Ready, set, go!
This is episode 435, with 244 Marathoner.
The co-founder of Path Projects and the host of the Extra Mile-less podcast, Floris Giermann.
Welcome to the Strength Running Podcast.
I'm Coach Jason Fitzgerald, and I want to help you become a better runner.
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My guest today is a 244 marathoner, a 100-mile ultramarathon finisher, the co-founder of one of my favorite running brands, Path Projects, the host of the Extra Mileless podcast and the author of the new book Running Breakthroughs.
Floris Guillermont is a unique voice in the running community.
He owns an apparel brand, a top podcast, and he's incredibly talented himself.
He's had the incredible opportunity to speak with world-class athletes like Elliot Kipchoge, Kylian Jornet and Courtney DeWalter.
I wanted to know, what has he learned from hundreds of conversations with such amazing athletes?
What sets them apart?
What makes them similar to us?
Floris Guillermont is a unique voice in the running community.
From all he's learned.
What would he recommend?
Are the most important pieces of advice for a new runner?
What about an experienced advanced runner?
We're going to discuss what he's changed his mind about, what's been most surprising and who he's learned the most from.
Don't miss his new book Running Breakthroughs, which is available on Amazon or at the link in this episode's description.
Without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Floris Gehrman.
Here we go.
Floris, thanks for coming on the show.
Thanks for having me here.
Appreciate you.
Well, I had a great time on your podcast a couple months ago.
And here you are on mine.
I'm excited to chat with you because you have written a really interesting book based on your podcast.
And you've interviewed hundreds of experts and elite athletes.
And you sort of put all of their lessons and inspiration into your new book, Running Breakthroughs.
So congratulations.
We're going to explore some of those lessons today.
I thought we could start with something kind of fun.
Who have you interviewed?
And these are, we're getting into the hundreds of interviews.
Who have you interviewed that you've learned the most from?
When you look back on all those interviews and you think back oh man, this guy broke my brain, or this lady really changed how I think about things.
That's a great question.
And it's one of those things where I think, at different stages in your running journey and in your health journey, you come across specific lessons that draw you in.
And so what initially got me really thinking about this?
One of my very first interviews that I did was with Dr Phil Maffetone.
Focused on health first and running second.
And that to me was very eye opening.
I was always focused on running, running, running to become a better runner.
You have to run faster and train harder.
And then actually getting my eyes open to the whole part of slowing down, to speed up, like they didn't know what aerobic base building was, any of those kind of things.
But sort of slowing down to speed up was one thing.
But then, on the other hand, it was more focusing really on being a healthy athlete, the importance of recovery nutrition.
And it sounds so cliche or it sounds so like, duh.
But I think a lot of runners actually ignore that part and just focus the majority of their effort on their running, not realizing how even your daily stress levels directly impact how much training load you can handle.
And so for me that was one of the lessons that I was like okay, that really kind of changed the course early on in my running journey.
But then later on, for example, sitting down with the GOAT Elliot Kipchoge and hearing him specifically say the importance of not wrecking yourself in workouts where you can actually smile at the end of a run.
That to me was very interesting as well.
He talks about the importance of joy in training, the importance of consistency.
So even someone there who has access to all the data, all the tools, sometimes just come back to the basic fundamentals that we cannot underestimate the importance of that.
And I've been guilty of some of the things there myself too, where I go too hard in hard workouts.
And it just sets you back several more days in training.
And it's not about that part.
Killian Jornet in the conversation, we sat down four times to record different conversations.
At one point, he said that it's not the one killer workout.
It's the 30, 40, 50 sessions over the duration of six months, 12 months.
That will make you a better runner.
And too much emphasis is being put on these one hero workouts.
And so I think, after a while, it's not necessarily one person who changes your entire perception, but i think it's the combination of different inputs, and that's why i wrote this book.
I just wanted all of those like.
It's 10 years of podcasting and, as you know as well, you've done this podcast for so many years.
From all these conversations, you have one thing that you would like to take away, or two things that you would like to remember.
So now i just basically summarize those, put those all together in a book.
I honestly wrote it for myself, to be able to sit on the couch and grab a hardcover book and just sit there and go through all these nuggets in a row, instead of having to listen to hundreds of hours of videos.
Yeah well, it's such an interesting thing because you know you've created such a large body of work.
You know, this is almost like the CliffsNotes for hundreds and hundreds of hours of podcasting.
And you're starting to make me think I should maybe do something similar too.
You absolutely should.
You have had so many amazing podcast guests, and you and I have had similar guests on our show as well.
And I think you would do a phenomenal job with it.
It's a lot of work to put together, but I feel it's just one of those things that you will look back to and you'll be glad that eventually you have a piece like that to hold.
Yeah, you know, like I think what you said earlier really resonates with me.
Like when you hear the same thing from multiple people, especially people that come from different worlds.
You know, you have Dr Phil Maffetone.
He's a little bit more on the research side.
He's a coach.
And then you have literally the best marathoner in the world giving you sort of the same guidance you know like slow down, have fun.
Not everything has to be hard.
Think big picture.
Let's prioritize being healthy and having joy in our training.
When you start hearing very similar advice from different corners of the running world whether it's the science corner of the world, elite athletes, coaches When you start getting multiple signals from multiple locations, that's when you really start kind of developing this perspective on running.
And like my podcast is obviously very fun for me.
I really love these conversations, but it's also a wonderful form of professional development for this exact reason, because you just are constantly learning as you read the books that your guests write, and you prepare for these conversations and find yourself engaged with them.
So thank you for putting this together.
I feel like this is the next step with some of these types of podcasts that have hundreds of episodes.
They focus on this one particular topic running.
Having a resource that sort of pulls out the main lessons and inspirations is really valuable.
Yeah, it was really interesting to see some of the similarities That at the beginning I didn't realize.
I started hearing it more and more.
One other one that stands out to me is the power of journaling often comes up.
But then even taking it to another level of doing micro experiments in your training.
So there's often a lot of different inputs, different things you can try, different things you can experiment with.
But unless you're documenting that, it's hard to actually see what that does to you.
And i know you've actually written your own journal.
Like you have a running journal on amazon.
I saw, and i think, the power of that like you're the first person who talks about journaling quite frequently, but that that often comes up where it's like okay, the more we can start noticing.
I think the data is one thing, but starting to pay attention to the voice in your head when you check in in the morning and making some notes on that, using your own intuition and using the intuition as an input on your training that was one of my favorite takeaways from Courtney DeWalter on the podcast.
She doesn't really follow a strict training schedule.
She doesn't really have a coach even guiding her on any of it.
She basically wakes up in the morning.
First thing that she does is she grabs a cup of coffee and checks in with herself and she asks, like how are my energy levels how?
Like, is there anything off in the body?
And she pays attention to that.
And I think us runners the more we can be present and connected with ourselves and we can tune into that, the better.
I think the running component is one thing.
The mental component.
I'm very happy to see that there's more and more attention being given to the mental component of athletes and reaching their athletic potential.
Yeah, I find it very difficult to master the mental component of running if you're not...
Really deeply engaging with your training.
And look, I use Strava.
I like Strava.
The problem with Strava is that it requires no effort.
You go for your run.
It automatically uploads.
And people think you know.
Creating the perfect headline or title of your run is kind of like where the effort is.
But it's really writing subjective notes about how you feel, how the workout went, how you felt before during, after.
And I actually just recently shared a study on social media that showed, when it comes to note-taking, if you type your notes, you don't learn nearly as much as if you handwrite your notes.
And so it kind of gets to the same point here.
If you have to manually record notes you're, you're running splits times, pace etc.
But then also add in that subjective kind of commentary, over time you're really going to start picking up on a lot of different types of patterns, and that's where i really think the value is is noticing those patterns.
You're just not going to really notice them if you're not engaging with it like that.
So i I've just been a training log geek since I was, like you know, 15 years old.
And I remember buying my first runner's world training log from a local bookstore.
And, you know, I since have like seven copies of that same training log.
Then I switched to you know a notebook and I have this whole bookshelf of training logs for from over a decade of training.
And that's probably the thing I'd grab in a fire, because it's like this journal of my life that I wouldn't trade for almost anything.
And you know I don't scroll my own Strava account, but I surely will look at some of my old training logs.
Yeah, it's so interesting you say that because I think I've gone through periods where I get really into journaling and I've gone overboard with some of the templates as well, where I have like 30 different things that I'm tracking and all of that.
The part that I notice is the more detailed I get with it, the more inconsistent I get with it.
But if I just stick to the basic fundamentals in one of the groups that I run on Sunday, I just asked the question what was one thing that you learned in your training this week?
And is there one thing that you would improve?
Like high level, how was your training week?
And it often comes down like there's a few people who rate themselves just on the basic fundamentals.
What was my sleep like this week?
How would I rate myself on my nutrition?
Meaning like, did I eat a lot of junk food?
And it's a low number out of 10.
Is it eating clean, healthy, unprocessed food?
You rate yourself higher and like there's a few other like what are your stress levels, like how did you feel your actual running when?
And if you stick with those basic ones, but you do it over a long enough period of time, you'll start recognizing patterns.
Yet not everyone yeah, not everyone is able to do that once we start complicating it too much, and this is why i like those, those simple templates, quite a bit actually Yeah.
And also like whatever you want to record, you can record.
And that's almost why I like not following too much of a strict template, just having space to write in whatever resonates with you about your training.
And you can really start honing in on what you are particularly interested in.
Now Floris, I'd love to hear about what you've changed your mind about over the years, because I've discovered this for myself.
You talk to enough subject matter experts and people operating at the highest levels for a really long time and they start changing your mind about certain things.
I know I've, from a coaching perspective, do things a little differently now than five years ago, than 10 years ago.
What have you changed your mind about over the years since starting your podcast?
One of the biggest things is when I started my podcast, it was in 2014, really.
And so I've been doing it for 11 years now.
At the beginning, I had one young daughter, and my stress levels were relative under control.
I just didn't have that much going on in my life and I could get away with 80-mile, 85-mile running weeks.
And at that point, like, yeah, things are all clicking.
And I was able to run like at that point, I ran my PB like a 244 at the Boston Marathon.
And I was like, oh, yeah, I can totally recover from this.
Yet over time, as more life happens and you get a second kid and you get a startup and there's other projects going on or you start writing a book.
The bucket already is quite full with other projects and you can only handle so much training load.
And so, for me, realizing that more is not always better, that finding that right balance is a very important one.
And I think just learning about ways to calm the nervous system has been a really big one for me, and so there's a variety of different ways.
We talked about journaling earlier.
For me, one of the things i wrote down a few weeks in a row was i'm in front of my kids too much on the phone and this was a big red flag for me, and this was purely i wrote it down once and then i realized i wrote it down again the next week in my like weekly check-in.
That happened a few times.
I'm like, okay, something has to change or you're just going to keep doing that.
And that can be with your running, but that can be outside of your running too.
I think the phone behavior directly impacts how connected we are with our bodies meaning, go travel around and look around you.
Everyone is glued to their phone.
Many people are disconnected from their body and mind.
So for me, one of the things is to be more cautious about phone behavior.
Just be aware, have certain times of the day that you're using it for a specific reason, like even going on social media instead of doom scrolling for an hour.
Just have an intention of why you're doing it and set a certain timer for it or whatnot.
And it might sound very rigid, but i do think it has helped me get a little bit more back in tune with my body.
And so some other things like with the whole calming the nervous system like yes, we we often talk about sleep and sleep is like so freaking important and prioritizing that as top of the pyramid for recovery is one thing, but i think even other ways of what you can do throughout the day to calm your nervous system even just taking a five minute break, literally like just sitting down for five minutes, taking some intentional breath, that right there, or even like in the middle of the day, i would go to my car sometimes and meditate for 10 minutes and when you actually look at your aura ring data of your hrv and your resting heart rate, what's happening it is wild to see how even a 10 minute break like that can get you out of fight or flight straight into the like calm nervous system again.
So that's something that i've been trying to do a bit more and that is something that that really came through talking with specific podcast guests.
Lawrence Van Lingen, he's a movement specialist from Boulder.
And I've worked very closely with him first as a PT and then as a movement specialist.
And he talks about backwards walk and about the flow rope and a variety of different tools.
And a lot of this goes back to ways to calm the nervous system.
And so...
What I didn't get earlier on was when your stress levels are lower, you can simply absorb training load better.
And there's a reason why the goat, Elliot Kipchoge, lives a very, very simple life.
There's a reason why Taylor Nip like the goat of triathlon.
She is trying to not rush through a day, she's trying to take her time.
She's like rushing through the day causes anxiety, and when you're in that anxious state it's much harder to absorb training.
And so, once again, i think my main lessons over here are running is only one part of the actual approach here to become a better, better runner, and then it's these other elements that come into play as well.
Do you know?
There's actually science that supports this.
There was a study published recently looking at athletes who scrolled social media before a workout had reduced performances than athletes who were not scrolling social media before a workout.
And I'm not exactly sure of the mechanism there, but it's likely some sort of anxiety, some sort of comparison trap of looking at other people who might be doing better workouts than you, who have a better running kit than you, and then you start feeling bad about yourself.
There's like a million and one ways that social media is damaging to our mental health, but it's clearly something that is counterproductive for high-level performance.
You know it's funny.
You mentioned that too, because I've also noticed more of a theme among certain guests talking about ways to calm the nervous system.
And you know, incorporating some type of nervous system recovery as part of your cool down is becoming more and more popular now.
And I think it's precisely because of our phone culture that we are just more anxious than usual.
So we have to spend a little bit more time reducing that anxiety.
Because, you know, I look back and of course hindsight is 20-20.
When I was running my best, I was like you.
I didn't have three kids like I do now.
I didn't, you know, strength running was not as important. you know, involved as it is today.
I just had fewer things going on and I could pour all of my energy into training.
That's all I thought about for the most part.
And, you know, I got a lot out of that training and it was fantastic.
But you know now, with kids and work and all the other responsibilities of adulthood, you also have to go out of your way to you kind of stay in that anxiety, that low anxiety state, because it's beneficial for performance but it's also very difficult to attain in our modern life.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think Andrew Huberman recently made some really interesting comments about The importance of cortisol, the stress hormone.
Yes, there's a time and place for it, but there are ways that you can impact that.
And one of the key things you often talk about is sunlight first thing in the morning.
And it directly, like even activity or an ice bath or runs or anything within the first hour of waking up, it really spikes your cortisol level.
But it also helps the cortisol level come down later on in the day and i think there's quite a few athletes who experience actually waking up in the middle of the night, that their cortisol levels are spiking at two, three in the morning and it might be a dysregulation of cortisol levels and so making some positive steps that you have in control within that to change that.
I think it's just interesting to play around with meaning, just try it for a few days and journal of are you noticing any difference over there?
And I think that that's a big one.
One other one that comes up very often actually by speaking with recreational runners.
This was very eyeopening for me because I've, I've interviewed elite athletes.
I've interviewed experts and, But at one point I just put out a poll with my audience and I asked what type of conversations do you enjoy?
What do you like hearing?
And the everyday runner had very relatable stories.
That was not the superhero who can train 40 hours a week, but it's actually someone who works full time, who has kids, who has to run early in the mornings or late at night and over there there have been many different lessons that came through and one of the key ones that i noticed was athletes under fueling.
That was eye-opening to me.
I didn't realize that and i came both through these conversations, through some of the coaching i've done as well one-on-one with athletes, where literally you start going through okay, you're increasing your training volume from three hours a week to six or eight hours a week, yet you're fueling the same.
You're waking up in the middle of the night.
Let's play around with some of these things.
Let's start fueling a bit more or maybe even eating a little bit, like closer to bedtime.
Of course you want to have time to digest your food, but at least not doing the skipping the first meal in the morning and then like doing the faster drums and then this and like there are literally quite a few athletes with calorie deficits.
And that surprised me, not just not just during racing, not taking in enough carbs per hour, but actually as an athlete refueling, which is so important for the overall recovery.
So I thought that was eye-opening there.
Yeah, we're seeing a lot more attention being paid to the importance of fueling.
And I think it's very well deserved because I grew up on a track team.
And when you start getting onto college track teams and the women's team and the men's team, we're together all the time.
And you start really starting to notice some of those patterns of disordered eating and And so yeah, it is very prevalent, unfortunately.
And I'm very glad that we're now talking about fueling appropriately, not just for great performances, you know, during a marathon or something, but also just for general health and making sure that you know you're preventing the risk of bone stress, injuries and all of the other health complications that can come from that.
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I'd love to ask you a kind of a really high level question, because you know, one of the cool things of having a podcast like yours, where you get to talk to elite athletes, subject matter experts, but also just recreational runners you know, everyday adult runners is that you get this wonderful professional development over time, and you've been doing it for 11 years.
If someone was just starting to run or, you know, maybe they have six months of experience, right?
From your experience talking to all these high-level folks, what would be three big principles that you'd advise them to focus on?
To get started running on the right foot.
To set that good foundation.
To make sure that five years from now they're hopefully still running.
The number one thing would be slow down in the majority of your runs.
If you're able to hold a conversational pace, if you're able to breathe through your nose, and that for most people means having to slow down quite a bit.
The majority of beginner runners go out there and not even beginner runners, even people who have been doing it for many years go out there and run in that zone three, that yellow zone, or even harder than that, and that just doesn't build the adaptations in the long term that can benefit you a lot, where you become faster at the same heart rate and it becomes easier over time.
The second would be we have talked about earlier the consistency is more important.
I see quite a few people make the mistake at the beginning that they get very into it and they get overly excited, wanting to run every day, wanting to run as much as they can.
And then there's this band that i think you gotta kind of try to stick to.
It's like the training load band and you see it on strava or you see it on other platforms as well where manage your highs and manage your lows, meaning like don't do too much, don't do too little.
There's like a band, and that band might be if you're just starting out and you haven't been running for a while, maybe that means you're gonna run three times a week and you keep that for like 30 minutes and see how the body responds.
And then from there on you start adding a little bit more, start adding 10 percent per week, do a step back every fourth week and play around with that a little bit.
And then i think the third one would be try not to get too married to your training schedule either, meaning like yes, you can lay out a schedule of like you're running x amount of times per week, but be flexible with that.
If last night your kid was partying and you didn't get much sleep and you don't feel like going for that hour run, that's on your schedule, Cut it a bit shorter.
Do it at a lower intensity.
But if you feel really well rested and you feel excited to run, listen to that as well.
But then once again, don't overdo it that you're going to be sore for three days after.
So it's this balance.
And it's really like, let's think six months out.
Let's think 12 months out.
We don't have to run our personal best, fastest time ever in the next race that's up in two months.
It's like, let's keep building.
It takes years and years to develop as a runner.
So having patience and consistency with that is very key too.
It's sort of like that Killian Jornet advice that you mentioned earlier of like there are no hero workouts.
Let's focus on the 40 workouts of this year that are going to really move the needle with my fitness level.
Absolutely.
And it's easier said than done.
I'll tell you this, Jason.
In the last several weeks with this book launch.
It has been long hours and I haven't been sleeping that much.
Like, yes, I would normally always advise try to sleep eight hours a night.
And typically I do.
And realistically, life has happened.
And some nights I've slept five to six hours.
And I know that's not enough.
Yet there's a few weeks now that some days that might happen, right?
Yesterday, though, I really felt like just energetic.
I want to go out.
I want to run hard.
I didn't want to even think about anything.
Just go out and have fun.
Do some fart legs.
Play around with speed work.
I know for myself, around 158 160 is my threshold where I don't really like to go over, because at that point I just noticed how much faster the lactate levels build up, how much longer the recovery is going to take.
And sure enough, I was trying to do like three minutes on, one minute off, and and i look at my watch and it's like 166.
I'm like here we go.
I literally know i don't want to go over 158 160.
And i'm looking down here and i'm seeing oh, i'm already at 166.
But here's the interesting thing, because after 11 years now of paying very close attention to my body, I can kind of tell the signals in my body when something is off and when something is right.
And I literally felt like the right bottom of my abdomen.
It felt like more tight, more stressed, more like I was already kind of on a high tension.
But then this, just even that difference of five or eight beats, while already on top of like a stressed body with a stressed workout, I was like okay, I'm noticing that.
Let's dial it back a little bit.
And then, sure enough, like running in the 155s, 158 felt wonderful, and i think this just takes practice and there's a lot to learn as a runner and i think you never, at your destiny, you're just going to continue like people are listening to this podcast right now, might pick up one or two things that they can apply to their running tomorrow, and i think that's that's the important thing that we just keep evolving, we keep having an open mind and we keep learning and experimenting.
I think that's the that's the fun part about this.
All That just makes me laugh as a parent.
But yeah, like if you're very stressed or if you haven't been sleeping well, you go out and you do the same effort and your heart rate's 10 or more beats per minute higher than it normally is.
Or you know, you end up going running a little bit later in the day and it's, you know, 55 degrees instead of 35 degrees and your heart rate's higher because of that.
And if I could add a little lesson here for our newer runners, it would be recognize when you're a little bit more stressed, recognize when you haven't been sleeping and just be really conservative with your training around those areas.
And if you do want to start learning how to interpret all those signals that your body is giving you.
I think you know running without music or listening to a podcast with the exception of mine and yours, of course.
You know running And doing workouts, maybe on a track, so that you can really dial in pacing, while at the same time measuring some of the metrics like heart rate, and really kind of putting it all together.
If you do that consistently over time, you're going to be much more fluent in the language of your body.
And that's where the magic happens, I think.
That's where you really start being in tune with yourself.
You can dial in your threshold effort.
You know when your heart rate's at 158 compared to 168.
And you can really dial in those efforts.
And that takes a little bit of intentionality, right?
It's sort of like writing down your training in a training log versus just automatically uploading it to Strava.
You kind of have to be really paying attention to those things.
But I think it's a worthwhile project.
So well said, absolutely.
And it was really interesting hearing you say the part as well of you sleeping less and noticing an impact of 10 beats higher heart rate.
I want to share one story as an example with this.
There was one runner that I came across who for several months tried this whole low heart rate thing to try to become faster at a lower heart rate.
And for about four months was just stuck at the same pace and just couldn't improve.
And the pace was actually like it was like around an 11 minute mile, couldn't get faster.
All of a sudden we had a conversation and i just asked him the question how many hours of sleep are you getting a night like?
I just go through a checklist of a few things.
That was one of the first questions and sure enough, he slept only five hours a night.
Once i challenged him really, try your very best to sleep seven hours a night.
It changed everything for him, meaning like not only did his training all of a sudden start clicking within four weeks, improving his aerobic pace by more than a minute, he just noticed a new feeling that he didn't even realize that he had been over under sleeping for so long, And sure enough.
Then all of a sudden he wanted to sleep more.
He ended up now sleeping eight hours a night.
And then seeing that pace drop from like an 11 minute mile to a 10 minute mile to a nine minute mile, purely by that missing piece.
Like you can do all the training in the world, but if you're not absorbing it because something is blocking it, identify what that is.
Is that the sleep?
Is that the nutrition?
Is that any other factor in your life that you can pay attention to as well?
I think people are really good at adapting to subpar situations, right?
Like we get really good at thinking that our version of under fueling is okay for us, or that sleeping five or six hours a night is okay because insert reason here.
Or we're training for a marathon on 20 miles a week and we just don't think we can ever run more than that.
There's better ways to do all of this.
And I think oftentimes runners just have to experience the difference to then almost be sold the idea that hey, there's a better way.
There's a more effective way.
And you're going to feel better.
You're going to perform better.
And I think that's the exciting place to be hundred percent and and sometimes it's out of your control too meaning, the other day i had a conversation with a single father of three kids and one of the kids had special needs as well and he was trying to train for a marathon, sleeping four hours a night, and we just had an honest conversation of there's a time and place for certain goals to go after, and he felt completely burned out and exhausted and we just talked about sometimes running can just be there to bring some stress relief.
Sometimes running and we talked through it and i think he put a lot of pressure on himself, but i see a lot of runners doing similar things.
We can beat ourselves up so hard, meaning like being very harsh on ourselves of specific, it's this balancing act.
Yes, you want to get yourself out the door and get some consistency in there and you want to train and put in the work, but sometimes it's just not the reality.
To train for a marathon at that time of the year, or at least realize this might not be your a performance and you're you're just giving yourself some grace through that.
I think that's a big one.
Well, i think you just outlined how good of a coach you are floris, because i think the best coaches have uncomfortable conversations that are very honest.
You know there's this idea of you know telling kind lies and telling unkind truths.
It probably wasn't the news this runner wanted to hear that now isn't a good time to train for a marathon, but it absolutely is true and you likely saved him from overtraining, from an injury, from maybe a really just terrible first marathon experience, because he just can't absorb the training and he doesn't have the space in his life to properly train for that kind of a race.
And I see this all over the place, with coaches who are sort of just glorified cheerleaders telling their runners they can do anything and You know it doesn't matter that you know you've had nine stress fractures in the last seven years.
You can run, you know, very long ultra marathons.
And it's just.
It strikes me as almost unethical to convince runners they can do things that are downright dangerous or could potentially get them hurt or just lead to a very negative outcome.
And I'm a big fan of that, that just honest conversation.
And- it's funny you say that because i literally i'm dutch and dutch people are very direct and so i love it i'm from boston massachusetts i'm from new england uh you know i don't i don't i don't resonate very strongly with like the midwestern nice vibe here in colorado sometimes i'm like guys we just need to have a direct frank conversation here yeah but sometimes indeed unlike coaching calls when i'm like hate to tell you but you're not in four sub four hour shape right now like it's just like it it's it's this fine balance and i'm i'm saying it in a very cautious way sometimes of like hey listen the more risk you're willing to take also the higher chance of blowing up over here so let's take a look at where where some of your goals where some of the workouts you've been putting in and what what is realistic based on what you've been experiencing in training and and most times when people then end up going out and running by the best way they could given the race day circumstances the training conditions that they were going through some of the challenges that they have experienced and they do the best they could on race day yes they might or might not have reached their goal but at least their race day experience was one to remember and one that was pleasant i see many marathoners go out and bonk just by going out too aggressive and i think sometimes being realistic with yourself or sometimes doing some workouts that actually indicate whether you're in good enough shape for your goal or not it's it's sometimes not what you want to see but i think it will save your day on race day to still have an enjoyable experience out there Yeah, and that's a good thing to have is an enjoyable experience.
We don't want to make running any harder than it already is, right?
Now, I asked you what some high level principles you'd advise a relatively new runner on.
What if a more advanced runner came to you for kind of the same guidance?
You've talked to all these amazing subject matter experts and professional runners.
This person is a three-hour marathoner or they're a Boston qualifying marathoner.
What kind of guidance would you give to this more advanced athlete?
I do think...
If your body is able to handle it and you can recover well.
Running enough training volume and training intensity will help improve your running times, meaning getting enough training load.
I see some people going overboard with the low intensity stuff, where they're only running low intensity miles.
They're skipping all the speed work and at some point you're going to hit a plateau, at some point you're not going to progress.
And i do think putting in enough time over, putting in a lot enough training, load over enough time is, is a big one there.
I think heat training is one of the most underutilized training tools, meaning i'm a huge fan not only of sauna training but even from time to time to go out and putting on some extra layers of clothing.
I truly have noticed a big difference in my own running that my cardiac drift just became less once I had more heat at a patient.
And it was Tim Ferriss in, I think, 2011.
He wrote a really good blog post that might be interesting to link to, Jason.
It's called Are Saunas the Next Performance Enhancing Drugs?
That was in 2011, i believe.
I read it, and so i ended up buying a sauna put in my garage and i've been doing sauna since and just sitting in the sauna a few times a week, i think has made a noticeable difference in my training and my recovery and my sleep.
And so if you don't have access to a sauna, from time to time, wearing some extra layers of clothes and making yourself a bit uncomfortable big caution over here, don't overdo it.
Heat exhaustion is real.
Heat stress is real.
You can fry your nervous system if you overdo this.
But doing things in a gentle way, when you start feeling light-headed when you're throwing up, you have pushed it way too hard.
There's no need for that.
But getting slightly uncomfortable will have certain benefits, and i think once you start getting to that certain barrier of you're almost there at the gasp of sub three hour marathon or sub four hour marathon and you're just not there yet, or boston qualifier whatever those specific time goals is where one minute can make a difference.
It's like yes, play around with that, play around with heat training.
I would even say it on the other side as well.
I've personally done cold exposure for a long period of time and yes, there's different theories about the benefits of cold exposure, but if my range of comfort is very wide between being cold and being hot, i feel there's benefits for me on race day, like i'm okay wearing pretty minimal layers of clothing and and be able to cool my body down well, but also be not completely shivering.
From that extent,
So I think, playing around with cold exposure, playing around with heat exposure journaling, what are you noticing when you do some of those things?
I think it has helped me sleep better at night when I'm actually doing some of the cold exposure and the heat exposure, which indirectly improved your running performance too.
So I think that's a big one.
Eventually, if you're really going to like go last percentage points over here, I mean if you're able to strategically play with altitude, like you live at 7000 foot, I believe, Jason.
Just about.
I think Denver is about 52, 5,300.
Okay, there you go.
But I can get up to 7,000 to 10,000 feet relatively easily.
So I'm sort of always playing in that higher altitude environment.
I just need to get more reliable access to a sauna and then I'll be all set.
There you go.
But even that part, right?
Like, if there's any creative ways that you can spend some time at at altitude, not saying, like i go on a training camp in order to do this, it is, but what if like, you're gonna go to a place where you're gonna be racing and it is slightly higher up, make sure that you go several days in advance to get some adaptations, or when you are able to visit family who lives higher up and you stay there for a few days, like these are the little things and, of course, we're talking about the one percent over here.
We've already covered all of the fundamentals of enough training, enough recovery, enough workouts, all of those kind of things.
But if we're really talking about those things, I do think carbon play to choose.
It's one of those things.
Initially I was like well, I want to do everything I can to not have to rely on the benefits from that.
But I think, if we're talking about icing on the cake in the last few percent, I definitely think that carbon-plated shoes you can do the test yourself.
Just see how much faster are you with the test, how much at the same heart rate.
What output can you put and like, even on the top end, what speeds can you hold at certain heart rates?
Like it's?
The data is there.
Yeah, these are all really great sort of final last few percentage points strategies that if you're already doing the basics and the fundamentals really well, These might help take it over the edge to get you that time goal that you might be thinking of.
Another thing that I might add too, is something that I've noticed a lot of runners doing more of is cross training.
And I know a lot of runners don't like cross training.
I sort of get it.
I'd rather be out running myself.
But for that runner looking for the extra edge, who really wants the BQ or the sub three marathon or whatever it might be, a lot of these runners are already training fairly hard.
They're sort of running a lot.
They're doing the workouts.
And yes, maybe you can play with sauna and super shoes and altitude.
Another training thing to add is just layering on some extra aerobic development with cross training.
And I like this because it's relatively low risk.
You're probably not going to get an injury if you do a couple extra hours of cycling every week, but that's going to add a couple extra hours of aerobic development.
And so I like to take this idea of you know you mentioned Phil Maffetone and the idea of building a very big aerobic base with low heart rate training
You can sort of always be doing this with cross training, because cross training is a little bit more controlled.
You can get on a stationary bike or a Peloton or something like that and purposefully keep your heart rate in that, you know, maybe high zone one, low zone two heart rate range.
Even while you're doing some zone three running from day to day.
You're doing hard workouts, but you're also just saturating your physiology in that lower intensity effort.
And I think that over the long term is going to be really effective at just building a much bigger base of aerobic fitness.
Even if you're already... running 60, 70 miles a week.
You could basically kind of give yourself the same stimulus as 80 or 90 miles a week, but without the pounding, without the impact.
And I think that's a good strategy that will help push your performances over the edge.
It really does.
And that once again, it's building that up over months and years, just being able to stack on a few hours here and there.
But if you do that over a long enough period of time, it really starts adding up.
So I think the cross training is a big one.
And I think you mentioned doing the cross training for low intensity.
Sometimes I've even had it where I was running, for example, Berlin, Tokyo and London.
And this is just one of those things where i got in back to back to back, like this was one of those years where i was able to get into several of these races more than i ideally wanted, but i also wanted to complete the original six world majors, and so it was one of these things.
And in between, at one point i started getting a niggle at my achilles and i was running less.
I was doing more like gentle low intensity running, i was doing some aqua jogging, but for some of the high intensity i still want to do occasionally some high intensity.
I would actually go on the elliptical, would put on some extra warm clothes for that.
And yes, those sessions are not pretty, but doing like three minutes on, one minute off on an elliptical and doing that six or eight times, I was able to get a high intensity session in with very minimal wear and tear on the body and still feel I made adaptations in a very positive way that benefited my running later.
I once was told just because you're hurt doesn't mean you can stop training.
And that one line really changed my approach to training.
Because like you, if something hurts and I'm training for a race, I'm going to get on the bike.
I'm going to be in the pool.
I'm still going to get in that workout that I had planned today.
But I'm going to do it with a cross-training modality.
And it's going to look a little bit different.
But I'm still going to adhere to the spirit of that workout.
And it's just a... a great way of keeping the ball rolling.
Let's just keep our fitness moving forward.
Let's keep our fitness growing over time.
Anytime that you're gonna just substantially decrease your training, you're gonna experience some level of detraining.
And I think cross-training is that bridge that can help you.
You know, continue to train really well while at the same time, maybe you're not actually able to run really well.
So that's a great example of using cross-training kind of for a slightly different purpose, but nevertheless highly, highly beneficial.
Yes.
And even there indeed, once you have that injury, being able to do some of that strength training you always talk about and more mobility, work and any of those things, it goes a long way.
One thing that I've come across too is...
What motivates people and what excites people to run?
And that is different for everyone.
But I think in particular, identifying some of the lower points of when some people start to lose motivation.
And there were several different threats in the podcast that came through as well.
One stands out is just the whole community aspect of surrounding yourself with like-minded people.
And I'll be straight up and honest, Jason.
I know you talk about strength training a lot, but I don't always enjoy doing it.
I don't either.
Running is so enjoyable to me and I can do it all day long solo with other people.
It's so enjoyable and it comes natural, right?
But then the strength training component.
Last night I did a workout with six of my friends at my friend's gym.
And we just did like a routine where you had nine different exercises.
It was one minute on, one minute off, and you were just rotating in between.
I did more over there than I would do on my own sessions, purely because it's joint suffering or like joint being able to dig deep and joke around and goof around.
And I think that part cannot be underestimated.
And so I think, when you're a solo soldier out there trying to toughen it out through certain – strength exercise and you're not feeling motivated to do it on a consistent way maybe maybe, look at your approach and maybe see if there's some potential ways to switch things up, to keep it fun, to keep it exciting.
Yeah, the community aspect of things resonates with me because I don't think I could have done what I've done as a runner if I didn't have a team, a coach, people at practice every day, that strict schedule, the expectations of others not wanting to let down my teammates and my coach, and all of that supporting infrastructure around your training.
I think is invaluable because without it, you're just not going to be able to achieve as much.
So I'm a big fan of doing everything in your power to surround yourself with other runners to get the guidance you need, to go on group runs, to exercise with other people, to reach out to some subject matter expert if you have a question, and not to go through things alone.
Because that's just a more effective way of doing things.
You know and Flores, a related question is you know, a big aspect of what you do is helping runners find more joy in the process of training and racing as well.
How can we do that?
It's getting cold here in Denver Florida, so I'm not feeling too joyful about training when it's freezing outside.
What are some good strategies for just making me find a little bit more of that fun?
Listen to the inner voice of where your energy draws you to, what excites you.
For some people, that is running on the trails.
For some people, that is running on the road. i see a lot of people doing the same thing over and over i run five miles around the block this block every day where it's like mix things up i really believe for me every tuesday night i run with a few other friends and we run for an hour hour and a half we jump in the ice bath jump in the sauna and we grab dinner and that's like a non-negotiable the running isn't even relevant like yes we run for an hour and a half like the running it's it's not there like it's for me it's catching up with friends and i think the more we can kind of integrate different things from that perspective and so yeah sometimes during the brutal winter months that might mean you're gonna have to go on the treadmill indoors when it's super crazy cold or super hot during the summer months but just focus on what excites you and that might even come down to the racing component too I see quite a few runners signing up for the next half marathon for the next marathon because they've done several and they just want to lower their time what if your next race is going to be a trail race instead of a road race what if your next race might be a run swim what if you think about something completely different like I'd never thought that I would want to do a triathlon it just wasn't for me So we made our own adventure.
We swam in the ocean for 1.2 miles.
We rode a bike for 80 miles to a local mountain, and then we ran up a mountain.
We made our own adventures and I think that's one very important thing to just look at that and keep it exciting and follow your own intuition.
What draws energy to you?
Yeah.
And there's so much opportunity to do different kinds of training, to race different kinds of events.
And I know I talk a lot about how I'm such a track and cross-country boy at heart, but when I graduated college I was a little bit burned out from track and cross-country.
And it even started a little bit at the end of my senior year of college where, you know, I wanted to do the steeplechase which, as a five foot seven guy, I really had no business doing.
Those are 36 inch barriers and they do not lower them based on your height, Floris.
But nevertheless, I was just interested in doing something a little different.
And then as soon as I graduated, I started doing triathlons.
I did a longer cross country race than I'd ever done before.
And I started getting into the longer road races and I went back to multi-sport and I did a duathlon.
And then I came to Colorado and I started doing formal trail races and experimenting with high altitude.
You know there's always something to challenge you a little bit differently with in the sport of running.
And I love that about the sport.
And it's just such a cool way to experience running in practice, trying different types of races and the different types of training that go along with it.
So I love that advice.
I think it keeps things fresh.
It keeps it exciting.
And after all, it also kind of teaches you what you personally enjoy, right?
Like, if you've never raced a 1500 on the track, you may not realize that that is your favorite event.
It is short fast sweet intense painful, but it's At the same time you never are going to know about it if you don't give it a whirl.
So I'm a big fan of just do something you've never done before.
Have a good time with it and see what happens.
Yeah, it really, really is.
And I think right now we're seeing a lot of movement from trail running or from road running into trail running.
And I'm very happy to see that, actually.
I think there's so much variety in it.
You mentioned altitude earlier.
I think just variety of different terrain, being very present with your environment is, And initially that can feel somewhat intimidating for people.
But once again going back to community, if you go with a friend, if you just say I'm going to go for a hike and maybe I just jog it for 100 feet just to feel what it's like to go on a trail run,
And once again, you don't have to go right away on like a 20 miler, just go, go for 20 minutes on a trail and just experience what that is.
Get these small wins under you.
And then you'll discover a new way of running.
I see so many people that have gone from road running to trail running who are like this is amazing.
And they're like, that's now their thing, which they never thought that that was possible.
So if you have not really gotten into trail running, I would challenge you sometimes to give that a go as well.
It makes the miles just kind of fly by.
It's a lot more psychologically manageable than road running.
So that's another great piece of advice.
And I really hope folks check out your new book because there's so many golden nuggets in here.
I'm holding the book now.
It's called Running Breakthroughs.
Transform Your Running and Life.
Proven Lessons from World-Class Athletes, Experts and Recreational Runners.
And you've interviewed like... who's who of running royalty over here, Floris.
Elliot Kipchagay, Stephen Seiler, Courtney DeWalter, Killian Jornet, Sally McRae.
She was a huge hit on my podcast.
She is just a tour de force.
So congratulations again on the book.
There's a link to check it out in the show notes of this episode, so I certainly encourage our listeners to do so.
Is there any parting message that you want to leave our listeners with, Floris?
I know we've had a very wide-ranging conversation here and could probably make this a three-hour show but uh, is there anything you want to leave us with?
I think you forgot to mention one podcast guest.
That was very legit too, and that was you man.
Like i honestly, i honestly felt like there was nothing about strength training that was uh, really covered in detail yet, and so once i had you on, like the, the way you broke it down and this is why i truly i appreciate the work that you have done over the years You broke it down in a very easy to understand way.
And so, yeah, that was phenomenal.
That being said, in closing, I would just say, let the running come to you.
Try not to force it too much.
I see runners get very excited, but sometimes that excitement has its ups and downs as well.
But if you follow your intuition and you don't beat yourself up and sometimes even ask yourself the question go, stand outside of your own body and be an external coach towards you.
It's really easy to be kind to other people, it's really easy to be coaching people what to do in a certain situation.
But what if you would actually coach yourself and you would tell is today that workout the right workout for me, or should i be flexible, or should i adjust this potentially, instead of being too married to a specific training schedule?
But most of all, just enjoy the runs.
We're doing this for fun, so go out there and be patient, consistent and just enjoy the process.
Really, I couldn't have said it better myself.
Floris, thank you so much for everything you do.
I hope folks, of course, check out the book, but also your podcast, The Extra Mile List Podcast.
And you are also the co-founder of running apparel brand Path Projects, which is one of my favorite brands of running gear.
So I'll put a link as well to Path Projects under this episode and folks can check it out.
Floris, thank you so much.
Thank you so much, Jason.
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