Developing Durability for Ultrarunners with Nicolas Berger, PhD #214

View all show notes and timestamps on the KoopCast website.

Episode overview:

Dr. Nicolas Berger is a Senior Lecturer in Sport & Exercise at Teeside University’s Centre for Rehabilitation. In this episode, we discuss the emerging topic of durability in endurance sports and how it applies to ultrarunning.

Topics discussed:
 
1- Why examining physiological variables matter and why determining what variables matter more is important for training design
2- How physiological testing is limiting
3- The concept of durability
4- What affects durability and how to improve it
5- How progression runs useful in some contexts and not in others

Episode highlights:

(17:26) Muscular fatigue: Gui Millet’s 2011 presentation, ultramarathon runners are more muscular than marathon runners, additional muscle mass may combat fatigue, strength demands of uphill and downhill running, sacrificing running economy for strength and durability

(24:00) Strength gains from training: trail runners get strength gains naturally, there is a higher bar for strength training trail runners, strength for running economy in road runners

(44:59) DIY-ing your own durability test: consistency of testing, track what you eat and how you feel, measure what you can, keep conditions similar, deciding what training to work on

Additional resources:

Nic’s profiles-
TU Research Profile
Google Scholar Profile
ResearchGate
Twitter
Earlier podcast on Durability with Ed Maunder
Fatigue and Ultra-Endurance Performance by Guillaume Millet

SUBSCRIBE to Research Essentials for Ultrarunning
Buy Training Essentials for Ultrarunning on Amazon or Audible
Information on coaching-
www.trainright.com
Koop’s Social Media
Twitter/Instagram- @jasonkoop

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Trail and Ultra Runners. What is going on? Welcome to another episode of the Coupecast. As always, I am your humble host, coach Jason Koop, and this episode of the podcast is about a topic that I feel is about to have its moment in the spotlight across all of endurance sports and, in particular, the sport of trail and ultra running. The podcast today is all about physiological durability and what you can do to affect it. You longtime listeners of the podcast remember, way back at episode 160 with Ed Marinder, we discussed this topic with the context of the paper that he recently wrote about it, and so to peel back the curtain a little bit further on this topic, welcome back to the podcast, professor Nick Berger, out of TSI University. We discuss a myriad of topics related to physiological durability, starting with what physiological variables matter and why. Determining what variables matter more is important for training design, because the physiological variables that we typically measure were doing so in a fresh state, and this concept of durability that we're discussing today describes the deterioration of those physiological variables after a fatiguing event, from the beginning of an event to the end of event, or from a fresh state to a fatigue state. We discuss how physiological testing is limiting and what affects durability and how to actually improve it, including this classic intervention of progression runs, and where they might be useful and where they might not be so useful, in what context to actually use those in. And as a bonus for you listeners, if you stick around to the outro of this podcast, I will summarize some of the key takeaways and actionable interventions that you can use in your training, starting tomorrow. Alright, folks, with that as a backdrop, I am getting right out of the way.

Speaker 1: 2:13

Here is my conversation with Professor Nick Berger, all about this concept of durability. I feel like we should release at least some snippets of what we were just talking about earlier before we actually got on the air, because that might actually be more entertaining and fun for people. Just to give people a little bit of background about what this banter is about, nick and I, before we, before I hit the record button, we're talking about the inevitability of continuous lactate monitors, wearable continuous lactate monitors that are probably going to hit the marketplace in 2024. And since both he and I have a lot of experience doing metabolic testing and graded exercise testing and lactate testing on athletes, we were just bantering about the ramifications of this in the real world. But we're going to table that for a second. We are going to talk about testing globally, and mainly in this concept, this or with context of this new concept that is starting to float around the endurance space called durability.

Speaker 1: 3:12

And the reason I kind of want to start with testing and, nick, have you your perspective, kind of come in on this is that for decades, and really ever since I've been a coach and ever since we started to be able to test athletes, we've used those tests to drive training interventions. And the way that, the way that the storyline has gone is we've said these great athletes have these types of characteristics, they have a high VO2 max, they have great running economy, they have, you know, x, y and Z things that we can actually test. Let's create training interventions and see if those effect, see if those training interventions affect those parameters. So that's the run of show. We know that these things, these characteristics, are correlated with performance in whatever way.

Speaker 1: 4:01

Let's figure out if the training intervention side, or nutrition intervention or whatever, can affect those parameters and then we'll design training based off of that kind of, based off that dialogue and the grand fallacy in all this that we're going to start about talking that we're going to start talking about is the lab is ultimately not like the field, where it's a really hyper controlled environment and we have to be careful about what we initially extrapolate from that. And I want to get your perspective on that, since you have more. You have a lot more experience on this, more in the academic arena, where you have to control things very tightly, and I was wondering if, like on with that particular dialogue, that run of show that I just described, how does that like set the backdrop for you, as somebody who's both in the lab and also working with athletes, in terms of how we should actually be interpreting some of the metabolic testing studies that we're actually looking at?

Speaker 2: 4:52

And I think it's important to understand there's a difference between being allowed and doing scientific testing and doing scientific studies where you always want the person to be in the best possible rested state to assess, like all the things that you mentioned.

Speaker 2: 5:08

So if you want someone to reach their VO to max or you want someone to have a true like that threshold and like a running economy, they can't come in for tea because you know it might affect it. But when we talk about durability and training, obviously that does happen all the time. So the thing with durability that we're talking about is obviously that there was numbers that we can give athletes. They are accurate for when they're rested, but as soon as there's a bit of fatigue in whatever that might come from, those numbers are probably not 100% accurate anymore. So what we need to try and find is a way to give them an idea of how those numbers could change. You know is a good or a bad thing, like how much are they changing, and then also, when they are doing the training or the racing, how to improve it. And I think the main thing in this area is to minimize any kind of decrements or fatigue, because that's going to cause a change in those parameters.

Speaker 1: 6:10

And we have a pretty decent blueprint for this from the sport of cycling and it's mainly because the onboard power meters are so powerful at giving us data with regards to what an athlete's power output heart rate speed actually is throughout the course of longer types of events or training activities.

Speaker 1: 6:32

And I know several coaches and practitioners who actually do this, who look at this concept of durability through the lens of what their power ranges or their power capacity at any particular time is, through that lens of the duration of the activity, and they might not set up the ranges differently, like we're going to do intervals at the beginning, and these are your power ranges, and we're going to do intervals at the end, and here are your power ranges. They might not get that detailed, but they at least understand that if they're asking an athlete to do 10 minutes of an all out effort, just to give an example, and they're evaluating that workout, those numbers are probably going to be different at the beginning and at the end and they can apply a factor between those two and see if that has actually improved. We've seen that start to evolve in the cycling sphere certainly.

Speaker 2: 7:21

Yeah, I mean it's like in cycling. If you look at durability research, the majority is on cycling because, as you said, it's actually quite easy, or easier than running, because you have the metric of power and obviously you have heart rate and how this change over time. And yes, what you would expect a drop off in power in someone over a race or some training. And yeah, you can factor that in. Obviously good athletes in theory should have less drop off. But I'm pretty sure if you look at someone that's doing a very long ride, actually being able to maintain a given power exactly as it's prescribed is very rare and you will kind of find some drop off.

Speaker 2: 8:05

And yes, I think when it comes to programming training, the question is exactly when do you put in those hard bits? So, do you put them at the beginning, when you're fresh and you can actually achieve those? If you want to put them in at the end, is there actually a realistic thing? Or do you need to look at the previous work that the person's done and say like, okay, actually this needs to be kind of pushed down a little bit?

Speaker 1: 8:30

Yeah, and, once again, running coaches have actually made this leap as well. I don't think it's been as conscientious of a one and the way that they have made this leap is through a running workout that a lot of people will be familiar with, and that's a progression run, where you're running the hardest at the end of a run when, in theory, you have the most kind of fatigue on your legs. And the origin story of this I'm going to, which I'm going to completely trivialize. So if somebody wants to come in on the podcast or somebody wants to come in on the comments somewhere and give me a longer education on this, by all means feel free to, but in the interest of time I'm going to, I'm going to simplify it. The origin story of that is looking at how elite level marathoning actually played out 10 people are in a pack at the half marathon point, five people are in the same pack at the 30 kilometer point, three people are together at the 40 kilometer point and at the end, one person wins. And so creating a workout, aka a progression run, that models the specificity and I'm emphasizing that word intentionally, and I'll come back to why I'm emphasizing that word intentionally in a second that emphasizes the specificity of that particular race attribute makes all the sense in the world for an elite athlete, because that's the way the race actually plays out.

Speaker 1: 9:50

And whenever we've debated this kind of this progression, run and things like that within our coaching group, it's kind of come down to a very simple compare and contrast. Do you want to build capacity, meaning, do you want to build a workout that emphasizes the total amount of work or the intensity that the athlete can achieve, or whatever or do you want to hone in I was going to say build specificity, but it doesn't make sense. Do you want to hone in on some sort of specific aspect of the race? Because certainly, in the way that you would design both of those I want to do the intervals at the beginning versus the intervals at the end. That trade off exists. The intervals at the beginning, you think, have a higher quality workout. The intervals at the end might be more specific, based on the actual context. So that's the way I've always looked at it from a coaching standpoint, but I don't know what your thoughts are, either on that practical piece or when we start to actually look at that from a lab setting or from a research setting.

Speaker 2: 10:42

I mean, it's actually really common sense and you'd be surprised how many don't have the specificity. So so many races start at 9am on a Saturday morning and then people train during the week between four and six in the evening and then they, you know, rock up on race day and they are. I don't feel great. It's like, well, you haven't been training specifically for this, but, as you said, you know, if you know you're going to do a race that is going to have a demand, you need to specifically train for that. Otherwise you don't know what it was going to feel like and how you're going to perform. So yeah, like I said, there's two things. One is okay, you want to build something, you want to build endurance, increase your threshold, whatever it might be, but there you need to be specific. And one really nice example is you know, you get really good runners on a bike. They perform well, but they don't reach the true view of tracks, because it is not specific to them and vice versa.

Speaker 2: 11:38

You know, you think obviously they're cardiovascularly strong, but the legs aren't as strong as cyclists. And the same you know when it comes to running. If you're going to be running a flat 10k at three in the afternoon, then obviously that's something that you should train for. But if you know your race is going to be hilly or it's going to be dark or whatever it might be, or you know it's going to go staccato, it's going to be faster and slower, you're going to. You know all those things you have to train your body to be able to do that. You know. Otherwise, yeah, you're going to find out pretty quickly that you're not performing to your best.

Speaker 1: 12:16

So let's like make the leap of faith and it's a leap of faith because we really haven't tested for this in an ultramarathon setting. But I think it's a reasonable assumption. And if we're wrong on this reasonable assumption I'll be the first person to eat crow. But I think it's a reasonable assumption that if we tested athletes for durability, however we want to construct that test, the ones that were better, that exhibited better durability, would generally perform better in an ultramarathon. I would say it's an important one. It might be as important as some of the other things that we actually can measure, if not, if not more important. Let's go ahead and make that assumption. We're going to play Kings of the world for just a second and make the assumption that actually is important. First off, what would affect an athlete's durability, Meaning what would affect this classic physiological degradation from the beginning of the workout to the end. And the reason I want to bring up that first is because then we could probably go through some sort of logical sequence of interventions that we can use to mitigate that decline.

Speaker 2: 13:14

Yeah, I mean. So we talked about durability. Obviously, we are saying that the numbers that we had at the beginning, when you're fresh, aren't true as you fatigue, as you go on, and I think we need to understand the fatigue mechanisms in the body by causing those changes and those could be things like changing the fuel that you're using. You're having to use more oxygen or energy for a given task.

Speaker 2: 13:42

You know, you're probably going to struggle to run the same pace. If you want to run the same pace, it's going to cough more energy From that. You need to have the person's characteristics, so you need to know the VO2 max and the running economy and the lactate threshold. You get them to do something and then we look at how much they've degraded. If they are very durable, then there is a very small amount of degradation. If they're less durable, then we're going to find a bigger one. Ie what that means is that the lactate threshold would suddenly be at a lower pace or for a given speed you are consuming more oxygen or after consuming more energy, which either means you're going to fatigue sooner or you're going to have to run slower.

Speaker 1: 14:28

And what kind of underpins that, though? I mean, we've been mysteriously searching for the sources of fatigue for 100 years now. Right, we first thought it was a draining of certain metabolites or an accumulation of other metabolites. Is it related to our perception of how fatigued we are? Is there an integrated you know we could bring Sam Mocorra I've been trying to plug him to come on the podcast for years and he keeps touching me Is it some sort of integration of how we perceive ourselves to be fatiguing? I want to not to pin you down too much, because I know it's a hard question to answer, but can we actually draw on any things in particular that might cause this and I'm not talking about Meiji, mainly in a marathon situation, but let's extend the duration of the exercise out to four or five hours. Are some of those things that? Are there some things that start to play a bigger role? I guess is what I'm saying as opposed to some of the shorter endurance events, which have been studied morecertainly more often.

Speaker 2: 15:30

There's a few things, so they also come in from. You know, when I used to do work on VO2 kinetics, we looked at the slow component which basically for the same exercise task, the VO2 just drifts up until you hit the ceiling. And when you're doing that it's the question why is the body changing as you fatigue? And one of the things obviously is, you know, fatiguing of muscle fibres. So your muscle fibres are unable to produce the same force they are, so you're having to recruit others to do the work. And I think what a lot of people don't understand or know is that those muscle fibres that aren't doing any work anymore are still consuming oxygen and energy to try and recover from that. So you basically have that on top of it and obviously if you are exercising, those aren't recovering. So you've basically got a sandwich of more energy demand on top of it.

Speaker 2: 16:23

There's other things as well, you know, like your breathing muscles. You know your muscles that you need for breathing. They actually start using quite a lot more oxygen as well. And then you know, once you've run out of substrates and fuels, even if you're feeding yourself, your body relies more on, you know, like fat, and we know that palliative oxygen actually are getting less energy per liter. So all those things kind of come in. And then you know the classical things of like dehydration, where you know you basically just have less blood in your system. So when we look at the increase in heart rate right, which is like the most easy and obvious one to see, that is very often related to dehydration. So you know, for the same exercise task it might be 10 or 15 beats higher. It's not totally just dehydration, but obviously that plays quite a role.

Speaker 1: 17:12

You know. So this podcast is going to say devolve, but that would be doing you disservice to describe it like that. This podcast, the way this podcast is going to transpire, is exactly how I thought it was going to do, because we're going to find three or four things, and then each one of them could be their own two hour long type of or maybe even a PhD level type of discussion. So I'm going to pick on the first one first, which is you mentioned the muscular part of things.

Speaker 1: 17:37

There's been this theory that I'm sure you're aware of, that a sports scientist who was kind of one of the OGs of studying ultramarathon runners, guy Mie, initially came up with and I remember running into this philosophy in 2011 from a really obscure presentation that he gave, and for those of you that want to see it, I will leave a YouTube link in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 17:59

It is not very exciting, but if you really want to, if you really want to view and listen to it, I think I definitely think it's worth it, and one of the plausible mechanisms that he was giving in terms of why ultramarathon is different than marathon is this muscular aspect, and he pointed at the very simple fact that elite ultramarathon runners are more muscular than elite marathon runners.

Speaker 1: 18:29

And that was kind of a no-brainer, you know, nixon, like he said yeah, like absolutely, and what he was postulating was that it was a specific demand of the event, that, because of all of the muscular damage and because you're having to use all of your you know you're having to go through this great amount of muscular fatigue because of the duration of the event, having a little bit more muscle mass as compared to your road running counterpart actually becomes an advantage, and in the road running world that would kind of be viewed as a disadvantage, because we know running economy is so important in the road running world and carrying around greater muscle masses you typically viewed as a disadvantage within that specific regard. So I wanted to kind of get your thoughts, at least initially, on that is does that create what you're describing from a muscular standpoint? Does that actually create a compelling case to say, yes, ultra runners should be carrying a little bit more muscle mass around, or is it something kind of completely different that we don't know about?

Speaker 2: 19:35

No, definitely I agree. So I'm also taking into account that most ultra marathon are up and down and not flat. So you know you need the strength and actually I think one of the reasons that some of the better runners are more durable is because they are a little bit more muscle mass and they are stronger and they're actually able to deal with the impact and have less muscle damage as a result, you know, at the cost of slightly decreased running economy. Obviously my way a little bit more, but all those things I don't think are as important.

Speaker 2: 20:12

And when you look at quite a few of the studies that are kind of looking at durability, it does seem to be a correlation between strength, like strength in the legs, in addition to all the other factors that we talk about, and actually being able to perform at a high level continuously, kind of indicating that you know having more muscle mass that's less fatiguing definitely plays a part.

Speaker 2: 20:38

And then also maybe you know going to talk about things like using poles. You know you have some more muscle than the upper body mass, but what you are doing when you're using those, again, you're sparing some of the muscles in your legs either going to get less tired, so when you need them later on, in theory they should be there, and I know that Gio is obviously quite hot on that. He's written quite a lot about the use of poles versus non-poles. But yeah, and I think, even just visually, if you look at the lineup of marathon versus the lineup of an ultra marathon, just looking at the legs, you look like Zach Miller's legs. You know they are massive. You know you wouldn't think that he could run as far as fast with legs like that.

Speaker 1: 21:21

Shout out to Zach, one of my homeboys here in Colorado Springs. I love him. He's one of my favorite humans, you know. So what people are naturally going to evolve to from that is is okay, should I strength train? And we're going to bring it back to a paper. You and I had discussed this offline, so I think it's fair game here.

Speaker 1: 21:36

One of my colleagues actually wrote Fred Sabatoor Pasteur, where he compared elite French road runners and elite French trail runners, and there were several really interesting findings in that paper, but the one that I think is relevant to this discussion point is that the elite French trail runners had better strength characteristics despite not doing strength training, when the road runners were actually doing strength training.

Speaker 1: 22:04

So it's this really interesting thing it's, and so, first off, one of the takeaways that you can absolutely pull from this, I think, is that, just as a component of training up and down, you can exhibit strength properties, and even better so than people who are actually doing a strength training program.

Speaker 1: 22:22

We criticize the strength training programs and things like that. We don't know the details behind it, but I think that's kind of a remarkable contrast. But I think the other thing relative to this and what you were just discussing is that it does highlight that it is a specific demand of a trail running race as compared to a road running race and one that might have quote unquote durable properties to it. And speaking of Guy, this is something that he's actually studied ad nauseam as well, where they would do max strength tests and some capacity at the beginning of a race and then do those same max strength types of tests at the end of a race and see how they deteriorated over the course of a race. But, needless to say, there's something there with this strength component, because it keeps coming up time and time again that it is a specific requirement of trail that is probably way more important than it is compared to road running.

Speaker 2: 23:14

I think what's important to maybe point out is that a lot of the people that have good strength have probably got a background in other sports as well, like skiing, skimo, you know, might be cycling or just hiking per se, where they do a lot of work. That's making them stronger, and people that do road running, that's literally it. They don't do that. So just kind of reading up a little bit for the podcast. I just had a little look at Kili and John. He's decent. He's one of the few races doesn't do any strength training, but obviously what he does gives him very strong legs. He's constantly doing something. He is not running on the flat, he's going up and down all the time and I think that's the characteristic of again, when you look at some of the papers where they try and find correlations of good trail runners is that the amount of time that they spend running uphill is far away start of running on the flat.

Speaker 1: 24:16

Yeah, I mean from a training perspective, from a coaching perspective. What I really take away from those things is that if I'm going to introduce a strength training regimen for an athlete specifically to improve their trail running performance, the bar on that strength training program is really high because they're already getting so much natural quote, unquote strength from the training part of it, and we just went through several examples of why that is the case. That is not as much of the case with all due respect to the road runners out there. That is not as much of the case as it is in a road running perspective where you can do some very MVP type of stuff. Our strength training coaches this podcast came out it was just kind of come out like in literally 20 minutes.

Speaker 1: 25:01

That I recorded a couple of weeks ago with our run training coaches and we were lamenting about this particular topic that if you just Google strength training program, strength training program for runner, you will find some of the most generic, non-individualized things out there, as you probably should, because it's a search algorithm that's meant for everybody, not specifically for you. But my point with that is is that the strength training bar for a road runner is just a whole lot lower and you can get those strength gains a whole lot quicker. And we shouldn't necessarily be doing the same thing from a trail running perspective as if you wanted. If you want to do it, you better really do it right, because you're already getting a whole lot of it, naturally.

Speaker 2: 25:40

Yeah, I mean I think in road running there's a really good evidence Strength training improves running economy, you know it really improves performance. But on the flip side I always am very hesitant to give people like heavy training because if you're not used to it, the amount of like muscle damage and soreness that people get and amount of time it takes for them to actually work up to a level where it's beneficial takes quite a while.

Speaker 1: 26:06

That's always the yin and yang.

Speaker 2: 26:07

I know it, but it's you know. So I agree, I think a more natural approach is better, but I think it's worth pointing out when I talk about how can runners work in their durability if they don't have the time or the capacity or don't live somewhere where they can do it. I think it's got its place and it could improve the durability of an ultra runner, but I agree that using real trails up and down would probably be better.

Speaker 1: 26:35

Yeah, I mean, we talk a lot about separating your endurance work and your strength work. So your endurance work should be done out on the trails and your strength work should be done in the weight room. I think that there's a better use case for strength training from a trail running perspective if you actually take that separation, as opposed to in a road running situation, where the bar is a whole lot lower just because you almost kind of have to right. You have to put so much emphasis on it in order to make a dent on it. And the counterpoint to that which I always point out in these types of discussions is that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Whenever you are introducing stress in one area, it is going to come at the compromise of stress in another area.

Speaker 1: 27:23

And going back to my original point, one of the reasons that we use all of this physiological testing in order to drive training interventions is because we're applying this kind of rack and stack model across. This attribute is more important than that attribute, which is more important than this attribute, and therefore, when we come up with a mix of training activities that an athlete is gonna do over the entirety of the year, we're favoring more of the things that matter more and less of the things that are mattering less. I mean, that's just smart, that's just smart programming at that point. Now that's the reason that we're kind of searching for answers, is it's much harder to actually do than it is to theorize. But I always throw that caveat in there when we're talking about all of these different types of interventions, is that at some point we have to decide what things are the most important and what things kind of fall down that cascading list.

Speaker 2: 28:17

If you were to ask me, I'd say right, I've got a runner and they want to improve the durability. Should they be doing more up and down trail running or should they be doing more volume, flat running and strength training? I'd always pick the specificity Because when you're running up and down, the amount of damage you're going to get from that and they're obviously gonna repair and get used to it. I don't think any kind of strength training that you do will have the same benefits as that, just because the repetitive nature, which sometimes can be very long. You can't really replicate that in a strength training environment. And then as a result of that kind of muscle damage, we'll have a massive impact on how you run afterwards, your stride length, the frequency, and then also those damaged muscle fibers. They won't be working towards propelling you forward, but they're still gonna be consuming energy. And if you can minimize that damage, I think definitely that's kind of one small piece to kind of minimize the decrements over time.

Speaker 1: 29:24

You know, I was actually reminded of this not me, but one of my colleagues just took on a new athlete and I interviewed her during the coach matching process and this athlete's kind of like core I'm trying not to phrase it as a negative, but I can't come up with a way to do it your core complaint was about two and a half hours. I always fall apart, like you're going through a 50K, 80k kind of whatever. Two and a half hours. I always fall apart, like well, what's the longest training run? You do Two and a half hours, so it becomes a really simple like a lot of cases, right, like the things that ale you or the things that ale you in a race are the things that you have neglected in training, and sometimes it doesn't have to be any more complicated than duration or, as you were just mentioning, nick, elevation gain and elevation loss.

Speaker 1: 30:11

If you don't have the right amount at the right grades to elicit the adaptations that you're going to kind of rely on during the race, those are easy fixes. We don't need to cut through testing to that. You can just look at training history and it's like hey, if you have 10,000 meters of gain and loss in a 100 mile race and in a 100 mile week you only have 2,000 meters of elevation gain, elevation loss. That's the hole in your game, right. That is the hole in your physiological game, right there. You don't need to look any further than just the training history.

Speaker 2: 30:43

It's not, you know. I mean there's lots of papers, but yeah, when we talk about correlations, vertical gain and volume, Start there. To massive predictors or how well you're going to do. It's just, there's no way around it, unfortunately.

Speaker 1: 30:58

Okay, so let's move into the second area, because a lot of athletes are going to be curious about this, because there is a lot of dialogue around kind of the extremes of the substrate utilization spectrum. Cycling has put a very bright spotlight on what two years ago we would have considered excessive carbohydrate intake rates of 100 grams, 120 grams an hour. It wasn't that long ago where a lot of people would have looked at that and gone whoa, like not everybody, but a lot of people would have looked at that and go whoa, that's not sustainable for anybody. And yet we actually now see it in the field and I'm going to choose my words very carefully it's rather common within the elite peloton and there are a lot of amateur athletes that are trying and seeing how sustainable it is for them, and that's another story.

Speaker 1: 31:47

So, anyway, my point with that is is in the spotlight right now. Is this really heavy? This is really bright spotlight on high carbohydrate use and also a bright spotlight on fat adaptation and trying to optimize for fat oxidation and particularly with the longer endurance events, that has been a that has definitely been a focal point as of late, whether you're trying to manipulate diet or the substrate that you're actually taking in during the race, or a combination of everything? So why don't we set the table for this first? How does how would substrate utilization and the way that your body actually oxidizes food stuff and energy, how would that actually play a role in any of these physiological components of durability?

Speaker 2: 32:27

when we look at it from a practical standpoint, I mean just you know, on a very basic level, your body likes using carbs more than likes using fat, because it's easier.

Speaker 2: 32:35

Like it's easier, you need less energy, there's oxygen to break them down and only have very limited carbohydrates in your body. So that's why they're obviously saying you need to put those in so really often. When we see these decreases is an intensity. You can only maintain that intensity by metabolizing a lot of carbohydrates. Once they run out and your body even starts to metabolize more fat, it basically can only do that at the rate that is lower than that of carbohydrate. So what you'll see is you know in a lot of competitions and races over time, that people will, you know, go very slow if they're not feeding themselves, because to break down fatty acids the body requires a lot of oxygen and it takes a lot of energy to actually do that. If a carbohydrate source is in your bloodstream glucose your muscle will definitely prefer to use that. So if that's not there, then you know you basically got a decrease in the ability to maintain a high level of pace or performance.

Speaker 1: 33:40

Or I mean, I'm extrapolating the math here for you you're trying to maintain the same intensity or the same output, same pace, if we're running on flat level terrain at a higher oxygen cost, right? That's kind of like the flip side of it is. If you have two runners that are running side by side, they both weigh the same, they both have the same running economy. Two identical twins both have the same running economy, both have the same VO2 max, and one of them is using more fat than the other one. The one that is using more fat is also requiring more oxygen to do that same amount of work, and that could potentially have a consequence down the line when we're talking about durability. How would that actually manifest itself?

Speaker 2: 34:25

I mean, obviously, when we talk about VO2 max, it's the maximum oxygen that we can utilize and transport. So we always, when we look at threshold, we're working at a percentage of that and if you're a good athlete in the bird commas that might be anywhere between 70% and 90% of your max. But people are less trained it's usually between like 50 and 65. So but if you had me to consume more oxygen over a given time, obviously down the line that's going to basically mean that you're going to have to slow down in relation to the person that was using less from the start, because it's not sustainable at that rate for that long. So that's where we talk about running economy. Obviously, it basically means that the person is using less oxygen for a given task because there's going to be a direct evasion. I always kind of like using the car analogy and kind of miles per gallon. I think you kind of find that quite easy to understand.

Speaker 1: 35:27

I appreciate that you're normalizing it to US audience and doing miles per gallon versus the European version which is leaders per 100 kilometers. Leaders per 100 kilometers.

Speaker 2: 35:37

I know everything in England miles per gallon as well. But yeah, you have two cars and if one of those miles per gallon is slightly higher, the fuel tank is going to be empty soon. I mean, it's very simplistic, but that's kind of the answer.

Speaker 1: 35:53

So let's put both of our, let's put the coaching hat on a little bit and start to give people some advice right. We've already made the leap of faith that durability can be important for ultra running. I still think it's an open question where and everything it sits. If you want my personal opinion, I'll give it as my podcast. You can give your opinion, agree or disagree with it. I think it's on par with the VO2 max and maybe even higher than running economy, I mean.

Speaker 2: 36:17

I think running economy in ultra running is not super important.

Speaker 1: 36:22

Yeah, that's very clear.

Speaker 2: 36:24

Obviously, if it's horrendous, then that's not good, but it's not as important as in a distance running. Vo2 max is important. Obviously, we see that the really good runners are the higher VO2 max, but obviously the ability to maintain a high percentage of that is important. But yeah, I agree. So if you have a high VO2 max, poor durability doesn't mean anything, because you won't be able to utilize what you have down the line because your body is getting tired and is having to work harder and eventually it's not going to be able to do it up or you're going to have to slow down.

Speaker 1: 37:01

I want to take a pause. I promise eventually we'll get into the practical pieces of it. But I want to take a pause and explain again this differential that we see in the importance of running economy in ultra running compared to what I'll call the traditional endurance events of the 10K marathon and things like that. This just showed up in the literature in a lot of different formats to the point where we really can't deny it. I can't remember if this is a podcast with you or with somebody else where I've used this analogy in the past, but running economy has kind of become so important in the marathon world that everybody's going to the ends of the earth to chase it down. I mean, the Super Shoe Revolution very much exposed its importance because this whatever percentage improvement that you're getting from your Super Shoes basically directly shows up in improvements and performance and has drastically altered the landscape in such a dramatic fashion.

Speaker 1: 38:04

Now, when we make that relation into the ultra running side, it's important, but not that important. Not the kingpin and the kingmaker and the queenmaker of the sports. I don't want to keep saying this until I'm floating the face, but I feel like I kind of have to. But why is it the case, why do we see this thing, this physiological component that is literally the kingmaker and the queenmaker in his kind of I wouldn't say transcended, but it's been such a focal point in that area in one discipline. And then, when we translate it to something that should be at least that similar, why does that not the correlation breakdown, but why is the importance kind of cascade down a little bit lower when we talk about a different discipline?

Speaker 2: 38:47

I think it might be worth just kind of explaining how you even measure running economy.

Speaker 1: 38:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do it. People don't know.

Speaker 2: 38:53

So you know the very traditional middle long distance running way is running at 16 kilometers per hour or 10 miles an hour for the American business on a treadmill and you're measuring VO2. Obviously you know this as the caveat that you can run a 20, 21 K an hour. Yeah, otherwise obviously it doesn't make sense. So you know you're running fairly quick, but not ridiculously quick. And then you look at your VO2 and you have these categories basically that are classified from very good, so that's a low VO2 at that running speed is good and the higher that VO2 goes for the running speed, the worse it is.

Speaker 2: 39:27

But basically you know you're needing more oxygen for that running speed. So what that translates to is, if you are running to be running 21 K an hour, also the VO2 max of 80, one of them is running at 70 and the other one's running at 72. Right, that's a big difference. So the running economy is basically running a lower VO2 for a given speed. I there's a lower oxygen cost. Oxygen delivery and utilization is super important and marathon running and, as you said, even like a two to three percent improvement, can be the difference between winning and 10th place.

Speaker 2: 40:06

But in trail running, ultra running, we do not. We don't run at those speeds. I mean very rarely run those speeds. We run much longer and we do not run on the flat. So the study is where they've tried to replicate a looking at running economy over trail races that have been done on treadmills. They've tried to kind of replicate it. But the problem is that the constant shift if you're running on off road and trails using the upper body a lot more, use more energy, and then you're running downhill, it uses you know all those things play a massive factor that you cannot say that this one specific element that you can measure is going to have a huge impact on your performance.

Speaker 1: 40:53

I always use a practical example, a local practical example, for this, because I think it kind of like drives it home and a lot of athletes will be familiar with it. So Matt Carpenter, who has the Leadville Trail 100 course record and as as recently as this summer had the Pikes Peak Scent Marathon record, is broken by Remy Bonnet earlier this year. He also owns the distinction of having the highest VO2 max that has ever been recorded at the Olympic Training Center at 92, and is one of the highest VO2 maxes that have ever been recorded across any endurance athlete in any sport. And it's not just an anomalous test. I know all the people that have done that test, they've verified it all and he's had a second test in Italy that was remarkably similar and things like that. So we can kind of rule that piece of it out.

Speaker 1: 41:39

He was just barely able to qualify for the US Olympic Marathon trials just barely, which is not a remarkable marathon performance by any stretch of the imagination. And the reason for that is he had a great VO2 max and very poor running economy, which led to a good marathoner not a great marathoner, but a good marathoner. But he was a great trail runner, because running economy matters less on the trails as compared to the roads. It works out in a very practical exam. We can come up with more of them, but that's just one. That is local, it's history. That wouldn't mind me mentioning all of that stuff because it's been published in kind of other areas and stuff like that, but I think that piece of it really resonates with a lot of athletes.

Speaker 2: 42:23

No, I think it's interesting. There's also some examples on the other side which show the importance of running economy and normal running the study that Andy Jones did with Bore-Raccliffe over five years the VO2 max decreased.

Speaker 1: 42:39

Another great example.

Speaker 2: 42:41

We were at a time's tumble just kind of showing them. Actually. Obviously, vo2 max is important, like we said, but it is not the most important thing, 100%.

Speaker 1: 42:50

Okay, so we got that piece of it out of the way. Now let's kind of get back to this practical piece of. If durability is so important and we're putting it up, we're putting it above running economy, maybe in trail and ultra running. I think that's a reasonable assumption, that maybe we grow on 10 years from now. But what's it get? I'll take it it's a reasonable enough assumption to make. What training activities could a person do to actually improve it? We've gone through some of the mechanisms of why it might deteriorate, some of this muscle fatiguing mechanisms. We didn't elaborate on the breathing side of it, but we went through the substrate side as well. I'm trying to alchemize all of those If an athlete is really curious about it. I think athletes have good intuition. I think that I'm not as durable I can keep up for the first half of the race and the last half of the race I really fall off. I think there's some things that they might want to take into consideration in order to cover that gap and improve this area. I think.

Speaker 2: 43:44

First of all measure it. Obviously we do the test in the lab brush and then we get the athletes to do some tasks that are similar to the race it could even be more than once and we get them back in the lab and we do the same test and we see how much things have changed. Has the lactate threshold speed shifted? Has the heart rate shifted up? Quite a lot? If that's happened, obviously it shows us that the durability is maybe poor. If maybe there hasn't been that much of a change, then it maybe shows us it's not. Maybe that might be something else. Then also doing longer events and asking all the example of the two and a half hours how are you feeling after this? Because if you're going for an easy run, after three hours you find you've got a massive breakdown, although you've not changed the pace Up. They've been eating up, they've been drinking up. They've been just the basic things that could actually impact the ability to stay more durable I think are quite important.

Speaker 1: 44:47

First off, on the testing piece of it, not everybody has access to a lab. We both happen to have labs that are easily accessible to us. If you want to test it, you can use a field testing protocol, and it's not the worst thing in the world to kind of DIY it, as long as it's consistent. I'm really. There was this quote that Lindsay Gollich, who is a senior sports scientist over the US OPC it's been one of my colleagues for a very long time over 20 years now. She gave me this quote a long time ago when she first took over our physiology lab because we were debating about our protocol that we were using. It was one of those endless, pedantic, maybe two academic types of debates that we end up getting to. She looked at me and she said you know, because we're trying to decide if we want her to change it. Essentially is the context of this. She finally looked at me and she said you know what Coop?

Speaker 1: 45:40

A consistent test is more important than the perfect test. If you do the same thing consistently, as long as you've got the right interpretation behind it, at least you have an apples to apples comparison. I use that to say that you don't have to have the perfect physiology lab to do this. You can go out and just take your favorite 10 or 20 minute section of trail or climb or whatever, run it as hard as you can when you're fresh, go do a three hour run, run it as hard as you can when you're fatigued and then you have your durability for that particular task that you can then measure against. You then can go and train and perform that same test again in four weeks, eight weeks, whatever you decide to do, and see if that durability component has improved. It doesn't have to be. You can put more complication behind it, more sophistication, and you might glean more information from that sophistication absolutely, but it doesn't need to be any more sophisticated or complicated than that.

Speaker 2: 46:38

I think if you are going to do a really good example, you also need to make a note of what did you have in those three hours, how did you feel, and everybody. So heart rate monitor, measure your heart rate, make sure that the weather conditions should be similar-ish if it's like hot on one day and that's going to be an issue, I agree and then just kind of try out a few things and see if it gets better. But that's like a real life performance measure because, like I said, it's nice to have this number in the lab, but if you can't run up a certain hill at the speed that you want to, that has obviously shown us that there is some decrease in your ability, whatever that might be related to.

Speaker 1: 47:23

I kind of, when I look at this and going back to my earlier example I'm going to kind of expound upon that a little bit is the first thing that I go to when I'm examining what I need to improve with an athlete is what have they brought to the table from a training perspective? Because a lot of times when you play that game of detective and you go and you review their previous training history even without the bias of I'm always bad in this area or I need to improve there you can usually find those gaps. So I always employ athletes who are trying to like DIY, like how do I fix this? Whatever this is, go back and look at your previous training. Do you have enough volume? Are you fatiguing after three hours? And you've never done a run that's over three hours.

Speaker 1: 48:13

Not to say that the answers are always that simple, but a lot of times the clues to the interventions can be found with very simple evaluations of volume and intensity and elevation gain, elevation loss, as we mentioned earlier. But outside of that, are there any other like specific training interventions that people can try out in order to improve this? And we can even deviate from the classic I'm going to do a progression run or this type of training activity to some of the more kind of different things that you can do, even from a nutrition perspective or other I guess, in other arenas. I guess is what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 2: 48:49

I mean, I think, when it comes to durability and long time, there really isn't a great replacement for volume and long time. There's obviously things that you can do, like I said, you know, if you don't have time you can do strength training, but I think what the literature suggests, when we look at people that are more durable, is that they do train more and consistently. They have fluctuations throughout the year, but that does seem to be a thing that's kind of the main theme that goes throughout. I do believe that when it comes to running, people can benefit from cross training to maybe increase the volume if they struggle with having a really high running volume, because I think that's something that people do kind of fine. You know that like damage and they have, you know, pain. So incorporating things like cycling, for example, you know, just to kind of get the volume up a little bit, I think it's probably a good idea.

Speaker 1: 49:51

When they're injury limited versus when they're time limited.

Speaker 2: 49:55

I think I do think with a lot of runners, like you were saying, if people aren't running more than three hours and you're asking them to suddenly kind of really increase, that that might cause some problems. And you know, if we're kind of just looking at duration and volume and getting like a nice response, like we said, not a specific response, but a response doing something else sometimes works really well.

Speaker 1: 50:19

Yeah, I'm with you on that one. I'm not the biggest fan of cross training just for cross training sake. But if you can use cross training as a mode to increase the overall volume, when, if, for whatever reason and normally it's an injury limitation, when we're talking about when we're talking about the sport of running, if there's some sort of injury limitation, I can't do over 100K per week or 60 miles per week or whatever. Because of this. Injury always kind of flares up and they still have excess time available. That's a pretty good use case for some type of cross training modality. I'm not as big of a fan of it when it's in substitution for the mode that they're actually competing in. Meaning if you're taking an hour of running and you're replacing it with an hour of cycling and they're competing in a running event, that's where I start to look at is that actually the best switch for them?

Speaker 2: 51:10

I mean that's the way. No, I agree with you.

Speaker 1: 51:13

Okay. So here's your challenge question. This comes up in running all the time. We just put the big emphasis on volume, meaning that if that is the primary hammer that we're using and I would say that's the primary hammer for a lot of endurance, adaptation, in fact the most of it in durability, certainly. Being one of them, a lot of runners myself included, because we talked off air I'm up at 4.30 in the morning running because of my time availability will ask what about double days? Should I do an hour run in the morning and do an hour run in the evening to get two hours? Is that better than me just waking up an hour earlier and getting a two hour run in? We can lean on the literature a little bit for this. But so what do you say about the runners that are thinking about that like, okay, I'm gonna do 45 minutes in the afternoon or I'm gonna do a double run in order to increase my overall volume?

Speaker 2: 52:07

I think we need to. If someone is going to sleep one hour or less due to our own in the morning, that will in theory impact on their recovery, then you know, because we have to kind of look at the whole picture like what is somebody doing throughout the day? And if you wanna increase your volume, your recovery has to be good. Can you run twice a day is another question. So obviously it's a good idea for some people, but I think some people kind of struggle to do that. I think when it comes to the literature it's a little bit divisive on whether it's actually better or not. And it's more anecdotal because you have some athletes that train three times a day out of this train once.

Speaker 2: 52:50

And I think if you look at cycling versus running, cycling one session a day unless you're track cycling, running two sessions a day. But I don't know if that's because of the impact and maybe kind of just the perception of how hard the session is, and maybe splitting it up into two makes it easier and I think psychologically it might depend on the plan it's. Do you find it easier to have one big session or do you find it easier to break it up, because some people might look forward to a session, but some people might break it. So I think it's. Can you recover between the sessions? I don't think you should neglect recovery and sleep to do a longer session. If someone cope with it, doing two sessions a day definitely will be beneficial, but I don't think it is necessarily better than one longer session.

Speaker 1: 53:45

Yeah, I mean I might take a little bit of a harder stance on that last piece, but that's fine, we can disagree on it. I would always take a two hour run versus two one hour runs for an ultra marathon runner. And even if that two hour runs is, let's say they just cover less distance or do less kilojoules of work, right, even if we're normalizing it to the amount of work that's actually been done. And I would extrapolate that even further to whatever permutation of math that you can get to an hour and a half versus 30 minutes, versus hour and a half plus 30 minutes to get to two hours, I would still take the two hour run, one hour and a half plus one hour and a half to get to three hours versus a three hour continuous run. I would kind of take the three hour continuous run, and it's predominately in whatever other iterations of that you can come up with, and it's predominantly because of this aspect that we just mentioned Is there is some type of physiological adapt, or there are some types of physiological adaptations that occur as a byproduct of the continuous duration of the activity. Now, I know that is a little bit of a. It might be an impractical game of math, but I use that as the basis. And then when we go down to brass tacks of, okay, I can do an hour and a half in the morning and 45 minutes in the afternoon, should I actually do the afternoon run? Then you can start to make those logical decisions of does the additional volume matter more than the potential recovery that you can get afterwards and make the next session higher quality and things like that.

Speaker 1: 55:18

But I kind of start with that game. First of, in this like not so contrived world of adding two, adding two runs together and substituting it for a run that's continuous, would I take one versus the other? And in almost all cases I would take the continuous run. And for those of you that are thinking well, what are the exceptions to it? The exceptions to it is for whatever reason, the duration of the single session creates some sort of injury problem for the athlete. That's when, obviously, I would take the split runs, because the total amount of volume is the thing that we should kind of be putting at the helm of all of this. So I'm not gonna rob Peter to pay Paul. I'm not gonna rob the total volume, peter, to pay this single session, paul. I'm gonna absolutely kind of favor both of those sessions if that injury condition exists. But outside of that I always personally I always prefer single sessions versus double sessions.

Speaker 2: 56:11

I think when it comes to durability, I think what you've said there probably makes more sense.

Speaker 1: 56:18

Yeah, yeah. But then the substitution to it and I don't mind or not the substitution, the criticism of it, which I don't mind bringing out, because I go through this whenever I have to come up with an opinion on things is those two single sessions can be of higher quality, right, because you're giving them recovery in between. And, honestly, for an endurance run, I kind of don't care Like if somebody's running at like 67% of their VO2 max on one workout versus 72% of their VO2 max on two other workouts. I kind of call from an endurance perspective. I wouldn't say that if intensity was the focus, but if we're just doing normal endurance runs, I think that variability is negligible at the end of the day in terms of the end effect on the adaptive process. No, I agree. Okay, is there anything we can advise people to do, nick, besides just run more? Come on, we can't, we can't, I mean.

Speaker 2: 57:15

No, I mean, I don't think people just obviously running more is good. But no, I think, like we said, we're looking at the demands of the event and being specific, but also trying to understand what is what's fatiguing in the body, which is decreasing the durability, and trying to address that. And going back to the previous podcast, where obviously it's multifractorial so if you are dehydrated, if you are depleted of carbohydrates, then all those things are going to increase your levels of fatigue and they're going to shift things in your body to be less efficient, you know, and basically make you able to work harder. So I think, when it comes to looking at a durable athlete, they do things well and correctly during the event to minimize the effect that the fatigue is going to have down the line to allow them to be, you know, fast or explosive, whatever it might be towards the end. And I think that's also things like pacing and conserving energy when you can to allow your body to have kind of more towards the end.

Speaker 2: 58:30

And that's again something that comes with experience.

Speaker 1: 58:32

Yeah, I mean once again, whenever you have a multifactorial phenomenon and injury let's just take it out of performance, right Injury is the one that always kind of comes to mind. Injury is always multifactorial. We always try to find these like correlating variables of are they wearing a nine millimeter drop shoe, or are they a four foot runner, or do they strength train or do they not strength train? And try to take those single variables and say, well, if we can eliminate all these things that are highly correlated with injury, then they should be, then they should, then they should have less injuries throughout the course of the year. And I use that as a great example is because we have all of that data right, if we've had it for years, yet the injury rate amongst runners is shit, like 70%. Up to 70% of runners will miss at least a day of training due to an injury.

Speaker 1: 59:24

And so when and so I use that as an example of when you have a multifactorial problem, a lot of times this reductionist logic of finding all the correlating variables isn't going to be the, isn't going to kind of be the solution to it. You have to look at them all, right, you have to look at them all and come up with a reasonably integrated approach to them and, just like with the performance outcomes, rack and stack which ones make the most and when you're talking about interventions, hone in on those, but, but don't do them at the neglect of everything else. No, all right, nick, this was fun.

Speaker 2: 59:55

No, I enjoyed it. This is a good one. I'm looking forward. I think as we speak, there's quite a few studies going on and, like I said, there is a lot on site. I think there's more in running it's more difficult to like we are considered last postcards to actually replicate trail running in a lab. But I think there'll be a lot more work on durability and hopefully we'll find a correlation or something that we can talk about a bit more than we can advise people. I do think it is also very individually down to the physiology of the person and like how much they recover and basically even recover during an event from short bursts that are kind of causing fatigue, and I think that's something you could obviously train that. But I do think that some people inherently are better at that than others. Unfortunately, and overall the cost and the damage that the crew over time is less than some other people, and then that golf gets bigger and bigger because some people are crewing this fatigue and damage more than others.

Speaker 1: 1:01:06

Yeah, I'm with you. We'll find some genetic components, some genetic predispositioning to this, once we tease it up. But we'll tease out the simple things first. Right, let's measure it first and then figure out the intervention in a second. So, speaking of some of the literature that's going to come out and some of your work, where can people learn a little bit more about you, follow you on social media and learn more about the stuff that you're doing?

Speaker 2: 1:01:25

Yeah, I'm here, dr Nick Berger. Instagram Dr Nick B. I mean, if you just type in my name, dr Nicholas Berger, t-side University, my research public comes up Google Scholar, quite a lot on there. So and obviously you know, if you go on this podcast or the previous one, you've put all the lovely links in there and you can free to email me, like my emails readily available online. So actually from when we published the last article, I got quite a lot of emails from people. That was nice. So people have questions or, you know, want to talk to me, you know, open to that Awesome.

Speaker 1: 1:02:02

I'll put links in the show notes to that, as well as all of the other references that you mentioned, as well as our previous podcast, which we didn't touch on a whole heck of a lot. My final point, just to cajole you a little bit further, are we going to see you in UTMB this year. We talked about it. I hope the listeners of myself, cajole you into showing up to that race and making an appearance.

Speaker 2: 1:02:23

Well, this me and my wife have said there's something we would like to go to and potentially might be there supporting someone, if everything works out.

Speaker 1: 1:02:32

All right. Well, we hope to see you there and if you do get there, make sure you let me know because we'll arrange something somehow. All right, nick, thanks for coming on the podcast today, man, I appreciate it, thank you. There you have it. Much thanks to Nick for coming on the podcast today. I hope we can get Nick back and into the Ultramarathon scene more. The previous podcast that I did with him about his paper, the Limits of Ultramarathon. I think that paper that we discussed is going to be one that hangs around for several years and is one that we continue to derive inspiration from a training perspective and from a performance perspective for years to come. So the more we can get Nick integrated into the Ultramarathon space, the better we will all be.

Speaker 1: 1:03:17

Okay, as promised, here are the summary points and action items that you can take away into your training from this podcast. First off, this concept of durability describes how traditional physiological variables like VO2 max, lactate threshold and running economy fade or deteriorate over the course of time or over a specific fatiguing event. Now it's important to understand how those physiological variables fade, and it's also important to understand how important they are relative to each other, because we can design training interventions at the things that matter the most. Now, this concept of durability has not quite been elucidated in the research just yet, and that's why you're starting to see a lot of researchers start to get interested in it. The current thinking among many of those practitioners and researchers alike is that durability is in fact, important, and the importance of durability probably increases as the duration of the event increases. Now that just sounds logical, and it's also applicable to ultramarathon. My personal opinion is that in ultra, durability is going to be even more important than running economy, and it might be more important than running economy in a marathon setting or as important as running economy in a marathon setting. Time will tell on if that is going to be true or not.

Speaker 1: 1:04:45

So how can you improve your durability? Well, we know from other sports that athletes who have large training volumes or higher training volumes over long periods of time exhibit better durability, and I'm emphasizing the long periods of time intentionally. This doesn't mean that you go out and do one really long, long run in order to improve your durability. It means that if you generally have a higher training volume over a long period of time six months, 12 months, 18 months you are probably going to be a more durable athlete. It is questionable whether strength training actually affects durability. We see this pop up in the research, where athletes who strength deteriorates less over the course of an ultra usually perform better, but it's unclear on if strength training can actually mitigate that deterioration. Now, durability also has a specificity component to it, which is why you see a progression run as a common training intervention in the marathon distance, but the applicability of that progression run in ultramarathon might not be quite there. We do see athletes that exhibit kind of durable properties have more specific training on the courses that they are actually training for, and that is something that I think that we can take to the bank as well. One of these aspects of durability is just simply getting on the course and experiencing the elevation gain, elevation loss that you might experience during race day.

Speaker 1: 1:06:15

All right, folks, that is it for the summary. I hope you enjoyed. It is a component that I am going to include in all my podcasts going forward. As always, this podcast is brought to you without any endorsements or sponsorships of any kind. That's a promise that I made to you from the very onset of this podcast, over 200 episodes ago. So if you want to.

Speaker 1: 1:06:38

If you want to support this podcast, all you have to do is one of two things. First off, you can just like it or leave it a review on iTunes or on Spotify. That's an easy way to share the message of this podcast and share the content within this podcast for people who might not be familiar with it. The second thing you can do is you can subscribe to Research Essentials for Ultramarathon. We take papers, just as the one Nick produced and others kind of in the area, and we break them down, present practical, actionable summaries of that research that anybody can understand and apply to their day to day training. That subscription it's way better than a Patreon membership because you actually get a valuable product from it. It starts at $9.99 a month. You can subscribe at the link in my bio. It is probably the product that I produce the most, that I get the most excited about, just because it's such high quality content. All right, folks. That is it for today and, as always, we will see you out on the trails.