The Steep Stuff Podcast
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The Steep Stuff Podcast
Coaching Mini-Series Episode 1 with Addison Smith
Ready to stop signing up for everything and start building a season that actually fits your life? We sit down with CTS coach Addison Smith to design a smarter year from the ground up: choosing an A race that truly motivates you, mapping B and C races that build skill without burnout, and matching training blocks to your goal’s specific demands. Whether you’re eyeing a first 50K or sharpening for a 100-mile bid, this conversation turns vague intentions into a practical plan.
We break down the three-phase progression that drives long-term growth—learning to train, learning to race, and learning to win—and show how each stage shapes your calendar. Addison explains how to dial intensity by race duration and athlete level, why mid-packers often race best with more zone two than they think, and how to layer in threshold and marathon-effort work at the right time. We also get real about volume and recovery: minimum viable hours for 50K, 100K, and 100 mile, the risk of copying pro training, and how to avoid the all-in gambles that lead to burnout.
Fueling myths get a major reality check. That 100 to 120 grams of carbs per hour? It only works if your pace and gut training support it. Most runners succeed at 60 to 90 grams per hour with fewer GI blow-ups. We walk through a simple framework to personalize hydration with a one-time sodium sweat test and easy at-home sweat rate tests, so your plan adapts from cold starts to hot, exposed climbs. Plus, actionable race routines, post-race debriefs, and candid insights from crewing at Javelina help you execute calmly when it counts.
If lotteries didn’t go your way—or life’s time budget got tight—you’ll hear how to pivot without losing momentum. Subscribe for more coaching-focused episodes, share this with a training partner who’s planning their season, and leave a quick review so we know which topics to dig into next. Your next PR starts with a better plan—let’s build it together.
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Welcome back to the Steep Stuff Podcast. I'm your host, James L'Oriello. And today I'm so excited to welcome Addison Smith, CTS coach, that's right, Carmichael Training Systems Coach, back on the show. Stoked to have Addison back on. This is going to be our first installment of a short trail, long trail coaching mini-series that we're going to be working on. I'm kind of all over the place in this episode, but the overarching, kind of the overarching theme of this one specifically is going to be on long-range planning, goals, and race selection. And then we're going to be doing a bunch of different installments for different subtopics that we'll ask the audience advice on for what they want to hear as we kind of go, maybe in a monthly or maybe like a quarterly fashion, which is going to be a ton of fun. You know, I think this is an absolute necessary episode in the sense where seasons starting to kind of change. People are starting to end their seasons and plan for 2026 and beyond. So, you know, we talk about, you know, what it's like partnering with a coach, figuring out what those plans are going to be, setting those goals, how many races you should do, and just all kinds of fun stuff. And then I have 10 million miscellaneous questions that Addison's kind enough to kind of answer and uh you know put his perspective on, which is a lot of fun. So hope you guys enjoy this one. Haven't quite nailed down a name yet for this series, uh, but that'll be rolling out pretty soon once we start to figure that out. But hope you guys enjoy it. Lots of good wisdom here from Addison. Guy is an absolute brain, and I just really appreciate his perspective. So without further ado, Addison Smith. Addison Smith, welcome back to the Steep Stuff Podcast. How's it going, man? I'm good.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for having me on again. Looking forward to our conversation.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, dude. I'm so happy you're able to do this. I we we still need to figure out a name, but like for the audience uh and those interested, like we're this is like kind of a coaching corner. I think that name might be taken. So like this is uh James and Addison's coaching discussion as of right now, and we'll we'll get a more formal name after this episode.
SPEAKER_00:We'll make it more exciting as we can think of something as we go.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. But no, dude, I appreciate you coming back on. I think there's a lot of good opportunities to talk about different coaching aspects, especially as the season starts to shift now. Um, I know for you and I, one of the big topics we wanted to kind of hit at was like long-range planning and talking to athletes about that and just how to set goals and and you know, uh if you were looking for, you know, getting a coach, how to get even get signed up to do that, as well as like race selection. Like I feel like there's a lot of like really good subtopics to hit here. Um what do you want to hit first? What do you want to dive into?
SPEAKER_00:That is a great question. I think you know, the best way to start is just to think about, you know, if I were an athlete coming to into the space for the first time, there's so many different awesome things to to do as far as races and camps and experiences and places to travel. And so kind of looking into the lens of someone who's coming into the sport as a beginner, what are the things that they should be thinking about when creating that first year of you know trail and ultra races that they put on the calendar? Because I think that's a really critical thing that doesn't get discussed very much. I I think there's a lot of eye candy out there as far as opportunities to sign up. And you could sign up for a race every weekend and have a great time everywhere. But, you know, identifying first and foremost what are your goals for this coming year to, you know, in terms of those goals, is there kind of a big goal that kind of gets you the most excited, you know, for that season? And then kind of working your way back from there. Because I think some an issue that some people run into when they get into the sport is they want to do everything all at once. And I think, as you and I know, having done this sport for a while now, there really needs to be a focus, not only from the perspective of you know, time availability to train, funds to get out to all of these cool places. But I think third and most importantly, having a focus on kind of the demands of what that race or course requires, whether in training, in mental preparation, in fueling and hydration, and and those things are very unique across all of the different races and kind of types of uh experiences and distances that we'll see here in in trail running.
SPEAKER_01:Interesting, dude. I like this. This is a good this is a good little all right. Let's let's dive in. How would I pick a race? Like what how how like if I'm interested in finding a race, I mean there's so many different options, so many opportunities. If you were to take we'll break this up into three options, maybe. If I'm a beginner or if I'm a you know a moderate, more a moderate runner or maybe an elite runner, how would you how would you push someone to kind of craft their season?
SPEAKER_00:That is a great question. I every every athlete that I work with, we kind of end the season with talking about kind of next year, what their goals look like. And the first thing that I ask, and I think the most important thing in kind of the process of choosing that initial goal is what gets you excited? Like what at the end of the night are you like looking up videos on YouTube about, you know, what sort of thing like sparks your excitement, whether it's like a travel trip to an awesome mountain range or you know, something locally that just really piques your interest. Maybe you've run on these, you know, sorts of trails in the past or currently, and you want to just piece together all of these trails, you know, in a race scenario. I think finding the one thing that really gets you out of bed in the morning to train, especially in the middle of the year when likely you're gonna be doing higher volume, you're gonna be trying to make everything work with life and with, you know, your running and training goals, you know, your work obligations. The this is the race that, you know, no matter what happens, no matter what um issues you run into and sort of push and pull on your life that you have, this goal is gonna keep you getting up and getting out and getting excited for the training process. Because ultimately, you know, when you're choosing a race at the end of our quote unquote season, obviously, you know, with trail and ultra running, you could be racing an A race at any point in the calendar. But typically, this is where you know the trail running calendar starts to wind down. At this point in the season, you're choosing something likely, you know, four months to nine months out from now. And that's gonna be your North Star to which everything else is built. And that thing needs to really fire you up, really motivate you, and want you uh, you know, getting out the door for the entirety of the training block, which will likely be, you know, a couple of months, if not close to a year.
SPEAKER_01:If I'm like a new, and I I think this is cool because we if in this audience, like we have a really good mix of uh both entry-level folks, we have a lot of elite athletes, and we have a lot of sub-elite athletes that want to become elite athletes that listen to this. For the new, like, I don't want to call them newbies, but if you're someone relatively new to the sport, like what is if I'm picking something like let's say I want to run Canyons, and we're what are we in now? October, November. If I want to run Canyons in the canyon, let's say the Canyons 50K is gonna be my A race, and we're gonna we're gonna kind of build a build like for that. How would you build something? Like, is it gonna be a lot of base blocks? We do a VO2 block, like how would you put together kind of like that train, like that, I guess blocks of training for someone pretty new to something like that?
SPEAKER_00:Definitely, definitely. Ultimately, I think it depends on the athlete's fitness level coupled with kind of where they are in the progression of their trail and ultra running journey. So, for example, if you're gonna have an elite athlete doing Canyons 50K, that's roughly gonna take them, you know, on the hours of you know, three, three to four hours, roughly speaking. So that's you know, comparable to you know, steady state intensity, close to marathon intensity. And that's the kind of training that we're gonna want them to be doing as close to the race as possible, if that's their A race. And so, in terms of kind of winding things back between now and that race, we're gonna be touching on different intensity systems in the kind of intermediate periods between now and then before we get into kind of the meat of the most specific type of training, which is, you know, you could call it a variety of things. You could call it LT1, you could call it zone three training, you could call it, you know, the closest, you know, equivalent in ultra and trail running to marathon effort. That's the kind of sweet spot intensity that we want to be focusing on because that's what you're gonna be doing on race day for the most part. Now, if you're more of a beginner athlete, maybe a middle or back of the packer, then that's gonna look more like zone two on race day because just the capacity to run at a certain intensity and the total time to complete that race is a little bit different. And so, in that scenario, then you're gonna be doing a lot more zone two, you know, long days out in the trails. And then maybe, you know, in March, for example, you're gonna be doing more of that zone three work. Whereas, you know, for an elite athlete, likely, you know, you're gonna be building a big base in like December, January, February, then probably adding in some threshold after that. And then we're gonna be going into kind of that specific period where you're doing that zone three marathon effort intensity. And so I think within the context of any of these races that we're doing, whether a hundred-mile race or you're doing a Cirque series race, identifying how long that race is gonna take you is going to really dictate what sort of training you're gonna be doing in the lead up to that race and kind of, you know, at least in CTS's training philosophy, we want to be touching on all of the different intensity systems, but we want to do it in a structured way to where you're doing the most specific thing training-wise to the intensity that you're gonna be experiencing on race day. And so the puzzle pieces are gonna match a little bit differently depending on that race duration and the uh fitness level of that athlete leading up to that race. So interesting.
SPEAKER_01:All right, I want to pivot a little bit. So for let's say, so I just had Adrian McDonald on yesterday, and he I one of the things I really appreciate about Adrian is he mixes it up, he does a lot of short trail stuff, and then he'll pick like one, maybe two longer short or longer trail uh races a year, maybe it'd be Leadville, Western State, two TMB, whatever. Um, and I I like how different athletes kind of throw those things in there and kind of mix it up with both. If you were to offer advice for let me we could start with the beginner all the way up to the intermediate to the elite, dude. What is like an appropriate amount of races like people should be doing a year? I and I'll I'll throw this one out there. Like my friend Lemmy Remy LaRue, who's been on the podcast a bunch of times, dude. I think he raced like 25 times this year. Now, short trail, uh, you know, and I feel like he's only gotten fitter and better. Um, but like, and then I'll see people do like a bunch of hundred miles per year, and their body can like Rachel Entrigan and stuff like that. Obviously, these are elite of the elite athletes, but how do people like durability's got to be a massive thing as well? So, how would you what would you recommend as far as athletes kind of picking the A races on the calendar and then the B and C races to kind of fill it in?
SPEAKER_00:Definitely, definitely. When you asked that question, my mind immediately went to a continuing ed discussion that we had as a group a few years ago. Um, Athletics Canada put out this really, really awesome document. And, you know, if you're listening and you're curious at all, go and check it out. Essentially, what they were outlining is, you know, in Canada, because you know, they're a little bit smaller of a country than the US, and the collegiate system isn't necessarily used as a springboard as much as it is in a lot of sports in um kind of the team USA, you know, youth athletes going up into being Olympic ready athletes. They outlined, you know, what are the fundamental goals in terms of long-range athlete development in the different parts of, you know, an athlete's development as they go all the way from like nine years old up to competing at their best, you know, between 25 and 30. And in that, I think there's a lot of cool information that we can take when looking at, you know, any sort of beginner, intermediate, or elite athlete and get insights into what are the goals that we're trying to achieve in a given season within the context of someone's athletic career. Because even though you know a beginner athlete may not see themselves as like, this is my career, certainly they want to progress as they go along in their ultra running or trail journey and doing it in a way to where they're picking up the right kind of learnings along the way, whether in training or in racing, should help inform and help them grow into, you know, the best version of themselves in whatever capacity that is, you know, in the prime of their career, so to speak, or when they've just accumulated a few years and they're ready to, you know, perform at their absolute best. So in that document, there's a lot of conversations about, you know, what are the goals within these different like periods of um an athlete's, you know, lifespan. And so the main kind of points within that is, you know, there's there's a period of time when you're learning to train. This is when you're a beginner, you've just started endurance training, or you've just started training for specific types of trail or ultar runs. And so in this learning to train process, the goal isn't to go out and do a bunch of races, the goal is to kind of hone in on understanding how to train well, you know, the the ebbs and flows of your body's fatigue and recovery mechanisms as we go about kind of training for different blocks. And that can take, you know, anywhere from like one to two years. Obviously, for adults that have some sort of endurance background, maybe just not specifically in the trail and ultrarunning realm, you know, that's going to be a lot shorter of a process. But even for an elite athlete that I'm working with, she's come from a high school track background, but it was more sprint-focused, a collegiate, highly competitive basketball background. And then she's jumped into the trails. And so, yes, she has trained many, many years in the past, but the in terms of like understanding her physiology, when to push, when to pull back in an endurance context is relatively new. And so, kind of this past year, we were really focusing on dialing in her understanding what sort of you know things should she be thinking about in training to make sure we're not overdoing things, but also hitting the right intensities on given training days for a threshold block or a steady state block or a VO2 max block. And after kind of that period of time, we're kind of jumping into the next phase, which is um learning to race. And so for her, she she loves the 100K 50 mile distance. Um, she did CCC this past summer. It went fairly well, but you know, there were still some things that we're tinkering with before we feel like she's ready to like give her absolute best, her physiological best performance on a day because she's dialed in her nutrition, she's dialed in her RPE on the day, she knows, you know, how to manage herself on an early downhill, for example, or an early climb. And so that's that next period. And I'll kind of just talk about kind of the three phases. They break it down the Athletics Canada into a couple more phases, but you know, just for this audience to kind of understand where I'm coming from, it's really just three main phases. And the second phase is the learning to compete. And in this phase, our focus is on getting reps in race scenarios. And so it's not like we have a bunch of A races on the calendar. We have a bunch of B and C races where we're just going out and we're practicing the things that we've talked about in long runs. We've done the training and she knows how to measure her body out in training. But now it's time to learn when to go with a move in a race, when to hold back, you know, in different scenarios of altitude, cold weather, hot weather, you know, what should she be adjusting fueling and hydration-wise, and what sort of gear is necessary for those different environmental conditions that she might find herself in. And so, likely my guess is this is gonna be, you know, about a year process of, you know, throwing her into a bunch of different race scenarios, you know, competitive fields where it's not like she's just gonna walk away and kind of do her own thing in the front, but also she she's not way behind a group and you know, not feeling like she's kind of in the thick of it. Because for her, wanting to eventually, you know, take on some sponsorships, although that's not like her main goal, but like that would be a product of her continuing to develop and she is competitive. Um, we want to get her to a place where she's super comfortable at CCC or at another major race in the context of having all of these experiences that she's you know picked up on the in the past year of racing a lot more to then give it her best and maximize the performance, which is kind of that last phase of learning to win. And so that can look like a lot of different things. For an age group, or that's just maybe maximizing their ability and kind of beating the people in their age bracket to go and get a spot at UTMB, for example, at a Kodiak. Or that could be, you know, simply um, you know, being behind cutoffs for years and years and years, but then going to that big race like Leadville after finishing a couple 50K's, 50 miles, 100Ks, knowing that like they have the tools to squeak by and get that 30, 29, 59 finish at Leadville, for example. And so I think within talking about these three different phases, identifying, you know, where you are within kind of your own journey with trailer ultra running will really inform what sort of races or how many races you should be doing. Because I think even for someone, you know, that's doing a Cirque series race, you have the opportunity in the lead up to maybe an A race within that Cirque series to practice some really technical downhills if that's a struggle of yours in a variety of races where you know maybe you're not at your peak fitness, but we're just gonna drill that with a bunch of people you can follow and kind of push your comfortability within a race context to really improve that. So when you get to that A race, there's no question that you can bomb that downhill with wherever you're competing in that race, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01:Totally, dude. That's interesting. There's so many different things I can like riff off on this. First thing I want to get to, because this is something I think I need help with and something I will be working on this year a ton, is just like the amount of races you do in the sense of like these B and C races, just kind of lur kind of learning how to race. Because I like I only raced, granted, I went through a period of injury this year, but I only raced twice. And I felt like when I lined up when did I I what was I at? Uh what was it? Um go Grand Targy. Dude, I had so much race rust, I totally forgot how to do so many different things that like you know, even from like breakfast in the morning for certain things and you know, different hydration solutions, all kinds of stuff. And it's I I feel like it's such an important thing to practice because it's a skill in its own right. Like racing is its own individual skill. Totally.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I have a high school athlete that is a junior in high school, but we've only started working together as she's like wanted to get more competitive and look into the idea of, you know, racing collegiately at a fairly competitive program. We've really drilled the routine, you know, from lunchtime at school to like a pre-race snack to what she's doing in the warm-up. And I want it to be as like easily accessible to her mentally, to where that's not something we're thinking about or worried about. We can focus on all of the other things that might potentially make her nervous. But in terms of the routine, nothing changes. Like if the start time is an hour earlier, then we're moving this entire schedule of her routine back an hour and she's gonna do the exact same thing. And I think that's that's a really cool part of like the learning to race um portion. It's not just like the skills that you're picking up within the race. And of course, like we talk about those things. I think it reflection post-race is a really important kind of part of that sphere of someone's career, is just understanding, you know, the things that maybe they could have done differently, but also, you know, reflecting on the things that went really well and reinforcing those things, but also the routine before and afterwards to make it as an anxiety-free process as possible. Because, you know, racing when you really care about it is gonna have a lot of anxiety already. So you want to eliminate all of the noise as much as you can before and afterwards. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I feel like we could do all right, we'll we'll save that for a different for a different podcast because I feel like we could do an entire one on race day just talking about like appropriation. All right, what else do you want to get to on? I feel like so. We got to race selection, picking races, kind of building out a schedule or having an idea of building out a schedule. What else do you think we can we can dive into for this?
SPEAKER_00:I think for the for the everyman, the non-elite who you know has the job and a family and friends and other time commitments, a really key component of choosing their A race, but also their season schedule is just their time availability to train. Because I think a lot of athletes, when they get done with the season, especially when it goes well, their eyes get super wide, they get super stoked about all of these other potential things that they can do. You know, they feel, you know, on top of the world, their confidence is at an all-time high. And so it's easy to get greedy with either the races that you choose or the amount of races that you choose, even when you might think in the back of your mind, like, I don't know if I have the time to train for that. If there's any thought that, like, oh, maybe I shouldn't, you know, choose this race because it's gonna be really challenging to get in the time to train, then I think you should spend about a week and talk to first, talk to your significant other if you have one. You know, think about the potential busy periods of work and try to minimize, you know, choosing races within that period of time. Because we want to make sure that there's no major roadblocks as far as time availability, especially right before a race, to potentially hinder your availability opportunity to train, but also potentially put a dent in your confidence because you're frustrated with just the whole scenario. It's like, I signed up for this race, I really wanted to do it, and now I don't have the time to train for it. And then it's just a downward spiral spiral of frustration and potentially losing fitness. And so, in terms of kind of a minimum range to train for certain races, if you don't have six hours to train for an ultra at 50K, 50 mile, anything consistently, you know, for four to six weeks in the lead up in the last eight weeks of the race, then I would recommend that you choose shorter races than ultras for that time being. Because I think as a minimum for 50K's and 50 mile races, six hours of training, running, biking, whatever endurance activity you can for that needs to happen. And I think we can we can you know push that up a little bit for the 100K, roughly nine hours. If you can't train nine hours for three to six weeks um in kind of your biggest volume block leading up to the race, then I would say choose a 50K. And same goes for the 100 mile. Between 10 to 12 hours, roughly, would be kind of the minimum amount of time to train um for four to six weeks leading up to that hundred mile. And if you can't get that done, then I'd say save it for another year because it's just gonna lead to anxiousness, frustration, and hopefully not, but you know, not a lot of success on race day. And so I think that's a real conversation that needs to be had while you're super excited, all of the registration, you know, opportunities are open. You can throw your hat in the lotteries. This is the time to really check yourself a little bit and just give yourself uh an opportunity to think about what actually I can do leading up to this race. Because the worst thing is to like throw a race away and and and kind of push your registration away, um, you know, leading up to that race after you put in so much training and maybe you just don't have that time leading up to the race.
SPEAKER_01:That's gonna be an interesting, it's gotta be a difficult conversation for you as a coach to have too. To be obviously, there's a lot of real conversations that go into being a coach. It's yeah, you're part coach, part uh therapist in a lot of ways, you know, when it comes to this stuff. But like, so let's say I come to you and say Addison, I'm signing up for I don't know, let's say I'm gonna run the Gorge 100k, right, in February or March. Race day comes, I don't have the best day, but I didn't put in the work. It's like, how do you that's a difficult conversation to have if you're not putting that time in? Do you do you have that conversation up front with your athletes? Like this is gonna require X amount of time, or is it more so just kind of like I know my relationship with my coach, it's like, okay, for me, it's like whatever it takes, but I'm a different type of person. Yeah, I have different goals. But for your average athlete, how is that with these conversations?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's tough because I want to be your biggest supporter and cheerleader, but I also have to be a little bit of your like biggest enemy, pulling yourself away, pulling you away from like your hopes and dreams if it's not realistic for the time. That's not to say you can't do those things. That's not to say that, you know, next year we can't tackle this goal. But I also want to set you up for success because I think every, you know, time that an athlete comes in and wants to really attack a goal, but you know, it turns out they don't have a lot of time for it, that's a really frustrating conversation to have because, you know, they really want this thing, but it's just not working out. What I always say is, you know, every person has seasons of life where they're, you know, available to train, they're available to really tackle their big goals. But in kind of the grand scheme of things, that may not be this year. And that's not to say we can't have you know success growing in your kind of understanding of, you know, training, we can't get fitter. Um, but maybe you just can't train for 100 this year. And that's okay. We can learn a lot of things doing a 50-mile race. We can dial in your nutrition, you know, in training still. Or, you know, if that race is still gonna go down, then it's just having an honest conversation about, you know, you may not be at your best, but let's figure out ways to ensure that you can go as far as you can. And when things hit the fan, because likely they will if you're under trained for a race, let's make sure that we know all the things that we can do to triage that situation. You know, if you're gonna really start to, you know, feel your quads because we haven't time, haven't had time to get out in the mountain trails or just train in general, then what are the things that we can do? One, obviously we can slow down. Two, we can control our fueling. We can make sure we're as prepared as we can be with, you know, our our race gear and you know, our our foot care scenario if our feet kind of turn bad. Um, and so you're giving yourself every chance to be successful, but sometimes it's just off the table and we just have to, you know, call it a wash and and get back to it and and try to build positives in another way. And and I think, you know, I do have athletes that are kind of in that cycle right now, whether it's, you know, an injury recovery cycle or it's just, you know, they're swamped at work right now. And I think for me as a coach, the biggest thing I can do is show that I'm still there for them, I'm still supporting them, and we're finding creative ways to still make this an enjoyable process amid you know a frustrating time where it's like, I just can't do the things I want to do. Yeah, I can't train for this A race. I can't build out a long-range plan because I'm sitting here injured. And it's like, well, but we can do these things. And so let's try to work on these things so that we have some momentum going forward once you're ready and available to train.
SPEAKER_01:Interesting. I think it's I mean, that's the only thing you can do. It makes the the you know, being a partner in it and just is uh kind of the best thing possible. I want to pivot really quick. You said for 100 miles, 12 hours or somewhere in that range. Dude, I I mean there's dudes now obviously at the top of the sport doing like like crazy volume. I feel like we're back in this period now of crazy volume, but also nutrition and fueling has like really caught up in a lot of ways technology-wise. What do what do you see this as? Is like what what are your thoughts on that? I know this is kind of out of left field, but I've just I don't know. I now that I have you in front of me, I feel like this is an interesting thing to talk about.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, this is this is a great question. I'll I'll tackle the fueling question first. Um, there certainly is uh potential benefits for elite athletes to go, you know, 100, 120 grams of carbs an hour, if, and this is a big if, if they practice it in training, if they've practiced it in B races, and it's something that is not a question of whether their stomach can handle it or not. If you're going from you know doing a 50K to a 100-mile race and you're gonna try to fuel 120 grams of carbs an hour, I think that's a bad strategy. Because in reality, for athletes that aren't elite, you can get away with doing you know 60 grams to 90 grams of carbs an hour without an issue, and and doing more than that has the potential detriment a lot. More than there is potential for benefit because your GI system is going to struggle to process all of that because you're running at a lower intensity to where, you know, at that intensity you're burning more fat than the pro that can run that same race at a higher intensity and burn more carbs. And so it's not a one-to-one for a person who's a middle of a back-to-tacker running a race with, you know, comparing that to an elite athlete who's, you know, running at threshold intensity for a lot of these climbs and can handle, you know, that many carbs. And so I think, you know, with the feed is awesome, but something that I get a little bit worried about when I see their marketing is they don't talk about the fact that a lot of, you know, middle of the packers don't need that many carbs because obviously, you know, they want them to buy a few more products and they want them to really go out there and and try as many carbs as they can. But that's not necessarily going to be a net benefit for those people. And I think putting it into context of, you know, energy systems are different for elite athletes and for middle-the-pack athletes at the same exact race. Um, I think is really important to just give them that context and know that they don't have to do the exact same thing that the pros are doing.
SPEAKER_01:I love that. Dude, and that's the thing, it's such a catchy thing now to uh it's become so like in the zeitgeist to do 100, 120 grams per you know, per hour of carbohydrates. Yeah, I don't know. I think it's a recipe for disaster. Uh one more thing is on the volume. I people doing this crazy volume. Uh like like I said, we're at that point now where it seems like this is kind of circled back in the sport again. It's interesting, man, even on the short trail side. Like I talk to people that run, like Andy Wacker puts up stupid numbers sometimes, but then I'll see Alexa Aragon. Her and I were on the podcast talking, I think she runs like 30 miles a week. Um and I'm like, and but also bikes and stuff like that. A lot of dichotomy there. What do you think of from a volume perspective?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think it really depends on the types of races that these athletes are doing and their training history because I think you know, someone like Katie Scheid can handle a ton, a ton of volume. One, because they're a professional athlete and they can sleep, you know, 10 to 12 hours a night. You know, they have a a sports dietitian, um, they have, you know, Jason Coop working with them and making sure they're not overdoing things. They're they're they're checking their heart rate variability on a regular basis to make sure that they're on the right side of like what is sustainable and what isn't sustainable. Um, and they're doing 100 mile races. And so all of those things lead to Katie Scheid doing a ton of volume. That's not to say that someone, you know, that's doing 100 miles needs to do, you know, average 18 to 24 hours a week. You can get away with doing 13, 14, 15, especially when you're a younger athlete and you don't have that amount of volume behind you. Because I think regardless of how good that person is, an important thing as a coach is to understand the context of which their training history leads into what you should be prescribing. Because we don't want to make any massive jumps in volume if that's gonna lead to injury or burnout. Because at the end of the day, you know, at least for me as a coach, I would rather see constant progression, not only in a training, you know, space for total volume, but also constant progression from a results perspective rather than a swing for the fences and it's a 50-50 whether they totally crush a race or they get injured, if that makes sense. And kind of on the flip side, for a lot of the short trail runners, um, there's a lot of papers that come out that, you know, support the fact that, you know, having a lot of zone two training is definitely still gonna benefit someone who races for, you know, an hour to two hours, for example. Um, but certainly it needs to come in the context of having a variety of specificity mixed in, and that often means a lot more intensity. And when you come into conflict is where you have too much intensity while you're also doing too much volume. And so I think it's really the coach's job to figure out, you know, when are we really ramping up the intensity? And then, you know, subsequently also during that time reducing the total volume so that we're keeping it a sustainable process. And so I do think, you know, in those low intensity periods, we can really ramp up the volume, and you can have people training, you know, 15, 17, 18 hours a week, even though they're doing, you know, short trail type, you know, races. But that needs to be, you know, within the general structure, knowing that this race is going to be run at a very high intensity, high heart rate, um, high energy costs, and that also needs to be a major part of the plan. Interesting.
SPEAKER_01:I I've got one more question kind of out of left field. This is a Katie Scheid question. I just find it so interesting. Is she just an outlier then? Because you see a lot of people that are hundred miles, like very specific athletes, and then she comes down and does series and all and gets on the program and has an insane race. Is that just pulling? I mean, I from what I understand from training as well, no like we're doing 90% most of the same stuff with that 10% that's a little bit different. Yeah, is that just pulling those levers in that training block for her to get I don't know, I mean, you know Coop better than I do, but like uh pulling some of those levers in that training block to get her specifically fit for something like that. Like, how like what is she doing for something like that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so one of the cool things about being, you know, a neerobic monster, so to speak, is that your ability to recover is just through the roof if you're doing it right and not overtraining. And so, you know, transitioning over to doing VO2max work, you should have a higher capacity to recover from you know a bunch of sessions in a row compared to someone who, you know, may not have as much volume in their system over the period of years that they've trained. I do know that, you know, Katie does do schemo races, she still does VO2 max work, and also this might sound like a CTS fanboy answer, but she is also like very clearly at the tip of the spear performance-wise, you know, in physiology-wise. And so, yes, like her focus is on 100k, 100 mile races, but she's that good to where it really doesn't matter. Like for Jim, for example, Jim's another good buddy, it doesn't matter, he's just that much better than everyone right now. Um, and so I think that's a lot of it. Uh, she was also doing a lot of VO2 Max work leading up to that race. Um, you know, it wasn't necessarily an A race, but it was also like a focus of training. Um, and so I think all of those things lead to that performance. Whereas, you know, if she was, you know, one of the top ladies in the sport and not the top lady in the sport, her and Courtney, um, then I would say that, you know, it's not gonna look that flashy when she comes back down to to 50k distance. But I do think, you know, because she does high volume and she's been doing it really well um for years, that lends itself to then transitioning and getting some turnover and um really hitting on that VO2 max well and recovering quickly from it.
SPEAKER_01:So interesting. Yeah, dude, what what a performance. I mean, I know we're totally a bunch of months late on that, but yeah. Um, all right, I want to shift gears one more time. I want to get to so what about picking uh there's a lot of flashy stuff out there. I see um, and some stuff really works. Like for me, I met with you, I did a sweat test at CTS, and it changed a lot for me as far as my hydration went. Um, I see a lot of like the sweat monitors people use. I see a lot, there's a lot of flashy stuff on the market right now. What would you recommend? Do you recommend for athletes to get sweat tests and stuff like that, especially as they kind of shift periods in their season uh or to even coming into the off-season so they can appropriately dial in their nutrition and hydration?
SPEAKER_00:I do think that's a legitimate tool. There's a there's a lot of different things that you can do in the off-season when you know training's not that you know high volume-wise, and and you have the kind of ability to take a step back and look at things from a broader lens. Um, the nice thing about sweat testing is it gives you a number that doesn't change. It's like a one-time test. You don't need to go in and do it again. And you're coupling, so for the people that don't know what we're talking about, this is a precision hydration sodium sweat test, which what it tests, there you go, showing the precision bottle. Not sponsored, should be. Yeah. Um, it's a test that that shows how salty your sweat is. And so that is an important metric for your hydration plan going into any race, but specifically, you know, for ultras or for the athlete like James, who is an especially high sweater and is a fairly salty sweater. And so it it also lends itself to people that are doing shorter races like the Cirque series as well. Um, but that test should also be coupled with just going out and and getting a sweat rate test, which you can do at home. It's just weighing yourself before and after you go for a run. I recommend an hour just because it's easy for the math. And so you have an idea of you know how salty your sweat is per liter of sweat loss, and then you're gonna figure out how many liters you sweat to get a general idea of, okay, you know, for X amount of hours racing, this is what my strategy is, not only from the sodium perspective, how much sodium I should be taking in per hour, depending on the environmental conditions you find yourself in, but as well as how much should I be drinking in those environmental conditions, because we want to make sure that, you know, you're not losing too much body weight and you're going into a dehydration, dehydrated state, you know, over the course of that race. And the nice thing is, is you'd only have to do that precision sweat test once, and then it's just dialing in and doing a couple of those sweat rate tests over the course of a couple different environmental conditions, you know, when it's really cold out, maybe 40 degrees at the start of Leadville, for example, all the way to going to Twin Lakes, and maybe it's 75 and sunny at 10,000 feet, and you're gonna your sweat rate's gonna be drastically different, maybe you know, two or three fold difference compared to those different times of the day. And that'll then help inform then what do you do on the salt front when you're sweating a bunch or when you're sweating just a little bit. Interesting.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, all right. Yeah, I I mean I highly recommend it. I think it's a great aspect if you're looking. I mean, I don't know, and this was kind of going into the topic of like, all right, now off-season stuff and quote unquote off-season stuff, you can take more swings and try and figure more stuff out. Um, like, I don't know, I've always heard like don't mess with your diet too much when you're you know competing and stuff like that. This is a time to kind of do that. Um same with the hydration, kind of getting that dialed in and figuring out. So there's all kinds of good stuff there.
SPEAKER_00:Totally, totally. Um the one thing I would say, kind of in addition to all of the things we've talked about, is you know, if you don't get into a lottery, that's not to say that you know you can't find an A race that is awesome. There are so many races on Ultra Sign Up that I would highly recommend you you check out. There's tons of YouTube clips for a variety of races. And so for you know, this period of time when we're going into the lottery season, I know it's kind of this exciting time, but it can also can be a very frustrating time if you've entered Western States for the 10th time, for example, and you're still you have a billion tickets and you still can't get in. There are so many cool races out there, and there's there's so many kind people on on Instagram or probably in your running community that have tried a variety of races. And so I think, you know, no matter what race you set yourself up to do, that A race, like we've talked about, if it doesn't come through and for whatever reason, you know, you find that that's just a busy time in life, or you just can't get into it because it's you know really hard to get into, pivoting and finding another race within four weeks of that race is is gonna be very likely. And there's a variety of awesome race companies that'll take care of you out there. And so I I think, you know, a word of uh of caution for everyone that just wants to be really frustrated in December and January, that there's a lot of other opportunities out there and pivoting isn't too hard to do. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Is that the time you guys start to see more like busyness uh like around kind of that time frame when people get into races and then they oh shit, I need a coach? Like, is that is that when you guys start to like people start to buckle down kind of thing?
SPEAKER_00:That is exactly our busy busy season, yes. Um we tell everyone, you know, all of our coaches to open up their availability, get ready to take on some athletes. And I think for a lot of them, if they have a full athlete roster, um, it's it's a tough decision because it's like they know that this come around this time, there's a lot of people that are going to be taking breaks from training. Um, and so it's there's ebbs and flows in terms of you know, the the coach's athlete roster, and and people typically tend to take on a lot more athletes, you know, come January, just because that's that time where a lot of people just got into the lottery and, like you said, are panicking a little bit because now it's real. You know, they put in a bunch of tickets over and over and over. It's like, oh my gosh, now I actually got in and let's do this right. So definitely. If you're interested in coaching, feel free to reach out and we're happy to help you out here at CTS. Sweet.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we'll definitely, I mean, it'll be in the plug for whoever wants to get in contact. We'll we'll put you in the as the show notes. Uh, one last thing. I know you just got back from um uh Havelina. How was that?
SPEAKER_00:Havelina was awesome, man. So this was my third time going out. We've crewed specifically our CTS athletes four years now. And I would say this was the most rewarding and awesome experience for me as a coach and just someone who helps organize the crewing, just because it was so cool to see so many people kind of recognize that A goal, like we talked about. This is, you know, Javelina is one of the end of season races, and and it's a great opportunity to put a bookend on, you know, a big season that has been planned since January. And um we were you know thrilled to have 17 of our 21 athletes finish, which is 81% and and and definitely a lot higher than the average at Javelina. We had, you know, being a part of Will Murray's crew was was pretty awesome, just how calm, cool, and collected he executed that race. Um, but really for me, it's like staying up at at midnight and and crewing the middle of the Packers is the most rewarding because you know, you really see you know a lot of people just gutting it out and and and putting their you know dreams and goals, you know, to work out there and having the opportunity to fix some feed or hand an extra bottle to someone, it just means the world to them. And you know, seeing their crews, you know, just be at ease because there's a couple other people to lend a hand, I think is really special. And if you haven't been out to Javelina, it's such a cool race for a variety of reasons. One being that it's you know, it's a party in the desert, but for you know, uh an athlete who's relatively new to ultra running, it's a great place to get your crew involved for the first time because it's the easiest crew setup. You're just hanging out at Javelina headquarters the whole time, likely in the tent, you know, just hanging out, maybe dancing a little bit, dressing up in a costume and and watching your athletes come through every couple hours. So highly recommend. And it was a definitely a great time for for us CTS coaches and athletes.
SPEAKER_01:Did you did you dress up? Did you did you wear a costume?
SPEAKER_00:I I was a little bit lame this year. I had a costume last year.
SPEAKER_01:These are the questions the audience wants to know, dude.
SPEAKER_00:Dude, I brought a costume and I was stoked about it, but I like I was go, go, go the entire day. I didn't even like have a chance to think about putting on my costume until it was 2 a.m. And it's like, well, dang, now no one's gonna see my costume, anyways.
SPEAKER_01:That's awesome. Well, yeah, Addison, dude, thank you so much for coming on. I think we we covered a lot of really good stuff. Um, yeah, I can't wait to start pro like game planning for the next one. I feel like there's a lot of good coaching conversations that we can have, uh, especially for athletes um, you know, interested in the sporting, wanting to learn more. And and yeah, I think it's there's all kinds of good stuff there. So appreciate you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, definitely, man. I had a great time and looking forward to the next ones. Thanks, dude.
SPEAKER_01:What'd you guys think? Oh man, I feel like we we got a lot of good stuff in there, lots of nuggets of wisdom from Addison and stoked to continue to do more of these. Uh, like I said, I'm gonna put out uh some feelers to the audience. And if you guys happen to have any things you want to learn about uh on the coaching end or any subtopics that you find really interesting that you want us to talk about in a future episode, please reach out. Uh send me a DM on Instagram or Addison and uh or a message in any way. Like I said, there's a bunch of different ways to reach out to us. But yeah, reach out, let us know what you guys are thinking and what you want to hear about, and uh, we'll be sure to bring those topics up on a future episode as we continue to kind of figure out this mini-series uh that we're gonna be working on. So, guys, the best way you could support Addison two different ways first is give him a follow on Instagram. You can find him at Addison underscore Smith16. It's gonna be linked in the show notes. On top of that, if you're interested in a coach right now or looking for coaching, Addison is a coach at Carmichael Training Systems in Colorado Springs. That's right, CTS. On his Instagram bio, you can find him at TrainRight Coaches Addison Smith. Uh, there's gonna be a link to follow for um if you guys think he would be a good fit for you. There's a link to follow to uh talk to him and uh do some initial uh yeah, some some initial feeling out to uh see if that would be a good fit. So yeah, reach out to Addison for coaching and all good stuff there. Um it's also gonna be linked in the show notes. So if uh that's a good spot, you guys can figure it out too. Um yeah, the best way you could support the podcast is if you enjoyed this episode and others, give us a five-star rating and review on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you consume your pods. Um video episodes now on Spotify and YouTube, including this one. And very last but not least, uh you could support us also through our brand partner, Ultimate Direction. If you head on over to ultimatedirection.com, type in code SteepstuffPod, one word Steepstuff Pod, it's gonna get you 25% off your cart. So, guys, thanks so much for tuning in. All good stuff. I've got a great episode that I'm so excited to do uh with Abigail Lock that's gonna be coming out tomorrow. So lots of good stuff down the pipeline and uh much appreciate it, but I'm gonna go back to the same way.
