Jared Ward placed sixth in the marathon at the 2016 Rio Olympics and eighth in this year s Boston Marathon. But Jared is more than just a runner. He s a coach, a statistics professor, a husband, and a father of four. Today, I talk to Jared about how he balances all those aspects of his life, even as he trains for the 2020 Olympic Games, and about exactly how he eats, recovers, and programs his workouts. We also discuss how he deals with nerves before a big race and stays in a positive mindset while he runs them. And we end our conversation with Jared s advice for amateur runners.
00:07:59.240So let's talk about running and sort of training your philosophy towards training and recovery and all that stuff.
00:08:04.220Because I know there's a lot of people who listen to the podcast who are runners or who want to get into running.
00:08:09.040I'm sure you'd have some great insights.
00:08:10.480But let's just look at your training schedule right now.
00:08:13.520Like how many days, miles are you running a week right now?
00:08:17.840So I just ran the Boston Marathon 10 days ago.
00:08:22.520And so I'm just getting back into it right now.
00:08:25.080I ran six or seven miles yesterday and I did a little kind of a speed play 10-mile run today where I went a couple minutes faster and then slowed down for a couple minutes and kind of testing things out and making sure that everything's feeling good.
00:08:39.780And I like to be pretty cautious coming off of marathons to make sure that I'm recovered before I really put the throttle back down again.
00:08:46.820But in general, I train six days a week.
00:08:50.080I take Sundays off and that's a day for family and a day for church.
00:08:58.020Occasionally, I'll race on a Sunday, but I prefer not to.
00:09:01.520And then the other six days, I'll have harder workouts on Tuesday, Thursday and a long run on Saturday and fill it in with mileage totaling somewhere between 100 and 120 miles a week, depending on where we're at in the training and intensity and things like that.
00:09:17.820And then throw in a couple of lifts and probably two or three hours of cross training on the exercise bike, normally downstairs with my kids watching Coco or Moana or whatever they're into.
00:09:35.520But let's talk about how do you program yourself or maybe other folks as well.
00:09:40.440Like, you know, I do barbell training and so I'm typically looking at like three months of like training where your first couple weeks you're doing volume and then you increase the intensity a bit and then eventually you peak.
00:09:53.880Is there something similar that goes on with your training, like where you sort of break things into cycles?
00:09:59.800And, you know, I consider a training cycle around the same as conventional for lifting.
00:10:05.940And my lifting cycle kind of mirrors in terms of what we're doing in the running stuff.
00:10:12.420And so, yeah, it's a 12 to 16 week cycle, maybe as long as 20 weeks if I'm starting really from ground zero or when I'm coaching athletes that are really starting from ground zero.
00:10:27.020And so, you know, it's a volume phase at the beginning where for running and for lifting, we're building up volume and resiliency to training.
00:10:34.720And then we go into kind of more of a strength phase where we're doing tempo runs and marathon pace stuff.
00:10:41.820And we're gradually increasing volume as our body adjusts to that.
00:10:47.260And then towards the end, there's a little bit more of a speed segment where you cut down on volume and intensity gets a little bit higher.
00:10:52.940I think in the marathon, that training is a little bit more subtle than if it was, you know, a 5K or a 10K where you'd really jump into the speed.
00:11:02.760The reality is in a marathon, you're never going to be hitting oxygen debt.
00:11:06.440And so it becomes very important to train the aerobic system and then to be well rested and tapered up before the race.
00:11:13.460And so I think in marathon training, we see, you know, this building phase and then our strength phase slowly transitions to a little bit of a speed phase.
00:11:23.120But on paper, you might look at it and say, no, that's still very much strength.
00:11:52.160So power lifts, you know, Olympic lifts like cleans and snatches, squats and lunges and step ups, a little bit of time on my hamstrings, RDLs.
00:12:02.880Or, you know, I love Russian leans or Nordic curls, those kind of exercises.
00:12:09.120And then I leave about 6 minutes at the end of my workout for a push and a pull on my arms.
00:12:44.520And there's a lot of research out there, the compelling research that says that, you know, when you lift and when you lift heavy, it makes you a more efficient endurance athlete.
00:12:53.580And so when it comes to running, you know, you force, you know, we do the same running motion day after day.
00:13:00.540Your muscles are going to slowly lose the volume of firing capacity in them because you don't need to fire every muscle fiber to push yourself for the next step on a 10-mile run.
00:13:11.440But you get under a heavy bar and you're squatting and you get down there in the bottom of a squat.
00:13:18.560And so the theory behind that of why we see runners more efficient is that it just, you know, it makes a difference in terms of the volume of fibers you have activating for you.
00:13:29.220And I just feel better when I'm lifting.
00:13:32.180I feel like I recover a little bit faster.
00:13:33.980I'm a little more resilient to injury.
00:13:35.360And so it's an important part of my training cycle, but it's not a very, you know, in terms of the percentage of time I spend lifting, it's a very small part of my training.
00:13:45.980And where do you fit in your strength training?
00:13:53.460So, you know, on most days I run twice a day.
00:13:56.960And so on my hard days, you know, I'll lift after hard workouts.
00:14:00.900So typically coach has things set up for my more interval-like training or tempo runs on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
00:14:09.300And so, you know, I'll run that in the morning and then I'll come back in the afternoon and do a shorter run before a lift to kind of warm up.
00:14:16.680And then I'll do my lift on those hard days.
00:14:18.680I like my easy days as really recovery days.
00:14:21.440And so I want the days in between my hard workouts to be rest.
00:14:25.680And so I kind of try to pack it all into one day and then allow myself some recovery time.
00:14:31.120We'll talk about recovery here in a bit.
00:14:32.600What's your approach when you're training, when you have a day?
00:14:35.700Like, so like, you know, when you plan a program cycle, you are trying to pre-plan the stress that you put into your body so you can recover and adapt.
00:14:44.600But then there's other stuff that comes into life, like, you know, the kids up until three o'clock in the morning throwing up.
00:14:50.500You have a bad night of sleep, which adds more stress to the body.
00:15:01.860And I think that is key to long-term sustainable improvement.
00:15:07.240If you just put your head down and push through, you're liable to get injured.
00:15:10.180And I think, you know, when I was in college and even just out of college, you know, three and four and five years ago as an early marathoner, I think I kind of did that.
00:15:20.380I just put my head down and said, okay, I'm in the training cycle, so no matter what happens, I'm hitting this workout.
00:15:24.740And these are the paces I hit this workout in last time, so I got to hit the same paces this time.
00:15:30.820You know, my body was young enough to recover and handle that mentality.
00:15:37.280And as I've gotten a little bit older, and I just turned 30, and so I'm not super old, but I feel older, and I don't recover as fast.
00:15:46.620And what I've had to learn is that I really do need to take those kind of things into consideration.
00:15:51.720And sometimes I wake up and say, you know what, today's not the day.
00:15:54.620So it's either going to be the same workout, but at 70% or 80%, or it's going to be, we're just going to take another easy day-to-day, and we'll talk with coach, and we'll replan this workout when I'm ready for it.
00:16:05.140And I think this mentality that really has developed for me over this last year has been to just let the fitness come.
00:16:14.700And so instead of trying to force some sort of result or force the weight or the times in training, I just say, you know what, it's an effort-based thing.
00:16:26.020I've run long enough that I know what things should feel like when I'm healthy, and I know what pushing too hard is.
00:16:31.020And so I just let the fitness come and try to be a little bit more patient, and I've had a lot of success with that.
00:16:36.660I ran my best marathon time in Boston just a week and a half ago.
00:16:41.480And if you looked at my training, there weren't really any fireworks workouts.
00:16:45.780There weren't anything where if you compared them with other training cycles that you'd say, oh, man, he's running faster than he's ever run before.
00:17:49.180And I think that quick attention to injury has been beneficial over the last many, many years of our marriage and of me competing.
00:17:58.600I also have another massage therapist that I see sometimes when things are just too crazy at home with the kids.
00:18:03.720And I try to make it a point in training to get to him once every week or every other week.
00:18:09.560And then I'm still close at BYU, training with my same coach and, in fact, running with the guys on the team occasionally.
00:18:16.880And the trainers and physical therapists at BYU have been so nice to continue to spend some time with me when I have something flare up or when I need some attention there.
00:18:27.320And so I do try to make sure I'm staying on top of these things.
00:18:32.280And when something flares up, you want to get some attention to it really quickly.
00:18:36.200And so the Norma take and the vibrating meteor ball and some of those kind of self-massaging stuff I'm definitely using at home.
00:18:45.560But I'm taking advantage of a lot of things.
00:18:48.280And I do, I think it's made a difference when you're trying to perform as high as your potential is.
00:18:56.580You're putting your body under a lot of stress.
00:18:59.360And I think it comes back to respecting your body and respecting recovery as much as you respect putting your head down and training hard.
00:19:08.320Well, you mentioned you take Sunday off once a week.
00:19:11.520Are there periods in your training or during the year where you might take a week or two off?
00:19:15.880Or are you always running and you just might taper off and just do a slow jog on those days where you just need to – or those weeks where you need some time off?
00:19:24.900Really, unless in the sake of injury and that I really just need to take a minute and reset and get things healthy again, the only time that I take off besides Sundays are right after a marathon.
00:19:37.060And I'll give myself, gosh, a solid week of at least little, you know, if you're going to call it training, it's 20-minute runs at much slower than I typically run.
00:19:49.400And it's more just jogs to try to get my legs feeling better and get a little blood flow in there.
00:19:53.400It's hopping on a spin bike and spinning for a few minutes.
00:19:56.260And sometimes those weeks after marathons are just totally off.
00:20:00.340And so I would say I give myself really two weeks of pretty solid recovery after a marathon.
00:20:07.240So, you know, the second week it's kind of phasing back in and making sure that I'm healthy and things like that.
00:20:13.040And then it's just kind of listening to things and, you know, listening to my body.
00:20:16.620And if we get to the end of a season that doesn't end with a marathon, sometimes there still is, you know, a week or two that I just need to take off and reset.
00:20:25.800And I think the reset is as much mental as it is physical.
00:20:28.720So for some people, they can wake up the day after a marathon and they can go out for a run and they can continue running every day.
00:20:35.400And it's still a good reset time because they've let go of things mentally and it just works for them.
00:20:39.260And for me, the diet aspect and the training aspect and the focus aspect has just been so much that I'm ready to just say, you know what, I don't want to think about that for a few days.
00:20:52.700And that ends up being a really, I don't know, relaxing and I think a very positive mental thing for me.
00:20:59.320Okay, we're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
00:21:15.760It's like when I do like when I do powerlifting meets, like I feel fine as soon as I'm done with it.
00:21:19.640But like the next day when I wake up, I feel terrible.
00:21:22.060Yeah, and that's so when someone who's never run a marathon asked me how it feels after a marathon, that's normally what I say is I say, you know that day, you know, you've taken off the off season, you go back into the gym and you squat really heavy.
00:21:35.520And then two days later, you're trying to walk downstairs.
00:21:39.360And I think in the marathon, you do feel, I mean, I was feeling pretty, you walk slow.
00:21:45.340As soon as you hit the finish line and your body's done, things start shutting down.
00:21:48.820You know, you've been pushing your body for longer than it's said you could.
00:21:52.960And so there, you know, I'm walking slow that day, you know, even just like walking, you know, up the steps into the hotel, I'm holding on to the rail and kind of helping myself up.
00:22:03.380But then that seems like nothing compared to how it feels when you wake up the next day and roll out of bed or when you wake up two days later and roll out of bed.
00:22:11.880So, yeah, you definitely get some of that delayed onset soreness that two days after the marathon is certainly onset.
00:22:20.960And then a couple of days later, you start to feel normal again.
00:22:24.220And the first few jogs feel a little weird.
00:22:27.600Like sometimes it just feels like your muscles aren't quite firing right.
00:22:31.240And there's, I don't know if there's any other way to explain it.
00:22:33.560You're kind of back in terms of the soreness is gone, but it just feels funny.
00:22:37.600And then normally after, you know, a week or two, it's kind of back to normal.
00:22:49.980I think, you know, certainly a part of being a marathoner is trying to keep a lean and light frame.
00:22:56.200But I think the bigger part of it is fueling with things that are going to recover you and give you the energy to keep training.
00:23:04.500And so, you know, I kind of, I picture my snapshot of my diet would be, I start the day thinking, okay, I need probably 1500 calories just to live.
00:23:16.360And then for about every mile that I'm running, I need another hundred calories.
00:23:20.760And then if I have a lift, I need a little bit extra there.
00:23:23.440And if I have some cross training, I need a little bit extra there.
00:23:26.400And so I very much start the day looking at what my training is going to be and how much that means I need to replenish in my body through the process.
00:23:33.900And then I break up the day in terms of saying, okay, I need a snack before I run, normally high carb.
00:23:39.540I need to get something in right after I run because that's going to help with recovery.
00:23:43.440And so that needs to have a little bit of protein in it, but be mostly carbohydrates.
00:23:47.380And then, you know, in my meals, I'm saying, okay, I need to get a good chunk of protein in here and I need to get, you know, eat for volume.
00:23:55.280You know, I tend to be just so hungry that I'm pushing the vegetables and things like that just for some volume.
00:24:01.160And then healthy fats, like I think that I, well, I've had some genetic testing done and it seems that my body metabolizes fat really well, which would indicate that I'd be able to respond to a marathon well.
00:24:18.060I crave the savory kind of fatty stuff.
00:24:20.760You know, I'm eating nuts or nut butters.
00:24:22.660I'm putting avocado on salads or sandwiches and things like that, trying to get, you know, healthy dosage of fats integrated into my diet as well.
00:24:31.300So, and that's kind of the snapshot, if you will.
00:24:35.740I've, you know, I've found that eating right after exercising is critical if I'm hoping to exercise later that day.
00:24:42.100Just jumpstarts recovery, glycogen stores are most receptive to being replenished in the 30 minutes following exercise.
00:24:51.220And then also getting a little protein in right before I go to bed seems to help me not wake up starving in the middle of the night and just helps me feel a little bit better in the mornings.
00:24:59.280Are you tracking macros or are you just sort of like, well, I need a little bit of protein, a little bit of fat?
00:25:05.460And I counted calories very meticulously for a time in my life.
00:25:10.400And I feel like that exercise, you know, sometimes we get discouraged about embarking on new things, especially as it relates to diet.
00:25:18.520You know, it feels so, so lifelong and limiting and we are imagining all the desserts that we're going to go without or whatever.
00:25:25.520But I felt like just the experience of tracking my macronutrients for an extended period of time, and maybe you only need a couple weeks of that, but I did it for a couple months.
00:25:35.540I feel like that exercise gave me a really good handle of just looking at food and knowing roughly what I'm getting from that.
00:25:43.280And so, you know, I don't have a notepad or an app on my phone in my back pocket that I'm entering in stuff as soon as I eat it, but I have a macro count going on in my head every day, going through the day, making sure that I'm keeping myself fueled and that I'm getting my, you know, what's about 150 grams of protein in at least every day and making sure that I'm getting enough in that I can continue to train the next day.
00:26:11.800And what's your take about like low carb eating or intermittent fasting?
00:26:17.020Because I've, in the past few years, I've seen a lot of long distance runners like swear by it.
00:26:22.060Like this is the thing that's a game changer for them, but other ones who say, well, no, it's like the high carb actually is what we need.
00:26:29.500So I think there's certainly merit to it.
00:26:31.760And there's, I mean, maybe the merit in itself is just that you and I and many others have heard stories of people going on these low carb diets and then running really well.
00:26:41.800I think as it relates to really high level metabolism, I mean, when I'm running a marathon, you know, my heart rate is probably in the 160s, maybe as high as 170 and I'm, you know, I'm cranking through fuel.
00:26:58.460And so when I've talked with nutritionists, you know, some of the research that has applied in general and has indicated that these kind of keto like diets could be beneficial for endurance athletes, their opinion is that in my case, I still need a very high carb diet just because of the rate at which I'm burning fuel.
00:27:18.040And I, you know, and I think that, you know, I'm, I'm blessed to have a metabolism that metabolizes fat at a pretty good rate already, which, which seems to be one of the reasons to kind of cycle is to, to train your body to metabolize that fat.
00:27:30.900And so in my case, um, I'm still relatively high carb, you know, probably 50 to 60% of my caloric intake is carbs, but, but relative to the guys that I'm racing against, that's, that's fairly low.
00:27:44.080You know, I'd say you look at like the, the East African diet, they're, they're probably eating more like 70 to 80% carbs.
00:27:50.400And so, I don't know, I'm, I'm an advocate of a balanced diet.
00:27:54.820I'm an advocate of just these whole foods and eating what your mom would put on your plate.
00:27:59.680And, uh, and that kind of a mentality as it comes to fueling.
00:28:03.840So you mentioned earlier about running is often like there's a psychological aspect of it.
00:28:09.260Um, how do you keep yourself from being bored or getting burnt out from your workouts where it's just, man, you're pounding pavement day in and day out year after year?
00:28:20.540Well, you just have to bite off what you can chew right now and try to not look so far in the future that you can't fathom it.
00:28:27.220I mean, as it relates to the marathon, I, I mean, I think, you know, we, we talk about hitting the wall in the marathon, right.
00:28:34.320And around miles 16 or 18 or wherever it is, runners experience this effect where all of a sudden it feels like you're, you're pushing into a wall.
00:28:44.440And I don't think that it's so much one step where burning glycogen.
00:28:49.320And then the next step we're out of glycogen and we're burning fat or, or some, you know, crazy thing like that.
00:28:55.140As so much as it is, you look up and you see mile 16.
00:28:58.580And for the first time in the race, you say, oh no, there's 10 miles left.
00:29:55.360And, um, and, you know, I think when you, when you take yourself out of the present, one step in front of the other and take yourself into this world of the future, you open yourself up to anxiety.
00:30:10.340My, and my sports psychologist in college would always say, fear and anxiety live in the future, regret and remorse live in the past.
00:30:17.180None of those emotions exist in the present.
00:30:18.800And so he conditioned me to, when I start feeling anxious, um, or regret or anything like emotions, like those to think, Jared, you're not living in the present.
00:30:28.700You've got to figure out how to get yourself back to the present.
00:30:30.680And so in this middle of this Olympic race, I started thinking, okay, what can I do?
00:30:35.540And my next water bottle was in two miles.
00:30:46.020I focused on keeping form and rhythm and getting in my next water bottle.
00:30:49.660And I got there and I drank it and thought, I don't know if I can make it eight more miles, but I know I can make it two more miles to my next water bottle.
00:30:56.220And that became the theme for the rest of that run was getting water bottle to water bottle and then looking up and seeing the guy in front of me and saying, you know what?
00:31:04.220I don't know if I can get to the finish line, but I know I can catch that guy and, um, working my way up.
00:31:09.580And, you know, and I ended up surprising myself at the finish line, having worked all the way up to sixth place, which is, which is higher than I thought that, that I could have finished.
00:31:20.800And I think what got me there, um, was the reality of just running the mile that I was in and, uh, and trying to live in the present.
00:31:29.440And when I thought back to, Hey, you know, 10, 11 miles ago, I was thinking, I don't even know if I can make it to the finish line.
00:31:34.780And then I made it to the finish line in sixth.
00:31:36.520And so I think it can be a pretty powerful exercise to find something that motivates you and something that you can say to yourself or something you can do that gets your mind back to right now and just bites off the chunk that you can manage.
00:31:50.180And so, I mean, cause you're just thinking about the, the now, like, but like, do you, what do you do to manage the nerves?
00:31:55.100Like before the race starts before you've actually, the, you know, the starting gun went, goes off.
00:31:59.780Like, do you get nerves before the race or do they, is that not an issue for you?
00:32:05.180I think, you know, almost everyone feels nerves and the more times I race and the more times other people race, they, I think we, we become a little bit more accustomed to it.
00:32:14.120But, but the reality is that before the race starts, the race hasn't started yet.
00:32:19.420And so it doesn't, I don't know how much good it does to worry about what might or might not happen, you know, a mile into the race, you know, with the exception of, you know, we got to have a race plan and things like that.
00:32:31.860But an hour before the race, you're nervous.
00:32:34.380What I think about is, okay, I just need to make sure my shoes are tied tight.
00:32:37.600I need to get one more sweep of water.
00:32:39.180I need to make sure I'm warmed up properly.
00:32:40.740Like, focus on the things that matter and are relevant to what you're doing right now, as opposed to just stressing about what might happen in the future.
00:32:50.680I think, I think we can always, almost always, we can use the argument, well, I'm not there yet, so what can I do right now that's going to help me when I get there?
00:33:02.020And I, and I think that type of a mentality, um, can maybe help eliminate some of that anxiety.
00:33:08.560Well, let's shift gears to sort of beginner runners.
00:33:11.980You, I mean, you coach people from all walks of life.
00:33:15.760I'm sure some of the people that you, that you coach are just getting started.
00:33:19.560When you start coaching people who like, they want to start, they want to run a marathon.
00:33:24.000Maybe they've never run a marathon before.
00:33:25.900Um, what are the most common mistakes you see them fall into when they're first getting started?
00:33:30.640Uh, honestly, I think it's getting just so excited about what we're doing that we don't exercise any restraint.
00:33:37.200You know, when you're looking at like, you know, I'm going to use a comparison of Michael Phelps swimming.
00:33:42.840And, you know, when he's getting into, you know, we're coming up on an Olympics, we're hearing stories of how much he eats and how many hours he's spending in the pool and things like that.
00:33:52.540And, and for runners, we need to train this aerobic system, but we need our, our legs not to break.
00:34:00.120And so it's, it's not like you can jump in the pool and just, you know, hammer yourself day after day and kind of wait for your body to catch up.
00:34:09.180We've got to be careful not to get broken.
00:34:10.980And so I think what I, what I advise my, my new athletes and new athletes in terms of new to the sport of running is just to be, be careful about how you're increasing intensity and volume and do it gradually.
00:34:25.760And I think if you can get onto some program that's sustainable, it's going to do you so much more good in the long run than if you just get hyper excited about this new fad that you're into and you train hard for two months.
00:34:37.680And then you get shin splints and you have to take two weeks off and then you're frustrated at having to take two weeks off.
00:34:44.540And so you get back into it and you're ready to train again and you hammer it again for two months and then guess what you're injured again.
00:34:50.260And, um, and so I think to me, the best approach is to try to be patient and sustainable.
00:34:55.980And it doesn't mean we don't push cause we still push.
00:34:59.080You still have hard days, but it means after a hard day, you wake up the next day and say, you know what?
00:35:03.940I need to exercise some restraint and take it a little bit easy today.
00:35:06.760Cause we pushed hard yesterday and you know, I increased volume last week.
00:35:10.920And so this week I need to just keep the volume the same, even though I feel good.
00:35:14.340And so, uh, you know, I think it becomes the coach's job to exercise a little bit of big picture restraint and it becomes the athlete's job to pay attention to how you feel day to day.
00:35:24.200And when you're tired, listening to that, and when you feel good, taking advantage of feeling good subject to the restraint that your coach or your supervisor has given you in terms of your weekly volume and your intensity and workouts.
00:35:37.500When a person who's, you know, transitioning from say doing a, like the weekend 5k to like their first marathon, what is it?
00:35:44.400I mean, it's going to be different for every, for every athlete, but like sort of broadly speaking, what does that look like?
00:35:49.440How long does it take for someone who's never run a marathon before to work up to that point where they can do a marathon?
00:35:57.320Well, you know, if you're already running a 5k, then, then you're, you're a lot further along than someone who's not running at all.
00:36:04.320So, so those, those are different approaches.
00:36:07.020So someone who's not running at all, we're going to start with some, some walking and some walking slash jogging.
00:36:12.840And, and it's probably going to take someone coming off their couch, at least in, in how I like to train a 5k for a 5k.
00:36:21.440It's going to probably take someone coming off their couch to me two or three months before I say, okay, let's put you in a 5k.
00:36:28.020And then, but, but I think once you're running three miles, I don't know that it's that crazy to think about building up to a marathon.
00:36:35.920Now it seems crazy on paper, but when I was in college training for 5ks and 10ks, and then transitioned to running the marathon, I think you'd be surprised at similarities in my training.
00:36:47.620You know, in college, you know, I probably went to running 20 or 30% more volume per week.
00:36:54.860Maybe it was more like 15 to 25% more volume.
00:36:58.800And my long runs got a little longer and my intervals got a little bit longer and a little bit shorter.
00:37:04.680So, you know, instead of running mile repeats on the track, I was running two, two mile repeats on the road.
00:37:09.680And so instead of doing four or five by mile, I was doing three by two mile.
00:37:14.160And so it wasn't maybe as drastic of a change as you might think.
00:37:18.900And so for someone who's transitioning from, hey, I ran a 5k and I just want to run a marathon.
00:37:23.740We start with saying, okay, let's leave your training the same, except for your weekend long run.
00:37:29.560And let's start gradually building volume to a weekly long run.
00:37:33.220And then as we start adjusting to that volume, we might make a couple of changes to their midweek workouts or their weekly mileage in general with the in excess to the additional mileage they're going to get from a longer weekend long run.
00:37:47.160But I think that's the big picture is just getting that volume up on that one day a week.
00:37:51.760And if we can build to, you know, 15, 16, 17 miles on a long run, then when I taper you off and you're well rested, I think you're ready to run a marathon.
00:38:01.300Okay. So it's not that, not rocket science.
00:38:04.940No, no, it's not. And I think it's, it's more doable than you might think.
00:38:08.640Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, to me, like you say, I've done, I can do a 5k, probably not great, but knowing that I could do a 5k that I could work up to a marathon.
00:38:31.300My precious gains. Well, so you mentioned, uh, injuries. Um, that's shin splints is a common one.
00:38:36.580Like, yeah. Runners often, I mean, some of these guys, they're just injuring themselves left and right.
00:38:41.920What's the common cause of all these injuries is just pushing yourself too hard. Uh, is that what it is?
00:38:47.000Well, I think so. You know, if we, you know, if you, if you, uh, were to say, you know, for the, the average middle age runner that hasn't really done anything super active since high school or, or maybe college, you know, you take 10 years and you do a lot of sitting and a lot of walking.
00:39:04.600And then you go to running, you're, you're, you're using a lot of muscles very differently than you've used them for the last decade.
00:39:10.260Right. And so while the ambition might be there and while you still might have that same high school athlete mind, you've got to be a little bit patient with, um, with where your body's at.
00:39:19.580And there are things we can do to help. Right. I mean, I think if you're, if you're into the wrong pair of shoes, a pair of shoes, that's not, not agreeing with the way that your foot's shaped or the way that you make contact with the ground or things like that, then that's certainly going to lead to a higher likelihood of getting injured.
00:39:38.180But I, but I do think you're right, Brett, in general, it's just that we're not, we're just not being quite patient enough as we build up and, and it's a hard balance.
00:39:46.780And I get it, you know, when, when we decide we want to do something, we want that thing done yesterday. And so, and that's, that's part of the, you know, that's the beauty of, of, and the curse of, of high achieving minds is that when, when you set yourself out to something, you want it done right now.
00:40:04.780And, um, and I think we just have to be a little bit patient with the process and, and hopefully still have some of those days where we can say, Hey, you know what, let's, uh, let's turn it loose. Let's run. Let's see what happens.
00:40:15.020But, um, but then on the flip side of that coin, coming back and saying, okay, now let's look at what we were doing three months ago.
00:40:22.360And we're doing quite a bit more now than we were doing three months ago. So maybe it's time to exercise some restraint.
00:40:27.520So let's, uh, geek out with some statistics here. You did your thesis for your master's, uh, on, in statistics on analyzing runners split times in the St. George marathon.
00:40:37.760Uh, what were your key takeaways about ideal pacing from analyzing?
00:40:42.940Um, man, I had so much fun with that project and I, and I realized, um, I realized that, uh, that I'm labeling myself as a nerd right here and I'm okay with that.
00:40:53.100Um, that, that was a fun way for me to, to cross the paths, I guess, or the, the interests of running and of, uh, and of the research and the analytics that I do statistics.
00:41:05.260And so, um, we had some cool takeaways. I, you know, I was working with this data before I had run my first marathon.
00:41:11.160So I was acutely interested in what the data said and, uh, and what we could learn from, from, uh, people competing in the St. George marathon.
00:41:18.900And we really, we, we used Boston qualifiers, uh, or runners that hit a Boston qualifying mark as our indicator of, um, faster runners in this data set.
00:41:30.440And so, so you could argue that, uh, it may or may not apply directly to, to kind of Olympic level athletes.
00:41:37.600But, um, but what we learned was that the people who qualified for Boston were being a lot more patient in their pace.
00:41:44.380So relative to their average pace, they were starting more conservative.
00:41:47.960They did a better job at taking advantage of downhills.
00:41:50.540And I think some of that related to the more average runners, just, um, you know, coming out of the gates so hard at the beginning that by the time they got to, to incredible downhill portions later in the race that they otherwise could have taken advantage of their, their legs were hammered.
00:42:04.920And so we, we just saw a lot of, you know, it seemed like over and over we were seeing patience is better.
00:42:12.760Um, you know, exercise some restraint, save it for the downhill sections later to take advantage and bank up some time later.
00:42:19.040We also saw that ladies do a better job at, uh, exercising this pacing restraint than men do.
00:42:25.100It might not come as a surprise, um, to us, but, uh, uh, uh, and then, you know, that as runners age, they got a little bit better at pacing.
00:42:33.720And so, um, I think it was also encouraging to think that even after a runner has maybe passed their physical prime, they might still be able to expect to see lifetime best performances because they're getting a little bit smarter as they learn how to pace and, uh, and train just a little bit better.
00:42:52.460So, so kind of some cool stuff, but, uh, and you could argue that it wasn't earth shattering, but it, but it validated a few thoughts like start patient before my first marathon.
00:43:03.020And, and, and some things like that, that I think, um, contributed at least in some small ways, uh, before I really had any marathon experience under my belt.
00:43:11.580Are you still like looking at data and using your statistics chops to shape your own training or how you approach races?
00:43:19.500You know, we are working on a project still, um, analyzing kind of how stride length and stride rate changes across the course of a marathon and how that maybe relates to fatigue and some other things like that.
00:43:31.200And so, um, so yes, I'm, I'm always interested in new research.
00:43:34.760I'm interested in what the research says for getting ready for a hot marathon.
00:43:37.760And I'm interested in what the research says as it relates to lifting and interested in what research says as it relates to oxygen uptake requirements and different types of running shoes.
00:43:47.380And can we come up with optimal running shoes for running the marathon and, and design those and things like that.
00:43:52.880And so, so yeah, I think I'm, I'm certainly excited about that kind of stuff, but you know, ultimately the, the gold standard is experience.
00:44:01.100And in every marathon that I run, I learn something else about myself and something else about the marathon.
00:44:06.560And I think while the data and the analytics provide some good counsel in general, everybody's so different that the gold standard for you and anybody else should be your own personal experience.
00:44:18.600And, and so the data can help when you're in an early marathoner, but as you, you know, as you become more experienced, I would, I would more heavily weight your experience to data in general.
00:44:30.120Well, Jared, this has been a great conversation.
00:44:31.640Is there someplace people can go to learn more about your work and what you do?
00:44:34.220Sure. So I'm, I try to be active on my social media.
00:44:37.860So Jay Wardy 21 on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and try to keep you updated on, on all the upcoming fun.
00:44:47.080Well, Jared Ward, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:44:50.740My guest there is Jared Ward. He's an Olympic marathon runner.
00:44:53.360You can follow what he's doing at his Twitter account at at Jay Wardy 21, or check out his website, coachjaredward.com, where you find information about his coaching services.
00:45:02.420If that's something you're interested in.
00:45:03.600Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash Olympic marathon, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.
00:45:10.220Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website, artofmanlios.com, where you can find all of our podcast archives. There's over 500 there.
00:45:24.840We've also got thousands of articles we've written over the years about personal finance.
00:45:28.260We've got articles about running as well, physical fitness, how to be a better husband, better father.