The Lucie Beatrix Podcast
Lucie Beatrix interviews inspiring humans of all walks on life that share her love for running fast and far, creating interesting stuff, and changing the world for the better.
The Lucie Beatrix Podcast
Zach Bitter: The Art of Running 100 Miles
Ultrarunning legend Zach Bitter joins us for an inspiring conversation about his relationship with the 100 mile distance. Reflecting on Zach's incredible accomplishments, including his world and American records, we delve into how his perseverance motivated personal running goals. We talk about the nuances of adapting to new environments like heat and incline training as well as the mental power it takes to push yourself to the max.
Zach's transition from collegiate running to the grueling world of ultramarathons was unlikely but it has been a fruitful pursuit that's shown him he's capable of a lot more than he ever expected. Discover the delicate balance between training volume and speed workouts, and unpack the strategies necessary for conquering a 100-mile race. I ask him to break down for me in laymen's terms how to go about pacing, staying in the zone on track courses, and what to do when things don’t go as planned—(or like how a simple extension cord can save a treadmill record attempt).
The conversation also opens up about the crucial elements of nutrition and recovery, highlighting personal experiences from races and the adaptable nature of dietary strategies like a modified keto diet. We discuss how to manage hydration and nutrition effectively during grueling events, and the importance of strength training and injury prevention. From the potential of negative splitting to the thrill of setting personal records, this episode captures the essence of pushing boundaries in ultrarunning, with inspiration drawn from iconic figures like Alexander Sorokin and Camille Heron.
More Zach Bitter: Website
MUSEUM OF DISTANCE RUNNING: USE OFFER CODE LUCIE10 for 10% off your order at MODR
This is the Lucy Beatrix podcast. Thanks for tuning. In. Today's episode is my conversation with Zach Bitter. He is an ultramarathoning legend who shattered the world and American record for 100 miles run in 11 hours and 19 minutes. He held this record from 2019 until 2022. In today's episode we're going to talk about his unique dietary strategies, his coaching and what's next for him in ultramarathoning adventures. So stay tuned for a great show. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, lucy.
Speaker 1:I have to start by saying you're a huge inspiration to me. Part of why I attempted an ultramarathon on the track during the pandemic four years ago was I was listening to you on Rogan and I was sitting in New York City with nothing to do. It was the pandemic, so like everything was shut down and I was like I'm going to go try to run 100 miles on a track and I had like three days of prep. But I had been running a lot Like I had been doing the like random, like long distance and stuff over like weekends, like spontaneous, like 50K and whatever. But I had been listening to you on the podcast, on his podcast, and I was like I'm just going to go try to do this Like I want to. So I was like it's just so cool because, like you're definitely one of like the heroes that like put planted the seed in my head that like this is possible.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And not only is it possible, it's possible to do it fast, because like there are so many people who do ultras and it's just like time on feet, just sure get like 100 miles walking is like amazing, but to do it fast that's like a whole other level and it's super inspiring.
Speaker 2:So thanks yeah, no, I appreciate it. It's always fun.
Speaker 1:It's nothing like a pandemic to make a track look inviting exactly yeah, and like it was so weird in new york because everything was shut down and it was very like taboo to even be running.
Speaker 1:Like they were like basically acting like don't even run, and so what was allowed was to be on the track with like social distancing etiquette, and I was like, ok, I'm going to go be on this track the entire day and I didn't make it to 100. I only made it to 76 miles. But I definitely felt like it's like that thing of like, if you see it somebody else doing it, you're like maybe I can do it and it normalizes it. So that was huge for me, especially as someone who, like didn't know ultramarathoners. Really it's just like listening to somebody you know in a totally different place. But so yeah, so what brought you to Austin, texas, that's where we are right now. It's a gloomy day in Austin, but what brought you to Austin, texas, that's where we are right now. It's a gloomy day in.
Speaker 2:Austin. But what brought you here? Yeah, so Austin was probably a spot that I would have liked to gone to, maybe even earlier, or my wife and I would have liked to. Anyway, we ended up when we got married I was in Sacramento and she was in Dallas, and we picked Phoenix to move to. And Phoenix made a lot of sense at the time because we needed a big airport that could get places directly easily. We were both traveling a lot more than um. I mean, phoenix from a running standpoint is about as perfect as you're going to get, because you have access to just about everything. You have mountains, you can get to flagstaff in a couple hours, you have like these canal paths where you can just run straight, flat, underpass doing crossroads and um, so it was like a really good fit for us then. Then the pandemic happened. We both were 100 remote after that and we were just like, do you know, do we really want to be in phoenix forever? And we're like, ah, maybe not, but I had actually ended up coming to austin, I think five times that year for just different stuff between, like coaching, podcasting and all that stuff and and I just floated the idea to her and, like I didn't even get the sentence halfway on my model, she was like yeah, let's do it, I was like
Speaker 2:okay, oh, that's awesome. Yeah, and she, she, when she was in Dallas she had prior, she got her lottery from Baylor, so she had a lot of friends that ended up in Austin. One of her college teammates was in Austin at the time too, so it was just like kind of like well, let's check it out. And you know, austin was popping off so much at that point too, we kind of thought like if we don't act now, it won't be an option.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So we moved pretty quick actually, but that was almost. I guess that was three years ago, in January, so Okay, cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we love it here, so we don't phone anywhere. You run the town Lake trail loop and the dirt. I love that, Like when I moved from New York to Texas. I'm kind of back and forth a lot like both places, but I always love when I get back to Texas and I can go run on the dirt.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Just have, like you know, a nice 10 mile loop on dirt. Um, so, yeah, so the heat in Arizona is something that you're used to, and so you obviously have that here too. Um, do you?
Speaker 2:you prefer running in the heat to train for these big races? Or like yeah, uh, I I probably, nicole and I, my wife, we debate about this all the time where it's like is it worse to have the phoenix dry heat or the austin humid heat in the summer?
Speaker 2:yeah, so it gets pretty brutal here in the summer it's horrible, yeah, and she likes the humidity better, at least she likes the whole package of it, because, like here in austin, it's like you'll get that oppressive heat in the summer, but then you'll get like a storm that comes through and it'll be nice for a couple days. So it's not like this like drawn out, we're in it for three, four months type of thing, whereas in phoenix, like you hit april, may and it starts getting up to that 100 degree temperature is like okay, now we're in this until probably October.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, so I mean, I, I like it because I think it, it it's, it doesn't deter performance on, it actually probably enhances performance on even cooler races, uh, but it also prepares you well if you're going to do a hotter weather race too. So, um, you know the race you were mentioned in the intro. When I was training for that one, I was doing it through the summer in Phoenix and the race itself was on an indoor track, so they had a temperature, climate controlled. Uh, actually, very optimally temperature controlled, because it's a speed skating rink and they build the track around and that's in Wisconsin, in Milwaukee yeah, it's a little bit training facility there for the Pettit Center.
Speaker 2:So I went from like doing runs that would end in like 100, 110 degrees to racing in 55 years fair, amazing, yeah, so that's optimal. Yeah, I probably had enhanced blood volume just from like the adaptations from that, but then I didn't need it necessarily from a cooling standpoint. But you can still use that, yeah yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:I noticed that when I trained through the pandemic, actually that first 2020, like, I kind of had a breakthrough with running because of so much mileage in the heat that I just been building base, base, base, and then when I finally raced in the fall, uh, all these PRS happened because of the cool suddenly you're like oh okay, it's almost like altitude training, um, poor man's altitude, um. So so, yeah, um, when you first started, like 14 years ago, is when you became ultra marathon, zach right about.
Speaker 2:I did my first one end of 2010 okay, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:So you, when you transitioned from like just regular distance runner to ultra, you didn't really do like a marathon. You weren't like in between going from like 5k, 10k to marathon, you just went straight to 100, correct?
Speaker 2:uh, not straight to 100, but I did kind of bypass the marathon. Mostly what ended up happening to me is I kind of got into running. I got into running early but I didn't really get into it seriously until college. I started really getting into it as like I'm going to do things. So I'm going to prioritize this. I'm not going to, like you know, do other sports or you know I'm going to eat and sleep the way I want to do to perform for running and really learn like what workouts specifically do and all that stuff. So I had a little bit of catch up, maybe for my peers at the collegiate level in terms of just like where I was at and where I wanted to be, Um, but I learned a ton and I learned that I really liked the long stuff.
Speaker 2:So, after college I was a little burnt out on speed work. I was kind of a little bit tired of the whole, like Tuesday's short intervals, thursday tempo, saturday race, sunday long run, vibe.
Speaker 2:So I just started kind of building miles and I started kind of consistently running like 100 mile weeks but not a whole lot of workouts so I'd like jump in some marathons, uh, based off of just kind of like volume for the most part, and then, uh, I was just kind of doing like random races for the fun of it, not any real strategy behind it, until maybe, I think, 2011,. I actually went back to college to get more or to get my uh specialized certification. I was teaching at the time, so that's right. I had like a little bit of a kind of a goofy schedule, but it was conducive for training still and I did some actually indoor track races that year, but then I did actually train fairly specifically for a marathon. I think it was the end of 2011.
Speaker 1:Was that the two 31?
Speaker 2:Uh, yes, yeah, that was great, I mean, that's like.
Speaker 2:So that was that your debut marathon technically that you trained for that I actually did like a reasonable approach for yeah, yeah, unfortunately there was like I think it was like almost at the 40 mile a wind gust that day, so I was like not in optimal condition, but yeah, so that was. I had a pretty good performance there for where I was at at the time, um and but so that was actually after my first ultra, but so my first ultra was kind of like spontaneous to some degree. I was actually just looking at kind of the race calendar for the end of 2010. I didn't really know there were ultra marathons in wisconsin at the time and I came across one where I was just looking at just a race list yeah and I thought I had read some books about ultra marathoning.
Speaker 2:So I kind of had in the back of my mind was sort of this like thought of like, well you know, when I'm like thoroughly exhausted with everything that normal runners would do, maybe I'll do an ultra marathon in my thirties or something like that. But then I just thought to myself well, maybe I'll try this one and see how it goes and just probably go back to running normal stuff again. Um, but at least it'd be kind of a fun experience, a little change of pace.
Speaker 1:So when you entered that one, you had already, like, logged consistent hundred mile weeks.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So you were like okay, I've got a base, Let me just see what I can do in a race setting that's an ultra distance.
Speaker 2:I see.
Speaker 1:And so did you think from the start, like I want to, like go after a time goal, or just was it just to finish in the very beginning?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, just was it just to finish in the very beginning. Yeah, you know, I'm trying to think back what I think I looked at what the course record was and thought, like I just looked at the paces, like this is like the like typical, like ignorant runner coming ultra, mindset of like oh, I know what my paces are on a road, and then, like you get out on a trail and you think like, oh well, I'm gonna be running way faster yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, this was a very runnable trail so I I thought like I think I can run like pretty close to the fastest times there. So it's like something in the low six hours was sort of where I was loosely targeting 50 miler, it was yeah yeah, it was the the north face 50 mile midwest regional championships.
Speaker 2:the north face used to put on this like regional championship series and then they had their big national championship in san francisco, which for a while was one of the more competitive 50 milers in the US, before that series kind of got canceled.
Speaker 1:So how did you? How did you do that first ultra?
Speaker 2:I won it.
Speaker 1:Oh OK, so yeah, so that that's the thing, so you go into it kind of naive, like I have a time goal, whatever, and then you win. Do you think that that winning that very first ultra made you go like I think I have a knack for this.
Speaker 2:like this is going to be the next chapter yeah, it piqued my interest for sure, because historically, like I was a good runner, like I could make state and cross country. As a senior in high school I was able to make the cross country and track team at a highly competitive d3 school. But like there were competitors and teammates that were better than me and it was clear, so I wasn't like anticipating that I was going to win like these big meets and big races and things like that.
Speaker 1:So then winning a race was kind of like yeah, yes, I totally relate to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So and and I sort of had the seed planted, probably earlier, because I just loved the long run, like that was my favorite workout in college. That was where I kind of put most of my energy in post collegiate training for a while. I did get back to doing speed workouts After a while. I did get back to doing speed workouts After a while.
Speaker 2:It took maybe a year, maybe not quite a year but a year off of any real structured speed work before kind of phasing that back in into training too. But it was still always kind of based on that high volume.
Speaker 1:Like you just love, like just locking into a pace and going for hours at a time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's zone two.
Speaker 1:Relatable. Yeah, intensity, I totally get that. I feel like that's kind of how I was, or that was how I was for so long I was running so much volume. And so when you made that switch and you run your first ultra and you win it, did your peers and people around you? Were they like wow, what is this? How was the response of you getting into ultra stuff from your close family and friends?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, they thought it was crazy to some degree, but they were also pretty open to like they. At that point I was like invested enough in running that it sort of kind of fit what the expectation was going to be. Uh, you know, my college teammates thought it was pretty crazy Cause they were all like you know 5k guys and like some of them would maybe test the marathon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like it's it's like a funny thing I've noticed with collegiate athletes, because I didn't ever go to college or know any. But like I started to train with some and then like the marathon is even a crazy distance to those people. So go to like ultra or 50 miles and then ultimately 100 seems like a lot. So people thought you were like a little nuts when you first started, but then did you like now that, then, when that became more of your identity, was it more of an accepted thing, like okay, zach's just an ultra guy now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it yeah more or less. And then you start kind of finding the ultra running community then. So I did that race. Um, I also discovered, oh, there's like a pretty cool like ultra running community in Wisconsin, so those people would reach out to me then and I have a question about that.
Speaker 1:So when I first got into running I was like when I was meeting some of these ultra people, I I always in my head wanted to be fast with any kind of running, not like too fast, but like competitive. And I noticed with the ultra community when I first started, everyone was like you need to slow down, like 12 minute miles, and like you're going to burn yourself out and whatever. And I was like maybe, but like I kind of want to push it. And so I I wonder did you have that kind of reaction of like well, if you're going to do this, you're going to have to like slow yourself down, or do you just not have any of that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. Um, I definitely, you know, I guess maybe it was. Maybe I just assumed like kind of like the zone two type intensity would be like the recipe for a longer race like that, and just sort of sat on that and then kind of learned the hard way, sometimes like okay, that was a little too fast. I did some races where I went to the JK JFK 50 mile which was probably the first big ultra I went to like highly recognizable, like one of the oldest races, ultra races on in the U S and and then, like you know, went out way too aggressively and paid dearly for it.
Speaker 1:It's like, okay, so you can't do that, yeah, cause once you blow yourself out after like a couple of miles and you're like I still have 50 something miles or however many, um, yeah, so you learn your lesson with the like pacing yourself, but you didn't never fall into the like okay.
Speaker 2:Ultra means like 14 minute miles, no trap and I started out on, although I started on a very runnable courses for the most part. So some of that was just you know you're going to do more running in those versus like, my first 100 mile was west of states 100 and that was one where I think my average pace is like maybe 10 minute mile of the course.
Speaker 1:But you've got, you know canyon climbs in there where you're going up for, you know, beyond a mile, so you have to have the slow ones and you have some 20 minute miles in there, so you get a little bit more of that perspective there.
Speaker 2:But even those races where you look at your average time or your pace after that and you're like I feel like I was doing more running than that suggests.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I see that your mind remembers the running and forgets the hiking and walking pretty quickly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when I did my 76 mile track, ultra self-supported I the first 50, I was running, and then from 50 to 76, I was crawling and sick and stuff and I kept my time like still logging and I wish I kind of had just stopped my watch Cause I was like I would have been able to, like my pace was so embarrassing by the end of it Cause I had so many slow miles in there. But um so, speaking of the a hundred mile, uh, like getting yourself ready for a 100 miler. So say you're you or you're training someone who's like I'm going to do this in a competitive way with a time goal.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And the race is a couple months out. How do you like start Like, say you have the base, like I've, I've got, like you know, say I've got like months of a hundred mile weeks or whatever, and I'm, I've got the base. What, like? What do key workouts look like? Like, how does that look like as a overarching? You know, is it like two workouts a week? Is there a track?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a good question. I would say like the perfect scenario there would be if someone was a marathon runner and then they decide, okay, I'm gonna do this ultra in like eight to 12 weeks or something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because the way I look at it is like step one is just becoming a very good runner and then, after you've gotten that, then you can sort of use the rest of the time to prepare specifically for what you're going to do, so kind of raising the ceiling on everything, essentially through just your typical training and then like getting into like what you want to do on race day. So when they have a time goal, that makes it a lot easier because then we can kind of just reverse engineer what that means. So you know, someone has a time goal of, say, 20, I want to run 100 miles in 24 hours. We can look at that's, you know, like I think a 14, 20 second pace or something like that. So then the question becomes well, do you want to just like lock in? Cause? You know, marathon mindset is like, okay, my pace is going to be, let's say, seven minute mile pace, I'm just going to lock in sevens and sit there as long as I can.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:With the a hundred mile. I think a lot of people look at that and they're like well, 14, 20 feels really slow. But if that's what I'm going to average, like you don't want to get out so fast that now all of a sudden you're, you're, you're fading at the end and it's like a death March to the finish line.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you also don't necessarily want to be in this kind of gray area pacing where you feel like you're going a little faster than what walking would be comfortable, but way slower than what you're easy around would even be on a on a recovery day. So my strategy for folks like that is what you want to do is you want to run the comfortable pace that just kind of comes natural to you, but you want to inject walking breaks early so that you bring that average pace closer to that goal pace so you don't have this like huge disparity of the first half and the second half.
Speaker 1:I see.
Speaker 2:So it almost becomes this really long low intensity interval session. Okay, where maybe you run 20 minutes at a pace that's quite a bit aggressive towards the average pace, but then you spend a couple minutes walking, which kind of brings it back, and that also gives you time to focus on things like fueling and hydration during the walking breaks. If you have to take a bathroom break or stop for whatever reason, you can kind of borrow from those walking breaks and you don't feel quite as much of that pressure to kind of keep moving, even when you need to stop for something.
Speaker 2:That strategy works well. It gets a little more. The faster the person gets, the more complicated it gets to some degree, because then you get to a point where, like when I ran 11, 19, that's six, 48. So I'm not doing walking breaks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to say there's no walking with that, so so the faster someone gets, the less there's room for that stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So what did you do?
Speaker 2:So, thankfully for that one, I'd had a fair bit of experience doing 100 milers and specifically track ones too. So for that specific one, what I did was I did like my long run development phase, which is the phase that would come after just getting fit as a runner, and you know, for that I was doing like weekend training sessions where I'd maybe do like a couple of three hour runs on saturday and sunday and just collecting data, like three hour, three hour, you in the long run yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I mean I would. I was getting to, like you know, upwards to 30 mile long runs and where I would get like a pace that I would produce for that and I'm just kind of doing this at race pace pretty much, or even a little faster at times.
Speaker 2:So usually what I'm doing with those is I'm like what is the most aggressive I would think would be on the table for me, and for that that particular race it was like six and a half minute pace. So a lot of my long runs are right around that like six and a half minute mile pace. Um, then it's like you get into it when I get into the race itself. If I have kind of like a pacing strategy I'm going to target, then I'll look at like what's the fastest I should ever be going. So for that one it was like six and a half and what's the slowest I should be going. And I can't remember what I had for the, for the slow and for that one. But they give it, gives me like a seven, 10 or something.
Speaker 2:I think it was a little faster than that, At least at the beginning I think it might've been. It was maybe just inside of sevens.
Speaker 1:Okay already, so okay so you knew you had that, so you're just trying to push a little bit more. Yep, did you leave that race thinking you could have gone harder?
Speaker 2:or did you leave it all, like let it all out yeah, I mean I negative split it so I was running my fastest miles at the very end.
Speaker 1:So like that puts you in a position where you kind of think, well, if I was going faster at the end, maybe I had more to push it, yeah, because I always ask that because I feel like as a runner, like I feel like I always, no matter how I feel during a race like as soon as I'm done, I'm like I could have gone faster, but that's just. That's just a thing. Um, so when you were getting ready for that, um, did you so? You did your long runs on the weekend that were three hours at around goal, 100 mile base and go goal marathon. Goal 100, 100 mile, race space. Um, and then were you doing track ever? Like I was like, did you do? Like mile repeats and like what were those at?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I was definitely on a track, I think that's. I think it's fairly important to try to get race specific stuff in the end. I think people sometimes overemphasize how important that is in it. If it's a super technical course, then it gets important because that's a skill set. But then you get the other end of the spectrum where it's like these tight little loops. There's just like weird little stabilizer muscles and imbalances that you're going to maybe create over the course of the day running around those that you do want to kind of expose yourself to that kind of yeah, like the loops yeah.
Speaker 2:So I was doing all my long runs in that last like four to six weeks on a track.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Oh my God, I love that so much. I feel like in New York there's a track have you ever been to New York city? Like okay. So in Brooklyn there's a McCarran park, there's a McCarran track, that's Williamsburg and that's that's the track. I do a lot of my ultra stuff on it. Like I'm also like really obsessed with a treadmill and um, I'm I'm assuming you love the treadmill cause you've been on it a lot. Um, cause you set your record on for fastest hundred mile on the treadmill.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a pandemic thing too. I was actually supposed to do a race over in London, a hundred miler over there, for the centurion hundred which is on a track.
Speaker 2:So, I was probably, I think, like at least three-fourths, if not further, into that training plan when everything shut down. Yeah. So then I was like, okay, I've done enough of the work, that I kind of want to do something that's at least relatively close to this. Yeah, but there weren't really any options. Yeah, so my original goal is I'm just gonna like live stream on youtube and just set it up and then, like once I like pitched that to a few of my sponsors, they wanted to get involved.
Speaker 1:Did they sanction it to make it a world record?
Speaker 2:So we sanctioned everything other than there's one rule Guinness is really the only one that's really going. There may be some new governing bodies coming in on this. World Athletics might Probably not for the 100 mile, at least not right away, but Guinness is really the only one out there right now. That's looking at it through that lens, and there was one criteria that I just couldn't meet, which was having it open to public and doing due to the fact that I was doing the pandemic right, I couldn't have it open to the public, yeah so it was just like it became that part doesn't count, yeah oh well, but I mean the treadmills.
Speaker 2:We had mechanics in there and they calibrated and they certified it?
Speaker 1:that's the other question. So okay, so you have your treadmill on. For how long did it take 11 something, or how many hours was it?
Speaker 2:12 or 9, I think okay.
Speaker 1:So 12 hours on a treadmill, how does the motor not burn out? Yeah, so we had two machines up set up and just in case, yeah, just in case, okay, we did have issues, so it was good we did have two, so you could just jump over. Yep, okay.
Speaker 2:But we needed to regardless, because the way those treadmills were set up is there was a built-in system that they could not override, that they would automatically shut off after three hours and it was like a total reboot. So if it would have been like five, six minutes to reboot it, so we had it.
Speaker 2:So, like before it hit three hours, I'd hop over onto the other one. I see, yeah, and then. But we did have we actually had an issue because we were running so much power through that little corner of the house. I had it all set up because it was at my house at the time in Phoenix.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so like big electric buildup, right, yeah, yeah, and it was, it would have been I think it was in April.
Speaker 2:So it actually got Wow and we had the air conditioner turned on all the way, we had all the video recording equipment, both the treadmills, all the lighting and everything, all the video, like everything in that room and one of the treadmills the screen would go out.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, it would just black out.
Speaker 2:So you can't even see what pace you're going. Well, the problem was it didn't completely black out, but it would stop tracking.
Speaker 1:Oh no.
Speaker 2:So like, for whatever reason, that was malfunctioning and it was something to do with the power, so like, so I ended up losing some distance from that. Oh man, before I caught it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think there was maybe like three or four minutes in the early miles before I noticed that, hey, this thing isn't actually tracking.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, that would stress me out so much Like, wait, I gotta get this right yeah.
Speaker 2:So I hopped over to the other one and then we thought maybe it was just like kind of a fluke, so I want to switch back to that one. It did it again. Oh no. So at that point I just like I don't know how I thought of this, but I just like told, told nicole. I was just like go to the shed. There's like this hundred foot extension cord there, grab that, bring it in and plug that treadmill into the other side of the house.
Speaker 1:It's on a different breaker.
Speaker 2:Good idea, and then uh yeah so I'm on the other one while they're getting that other one set up and thankfully it worked from there on in after that, so it was something to do with the power going into that room. Wow, so there's a. There's plenty of things going on other than the running that yeah yeah, that's complicated, but it's like that's. That's very telling of the pandemic too.
Speaker 1:Just like we have to make this work. Um yeah, oh my gosh. Um, so it was probably like 8.6 miles per hour or like what was it like? Just under seven, or?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we came up to like seven, 17 pace or something like that.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool so you, so you're spending 12 hours on a treadmill that day? Um, and how was it different doing it? How different was that from on a 440 meter track?
Speaker 2:Way different than I thought it would be. I thought it would be a fairly clean transition. The biggest thing that stood out to me was like when I'm running on a track, even though it's super monotonous and super controlled, you're still making these like micro adjustments subconsciously that give you this sense of control, like I'm dictating the flow of this Totally, whereas when you're on a treadmill you're just responding to the belt. So, like you kind of be, it kind of feels like you're being told what to do versus you're kind of guiding, and that was really taxing mentally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I cause if you get tired, like on a track, you're like Whoa, catch yourself, Like if you're, you're going to fall. That's a little bit more scary, but yeah, interesting.
Speaker 2:So I found myself basically like just changing the pace a lot versus just like my initial thought was, I'd set a pace and just zone out. It's harder. That was that got more difficult. So I would do if I had a pace I wanted to hit, I would go like above it and then below it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Add it and then kind of rotate around yeah, keep yourself mentally, like thinking about how to change it.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. And then for fueling, for both the 100 miles on the track and on the treadmill. Uh, when are you taking in sugar and how are you doing all that? Like during the actual race, and then I want to get into your actual diet. But so like during the race. How are you doing it?
Speaker 2:yeah, so in on the on the track ones. It's usually pretty formulaic I'll have have some fluid-based carbohydrate source and then I'll have some solid food stuff sometimes, although my fast one was all liquid calories basically.
Speaker 1:So it's just nothing. Fiber to slow anything down. Yeah, is that also to kind of prevent digestion possibility.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you stay away from fiber as much as possible on race day. No real good, compelling reason to have it. So yeah, I mean, if you can get climate control and a real good system and you're not out there for too long, I think, like you know, six, four days, fast enough, where I avoid solids if I can, if it's something a little longer getting closer, if, like at a race like Western States or something like that, I'm going to take in some solids at certain points, especially during, like hiking breaks, just to get a little bit of variety, palette change and things like that, consistency changes and stuff like that. But yeah, for for the Pettit Center and then for, I think, for the treadmill. I had all liquids except for maybe some potato chips or something like that, and so like then fluid wise is it?
Speaker 1:are you taking water with electrolytes in it or ever just water by itself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll do some water by itself, but then I'll also have electrolytes in the carbohydrate stuff in in a bottle as well, and then I'm hitting that on on a formula based on my fluid intake and my carbohydrate needs. So if I have a scenario where, let's say, I like run the numbers before the race, I know in the climate I'm going to be in, I'm going to lose like a liter of water per hour, then I'm going to take in a liter per hour and then I'm going to tie my electrolyte loss to that.
Speaker 2:So for me, I lose like 614 milligrams of electrolytes for every liter of sweat. So then, for every liter of water I take in, I'm just going to make sure I have that concentration of electrolytes Do you feel okay.
Speaker 1:So something I ran into when I did some ultra stuff was the hypernutremia thing, where like when you take in liquid. It just doesn't it just it doesn't absorb. Have you ever run into?
Speaker 2:that Um prop, maybe not to an extreme sense, but I've definitely mismanaged things where I'm taking in more fluids than I need, not enough electrolytes, and vice versa. Yeah, in fact, definitely mismanaged things where I'm taking in more fluids than I need, not enough electrolytes, and vice versa. Yeah, in fact, the second time I did western states, when I finished I got like super light-headed and like the first 60 seconds and almost passed out.
Speaker 2:They had to like carry me over to the med first 60 seconds of the race after like when I crossed the finish, like just the moving kept my heart pumping enough where it probably wasn't an issue, but then when I stopped, you know, your blood kind of pools in your legs and it goes away from your brain and everything's just like yeah and I was.
Speaker 2:I remember like that year I finished 11th, so I was like the first person to not get the auto entry to the next year, so they wanted to interview me about that. Yeah, it's like. Yeah, so like I'm like, yeah, sure, whatever, but then, like, as I'm standing there, I'm like I'm gonna pass out and.
Speaker 1:I like told them they're used to that like that would be the first or the last person who passes out of the finish line of these things.
Speaker 2:So they like rushed me over to the med tent, they gave me some broth and that was like a light switch went on as soon as I had that salt.
Speaker 1:Um, so what would you say is like the scariest, not near death, but like where you're like. I went a little too far, like, or like. I ran too, because I felt that where I'm like okay, maybe this was like I put pushed myself over the edge and like I'm going to pass out. Have you ever had one of those that you're like that stands out as like, not not right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did a race in, was it? I think 2016? In 2016 was a hundred K in California and it was uh, it was actually six days after I done a hundred K in China. So the only reason I was there is I wanted to get a qualifier for another race.
Speaker 1:So 200 Ks in the same week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh-huh, pretty much with the travel from China back to the West coast.
Speaker 2:So I'm on, I'm in that race and, uh, I get to like about the midway point there's like the this peak climb on the course before you start going down and I start going down and as I'm heading, descending down that that uh trail, I like clipped my toe on a rock and fell.
Speaker 2:But I was like so out of it that I didn't even recall falling, like it was just like immediately on the ground and I hit my head on a rock. So like it was like instantaneous and the next thing I knew I was like, okay, I'm on the ground, I fell and then, like I knew, I hit my head, but I didn't like feel any pain or any sensation other than I know I hit my head. So I immediately reach up to see if there's anything there. It's like blood pouring out, wow. So luckily I had a bandana, so I like pressed that on my forehead and I walked back to the aid station. That was maybe like a half a mile from that spot and you know they brought in, like the medical person and they, like you know, patched it up. They, they made me drop out at that point, because they didn't know if I had a concussion or not.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Took me down to the start finish. I sat there for a few hours before they let me go and I still didn't know the severity of it until later that day. I was eight hours from where I was living at the time and I'd had a hotel midway I. My thought during that day was I'll run the hundred K drive halfway that night stay at a hotel that I reserved, I think it was. I asked them after, before I left, because I hadn't seen anything on my forehead from that fall. I just asked them. I was like do I need to go and get this looked at like stitches or anything like that? And they're like well, you might not need stitches, but cosmetically maybe you want to at least consider it. So I'm like well, I'll get to the hotel, take off the bandage, take a look at it and see how bad it is. And when I got to the hotel and looked at it, it was like this massive gash is this the picture on Strava?
Speaker 1:you have a picture on Strava of some hitting your head really bad. I probably yeah, because I was like scrolling through and I was like, okay, well, he definitely hit him his head at some point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's probably that it looks like a huge chunk out of my forehead essentially yeah, so when I saw that, I like went straight to the emergency room, and I mean it was an emergency room in Bakersfield, california, so they see like way worse situations than that they're used to like. Oh, that person got stabbed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're like this guy got bumped in the head, so the guy didn't even skip a beat.
Speaker 2:He's like looking at it. He's like, oh yeah, we'll put in these stitches that we do like internally, and then they'll dissolve.
Speaker 1:You pull them out and you won't stitched it up and then sent me on my way and then it was fine after that. So that was probably your scariest encounter on the run of like your health was tested. Yeah, pretty much okay, um, uh. So, getting into food, because I am so fascinated by this, you were one of the first people that I ever heard about okay. So back up when you first started running, I think you mentioned on one of the podcasts that I listened to that you were listening to ben greenfield podcast, like back in the day I did was too like.
Speaker 1:I don't know, maybe it was 10 years ago, um, I couldn't because he used to post a lot. I think he might still um, I don't listen to him as much anymore but he was the first person I ever heard talking about ketogenic diets with ultra or any endurance athlete he was that keto diet yeah, and I hadn't.
Speaker 1:I hadn't really heard about that because in the running communities that I was getting involved with it was always just like the typical like sugar, eat sugar stuff and like that's just all they eat, you know, like bagels and whatever. But I found it really fascinating and I began experimenting myself with a lot of that stuff and I was like cyclically keto for a while because as a woman, I think it's like more safe to be like like as from what I've like researched, like I don't know this for sure, but I mean I've like dabbled a lot in that like over the years. And then you came on the scene as someone who was like the poster child of a keto endurance which was like, primarily like a meat heavy diet.
Speaker 1:Is it minimal vegetables and like roughage, or is it like describe your diet?
Speaker 2:I'm just so curious to hear from your point of view Describe it is. It's, uh, it's low carb. So, like I don't do strict keto either, um, I've done, I do strict keto phases, maybe in the off season and things like that, and then I started that at the end of 2011. So I've been doing it now for I think I guess it'd be, coming up on like, I guess, about 13 years or so.
Speaker 2:From the first time I did it or started doing it to now those inputs have been like all over the place, so like the macronutrient ratios that I'll target, throughout different phases of the year. Those have been pretty consistent over that timeframe. But the inputs have changed and usually it's just out of curiosity, more or less. So, like when I first started, it was actually like mostly plant-based, a lot small, very little meat, animal-based inputs, and then, um, then it kind of balanced a little in between and then I did one where I was like mostly animal-based, very little plant inputs, um, and you know, usually I was kind of like somewhere in the middle there. Uh, so I don't really avoid one or the other necessarily. I'm more kind of interested in like making sure like, first of all, can I put together a protocol that is going to work consistently that I enjoy enough to do, and then, as soon as I stop enjoying it for one reason or the other, then I'll just change the inputs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel very similar to that, where I kind of like have gone between like more plant-based, with some veg or some fish and whatever, and then, like go to the other side of things and do more of a keto thing, maybe in the dead of winter, when I'm not as much in endurance training mode and the. And the thing that I've found that you probably have too is, like you, if you already become in ketosis and then you start to play around with like running a lot, and then, uh, eating a sweet potato, like right after you're running it like you can get back in ketosis pretty quickly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, like some people might, it might take them a lot longer to get into ketosis and use that um, utilize that, but it's like it's easier if you're running a lot like to get back into ketosis, yeah absolutely like.
Speaker 2:Lifestyle is a huge driver of just like the physiology behind all of that. Like I mean, you can even take a high carb athlete and they're going to be in some level of ketosis at times, most likely just due to the volume of running they're doing, like anyone who go. You could take a if you took, like a high carb endurance athlete, had them go out on like a Sunday morning long run and not fuel beforehand, like they're going to have some blood ketones produced by the end of that. So yeah, when you think about it now, you like, even if you reduce half of their carbohydrate intake, it's just going to force that their bodies can demand a fuel source and that's going to be what's available for them at that point.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then they're going to just have it. I think of it as a kind of like a spectrum versus like an all or nothing thing. So, and you can see this on like fat oxidation rates charts too, where, like, if you go in and you do one of the treadmill tests where they give you, like your carb and fat ratios at different points on the intensity spectrum, you can kind of see like okay, I'm burning this much fat and this much carbohydrate and you can land yourself on different ratios depending on those inputs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I found too that, like if I get my body really adapted to less, like if I can go train and do a 20 mile long grind on very little, like, maybe just water, which people are like, oh that's crazy, but it's like just doing that.
Speaker 1:and then then when you do take in the sugar, like at the race, it's like crack and like you're like, oh, like I feel so amazing and it's because, like, you haven't been training with that and so then it like it gives you a superpower, but it's like kind of and it's kind of fringe because, like a lot of people would think that that's wild, but like I think, I think it's an interesting thing when it actually works for people and it seems like you've done a lot of long runs that are fasted or call something that I heard you say.
Speaker 2:Yeah, quite a few of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the way I look. My first kind of exposure when I started. Well, like when I first started, I went stretch keto during like my off season, just to kind of like see what it was like, and I didn't have really any anticipation as to whether I would keep doing it or not. Um, I assumed at that point, I assumed it's either going to work or it's not, and I'm going to keep doing it. I'll go back to what I was doing, but what I realized once I kind of started adding training back was when I was still strict keto I felt great basically all the time, but then when I would do something moderate, high intensity, I felt like I just had this like kind of roadblock where I couldn't quite get to the paces I would be hitting prior to that Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the extra step. Yeah, I know what you mean.
Speaker 2:So then I started bringing back some carbohydrate and I noticed what you just described there, felt like whatever I needed before was halved and I'd get that same response, that same kind of perceived effort reduction. So then I was like, okay, okay, well, maybe I just cycle in carbohydrates strategically around. You're gonna run a hundred sessions, yes, yes I feel the exact same way.
Speaker 1:we're all like I know I'm trying to do a tempo or something, and so then I'm like I want to run 10 miles in a six flat pace, so like I'm gonna have extra sweet potatoes or like carbs that I like trust that are not too crazy, and then it gives me that like extra snap, cause it sucks when you get into that mode with training where you're like just kind of slow all the time. And you're just like and I've had that with keto too where I'd be like I just can't get fast.
Speaker 1:And you think like you're out of shape and you're like it's just cause you have no carbs, or glucose in your brain or whatever. So I wanted to also ask you okay. So a couple had like I'm like bouncing around, but I want to make sure I hit on these things because I'm just genuinely so curious, okay. So, uh, when you have setbacks because like you're someone who's done like huge things and suddenly if you're injured, like you hit your head and you can't, run or like something like you hurt your leg or something.
Speaker 1:I saw you had like a hamstring injury at some point, recently maybe. So when you have those and you're like a type a person who's just like always wanting to do big things, how do you work around it? And uh, with this question I want to build in the the 15% treadmill question, cause I feel like that has to do with like uh, injury stuff.
Speaker 1:Cause like I'm obsessed with 15% treadmill walking, like I came out of surgery and the first thing I did they were like you can't exercise and I was like I'm going to walk on the treadmill at 15% for like a few hours and like it helped me. So what do you do when you're injured? To keep yourself in a training mode even though you're like very far from like you're like a performance, like physicality?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think of it through two kind of.
Speaker 2:I think of two things basically.
Speaker 2:One is what do I need to do to correct whatever caused the issue in the first place, like what was lacking that led to that, and sometimes that's just like a reduction of something I was doing too much of, but sometimes it's like, ok, there's an imbalance here and I need to correct that.
Speaker 2:So I'm thinking about, like, what do I need to do to make sure that doesn't repeat itself? And then I'm also thinking about, with what I can do with whatever limitations I have from this injury, what are things that are going to be like productive that I normally would either not have enough time for, enough energy for when I'm kind of in like typical training and I start kind of structuring kind of my training around that. So a lot of times that'll be like, um, some sort of strength movement, mobility movement or things like that, or you know, a cross training device. So, like you said, the 15% treadmill. Um, like when I've had injuries in the past where it's like impact based and I want to, I'm ready to get back into training, but I want to get back in a way that's less, like less it's going to drive less impact.
Speaker 2:Yes so like the 15% incline on the treadmill, you can get your heart rate up pretty high.
Speaker 1:Yeah, easily, really fast, it's crazy yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, at a relatively low impact slow pace, fast it's crazy. Yeah, yeah, at a relatively low impact slow pace. And I actually like, and I also think like there's, when you're doing a lot of flat races, like I am, then you also have this scenario where you're kind of going through this very similar mechanic all the time, which is going to create imbalances and weaknesses and kind of make you a little more lopsided than you'd maybe want to be, just holistically. So I think kind of keeping in some of those modalities that do change that variability of the terrain is just good for, like, your overall health and just strength within the sport too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense, like the equal and opposite reaction. Like I'm a big flat runner type, like I love running flat too and hills are my weakness. So like I was like okay, now I'm going to just like dominate hills and just do incline running and like I noticed you do you do specifically the five miles in an hour. Five miles an hour on 15%. I was like this is like, this is amazing, because I like spent months where my whole Strava was like yeah, I got my five miles in an hour, but like nobody understands. There was like, okay, cool.
Speaker 1:Like it looks like, not very like great, but it's like, no, it's hard. Like my heart rate was like one, 78 the entire time. Um, so it's, it's just funny to see that, cause I was like oh, this is so random, like what a weird common denominator. But yeah, so like finding the, the training that you can do to supplement all of the flat running. Um, and then what about like strength, like do you do lifting and like all the other, like supplementing with strength training?
Speaker 2:to help with running.
Speaker 1:That makes sense, yeah, for for runners.
Speaker 2:I think it's like step one is always like do you have a relative strength deficiency? So the way you can kind of test that out is if you went into the gym and let's say, like you have like a squat rack or something like that, if you put your body weight on that squat rack, if you can't do one rep, you probably have a relative deficiency. Or if you're not comfortable with squatting squat there's a technical aspect of squatting.
Speaker 2:So I don't suggest people just go in there and start trying it necessarily especially if you don't know if you can get it off the ground or off the bar, I should say you, I mean you can use like a leg press or something and kind of like replicate that sort of like can I do my body weight?
Speaker 2:If that is a no there, then you should probably stick to some very traditional kind of strength movements, like that very machine to kind of get yourself into that spot where you can do your body weight once, and from there you get a little more options available to you. You can do things like more, like more plyometric based things, like muscular endurance routines, which are like basically like like lunges, box steps, uh, like, yeah, a little more plyometric type stuff. Or what I think is a really good strategy for a lot of runners is single leg stuff, so something as simple as like like picking up a dumbbell or a kettlebell off the ground by like bending over with one leg right, okay yeah, um, or you're doing like single leg, leg presses and things like that, so you're actually engaging your body on that single leg at a time.
Speaker 1:That's what you use when you run exactly, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then you can see if you got imbalances too, where, like, if I get on the leg press and put whatever weight on there and press with both legs, whatever my stronger leg is going to just like intuitively, like compensate for the more of the load than my weak leg. So I'm almost reinforcing that like that imbalance that makes.
Speaker 2:So the single leg stuff can really help with identifying. Is there a weakness on one side versus the other? Um, a physical therapist probably can do that for you too. Yeah, you really want to get good that it's it's.
Speaker 1:It's helpful to hear. I mean, like that stuff is always like my biggest weakness.
Speaker 1:I just like I like to run and then like anything else, I'm like it's probably not going to happen unless I have someone in the room with me looking at me telling me to do it um but so okay, out of all of these wild adventures that you've had when you've done like the multiple hundred mile races in different forms, uh, and like the trail running and stuff, you also have done things like run from San Francisco to New York, like like real adventure races that take a long time, seven continents in seven days.
Speaker 2:I haven't done that and I haven't done the Transpati yet either.
Speaker 1:Something on Google says that you have.
Speaker 2:Oh really, because I Googled it, I'll take credit for it if someone wants to get it.
Speaker 1:I think ChatGPT is lying to me, because I was thinking you hadn't, because I was like, well, this is weird, like why, why not? Because I would have thought you would have broken the record. But then ChatDBT says Zach Bitter has done this, and I was like, well, I'll have to ask about it. So so, is that something on your list that you'd want to do?
Speaker 2:The not so much the seven continents thing. I do want to do the Transcon, though the San Fran and New York run. That's one thing oh, my schedule to do okay, but I got injured, like literally I think, like four weeks before I was gonna start okay, because that's a 70 mile a day that the record is 72 and a half okay, and you, you probably, you think you could probably break that, so is that like I?
Speaker 2:don't know if I could break it. I mean, I think that's that one of those tougher records out there for these like multi-day long haul stuff, but I would definitely try to break it. So that would be my strategy going. It would be how do I prepare myself to give myself a shot at it at least?
Speaker 1:but so the seven continents in seven days is not a goal or something.
Speaker 2:No, okay, I'm not I'm not opposed to it.
Speaker 1:It's just not something I've necessarily gotten excited about what, what does, besides the san francisco, new york, uh, what other like what is like I? This is still left on my bucket list of like. I have to go do, do this.
Speaker 2:Yeah I, I think I could still run a faster hundred mile time uh for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 2:One is just, I think, like where we were talking about before, it's like a negative split that. So, like I mean there's a debate as to whether negative splitting is optimal or if you left someone on the table or you know the who knows on. My theory is that you're probably like a few percentage points on either side of even. That is like a loading zone where you're going to get the best out of you as long as you, you know, have everything else work out well for you that day. But I did that in just kind of like normal, like typical training shoes essentially, whereas now, like we have the whole super shoes stuff. So good point, yeah, because that was 2019.
Speaker 1:Yeah because that was 2019. Yeah, and so do you know if I always feel like this might be a touchy subject, but do you know if the person who broke the record after you the world record if he was wearing the super shoes? I think he was wearing he was wearing one version of the nike super shoes I see, um, yeah, because like I feel like if I was someone like you, you'd be like well, wait a minute.
Speaker 2:I want to get back out there in the super shoes and just like break it again and and like it becomes like this back and forth thing which is kind of like, I think, why these records drop, because it's like it just shows like okay, well, if Zach can do it, I'm going to go do it and then, like it just keeps going like that, but so besides that, like so you think, the hundred mile, probably another few years of, just like some honest swings at it to see if I can lower my time, um, but you know, along with that I I want to try to figure out the 24 hour. That's a really intriguing.
Speaker 1:So what you? Uh, I'm sorry, I'm always trying to remember all your stats, so you did 24 hours at, was it one 21? Um, I'm trying to think.
Speaker 2:I think the furthest I've gone is 125, 125, so 125 uh miles in a 24-hour race is that's also a track? Yeah, so that race was. So I actually stopped at like I think 16 and a half hours. That's where I dropped out of it. So I hit 125 at one or at 16 and a half and didn't get any further. So that's where I want to try to figure out like, how do I figure out that last eight, seven, eight hours to?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, Because that's even crazier. So that's like that's so. That's really wild to me. So you ran 125 miles in 16 hours and then it's like what could you do in the rest of the day? Right, If you don't blow up too soon?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I a day, right if you don't blow up too soon.
Speaker 1:yeah so I've got like seven to eight hours of potential like what?
Speaker 2:so? Like 200, something? Well, I mean, the world record is 198.6, so, and that's like head and shoulders above anyone else who's done it. So there's the guy, uh, alexander sorokin, who has the 100 mile world record. He's actually got the 100k, 100 mile, 12 hour, 24 hour now, and he's the only human to ever go above 190, and he's done it twice he did it 198.6 and I think like 192 or something like that yeah so I mean that's a huge number do you know him?
Speaker 1:do you ever like?
Speaker 2:yeah, I had him on my podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, okay, cool because you're just like hey, we were kind of in the same club like the rare people in the world who do these things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah he's a fascinating guy to follow, for sure yeah I mean interesting story too. Like he's been in the ultra running world for a long time, like we actually, before we knew each other, crossed paths at like world championships in the 100k and just had no clue because yeah like neither of us were like winning that race at the time and like, yeah, it was just. It was just like there's so many athletes at that, you don't meet them all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then when people start to just get dressed better and his story was like door over the pandemic.
Speaker 2:He got laid off from his job and I think, if I remember right, he just did a ton of treadmill training and then he went to uh. The following year after the pandemic he went to the Centurion hundred, the one that I was going to do right before that got canceled when I did the treadmill and he broke my a hundred mile world record there, uh, by I think like three or four minutes.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then. So he was like that was like a pretty big jump of compared to anything else he had done before then. And then he kind of went on this stretch of like maybe two to three years where, like everything he touched was just world record. World record he broke the 24 hour twice, he broke the 24-hour twice, he broke the 100-mile twice, he broke the 100K twice. Yeah, the 12-hour would have been within the sum of those. So yeah, so I mean he's like the dude for the six hours up to 24 hours, right now.
Speaker 2:So does that give?
Speaker 1:you like, does that kind of make you go well, does it fuel, fire a little bit of like seeing inspiration of like, okay, this guy. So you're like it's like a, not a rivalry, like it's like a healthy competition kind of.
Speaker 2:It shows you what's capable too. Yes, yes, you know. And, and he's also in his 40s, like all these records, he's when he's been 40 plus. So it also gives you kind of a perspective of, like, what is what is necessary next? Yeah, yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1:That's a great inspiration. I love that because in the back of my mind I mean I look at Camille Heron and I look at women who are doing big things later in their careers. Like I'm kind of in a point where I'm doing like trying to work on my marathon and then like work my way up competitively, but like like while I can, I guess. But it is awesome to think as you get older, like ultra just can get better. Yeah, um, and he's a great example of that um, do you feel like so, like talking about the competition or healthy competition kind of vibes. Do you feel like you're internally motivated or externally motivated, like having someone else to see doing the things?
Speaker 1:that's a very external thing, I think yeah versus like I have a fire inside of me and I have to go run this out. What do you think yours is, or like your? Why?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm probably a little more internally motivated, but I don't. It's not like a either or necessarily. I think the external motivation for me is like, okay, here are these guys who've done like these historic numbers. There's a path there, right, there's a process that they use to get to that, both in training and in race execution. And I get motivated from like, well, how do I use those inputs to figure out what I should even be targeting in the first place?
Speaker 2:So, like one of the hardest things with the 24 hour right now is like what is the strategy to yield your best result? Like, do you go out a little bit faster and hold on for dear life? Do you go slow and just try to like gain momentum as the race progresses? And there's not like a clear signal there, necessarily when there's very few people doing it or there's very few examples of it and there's still not a very clear one, although there is the women's world record and the men's world record of the 24-hour have a pretty healthy positive split. So that would maybe suggest that you do maybe want to bank some time.
Speaker 1:Like go run first half faster, exactly yeah.
Speaker 2:But then there's, like you know there's there's big numbers that are put up with other approaches, like the men's American record by Nick career.
Speaker 2:Now his is like perfect, evenly splits, just like, like clockwork basically. So I think there's some, there's probably some personality in there too, where I mean someone like camille. She thrives under running like her normal running pace, which is probably too fast to sustain for 24 hours. So she goes out there and just goes for it and then eventually she hits a roadblock and maybe just like shuts it down for 20 minutes, refuels, stretches and gets back out there and she starts running again.
Speaker 2:You know some people that works for, some people maybe doesn't, and other people might need to kind of feed off the momentum of just continually say, okay, I'm doing this right, I'm doing this right, which I would think nick is probably maybe a little bit more in line with. Um. But yeah, like you get alexander strokin and he came through 100 miles in like 11, 10 when he ran 198. So like he was way out in front, like he was at that point, he was like projecting to run well over 200. So I mean you can always make the argument of like, well, if he would have went slower, he would have gone 205 miles yeah, yeah, you just can't really tell.
Speaker 2:He's like or he wouldn't have done as well and ran 193. So right, right, right, yeah, it's so elusive, like that's the thing.
Speaker 1:It's even like I've seen that lesson with just the marathon, where it's like you just don't, like it's hard to tell what your body's gonna do. But it is interesting to think that ultra marathoning, competitive ultra marathon, like fast ultra marathoning, is still relatively new. Like, like, with this caliber of seeing what's possible and how, like we kind of don't know. Like if you took elliot kipchoge or something, or like the next elliot kipchoge, and put him on a track for 24 hours, how far could he?
Speaker 1:go right, exactly, or like would he just blow up like we just don't know, like what, what's possible, um so, but so you think that your why stems from I I'm internally motivated in the sense that I just have this like desire to just problem solve and I get curious about like what I'm capable of.
Speaker 2:So like once I kind of get fixated on a goal, then it's like okay, how do I build the training for that? And that's really what motivates me. I like that kind of the process oriented like thought, thought and then trying to like test it out on the race itself.
Speaker 2:So yeah for me, it's like if I go and I have a bad race, I don't really get upset about those things, because it's like if I'm at a race, it's probably because I chose something I wanted to be doing for the months leading into it and that alone is going to be fulfilling to some degree, because I'm going to answer a question on race day one way or the other. It's going to either be like OK, that went really well and I need to replicate some of those principles that got me there, or these things went wrong. What did I do in training that could maybe make that not the case? Or was it just purely poor race execution? Uh, fueling execution and all that stuff.
Speaker 2:So that stuff really motivates me the most, I think, is kind of like trying to self-improve based on the problem solving yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And sometimes if you have like small wins, like your very first ultra, you see something and you're like not saying that that's a small win, but I mean compared to what you went on to do, like you see something and you're like, oh, I got validation from that, like I, whatever I did to take it to that point worked and I'm going to keep doing it to see what I can keep pushing. Um, and it's cool to think that you're kind of still like right in the middle of that, like you have no idea what could happen, like in the next however many years that you keep doing it. Do you see yourself running forever?
Speaker 1:like what's your what's your ultra like retirement plan my?
Speaker 2:my, what I've been like, what I tell myself is like, as long as I'm as motivated as I've ever been, I'm gonna keep doing it. And the nice thing about ultra is there is such variety between trails, distances and other things that, like, so far, when I've lost motivation, it hasn't been for the sport, it's been for a very specific aspect of it and I just need a break. So, like you know, before I ran my fastest 100 miler. I spent half a year basically training for a trail 100 miler because I had been like I had had a race that prior year where it was just like I. I went into it with good intentions but when I finished and I reflected on I was like, yeah, I just it was. I didn't have that edge that I need to be really excited about this. Yeah, because I've just been rinsing, repeating for too long. So I needed to take a break to do something else and I did, and then when I came back it was like I ran my best hundred miler I had on on the flat stuff.
Speaker 1:So I love that. Yeah, I feel very similar where I was like I was racing a lot and then I just got so sick of it and I was like I just want to run for fun and not have anyone looking at me and like that.
Speaker 1:There's something about like just finding the edge again. That's going to get. Um. Have you ever been on a starting line where you're like I don't know if this is going to happen? Like you're just like this is this is not my day from the start, or um from the start, maybe not.
Speaker 2:Well, I guess it depends. Maybe on expectations. I've done races where it's like the expectations are really low, where I'm just like I'm doing this kind of for fun or to explore a little bit, versus having a real strict goal yeah and there's maybe a lot more uncertainty with those, I would say like with the 24 hours, since I haven't really had a very successful with one of that.
Speaker 2:That's one where, like you get on the starting line, you're like I don't know that my plan is gonna work. Yeah, it could be the worst possible idea yeah, yeah this strategy could be completely wrong right whereas with like certain races, like the hundred mile I mostly have, like got that down and like there's, there's a range of where you're probably going to land based on how you execute um, and how well you predicted your fitness going in.
Speaker 2:But it's likely not going to be something where, like it's not an experience you haven't had before. So you sort of know the pitfalls along the way, the signs that say like, yeah, you're, you're doing this wrong or you're.
Speaker 1:You sort of know the pitfalls along the way, the signs that say like yeah, you're you're doing this wrong or you're you're doing this right. Yeah, I see that. Um, what so? What is next? Like, what do you have on the books that you're like allowed, I guess, to say that you're doing? Is it the next race for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think I'll probably go back to the Pettit Center for a hundred miles, which is in June next year. Um, uh, I'm most likely to do the Vermont hundred mile, which is the trail race on the East coast. Uh, that's kind of a old historic hundred miler and I'd like to get back to a trail hundred miler next year at some point. So those two are kind of more, more certain. I'll spread in some other ones along. I'll do something before the Pettit center. I'm just coming off off season right now, so I kind of want to get back up to kind of peak training to see where everything's at before I put anything before that on the calendar.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, it's always hard to put anything on the books when you're like kind of still right Right. Especially like a hundred miler. Um. So, yeah, well, thank you so much. Um, we're, we're good on um the time that we have and I I just appreciate so much. You have no idea how big this was for me, like you are my um. I don't even know Like I was, like I was telling my friends I'm like guys. Zach Bitter.
Speaker 1:Cause, it's just like, that's my celebrity and in the running community, it's, uh, it's. It's always funny when you get to talk to someone that you, like, you've looked up to for so long. So thank you so much for coming on my show. Um, if you want to share any way for people to follow you, uh, I'm sure they can just look you up on google or whatever, but like your instagram or your podcast, yeah go for it.
Speaker 2:My website's probably the easiest place to find all that stuff. Instagram podcast is zachbittercom, but my instagram handle is at zachbitter yeah, great, um.
Speaker 1:so, yeah, thanks again for coming on the show, uh, and thanks for everyone listening. Um, this episode was brought to you by the museum of distance running, our motor short, which is an apparel brand that caters to the creative class of runners. If you use offer code Lucy10, l-u-c-i-e 10, you can get 10% off our next drop. We're going to have a fall winter collection coming out in a few weeks, so go use that code and until next time, just be fast, just win.