Boston Build #1: Setting The Scene for Success

In this episode we dive into part one of our four part series discussing our buildup to the Boston Marathon. We are joined by my long time training partner Rich Wolferz to discuss how our training is going, things we are struggling with, and our hopes for this training block. We also talk with Chris about strategies to help deal with some of the mental struggles in our training right now. Hope you enjoy this series as we build to boston!

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to the Backseat Driver Podcast, where we attempt to look differently at the worlds of performance, psychology, and sport. My name is Chris DeMarco, and by trade, I am a middle performance consultant. My co host, Matthew, is a doctor, avid runner, and someone who's not afraid to stir the pot, who also happens to be my brother.

Matt 0:25

What's up guys. Welcome to this week's special edition of the backseat driver podcast. We are coming to you from Snowbird, Utah on a special week of hanging out skiing and getting some father, son, brother time together. But we do have a special guest. This will be the first part of our three or four part Boston buildup series, where we will dive into some of the topics around training for a marathon. Training specifically for Boston training from a psychological perspective and Chris will weigh in and during the series We will have a special guest for each of those episodes and that will be my good friend rich Wolfers And so he is here with me and I'll let him say a couple things about himself and kind of get things started So here's rich let him introduce themselves and then we'll get into the episode

Rich 1:15

Yeah. Hey, listeners excited to be on this podcast and get to join Matt in this buildup for, for Boston, this would be my second Boston marathon. But first I should say my name is Rich Wolfers. I am one of Matt's colleagues from residency. So I'm also a family physician. I work out here in Park City, Utah, but originally from New Jersey. I am Like Matt, a dedicated amateur runner ran competitively in high school, was on a club team in college where I was very much mediocre. And then kind of fell in love with the marathon after that and have been running long distance, both on the roads and on the trails. Since that time,

Matt 1:52

so thanks for the intro, rich. I do want to give just a little bit of background on this series and what, what our ideas and why we think it'd be something fun to do. So essentially the idea behind this, this series is to give you guys an inside look, not only in our training, but what it looks like to work with a sports psychologist. So we want to give you some insights into what we're doing in training, but also some of the things we're struggling with, especially from a mindset perspective or a motivation perspective, or a lot of these things we've talked about in the last few episodes. And so we kind of want to give you insight into what it actually looks like personally for us and the things that are hard during marathon training, the things that are going well, things that are not going well, and then get Chris's input sort of like he would do with some of his cross country runners or other athletes and get kind of personalized feedback. So you guys have an idea of both of what our training looks like, but also what it would look like to work with a mental performance coach or a sports psychologist as a runner doing marathon training. So I think that kind of. Deeper insight is something that a lot of people have been interested in. So we thought this series would be a great opportunity to do that.

Chris 2:53

Yeah, no, absolutely. So I want to get started. I'm just curious rich for you. You said this is your second Boston. When did you run it first?

Rich 3:02

Yeah, my first Boston was in 2017. Okay.

Chris 3:04

So it's actually been a few years. Yeah, cool. So. I want to hear the contrast from both of you guys. I think this would be a good place to start of what is it for Matthew, like being your first boss and kind of how, what is your mentality going in and then rich having done it before. Are you noticing any difference from 2017? Or some of maybe the other bigger marathons that you've done compared to now with some of that experience.

Rich 3:33

Yeah, so I can certainly give you a little bit more context where I'm coming from. So 2017 Boston was at that point my third marathon. So I ran, or sorry, it was my fourth marathon. I had first run a marathon in college with some friends. At Disney, which I do not recommend, especially if you don't have a qualifier to get yourself out of the literally last corral where I stood on the pavement for four hours before starting. But I ran 311 there having really cramped up near the end, but that was when I first realized like, Oh, I probably have some potential and be able to run a decent marathon qualified for Boston. My next marathon in Hartford I ran. Just under two 55, which is where I got my Boston qualifier. At that time it was a three Oh five qualifier for the age group. And really kind of fell in love with, with marathon running had a pretty poor marathon off a bad build my, when I first started med school. And then the spring of my first year of med school is when I ran, ran Boston and I ran two 58, which is my goal was to break three there and have a decent showing. And I felt pretty good with that. So fast forward. Now. I've run at least a dozen more road marathons, not including the trail marathons, 50Ks, 50 miles that I've run on it. And I've had a lot more success. I've broken three hours in the marathon. Probably close to 10 times then. And most recently we ran with Matt here at CIM in 2022 and ran 240 flat pretty much. So coming into it with very different goals where before I was just kind of like having a good showing running about a time to qualify for Boston again, versus this time seeing like, Hey, I want to set a PR here and kind of break into that next level, which for a dedicated amateur like myself Getting down into the two thirties, I feel like it's like kind of that achievement of like, Oh, this is now you're really kind of putting a lot of effort and structured running multiple training cycles on top of each other to get there. And that's kind of my approach. Gotcha.

Chris 5:30

So for you, it's More like the first time was, all right, let's experience this. Let's see how we do. Obviously probably wanting to do well, but not with the same intention, the same goal setting, like you, you have a clear time in mind that you want to hit and you're working

Rich 5:44

towards that. Right. Exactly. I did not go out in the other Boston with like a specific pace in my, I knew like generally where I wanted to be running, but I was also running with a couple of friends. They were struggling early and it was fine. I was like, not going to drop them right away. And then kind of just like looked at my time, realizing I could be close to three hours and wanted to push under that versus this time I'm going to be going out like from the gun, looking at the watch, being exactly on to within five seconds of a time is kind of the approach, right?

Chris 6:09

So taking a lot more, a lot more professional approach.

Matt 6:12

Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of that though, is just kind of maturing and training, maturing and experience from a running perspective. So like, like Rich said, when you run your first couple of marathons, a lot of it is just. You don't really know what you're doing. You don't necessarily understand training, how to make a good training block. You're also very fresh in terms of the amount of miles you've run. And that makes a huge difference over time, stacking those miles over years. So yeah, I think we both got into the place where we've run enough races. We kind of understand training theory enough. And so our goals are usually very specific. We usually have a very specific time in mind. And then we have a very specific process of how we want to achieve that goal. So just to give you numbers that we're thinking, I think our, our dream scenario would be two 33, obviously every goal in the marathon is, has a huge caveat of weather, right? Like if it's hot, if headwind, especially at Boston, those are two, if it's really windy, rainy, those are things that happen in Boston all the time. So. Boston's one of those courses. If, if the weather sucks, it's, you know, you're out there to enjoy yourself at the end of the day. If the weather's perfect though, you know, that would probably be our dream scenario. Two 35 is probably the B goal. And then I'd say two 30 getting under two 38 is probably the C goal. Cause I think that like Rich said, getting under two 38 is really getting under two 40 into two thirties is really a nice. Transition as a amateur runner, it's really nice to have a three in front of your, your number. So yeah, those are, those are kind of our goals that we have talked about. I think 2 33 is aggressive. Like I, it is fast. That's around five 50 pace. Our last PR was two 40, so that would be, especially when you've been running for a while to take multiple minutes off of your best time. Is, is a feat, like you have to be really in a good place. Good training, good, consistent training, a good buildup. Like you have to have good training before you can't just start training. So I think all of those things are hopefully in place and we'll see what happens.

Chris 8:18

Yeah. So one question I have, so the, there's clear outcome goal, right? Time this, that if the conditions cooperate at all. So one thing that I'll share with you guys that I don't actually talk a ton about. Outcome goals with people. Like they certainly might come up as far as like setting a framework for like where I want to get, maybe I want to be ranked this. I want to, like you said, run this time, but way more interested in like, okay, that's the framework that you're setting. And obviously we skied a little bit today and have seen some of the things that you guys are doing, but. What are, okay, that's the, that's the outcome goal, but for you guys, what is the process goal and steps in order to achieve that? And what does that look, have looked like recently for you?

Rich 9:05

Yeah I agree, Chris, I think Matt and I talk about this on many of our runs is a lot about kind of like, what are, what are our process goals? We're like we have outcomes in mind, but then we. Pretty much we put that out there, maybe the beginning of a training block and then kind of forget about it. And then it's all talking about process of like, what are we doing this week? What are we doing this month? What are we trying, like, what do we need to put together? And what I think is different for me, maybe even for both of us coming into this training block than others is a good base of fitness over the last few years of consistent miles across the year in a number of events, both doing really steep, hilly. Mountain races, 50 Ks, we're at snowbird right now. Both of us ran speed goat in the last couple of years. 10, 000 feet of vert over 50 K building up a lot of that kind of strength in the legs. And then also putting in a lot of road miles coming into things like CIM and stuff. I ran like 2, 700 miles last year. And I didn't take a lot of downtime coming out of that to like transition. Now I feel healthy, like I coming into this, but I'm definitely fitter coming in. So now it's, for me, the process is like maintain that fitness and now start growing from a higher spot. And then looking at. How do I stack workouts week in and week out to get where I want to go.

Chris 10:18

Right. So it's that, it's that buildup, the body of work that, okay. Yeah.

Matt 10:22

And I think that's having that mindset makes it, you know, we called CIM. Like our joke was that was a celebration of friendship, like a celebration of fitness of our friendship. Like ultimately the most enjoyable part was the buildup. Like the times we worked out together, did long runs together, just easy runs. You know, all those things are. The process that are enjoyable and, and ultimately the outcome worked out that time. And a lot of times if you have a good training block, it will, but like I said, at the beginning, you can't control everything in the marathon and you have to be okay with, did I have a good? Training block where I did the things necessary to at least put myself in position to run a good time if the conditions are appropriate. And that's kind of how I think of our, our process. And then at the end of the block, it's really just a celebration of a good process for 16 weeks. So I think that's kind of both of our mindsets and something we had talked about a lot over the years.

Chris 11:17

And that kind of leads in to my next question and you kind of maybe answered it a little bit just then, but. One of the, one of the ways that maybe I transitioned from like that outcome oriented thinking and not saying you guys have that, but it's, it's easy to fall into that, what would success look like, or would it be possible to have a successful run? And what would that look like if you didn't hit your time? How would

Rich 11:43

you know? I think what Matt was saying is it's spot on with how we've approached other training cycles, which the day of the race itself for us is really just a celebration of the work that we put in the three months leading up to that. So for me, I really enjoy the process of training. Marathon training just gives a beautiful structure. To my life and my running. Sometimes it is a drain. I'm sure we'll get to it where it's like another tempo, some more intervals, another long run. But at the same time, it's kind of nice to like see this felt fitness build over that time. So for me, a success, and especially going into Boston where like Matt was saying, the course has a lot more control. Over like you can come in fit, but if the weather's not there, you're, you've got to still enjoy it and you're not going to hit your time and accept that. But for me, success for this cycle is really stepping up the workouts into that to then next zone. So for us, what that looks like is really. A lot of tempo in under six minute pace, right? And being able to do that and kind of grow that tempo out. So we've both done it now, like up to 10 miles. What does that look like at 13 and 15, 18 miles? Maybe like, can we get there? And I would love to see how my body responds to that.

Matt 12:57

Yeah, it's, it's interesting. Cause I do a lot of the programming, so I, I control, or at least we talk, but I think rich gives me a little more control over. We have a joke that his coach, he doesn't pay me anything, but that's kind of our running joke. He just kind of gives me control over what our workouts, what our week's going to be structured. Like how many miles we're trying to get. And some of that's cause I like doing that, but some of it is just because, you know, I think he likes to not have to think about it as much too. So it works for both parties, but one big difference that I've noticed and this could maybe be our first. So that's one reason training together during residency was really good is because rich is really good at just going forever at a pretty moderate, easy pace, and I like to run fast and go all out, go as close to the red line as possible and see what that looks like. So. You need both of those in marathon training, but they both, those things that you're not as good at tire you out more mentally. So our training actually can look a little bit different because I'm able to tolerate more time on the track and that's energizing to me, but for rich time on the track is very draining. So trying to find like a, a balance of yes, you need to do some track work to get fast enough to run five 50 pace for a marathon, like there's no way around it. But what's the minimum effective dose for him where he's not getting burned out. And then for me, it's the same thing with the long runs, like long, easy runs, especially, I don't mind doing long, hard runs as much, but the long, easy runs, like how many of those do I need to do to be successful and having that awareness for each of us. And that's what we were just talking about is like, how are we going to get you enough fast miles to show up to the start line, ready to run without burning you out mentally.

Chris 14:51

Right. So a couple of things I heard in there for on Rich's side, I really liked how you frame. The celebration, like the, that's what the event is to you. It's a celebration of the training of the process of the journey to get there. I think that's a really cool way to frame it. And it takes a lot of the, not that there's no pressure, but it takes some of the pressure off of like, everything's relying on this one day. So, so I really liked that. That was cool. And then this second, the second piece of you like different things. And I think two things that were coming to mind. With this is like, do you maybe not uniqueness, but the collaborative effort that you guys have had in how that's positively impacted you. I think it's cool actually, how you have different strengths and weaknesses that you can work off of each other. One of the questions I had that came up is like, okay, you say you don't like the track stuff as much. What in Matthew for you, maybe the opposite. What type of mentality or what are you telling yourself on those days when you know it's coming up and it's not your favorite part? What, what is your approach to that?

Rich 15:58

Yeah. Great question, Chris. And I think it's varied over time. Like I am not some like monk master at this and I'd like try different strategies. Right. And I'll be honest, like going to the track by myself is not. Easy or fun generally versus like doing even a long tempo or even long runs. Like I can do on my own relatively without as much mental effort, lock into a pace and just sit there is different than doing those intervals. What I've started doing, obviously one strategy is finding people to do it with is huge. If I could find someone else that I know, I already, I run faster that way and I can joke around with them, not think about the workout itself.

Chris 16:33

Right. And that's already, that's already come up with just y'all's programming effort, like the collaborative effort. Have the motive, the natural motivation within that. So that's

Rich 16:41

cool. Yeah. The other thing I've been kind of testing out as a mindset is like a mantra. I go in, go to the track with, which is the idea of like, Hey, this is part of the process. This workout doesn't define who I am. This doesn't take away from what I've done so far to take the pressure off it. Cause I think one part that's also hard. For me on the track with those speed workouts is you're getting feedback constantly every lap on like, Hey, you're too slow. You're too slow.

Chris 17:09

Yeah. That's, that's an interesting point. How the, the instantaneous feedback that you're receiving and there's like no avoiding it and what, yeah. How do you like filter that information? I,

Matt 17:21

I am a little bit curious. I'm not sure we've talked about this a ton. Do, cause I feel like I naturally run a little bit faster on the track. Like my, the things I'm good at in running are kind of on the faster and enriches a little bit better on the things that are a little bit longer, like, like he was saying, 50 K, 50 mile, like his continuous engine is just ridiculous. And I think sometimes there's some of that comparison, at least I could see that being. So I'm just curious for you. Do you feel like that's something sometimes, like I'll go run a track workout at this pace. And you're like, Oh, I got hit the same splits to have the same fitness. But in reality, it's probably not true because our strengths are in different places. Do you feel any of that? I'm just curious.

Rich 17:59

Yeah, I think, I think we've talked about this and without trying to like nerd out too much about lactate thresholds I think ours. Like our LT1, LT2 are, are quite different in the sense that for me, what is like, even my marathon or half marathon pace compared to my 5k pace is really close. So even just going a little bit faster than what I normally run for my like long tempos starts becoming really taxing and hard and mentally, for some reason, for me, it's a lot harder. I can go and try to run intervals on the track and struggle to hit a pace that then I go and run a five mile tempo at. A week later on the road and feel great. And I don't know what, what it is about that, that I feel like telling myself I have to run fast makes it feel running fast, harder than just going out and feeling like, Oh, I'm just trying to cruise and settle in and my mind can settle.

Chris 18:47

Yeah. That, that is not uncommon, right? To, to know, like when you put that like that, I always use the terminology is not exactly what you ordered, but essentially what's happening is this. I want. I have to in, in probably the language that's going on in your mind is putting you in that, like, I have to mindset which a lot of times puts us a little bit more into the threat mentality. And some, I don't know if you're familiar with that. We've talked about on some, one of our previous episodes versus kind of this, you know, the, the alternative of the, the challenge or we were discussing this a little bit on our trip of like being kind of the opposite of that would be curious toward the experience of like, this is what I'm going to try to do. And not put yourself in that judgmental place. Cause that's what I'm hearing a little bit of kind of like, you're talking about the feedback of like, I run this lap at this time and it's like, you're so slow, right? That's the first time. And that's just, that is a judgmental thought versus, you know, the, the alternative approach would be approaching what that, that with a little bit more curiosity, a little bit less self judgment would probably be where I would. Maybe input something here just to, to try out with some of that internal dialogue.

Rich 20:08

Yeah, no, I, I totally agree and I think Matt and I approach the track very differently. Like I see a track workout. I see the paces on my warmup to the track. I am scared. Like, that's how I feel trying to do these versus, you know, Matt, I think goes in like confident being like, this is going to be fun. It's like move fast and it's going to hurt. He goes into that first rep, like excited for it. And I go in like worrying and immediately like. How, how hard is this? How much does this hurt? Am I going to be able to get there? Right.

Matt 20:37

Yeah. It's been kind of interesting over the three years. Like there's a different distances. There's different mentalities. I almost feel like when I get over a marathon, especially, I start to feel some of that more. Whereas for rich, that fear of failure or, or trying as hard as you can and failing seems to show up most from the mile to the 10 K I feel like once he gets past the 10 K. It's like, it goes, it's very interesting. We've I've noticed it because we've done some like shorter stuff. We've done some longer stuff and tried time trials. And, and you've said that to me, so I've definitely noticed that it seems like there's a cutoff where you feel a lot more comfortable. Trying as hard as you can and fail. I don't know

Rich 21:20

exactly. I think some of it too, is the confidence in the pace. Like I know I can run a six minute mile. And so I am less worried about just holding that pace. Cause I know I can be there versus a faster pace where I don't know if I can even be there. So even holding it for like half a mile seems really hard. Yeah. Yeah. So I enjoy that, that longer stuff. And I, I've had, I have years of like longer running. So running over 20 miles, running 30 miles. I know my legs will get me there.

Chris 21:49

There's that built up trust in that subset of, of the run versus this, which is, you know, and it, it's kind of funny, I wonder, and this is just a thought that you can disagree with, but like, I wonder if you, because it's like so. I don't know if comfortable is the right word, but that, that confidence is there. And the other aspect of the training that, because it's such a stark contrast, it sounds like that it almost feels worse because it's like, I'm so successful at this aspect of it, that it makes you feel more inferior than you probably. Are because you're like really good at the, I don't, does that make sense?

Rich 22:31

Yeah, no, I, I, I probably agree with that. And I have honestly had some of those thoughts cause I haven't raced a ton in that middle distance since college. So 5k, 10k, even 15k, like haven't done a lot of that racing. So don't have that confidence there that I can run fast or do well versus I've spent most of my time doing longer stuff. Like you said, like I know and have a certain level of like, Oh, I'm this type of runner at this distance, but it's kind of just like this black hole underneath it.

Chris 23:04

Right. And I mean, and it's a great point of like confidence comes from evidence, right? There's, there's, and that's exactly what you're talking about. I've run at this distance successfully many times, so I know I can do it. I know I can trust it. I haven't here. So that makes perfect sense to me. The second. That's coming up a little bit for me is you, I can tell you're a high performing guy. You're a dot, you know, you went through med school residency. You're obviously training at this at a pretty high level. And maybe you've done some other things in that from a performance realm. And it really seems to. Bother people a little bit more when they aren't living up to whatever like expectation they've had in their mind You know, I was having a conversation with an athlete the other day of like, you know It was like why does this aspect of my game not feel that's good. Everyone has an aspect of their game or their Training that doesn't feel that is the most normal experience. Not not everyone's gonna be a plus at everything And it, but it is kind of funny how much that bothers people who are successful, right. To be like, whatever you want to call it, B, B minus at something and how you kind of internalize it.

Matt 24:17

I'm going to switch gears cause I have one and I know. We have like five to 10 minutes before rich has to go since it's a blizzarding outside. But the one from, I feel like we've talked about rich, so we'll stop, we'll stop putting you under the microscope here.

Rich 24:31

Yeah. I didn't agree for this to be like an intervention here.

Matt 24:35

But the one that, the one thing that's come to my mind a lot is I really, I think my motivation or my. Desire to train hard is too closely linked with my performance in certain areas of running. So there's just to give some background, there's like really three types of workouts when you're training for marathon, there's like long marathon pace tempos, there's track stuff. And then there's kind of your long runs. There's probably four then long, easy runs. And then there's like a. Intermediate pace tempo that's faster than marathon pace somewhere in that like 10 K to half marathon pace. So those are kind of your key metrics, really the marathon pace tempo though, where you're running continuously. Marathon pace is like the gold standard workout. I feel like for, for marathon training, I feel like if I hit that workout, I'm like, Oh, I'm so motivated to run this next week, like training's going well. I've had once or twice in the last 10 weeks where I've struggled during those workouts. And I find the next week I am really struggling with the desire to keep training or I just feeling like, Oh, maybe I don't actually want to pursue this all out like I'm doing right. You know? So I feel like there's this link between how I actually perform and then how I, how hard I want to keep trying at it the next week. So that's probably the main one I've noticed recently, and I don't know, I, I think if I just put my head down and keep going long enough, I'll have a good workout and then it's kind of gone and you feel good again and you just kind of keep going. That, that's probably my main thing I've noticed.

Chris 26:16

Okay, so, so, so just to make sure I heard that right. So, when you do a workout and you don't perform as well as you want, basically, just weaken some of the motivation to do that workout

Matt 26:31

again. And, well, just to go run. Yeah, just in general to continue training. You know, 30am on Monday and Tuesday and then go do a long run, you know, long run on Wednesday. Just kind of like makes the desire to go. Keep doing all the little, like we talked about the process, the process is a lot. It's like, Oh, I have to go to bed on time. I have to eat enough food and I have to do my rehab stuff. And, you know, it's a lot of other stuff to run that much. So I feel like you just kind of lose some of that desire when you, like, I'll tell you exactly what happened. I was running, this is so stupid though. It was a, it was a monsoon. It was a 30 mile. I'm not exactly, it was a 30 mile an hour headwind and it was the day before a flight. So I had to do it that day. And I tried to go do a longer marathon tempo and it went horribly. As you can imagine, I was running 20 seconds a mile slower and it felt harder than it had, 10 days earlier. And it's like, Oh, am I, you know, it starts, the doubt starts creeping in, I think a little bit of like, Oh, how am I going to be fit enough? If I just had to cut this short at like five miles, I was supposed to be doing 10 or 12. How am I going to be fit enough in 12 weeks to just do this 20 seconds per mile faster? So I think maybe that's more of what it is, is the doubt. And then the doubt really. Yeah,

Chris 27:48

I think that's a really good description of it and pretty good background as well. I mean, I would say it's normal, right? Like any time you're not seeing, and this is where feedback's tricky, right? Cause y'all are, I mean, running, there's kind of what Rich was talking about, like there's that instant feedback of I did this and I'm getting this time and, What your relationship with the feedback you're receiving is really important. I think two, it goes a little bit, I think our motivation episode released a little bit of like two, two things. Interacting, motivation and confidence that, that I'm hearing. And, and both of those to, to link the episodes are. The feelings that go up and down. Okay. So I didn't run as well, whether the conditions were bad or not, you're feeling bad, right? Like it's feeling uncomfortable. And so the confidence is going to dip a little bit, which in turn, there's probably that relationship with the motivation as well. And then the questions I'm assuming of like, why am I doing all of this? If it's not, if I'm not going to get the return on investment. that I want, right? And so all of those things, I mean, I would say are pretty normal feelings in over a course of these long training blocks and seasons and things like that, that come up with people. So, so that's my, that's my first thought. The second thought is like, you know, what do you, how do you, like, when you get in that place, like, what do you do about it to cope? You know, like, what do you tell yourself? And maybe Rich, you can jump into if you want at some point. I

Matt 29:23

mean, I think for me, I just, I try to just keep doing the things that I need to be doing until I get another chance, so I think I just try to not start backsliding where you like skip runs or miss runs or, don't do the other things until 10 days later, two weeks later, when you, that same workout comes up again and you get another chance to do it well. yeAh. So I think in general, it's, I try to apply what you just said of realizing, like the feelings can go up and down and just being aware that it's down and just trying to kind of like keep going temporarily. With the understanding and hope that it will come back up, you know, as things ebb and flow so that that's probably my main approach

Rich 30:11

Yeah, I think to actually bring it back to kind of where this started of like Oh, how is this cycle different than others? We've been in I think I went through a period of time to in marathon Anywhere, it's like my goal generally was to just break three hours again do something I kind of knew how to do and what was nice about that where my fitness was at the time is The marathon buildup was almost predictable and I could get away without doing workouts that were really hard, both mentally and physically. No, I put in moderate mileage, maybe build one quality workout in the middle of the week, every other week, and then did my long runs that built up and my marathon tempos that built out all at paces I knew I could hit. And I knew if I put in. X amount of kind of effort every week. I wouldn't have a missed workout because it was just like things were progressed. My body wouldn't know what I would be able to do. And I could predict my outcome at the race too. And it was comforting. I think this is different, right? That's what Matt and I are saying. Like we're trying to now push ourselves a little bit more, like a little bit more dedicated with having an actual process goal or sorry, an outcome goal on top of it, which therefore the process has to also change. And for my fitness, and this is different for other people, like I could get away with that kind of C plus training for the outcomes I was doing. Now I need B plus to a minus training, which requires those speed workouts, both like track intervals, maybe that moderate tempo at even faster paces. And knowing that it's harder does make it more daunting waking up every, every week, right? You wake up Monday morning and be like. You know, your mileage is back to zero because you're always like, how many miles do I need to run this week? Okay. Where am I going to find those miles? How many of them are quality? So some of it is just like, I think that's where sometimes having the outcome goal is like keeps you honest because if you slack, you know, it's like, you're not going to get there. So is this important or not? And we're at the point approaching this where it's like, yes, this is important. It's like, okay, how am I going to find the time to do this? But then also having that mindset of no one workout makes or breaks a marathon. Training cycle, right? Just cause you run slow on a single workout doesn't mean you're like, you can't get there and it's part of the process to fail. If you're not failing, you're back at C plus training, right? That means you're never going to the world, never testing yourself.

Chris 32:29

That's such a good, that's such a good reframe, right? Like to view that as if I'm not feeling that I'm not. Pushing myself hard enough because yeah, cause I'm at the seat, but I'm doing things that I know I can do. That's, that's an amazing reframe for, for failure and how to interpret it for everyone. I also really just wanted to like sit in for a second that, cause it's, it's such a cool, it's one of my favorite human experiences of like this. Internal battle of like self doubt, right. That you kind of talked about a little bit. I don't even know if you're aware of it, but like sitting in, okay, I want to do this and I set this Pretty challenging goal, which by the way, you can see the benefits of that, how it reorients your process. And you kind of talked about that and that's one of the benefits of goal setting. But then it puts you in that place of, it's not a comfortable experience that I know I can do. Right. You don't have the confidence that you can run this time, which is. To a great thing, in my opinion, because one, I think you'll probably realize, and again, recognize that we don't always have to feel super confident to achieve certain things or accomplish certain things. And you're, you're experiencing that. And those, those internal, like, self doubt conversations after a bad workout is really important. One of the most powerful places. And I think you, where you can see the most growth from an internal perspective of like working through that and, and kind of trying different strategies. You guys have talked about some of them already of like how you manage through that, because most people don't ever get there and that's always like, so maybe that's a reframe in and of itself of like, when you're experiencing self doubt. That actually is a beautiful place to be because you're putting yourself in that situation that most people aren't even willing to get to So I don't know that was just kind of what I was thinking. Yeah,

Matt 34:28

I think that's that's good I think what Rich said and how you kind of wrapped it up and tied a bow and it was really good I think the the idea that yeah, these workouts are totally different Speed. So there's the chance of failure is significantly higher than it's probably ever been. So obviously there's probably a million things we could talk about and hopefully we'll cover some more as we go forward, but. Hope this guy, this episode gave you guys a nice intro into just some of the things we're thinking about as we, we train and set ambitious goals and, you know, try to pursue them and create a process that works. So hopefully there were one or two little nuggets that are helpful to you. And we look forward to seeing you guys in the future for more of these special episodes and then seeing you guys for our next normal episode. So hope you guys enjoyed this and any closing thoughts from either of you guys.

Rich 35:19

Looking forward to checking back in as this goes along. And just want to also recognize how grateful I think both of us are that we have family that supports us in doing these stupid things. Cause I promise you running two 40 versus two 33 in the marathon does not bring any more money home or anything like that. That's

Chris 35:37

a, that's a valid point for sure. So shouting out the families and friends, and then also just feedback on, on these sessions. This is something you guys like let us know and then maybe things that you think would be interesting for these guys to talk about or questions that you would like to ask them as well.

Matt 35:55

Sweet. Thanks guys. Rich, we'll let you get home before the blizzard comes by.