KoopCast
Coach Jason Koop covers training, nutrition and recent happenings in the ultramarathon world.
KoopCast
Taking the Right Advice with CTS Coaches Anne Tisdell and Ryne Anderson #225
Coaches Anne Tisdell and Ryne Anderson discuss how to take the right advice from your friends and training partners through the lens of how we take our own training and racing and translate it to athletes.
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Trail and Ultra Runners. What is going on? Welcome to another episode of the CoopCast. As always, I am your humble host, Coach Jason Coop, and this episode of the podcast is something that is going to be pertinent to everybody now that we are in the racing season, and it's centered around this topic of how do you go out and find and solicit advice from people who have done the same races as you and who might be doing similar training to you. As coaches, we have to manage this all the time, because most of us coaches, we do a lot of the same races that our athletes end up doing, and so we wanted to use a little bit of that experience as a lens to look through, to impart on how we actually translate our own training and racing experience to our athletes and where we might actually not translate that racing experience. So on the podcast today I have two of our crack coaches.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the podcast repeat offender. Ryan Anderson, who is currently training for the notorious Hard Rock 100 and new to the podcast but certainly not new to coaching, is one of our stellar coaches. And Tisdale, who is just off of a fantastic finish at the Cocodona 250. And we run through it all. We are experienced athletes as well as experienced coaches in the sport, and how do we take our own personal experiences and either translate those to our athletes or choose to not translate to those athletes? And what I hope that you can glean throughout the course of this conversation is how you can provide a little bit of a filter for yourself as you are soliciting information, counsel and things that can help you prepare for the races that you are preparing for this summer.
Speaker 1:All right, with that out of the way. I am getting right out of the way. Here's my podcast with coaches Ryan Anderson and Tisdell, all about how we translate our own training and racing over to our athletes and where that might actually not be as applicable. And Ryan, welcome to the podcast. And have you been on before? I am searching my memory. I don't think so right.
Speaker 2:No, first time.
Speaker 1:Okay, first time, ryan's a multi-time offender, so he's kind of used to the gig. So we're going to talk today about how to translate our own personal experiences into what's functional for athletes. And then what I hope that the audience can kind of take away from this is now that we're kind of in the racing season and everybody's like searching for advice and the far corners of the internet whether that be from their friends or the Reddit forums or Twitter or Instagram or whatever. Hopefully some of these lessons that we actually use as coaches can be translated to the audience while they're trying to like navigate the same thing of how to actually glean information from people who have trained or who are training for the same events, and then what information to take, what information to potentially throw away and what kind of like caveats to put out on it.
Speaker 1:And the reason I first off, the reason I wanted to do this with you two cause you guys are training for and have trained for, a kind of a prolific series of events, and I could probably apply that same description to to myself. We've got a wealth of event experience personal event experience, kind of in our group today that we're going to be discussing this with um, but we also have to, in a very pragmatic way, taper that or tailor that, what we learned from those races individually, into a professional setting where we are professionally advising athletes on some of the events that we have actually trained for. And that's a different level of scrutiny than a friend or a colleague or a training partner has to have when they're just saying, oh well, when I did the Leadville trial 100, this is what happened, that's fine. Nobody's like trying to impart wisdom with like ill intent or anything like that. But there's a different kind of burden of proof, so to speak, with people who are professional coaches when they take what they have done personally and then try to glean some information from that onto their, onto their athletes.
Speaker 1:So with that as a bit of a backdrop, I want to set the table a little bit more, and we never do this as coaches. It's going to be kind of weird because we try to downplay our own personal experiences. But this is a podcast where I think we have to actually bring it to the forefront. So, anne, we're going to start with you. Can you try to? I just mentioned that you have kind of a prolific list of events that you have done. Can you kind of bring to the forefront and try to encapsulate that in a couple of, you know, just a couple of minutes, all the events that you have personally, personally trained for and completed or tried or whatever?
Speaker 2:yeah, all right. So there's been all like the little stuff, but let's focus on the more exciting one. So last week, cocodona 250. I'll just start with that one because it was the most recent. That's my third 200 miler. So back in 2019, my husband and I did Tahoe 200 together and then last year did Moab 240, solo. Cocodona just last week, solo. In addition to that, one of my favorite races in the whole world is URA 100. So I've been to the race three times, finished it twice, dropped, with my husband once when he had some medical issues. So we got the 200s, we've got URA. What else is there? Been out to canyons? What have I done? A total.
Speaker 2:other end of the spectrum, florida Keys 100, being a polar opposite, of everything that I just described, the big ones, I think those kind of fall towards the top of the list for me.
Speaker 1:Well, first off, congratulations on Cocodona. We're talking off air. You look great out there all day. It was really fun to personally see you out there, although in a slightly limited capacity. I want to kind of bring up the breadth here just to paint this for the listeners. Again, you've got mountainous stuff, you've got flat stuff, hot stuff, cold stuff, things where you've done really well and podiumed and raced well and you can be super proud of those performances, and then also times where you've dropped like you've kind of got the whole rainbow of like performance context to go into this. Is there anything else you want to add to that? Just in terms of your sheer race resume that like sticks out, jumps off of the paper for you.
Speaker 2:I'll just add maybe the two things that are coming up, one of which I'm particularly excited about. So there's you, ray, again this year, just continuing the trend of doing a hard race and thinking, wow, I'm never going to do this again, and then finding myself signing up for it again. And then next year, big one Arizona Monster 300. So new race, I'm excited to be one of the first to get to try it. And if 250 was good, then 300 should surely be better, right? That's what I'm thinking.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, I had an inquiry from our website, somebody asking about coaching for that specific race, so it's taken the world by storm.
Speaker 2:Oh it's exciting. I can't wait. It's just one more day, right? Just one more day, Just one more day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just one more day on top of it all. All right, all right, ryan, you're up. You've got a hard rock coming up this year. You're currently training for that, but why don't you go back a little bit before you go to the present and just kind of give the listeners a sense of your resume which you can bring to the table here?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I started my hard rock qualifier journey in 2017 with Big Born as my first 100 miler, and then did Grindstone in Virginia two years later and then did the bear last year, and I've also did the Penhody 100 down in Alabama, down here in the South, twice, and then I have had some experience in the San Juan, still in San Juan, solstice, 50 mile or twice, and then just a smattering of local ultras here in the Southeast that I like to revisit year after year.
Speaker 1:And currently I already mentioned this you're training for the Hard Rock 100. It's always an apex event for anybody who gets in it, especially the first year. I think it's worth. I think it's also worth pointing out where you live.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I live in Knoxville, tennessee, sea level. Yeah, we're a thousand feet, hey, we got a thousand, and in town there are not a lot of hills or long climbs to speak of. But I am fortunate to live in between frozen head and the smokies, so I can't go get the mountainous terrain, the three thousand to four thousand foot climbs and desc. It just takes a little bit of driving. It's cramming for lack of a better word on the weekend to get in that vert. Specific terrain, specific type of terrain Perfect. But yes, coming from sea level presents a challenge, but frankly, that's how it is for most people doing that race.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did not know that you did the San Juan Solstice twice doing that race? Yep, I did not know that you did the San Juan Solstice twice. That's new information to me. Very hard race. I'm doing that in a four week. Four weeks, five weeks.
Speaker 1:It's coming up pretty quick. I should know that that might give you an indication of how ill prepared I am at the present time. Okay, so I'll go next, I'll play. I'll play ball of the similar breadth of races that I've done, both short and long, starting with, I guess in my backyard, the Pikes Peak Marathon I wasn't even thinking about mentioning this Both the Pikes Peak Marathon and the Pikes Peak Ascent. That I had done for years before I started getting into ultra running.
Speaker 1:Then you transition over to the ultra style, the ultra side of things, and I've done every anything from the bad water one 35, obviously hot, you know, flat in the desert to the hard rock 100, to tour de Jean, to Coca Dona, to Western States. I have one finish at Western States and that'll probably be my only finish at that prolific race. I'm a multi-time finisher at the Leadville Trail 100. I'm trying to get 10 eventually. My schedule will kind of allow me to.
Speaker 1:But a lot of my racing has kind of been I was going to use the word stuck, but it's been limited to the Rocky Mountains. I would say I don't have that much experience out on the East Coast, a little bit out on the West Coast and then in the Pacific Northwest, but that that, I would say, would be very limited. My home base is Colorado Springs, colorado. You know altitude. We've got great trails here. They're very unheralded but I think a world-class trail system which I think lends itself really well to training, for training, for both mountainous events and flat events. So I've been able to leverage that kind of home training environment a tremendous amount, irrespective of what I was actually, what I was actually personally personally training for Um, let's see. Is there anything else I should mention? I can open it up to you guys. You guys can ask a question. What else should I mention on my own person?
Speaker 3:The self-support. In Rome you gave Nolan's 14.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's right, yeah, I have. Well, okay, so that actually prompts my, prompts, my memory a little bit. I do have, oh my God, three now failed attempts at the Nolan's 14, ranging from the Nolan's 12, which is the furthest I've gotten to the Nolan's two. So big range of failures right there. One of them, the one in the middle, was actually an attempt with one of our own coaching staff, john Fitzgerald. But that actually prompts me to think that I've also been really bad in races. I've dropped out of my fair share of hundreds. The Wasatch 100 I've dropped out of, as well as a Javelina I dropped out of one year. So a much flatter kind of easier type of race I dropped out of hard rock one year. So I've kind of run the gamut of where I've been pretty good or really good in some races and I've been really bad and DNF for a whole variety of reasons, including DNFs, that that I probably shouldn't have taken. I probably should have just sucked it up and continued forward and in hindsight, so definitely the whole range of things, as they say Okay. So with that as a little bit of a backdrop, I think the first thing that I want to discuss more globally, and we're going to try to leave the specifics out for right now, but just globally is what you take from the training process specifically we're going to leave racing as a separate deal but the training process specifically that you then can impart to your athletes. So we just mentioned.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I want to bring to the forefront is not only do we have what I would call a robust amount of experience of ourselves racing in these events, as the results would be an indicator of, we've also been successful and unsuccessful in the training side of things. Right, because training is the litmus test for the race itself. It's not always the perfect corollary, but it's a pretty it's a pretty darn good one where, if the race results are good, you can probably count on the training actually being good in concert with that. And the opposite would also be true where the race results are typically poor. Usually you miss kind of like something, kind of something in training, and so we've made all those mistakes personally.
Speaker 1:Let's go over that piece of it first, and I think that one thing I kind of want to like clear up before each of us discuss this training component of it is where do you get your training from Do you do it yourself, do you have a coach manager training, and then go into what pieces of that training process can you actually impart on on your athletes? We're going to go around Robin style and we're going to start with you again, so you get first crack at this question. So how do you organize your training, first as a coach, and then what pieces of that training process can you, or do you then translate down into your athletes when they're going through something that might be relatable?
Speaker 2:Sure. So I'd say the way that I have historically treated my training is basically what I do for my athletes. I use Training Peaks, I use like the same methodology, the same long range plan, break it down into a week by week plan. That's how I've historically done things for myself. I haven't had a coach. Personally. Would I love to have one. Yeah, that's actually a goal of mine, maybe in the next year or so, but it's always been self-managed to date.
Speaker 2:Now I'll say this so one of the biggest lessons I've learned about my own training is that it just it doesn't have to be perfect. It should have an appropriate amount of volume, it should be consistent, it should include race specific training as much as possible, but it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect. Especially in times of your life where things are just really busy or stressful and you've got other stuff going on, you can get creative, and that is also something that I do with my athletes too. So the last eight months in particular, I'd say life stress has been much higher than usual, and this is something I see in a ton of my athletes too, whether it's work or kids or illness or whatever and I've realized that during those times the level of perfection can scale down, as long as you're just getting the basics done. So that's where I say, all right, we need to do this stuff this week, and as long as you get this stuff done, we kind of don't care how it happens. So here's the perfect plan. Let's mess it up. As long as you get this stuff done, we kind of don't care how it happens. So here's the perfect plan. Let's mess it up as much as we need, but let's try to at least achieve these like key milestones. And that's something that I'd say.
Speaker 2:90% of my athletes are going through some sort of like busy period or stressful period at some point in our relationship together, and that's something I can definitely translate to them this idea of you've got to do the minimum and it should really be consistent and you should really do some race specific stuff, but it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect. No, it doesn't. So that's my starting point. Would I ever take my own exact training plan and give it to an athlete, even if it was for the exact same race and the exact same timeline and they live down the street from me? No, because we are two totally different people with different jobs and different lives and different backgrounds. So I will never like, in terms of things I don't translate, it's the training plan. It's the number of intervals I'm doing. It's the amount of volume that I'm doing each week. It's the training plan. It's the number of intervals I'm doing, it's the amount of volume that I'm doing each week. It's the structure of those things. But what I can translate is the life experience and the race experience and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:A pause there. Does that make sense so far?
Speaker 1:So here's what I'm taking from that. It's the general themes, not the specificity side of things. So the general themes of I know what it's like to be busy, I know what it's like to have imperfections in your training program, I know what it's like to have life stress, and here it's almost like an empathetic translation right. So here's how we're going to take all of these you know, moles and flaws and hairs and wrinkles in the in the life and training process and make something really productive about it. And it's not and I think, deliberately not. I'm glad you brought that piece of it out. I did this super amazing specific workout for the Cocodona 250. And then. So therefore this athlete is going to get either that exact same thing or some sort of like. You know, close, very close variation of that. As you were speaking, that's what kind of came to the forefront of my mind is that these general experiences are relatable but the specific ones are not.
Speaker 2:I totally agree with that. I would say the only things that are more specific that I do translate to my athletes are they're probably just the nuances of, like this race experience. So, for example, wow, I realized at high altitude it gets really hard to eat these certain things. Yes, I'm going to share that with you. And then let's talk about your nutrition plan and let's talk about what you're practicing and what you're planning to use.
Speaker 2:Or, on the other end of the spectrum, florida Keys, it's really freaking hot and it gets really hard to eat these kinds of things. So let's talk about that and how it applies to you too, because there are certain things like that are probably going to apply to every single athlete that's in that race. But when it comes to myself and my mind and my body and exactly what it did every day to get ready for this thing, it's probably going to look pretty different from what this athlete and that athlete and their mind and their body and their history are going to do to get ready for that thing okay, I'm going to put a pin in that specific piece because I'm going to bring up another question to both you and ryan, because I think that there's going to be a theme that that emerges from this that we can discuss as coaches.
Speaker 1:but, ryan, let's move on to you. How would you like, how would you describe this component of? First off, how do you organize your own training right, being a coach, being a professional in the, in the space, and then what pieces of that process are you then translate? Translating into your athletes that are training for similar events?
Speaker 3:So I'm coached by fellow CTS coach Darcy Murphy.
Speaker 1:Shout out to.
Speaker 3:Darcy, she's one of the best. Yeah, shout out, darcy, she is one of the best and it's a good personality match. She knows when to push back and when to be empathetic. On the theme of Anne and being time crunched we are all time crunched and there can be a moment for all of us when we make excuses and let those spiral rather than sucking it up and getting it done, whether it's waking up early and being more stern with ourselves.
Speaker 3:I think that's a general theme of learning this balance of when to be empathetic and when to go drill sergeant on yourself and then, broadly speaking, identify the specifics as best you can for your event and if you're limited by geography, extreme weather, we have to put in these non-negotiables within the long range plan of okay, racing at altitude, have to get out there early, that's pretty simple and formulating a plan around that and doing it on the front end. So I know, hey, we're addressing these things and I know I'm preparing for them. So I'm not going to freak out and get anxious and try to cram for the tests and get stuck in the weeds with little things that I'm nervous about. At the last minute. I've identified those significant demands, what I'm least confident about, and I'm addressing those so, as the race gets closer, I'm feeling more and more confident rather than more and more anxious.
Speaker 1:Okay, I want to bring up one specific point that Anne really brought to my attention just a second ago, one specific point that Anne really brought to my attention just a second ago, and this is what happens when you're working with athletes that are doing the exact same races as you have done. And I'm going to back this up a little bit and bring in another one of the features I guess that he gets requested of the coaches when he's navigating how to pair up an incoming athlete with a new coach is the athletes very often request that they have a coach that has done the race that they are training for. And if they've got a few races on the calendar, hey, I want a coach that's done this and this. And we've always had a push pull with that request, right, and the push is that, yeah, the coach has experience doing that themselves, and so there's a little bit of a. It's not an appeal to authority, but maybe it's an appeal to having actually done the race. It gives them some street cred, right, in doing it. I've done Tour de Jeanne. Somebody comes in, they want a coach that's done Tour de Jeanne because they feel that's some sort of prerequisite to coach for the event is not, because they feel that's some sort of like prerequisite to coach for the event. So, on the match piece of it, it's nice to have right, because it gives the athlete an immediate sense of security that they know the coach has been through what they're about to go through right and that's meaningful in the coach athlete relationship. I'm not I'm not denying that the buy-in is actually meaningful in the entirety of the process, but it's certainly not, it's certainly not a, it's certainly not a necessity.
Speaker 1:So I want to answer this. I want to go over this really specific question because I know we've all had it when you've been working with an athlete that is training for a race that you have done and they ask you what you did for it, but your prescription to that athlete is different. So you know I've done the hard rock 100 and I have just had this happen a few weeks ago. That's why my brain was kind of prompted to this as well. My athlete asked me hey, what did you do six weeks beforehand, whatever the timeframe was eight weeks beforehand.
Speaker 1:And I said, well, because you can see it on Strava, I did this and this, but you were doing that and that. Because of this context. Right, there's this discrepancy between this is what I did and this is what you did, and even though I had a really successful blueprint on this, you're doing this because of what kind of whatever reasons that we're just going to kind of go through now. So, ron, I'm going to ping it back to you what have you done in that situation where you're coaching an athlete for a race that you have trained for and they've asked this question hey, what did you do?
Speaker 3:and there's just there's a discrepancy between what you're prescribing and what that and what you have actually done, or what darcy has kind of prescribed for yourself I would say, maybe when someone lives close to the race and I also live close to that race and I either did the smaller event leading up to it Okay, so take Penn Hody 100, for example, you can do, there's a 50 miler on the course in September and there's a 50K on the course in February. And I've did that 50K in February. And maybe I haven't encouraged an athlete like, hey, this is a non-negotiable go, do this race to get an idea of the course. And like, well, why wouldn't I do that if I have the opportunity to do it? And it's like, well, maybe that 50K in February for a race that is, how many months is that? Nine months out doesn't fit within your training right now. So we're not going to force that.
Speaker 3:That can be an example. Or oh, okay, it's this race in the beginning of October. There, it's this race in the beginning of October. There's a chance it could be hot, but it could be cold. I did heat training to be safe. But I'm not advocating for you to do that because of X, y, z, well, why not? And then, of course, you have to have a reason for it. Those are two immediate examples I can think of.
Speaker 1:I've got one and I'm going to let you ruminate in your head to kind of come up with an example. So so I have one finish at the bad water 135. And the most common question that I get out of all of my coaching experience in any format by a long shot, is what should my longest long run be? Before race X? That is like universally the most asked question that I, that I, that I get year round, and it's been that way for over a decade, that I get year round, and it's been that way for over a decade. And so, true to form, whenever I have athletes that ask me what my log, that I'm trading for the Battlewater 135, and they ask me what my longest long run before that race was, and it is exactly 63 miles, and I can remember the exact route that I did from my home in Colorado Springs to tally up 63 miles. Why was it? 63 miles is just the way this loop worked out and it was about what I wanted to do and things like that.
Speaker 1:The longest long run that I give any other athletes improbable, that it would be exactly 63 miles and the way that I back into the answer is with their previous training. So a long run of whatever we're trying to prescribe has to fall in line with the volume that they are doing at the time and the volume that they can build up to in advance of the race. There's no magic prerequisite. That is exactly 63 miles that I happen to prescribe, that I happen to prescribe for myself, it's just it. But the philosophy is exactly the same. I did a 63 mile long run exactly because that duration of long run falled in line with what my training could support at the time. So the strategy aligned, but the outcome of what the exact number was is completely different based on the situation. So that's how I kind of like back into the explanation, when these like discrepancies, you know exist, and I could go through any other race that I have done that I'm also coaching an athlete, for I will get that question what is my longest long run? What is?
Speaker 1:The athlete will ask me what is my longest long run going to be? What did you do for your longest long run in advance of that race? And sometimes they're close, but many times they're like 50% different, you know, and in this case, like a 40 mile long run would be completely appropriate. Completely appropriate for an athlete doing the bad water 135. And I did a 63 mile long run and those are two very different. That's 33% different, right? Just doing the math. They're doing the rough math off the top of my head.
Speaker 1:So I guess my point is is the the exact prescription when you look at it on paper could be wildly different from one person to the next and, in this case, from me to another athlete, but the strategy of how you get to that can actually be remarkably similar because we're still following the same kind of rules and laws and strategies of periodization and training, design and stuff like that. So it's an important component to remember as we're going through all of this. Okay, so, and you've I've teed you up what's the example that you that's coming to the forefront of your brain right now, in terms of when you have trained for an event and an athlete is training for the same event and the prescription is different.
Speaker 2:I just think this is such a funny question because I think of everyone in such a silo, like every single one of my athletes is in a complete silo and, yes, the principles of their training are the same. But I could focus, so I might go do a training peaks review for athlete one and then athlete two right after this, and they're training for exactly the same race and I'm not even thinking about well, this person's doing this. Why am I having this person do this, which is totally different? Why does this person have 10 hours a week of training? Why does this person have well, should I be tweaking what athlete A is doing so it's closer to athlete B?
Speaker 2:Like the thought doesn't even cross my mind, because it's exactly what you said. Like the principles and the foundation of what we're doing exist across all athletes and that includes myself but the athletes and their schedules and their histories and their capabilities and what their body can handle, it's just so different that there's no world where I'm going to say, well, I did this and man, I did a really good job, so you should probably do this too. It just the thought doesn't even occur to me now.
Speaker 2:On the flip side, occasionally there are things that all like really mess up, and then I can use that to tell my athletes All right, I did this really badly for the Florida Keys. I've got someone doing it this upcoming weekend, so I'm telling him, like, don't do these things, because I really messed this up. I think that's a perfectly appropriate thing to do. Or for Tahoe 200 back in the day, just on a whim, my husband and I were like hey, we should go out to the Tahoe course and do a marathon a day for four days in a row and it's basically like doing half of the race. And now I work for CTS and I realized this is called a training camp, like this is a real thing.
Speaker 2:And this is something I should be prescribing to my athletes. So every once in a while there are those little moments of genius, like little things that are incredibly effective where, yes, this is totally appropriate to apply to my athlete. Or I really screw it up and I use that to influence my athletes training or their education, but otherwise, like, everyone is operating in a complete silo, because they're just different human beings and human bodies who just happen to be moving up and down at the same rate or the same distance at the same time.
Speaker 1:I've used that silo description a lot with the athletes that I work with.
Speaker 1:I'm kind of in a little bit of a unique position where I have several really prolific athletes that everybody wants to follow and emulate on Strava right or emulate their Strava, and a lot of them are training for the same or very similar races.
Speaker 1:And they will ask me I'm kind of taking this out of the original context of the of the discussion, but I think the message point will translate over They'll sit, they'll look and say oh well, you know elite athlete X, y, z who's training for CCC or whatever. They had this patterning going into this race and I'm training for CCC, you know they kind of expect a similar patterning going into it. And I always kind of go back to the theme that we mentioned earlier is that the strategy generally has like a 90% alignment. I don't know how else to you know encapsulate a percentage on that, but I think. But I think that's a pretty good description, the overall strategy. Like if we put a long range training plan up for a similar time duration athlete, that's going to match up pretty darn close. But the specifics of it's a six hour long run and two by 30 minutes, steady states and things like that.
Speaker 1:That's where you're going to see kind of like the most amount of variation or like the density of the training right, so how much they can handle in a acute period of time, five day period of time or something like that just because the better athletes are going to have more capacity to handle, you know, like, like higher workloads.
Speaker 1:But it does put the spotlight to your point and it does put a much more, a much brighter spotlight on on trying to silo the athletes off as much as possible and then reinforce that this is specific to them, because we have this really neat social application, in mainly Strava, that people use to just they use it for everything, right, they use it to, you know, satiate their own ego. They use it as a training tool, they use it to see what other people are doing, to kind of like glean ideas from. And there are there, there are absolutely a lot of bright spots to doing that. You know I learned things about, you know, certain people's training programs that I wouldn't normally have access to if we didn't have that, if we didn't have that like transparency on the scene. But there are a lot. There are 10 times or a hundred times maybe more pitfalls associated with with that strategy than than anything else.
Speaker 2:You know what One of my biggest I'll call it a theme, but also a lesson for the last several months has been in this. So this started right before Moab 240 last year when I was trying to figure out like what my outcome goal would be, what my process goals would be and my goals would be and my number. I said number one goal was mind my own business, and I think this applies to training. It applies to racing. Now, if you are trying to be competitive, if you're trying to get a podium spot like, you're probably gonna have to pay attention to those around you as well, but generally for 95 of us, being just minding your own business is a good way to go about it.
Speaker 2:Now, with that said, I love Strava, I love giving people kudos. I just think that's super fun. But you just can't get caught up in that. I just need to put blinders on to everyone around me, whether I am in a race or focusing on my training, because I need to mind my own business and the more I do that I find the less injury prone I am, the better I feel about my training, the better I execute my own plans and just feel like the outcomes have been stronger just by focusing on that one thing like mind your own business.
Speaker 1:You're creating your own silo, as you being a self-coached athlete, right? So it's the same strategy of siloing out, like your individual athletes, for what they individually need. You're just applying that same thing to yourself and using this framework, which I think is really cool. I'm going to steal it from you at some point. I'll give you credit for it later. The royalty checks will be in the mail but using this framework of minding your own business, which I think is which I think a lot, I think it will resonate with a lot of people. Ryan, do you want to tack onto that at all?
Speaker 3:No, she summed it up perfectly, just funny anecdote. My rule for myself is I don't follow people that make me feel bad about my own training. If I've got a really fast friend, I don't follow them. For let's see that I'm like damn, like we used to be the same level and then now we're not, or he's really crushing it and on the roads, or vice versa, just like I don't if I'm seeing what they're doing. It makes me feel bad. Unfollow, sorry, you tailor your.
Speaker 3:Strava feed in order to help your ego not intentionally, not to hurt, it fair enough fair enough, it's been interesting, okay.
Speaker 1:So let's get a little bit more specific. Now we're going to talk about the races, right, and the reason I think that this is really pertinent is, unlike the training for races and I get this all the time Like athletes come in, I get this inquiry on my web on like on my website a lot. I was following athlete X Y Z that's training for this race. I am now training for that race. Should I follow that exact same patterning? And they're kind of like trying to coach themselves, essentially using the blueprint of other athletes who have trained for those races, to to get a better fix, to get a better fix on the training process. And that happens all the time.
Speaker 1:But there's an even more specific component of this that doesn't have that lens of transparency, and that's the, the races themselves, and that's because they're such unique and of one experiences, like if you go and do the Wasatch 100, or if you go do the San Juan solstice, that process shows up in one single file on Strava, or one single instance of the entirety of the, of the entirety of the journey, not weeks and months and things like that you can kind of like glean patterns from. So it's a much different. It's a much different proposition of what do you actually translate from your racing experience over to your athletes, because it's that unique property adds this kind of adds this dimension to it that they're not they have, they're going to have one a lot of times. Like Ryan, you're doing the hard rock 100, right, you might only get one shot at this, unless you want to wait another decade to get into the race. Right, you might get one shot.
Speaker 1:And so the thirst is to try to accumulate as much of other people's experiences as possible and see if you can somehow apply a filter to those experiences to glean something kind of like relevant for you.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to kind of ask this of you guys in your professional capacity as coaches you've got athletes that are training for the same races that you have done. When it comes down to race time, you're going through the race plan and things like that. Can you in any way encapsulate this filter that you have to apply to counseling your athletes who are going into these races that you have done with? This blend of this is what I experienced here, versus trying to generalize it to what they may or may not experience. And, ryan, we're going to start with you, and I want to leave this with. This is a really tricky, like a really tricky question because it's based off of a single instance of a race and even if you have 10 years experience, or something like that, doing that race, it still is a singular or maybe a few time experience for the athlete and it just brings a level of complexity to the whole thing.
Speaker 3:I think one thing I have to be really mindful of is that technical and runnable is relative.
Speaker 3:I may define a certain section as oh, this is really runnable, because my strengths are downhill running and I enjoyed that section and I hit it in the daytime without a headlamp and I can't. I have to be mindful to know where that athlete is at. If they are a good downhill runner, if they have confidence in that, are they going to be maybe further behind and be at it with their headlamp? And if I I'm, if we're going to the race plan and I keep saying like, oh yeah, this section is super runnable, and then they get there and it's not runnable to them, like what the hell, what is this council I have received? I mean, like that's not a fun thing to be surprised by at some point in a race.
Speaker 3:So I think that is one thing. Um, yes, you experience that in a race, you see it firsthand, you experience it. But again, zoom out in everybody's perspective and their skill level and when they're going to hit the race, if they're having a crew or not. Having a crew, that dictates the race plan and how things are going to flow. As well, are they going to have a pacer or not have a pacer, things of that nature, dan. You want to tack on to that.
Speaker 2:I would say the things that I can and should be sharing are factual and descriptive and the things that I should not be sharing with them are emotional or personal. So, kind of to Ryan's point, like in this section of the race, I was throwing up off the side of the trailer, I was crying because it was so rough. Like anything that is just based in my feelings that's not relevant to that person, because they might be feeling completely different in that part of the race. But if it is a matter of you are at high altitude and so this is how you need to adjust your nutrition, because that's a fact, that's something we talk about. Or this section of the race has golf ball sized rocks all over the trail for one to two miles at a 20% grade climb. Like I can share that.
Speaker 2:That's not me saying, oh, it's so crappy and rocky and annoying and just try to get through it. I'm not trying to attach any emotion to the race description or like what I'm preparing them for, but I can certainly tell them, like the facts, this is what you're going to encounter. You might feel this way in this place and if you do, here's what we're going to do to like mitigate that, um, but I think the more I can pull my own personal like feelings out of it, the better, but the more I can describe like what they're going to encounter, without like planting any ideas in their head about how fun or not fun or like nice it's going to be. I think that's my approach.
Speaker 1:I think the factual piece of it is really pertinent. I'm reminded of this the description that coach AJW sends out every year for the Western States 100. It's a you know five or six paragraph 2000 word type of deal and the theme of it, or one of the themes of it, is is very factual. He could certainly talk about the many times that he's puked at XYZ point or had an epic bonk or you know when so-and-so passed him. You know over here like all those kind of like personal stories, but it's very much. There's a descent. It's 2000 feet. At the very bottom you'll find a river. You know if it's full, you know if it's full, use the water here, like all those different like like it's almost like geographic inflection points that aren't going to change from year to year unless they change the course or the water conditions are different or things like that. And then also kind of like relative to the to to the climbs, to to the climbs and the descents, I take a very similar approaches to to you guys. I almost tried not to get into the race flow itself, though and this is where I might deviate from you guys a little bit is I really try to. I'll use the word silo off again because we use it a few times. I really try to silo off the athlete's individual race experience as best I can, based on what I know about their training and their experiences, and try to describe the race flow as I would if I hadn't had eyes on the ground or boots on the ground, so to speak. What the individual or the experiential parts of the race that I actually do emphasize are the things that you aren't going to find in the race manual. So, for example, for Tour de Gente, absolutely have your crew use the Alsta Valley as a base of operations. That doesn't have anything to do with the race itself. You have people coming over and supporting you. Stay in Alistair. It's centrally located. It's an hour drive to anywhere, any of the aid station or any of the life bases that you actually want to get to. It's well-resourced. You can come back at any time of night, not really disturb anybody.
Speaker 1:Like I said, that's just something that is universal, right Across the entirety of anybody who's actually doing that race, whether it's going to take them 70 hours or the entirety of all six days. If they have crew out there, that's something they can use. The same thing could be said for the western states, 100. The railies at the corner of forest hill road and I think it's i-80 is a common rallying point for all of the crews out there to like resupply with food and ice and sandwiches for the day and all those other things that it's not going to change whether you're whether they're supporting somebody at the very front of the pack or the very middle of the pack or the or the back of the pack.
Speaker 1:So when I'm like going over all like the pre-race stuff, I tend to focus on those like external things. A bighorn would be a really actually, ryan, you've got this experience right when your crew goes back into Bighorn, there is no cell phone service at all ever, and that's a thing that you, that's a piece of experience that you get from actually having been out on the course. Once you leave the town I'm blanking on the name right now, ryan, help me out Sheridan. Yeah, once you leave Sheridan Wyoming and go up and over the pass, it's nothing, it's nothing. You're not going to have access to any sort of information at all for the entirety of the race. It's those, it's.
Speaker 1:I think it's those types of things, those types of experiences that I've had out of races personally that I try to translate on onto athletes. It's not like the race flow thing itself. So there's a little bit at least, what I do. There's a little bit of this theme that ann mentioned where you're trying to keep it factual, but I also try to. I won't say I do this 100 of the time, but I try as much as possible to try to stay out of the actual mile one to mile 50 or mile one to mile 100, whatever race flow, and keep it to the things is otherwise specified that you you know you're only going to know unless you actually get the. You know you get on the ground there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the logistics of lodging the best place to stay. Okay, it says you can go to this aid station, but you don't want to go there because it's going to be a quick drive for your crew. The road is really rough. Learning those things are key and in some cases race manuals are pretty good and giving you those caveats or warnings, but other times they're not, and you learn that the hard way and we can relay that information so our athletes and their crew do not have to learn it the hard way.
Speaker 1:And I think the translatable point for the athletes that are listening is if you're trying to glean race information from other people that have done the race is, if you're trying to glean race information from other people that have done the race, focus on those factual areas, whether they're within the race itself or the logistics surrounding the race for the crew and support people and things like that. Focus on those areas versus was it hot at this section or is this section runnable, or whatever, because those are all going to be in the eye of the beholder and also they change so much year to year. I mean, even we'll use Bighorn as an example, right, it does have a pretty prototypical muddy section, right.
Speaker 3:That can start early or late.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and it could be like slightly muddy or ridiculously muddy, and I personally have been. I've raced that race and I've paced on that race as well and seen kind of both ends of the of the muddy spectrum. But trying to ask somebody who has done that race previous years how muddy it actually is, the variability is going to be much more on that individual's interpretation of that as well as the race day conditions, and that's not something that, even if they're all trying to help out, but it's hard for that individual to actually translate that to what's actually gonna, what's actually gonna, uh, go on on the ground there. So we've gotta like we've got to be really kind of like really mindful of it. So in that example, what?
Speaker 3:you take out fact, it is going to be really kind of like, really mindful of it. So in that example, what you take out fact, it is going to be muddy at some point. Be prepared. Yeah, exactly, I was training. Run in the mud, know what shoe works, what sock, etc. It's going to be muddy, be prepared. Yep, you will find out the severity and when it starts and when it ends on your own. Have fun.
Speaker 1:I mean pretty much. I mean pretty much. I mean you've got to reasonably prepare them for that piece because it is so significant. Getting any more granular than it's going to be muddy, I think, is a little bit of a. It's kind of a little bit of a fool's errand, especially if we're putting ourselves in the position of it's another athlete trying to translate that information to the, to their friend or their training partner or some random acquaintance. What the information is going to be on the ground.
Speaker 1:Because that's really the orientation that I have for this particular podcast is people are out there, they're trying to glean information from any number of different sources, from the race organization, from friends and family, people who have done the race before, and how to actually kind of apply the filter. I think the right way to apply the filter is more coarse versus fine-tuned, right If they're getting really specific and you know it's six inches in this section and two inches in this section and really sloppy mud in this other section. Just okay, it's muddy, like that's the translatable point, not the specificity of everything.
Speaker 2:You know what else I do, so in conversations with athletes, I try to keep it factual and individual. But then I also have this list of what if scenarios that I give to all athletes before they're doing races like this, especially the longer races. And it's a really long list and it has things like what if I get nauseous? What if I lose the ability to eat solid foods? What if this happens? What if I get the worst blisters I've ever had in the world? And what I'll do is after I have my own race experience and I realize, wow, man, that was a high altitude race and I got this splitting headache up the back of my neck at this point. Maybe that's something I should add to those what if scenarios.
Speaker 2:And I'm not going to plant the seed for this person and say you know, this happened to me, so it might happen to you, but I'm going to give them that list of 25 potential scenarios that they could run into in a 100-mile race, and that's going to be one of them. So then they've thought about it and then they've come up with what their plan of action would be if that happened. So if it does happen, okay, they've got a plan, and if it doesn't happen. I haven't like planted the seed that well. This happened to me, so it's probably going to happen to you, but it's kind of a sneaky way to at least get them thinking about all of these potential things that could occur during the course of their race.
Speaker 1:It ends up being like you can't predict the unpredictable right, but you've got to have a reasonable toolkit for when those things do, when shit actually does hit the fan, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Ryan, how do you help your athletes navigate that unpredictable piece of it? And, by the way, this unpredictable piece, that is the root of the most common question that I get how long should my longest long run be? Because inevitably there's a big gap between that longest long run and the actual race. And I think that the that, that trying to satiate that gap, leads to that very question and it's the same theme as you just mentioned like what happens? What if I encounter these things? That, uh, that a I haven't encountered before gotten nauseous, gotten blisters and things like that but B are very difficult to predict if they're actually going to happen. So they're all wrapped up in the same theme and I think the navigation tools that you can use, both in advance and actually during when those things happen, are kind of remarkably similar. So, ryan, I'll ping it over to you Like how do you help your athletes kind of be armored up for those types of things?
Speaker 3:Go through the what if scenarios, like Ann says, and try to find moments in their training that it has happened. And then did you handle it successfully? Great, we're going to repeat that process. You did to handle it, solve the problem, or you did not. So now let's learn from it and what are you going to do differently the next time? Or the feet situation, the stomach situation? Well, if it does happen, let's have this first aid kit, so to speak, this backup plan of the shoes and socks and the drop bag, some Tums or this food that you know always sets really well with you of go through the what-if scenarios. If you have solved them in training, fantastic, repeat that success. If not, let's keep discussing it and figure out what your mental flow chart is going to be to go and try to solve that issue yeah, so I I keep it really simple.
Speaker 1:So the two most common things are foot problems and stomach problems. You know there's a whole list of other things. You can have vision problems, you can get off course things like that, but I kind of start with those because they're you can kind of come up with some concrete thing, really easy, concrete things to do. So I teach people how to tape their feet, use some kinesiology tape and some tincture of benzoin to stick it on, and I'll do a little zoom call to show them how to like pre-cut the patches and stuff like that. And you know, some of that is functional but a lot of it is psychological. It's like now I have something that I know I can do, that I've at least practiced one or two times before that if I have to do it in a race, granted, it's a different spot on my foot, it's different. Whatever, I've at least got some kind of resource there. So that's what I do on the foot thing and on the stomach thing, although there's a, once again, a myriad of wives tales out there on how to fix a sour stomach. Right, you want to stand on your head and you know ginger beer and suck on a candy and all these other kinds of things. Slow down and cool off, just start, just start there. We know that actually works right. You reduce your intensity and you can reduce your core temperature and you can redistribute some of the blood flow to to your gastrointestinal system. Start with that, and then any of the other stuff that you hear at the aid stations or somebody that's running next to you you know, tells you to try. Then you can deploy those kinds of things, but just start with slowing down.
Speaker 1:Slowing down and cooling off and then the final thing I kind of like armor up my athletes is more of an attitude, and I take this from. It's not my conjuring, it's somebody that I've worked with for years. It's this former Navy SEAL that I've done a number of projects with that. A lot of some people in the audience will recognize who it is. It's Harold Zendel, otherwise known as German, and he's been around the scene for a long time and whenever we've been out on projects and stuff goes south which is inevitably the case with these events he would always just look at me and goes there's always a solution, coop, let's just find it. There's always a solution. And so I think that attitude like armoring athletes up.
Speaker 1:With that attitude of there's always a solution, you just have to find it is really empowering. It doesn't matter how bad your feet get or how bad your brain gets or how bad your stomach gets or whatever kind of like ails you. There's always a solution out there. You just got to find it and you can actively work towards whatever that solution is, even if it's just guessing. You know, there's nothing, there's nothing wrong with that in in many cases, because there are any different number of kind of permutations of how these things arise and you can't be you can't be completely prepared for all of them, but you can be completely prepared to actively try to find a solution because it is actually out there.
Speaker 1:So there's always a solution. So I kind of start with those three, those three things, two things that are super tangible feet, stomach, easy solutions. And the last one is it kind of covers everything else all at the same time. Right, I don't try to get too granular of what if this, what if that, because you can play that game how many, like an infinite number of times, right, I try to have one thing that encompasses it all and that is always try to find a solution. There's always a solution out there.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe the conversation is when because we all have that free race check in, where we're talking about the outcome goals, the process goals, the fine tuning, like the last things we need to talk about Maybe part of that conversation also needs to be like all right, here's the plan.
Speaker 2:We just talked about all of this. Let's assume something's going to go wrong. Like, how are you going to deal with that mentally? What is going to be the mantra or the trigger that you're using to like, keep you mentally strong when something goes wrong? And then the second question is if something goes wrong or when it goes wrong, are you willing to use every minute that the race is giving you to try to fix this and try to stay in the race? And for some people the answer is no, because there's a time goal. But for those especially more towards the mid and the back of the pack, I really try to encourage them. Like, you paid for this many minutes of running, so you better use every single minute that you are given, like use the resources, use the time and just see what you can fix. And I would rather you run out of time trying to fix problems versus giving up on them before you've been trying to solve them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot of what I would call like mid-pack people that have a lot of time to spare to finish a race, and some of them within their own goal setting framework. It's absolutely important to them to finish, no matter what. So they were aiming for a 24-hour buckle at the Western States 100. They're not going to get that and it's absolutely important for them to finish under a 30-hour cutoff. Some athletes it's not a part of their goal orientation. They kind of want to go time X, y, z or bust right 25 hours or bust, and if I run into a spot where I have to fix all these problems, they're just not interested in, you know, staying out there for 30 hours when they were expecting a 20 hour day or kind of kind of something like that. And I do think that some of that is in the eye of the beholder and we're not going to adjudicate. You know, the merits of DNFing versus not DNFing or sticking it out during this. But I do think it's a worthwhile conversation to have, either with your coach, your support system or even just internally. For if you are faced with that, what are you going to do? Because the last thing you want to have happen is make the wrong decision under duress, which can happen very frequently because you don't have time to process what this framework is that you should have processed beforehand. When you're not under that same amount of duress, it's not easy, but it's a lot easier to come up with that framework when you're sitting down in your office or you're just on a normal run.
Speaker 1:What if this actually happens? Do I want to finish? Do I want to suck it up or not? That's a way easier thing to work through in advance than when you're sitting at the aid station puking your guts out and you haven't slept for 35 hours and you're trying to discern what is valuable to you and what is within your value set and relevant relative to do I need to actually finish this race or not. That's a hard thing to actually come up with in real time for a lot of individuals. So I think the learning lesson with that is figuring, figure it out in advance. You're you're much more well-resourced to do that in advance versus when you're trying to do it in real time.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm going to open it up for last thoughts, ryan. When you're trying to do it in real time Okay, I'm going to open it up for last thoughts. Ryan, you get to go first. Any last thoughts for the athletes out there that are entering the racing season. They're trying to glean as much information as possible from all of the different sources of information that they can get it from Strava, friends, coaches, people who just the peanut gallery out there that tells them that they should be doing things. Is there anything you want to impart on the listeners on how to navigate this wild landscape as they're getting ready for races?
Speaker 3:Listen to it all, but be selective in what you maybe attach to. May attach is not the right word, but listen, be a listen, take it in. Take your buddy's funny anecdote about the mud at Bighorn it started at mile 30 for him that year or any sort of thing. Take it in, but never get attached to one specific thing that's like oh, that's probably going to happen to me, so I should be prepared. Or they made up a bunch of time on this part of the course, or whatever it may be.
Speaker 1:Perfect, and you want to opine on that as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd say two things. So similar train of thought to Ryan allow yourself to be inspired by other people, but don't allow yourself to be pressured by what other people are doing or what other people are saying. And then also, I feel like this is a sport that is equally problem solving and physical. So you know, maybe you're not the best athlete in the world, but if you're a really good problem solver, that's going to make up for a lot when it comes to race day. So know that. And if that is a weakness of yours, if you're an extremely talented athlete but not necessarily a strong problem solver, that's probably something that you also want to be working on. So, I think, be inspired by people, don't be pressured by people. And then remember that problem solving is a big part of the game, so make sure that's part of your skill set as well.
Speaker 1:I like that. I like that a lot. I'll play ball here on this one as well.
Speaker 1:I think that one of the hardest skills to develop as a coach is taking a big set of information and making it individual and specific for one person. That's ultimately why we are all in business. We have this big set of information that we have from physiology and experience and practice and things like that, and we're trying to distill that, all of that information that's in textbooks and classes and courses and experiences that we have in continuing education courses and things like that. And we're trying to distill that, all of that information that's in textbooks and classes and courses and experiences that we have in continuing education courses and things like that. We're trying to distill it down to a individual for a situation.
Speaker 1:Right, that's the skillset. That is hard. That's hard. That's what we work on developing as professionals. So, realizing that's a hard skillset and pinging off a little bit of Ryan's theme no-transcript for what's going to be specific to you and, at the end of the day, default to the themes that are more general versus specific, and I think you've got a good pathway to take almost anything and have it be relatable and functional to you, if you kind of take that sequential process of things, this was fun.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this was fun you guys.
Speaker 1:Thanks for coming on, and can we invite you back and put you on the spot, since this is your first time? We didn't scare you off.
Speaker 2:I would love to. I'm hoping that next time I'll be at greater than like 60% brain capacity, because I think I'm still not quite there from Cocodona, but I would love to come back this is fun.
Speaker 3:What day did you Share with the listeners? Yeah, how many days out are you?
Speaker 1:Can't even do that, can't even do that math.
Speaker 2:Early morning, Friday 2 am. Friday is when I finish. So Saturday, Sunday, Monday, what day is it?
Speaker 1:It's.
Speaker 2:Tuesday Four days out. That was four days ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, these big long races, they skew your sense of time and calendar right, because they occupy so much, like so much of it, and then it's offset from like a normal work week. So then you're like what day is it, and everything, but I'm actually I uh really impressed with your intellectual faculty right now and, to zell like having been once again, I'm going to translate my personal experience onto you and the exact opposite manner that you know we've all talked about.
Speaker 1:I know, after trudeau and after coca-dona, myself intellectual pile of mush for at least a week, at least a week, probably two weeks. So you got it.
Speaker 2:You got something going on well, I'll tell you, I went to bed, so finished the race at two, went to bed at four, woke up at 6 30 and was like all right, I guess, seize the day, here we go check my emails I don't know what I said in response to those emails, but I like cleared out my inbox and I should probably go back and check your athletes listening to this.
Speaker 1:now have context to whatever counsel you were giving them at the time and whatever. Yeah, exactly, treat it with a little bit of suspect 200 mile drunk text or something.
Speaker 1:I think that we should, after these things, we should put it like you know, the legal disclaimers that you see at the end of a lot of your athletes' emails. We should like, we should customize that based on if we're coming from an event, or something like this Like take this advice with a grain of salt, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All right, guys, thanks for coming on the podcast. We're gonna both of you guys back. That's racing season. I'm sure there's lots of other anecdotes and stories and things that we can impart on listeners from both our experiences but also the experiences that we have our athletes. So, once again, appreciate you guys. All right, folks, there you have it. There you go.
Speaker 1:Much thanks to coaches and Ryan for coming on the podcast today, and I just can't tell you guys how impressed I am with and not only are finished for Kokedona, but coming onto the podcast today and being as articulate as she is you would.
Speaker 1:She doesn't really kind of skip a beat and you would have never have known that she went through all the sleep deprivation and pain and agony and suffering and all those things that you go through when you do a 250 mile race that you did just a mere few days ago before recording this podcast. So shout out to Ann for coming on the podcast today and opining on this extremely important aspect that I think a lot of athletes are facing in front of them right now, as we are entering the racing season. All right, if you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with your friends and your training partners. As always, this podcast is brought to you without sponsors or endorsements or advertisement of any kind, and if you want to help support this podcast, just share it with people and tell them how much you like the information. That is all you have to do. I appreciate the heck out of each and every one of the listeners out there and, as always, we will see you out on the trails.
