The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1110 - Zach Bitter

00:00:01.000 Five, four, three, two, one!

00:00:05.000 Boom.

00:00:06.000 And we're off.

00:00:07.000 What's up, brother?

00:00:07.000 How are you?

00:00:08.000 Good, good.

00:00:08.000 Thanks for having me on.

00:00:09.000 My pleasure.

00:00:10.000 Nice to meet you, man.

00:00:11.000 You know, it's funny that you just brought up Dr. Atiyah.

00:00:14.000 You know, when you were saying that you downloaded the podcast, you were saying, I gotta get that guy on.

00:00:20.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:00:20.000 It was funny.

00:00:21.000 I was at auto-downloads and that one popped up and I remember thinking about a week before that.

00:00:25.000 I was like, well, when we first scheduled this one, I was like, I gotta tell Joe about Dr. Atiyah.

00:00:29.000 He was one of the kind of first guys I really followed when I kind of dove into kind of the high-fat approach to...

00:00:35.000 To nutrition.

00:00:36.000 So, yeah, he's a fascinating guy.

00:00:38.000 It was a great listen.

00:00:39.000 I had to listen to it like twice.

00:00:40.000 Yeah, he's a weird guy.

00:00:42.000 He's one of those guys where you talk to him and you think, oh, this is like a normal, really nice guy. 0.99

00:00:46.000 And then as he starts getting into the medical aspect of things, you go, oh, okay, you're a fucking super genius. 0.99

00:00:52.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.99

00:00:53.000 He tricks you.

00:00:53.000 Yeah.

00:00:54.000 I remember one of the first things he ever said that really kind of resonated with me was I think someone was asking him about like what the effects are or the ketogenic diet in terms of like micronutrients and what maybe he'd be missing based on kind of like that normal profile of what you're supposed to get.

00:01:09.000 And he was just like, you know, it's interesting because most of those studies and recommendations are based off of basically a standard American diet or a higher carb diet.

00:01:18.000 So he's like, well, you might just not need the same.

00:01:21.000 We need to do more.

00:01:22.000 And he's always looking to kind of push the envelope a bit.

00:01:25.000 So cool guest for sure. 1.00

00:01:27.000 Yeah, and you know, I'm fascinated by you and I'm fascinated by anybody who does the kind of shit that you do. 0.96

00:01:35.000 I mean, please explain to people all the different ultra marathons you've done and like what you've accomplished. 0.89

00:01:44.000 Yeah, you know, it's interesting because, like, I still kind of see myself as a pretty average runner because, like, I mean, I competed in high school and made state cross-country and state track and that kind of thing for a small school.

00:01:57.000 And then I went to a small Division III school and was...

00:01:59.000 I'm pretty much average amongst a real good program at the D3 level.

00:02:04.000 I always just did kind of like running longer, though.

00:02:09.000 Once I got done with college, I kind of decided, well, let's see what's longer than some of those traditional collegiate races of 5K. To 10 kilometers.

00:02:18.000 And, you know, I started kind of just dabbling that stuff.

00:02:21.000 And then in 2010, I think I actually did my first ultra marathon, you know, partly because I was just like looking around and there turned out to be one in the state.

00:02:29.000 I was I was living in Wisconsin at the time.

00:02:31.000 And there was one that was kind of in my neck of the woods, and I actually had just decided to go back to grad school, and that one had a $1,000 prize purse on it.

00:02:40.000 And I was like, you know what, if I can win that, $1,000 go a long way during grad school.

00:02:44.000 So I did that one, and I ended up winning it, and it definitely hooked me.

00:02:49.000 It was like the type of thing where I was like, I want to do more of these.

00:02:52.000 And by 2011, I kind of jumped all in at the end of the year and did three 50-milers, and I think it was about a nine-week time frame.

00:03:03.000 That's so crazy.

00:03:05.000 Yeah, and I mean, it gets crazier.

00:03:06.000 There's some freaks out there.

00:03:07.000 There's guys who will do like a couple and a weekend and stuff like that.

00:03:11.000 So, I mean, it never ends.

00:03:14.000 But yeah, you know, it was one of those things where after that I was totally hooked.

00:03:18.000 What is it that got you hooked?

00:03:20.000 You know, it had to be partly just a little bit of success.

00:03:24.000 You know, I wasn't necessarily used to winning.

00:03:27.000 So, like, I mean, I've had good races and good times relative to what you probably see, like, in an average person.

00:03:33.000 But, you know, when I went to, like, a competitive 5K, a competitive marathon or something like that, you know, I wasn't going to win unless it was kind of a local race.

00:03:41.000 So kind of finding, you know, it's like anything, I guess, you kind of gravitate to what you feel you're good at, and then that kind of piques your interest.

00:03:49.000 Yeah.

00:03:49.000 So that was part of it.

00:03:50.000 The other part was just I really enjoyed doing the long run.

00:03:54.000 Like when you break up kind of like a training week, you have like a variety of different things.

00:03:57.000 You've got like kind of, you know, base level runs, you've got specific workouts for the distance.

00:04:02.000 And then most training programs are gonna have a long run once a week.

00:04:05.000 And that was the one that was always my favorite.

00:04:07.000 So wrapping my head around doing a bunch of those a week instead of just one was was really kind of appealing to me and When you're putting that much time into whatever you're training for, it's, I think, important to enjoy it.

00:04:18.000 So being able to kind of enjoy the training process a lot was really appealing to me.

00:04:24.000 And then it's just the variables.

00:04:26.000 When you're out there for that long, there's so many variables to consider and it's like...

00:04:31.000 It's a blast for me to work through those, plan for those, and then adjust to them on the fly when you're out there and things inevitably go wrong or things pop up that you didn't expect.

00:04:43.000 It's kind of hard to explain, but it's weird.

00:04:46.000 One of the things in ultramarathon running that people always say is they'll have a race, and even if they have a bad race, say, I'm never doing one of these again, and then the next day they're on the internet looking for another race.

00:04:55.000 It's There's this weird thing about it that you don't really know until you do it, but it sucks you in.

00:05:01.000 That's the case with a lot of people when they talk about things that they have to suffer through.

00:05:05.000 I've heard that when guys talk about those extreme hikes.

00:05:09.000 You know that one that goes from Georgia all the way to Maine?

00:05:14.000 Do you know that insane hike?

00:05:16.000 What is that called?

00:05:16.000 The Appalachian Trail?

00:05:18.000 That they say, I'll never fucking do that again. 0.97

00:05:20.000 And then they're like, okay, what other hikes can I go? 0.89

00:05:22.000 It's just once the pain, the physical pain, dies down, there's something about that challenge that stimulates in people like you and people that are into these really long distance things.

00:05:34.000 Like, there's something about distance.

00:05:36.000 There's something about, like you were saying, like, You weren't the best runner in high school or college, right?

00:05:42.000 But there's something about the mind of an ultramarathoner.

00:05:46.000 It's a different mind.

00:05:47.000 The type of person that can run 100 miles, 200 miles, 238 miles, those type of people, they're different people.

00:05:54.000 And there's a strength, a mental strength, and the ability to just keep going on and on and on that I'm absolutely fascinated with.

00:06:02.000 Yeah, you know, it is interesting, too, because the sport's grown quite a bit in the last decade or so, but it's still very much kind of a niche group, and then when you kind of hang out in that group, you start to kind of normalize it a little bit, I think.

00:06:14.000 So then you start thinking, like, oh, 100 miles, it's just what we do.

00:06:18.000 And then you, you know, you actually try to, like, separate yourself from the fact that you've done a few of those, or separate yourself from the fact that you've been hanging out with other people who are doing it, and you realize, oh, this is actually kind of A weird thing to kind of do as a human nowadays. 0.91

00:06:31.000 It's fucking very weird.

00:06:33.000 How many of these things have you won? 0.98

00:06:36.000 I don't know how many I've won.

00:06:38.000 I think I've done just shy of 50 total now.

00:06:42.000 Everything from 50 kilometers, the furthest I've done is 200 kilometers, which is about 125 miles.

00:06:49.000 I'd have to look to see how many I've won.

00:06:51.000 It's really goofy, because when you start getting into the longer stuff, like 100 miles and beyond, you start, at least in my training program, you start to pick smaller races to use as training runs.

00:07:03.000 And some of it, I think, is just because for me, if I'm going to go out and do like a 30 mile or 40 mile training run or something like that, it's kind of tedious to do that by yourself and then plan all the logistics of it.

00:07:14.000 So if there's a race nearby and that's not too hard to get to, it's easier just to sign up for that, go and do that.

00:07:20.000 So some of those, you know, I'll win if they're small enough, even though I'm not necessarily trying to go all out, so to speak, because I'm hoping to recover, kind of, and get back into training.

00:07:32.000 So you'll pace yourself at one of these local races, maybe?

00:07:35.000 Yeah, you know, the way I describe it is, and this is a real hard thing for a lot of people to do, I think.

00:07:40.000 It's like you go into a race saying this is going to be a moderately difficult long run.

00:07:46.000 So maybe a little faster than what I would do if I was just going to do it by myself, like unsupported, that sort of thing.

00:07:52.000 And then I always tell myself 80% is the hardest you can go if you want to be able to come back and start training on time to meet the actual goal or the A-race.

00:08:02.000 So when I do those, it's one of those things where, who knows, someone might show up that's as fast as you, or maybe a little slower than you normal, and if they're deciding to just hammer it that day, they might beat you, and you gotta be okay with that.

00:08:15.000 Does the competitive part of you flare up, though?

00:08:17.000 For sure.

00:08:17.000 Well, yeah, it does, and that's the hardest part, and that's, I think, the main reason why some people won't do that approach, because there's certainly people who just, they stay away from races unless it's their A race, and they just say, if I'm gonna do a long run, I'll do it on my own, and Yeah,

00:08:42.000 it's interesting.

00:08:44.000 It's kind of a sport that I think is still a lot to learn, which I think is actually the case for a lot of things.

00:08:52.000 Even things that are well-established, there's always something to learn or new things to pick up on.

00:08:57.000 Well, it's one of those things, right, where once someone runs 100 miles and then a bunch of other people start doing it, like you said, it almost becomes normalized.

00:09:04.000 And then people start to try to push that boundary.

00:09:07.000 Now, I've been hearing talk about the woman Candice who runs the Moab 240. Yeah. 1.00

00:09:12.000 They're talking about doing a 500. I heard that.

00:09:16.000 I was like, you're out of your fucking mind. 1.00

00:09:18.000 People are going to die. 1.00

00:09:19.000 But maybe that'll be normal in five years and we'll get used to like four or five day races.

00:09:24.000 Yeah, so it's really fascinating.

00:09:25.000 It took me a couple of years to do this before I got into the sport, but once I was in it for a couple of years, I kind of did a little research to see what the deal was with some of this stuff.

00:09:34.000 The funny thing is that type of a distance isn't even unheard of.

00:09:40.000 I forget what the book is called, but they actually had in Madison Square Garden, they used to host a six-day event where Guys and gals, I'm not sure if gals were doing it back then, but guys for sure were going there and seeing how far they could run in six days.

00:09:56.000 Yeah, I know, crazy.

00:09:58.000 And I think if I remember right, people were betting on them that way, and so they'd fill it up.

00:10:04.000 People would come and watch this spectacle.

00:10:06.000 What year was this?

00:10:06.000 It was in the late 1800s, I think, is when they started it.

00:10:09.000 Wow, here it is.

00:10:11.000 Six-day cycling?

00:10:13.000 Yes.

00:10:13.000 The six-day grind at Madison Square Garden?

00:10:16.000 Oh, wow.

00:10:17.000 Look at this, man.

00:10:18.000 So some crazy person decided to leave the bike at home, I guess.

00:10:21.000 This is super old.

00:10:22.000 We're looking at this on YouTube, folks.

00:10:24.000 It says six-day cycling, the six-day grind at Madison Square Garden.

00:10:29.000 And so it's just a track.

00:10:31.000 And these people are... 1.00

00:10:32.000 This is old-timey shit. 1.00

00:10:35.000 This looks like the 30s, right? 1.00

00:10:37.000 Yeah.

00:10:38.000 That guy just went down.

00:10:39.000 And so they're just riding their bike for six days. 1.00

00:10:42.000 Oh, shit! 1.00

00:10:43.000 When they wipe out. 1.00

00:10:44.000 Oh, my God.

00:10:46.000 They probably had terrible breaks back then, right?

00:10:48.000 Yeah.

00:10:48.000 That was their feet.

00:10:50.000 Probably, right?

00:10:51.000 Or the railing.

00:10:53.000 Yeah.

00:10:53.000 So endurance sports like this are nothing new.

00:10:57.000 Yeah, it's actually fascinating when you kind of look into it, because nowadays, in the United States, the trail running scene is definitely way bigger than the road running or certainly the track scene, but that wasn't always the case.

00:11:07.000 If you look back into the 70s and 80s, there was a pretty big surge in ultramarathon running for flat-fast stuff.

00:11:13.000 That's where we see a lot of the records coming from.

00:11:16.000 So that's like a track, and you run as far and long as you can on a track?

00:11:20.000 Yeah.

00:11:21.000 Track or a road or a really flat road?

00:11:23.000 I had Goggins on, David Goggins, and he was talking about the first time he did one was on a track. 0.96

00:11:28.000 Just ran in circles on a track, which has almost got to be more taxing for your mind because you're just seeing the same shit over and over and over again. 0.82

00:11:37.000 Yeah, it's really fascinating to me because I've done both. 0.98

00:11:40.000 I've done 100 milers on the trail and I've done 100 miles on a 400 meter track.

00:11:43.000 And the fascinating thing is it is like what you said, it's almost a different event where mentally you're doing everything you can on that track to kind of separate yourself from the actual environment, envision yourself being somewhere else, you know, looking forward to little things to kind of not necessarily be thinking too far in advance because that can get overwhelming.

00:12:02.000 Whereas when I'm out on the trails it's like you're usually in a pretty pristine beautiful area and you can kind of just take it as it comes and say oh cool now I get to see that or this is a neat area or I like this section and you look forward to that kind of diversity.

00:12:16.000 Whereas on the track it's you see it once and you've seen it every time.

00:12:20.000 And then it just kind of beats you up mentally from that side of things.

00:12:24.000 But then, you know, there's other things about that, too, that help out, like, logistically.

00:12:28.000 When you're on a track for 400 meters, you bring out one person, you put everything you may possibly want on a little table, and if I want something, I say, hey, can I get that?

00:12:36.000 400 meters later, I have it.

00:12:37.000 And even if we mess it up, I'll get it 400 meters after that.

00:12:40.000 So...

00:12:42.000 Yeah, whereas, you know, the trails, it depends.

00:12:44.000 They've gotten a lot better with aid stations as the sport's grown.

00:12:47.000 But, like, you know, you mess up your aid station, or if you get caught up in the moment and just blow through it and don't take care of yourself, you might have to suffer for an hour plus before you get help again.

00:12:56.000 So that's where it kind of gets a little different, I think, logistically, when you're on the trails versus on the road.

00:13:03.000 But yeah, it's kind of a different thing.

00:13:06.000 The track is interesting too in the sense that you're essentially making that same exact motion the whole way.

00:13:14.000 So like there's certain areas of your body that fatigue and they don't get a break.

00:13:18.000 Because of the turn?

00:13:19.000 The turn and just running flat.

00:13:21.000 Like running flat, you're going to kind of localize some of the way you stimulate your muscles or your gait is going to be pretty similar throughout.

00:13:27.000 Whereas when you're on the trails, like you might be going on a slight incline, a steep incline, a slight decline, a little bit of flat, some rolling, all kinds of things in between.

00:13:35.000 And then trails can be kind of undulating.

00:13:37.000 So you're just kind of moving all that forces around your legs a little more than you would be when you're running on a flat surface.

00:13:43.000 Yeah.

00:13:43.000 So, you know, it's one of the things that I always tell like my coaching clients and myself when I'm planning for something is like, if you really want to meet your full potential, like specificity is king.

00:13:52.000 You need to be on that environment in the environment you're going to race on and really get your body used to kind of that type of emotion.

00:14:00.000 It makes it a little more interesting when you're doing a track race because that means some kind of long runs on a track.

00:14:05.000 So you're kind of balancing doing just enough to get ready for it and not doing too much so that when you get to the race, you're like, screw this.

00:14:11.000 I've done too much of this already.

00:14:12.000 I don't want to see another loop.

00:14:15.000 That's kind of an interesting concept.

00:14:18.000 It's interesting to me, too, that if you're planning to run 100 miles, like what you were saying about running these shorter races as a training run, which makes sense because how else are you going to prepare for 100 miles?

00:14:28.000 If you just decided to just go out and run 100 miles, you'd have to map it out.

00:14:32.000 How far is 100 miles?

00:14:34.000 Where am I going to park?

00:14:35.000 Where am I going to put water?

00:14:37.000 Yeah.

00:14:38.000 Yeah, and then people also kind of forget about the aspect of just all the stuff surrounding the race that you can kind of fine tune when you're doing a race as a kind of training run where usually you're going to travel a little bit for stuff like this.

00:14:52.000 So you're probably going to stay in a hotel the night before.

00:14:55.000 You have to wake up early in the morning.

00:14:56.000 You have to get your gear ready.

00:14:59.000 So it's kind of like going through that.

00:15:11.000 What's different between you and a lot of guys, and this is one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you about this, is that you are on a fat burning diet.

00:15:19.000 You're essentially on a ketogenic diet and running these races.

00:15:23.000 Yeah, you know, it's a little interesting because the way I kind of, at least the way I came into it, like I explored the ketogenic diet mainly because I started noticing some things.

00:15:34.000 Try to pull this thing.

00:15:35.000 Oh, sorry.

00:15:35.000 No worries about it.

00:15:36.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:15:37.000 So I started kind of exploring the ketogenic diet back in late 2011 because I started noticing some goofy things going on with my body from the high level of training and then the racing.

00:15:50.000 And that was right around that same time I did those 350 milers in nine weeks.

00:15:54.000 I would wake up like three or four times at night and then like I'd have to like pee all the time at night and I'd have like swelling in my ankles and stuff a lot of just like huge energy swings throughout the day like I would you know I was I was a teacher at the time so I remember thinking like every day at like one or two o'clock I could have laid down and take a nap on spot if I had had the opportunity to so it was just like a lot of weird things that I thought was pretty abnormal for a 25 year old male at the time and And

00:16:25.000 so it was kind of becoming clear to me that what I was doing was either unsustainable or the way I was doing it was unsustainable.

00:16:31.000 And, you know, I was really intrigued by the sport and I didn't really want to necessarily back off of that if I didn't have to.

00:16:38.000 So that's when I kind of started to explore nutrition and diet and things like that.

00:16:43.000 I was very much following what I would have considered a healthy diet before that at the time.

00:16:48.000 It was high carbohydrate, but it was what you would think of as a healthy high carbohydrate diet.

00:16:53.000 What was a normal meal?

00:16:55.000 I'd wake up and I'd usually go for a run and then have some oatmeal, raisins, maybe some fruit or something like that.

00:17:03.000 Some eggs or something with that in the morning.

00:17:06.000 So not junk food, just high carbohydrates?

00:17:07.000 No, it was clean.

00:17:08.000 They say get your whole grains, fruits, vegetables, that sort of thing.

00:17:12.000 I definitely focused heavily on that and made sure I wasn't eating junk food.

00:17:16.000 I wasn't going through fast food restaurants or eating Oreos and bonbons and that sort of thing.

00:17:22.000 So it was kind of interesting to me to think like, okay, I didn't really realize that it was necessarily the nutritional side of things.

00:17:31.000 Like it wasn't like a big slap in the face in the sense that, oh, I just got to cut out the junk because like, according to most people, I wasn't eating junk.

00:17:38.000 I was eating really good food.

00:17:40.000 Right.

00:17:41.000 So, you know, that's when I kind of got introduced to some folks like Dr. Volek and Dr. Finney, who are kind of, I guess, the pioneers of like this latest wave of kind of the high-fat approach.

00:17:54.000 And, you know, they were – I started reading their books, listening to podcasts and things like that.

00:18:00.000 And, you know, it was interesting because I was training upwards of 20 hours a week at the time.

00:18:04.000 And, you know, I started kind of thinking like – How much time am I going to invest in just running?

00:18:11.000 How can I kind of kill two birds with one stone?

00:18:13.000 And that's kind of when I discovered podcasts and thought, this is sweet.

00:18:17.000 I can learn something and train at the same time.

00:18:19.000 And so I just kind of went all in on listening to a bunch of podcasts and stuff like that.

00:18:24.000 And actually, one of your previous guests, Ben Greenfield, was one of the first podcasts I really kind of did a deep dive into.

00:18:30.000 And he was always kind of like...

00:18:33.000 Rolling out stuff that was kind of new or cutting edge.

00:18:36.000 So he definitely had a lot of information there. 0.97

00:18:40.000 Yeah, he's a maniac. 1.00

00:18:42.000 Don't take his advice on what he does with his dick. 1.00

00:18:44.000 He's shooting stem cells into his dick. 1.00

00:18:46.000 Yeah, he's turning himself into a guinea pig. 1.00

00:18:49.000 He's an odd duck.

00:18:52.000 But yeah, he definitely had a lot of info from guys like Dr. Finney and Dr. Volek, and I was lucky to meet those guys too on a couple occasions.

00:19:00.000 And with Dr. Volek, I've done some podcasts with him and certainly exchanged emails and stuff when I've had questions.

00:19:08.000 So I kind of just tested it out.

00:19:10.000 I was like, what's the worst that can happen?

00:19:12.000 I can always go back.

00:19:13.000 It's not like I have to stick to this for the rest of my life if it's not something...

00:19:17.000 So your issues were swelling and energy, and why did you attribute that to your diet?

00:19:22.000 What was making you think that it was your diet that was doing that to you?

00:19:25.000 Yeah, so I wasn't sure.

00:19:26.000 I thought for sure that something I was doing was wrong.

00:19:30.000 Did you get your blood work done, check your hormone levels, all that stuff?

00:19:33.000 Yeah, you know, I didn't have probably as much blood work done as I would have liked to, to really, like, look at stuff and see.

00:19:40.000 Like, the way I look at blood work is if you're doing it regular, like, often enough and not changing things, that's what you're going to see the most, because you're going to see changes, versus just like, oh, I'm chronically low in this, or I'm always low in this, but it doesn't seem to be an issue.

00:19:54.000 But, you know, there was no big red flags on my blood work.

00:19:57.000 Like, nothing that would have said, like, Thyroid disease or something like that.

00:20:01.000 Nothing quite that wrong.

00:20:02.000 And it wasn't like the wheels were coming off at that point.

00:20:05.000 These were small things that I kind of associated as nagging things.

00:20:09.000 They were things I could get through, but they weren't ideal.

00:20:13.000 So I've kind of been a curious person my whole life, so I was just looking to kind of optimize, I guess, more or less.

00:20:21.000 And I didn't know if it was going to work.

00:20:24.000 I was...

00:20:27.000 Terrified that I'd find out it wasn't and then I would have to stop running as much.

00:20:30.000 And at the time I was like, that doesn't sound like what I want to do.

00:20:34.000 So this was just something I decided to explore first.

00:20:38.000 And it's really goofy because I've certainly evolved in kind of how I use it from that when I first started.

00:20:46.000 When I first started, I went really low carb, like that clinical ketosis level where you read about where there are like 50 grams of carbohydrates or less.

00:20:55.000 I did that for about, I think it was like four to six weeks, and I didn't have as hard of a time as what I think I've seen some people have with it.

00:21:04.000 You have people talking about everything from the keto flu to just feeling really lethargic for a while before that kind of metabolic switch flips.

00:21:12.000 What I kind of noticed was I felt really good doing like really like low-level type mundane tasks, just like day-to-day work and things like that.

00:21:22.000 But like maybe every second or third day I'd go for a run and just feel awful.

00:21:27.000 And I kind of knew enough about it that I thought, okay, let's give this a solid four weeks before I make any judgments on whether that's going to be something that sticks around or not.

00:21:38.000 And, you know, after about that point, my energy level is kind of normalized.

00:21:42.000 And then, you know, I was so at that point, I was like excited.

00:21:45.000 I was like, this is sweet.

00:21:46.000 I should have mentioned to like, during that process, I started sleeping through the night again, which was like, kind of really an eye opening thing for me.

00:21:56.000 Because usually, like, I'd wake up at least three times.

00:21:59.000 What do you attribute that to?

00:22:01.000 You know, I don't know for sure.

00:22:03.000 But, you know, it could be anything from just the amount of stress I was causing on my body from kind of two angles from the training plus like, you know, like, I don't want to demonize carbohydrates because I think they have a place.

00:22:15.000 I think they're a great tool.

00:22:17.000 I just think like the question everyone should ask is at what level?

00:22:23.000 I think?

00:22:43.000 But who knows, really?

00:22:46.000 All I know is the only thing at that time I changed was my diet.

00:22:49.000 And we should probably point out that this is not universal.

00:22:52.000 That everybody's diet is going to affect them differently.

00:22:55.000 Some people are fine with carbohydrates.

00:22:57.000 There's a lot of people out there that eat a high-carbohydrate diet and they have zero issues with it whatsoever.

00:23:03.000 And that's one of the weirder things about people.

00:23:05.000 That we are so variable, depending upon your ancestry, what part of the world they evolved in.

00:23:11.000 Yeah, it's fascinating to me because I'll look at folks doing the complete opposite of who I am and they're doing just fine.

00:23:18.000 Then I'll look at some folks, too, that are doing the opposite of me and they're doing just fine for a while and then they ultimately start noticing the same kind of things I did and then they can clean it up.

00:23:30.000 I think at the end of the day, you just got to be kind of honest with yourself.

00:23:33.000 Some people, I think, are...

00:23:35.000 Really, really robust.

00:23:37.000 And they can hit their body with that high octane fuel, carbohydrate, like day in and day out at a high level and it doesn't seem to bother them much.

00:23:46.000 But, you know, other people I think just that it can kind of, it's like playing with rocket fuel a little bit where, you know, a little bit can be great and too much of it can kind of burn you up a little bit.

00:23:55.000 So you're saying that you started off at like 50 grams of carbohydrates a day, like real strict ketosis diet.

00:24:00.000 What did you eventually move to?

00:24:04.000 So the way I call it is I periodize it.

00:24:06.000 So like when I look at my year, you can pick out a week where I'm kind of in peak training.

00:24:12.000 I think?

00:24:34.000 It was a lot more difficult to go out and really throttle down.

00:24:37.000 I could run all day at a slow pace, but if I decided to go out on the track and do 400-meter repeats at a really fast pace, it was really hard to be able to do that.

00:24:50.000 That's a common complaint.

00:24:51.000 Rob Wolf, you know Rob Wolf?

00:24:53.000 Rob Wolf had a similar issue.

00:24:55.000 He's gotten like very heavily into jujitsu.

00:24:57.000 And he was telling me that he just can't stick to that 50 grams of carbohydrates a day and still have the energy to go hard.

00:25:05.000 Do you know, does Rob Wolf workout more than one time a day?

00:25:08.000 I do not know.

00:25:09.000 He looks very fit, though.

00:25:11.000 I'm not sure what his schedule is, but I know he works out very hard.

00:25:16.000 And if he's doing jiu-jitsu, it's very difficult to do jiu-jitsu any other way than hard.

00:25:20.000 Sure.

00:25:21.000 This is one thing I've always been curious about, too.

00:25:24.000 I'm not trying to come on here and say everyone should switch to doing what I do.

00:25:29.000 I think you should follow your own personal self and be honest with yourself.

00:25:34.000 If you feel great, do what you're doing.

00:25:35.000 If you don't, then probably look to change something.

00:25:38.000 But one thing I'm always looking at now or suspecting is that it's more about the recovery between efforts than it is about the intensity of the effort or the duration of the effort in terms of how much carbs you need to bring back or want to bring back.

00:25:52.000 Because I've also had circumstances where I'll do a big workout or a race or something like that, and then I'll go really easy for a week.

00:26:01.000 And during that week, I'll go like super strict keto because I'm recovering.

00:26:05.000 I'm not doing anything intense.

00:26:06.000 I'm not doing anything too long.

00:26:08.000 So that's the point of my training where I kind of say, all right, let's get rid of the fast-acting fuel sources.

00:26:13.000 I don't need them right now and reset that whole fat adaptation thing.

00:26:17.000 So you feel like the fast-acting fuel sources like carbohydrates, you only really need them when you're pushing hard.

00:26:23.000 Right.

00:26:23.000 When you're really running fast.

00:26:25.000 Right.

00:26:25.000 Yeah, and I actually think it's when you're doubling down on those on a regular basis.

00:26:30.000 So if you're working out really hard for 45 minutes to an hour a day, I think you can probably get away with almost a ketogenic or a really low-carbohydrate approach because you're giving yourself 23-plus hours between sessions for your body to restock glycogen stores from other areas,

00:26:46.000 from fat and proteins and things like that.

00:26:48.000 I think when you start getting into a system where you're like myself, I'm doing two days a lot.

00:26:53.000 And then sometimes one of those is a speed session.

00:26:56.000 That's when I feel like I need to bring some of the carbohydrate back.

00:26:58.000 And I think it's probably just to get some of the glycogen at a little faster rate because that is going to replenish your glycogen stores faster as a carbohydrate than like a fat or a protein probably would.

00:27:07.000 So how many grams of carbohydrates a day would you have on a day like that?

00:27:11.000 When I'm in like peak training, which is about 20 hours a week of running strength training and mobility type stuff, you know, I'll probably let myself get up to like 15 to 25% of my intake from carbohydrate.

00:27:27.000 What do you think that is in grams? 0.97

00:27:29.000 It depends a lot on what I actually do.

00:27:33.000 Because I don't count calories very often.

00:27:35.000 I used to just to kind of see what was going on and then I kind of got intuitive with it.

00:27:40.000 Gram-wise, it's probably anywhere from 200 to 300 maybe.

00:27:45.000 And then when I'm in those phases of training, it's really intense in terms of just...

00:27:50.000 Or I shouldn't say intense.

00:27:51.000 It's just really tedious in the amount of time and energy required for it.

00:27:55.000 Now, are you blood monitoring at that time?

00:27:57.000 Are you checking your millimolar levels?

00:28:00.000 I am sometimes, like when I get curious about that type of stuff, or I've done it in the past.

00:28:07.000 What I did originally is I got the blood ketone monitor, and I also got one of those ketonics.

00:28:15.000 It's like this little USB thing, and then you blow into it.

00:28:18.000 Is that accurate?

00:28:20.000 I think there's varied results.

00:28:22.000 I think they've gotten a lot better with it.

00:28:24.000 But what I did is I actually measured my blood ketone and then I would use that and I tried to find kind of like if mine was matching what that thing would say.

00:28:33.000 So I kind of had an idea where certain ranges on that thing would kind of indicate whether I was in ketosis or not.

00:28:40.000 Yeah.

00:28:42.000 So, like, I very much was coming out of ketosis during peak training.

00:28:45.000 Like, especially when I would get up to 200-300 grams of carbohydrate, I would come out of ketosis, and I'd probably go back into ketosis throughout that phase.

00:28:54.000 When you say go back in and come out, like, what kind of time period are you talking about?

00:29:01.000 The time period was more indicative about what I kind of ate during it, too.

00:29:06.000 Like, if I did...

00:29:08.000 If I did, or I shouldn't say what I, like how I kind of structured those 200 to 300 grams of carbohydrate, like if I did like a big bolus of it in one meal, I'd get back into ketosis a little quicker because then I wouldn't come back to the carbohydrates again for a while.

00:29:22.000 So would you vary inside the day?

00:29:26.000 Yeah.

00:29:26.000 And here's where it got kind of interesting, I guess, is I do a lot of the heaviest bulk of my training in the morning.

00:29:33.000 So I typically wake up and have some coffee with coconut milk or heavy whipping cream or something like that.

00:29:39.000 And then go for my run.

00:29:41.000 So then when I get back from a run, it might be two hours, sometimes even three.

00:29:45.000 And at that point, I just slept for eight to 10 hours.

00:29:49.000 Then by the time I got done with my run, I hadn't I had essentially done a small intermittent fast for the most part.

00:29:57.000 So even when I had the higher amounts of carbohydrates, I'd find myself going back into ketosis at the end of something like that sometimes.

00:30:05.000 But really, to me, it wasn't necessarily a question of whether I was in ketosis or not, because that really wasn't important to me.

00:30:13.000 Performance is important.

00:30:14.000 Exactly, yeah.

00:30:15.000 And what I wanted out of this approach was...

00:30:19.000 I wanted to be able to rely on my body to burn high levels of fat when I needed it to, but I also wanted to be metabolically flexible enough where if I needed to hit the gas pedal, I could do that as well.

00:30:33.000 And I think that's where people get a little confused or up in arms or something because there's not a whole lot of studies that kind of...

00:30:41.000 Look at that specifically.

00:30:43.000 Can you do that or can you not do that?

00:30:44.000 Some people think it's kind of an all or nothing thing where you either get really fat adapted or you get really carb dependent and then everything else is kind of like this gray area that you can't really get into.

00:30:54.000 But that's not my experience.

00:30:57.000 My experience has been that I can...

00:31:01.000 Here's my kind of litmus test.

00:31:02.000 If I can go for like a four hour or even five hour run with no fuel other than water and electrolytes, then I'm fat adapted enough.

00:31:10.000 I don't need to get any more fat adapted than that because I can eat during a race and everyone else is going to be.

00:31:15.000 So I don't really need to get more fat adapted from a performance standpoint.

00:31:19.000 So when I get to that point, then it's like, how many carbohydrates can I bring back to kind of give me that extra nudge or that extra fuel substrate?

00:31:28.000 Have you ever tried mixing exogenous ketones with carbohydrates?

00:31:34.000 Because Greenfield was talking about that, and he said it's like doing steroids.

00:31:37.000 He said it was incredible. 0.99

00:31:38.000 But again, he's a maniac. 0.99

00:31:40.000 He's a maniac, yeah. 0.99

00:31:42.000 Who else was it?

00:31:43.000 Was it Dominic D'Agostino was playing around with that stuff quite a bit, too?

00:31:46.000 Or he might have helped...

00:31:47.000 He might have helped with the creation of some of that stuff.

00:31:51.000 I know there was...

00:31:53.000 I'd have to look back in my emails and stuff.

00:31:55.000 But I actually had...

00:31:56.000 There was a guy who was doing a real clinical version of the exogenous ketones.

00:32:00.000 And he had sent me one a while back to kind of do a little test for him.

00:32:05.000 And it was like just this little canister of exogenous ketone.

00:32:11.000 And he wanted me to kind of check my ketones when I woke up in the morning.

00:32:14.000 Take that, test it 15 minutes later, and then test again after my run.

00:32:18.000 Is that like a ketone ester?

00:32:20.000 Yeah, I think so. 1.00

00:32:21.000 Super potent stuff, tastes like Godzilla's dick. 0.99

00:32:24.000 Matt Brown brought some of that in. 0.99

00:32:26.000 It's like, woof!

00:32:27.000 Did you test your ketones when you took it?

00:32:28.000 No, I didn't.

00:32:29.000 I didn't have a monitor on me, but it tasted terrible, but I felt great.

00:32:32.000 And you have to take it with glucose.

00:32:35.000 Yeah.

00:32:36.000 Yeah.

00:32:36.000 See, I think that's maybe that's where I messed up.

00:32:39.000 But besides that, like my ketone level shot up.

00:32:43.000 I woke up that morning.

00:32:44.000 I think I was at like 1.0 millimoles or something like that.

00:32:47.000 I took that exogenous ketone.

00:32:50.000 And 15 minutes later, I test I was at 3.7 millimoles.

00:32:52.000 Wow.

00:32:53.000 So it was like, okay, stuff works.

00:32:55.000 Yeah, it works.

00:32:56.000 But I don't know.

00:32:57.000 Here's my question is, with that stuff, from a performance standpoint, is people are looking at that kind of, I think, more like an electrolyte, where it's like I take this on top of my energy source, whereas that's actually an energy source, a fairly potent one,

00:33:13.000 too.

00:33:14.000 So when I'm out there racing and I'm trying to kind of limit...

00:33:18.000 I'm trying to eat...

00:33:20.000 A certain amount so that I kind of keep that energy where I want it, but I'm also trying not to go overboard because I don't want digestive stress.

00:33:29.000 That's interesting.

00:33:30.000 So as you're running, you have to maintain a certain amount of food in your system, but you don't want to have a large meal.

00:33:38.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:33:38.000 Because, like, basically the way I... To simply put it, like, digestion requires blood volume, you know, to move into your gut and, like, digest the food.

00:33:47.000 So when you're running, especially when it's hot, your body's also trying to use your blood volume for muscle function and cooling and things like that.

00:33:54.000 So by kind of introducing another use for that blood volume, your body is running out of resources to kind of make all those things...

00:34:02.000 Run smoothly.

00:34:04.000 Which is why a lot of times in ultramarathons people find out like they have the worst luck with like throwing up and stomach issues when it gets really hot out.

00:34:12.000 Because their body's got to go double down on the cooling side of things with the blood volume and then it's like well something's got to give so it just pukes up everything you put in your stomach.

00:34:21.000 Oh wow.

00:34:23.000 Is there a way to mitigate that?

00:34:25.000 Eat less.

00:34:26.000 That's it?

00:34:27.000 So if you're running, what's a size portion?

00:34:30.000 Say if you're doing a 100 miler and you have to pause for fuel.

00:34:36.000 I'll typically aim for around 100 to 200 calories an hour when I'm doing a 100 miler.

00:34:41.000 And to kind of put that in perspective, when I was high carb, I was aiming for 300, 400, and sometimes even 500 calories an hour.

00:34:50.000 So when I kind of went into the approach where fat was my primary fuel source, the need for that carbohydrate essentially got cut in half, if not more.

00:34:59.000 And for me, that's a win as long as energy levels are the same, because it means I have to eat less during the race.

00:35:04.000 It's one less logistic thing, one less potential stomach issue.

00:35:08.000 So what's a typical meal?

00:35:11.000 While you're running.

00:35:12.000 Oh, while I'm running.

00:35:13.000 You know, I usually stick to, like, water-based stuff.

00:35:18.000 So, like, I'll use a product called X Endurance Fuel 5. And it's essentially, like, a really, really high-level sports drink with, like, a varying – it's carbohydrate-based.

00:35:30.000 And I can tell you why I use carbohydrates instead of fats during a race in a minute, too, if you want.

00:35:34.000 But it's like five different types of kind of carbohydrate that release at varying points.

00:35:38.000 So you get some that's kind of a little quick jolt and others that are more sustained like kind of like a sweet potato type of a release.

00:35:44.000 So I'll be just trickling that in.

00:35:46.000 So like if I'm doing like a hundred miler and let's say I'm aiming for like 30 to 40 ounces of water per hour to kind of stay on top of hydration, I'll put...

00:35:58.000 You know, 100 to 200 calories worth of that stuff in that water.

00:36:02.000 So then I'm kind of killing two birds with one stone and getting my fuel in as well as hydrating at the same time.

00:36:06.000 And why are you taking carbohydrates while you're running instead of fats?

00:36:10.000 Yeah, so that's the other thing.

00:36:12.000 And I see this as somewhat of a...

00:36:15.000 I don't know if it's an issue necessarily, but it's an interesting thing at the very least.

00:36:19.000 When I talk to folks who are really into the high-fat approach, some of them are zero-carb or really ketogenic all the time, 24-7, they'll be taking in fat sources during a race.

00:36:31.000 And I've never understood that, just because...

00:36:36.000 When you look at your body's energy systems during a race, like you have your glycogen stores and then you have body fat.

00:36:43.000 And I think a lot of people kind of get misled and they think, oh, I'm a really lean runner, so I can't rely on body fat.

00:36:49.000 When in reality, even the leanest endurance athletes have enough body fat to get through an endurance race.

00:36:54.000 Like even if you're 4%, 5% body fat at your leanest, that's a much bigger fuel source than your glycogen reserves.

00:37:01.000 So, when I'm doing a race, I've got enough fat to take care of the fat metabolizing portion of that energy requirement for the race.

00:37:09.000 What I might run out of is those glycogen stores, which are really small in comparison.

00:37:14.000 So, I'm trying to just slowly trickle in the sugar or the carbohydrate.

00:37:19.000 During a race, just enough to kind of keep my glycogen stores where I want to be so I can hit the gas if I need to, but not at the level where it's going to cause stomach distress or compromise or heavily compromise my body's willingness or ability to burn fat either.

00:37:34.000 That's fascinating.

00:37:35.000 So as you're running, your body could switch back and forth between fats and carbohydrates because you're so fat-adapted?

00:37:41.000 Yeah, and it's actually probably happening simultaneously.

00:37:44.000 It's just at different rates.

00:37:47.000 Someone who's really fat-adapted, they could be running kind of the same effort, and the fat-adapted person might be burning 80% fat, 20% carbohydrate, and the carb-dependent person might be a 50-50 split.

00:37:58.000 So that carb-dependent person is going to exhaust their glycogen stores a lot quicker, or they're going to have to fuel themselves at a much higher rate to make up for that deficit.

00:38:07.000 And when you look at, like, how difficult that is, because, you know, some of these, especially some of these mountain races where you're running uphill, it's like you might be burning 800-plus calories an hour, and it's really hard.

00:38:18.000 Yeah, that's a different animal, right?

00:38:19.000 Yeah, and it's really hard to replace that on the fly.

00:38:23.000 Yeah, those running uphill ones, I would think that's a much more difficult race.

00:38:28.000 Yeah, I mean, it's a different setup.

00:38:30.000 It's, you know, it's one of those things where I'm pretty new to that, actually.

00:38:34.000 Like, most of my ultra running career, I focus more on flat stuff.

00:38:38.000 And part of that just because I've lived in a lot of flat areas.

00:38:40.000 And like I was kind of saying earlier, if you really want to nail a race, you have to be specific.

00:38:45.000 So I learned kind of early, probably around like 2013 or so, that it was in my best interest to make my peak races flat ones if I really wanted to meet my full potential.

00:38:54.000 Now I live in Phoenix, so I've got a lot more access to mountains.

00:38:57.000 I can get on the trails and do some significant climbing right out my back door.

00:39:00.000 So I've certainly been able to practice that more.

00:39:04.000 And as I've gotten more competent at it, I do recognize like, oh, it's not quite as hard.

00:39:10.000 As I thought it was originally because I was going into it essentially under-trained.

00:39:14.000 Whereas now it's like I go into it and I'm like, oh, I'm more adjusted to this.

00:39:19.000 So, I mean, it's still hard.

00:39:20.000 Like going uphill is hard no matter how you skin it.

00:39:22.000 But it's like it's one of those things where if you kind of figure out the pace, it shouldn't be any more hard.

00:39:28.000 Like it should be just as hard to run flat because you're going to have to run faster.

00:39:33.000 And it's just then it just comes down to, I think, the right training and pacing everything right.

00:39:37.000 It's interesting you're saying you're living in Phoenix.

00:39:40.000 Do you run the summer in Phoenix? 0.99

00:39:42.000 Because Phoenix is fucking insanely hot. 0.96

00:39:44.000 So I moved there in January. 0.97

00:39:46.000 Good move.

00:39:48.000 Big wake-up call come June.

00:39:50.000 You're like, whoa!

00:39:51.000 Yeah, it'll be warm.

00:39:52.000 I actually kind of like it because right now I'm training for the Western States 100. And that's in, it starts in Squaw Valley and ends in Auburn, California.

00:40:01.000 And they go through like these four canyons that can get brutally hot, like 110 plus some years.

00:40:08.000 Do you run with like a vest where you have water bottles attached to you or anything?

00:40:12.000 Yep.

00:40:12.000 Yeah, that stuff has come such a long way since I started the sport.

00:40:15.000 I remember when I first started, it was pretty primitive type stuff.

00:40:19.000 And now the sport is, I think through hiking plays a big role in this too, has gotten like...

00:40:24.000 So popular or popular enough where now companies are really dialing that stuff in where you can get like a pack that just sits nice and snug on you and you can put water.

00:40:34.000 Like I use a brand called Nathan.

00:40:36.000 They have like ones that have bladders on the back where they also have ones you can put water bottles on the front.

00:40:41.000 And then just, you know, different setups and stuff.

00:40:43.000 So yeah, that's like a must.

00:40:46.000 Yeah, I mean, because even in early mornings, it's got to be brutal in Phoenix, right?

00:40:50.000 Yeah, I mean, I have yet to see the worst of it.

00:40:53.000 Why'd you move there?

00:40:55.000 Well, part of it was...

00:40:57.000 You want to carry a gun?

00:41:00.000 Well...

00:41:00.000 You've got crazy laws for that.

00:41:03.000 Well, I moved from Sacramento, so let's say I'm looking into that now.

00:41:08.000 It was a combination of things.

00:41:11.000 For me, I'm trying to balance a few different things.

00:41:14.000 I train a lot.

00:41:16.000 I also work for one of my primary sponsors, Ultra Footwear.

00:41:21.000 For me to be able to do the stuff for them that I was wanting to do, it made more sense to be in Phoenix.

00:41:27.000 Like product testing and stuff like that?

00:41:29.000 Yeah, that and just putting on small group runs and events and things like that in the area.

00:41:34.000 If I wanted to appropriately handle the territory, Phoenix made a lot more sense than Sacramento.

00:41:41.000 Northern California has just grown so much for that company in the last couple of years that they needed to get someone in there who was going to do full-time plus to really cover the area.

00:41:50.000 And then I also got engaged in January as well.

00:41:54.000 So my fiance, she was best served being in the Phoenix area too.

00:42:01.000 So it was kind of a mutual...

00:42:03.000 She was from Dallas originally and Phoenix was kind of like a mutually good spot for both of us.

00:42:08.000 So we both kind of looked at it as like, well, what do we want?

00:42:14.000 And it was we want trails right in our backyard, but we also want access to flat stuff.

00:42:18.000 And we actually kind of want the heat because there's races where you need that to train for.

00:42:24.000 So when it gets hot earlier, you can prepare for them.

00:42:27.000 What a crazy reason to move to Phoenix.

00:42:30.000 I'm enjoying the heat for training.

00:42:33.000 Well, I'm not even the craziest one in the house. 0.99

00:42:34.000 My fiancé is a savage. 0.99

00:42:36.000 She... 1.00

00:42:38.000 Yeah, her name is Nicole Kalidropoulos.

00:42:42.000 I've always thought I'm a hard worker and someone who puts a lot of time and effort into things I do.

00:42:46.000 And then I met her and she's cut from the jock-o-cloth, let's put it that way. 1.00

00:42:52.000 Nice.

00:42:53.000 She works for a company called Towers Watson and manages the Midwest division for stuff.

00:43:03.000 So she'll be on a conference call with Amazon and then You know, go out and run three hours after that and then come back and get on another conference call and just keeps going and going and going.

00:43:11.000 So, yeah, it's, you know, it made sense for her job and my job to kind of be in Phoenix.

00:43:18.000 And with as busy as she is and as busy as I can get from time to time, like, it's nice to be able to go out your backyard and be on the trail five minutes later.

00:43:26.000 Whereas both of us didn't have that before.

00:43:27.000 We both had to drive to get to any kind of trail, especially her.

00:43:30.000 Dallas, it was a lot of just, like, flat road running in her area.

00:43:33.000 So, yeah.

00:43:35.000 Dallas doesn't have hardly any hills.

00:43:37.000 No, no.

00:43:37.000 Well, and that's what is impressive with, like, so she's done Western States a few times, the race I was telling her before with the Canyons, and she's been sixth place there twice, just training on flat roads, basically.

00:43:49.000 That's crazy.

00:43:50.000 Does she do anything to augment that, like doing lunges or anything like that? 1.00

00:43:54.000 Uh, she does, uh, some strength work and stuff, but really, you know, a lot of it was just, you know, she would go out and run and run a lot.

00:44:02.000 And then I'm sure like she hasn't met her full potential at that specific event or certainly like mountain type races just because she wasn't trained in mountains, right?

00:44:10.000 Right.

00:44:10.000 Yeah.

00:44:10.000 And she's She's good, though.

00:44:12.000 She was a Division I recruit for college and stuff back in the day, so she's got some running talent, no doubt.

00:44:19.000 And then she puts in the work, because consistency is a huge thing.

00:44:22.000 If you can't find the specific stuff and you're really geeked about a specific race, I don't think not having the right training environment is a reason to not do it if you're excited to do it.

00:44:31.000 So for her, she was more excited to get out on the trails than she was to go do something on a track or a flat road like I was.

00:44:38.000 So for her, it was like, even if I'm not quite where I would like to be, I'm going to do it anyway.

00:44:44.000 Now, I'm not familiar with ultra footwear, but what I wanted to ask you is, does anybody wear minimalist shoes and run these ultra marathons?

00:44:53.000 Yeah, there was actually a gal, I cannot remember her name, this was a couple years ago, who ran ultras in those Vibrant Five Fingers. 1.00

00:45:03.000 Really?

00:45:03.000 Yeah, and the trail stuff too.

00:45:06.000 She must have been a beast. 1.00

00:45:08.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:45:09.000 It's hard to run just a couple miles in those things.

00:45:11.000 Yeah, and it's, you know, it's interesting because, so Ultra Footwear made this shoe this last year called the Vanish, and it's essentially a minimalist shoe.

00:45:21.000 Just like a little bit of fabric on the top, super hard, flat base, and that's kind of what I like when I'm on a road or a track.

00:45:28.000 So I was wearing that.

00:45:29.000 It's called the Vanish?

00:45:30.000 The Vanish, yeah.

00:45:30.000 Can you pull that up and see what that looks like?

00:45:33.000 So I went to this ultra race and I wore those thinking I'm going to have the lightest shoe out of anyone here.

00:45:40.000 Three guys show up running completely barefoot.

00:45:41.000 What?

00:45:42.000 They ran an ultra-marathon barefoot?

00:45:45.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:45:45.000 Dude, that's another level.

00:45:46.000 Yeah, there was one guy who's...

00:45:48.000 Jesus Christ.

00:45:49.000 He's like a 2.22 or 2.23 marathoner, and he's barefoot, and he said...

00:45:54.000 He runs a marathon barefoot?

00:45:56.000 So he doesn't do the marathon barefoot.

00:45:57.000 He actually said that the...

00:45:59.000 So that's a little bit of padding in that, it looks like, or unless there's a lip on the outside.

00:46:03.000 Is that the vanish, or is that the...

00:46:05.000 It says vanish.

00:46:06.000 Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:46:07.000 Yeah, so there's a little bit there.

00:46:09.000 There's a carbon fiber plate, and you see where that little cut is in there?

00:46:13.000 There's a carbon fiber plate in there that makes it a little more firm.

00:46:16.000 So what I'm looking for in a shoe, when I'm looking for that natural feel, is something that's got a firm midsole or a firm durometer, because I don't want to squish down into the shoe.

00:46:26.000 I want to pop right off the ground.

00:46:29.000 And I think, really, that is just...

00:46:32.000 I mean, you've probably experienced this with the Vibrams, where...

00:46:35.000 If you spend the time, your feet get stronger and stronger and stronger.

00:46:40.000 And it's only a matter of time before they get strong enough.

00:46:42.000 You just got to keep kind of working at it.

00:46:44.000 Just like, you know, a weightlifter, you know, when they start out weightlifting, they're nowhere near where they are 10 years later.

00:46:51.000 So like for me, back in 2012, 12, I think?

00:46:56.000 I kind of, like, you know, I read Born to Run.

00:46:58.000 Have you heard of that book?

00:46:59.000 Yeah, I've heard it's amazing.

00:47:00.000 Yeah, you know, I read that and I was like, this is intriguing, you know, and it made a lot of sense too.

00:47:05.000 It's like, you know, if we were meant to have a wedge on our heel, like, we would have had a wedge on our heel.

00:47:12.000 Yeah, no, that's a ridiculous thing that Nike came up with and it's really unfortunate that so many people have adopted that and they run heel first like that.

00:47:20.000 Yeah, well, and the problem, I think, too, is that, like, a shoe is essentially a cast for your foot.

00:47:27.000 Even that Vanish that I had up there, that's a little cast compared to what you're normally going to see, but it's still a cast.

00:47:32.000 That's why I like those five fingers, because there's nothing.

00:47:35.000 There's just a very, very flexible piece of rubber underneath, and it's a glove for your feet.

00:47:41.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:47:42.000 And, you know, people just don't know that I think that you can really work those foot muscles to a point where you can exhaust them the way you would in a shoe.

00:47:50.000 It just takes a lot of time because, like, if I broke my arm and put a cast on it and then, like, six, eight weeks later got the cast taken off, I went back in the weight room and did a normal routine, I would be wrecked the next day.

00:48:01.000 So when you take your foot out of that shoe cast you have it in or take it out of the position it's gotten used to and put it in a different position, it's like taking a cast off and trying to do that full mode of training or motion.

00:48:14.000 So when I first kind of got into ultra running, I worked my way down to a minimalist shoe.

00:48:21.000 I spent probably six months before I was running exclusively in something that was really minimalist.

00:48:28.000 And when I say minimalist, I mean zero drop and no cushion or little to no cushion.

00:48:33.000 Because I think some people confuse that too.

00:48:35.000 Like the shoe you saw up there, because you're like, oh, it looks like it's got a little bit of padding there.

00:48:39.000 So that's like zero drop with cushioning.

00:48:41.000 Or that shoe really doesn't have a lot of cushioning.

00:48:43.000 But there are shoes that Ultra makes that does.

00:48:46.000 And what that does is it takes you from like, the way I describe it, this is someone in like a, Someone in a traditional running shoe, real built up, cushioned, a lot of support is on one end of the spectrum.

00:48:56.000 Barefoot runner like those dudes that I ran into at the track, they're on the other end of the spectrum.

00:49:01.000 There's all these steps in between to get to that.

00:49:05.000 I can't believe people run ultras barefoot.

00:49:08.000 Yeah, it's crazy.

00:49:09.000 I don't think there's too many people doing it. 1.00

00:49:10.000 Look at this fucking savage. 1.00

00:49:11.000 Look at this dude. 1.00

00:49:12.000 Barefoot Ted.

00:49:13.000 Oh, yeah.

00:49:14.000 Barefoot Ted.

00:49:15.000 Yeah.

00:49:15.000 Hi, Ted.

00:49:16.000 He also uses this.

00:49:17.000 The sandal, yeah.

00:49:18.000 Runs in a sandal?

00:49:19.000 Yeah.

00:49:20.000 Well, it wasn't that in the Born to One that these guys had made sandals out of tires.

00:49:25.000 Yeah, uh-huh.

00:49:26.000 Yeah.

00:49:26.000 I've been using something called a...

00:49:28.000 Pull up this Vivo Vivo Barefoot.

00:49:30.000 I've been using these.

00:49:32.000 Yeah.

00:49:33.000 What I like about these is that I don't have to look where I step.

00:49:36.000 There's no cushioning at all.

00:49:38.000 The trail one, I use that one on the far left.

00:49:40.000 The far left?

00:49:41.000 Yeah, that one.

00:49:43.000 There's no cushion to it, but it's got some tread and the bottom is hard enough so that I can run on hard rocks.

00:49:51.000 Sure.

00:50:06.000 Some good tread, you know, so you can, you know, you can get good traction and dirt and mud and stuff like that.

00:50:13.000 But they weigh nothing.

00:50:15.000 Yeah, and you can crumble that thing up.

00:50:17.000 So your foot muscles are flexing every which way they work.

00:50:19.000 That's cool.

00:50:21.000 It's made a big difference with me, man.

00:50:23.000 But honestly, the five fingers are probably the best for that.

00:50:27.000 They just don't have as much traction and I have to look where I'm stepping.

00:50:31.000 I have to be careful.

00:50:32.000 Sharp rocks and stuff, I have to look down.

00:50:34.000 Don't step on that one.

00:50:35.000 I don't like looking.

00:50:37.000 I'd rather just run.

00:50:38.000 With those, I can just run.

00:50:40.000 I can get a faster pace with those.

00:50:43.000 That's where I draw the line, too.

00:50:45.000 When I'm on the roads and on the track, I don't mind having that no cushion type of thing.

00:50:49.000 When I go on the trails in Phoenix, it's very rocky and hard.

00:50:53.000 Then I'll use a shoe called the King MT. That's kind of like the one you had there.

00:50:57.000 It's a little less nimble, I would say, than that one.

00:50:59.000 It's got that That, like, really aggressive lug.

00:51:02.000 It's got the foot-shaped toe box, so I don't feel like my feet are getting pinched together.

00:51:06.000 What do you think Barefoot Ted does?

00:51:08.000 On the trails?

00:51:09.000 Those trails.

00:51:10.000 I think he probably wears those sandals.

00:51:12.000 Oh, probably, right?

00:51:13.000 Yeah, just something where he's got just something that keeps him from getting cut.

00:51:17.000 Yeah.

00:51:18.000 But there are guys who just do that barefoot, too. 1.00

00:51:21.000 Fucking animals. 0.99

00:51:21.000 I think there's very few, but it's doable. 0.99

00:51:24.000 Have you ever seen that show, Dual Survivor?

00:51:26.000 It's one of those wacky Survivor shows.

00:51:29.000 I don't know if I've seen that one. 0.91

00:51:30.000 This one guy, I think his name's Cory, who has the most disgusting feet I've ever seen in my life. 0.90

00:51:36.000 Almost as disgusting as that one guy was cutting the bottom of his feet off and feeding it to dogs. 0.96

00:51:41.000 Remember that guy with a knife?

00:51:42.000 Yeah, that video's awful to watch.

00:51:44.000 But this guy walks barefoot everywhere and his idea is like, you gotta toughen your feet up because you might not have shoes.

00:51:51.000 You know, they get real crazy with this whole survivalist thing.

00:51:54.000 So this guy basically has, I'm not joking, like a good solid half inch of callus under his entire foot.

00:52:02.000 It's amazing what the human body will do when you put it in a position to need to.

00:52:06.000 Yeah, when it has to adapt.

00:52:08.000 I mean, that's one of the reasons why I'm fascinated by guys like you, these ultra runners, is because for the average person, that's an impossible feat.

00:52:16.000 But you've built...

00:52:16.000 There's that guy's foot.

00:52:17.000 Look at that. 1.00

00:52:18.000 Dude, what in the fuck? 1.00

00:52:20.000 It looks like elephant skin. 1.00

00:52:21.000 Yeah, it's fucking gnarly. 0.95

00:52:24.000 But guys like you have adapted your body to this position where you know you can do that, and it's just a matter of putting in the training runs and making sure you're fueling up correctly. 0.95

00:52:36.000 A 100-mile race is not a question whether or not you can do it.

00:52:40.000 It's how fast you can do it.

00:52:41.000 Yeah, you know, it's interesting.

00:52:43.000 The cool thing, and this might go back to what you asked, like, why ultramarathons?

00:52:47.000 And I think it is, part of it, too, is, like, in 100 miles, it's almost like it's not a matter of when is something going to go wrong.

00:52:54.000 It's a matter of when and how do you respond to it.

00:53:00.000 Right.

00:53:00.000 So what's a typical thing that goes wrong?

00:53:02.000 You know, I think a lot of people will have, like, cramping or they'll bonk.

00:53:08.000 I mean, this is one of the reasons why I love the high-fat approach is because, like, bonking from the, like, energy side of things is essentially non-existent.

00:53:15.000 Explain bonking to people who don't know what you're talking about.

00:53:16.000 So bonking is essentially what happens, and I think it's actually more common in the marathon just because people are running a lot faster in those.

00:53:23.000 But essentially what's happening is you're depleting your glycogen stores to the point where your body doesn't really have access to that fuel substrate anymore.

00:53:31.000 And if you're not good at metabolizing fat or you cannot burn fat at a high rate at a decent clip, it grinds you to a halt.

00:53:40.000 You see people staggering and falling over and losing their mind, hallucinating and stuff like that in those situations.

00:53:47.000 So bonking is something that is an issue with ultramarathons because you're out there for so long.

00:53:53.000 If you get behind on fueling, you could bonk and stuff like that.

00:53:56.000 Yeah.

00:53:58.000 I talked about before, there's a lot of logistics with an ultramarathon, and these variables are just so prevalent when you're out there that long, that if you can eliminate some of those or reduce the potential of them flaring up, that's usually a win, because then there's less chance of something popping up that you wouldn't expect or an uncertain thing happening during the race.

00:54:17.000 But it still happened.

00:54:19.000 I would say the most efficient 100 miler I've done is when I ran 11 hours and 40 minutes and 55 seconds at a race in 2015. Holy shit. 0.99

00:54:28.000 You ran 100 miles in 11 hours? 1.00

00:54:32.000 Yeah, that was one on the track. 0.99

00:54:34.000 I don't give a fuck if it was on the moon. 0.99

00:54:36.000 That's crazy. 0.99

00:54:38.000 You ran 11 hours, you ran 100 miles.

00:54:41.000 Yeah, so I think the thing that...

00:54:44.000 How long does it take to drive 100 miles?

00:54:46.000 Okay, it takes...

00:54:47.000 I mean, if you go 100 miles an hour, it takes an hour.

00:54:49.000 Well, it might take me longer to get to the airport if the traffic on the 405 is bad. 0.99

00:54:53.000 That is fucking crazy. 0.92

00:54:54.000 How Zach Bitter broke the U.S. 100-mile record. 1.00

00:54:59.000 You average seven fucking minutes per mile for almost 12 hours. 0.99

00:55:06.000 Dude, that is insane. 1.00

00:55:09.000 That is fucking insane. 1.00

00:55:11.000 Bert Kreischer, he brags when he runs seven minute miles for like three miles. 0.99

00:55:16.000 What did Bert end up running that LA marathon in?

00:55:19.000 Six and a half.

00:55:20.000 Six and a half?

00:55:21.000 I think it was shorter than that.

00:55:23.000 I think it was five.

00:55:23.000 Five something.

00:55:24.000 Yeah.

00:55:25.000 Yeah, no, no, Ari's dad. 1.00

00:55:28.000 He's like, oh, fucking Jamie! 1.00

00:55:30.000 Jamie's giving me a bad rap! 1.00

00:55:31.000 Well, I'll say this here.

00:55:33.000 Bert, if you're listening, contact me.

00:55:35.000 I'll get you to four and a half in six months.

00:55:37.000 Bert!

00:55:38.000 You heard him! 1.00

00:55:40.000 Zach is a fucking man. 1.00

00:55:42.000 If he tells you he can do it... 1.00

00:55:43.000 Dude, that is an incredible number. 0.99

00:55:45.000 That you broke the U.S. 100 mile record by running seven fucking minutes per mile. 0.99

00:55:53.000 That's crazy! 0.99

00:55:54.000 The interesting thing I thought about that event was, when I was talking about efficiency, is I stopped twice during that race.

00:56:01.000 And it was for maybe a total of like 60, at most 90 seconds total.

00:56:05.000 And it was just to pee two times.

00:56:08.000 Did you ever thought about just peeing your pants and just keep running?

00:56:11.000 Wear black shorts.

00:56:12.000 Keep the party rolling.

00:56:13.000 There was a guy who did that.

00:56:15.000 It was two years before I did that race, and he was trying to break 13 hours, and he was right on the edge.

00:56:22.000 He just whipped it out and peed all over the track, I'm pretty sure.

00:56:26.000 Why would he be just peeing his own pants?

00:56:28.000 I don't know, yeah.

00:56:28.000 I mean, I think that's probably what I would do.

00:56:31.000 Yeah, that guy doodied himself.

00:56:33.000 Well, everyone who's been doing endurance sport long enough will have a situation like that, unfortunately.

00:56:39.000 That guy's got it in the front of his legs.

00:56:41.000 He must have just exploded.

00:56:42.000 He lost it, yeah.

00:56:43.000 It must have been a bomb.

00:56:44.000 Bomb went off.

00:56:45.000 Oof, yeah, it's, you know, it's... 0.91

00:56:47.000 It's okay to poop your pants.

00:56:49.000 This guy has a sign.

00:56:50.000 Is that him?

00:56:51.000 With the same guy?

00:56:52.000 Different person.

00:56:54.000 Yeah, it's a very sensitive subject for folks.

00:56:57.000 Yeah, it's a running joke in the endurance running community though, because if you do it long enough, it's going to probably happen to you eventually.

00:57:04.000 Oh, it has to, right?

00:57:05.000 I would imagine you're running 100 miles and your body's going to be misfires.

00:57:10.000 For sure.

00:57:10.000 How do you time your meals before you run?

00:57:13.000 Say if you're going to run 100 miles, when's your last meal before you get there?

00:57:17.000 Yeah, so I'll eat a big dinner the night before, probably around like 4 or 5 o'clock.

00:57:21.000 And what would that be?

00:57:23.000 So I'll do like a huge steak.

00:57:25.000 I try to keep...

00:57:27.000 16 ounces, 20 ounces?

00:57:28.000 Yeah, at least.

00:57:29.000 Really?

00:57:30.000 Mm-hmm.

00:57:30.000 1620 is probably a pretty good number.

00:57:32.000 How much do you weigh?

00:57:33.000 140 pounds, give or take. 1.00

00:57:35.000 That's a lot of fucking meat. 1.00

00:57:37.000 That's crazy. 0.99

00:57:38.000 Well, this is where it gets fascinating with the lifestyle thing I was telling you about is like there's days during the year where like I'm in training where I'm metabolizing two to three times my resting metabolic rate.

00:57:47.000 So I've got to feed myself appropriately for that.

00:57:51.000 And that means a lot of steak.

00:57:53.000 Wow.

00:57:54.000 So is that your primary food source?

00:57:56.000 I don't know if I'd say steak for sure, but definitely fatty meat sources.

00:58:01.000 A lot of like saturated fat-based oils like coconut oil, like ghee, that sort of thing.

00:58:09.000 But yeah, I don't shy away from meat.

00:58:12.000 I usually have meat or eggs for every meal for the most part.

00:58:16.000 Interesting.

00:58:17.000 In every meal, I should say.

00:58:18.000 Yeah, there's a lot of talk lately about the carnivore diet.

00:58:21.000 There's a lot of people that are delving into that, including Jordan Peterson's daughter, which is a really interesting case because she had severe autoimmune disorder.

00:58:31.000 Like, she had some severe issues with, like, horrible arthritis, where she's had...

00:58:36.000 I know she's had hip replacements, and I believe she's having an ankle replaced soon, too. 0.84

00:58:42.000 Okay.

00:58:42.000 Like, severe issues, and...

00:58:45.000 If she eats anything other than meat, it flares up horribly.

00:58:50.000 It's really crazy.

00:58:51.000 I want to try to talk to her, maybe even get her in here, but I've never heard anything like that.

00:58:56.000 I thought I heard somewhere, it was after the last time you had Jordan on, where he was telling you about how he just basically eats meats and greens.

00:59:03.000 That was on his daughter's recommendation.

00:59:05.000 Yeah, I think he's cut out all vegetables right now for at least a trial.

00:59:09.000 I thought I saw something about that.

00:59:11.000 But yeah, it's one of those things where I think like, it's like what I was saying before, like why I don't necessarily want people to say like, well, Zach is saying everyone should do exactly what he's doing and then, you know, they...

00:59:23.000 That's important to bring up, right?

00:59:24.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:59:24.000 Everybody's body is different.

00:59:25.000 For sure.

00:59:26.000 I mean, to the point where, like, you have people like that, like, when I had, like, the issues I were having were incredibly minor compared to Jordan Peterson's daughter.

00:59:35.000 Like, I mean, she's in a spot where, you know, she had to make changes if she wanted to even just probably do daily activities. 1.00

00:59:44.000 And, you know, that's, I think, the hard part for people to kind of understand is, like, People are at different stages.

00:59:51.000 No one's breaking themselves overnight.

00:59:54.000 So it's like this is something that's chipping away at people, and sometimes it chips away at them quicker, some people, and takes longer for others.

01:00:02.000 So if you have an issue like that, it's like you almost have to go back to square one and say, give me a couple things that...

01:00:09.000 I know aren't going to upset me.

01:00:11.000 And let's start from there and see if we can start adding things back eventually, maybe.

01:00:17.000 Sean Baker, you had on the podcast.

01:00:19.000 We actually started recording some podcasts together.

01:00:22.000 And we are having this gal come on who's been a carnivore for eight years. 1.00

01:00:26.000 And she was kind of in that situation where she had a whole bunch of goofy things going on, even with the keto protocol, and she eventually just cut everything up with meat and has been doing great ever since.

01:00:36.000 That's a vegan's nightmare, hearing things like that, like, no!

01:00:40.000 I wish people could separate their ideology from the reality of certain people's bodies.

01:00:46.000 And unfortunately, and this is very unfortunately, you You've got to separate also all the horrors that we associate with factory farming and all the other things that we associate with meat and meat consumption.

01:00:58.000 Those things are real and terrible and absolutely should be avoided and absolutely factory farmers should be illegal.

01:01:04.000 I think it's one of the great horrors of modern society.

01:01:08.000 I really, really do.

01:01:09.000 But take that away.

01:01:11.000 And some people don't think animals should die at all, but they don't live forever and other animals eat them.

01:01:16.000 And it's just like, this is just a part of life.

01:01:18.000 Yeah.

01:01:18.000 Then you're into health and whether or not consuming meat is actually healthy.

01:01:25.000 And there's no evidence that it's not.

01:01:26.000 There's none.

01:01:27.000 Yeah, you know, the thing that, like, I want a vegan to sit me down and explain to me is that, like, when I look at bioavailability of micronutrients, it's like you can't find much better than liver.

01:01:43.000 No.

01:01:44.000 It's like the stuff is super available.

01:01:46.000 Well, that's why alpha wolves immediately go to the liver when they kill something.

01:01:49.000 Right.

01:01:50.000 Yeah, so like, it's like, I need that, like, I don't know, I'm sure there's ranges of what people can do in terms of absorbing something like a non-heme iron versus a heme iron, but like, for me, it's like, if my iron levels were low,

01:02:06.000 the first thing I'm going to, I'm doubling down on liver.

01:02:09.000 Yeah.

01:02:09.000 Doubling down on liver and it's like...

01:02:10.000 As far as nutrients.

01:02:11.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:02:12.000 You're just talking about just from a purely objective standpoint, the consumption of nutrients, organ meats are some of the best.

01:02:18.000 Yeah, for sure.

01:02:19.000 You're aware of Chris Kresser?

01:02:20.000 Mm-hmm.

01:02:20.000 Yep.

01:02:20.000 Chris was a macrobiotic vegan and, you know, I mean, he was like fully hardcore and just having all sorts of huge issues.

01:02:28.000 His body just didn't react to it and he fixed all that by eating organ meat and that's like his primary food source.

01:02:35.000 Yeah.

01:02:36.000 What's the gal's name? 1.00

01:02:37.000 There's a lady who, I can't remember what she had.

01:02:43.000 I'm not going to think of it, but if I do, I'll remember.

01:02:45.000 But she did pretty much the same thing.

01:02:47.000 But some people are fine with a vegan diet, too.

01:02:49.000 That's the other thing that's important to point out.

01:02:51.000 It might not be the best for them in terms of bioavailability of nutrients, but it's certainly better than the standard Western diet, standard American diet.

01:03:01.000 But for some people, they can get by with it and not have any issues.

01:03:04.000 Well, and some people get away with even more.

01:03:05.000 I mean, Courtney DeWalter.

01:03:07.000 Yes.

01:03:07.000 She eats candy, right?

01:03:08.000 She eats candy and drinks beer and eats nachos. 0.95

01:03:11.000 We took her to a bagel place. 1.00

01:03:13.000 She fucking chowed down with bagels and cream cheese. 1.00

01:03:15.000 She's a fucking animal, man. 1.00

01:03:16.000 I read an article about her not too long ago, and she said that she's got, like, candy jars sitting around the house. 1.00

01:03:21.000 Yeah.

01:03:21.000 And she's like, before I go for a run, I'll go anywhere from just, like, you know, nibbling on it to a small stomach ache.

01:03:27.000 Yeah.

01:03:29.000 So we're not operating from the same field, I guess, in that regard.

01:03:33.000 Well, she's a real freak, man. 1.00

01:03:34.000 You know, there's people that know her that just, they're stunned by her.

01:03:39.000 Because what's interesting about her is she's not a fast runner in, per se, like the way she would run a marathon.

01:03:44.000 She'd run a marathon in like three hours.

01:03:46.000 So did she talk about how she got into running when she was on here?

01:03:51.000 I believe she did.

01:03:53.000 Do you remember her specifically, Jamie?

01:03:54.000 Just sort of like you.

01:03:55.000 She ran in high school, I think, a little bit.

01:03:57.000 Yeah.

01:03:57.000 Well, she was teaching as well.

01:03:59.000 Okay, yeah, yeah.

01:04:00.000 And while she was teaching, she was running and doing these things.

01:04:02.000 And then eventually she was able to get enough sponsors so that she could run full-time, which is what she does now.

01:04:09.000 But with her, I think – and this is one of the reasons why I'm fascinated by you folks – With her, it's her mind.

01:04:15.000 Her mind is just unbelievably powerful. 0.99

01:04:18.000 When she was experiencing cornea edemas, she couldn't fucking see, man. 0.99

01:04:23.000 She was literally blind. 0.99

01:04:24.000 She barely could see her feet.

01:04:26.000 And she still won!

01:04:27.000 She fell, cracked her head open, blood's pouring down her head, and she's still won.

01:04:33.000 Was that at Run Rabbit Run?

01:04:34.000 I don't know.

01:04:34.000 I think that was what it was.

01:04:36.000 Yeah.

01:04:36.000 I think that's what it was.

01:04:36.000 And there's an image of her crossing the finish line.

01:04:39.000 Literally can't see shit. 0.99

01:04:40.000 She's got her hands in front of her. 1.00

01:04:41.000 She's covered in blood. 1.00

01:04:43.000 Like, she's a fucking savage! 1.00

01:04:46.000 She's... 1.00

01:04:47.000 If you take...

01:04:47.000 The interesting thing about ultramarathons is, like, we kind of...

01:04:50.000 We're small enough sport where it's like, you can't really say, like, oh, I'm a hundred miler.

01:04:54.000 It's like, okay...

01:04:54.000 Everybody would know.

01:04:55.000 Yeah.

01:04:56.000 Well, it's like...

01:04:57.000 Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

01:04:58.000 So, like, you have everything from a 50 kilometer that's got over 10,000 feet of climbing and descending to a six-day event on a track, and they're all the same sport.

01:05:05.000 Yeah.

01:05:05.000 When you look at, like, people who can kind of do really well at all of them, or in Courtney's case, really well at all of them, you can't find a better female, on the female side of things, someone who can do it better than that.

01:05:16.000 No.

01:05:16.000 Like, she does it, she goes on the track, kills it, she goes in 240 miles through the mountains, kills it.

01:05:22.000 It's crazy. 0.63

01:05:23.000 Yeah.

01:05:23.000 Yeah, she's something really, really unusual.

01:05:26.000 You know, a buddy, my friend Brian was texting me about her while she was getting...

01:05:30.000 Brian, he doesn't even run, I don't think, or barely.

01:05:33.000 But he was just so fascinated by this one woman that was so far ahead of everybody. 0.99

01:05:38.000 He was like, what the fuck is she doing, man? 0.99

01:05:40.000 She beat the second place guy by 10 hours in a 238 mile race. 0.99

01:05:46.000 22 miles she was ahead of him.

01:05:48.000 Yeah, that's an interesting topic, too, where men and women in ultramarathoning and how that kind of...

01:05:56.000 It's one of the rare races where women can win. 1.00

01:05:58.000 Yeah, and the interesting thing to me about it is women can and do win some races, but when they're like... 1.00

01:06:07.000 Courtney's very much the most, I would say, talented person to do one of the 200 milers yet. 0.97

01:06:12.000 There hasn't been a lot of what...

01:06:13.000 The top of the sport hasn't really moved into that.

01:06:17.000 I mean, Courtney certainly is top of the sport, but she's... 0.97

01:06:19.000 Do you think she's the best?

01:06:20.000 I think she's the best woman all around.

01:06:23.000 Certainly in the United States.

01:06:24.000 Do you think she's the best at running those 200 milers? 1.00

01:06:28.000 No.

01:06:29.000 Is it dependent upon altitude gain and loss?

01:06:32.000 Probably.

01:06:32.000 And just variables to the day.

01:06:35.000 There's a guy named Killian Jornet.

01:06:40.000 How do you spell his last name?

01:06:41.000 J-O-R-N-E-T. And, uh, he won the, um, or he, he's, he's, he's essentially the best mountain runner by far.

01:06:52.000 Like there's maybe one other guy who could maybe compete with him at something under a hundred miles.

01:06:56.000 But if it's like, he's, he's, he would probably like beat everyone by who knows how much in a 200. We've seen one of these videos before.

01:07:05.000 Yeah, he'll run on these ridge lines and it'll be death on both sides and he just...

01:07:11.000 Play that, Jimmy. 1.00

01:07:14.000 These fucking guys, man. 1.00

01:07:17.000 Oh, I have seen this. 1.00

01:07:19.000 This isn't even nearly as thin as some of them get.

01:07:21.000 Oh, Jesus Christ.

01:07:22.000 Oh my God.

01:07:22.000 Yeah, that's crazy.

01:07:25.000 Look at him. 0.96

01:07:26.000 He looks like a freak, too. 0.91

01:07:27.000 A GoPro strapped to his head?

01:07:28.000 That's gotta throw your balance off.

01:07:30.000 He's running with a GoPro!

01:07:31.000 Put that down! 1.00

01:07:32.000 Pay attention!

01:07:33.000 If that was my son, I'd be like, pay attention to where you're running, kid!

01:07:36.000 Jesus!

01:07:36.000 Yeah, he's interesting, because, I mean, his parents were, like, mountaineers, I think, and, like, so he was, like, basically playing in the mountains at, like, age three and basically grew up doing this stuff, so...

01:07:44.000 Oh, my God.

01:07:45.000 Yeah, so he's the type of guy who, like, he's probably the best in the sport right now, and it's...

01:07:50.000 Oh my god, he's jumping around. 1.00

01:07:51.000 He's an asshole. 1.00

01:07:52.000 He's an asshole. 1.00

01:07:53.000 He is running, folks. 1.00

01:07:55.000 What is this video?

01:07:56.000 It's on his Instagram.

01:07:57.000 I don't really know.

01:07:59.000 Okay.

01:08:00.000 And spell his name K-I... Is that two L's?

01:08:03.000 One L. One L-I-A-N-J-O-R-N-E-T. And he's running in Chamoy...

01:08:10.000 How do you say that?

01:08:11.000 France.

01:08:11.000 Chamonix.

01:08:12.000 Chamonix.

01:08:12.000 Chamonix, France.

01:08:13.000 And he's running on what looks like the fin of a shark if a shark was the size of a mountain. 1.00

01:08:22.000 This guy's a fucking animal, man. 1.00

01:08:24.000 That is so scary. 1.00

01:08:27.000 I get sweaty.

01:08:28.000 My hands are sweating.

01:08:31.000 It's scared just watching it.

01:08:33.000 And so he's the best?

01:08:34.000 Yeah, on the mountains for sure.

01:08:35.000 He doesn't do anything that's not mountainous.

01:08:37.000 He did Western States and won it in 2011, and he was complaining about it being too flat.

01:08:43.000 Oh, Jesus Christ.

01:08:45.000 What is the gain and loss of elevation in Western States?

01:08:48.000 That one's net downhill, so it's 23,000 feet down, 17,000 feet up.

01:08:52.000 What?

01:08:52.000 He's complaining about that?

01:08:54.000 Yeah, it's too flat.

01:08:55.000 17,000 feet up?

01:08:57.000 And it gets much crazier in that you can do 50 milers or 100Ks that have the same profile as that.

01:09:02.000 If you're doing what he's doing, that probably does feel kind of flat for him.

01:09:06.000 He likes that steep technical stuff.

01:09:09.000 But yeah, as far as the mountains go, he's the guy to beat for sure.

01:09:13.000 And he'll do races on a regular basis when he is running because he's actually a professional skier too.

01:09:18.000 So he's only running basically half the year and he's skiing the other half.

01:09:22.000 Jesus Christ.

01:09:23.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:09:23.000 So he's a fun dude to follow for sure.

01:09:26.000 But yeah, when you look at some of the races that are kind of the big races, like Western States 100 is the most competitive 100 miler in the United States, and Ultra Trail Mount Blanc, which is actually by Chamonix where you saw that video, is probably, at least last year, was the most competitive in the world.

01:09:44.000 Those are the races I like to look at to kind of see where the divergence is from the males and the females.

01:09:49.000 And if you look at course records and winning times, the men are finishing two plus hours ahead of the women on a pretty regular basis on that type of stuff.

01:10:00.000 At Ultra Trail, Mount Blanc, sometimes it's four or five hours.

01:10:05.000 It actually is more in line with what you see with other endurance distances, like marathons and stuff like that.

01:10:12.000 The crazy thing about it, though, is...

01:10:15.000 I think?

01:10:25.000 I think?

01:10:35.000 Finishing place for a woman other than this other lady named Ann Tracen, who she doesn't really race anymore, but she's kind of like the legend of the sport from the women, where she's won Western States like 14 times and had like 20 world records at one point and stuff like that. 0.59

01:10:52.000 But Nikki Kimball, she finished third and part of it was because that was like the hottest year in the Canyons on record. 0.99

01:10:57.000 And if women do, one thing I'm pretty confident women do better at these 100 miles than men is they're not nearly as stupid. 0.98

01:11:04.000 Like the men will go out and like if it's competitive... 0.99

01:11:09.000 It takes one or two guys to kind of run a little too fast and he's going to bring five, six, seven guys with him.

01:11:15.000 And then it's actually a fascinating racing concept, I think, because then it's like, if you're watching it, you're like, okay, one of these guys is going to have the race of his life and hold on for dear life and run a spectacular time.

01:11:27.000 Everyone else is going to blow up epically.

01:11:28.000 When's it going to happen?

01:11:29.000 Wow.

01:11:30.000 So you can thin out that men's field really easily when that happens.

01:11:33.000 I think the women are a little smarter than that. 1.00

01:11:35.000 That happened at MOAB, right?

01:11:37.000 Wasn't there a guy that was like way out ahead?

01:11:40.000 Yeah, that might have been the case.

01:11:41.000 Yeah, he dropped off.

01:11:42.000 He couldn't keep it up.

01:11:44.000 He was probably running way too fast for what he was capable of doing.

01:11:47.000 And you see that all the time.

01:11:48.000 And it's really easy to do at 100 plus miles because really at the end of the day, like if you feel comfortable at the start, you're probably going too fast.

01:11:55.000 Now, how do you pace yourself in something like that?

01:11:57.000 Are you using your watch?

01:11:59.000 Are you counting steps?

01:12:01.000 What are you doing?

01:12:02.000 Yeah, I like to get to a point where I can use perceived effort, which is basically listening to my body.

01:12:08.000 I can know, okay, this is a little too hard.

01:12:10.000 I need to dial it back.

01:12:12.000 I'll use heart rate a lot in training to kind of get myself...

01:12:16.000 To the fitness I'm looking for.

01:12:18.000 Yeah, Rich Roll was talking about that.

01:12:19.000 He was saying that he tries to stay under 140 or in the 140 range.

01:12:24.000 Yeah, and the thing about heart rate that I... Where I kind of deviate from heart rate is when you start getting into these really long events that go past like two or three hours, heart rate starts losing its value in terms of being able to trust it as like a metric that's going to tell you to do the right thing.

01:12:38.000 Like there's so many things that can kind of disrupt that from like dehydration to just cardiac drift.

01:12:43.000 Yeah.

01:12:43.000 All kinds of things.

01:12:45.000 So I think if an athlete really has things dialed in, they can use heart rate in training and they can look at heart rate if they want, but they also need to connect that with perceived effort so that if something goes wrong with that or issues start coming up with the heart rate side of things, they can still kind of reflect back in on themselves like,

01:13:03.000 okay, this is a sustainable pace for me or this is not a sustainable pace for me.

01:13:06.000 Rich Roe, we should point out, is a vegan.

01:13:09.000 He's one of the few guys that is fully functional, has no issues at all keeping that diet up.

01:13:15.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:13:15.000 And I think he puts a lot of work into that, I think.

01:13:18.000 Oh, you have to.

01:13:19.000 I mean, you really have to be just super dedicated to making sure you're getting the proper amount of nutrients, making sure you're getting microalgae and all the different forms of B12. Yeah, yeah.

01:13:29.000 And whenever someone comes to me and says, like, I'm a vegan or I'm a vegetarian or something like that, it's like, who should I look to?

01:13:35.000 And he's the first guy I point to.

01:13:36.000 He's like, if there's someone doing it right, it's him.

01:13:38.000 Yeah, no, he's definitely doing it right.

01:13:40.000 Now, when it comes to something like Moab 240, how does someone like Courtney blow that whole field away like that? 1.00

01:13:47.000 I think some of it is just that's a really new event.

01:13:50.000 I think they're in their third or fourth year for 200s.

01:13:54.000 There's three of them in the United States, and there'll probably be four or five in the next couple of years.

01:14:00.000 So it really hasn't...

01:14:01.000 It's in its infancy.

01:14:02.000 I mean, think of it like with UFC back in the 90s, and then where it is at today.

01:14:08.000 Right.

01:14:08.000 So those 200s are kind of like UFC was in the 90s.

01:14:11.000 I see.

01:14:12.000 And if that becomes a thing, if people start gravitating toward it, then you'll see some of these course records just get blown out.

01:14:19.000 I mean, we saw that with the 100-mile distance, and we've seen that with a lot of other trail course records.

01:14:24.000 Yeah.

01:14:25.000 Because a lot of fast guys and gals have moved into this sport in the last 5-10 years.

01:14:29.000 So it's been just deeper talent pool, more likely to get a complete genetic freak.

01:14:36.000 And the other thing too is a lot of times what you have is you get competitive enough in a sport, then people start playing with fire and training.

01:14:46.000 And they're doing it because they know they have to get to their optimal best.

01:14:50.000 And sometimes they overtrain?

01:14:51.000 Right.

01:14:52.000 Overtrain, get hurt.

01:14:53.000 But then the people that make it through that are there as fit as they can get.

01:14:59.000 So then you can see some really good times.

01:15:01.000 Do you peak for a race?

01:15:03.000 Yeah, definitely.

01:15:04.000 The same way a fighter would peak for a fight?

01:15:06.000 Yep.

01:15:06.000 I'll usually pick two, maybe three races a year.

01:15:09.000 And those are the ones that I'm really going to try to nail.

01:15:11.000 Those are the ones where...

01:15:13.000 I'm going to try to do everything I can to be ready to hurt during that race.

01:15:19.000 And then I'll usually do maybe...

01:15:21.000 It's usually ranged.

01:15:23.000 I'll usually do about six to eight ultra marathons in a year.

01:15:25.000 And then the other ones are kind of like those training races that I talked about before.

01:15:28.000 Or every once in a while I'll get invited to a race that's overseas and it's like a free trip to go to China or something like that.

01:15:36.000 Well, speaking of hurting during a race, I know that a lot of ultra runners are utilizing CBD and even using edible marijuana while they run, and that they found that this is a great performance enhancing.

01:15:52.000 Yeah.

01:15:53.000 Yeah, I don't...

01:15:53.000 Have you ever messed around with CBD or...

01:15:55.000 Yeah, not within workouts, though.

01:15:59.000 Like, more as, like, a sleep aid than anything.

01:16:01.000 But, like, or an inflammation thing.

01:16:02.000 So it's, like, more of a post-workout type.

01:16:05.000 Wasn't there...

01:16:05.000 There was an Esquire article or Maxim, one of them, Guy Guy magazine type things, and it was all about marijuana and ultra-running.

01:16:14.000 And that it's somehow or another become a big part of it for a lot of these guys.

01:16:20.000 Yeah.

01:16:21.000 Yeah, I think, you know, it's interesting because, like, you know, marijuana use, I'm not sure about CBD, but marijuana use is, like, is illegal in competition.

01:16:31.000 Is it?

01:16:31.000 In all of them?

01:16:33.000 Yeah, it's...

01:16:34.000 So there's, like, a USADA-type standard?

01:16:36.000 Yeah, it's the same.

01:16:37.000 It's the USADA protocol.

01:16:39.000 So I think it's, like, it has to be below a certain level for, like...

01:16:43.000 That's great, then.

01:16:43.000 So they're testing you for EPO and all those things?

01:16:46.000 Yeah, I mean, it's still pretty primitive and ultra-running.

01:16:49.000 Like, there's testing at some of the big races, and that's even relatively new, like, in the last year or so.

01:16:54.000 So, like, Western states, they'll test the top 10 on each side and then a few random people.

01:17:00.000 And then, I think, UTMB, which is the other big 100-mile I was talking about, they test.

01:17:05.000 Like, I was tested after...

01:17:07.000 When I broke the 12-hour world record in 2013, I got tested after that.

01:17:12.000 Have there been any big superstars that pissed hot?

01:17:15.000 There's been people who have.

01:17:18.000 They weren't like individuals that were kind of like a poster child of the sport necessarily.

01:17:24.000 Not like Lance Armstrong.

01:17:26.000 Right.

01:17:26.000 Nothing like that.

01:17:28.000 It's really interesting because there's certainly people skirting the rules in ultramarathon running.

01:17:34.000 I have no doubt about it.

01:17:36.000 What do you think they're doing?

01:17:38.000 Probably like...

01:17:40.000 What is it?

01:17:41.000 I doubt they're doing like blood transfusion things like Tour de France style because I mean that's an expensive hard thing to kind of put together.

01:17:48.000 You need a doctor essentially if I'm understanding it all right.

01:17:50.000 So they're probably just doing little like minor things like maybe like peptides or something like that would be my guess.

01:17:57.000 But I also do think it's not nearly like people I think nowadays like with Icarus and all that stuff like now people are on the opposite side of what they were a few years ago where they suspect everyone's doing it.

01:18:10.000 Versus, ah, no, they're not doing it.

01:18:12.000 They haven't gotten caught yet, which is where we were probably a few years ago.

01:18:15.000 In ultra running, I think the culture plays a huge role in that.

01:18:18.000 I mean, when you had Lance on, I think he was pretty good about talking about how you come into the sport, you go over to Europe to race, and they ask you to get on a protocol.

01:18:29.000 If you say no, they send you back.

01:18:30.000 That's a cultural thing then, too.

01:18:33.000 It's like you have to do it to be in the sport, almost.

01:18:37.000 With ultra running, it's kind of the opposite, I think.

01:18:39.000 I think the culture is stay away from that stuff.

01:18:43.000 Like, we don't want that.

01:18:45.000 Because it's a mind thing, almost more than anything, which is why people like Courtney, who aren't maybe the fastest marathon runners, but have this just bulletproof mind that allows them to compete.

01:18:57.000 And that you really, there's no supplement for your mind, for willpower.

01:19:01.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:19:02.000 And there's things that can go wrong just from the duration you're out there.

01:19:06.000 Yeah, I can imagine.

01:19:07.000 I mean, it seems to be, so much of it seems to be your ability to deal with discomfort and pain and just press on.

01:19:14.000 Yeah, you know, the way I describe ultramarathon running is, it's still a running sport.

01:19:18.000 See, runner's high.

01:19:19.000 The athletes use marijuana to improve their training.

01:19:22.000 What was that in?

01:19:23.000 Was it in Esquire?

01:19:24.000 I typed in Esquire.

01:19:25.000 I typed both of those in yet, but it was Guardian case.

01:19:27.000 Stone marathon runners may seem like walking contradictions, but there are hints that the drug and long-distance running could go hand in hand.

01:19:34.000 I'll tell you what, man.

01:19:35.000 I've only done it a few times where I got super baked and went running.

01:19:38.000 It feels awesome.

01:19:40.000 It feels great.

01:19:40.000 You feel so scared, though.

01:19:42.000 Like, ah, what am I doing?

01:19:45.000 But I would imagine for some people it's, you know, euphoric.

01:19:50.000 50% of the runners I mean are avid cannabis users.

01:19:53.000 To say almost none of them are open about it, says Avery Collins.

01:19:56.000 Oh, yeah.

01:19:57.000 Yeah, Avery Collins is, you know, he's interesting because he's a spokesperson for marijuana use and, you know, You don't have to look far into marijuana and how it got to be where it is in terms of its legality or illegality to recognize there's some tomfoolery going on there.

01:20:17.000 I mean, you don't have to be a historian to find out...

01:20:20.000 Why that's criminalized, whereas alcohol isn't, and that sort of thing.

01:20:25.000 And Avery's been a pretty big proponent about destigmatizing it.

01:20:31.000 But he understands that it's illegal in competition, and I think he's been tested at least twice after races.

01:20:40.000 I mean, he was sixth at Western States last year, so he had gotten tested for that.

01:20:44.000 Is caffeine illegal in competition?

01:20:47.000 No.

01:20:48.000 I think at a certain level, I think it is, although they may have just removed it.

01:20:51.000 I'm trying to remember if I saw that right.

01:20:52.000 But it used to be like you can have caffeine, but at a certain level it would be illegal, but it was like the equivalent of like 16 cups of coffee or something like that.

01:21:01.000 So you'd have to put down like four of those nitros or six of those nitros right before your race if you wanted any chance of going over that. 0.95

01:21:09.000 And you'd probably go into cardiac arrest before then.

01:21:10.000 Right.

01:21:11.000 And by the time you got to the end of the race, it would probably be out of your system anyway.

01:21:14.000 Yeah.

01:21:15.000 Well, it's interesting.

01:21:16.000 I actually, this is diverging a little bit, but I read a story a while ago that there was some high school kid who was playing football and he like slammed a Red Bull or some, one of those like high caffeine energy drinks and then like was like on the kick return team or something and returned a kick for a touchdown and was just jacked out of his mind,

01:21:35.000 slammed another one and then went back on the field and had a heart attack or something.

01:21:38.000 I'm sure it could happen if you go too hard.

01:21:40.000 It's not just caffeine, right?

01:21:42.000 A lot of those things have a bunch of other wacky stimulants in them, too.

01:21:45.000 Remember Red Lines?

01:21:46.000 Oh, yeah.

01:21:47.000 I took one of those once, I drank the whole bottle, and then I looked at it, it says like four servings. 0.99

01:21:51.000 I'm like, oh, shit. 0.99

01:21:53.000 And each serving is like 150 milligrams of caffeine or something nuts. 0.99

01:21:57.000 Yeah, well, and then they put a bunch of other stimulants in there that people don't know about. 0.97

01:22:00.000 Yeah, taurine and all sorts of other shit in there. 0.60

01:22:03.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.89

01:22:04.000 Yeah, the kind of those pre-workout supplements were kind of wild.

01:22:08.000 Oh, yeah, ephedrine.

01:22:09.000 Yeah.

01:22:09.000 Oh, remember those ripped fuel?

01:22:11.000 I took ripped fuel once and went to a jiu-jitsu class.

01:22:13.000 I had to stop.

01:22:14.000 I had to stop training.

01:22:15.000 I'm like, my heart is beating so fast.

01:22:18.000 I could die here.

01:22:19.000 Like, this is not good.

01:22:20.000 And that was right before they pulled it off the market.

01:22:22.000 Yeah.

01:22:23.000 Cut it in just in time, I guess.

01:22:25.000 There was another thing they pulled off the market, too, that was killing people.

01:22:28.000 Was it called Jack 3D? Oh, I think I remember hearing about that stuff.

01:22:31.000 Yeah, yeah, that killed a few folks. 0.64

01:22:34.000 I think it killed a few folks in the military. 0.99

01:22:36.000 So, you know, you're not talking about, like, some fucking sickly old man's like, I'm about to get jacked! 1.00

01:22:41.000 No, it's like fucking soldiers. 1.00

01:22:44.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:22:45.000 I mean, I'll use caffeine in races.

01:22:46.000 I think it's pretty clear that caffeine is a performance enhancing and it just happens to be one that's legal.

01:22:51.000 But it's a mild performance enhancing.

01:22:53.000 For sure.

01:22:53.000 Are you using coffee or are you taking pills?

01:22:57.000 I've done a variety of different things.

01:23:02.000 I did a race once where I was trying to figure out my fueling rate and what was ideal.

01:23:11.000 This was a while ago, but I did a 100k race and I did nothing but Mountain Dew.

01:23:18.000 It ended up coming out to about 158 calories an hour of just Mountain Dew.

01:23:24.000 I added some electrolytes to it.

01:23:25.000 Well, I feel like if you're just sitting around doing nothing, Mountain Dew is probably terrible for you.

01:23:29.000 For sure. 0.77

01:23:30.000 But if you're running hills and really kicking ass like that, the amount of fuel you're burning, Mountain Dew might be a great move.

01:23:36.000 If you don't go overboard, I mean, so does at every aid station at pretty much every race.

01:23:40.000 Really?

01:23:40.000 Yeah.

01:23:41.000 So it's definitely something people have identified as useful.

01:23:43.000 But since then, I've been...

01:23:45.000 That product I was talking about before, the X Endurance Fuel 5, they make one with a little bit of caffeine in it too.

01:23:50.000 So now I'll usually, if I want caffeine, I'll just use that instead of the non-caffeinated one.

01:23:54.000 But then I'll do, like, you know, I'll still sometimes do a little bit of soda, especially at the end of the race, just to kind of change things up a little bit.

01:24:01.000 Because that's the other thing, too, is, like, if you do the same thing, you know, after a while, it's like, just give me something different.

01:24:07.000 Yeah, well, I know Floyd Mayweather drinks soda after he works out.

01:24:11.000 Oh, really?

01:24:11.000 Yeah.

01:24:12.000 And people were like, what an idiot. 1.00

01:24:13.000 And I was like, maybe not. 1.00

01:24:15.000 First of all, maybe the best boxer of all time, so definitely not an idiot.

01:24:19.000 He's doing something right.

01:24:20.000 And if he's that good on top of having a terrible diet, I think part of his terrible diet is a joke. 1.00

01:24:28.000 He'll eat cheeseburgers and shit and show you and say, look, motherfucker, I'm kicking everybody's ass eating cheeseburgers. 1.00

01:24:34.000 But not really. 1.00

01:24:35.000 He really does have...

01:24:36.000 He goes home and the chef's making some gourmet meal.

01:24:37.000 I mean, he has a personal chef.

01:24:40.000 There was a whole article about it recently.

01:24:42.000 But I think that the fueling up with really heavy sugary drinks after a very hard workout, it's not a bad idea to replenish the glycogen in your muscles.

01:24:52.000 Yeah, I think that depends.

01:24:54.000 I think like, I think the science is pretty clear if you're on a high carbohydrate or at least a higher carbohydrate diet that, you know, carbohydrate and protein within like, you know, 30-45 minutes of the post-workout is going to be in your best interest.

01:25:07.000 A lot of people like chocolate milk for that, right?

01:25:10.000 Yeah, that's gotten kind of like labeled as that perfect ratio.

01:25:14.000 Yeah, of protein with sugar.

01:25:17.000 Protein with sugar, yep.

01:25:18.000 Where it's not clear, or at least it's getting clearer, is like where the variance there is for someone like myself who's following a high-fat approach.

01:25:26.000 Yeah.

01:25:27.000 And we had a little bit of a glimpse into it from some studies.

01:25:31.000 And the interesting thing is what they did this one study called a FASTER study.

01:25:36.000 And it looked at like it was 10 guys who were on a high fat diet and 10 guys who were on a high carbohydrate diet.

01:25:43.000 And, um, the guys on the, they try to pair them up as twins.

01:25:47.000 So like similar, like performance achievements, uh, similar like body metrics, and then kind of compare the two in the, the high fat cohort actually, when they finished the, one of the workouts was a three hour treadmill session.

01:25:59.000 And then they were, they taken like blood tests and stuff and they had like the oxygen mask and things like throughout the course of it.

01:26:06.000 And they tested things before or after, um, And one thing they saw was, like, the high-fat folks actually had this kind of big, like, surge of glucose in the bloodstream post-workout.

01:26:18.000 So the thought is, like, you might not want to double down on that if you're in a fat-adapted state because, like, I mean, some of the levels...

01:26:27.000 This goes back to...

01:26:28.000 It would have been, like, this is something I'd like to ask Dr. Atiyah about, is that, like, you get these big...

01:26:35.000 Kind of post-workout, like, blood glucose spikes, sometimes to the level of, like, what would look like a type 2 diabetic.

01:26:43.000 But it's in a different context than what you would see in someone who's just, like, following a normal diet, where that would be kind of a red flag.

01:26:50.000 And so, like, to hit the body with another source of glucose, essentially, might not be affecting you the same way.

01:27:00.000 So, yeah, it's interesting stuff.

01:27:02.000 So, like, it's actually, like, what I've done sometimes, too, is after a big, hard workout, if I'm not hungry, I don't always eat right away.

01:27:08.000 I wait for my stomach to come around and, like, my body to say, you're hungry, just to let all that stuff kind of go through and then I'll have, depending on what I'm doing next, like, if I'm taking an easy day or a couple easy days, I'll go, like, really low carb.

01:27:22.000 But if I'm going back out that afternoon for another workout or the next morning for, like, a speed session or something like that, that's when maybe I would...

01:27:29.000 Try to drop in a little bit of carbohydrate to kind of speed up the glycogen side of things.

01:27:34.000 So I'm ready for that next one. 1.00

01:27:36.000 Well, Zach, you're a bad motherfucker. 1.00

01:27:38.000 I wish you all the best. 0.99

01:27:39.000 I really appreciate you coming down here and talking to us.

01:27:41.000 And it's fascinating what you do, man.

01:27:43.000 Thanks for having me on.

01:27:45.000 Thank you.

01:27:45.000 Thank you very much, man.

01:27:46.000 Thank you.

The Joe Rogan Experience - April 26, 2018

Joe Rogan Experience #1110 - Zach Bitter

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript