[gentle music] Consistency is, is more of a superpower than I think a lot of people give credit for, and I think anyone on the professional circuit would say that.
But anyone in, in running or any, any aspect of life, relationships, corporate jobs, anything, consistency is gonna be the king over anything. Welcome to For The Long Run.
We explore the why behind what keeps runners running long, strong, and motivated, and how they've been able to achieve sustainable excellence. I'm your host, Jonathan Levitt, and we're so glad you're here.
Thank you all for being here. Um, I don't know what everyone else in Boulder is doing tonight, but this is a, a loaded panel of information here.
Um, we have some really awesome, uh, knowledge from people who have been working with some of the best athletes in the world, um, people who are running really, really fast, and then we have Jason.
[laughs] I'm so glad I showed up tonight. [laughs] Um- He's an expert in his own right, obviously. [laughs] So, um, I wanna get started with, with, um, some common misunderstandings.
So you guys all have a variety of perspectives of what you've seen with athletes.
So Mark, in your, in your experience working with professional athletics, Charlie in, in doing the thing, and Jason's worked with tens of thousands of athletes over the, over the last few years.
What are people, what do people think they're doing right, but, but really is maybe not helping and might even be hurting them? Yeah. Well, first off, thanks everyone for coming out.
Um, if you're not so familiar with me, uh, 20 years working in, as a performance nutritionist and in clinical work as well, so working with Canada Basketball.
So if you like, uh, basketball, A Quarter Gold on Netflix, you'll see us in there, the Paris Olympics. We fell a little bit short, got upset by the French. Um,
consult with teams, NBA, NHL, consult with individual athletes, so people like Sharon Lokedi. And I think this is where we can start to translate.
You know, we always think of elite athletes as being just different from the rest of us in the sense of the, their, their capacity and their capabilities, but they also have the same or similar just human problems that we do, right?
So for example, Sharon, you know, two eggs for breakfast. She can't eat any more than two eggs, right? S- gets too full. That's 12 grams of protein.
It's not really enough if you're really pushing yourself in the morning.
And so little things like that, when we look at the fundamentals, right, which can feel a little bit basic and sometimes a little bit boring and not that kinda shiny new toy or that herb that grows in, you know, Bolivia somewhere that's meant to really be moving the needle.
Those things can be helpful. But really tightening the screws on the main thing, like when Sharon will talk about how she's had the same training plan for six, seven years.
There's differences within it, but that ability to just keep getting better and better at it and adding those layers, I think is a spot that we tend to, you know, we don't tend to revisit that, right?
We're always kinda looking for something outside that's gonna take us to that next level.
Which maybe you can speak to a little bit 'cause you're obviously, uh, having to push hard on the, on the fundamentals as well, right? Yeah.
Yeah, I think, uh, I get asked this a lot, um, both in my training with my training partners, people I, I run with, and just, uh, my mom's trying to run sub six hours in a marathon. So it, it really truly to me is
there's no catch-all in terms of especially fueling, but training. It's just y- you can see so much on social media.
You can see so much of your, what your favorite runner's doing or what your, the gold medalist of whatever is gonna do that day or gonna eat for- e- eat for breakfast or whatever.
But it's really, truly, truly tried and true of it's very individual. So what I eat for breakfast on my race morning is gonna be way more than what someone like Sharon might be eating, and we're running the same race.
We're, have the same goals at the end of the day. And so I would say just be very wary.
Um, working with ProBio for myself, that was a big part of the journey, is trying to find a specific company and a specific product that I'm using r- already and that I'm happy and I, we have the same vision rather than this, "I get a discount on this from my favorite influencer on YouTube or my favorite influencer on Instagram, and they use it, so it must be good."
And it makes me feel horrible, but maybe that's just part of the process. But, um, I would say it's, it's really just whatever works for you works for you. And I do some kooky stuff in my training.
I do some kooky stuff day to day, and it works for me, and I tell my mom the same thing. I tell people who I've coached throughout the years the same thing. If it works for you, then don't second-guess it.
Um, there's way too many things in life to second-guess as it goes. And so if it makes you feel good while you're running and makes you excited to go run, to go train, to go lift, to get out the door, just do more of it.
Whether it's, yeah, everyday things that bring you joy, like going, walking your dog every morning, or stuff in nutrition that might be untraditional, but it works for you, and by all means.
So yeah, there's a lot, lot of, lot of details in between the lines and, uh, minuscule things that go on, but that would be my biggest thing that people kinda read into and, and get wrong, in my opinion.
Who wants to hear about the kooky stuff? Yeah. [laughs] I wanna hear about the kooky stuff. [laughs] I, I would, I would say from my perspective, you know, I work with a lot of adult recreational runners.
You know, guys in the 2:30s for the marathon and up, women in the 2:50s and up. That's kind of my experience level with coaching since 2010.
And, you know, th- fueling in particular is very different in 2026 compared to what we were doing in 2010.
You know, like I ran my marathon PR in 2011, and I was taking in 48 grams of carbohydrate per hour, which is, is two gels an hour. Back then, that was a lot. [laughs] And that was what I was gonna say. And, exactly.
My, my first marathon in 2014, and I probably had half that. Yeah, and I was taking one Gu gel every 30 minutes in the, in the marathon.
And as a former track athlete, I thought I was consuming an incredible number of carbs and calories 'cause that's so different than any other race where I just took nothing.
But- You know, as things have changed, I think what I'm seeing now in kind of like the, the, the, the, the, the running world, everyone else besides Charlie- [laughs]...
the, uh, mere mortals, is that maybe the biggest mistake is a, is a lack of experimentation. Like, there's so many interesting products today.
There's so many fueling strategies that you could implement, that I think you gotta figure out what works for you, and finding the fueling approach both for a race or a workout or a long run, and then also, like, kinda what you're doing on a day-to-day base, your own kind of personal kookiness maybe.
You know, you gotta figure that out, and I think the more experimentation you could do to try to find what really works for you is probably the, the thing that I think is gonna be more impactful from a fueling perspective.
Marc, what about just volume of food? Do you feel that most runners are not taking in enough?
And how does, how does the ProBio product contribute to, at least on the micronutrient side, any sort of gaps that, that might exist?
But specifically the volume and, and everything in general, and then also in the micro side. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean,
if we look at different macros, like in terms of protein, if you go online, it looks like things have changed dramatically in the last few years.
Over the last 10 years, absolutely nothing's changed with protein recommendations.
[laughs] But if you were to go online, it looks like they've been changing, you know, dramatically in the last couple of years really, right?
Like 1.2 grams per kilo as a baseline, 1.6 grams per kilo as, you know, if you're, if you're pushing yourself. Going all the way up to, like, a gram per pound is, is quite a lot of protein for most people.
So protein you can actually, with my athletes, we kinda set it and forget it. Like, get it to where it needs to be, automate that, and then you don't need to think about it anymore, right?
It's like the apps on your phone, they're just running in the background. 'Cause when it comes to carbohydrates, now all of a sudden the pendulum swings massively, right?
Like, I've worked with some cyclists, professional cyclists, and they're consuming, like 1,600 grams of carbohydrates in a day to do some of these mountain stages.
That's, like, what, what we might have in a week or, you know, Monday to Friday.
And then at certain sessions you could go all the way down to having, somebody might in a day have, you know, if they're going on a keto diet or low carb, like 50 or 100 grams.
So you do have this massive room to play in when it comes to carbohydrates, and, you know, typically what we're thinking about is I like to bucket it with fast or slow carbs, right?
'Cause sometimes when we use the term sugar, you know, it sorta has a bad connotation, 'cause obviously if we're not in good health and we consume too much of it, you know, bad things can happen.
You can become pre-diabetic, diabetic, hypertensive, all these types of things. But for athletes, the term helps, right?
Because it's like if you're just about to train, if you're actually training, if you just finished training, you want fast, right?
And now all of a sudden it takes the value judgment off of having something that has sugar in it, 'cause we're after speed, right? We're trying to get it in through the gut and into the tissue as quick as we can, right?
Away from exercise, we wanna, you know, that's when you want your complex carbs. We want it to be slower. You're sitting at your desk, you want that constant energy.
So I think playing around with it, like you guys were just talking about intra-session fueling, that's when, as you get faster and faster, that's where you can start bumping those numbers up higher and higher.
I think where when we look at, like, the general runner who's maybe running a four-hour marathon and they're starting to fuel like Kipchoge with 80 grams an hour, like, now we're into that sort of over-fueling.
And there's some cool studies with CGMs, like continuous glucose monitors, where they, you can actually see the person's blood glucose rising and rising, and then they, you know, they bonk because there's basically just too much fuel going in.
So just getting a sense for yourself of where you might stand. Like, do you know... You know, for these macros we often refer to the three Ts, so the total amount, the timing, and then the type.
So basically for carbs, for everybody in here, it'd be like, what, what is your total? Do you have a range? Is it 150 to 200? Is it 300 to 400? You're trying to get a rough ballpark.
And you don't need to calculate all the time or track all the time.
Just taking a snapshot of what a typical day or couple of days looks like is a great way to then have a benchmark that you can then start to work off of.
'Cause particularly for in, in female performance, things have gotten a lot better now, but traditionally under-fueling was the big problem, right?
Like, even at the Olympic level, getting female athletes to consume enough, we'd tell them, "No, you need an extra 100 grams of carbohydrates." They're like, "100 grams? How, where am I gonna put that?"
But we use different strategies, but this is a, definitely one that has a huge impact, 'cause all of a sudden your outputs in the sessions are better, you recover better, right?
Less kinda niggles and aches, and then just in terms of energy levels, you feel a lot better. So certainly a lot of room. I'm curious kinda where you're, where you sit with, in terms of your total intakes. Yeah.
Uh, [laughs] day to day, I mean, I, I would, I was just thinking about it. I would, I would assume, I don't... My loose guess for carbs would be 700 grams. How many? 700. That's a pretty, pretty big dose. Yeah.
Would be my guess. And how many hours a week are you training? 20, 24 to 28. Of run? Total train- Got it... so strength. Okay. Um, but yeah- [laughs] That's a lot of running...
I would, I would say close to 20 of running. How many miles a week are you running? 140. Oh. 140. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Okay. That checks out. Wow. It's a lot of miles. [laughs] It's a lot of time.
[laughs] Who's running 140 in a month? [laughs] Maybe a while ago. So how has, how has your fueling evolved and, and how have you experimented with what's worked for you both, uh, let's start with in the run itself.
Yeah. Yeah.
I, I was very similar to what was said earlier of, um, I ran track in college in Boulder for my last two years of grad school as well, and we had nutritionists, and that, that was mainly focusing on outside of activities, so what we do in the cafeteria, what we do at our house, especially when we're starting to cook on our own.
Um, but, so yeah, we would go on 20-mile long runs in the, the dirt roads in Boulder and just have water, water one stop. For two hours, and that was just what we knew. And so I didn't take it.
I would take a protein shake on my drive home afterwards and, and nap for three hours, and I could never figure out why I would wake up and- And you were exhausted afterwards, right? And couldn't leave my bed. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, and so every Sunday was just a wash, like couldn't do homework, just watching football or just watching TV and wasting away, and I thought that was normal.
And, um, as I kind of progressed outside of college and got into more of the road scene and training myself and, and working with-- I didn't have my nutritionist at CU anymore.
I was working with people in Boulder and just different resources. I kinda got into like the, the intra fueling.
So, like it was pretty low carb at the time, but yeah, I, I was trying to just get forty grams of carbs in, in two hours. And for me, when I started out, that was brutal. It was very rough.
Um, I felt like I was bloated all the time. I, I just couldn't figure out where I was translating to, but then it-- my runs did get better.
So I was like, "If I can figure out this over time, it's gonna hopefully lead to something well," and also, I wasn't feeling like a zombie.
I could go out to dinner with my partner on Sundays, which I'd never been able to do before. And [laughs] I, I felt like- It took coherence... a normal person. And so
yeah, just as I kind of progressed, um, I'm sure everyone who's a, a runner or trains at somewhat of a, a high level every day has heard of the high carb fueling strategy.
And so yeah, now it's, it's just kind of where can I introduce more carbs? Does it work? Does it sit well?
Or does it need to be more of like a front-loading when my stomach is enlarged and it's not shrinking after a lot of, um, exertion over time, and so, and playing with electrolytes.
And so yeah, I mean, now, now I am pretty-- I like to pride myself, I'm pretty good on it, but it took a lot of practice.
And so, um, yeah, I, I went from that to now I've been removed from college for four years, and I don't do a run over 12 miles without fuel.
So I, if I'm-- even if it's an easy run, I'm gonna take a gel and, uh, whether it's forty grams of carbs, sixty grams of carbs, I don't leave the house without it if I'm gonna be on for 90, over 90 minutes.
Um, and then especially going into my workouts, I try to have at least 100 grams of carbs per workout. Long runs is more, 250 grams of carbs per long run.
So yeah, I, I'm, I've practiced and, and really gotten to a point where I really try to hover on that 100 grams of carbs per hour limit, um, for myself.
And in Boston, I, I worked it out the other day talking with my coach, and I was able to do 110, which was a personal record.
And so-- and I felt really good, and, and I came off of it pretty well, and I got to go out to dinner with my family afterwards, and that was something I wasn't able to do last year as well.
So- And there can be a little bit of gut tolerance- Yeah... building that you have to do. For sure. So if you start pushing up above 80, give yourself a little time- Yeah... 'cause imagine, as you alluded to- Yeah...
your drive, tracking- So who else is familiar with that, like, long run fatigue that knocks you out for like three or four hours? Yeah, so mo- most people.
[laughs] A couple years ago, I, I was dealing with the same thing, and a dietician friend suggested trying more fueling, and I had just started to do that.
And one day I texted her after a two-and-a-half-hour long run, and I was like, "Oh, I just like moved furniture for four hours," and I didn't, I wasn't tired. She's like, "Yeah, duh.
You give your body what it needs, and it, it makes sense." And so it's- Put the fuel in the tank...
for, yeah, for a lot of people it's this like very binary switch of once you start doing it, you feel so different, and you can't imagine not doing it anymore.
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I, I think it's important, too, to remember that, like, it's not always an easy road to go from, like, poor fueling to good fueling, like we were talking about. Yeah, no [laughs]. I don't wanna- Feel- Yeah...
like a trail in there, yeah... you mentioned- Make sure to support a body if you want... struggling with 40 grams of carbohydrate. Now they make gels that have more than 40 grams in- Yeah... one gel. Yeah.
And so, like, it, it often takes time.
I remember reading this story about Des Linden throwing up on the side of the road because she was trying to teach her body how to get in the fuel and digest the fuel and be okay with it in her system while she was running marathon pace.
That's the other thing. You gotta practice while running the, the paces that you're gonna be running on race day.
And it just all goes to show, like, it is such a process to train your body for the demands of fueling, just like you do it for the demands of running. I have a question for Mark on this one.
So I, I had a conversation with Dr. Alan Lim, who's the founder of Skratch, and he talks- Yeah... about how with carbohydrate, intra-run carbohydrate, it's a test. You just, okay, if you can do 50, try 60.
If you can do 60, try 80. If you can do 80, try 100. If you can do 100, try 110. If you can't do 110, back down to 100, and you don't need to push further.
And so his, his take is, like, find your threshold because that's your, your max benefit, and don't try and exceed it and just kinda back, back off behind it. Is that-- Has that been what you've seen work well?
Yeah, I mean, that's a great suggestion. I think the other piece of that is that the different types of simple carbohydrates, like between maltodextrin, whether it's glucose, fructose.
Isomaltulose is what you get in honey, and that's got a bit of a slower burn. And so everyone's guts are a little bit different in terms of how the microbiota react to it.
So somebody can have a certain gel and be like, "Wow, that was no problem at all," or maybe the one that you tried initially was, obviously didn't react. Yeah. And it creates a lot of bloating.
So definitely some trial and error with kinda different brands if the first go doesn't, uh- You know, go too well.
Um, I think also even 20 grams to start with if you haven't done anything is a nice place to, um, to start.
And then just on the flip side to what these guys were talking about, just to give you kind of the full, there's still athletes like Sharon that get up in the morning, have a cup of tea and a biscuit, and run a training session.
Now, the key for her is that that meal then after, when you get back from that, 'cause you're technically training fasted, that first meal then becomes really important.
And for someone like Sharon or if you're, if you're, if you're very fit, then it's like a, a liquid nutrition. So something comes in quickly, but it doesn't fill you up, and then there's a meal on the back end of that.
So that's how you can sort of get away with that if you are, you know, it's early, you're getting up in the morning, and you don't quite have time to, you know, knock back 120 grams of, of carbohydrates.
Let's talk about the, the micronutrients and the, the piece of fueling outside of the run itself. We're obviously here with ProBio. You helped to start the company. Um, what was the, the genesis of the idea?
What did you feel wasn't existing in the, in the space that led...
And, and so again, for, for background, Mark has been a consultant or works with a number of teams, so he sees what goes on in these locker rooms and, and elite sport, it has this really nice, um, use case of what works there is the validation that gets to trickle down to the rest of us.
Like, but if it doesn't work for elite sport, it's probably not gonna work with amateurs, and so it's a really nice kinda training ground to understand product innovation. So- Yeah...
what, what was missing and what, what led to you wanting to, to make this? I mean, 20 years of looking at athletes' labs and people's lab tests, you start to see similar patterns over and over and over again.
And typically, we give out pill packs, right? We make up the different pill packs and individualize them. But when you're seeing the same 80% of problems are common,
and we would make up these pill packs for athletes, you know, we hand it out to them.
Like I was telling the guys, you know, you find it stuffed between the seats in the plane or still in their shoes, like compliance wasn't so great. And most of the time you'd have to trim things, right?
Like a good multivitamin one might be six capsules, but you're like, "Oh, there's no way they're taking six capsules, so we'll make it two."
And the magnesium that needs three capsules, but we know they're not gonna do that, so we'll put one. So you're always kinda cutting corners.
And so that was the idea around the ProBlend of basically saying, "How can we cover this foundation so we're getting 85% of what folks need," right?
We can put the best forms of it, so not kind of the cheaper forms to make the product cheaper, but the best forms of it. And just that compliance piece.
'Cause whether it's training, nutrition, rehab, like consistency predicts the outcome, right?
And so if we can get people taking something all the time, then we can see, you know, the actual outcome, whether it's energy, immunity, healing.
And the, for me as a practitioner, I think that's where the, you know, being at the coal face, it still allows a practitioner to still individualize a little bit as well, right?
It's more like rather than solving 10 problems, this can cover eight out of 10, and now we're left with a couple things. And it's a better experience for the athlete, right?
Like if I give you two capsules and say, "You're taking this for four weeks for this reason, and at the end of that four weeks you're done," that's a lot easier proposition for someone to actually execute on versus what happens even in pro sport is like, "Here's your eight pills.
Here's three more 'cause you had a concussion. Now you't injured, here's another four." And it's almost [chuckles] like the, you know, the athlete's going home with this basket of stuff.
And of course, depending on the sport, some of them aren't so compliant, and so it just goes in the, in the bin on the way out the door. So that was really the impetus of it.
And then, you know, we spent our first 18 months just with pro teams, so all your major sports, track clubs like M11 out in, in Manchester with, you know, Keely Hodgkinson and Georgia Bell, Olympic athletes.
And, you know, to be able to see them have fewer missed days training and fewer sick days, 'cause I'm sure you guys are familiar with the term, the best ability is availability, right?
Which in endurance is everything, right? You can actually separate out international from national from regional competitors just on who showed up the most to training. There's a few other components in that.
Genetics are some of them. But, you know, that's really that idea of like, let's get you taking it consistently.
And then, you know, as you mentioned with all the fueling talk, like the micros help to convert what you're eating into energy.
And so for endurance athletes, and again, whether it's Sharon or Keely, like we would run, and, you know, especially for female athletes, right, we've gotta build blood every month, so B12, folate, you know, magnesium, these become really important and we can track those.
And we, you know, there are norms for, you know, professional female runners and, you know, non-professional in terms of the, the metrics that we wanna get to.
So that was really fun to be able to see those changes in a, in, in, in, in athletes and, of course, things like vitamin D, massive for bone health and immunity. So
long-winded way of saying, you know, that, that's what came to it, and it's been great to kind of prove that out in sport, get the feedback, and now, you know, since, since November, since New York Marathon, you know, we're, we're out to the public.
And the, the similar parallel is in clinical practice. You have people come in and they put their four or five supplements on your count on the, on the desk of what they're taking, right?
And sometimes they forget why they're taking it, and they've got a bunch of pills, and it's like, okay, how do we simplify that?
'Cause, you know, you guys are busy, and I'm sure, you know, I was a pretty compliant pill taker, but after months and months it's like, okay, you know.
And you tend to not take them when you're sort of run down and tired, which is the when you should, when you kinda need the most, right? So, so that's how we got here. And then the orange color just picked us, right?
We didn't try to pick orange. It's just the, uh, CoQ10, the lutein in there, and so that's all natural. You know, sometimes people think it pops a little too much.
[chuckles] It's not any artificial orange or anything, so. But yeah, that's how we got here. Mark, I'm curious which sports are the least compliant. So normally the high-skill sports, right?
So basketball and soccer, right? If you've got a 44-inch vertical leap and you're 6'8" and you can run like the wind, you're like, "I'm in the NBA. What do I care? I, I didn't care about my nutrition beforehand."
But what happens, though, is as they get older, mid-20s, late 20s, now all of a sudden you get exposed, right? Like if you're not fueling the right way, the little niggles and injuries come up, right?
You get sick more often. And so,
you know, for example, like I- I've, I work with Canada Basketball, so for someone like Shai SGA, so when he was 15, when he was at prep school in Tennessee, we were helping his coach out with breakfast and everything else, and trying to build in these habits with him so that now he's 26, you know, he just does the right thing more often than not.
It's not like a- You know, we used to give these big elaborate plans to athletes, but it's the same idea. Like, if you give- the more content you give someone, the less retention, right?
So we're always trying to just, like, drip feed everything in, get you to do one thing, do it well, repeat it. Once you can just, it's autopilot, right, then we do the next thing.
And it's amazing how whether you're in the Olympics or the rest of us, [laughs] it's sort of a, a good way to approach it, um, because then you're, again, it's just easier to execute on as you go forward.
I heard a coach say once, "Do the common uncommonly well." Yeah, 'cause it's the controllables, right?
I mean, it's, uh, the things that are within your control are so few and far between that if, if you can do those well, it's amazing how that's the thing that's gonna move the needle when most the time we kinda look outward, like, do I need a new pair of shoes?
Do I need a new training plan? Do I need, like, some special gel? You're like- Mm... maybe a little bit, but the big thing you need is to kinda go back to the big rocks, so.
Charlie, does that echo your, the way that you kinda do the thing? Yeah, for sure. It, it's, there's a lot of, a lot of things that I've, uh, I've messed up when we're talking about this stuff.
But yeah, even just kinda going back to what you just said, but, um, I have a thing that is maximize the 99% before you worry about the 1%. Yeah Or it can even go down to 90% before you worry about the 10%.
So when it's like you're needing a massage, or you wanna spend money on a, a magic gel, or all this crazy sodium bicarbonate or everything, um- That's a good name for a product, Magic Gel. [laughs] Magic Gel, yeah.
[laughs] It's, if you're not- Black current...
if you're not sleeping eight hours a night, or if you're not fueling well outside of the workouts, or you're not just taking care of yourself in general day to day, you're not enjoying it, then it's
n- that magic 10% isn't gonna make any impact if your 90% foundation isn't there. And so it's, yeah, it's, it's very easy to read into that.
And, and I mean, that's, I have a full-time job as well, and I'm in, in the marketing department, and that's all marketing is, is you just wanna get the consumer to believe in your product is gonna make that 1% difference.
Um, and so yeah, in a way, it's like, y- as long as you have that 90%, then you can worry about the next thing, the next super gym membership, that next massages three times a week, the next what-
whatever recovery you can think of.
But if you don't have the, the training, the consistency of the day in, day out, the willingness to do it when it's raining outside, or will, when it's cold, or when you had a long day at work and you can only squeeze it in on your lunch break, all the other stuff is really gonna go by the wayside.
Um, and so yeah, that, that was a big thing for me to learn, especially coming from college. When I was a broke college kid trying to train without a sponsor, I couldn't get a massage because I, I couldn't afford it.
So I was like, "What can I do well? What can I do better than everyone else that is getting massage?" And for me, that's running a lot of miles, and sleeping a lot, and maximizing when I'm working.
I'm working 9:00 to 5:00, and the second I get off my last meeting, I'm out the door and getting as much mileage in before the sun sets, and the same in the morning.
So that was my one thing, and thankfully, it's led to some success, and now I can have the, the ability and the, um, blessing to go get a massage once a week and once every other week.
But yeah, for me, it's, I don't start that stuff, I don't start my massages, I don't start anything until I'm really confident in myself that I cons- consistently do this again, and I earn it for myself.
I make myself earn it. And so yeah, I mean, consistency is, is more of a superpower than I think a lot of people give credit for, and I think anyone on the professional circuit would say that.
But anyone in, in running or any, any aspect of life, relationships, corporate jobs, anything, consistency's gonna be the king over anything. Showing up to work's a good thing. [laughs] Yeah.
[laughs] Consistency there is always helpful. Does anyone have any questions? Yeah, I can throw it out to you guys. You mentioned having a full-time job and running 140 miles a week. I'm just curious, like- [laughs]...
what your day-to-day looks like, like, on a Monday- Oh, man... when you have to work, but you're, like, trying to train. Yeah. Yeah, Mon- Mondays are tough. Mondays are the, the worst day of the week, uh, for me.
But yeah, I think, um, I work for a GPS watch company. I work for COROS, and so they're very understanding of what I do, which is nice. Um, but that doesn't give me necessarily any more flexibility.
So, uh, yeah, a, a normal Monday will be, my first meeting, non-negotiable, is 9:00 AM. And so I have a recurring meeting 9:00 AM, 10:00 AM, 11:00 AM every Monday.
And so I'll do, I have an easy run, and I have two easy runs on Monday. So I'll do my easy run before the meeting at 9:00 AM, and then kinda get back, get that meeting done.
That's when I'm, I'm mainly sipping on Pro Bio or a carb drink, um, and then kind of use that- [laughs] [laughs] Use that space of 9, 9:45 to 10:00 before that meet, that second meeting. Um, I work remote.
I guess I should've included that. So it's all from my house, which is very, another blessing that I can't thank my s- company enough for. But, um, then I kind of have the same breakfast every day.
So I have a scrambled eggs, spinach, uh, bell peppers, cherry tomatoes on a sandwich. I can whip that up in 90 seconds. If we had it in the, in the next room, I could whip it up for everyone here.
Um, and then yeah, it's, it's- Challenge accepted. Let's do that. [laughs] It's 10 A- yeah, yeah, 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM. Um, and then from that point on is just kinda making sure I'm catching up.
So I do social media for COROS.
And so a Monday, Tuesday, especially coming off the weekend, will be anywhere from 100 to 300 DMs on the Instagram account alone, and then going, pivoting to Strava, to Facebook, to YouTube.
And so kinda catching up, working through my lunch break. I don't take a lunch break, and so working through my lunch break where I try to get in my, my second sandwich of the day.
And then kinda working whatever recurring meetings come up or however it, whatever needs my attention that day for the afternoon.
And then yeah, the, like I said, the second my last meeting's over, or the second I check that last box, um, on Monday afternoon, I get out again and get, go do it again. And so yeah. How, how many days do you do?
Two days, did you say? Just a Monday, or? Five days of the week. Two, two training sessions, five days a week? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so yeah, most, most days are like that.
Um, I don't take a lunch break, which has its toll on it, on my mental health. I'd love to take a, take a break in the middle of the day.
But it, it really gets me that, that time to, the buffer to go off for my second session. And then, um, yeah, I mean, I started in customer support at COROS, and it was, my running took a, a backseat. And kind of as I-
Figured out what I was good at, pivoted to marketing, pivoted to what I'm very good in my routine. Then I could kinda have those conversations with my manager. "Hey, I'm training for the Boston Marathon.
What does that look like? Can we offload some of my stuff for this next eight weeks? Can I do- can I have an extra Friday off here and there to do my key workout?
On Sunday, I'm gonna be totally off the grid because I have a 25-miler." And so, yeah, a lot of communication. Um, but yeah, it's not a lot of, not a lot of free time, not a lot of- Forces you to be efficient too, right?
Extremely efficient. Like, you gotta be really efficient with everything. Yeah. You gotta pick your battles 'cause there's only so many hours. Right. Yeah. And so I don't, I don't watch a lot of Netflix.
I can't remember the last time I- I finished a, a docuseries or a Netflix series at all, and I don't get to- Lots of music, though. Lot. Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. Podcasts, right? Yeah. Yeah. Podcasts. Yeah. Podcasts.
Podcasts are big on the runs. Um, but yeah, I don't get to watch NFL or that stuff as much anymore just 'cause it, it is truly, you find what, what wastes your time.
And so my screen, my personal screen time on my phone goes down, but my work screen time on my work phone goes up. And so yeah, you, you kinda find what works.
For myself, and like I said, being remote is an incredible blessing. And having a company that understands and supports what I am doing is something that I
will never take advantage of because it's definitely not as easy as it seems. So yeah. Cool. Any- anybody else? Questions, training, recovery? Um, I have a question about pre-race meals.
Would they look any different if you're trying to go out the next morning for speed versus endurance? Yeah. In terms of intensity, is typically when you wanna be providing more carbohydrate. Right?
Like, after you've slept all night, to keep your lungs ventilating and heart pumping, you use up all the glycogen in your liver. So you got carb stores in your liver, about 100 grams, and those will be all used up.
So you think of it like a glass that empties. But you still have all your muscle glycogen.
So you can do a really intense session without too much carbohydrate, but that additional carbohydrate really helps you to, you know, push yourself and create that adaptation that you're after, especially if it's a longer session.
So it can be as simple as even just having, like, toast and honey or a bagel and honey. Like, those are meals where it can just be carbohydrate only.
You don't have to think about necessarily adding that protein in 'cause then you can, you know, back-end the protein when you get back in a protein shake or a breakfast.
Um, but that typically helps people when they're going out in the morning. Dates can be really handy, like the big, thicker Medjool dates, 'cause one date's got 18 grams of carbohydrate.
So, you know, two or three dates, you're already at 50 grams of carbohydrates. They go down pretty quick. So those can be some strategies.
But, uh, but even if you're really pressed for time y- and your session's less than an hour, you still have enough glycogen, so enough carbohydrates in your muscles, to get the job done.
But you just then wanna make sure that that next meal, like when you come back from that run, that becomes really important 'cause if you miss that and keep going, then now you're gonna, from a recovery standpoint, be sacrificing a little bit.
Yeah. I, I might add, too, like, it, I think it depends a little bit on the total duration of the session rather than, like, if it's an endurance or speed session.
'Cause you could do a speed workout where you, it might only take 50 minutes total or, or 55, 60 minutes.
You probably don't have to worry about fueling too much for something like that, whereas if you're doing a two-hour long run, you definitely have to worry much more about your pre, uh, workout breakfast.
Um, so in my coaching practice, I'm a little bit less concerned about, like, the intensity of it.
Like, you're gonna need certainly some carbohydrate for that, but if the overall duration is pretty short, you probably can get away with less than you think.
It just becomes more important to then refuel a little bit more afterwards. So if, like, long was, like, one hour plus, two hour plus, like, what, where's, like, that threshold- Say 90 minutes, is that-...
where you start considering more? I, I mean, I think 90, 75 to 90 minutes is probably a good threshold for when you wanna start taking carbohydrate during the run.
Um, and then o- I mean, once you get to, like, hour 45, two hours, then you're, you not only wanna take carbohydrate in during your run, but you wanna maybe think about a slightly more substantial breakfast, getting up a little bit earlier so that you have the time and the space to, to eat something more substantial and then digest it a little bit before you head out the door.
Like, I think it's always hard when you're in the middle of both and you're pressed for time. So say you're doing a long marathon-specific workout. It's gonna take you 90 minutes.
Now you, it's starting to be long and it's starting to be intense, so those are the workouts where definitely have to fuel beforehand really well, definitely have to fuel during the workout really well.
Um, you know, marathon-specific long runs, and I, you might agree, is, like, probably the one type of workout that you should be fueling at 100%. And hydrating. Yeah, hydrating, like, all the things.
'Cause it's arguably combining both intensity and duration of workout into one session that could potentially just wreck you if you don't fuel yourself, and why you need the three-hour nap, and you can't go out to dinner afterwards.
And, like, that, tho- those are the things where I'm much more strict about fueling. Creating ProBio, I think, well, the interesting thing is a lot of the sentiments that you'll hear
historically from nutritionists is you can get everything from a well-balanced diet. Obviously, you're, you're coming at this from something to help supplement or in disagreement with that.
How, how did you come to stand on this? Yeah. I think the challenge when we're... You know, as demands go up, so do requirements, right?
Um, if you're eating four, five, six times a day, not every meal has to be sort of a cornucopia of micronutrition, but it gets harder to get all the micronutrition in, right?
'Cause people are sort of fueling up with, you know, rices, pastas, et cetera. So when we look at the research now with, you know, magnesium status, so magnesium's key for a lot of functions in the body.
Energy's one, right? Making ATP. The more protein you eat, converting protein to energy, all these types of things.
You know, athletes and active people are gonna have 10 or 20% higher requirements, so it becomes a question of, like-
Do we wanna try to get away with, you know, the minimum effective dose, or do we wanna try to put in as much as we can to help with overall performance?
And so that's where you tend to err on the side of even just having a general multivitamin typically help.
But then for people who are really pushing themselves, this is where like, you know, maintaining your vitamin D status at, at least 36 nanogram per mil throughout the year, 'cause that's huge recovery support.
You know, you guys get a lot of sun o- here, but in the wintertime the sun's still pretty low, so get yourself tested in like December is really great, right? 'Cause you're gonna get immune benefits up to 40.
Same thing when we look at folate and B12. So there's certain markers that we wanna, you know, get in, and so that's the idea of being able to just provide a really robust support.
Um- Like Mark, I've seen a lot of blood work in my day. [laughs] InsideTracker, yeah. Spent 10 years working at InsideTracker, and we worked a lot of pro teams and pro athletes, both endurance and team sport athletes.
And while these athletes are miraculous on the field and on the ice, their blood work was quite average. And so to echo your point of the more work you do, the more you need to think about the replenishment.
And so at some point it becomes an insurance policy around like you can't... A- and from a caloric standpoint too, like people talk about, "Oh, eat whole foods, eat energy-rich food or, or, um, from the earth only."
And it's like, well, if you're doing 140 miles a week, you can't just eat plants, right?
Well, and the other thing, I mean, I work in fight sport as well with, you know, boxers, guys like Anthony Joshua, and if you, if you put in lots of fiber, they can't get enough total calories in.
That's the other one, right? You've gotta put... If you need 4,000 or 5,000 calories, you're not gonna eat so many heads of broccoli 'cause you're gonna be full of brown rice. You know what I mean?
So there's that, there's that- That's why we got pizza tonight... there's that push and pull. The glycogen store is full. We have the pizza to make sure the glycogen's topped up and the ProBio too.
Uh, but yeah, th- those are the considerations. And then there's things that we didn't put in on purpose, right? Like there's no creatine for a reason. There's no sodium for a reason. There's no collagen.
Because it's gonna be different for in- individuals, right? For an athlete, we would test you to measure how much sodium you lose in every liter of sweat, and it's like a shoe size.
So you might lose 1,000 milligrams of sodium per liter. She might lose 500. You might lose 2,000.
And so if you think, if you all lose three liters of sweat, you've lost 6,000, 3,000, and 1,500 milligrams of sodium, so that can be then added into the Pro Blend.
Creatine dosing, depending on like male, female, three or five grams, or if someone's doing a concussion protocol.
So there's things that we wanna add in and use it as a hub so that you can, again, kinda tick off most of the boxes and then you're, you know, you're good to go, um, you know, for the day.
So Mark, all these people are a wealth of knowledge. Mark was on Jason's podcast if that, if I recall. Yeah, a time ago. Yeah, we did. Yeah. [laughs] So you can, you can hear more from the two of them.
The years, the years go by quick. Um, you know, the other thing I might add about like why supplement if you're, you know, if a dietician says, "Well, you can get all this from whole foods."
Nobody eats that perfect diet.
So it's almost like this imaginary, o- you know, fantasy world where everyone is getting six servings of vegetables every day and four servings of fruit and the proper whole grains and- Enough fiber...
you know, the exact- When people give you their diet recall, it's always their best day, right? Like, they're always- Yeah... giving you the- Oh, I, yeah... which is fine, but it's- I decided to track my food- Yeah.
[laughs]... and on that day I ate perfectly. Wow. [laughs] And then the day where you just have six slices of pizza for dinner, you don't track that day. So I've talked to a lot of RDs, and
I would say that they, they sort of agree with that line, but then practically they recognize that nobody actually eats perfectly.
And then there's things like, you know, if you go out and have a couple beers, that will impact the absorption of nutrients in your gut. So yeah, like I'm, I'm a, I'm a fan of supplementation even though like
I think you could probably get 98% of what's in most supplements from food. I think that would be a full-time job, and, uh, I think, I think also runners are busy and we like convenience. By all means [laughs]
pro supplementary, I just put- No, no, no, I mean, I'm- [laughs] He's super into magnesium. [laughs] Yeah.
Actually, you had mentioned sunlight and all those things, and I actually used InsideTracker and found out I was actually deficient in vitamin D, and I still am out here running a lot- Yeah...
and was surprised to see that my vitamin D was tanked. And magnesium, two of the things you guys have in here.
Um- And yeah, when you start to th- think of those things as sort of like gas tanks in the sense of like you can top it up, but if you're doing a lot, it comes back down again, is probably why you're in that, you know, you get in that situation.
So it's, yeah, great to do some testing like that to, to see, right? Peter, do you have a question? I have one last question. It's less fueling. It's kind of selfish that I wanna know.
[laughs] Um, Char- Charlie, what's your, um, strength to running breakdown in your weekly, when you're 25 hours of working out in the week? How much is that? Like strength training? Yeah. Um, [laughs]
it's, it's, it's kind of like a- I'm, 'cause I'm- [laughs] But- [laughs] It's, it's, um, [laughs] it depends who you ask. Um, I, I- [laughs] We're asking Charlie. [laughs] Yeah. It's, uh, the- That was the best answer.
[laughs] One D it for Jason, so. He doesn't wanna give away any trade secrets- Yeah, yeah, yeah... is what he's saying. I, I, I go, I strength train once a week.
So I go, I, that, and to me, that's going to the gym, going through a, a routine, and I spend 90 minutes go- like dedicated strength training.
So for Boston, I was doing a lot of explosive movements, so box jumps, stuff like that, to kind of refine my, um, downhill running technique, whatever.
You callous myself to kinda more that impact, and that usually takes 90. If it takes longer than 90 minutes for myself, I leave.
Um, because that's, it's just a fueling thing for me at that point because I'm training so much already.
And so I do 90 minutes of dedicated strength work in a, a gym, and then every other twice to three times a week, depending on the week, depending on the workload, I'll do stuff like body weight stuff of mobility, hip mobility, just kinda like light foam rolling, core, just kinda-
Give or take 30 minutes while I'm getting ready for bed, while I'm just kinda winding down, having my last supplements, having my tea before bed, I'll just kinda do, whether it's core or my hips feel tight or kinda stuff like that, just work on that.
But, um, yeah, it's 90 minutes once a week. And just to quickly tack onto that, like in terms of team sport, they would use the off-season to kinda create these adaptations, and then in- in season, they're just lifting,
you know, after a game once or twice a week. So to maintain the quality that you build from the gym, once a week helps to maintain that quality.
So you can even think of it like when you've got time, you can get more compressed and create that adaptation, whether you wanna get stronger, more explosive, and then to maintain it, you just like one session a week, and you can keep those qualities whilst you're, you know, building out the running.
That was gonna be question 1B for the run coach, 'cause like, you know, again, 2:11, 3:45. [laughs] Different runners here. 2:10, wasn't it? 2:11. Ooh. I appreciate that, that was... Yeah, yeah, we'll give...
[laughs] Oh. Jonathan said it. Counted. Yeah, yeah. [laughs] Yeah, counted.
Um, but, so I, you know, I try and work out like two or three times a week in addition to running, but then getting into that, like peaking for, you know, training for a race, when do you taper off on the strength- Yeah...
and just, you know, stack miles? Yeah, it's a really good question.
Um, I, I think no matter what phase of your training cycle you're in, I think it's always good to remember that your strength training is there to make your running better.
Like, if you are a runner trying to become a faster runner, your running is designed to kind of aid your running, then your running should never be negatively impacted by your strength training. So what that means is,
w- I think runner- most runners should probably limit their weightlifting days in a gym to two. Three starts to make me nervous, like you're gonna, it's a fueling issue. You're just gonna be sore. You're gonna be tired.
It's gonna negatively impact your, your running in some way.
If your weightlifting is periodized like your running should be, which I think it should be, you know, like what you're doing four months out from your goal race in the weight room probably should look a little different than what you're doing two weeks out.
Mm-hmm. Uh, I think it should be kind of matching the goals of your training plan, you know, kinda like general endurance, strength, then it kinds of moves into kinda peak lifts and stuff like that.
But then you add in explosivity, power, plyometrics, things like that, to kind of take your strength and almost like turn it into speed. Um, so if it's periodized, you can lift the week of your race.
That workout's gonna- There you go... it's, it's just gonna look so much different than what you did months earlier, you know? It might be, you might only spend 25 minutes in the gym.
Jason, do you have, uh, programs on your website? [laughs] Yes, I, I sell a weightlifting program, but, but like- It's tough to tell a former offensive lineman to lift less, though. Really. [laughs] Yeah.
This is really, this is really what it comes down to- No... is like- Yeah... just lift once a week at that point. Yeah. [laughs] High reps, low weight. Yeah. Uh, no, you don't wanna do that.
Uh, yeah, so like it might only be 20, 25 minutes.
Half of that might be the warmup, and then you're doing, you know, four sets of two reps, pretty explosive, and then it's like you're, you're almost just kind of activating the nervous system.
Kind of like we are practicing power output, but in a way that's not gonna make us too tired. Almost like if you wanted to practice running fast without getting tired, you would do like something like strides.
Playing with speed, it's fun. It, it, it, it's not a workout. It's just like, uh, uh, training the nervous system, working on turnover.
You would do the same thing in the weight room, it would just be with a different sport. It would be with lifting weights. So I don't think that answered your question at all, 'cause you basically never...
You, you taper off almost in the entire month leading up to your weight. Hey, bro, you taper. I love it. [laughs] Yeah.
Kinda like the ru- like kinda like your faster workouts, like what happens with your faster workouts? They get hard, then they get specific,
then the volume of them decreases, but the, the, the, the, the intensity stays the same. And then the week of the race, the, the volume is so little, you're just kinda just practicing some snappy stuff- Watch...
and then, and then you're, you're going. You're, you're running the race. Lifting is, is almost the same way. And then I, I do like, I love what you do with the mobility and the body weight stuff.
I have this concept where I like runners to sandwich every run in between a dynamic warmup, 10 minutes mobility, some light strength work before you go running, and then after you run, you can do another 10 to 20 minutes strength work, mobility, core.
And then twice a week, maybe you replace that post-run with some kind of actual weightlifting workout in the gym. Jason and I are running tomorrow, so I'm gonna hold him accountable to actually doing that tomorrow.
I'm gonna hold you accountable- [laughs]... for doing a proper lunge. Touché. [laughs] A proper lunge, okay. Amazing. Uh, thank you all for being here. That's it for today's episode.
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