I hope folks

52:24

pick up your book. It's a really great

52:27

work that is just different from a lot

52:29

of the running books out there. So thank

52:31

you. You're welcome. Thank you. What an episode.

52:33

Thank you so much for listening and being

52:35

part of our community here. If

52:38

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52:40

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watching. See you next time.

53:15

Bye. Bye. Bye.

53:17

Bye. Bye. Bye.

53:20

Bye. Bye. Bye.

53:23

Bye. Bye. Bye.

53:26

Bye. Bye.