At age 75, legendary coach and Olympian Jeff Galloway is almost as famous for walking as he is for running. Jeff says his run-walk-run method of training enables people to run longer and faster with much less risk of injury, and his half a million followers agree.
In this episode, Jeff talks about how he developed his walk/run technique and how everyone from absolute beginners to the fastest runners can benefit from it. He also shares with Coach Claire how he’s getting more steps in while working from home, how runners can stay motivated during the pandemic, what his Magic Mile is and how to use it for training, and what he’s doing at age 75 to ensure he can keep running until age 100 and beyond.
Not only is there a lot to be learned from Jeff in this interview, but he also has a new book out called Galloway’s 5K/10K Running, Training for Runners & Walkers. The book describes Jeff’s Run Walk Run method and how it can be used to reduce aches and pains and fatigue while improving race times. It includes training plans, easy-to-read advice on medical checkups, nutrition for runners, fat-burning workouts, choosing the right running shoes, how to stay motivated, and a race day checklist. The book is definitely a great tool for runners at any level!
Jeff worked his way from being an average teenage runner to an Olympian. His book Galloway’s Book on Running is the best selling running book in North America. He also wrote columns for Runner's World for 20-plus years, he’s an international running and fitness speaker, and as a coach, has helped 400,000-plus average people train for their goals. His Run Walk Run marathon training program boasts an impressive 98% success rate.
Questions Jeff is asked:
3:35 At this point in your career, you are almost as famous for walking as you are for running! Can you talk about what you love about walking in general and its benefits for runners?
9:09 How would you recommend all of us who are working from home get more transition time between sitting at our computers and running and get more steps in? How do we get our work done and still get in all our steps?
10:51 Maybe because we’re all stuck at home and the gyms are closed, I see more people in my neighborhood than ever out walking, out running, out doing things, people you’d never see before. So what advice would you give to someone just starting out?
14:58 Should runners of all levels use walking in their training and racing? What’s your opinion on intermediate-to-advanced runners?
16:12 I’m a steady runner. I run even splits no matter what, and in the last marathon that I was in, there was somebody next to me who was leapfrogging me. And he was running super fast and then he would walk, and then I’d pass him, and he’d run super fast and then he would walk. And this is at a sub-three-hour marathon pace, and so I was just like, “That is pretty impressive to see someone doing that,” because in order to get to the finish line in the same time as me, his run section would have to be significantly faster to make up for the walking. So I thought that was very interesting.
17:32 Is there a proper technique to walking or can you just go out and walk like you always do?
18:43 The walk in the run/walk method is not just a stroll; this is a walk with purpose?
19:42 Let's talk about the Magic Mile. What is so magic about it and how do you use it for training?
22:03 So you just go out, you run a mile as fast as you can, and then you pop it into a calculator. Is that it for the Magic Mile?
23:53 When I use the Magic Mile calculator on your site, my predicted marathon time is far slower than what I actually could run for the marathon. Can you explain this?
25:21 My Magic Mile calculator result could just mean that I’m bad at short distances and better at long distances, right?
25:43 In a recent podcast, I asked leaders in the running community what they did to continue running for life, and I actually got somebody wanting to know what you do. They asked for you specifically, so I would love to hear your thoughts on how you’re going to keep running to 100 and beyond.
30:16 A lot of runners and walkers really look forward to having a race on their calendar, and with 2020 being as crazy as it has been, not all of us have those races on the calendar. How would you talk to those people who really get motivated by races when there aren’t any?
33:43 What is next for you?
Questions I ask everyone:
36:40 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?
38:57 What is the greatest gift running has given you?
39:55 Where can listeners connect with you?
“There are a lot of people that won’t start running unless you tell them, ‘Well, just walk. Give it a try.’ And then if they’re interested, I offer them a proven way to add small segments of jogging or shuffling in a 30-second to 60-second timeframe so that they gradually introduce the body to the running motion. And I found that almost anybody can get into running, get all the benefits, and not have aches and pains if they have the right Run Walk Run.”
“If you want to walk, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with walking. You honestly are not going to get the brain benefits that you get even from five seconds of running at a time.”
“If runners want to run faster in races, then it’s definitely a good idea to put the walk breaks in.”
“The whole thing about running as you get older is all based on what your body part can handle that’s getting irritated, and I call those weak links. We all have weak links and we have to be attentive to them, and at the first irritation of a weak link, you back off, you treat it, and you go on.”
Take a Listen on Your Next Run
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Jeff Galloway | The official site of Run-Walk-Run
Book: Galloway's 5K/10K Running, Training for Runners and Walkers
Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community
https://www.precisionhydration.com/
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We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.
The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.
The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!
Elevating American Distance Running: Ben Rosario
Ben Rosario is the head coach of the HOKA Northern Arizona Elite. His athletes have been wildly successful in recent years, with the most notable being Aliphine Tuliamuk's win at the 2020 US Olympic Trials. His athletes Stephanie Bruce and Kellyn Taylor also finished in the top ten of that race, and on the men's side, Scott Fauble, a 2:09 marathoner, came in 12th.
In this episode, Coach Claire talks to Ben about the Olympic Marathon Trials, focusing on how well his female athletes did, how HOKA NAZ treats female athletes, especially in light of the Nike Oregon Project, and why he thinks so many female runners are still posting PRs well into their 30s. Ben also shares some great coaching advice, his training philosophy, and his insight into why so many world records have been posted during COVID.
At the time of this recording, Ben was preparing for The Marathon Project held on December 20. Coach Claire asks Ben for his predictions and will post the results here in the show notes following the race.
Like many coaches, Ben started out as an accomplished runner himself as a member of the Hansons Brooks team and he competed in the Olympic Trials twice before turning to coaching full time.
In his six+ years with Northern Arizona Elite, Ben’s athletes have won U.S. National Titles in cross country and on the roads at 10k, the half marathon and the 25k, as well as New Zealand National Titles on the track and the roads.
HOKA NAZ Elite athletes have recorded 8 top-10 finishes at World Marathon Majors.The team has been represented at the World Cross Country Championships, the World Half Marathon Championships, and at the World Track and Field Championships.
His athletes have also competed at the European Athletics Championships, the Great Edinburgh International XC Meet, the NACAC Cross Country Championships, the NACAC Track Championships, the Pan American Cup Cross Country Meet and the Pan American Games.
In 2016, the team produced two sixth-place finishes at the Olympic Trials Marathon and two fourth-place finishes in the 10,000 meters at the Olympic Track and Field Trials. At the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials, four HOKA NAZ Elite athletes posted top 20 finishes, including three in the top eight in the women’s race led by Aliphine Tuliamuk–the Trials Champion.
Questions Ben is asked:
4:19 2020 has been pretty crazy for everyone in the world but specifically for the team that you lead, Northern Arizona Elite. Let's go back in time to February when you were getting ready for the Olympic Marathon Trials in Atlanta. Can you take us back there and recap what you were thinking?
5:10 Atlanta is a pretty tough course with all the hills. Obviously that was not a problem for at least your female athletes.
5:28 Your athlete, Aliphine Tuliamuk, won the women's race and was planning to head to Tokyo when the world shut down. What was that like as her coach?
6:41 I would love to talk to you about Aliphine Tuliamuk’s recent announcement that she is pregnant and due in January. As her coach, I’m sure she came to you and said, “Hey, Ben, this is what I’m going to do.” What was that conversation like?
7:26 How tough was it keeping Aliphine’s pregnancy a secret?
8:33 You are quite experienced in elite mom runners. Several women on your team are moms and are still just killing it. I would love to talk about Kellyn Taylor, Stephanie Bruce. I would love to talk about Stephanie for a minute. She is almost 37 years old and still getting PRs in the 10K. How is that possible?
10:14 It didn’t used to be so long ago that mid-30s was old for a runner but now that’s not the case, and I think maybe it has something to do with belief, too, seeing all these new great examples.
11:06 I want to keep going back to the women because you have been coaching some really great ones obviously, and American women are seeing a resurgence in endurance running. American men maybe not so much. Would you want to talk about that?
12:32 I want to talk to you about how women are treated in this sport. We’ve all heard about the crazy things with the Nike Oregon Project and how Kara Goucher was treated when she was pregnant. I don’t think that it’s going to be the same story with Hoka. I would love to have you share what you could say about how Hoka supports its female athletes.
15:06 I think you’re right that when all that came out about the Oregon Project that we thought as fans, “Oh. This is the way they’re all treated.” But it’s great to hear that that’s not the case.
15:34 Whenever I get a coach on, I love to talk about coaching advice to hopefully help someone who’s listening become a better runner. Do you have different training approaches for the kids who come straight out of college than you do for your veteran elite runners?
17:03 Let’s talk in a little bit more detail about the training advice. Most runners get the advice hard days are hard; easy days are easy. But then you throw in some medium days. I think that’s where a lot of recreational runners trip up is those medium days. Can you talk about those and what they’re for and how you use them?
19:22 You don’t always have to run your hardest, right?
20:11 You're also a fan of high mileage and I want to know what that means to you because as runners we all want to run as much as possible but clearly there’s a point when high is too high. So what is that point? Obviously it’s individual, but how does somebody know what is high for them? Where’s that sweet spot?
22:51 Besides your athletes, this year we've seen so many world-record breaking performances in 2020, which seems counterintuitive since there have been so few races, the world is not normal, and people can’t train the way they usually do. What do you attribute that to?
24:14 I’m sure the cynics would say the number of world-record breaking performances in 2020 are because of the shoes or because there’s not enough drug tests in COVID. What do you say about those kinds of things?
25:25 So you think there should be regulations on running shoes like them being available to the public or there’s a stack height, that kind of stuff; is that what you mean?
27:00 What's next for you and your athletes? How do you predict the running world will change in 2020?
28:29 This will probably air after the Marathon Project this weekend, but I would love to have you handicap it a little bit, tell us who’s all racing and what do you predict?
31:40 How many participants are there for the marathon?
Questions I Ask Everyone:
32:17 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?
33:31 What is the greatest gift running has given you?
33:56 Where can listeners connect with you?
“I think what we’re learning is that women can run really well into their mid-to-late 30s, and we’re learning that not only from Steph but Shalane, Des, Kellyn, Molly Huddle; all kinds of women in the US and beyond are showing that in distance running, women keep getting better.”
“In general, my goal anyway is to keep people around here for a really long time. So we’re definitely taking a long-term approach and we’re not trying to necessarily throw everything at them right away. We’re trying to slowly add pieces over time, and you see that with the folks who have stayed with us for a long time just getting better and better and better and better, and that’s what we want.”
“I think uninterrupted training leads to great performances for anybody at any level.”
“The sport has a side to it now that is very technological. And so does golf. And so does swimming. And so does baseball, right? And every sport almost. And like all those other sports, we need to make sure that the playing field is fair.”
Take a Listen on Your Next Run
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https://www.precisionhydration.com/
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Is Nike too big to fail?
Matt Hart is a freelance journalist whose new book Win at all Costs investigates Nike’s Oregon Project, diving into its culture of cheating, lying, and misogyny. The book is a page-turning sports thriller reminiscent of a Shakespearean drama with one of the top coaches in the world felled by hubris.
Coach Claire talks to Matt about the rise and fall of former coach Alberto Salazar, if he is indeed a villain through and through, the win-at-all-costs mindset of sports today, how young athletes are affected, the women at Nike, if Nike has some redeeming qualities as an organization, and if most people even care about any of this. It’s a fascinating discussion that is sure to appeal to true crime fans!
Matt Hart’s writing covers sports science, human-powered adventure and exploration, performance-enhancing drugs, nutrition, and evolution. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, and Men’s Journal magazine, among others. His reporting on the investigations into Salazar appeared on the front page, above the fold, of The New York Times in May 2017. In addition to his access to the Gouchers, other sources for the book include former Nike employees, athletes, and coaches; famed sports-scientist and Oregon Project whistleblower Steve Magness; and Olympic marathon gold medalist Frank Shorter, among many others.
About Matt’s Book WIN AT ALL COSTS:
In May 2017, journalist Matt Hart received a USB drive containing a single file—a 4.7-megabyte PDF named “Tic Toc, Tic Toc. . . .” He quickly realized he was in possession of a stolen report prepared a year earlier by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). It was part of an investigation into legendary running coach Alberto Salazar, a Houston-based endocrinologist named Dr. Jeffrey Brown, and the cheating by Nike-sponsored runners. The file began Hart’s reporting on the Nike Oregon Project and led him to uncover a win-at-all-costs culture of greed, corporate malfeasance, and abuse.
WIN AT ALL COSTS is an explosive and revealing narrative depicting the deception and performance-enhancing drug use at the Nike Oregon Project. Hart writes richly detailed portraits of athletes Kara and Adam Goucher, Galen Rupp, and Mo Farah, as well as the coaches and doctors at the root of the cheating. The book recounts how the secretive program began to unravel when Steve Magness, an assistant coach to Salazar broke the code of silence by alerting USADA. He was followed by Olympians Adam and Kara Goucher who, risking their prosperous careers, became whistleblowers on their former Nike running family at headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.
Combining sports drama and corporate exposé, WIN AT ALL COSTS uncovers a relentless culture of deceit and drug misuse at Nike; as well as abuse of power, gender discrimination, medical malpractice, and systemic cheating at the highest levels of professional athletics. The book is also a cautionary tale about the excess of greed, corporate malfeasance, and the pushing of athletic boundaries. Deeply researched, unsettling, and ultimately entertaining, WIN AT ALL COSTS will astonish readers by the extremes that coaches and athletes will go to achieve athletic greatness—no matter the cost.
Questions Matt is asked:
3:20 On your website, you say that humans learn through storytelling. What made you want to tell the story of Nike and its infamous coach, Alberto Salazar?
4:28 Your new book, Win At All Costs, is a fascinating deep dive into the world of Nike, from its scrappy, rebel beginnings to the behemoth brand that it is today. Essentially, it's a "David becomes Goliath" story. How would you describe the changes that the company went through from its humble beginnings to today?
6:33 Let's talk about Alberto Salazar. When he started out as an athlete he became one of the greatest American marathoners, and then became an absolute legend as a coach. I was struck reading your book how Skakespearean he really is. He’s like this man in power brought down by his hubris. How would you describe him as an athlete, coach, and father?
10:18 It’s easy to paint Alberto Salazar as the evil cult leader who got everybody under his spell, but how do you see that? Obviously there were people complicit in it and athletes at the top of the sport, some of them are willing to do anything to get ahead too. So how do you see it? Do you see Alberto as just the evil cult leader or is it more complicated than that?
13:25 Galen Rupp was what, 15 or 16 when he began to be coached by Alberto? That’s a child, and you’re not really able to make decisions, especially when somebody who has a reputation like Alberto comes into your life and says, “Hey, I see something special in you. Let me take you under my wing.” I have a lot of sympathy for Galen Rupp. I know not everybody in the running community does, but I do. But he’s an adult now, so we’ll see what happens with his career.
15:12 It’s like you want to hate Nike for all of the things that they’ve done, but yet they also have the Bowerman Track Club which is like women supporting women. Shalane Flanagan is now one of the coaches there. If you look at them on Instagram, it’s just like picture perfect empowerment and everything that it’s supposed to be. It’s just like how can you have two things like that in the same town and in the same company?
17:56 It’s easy to kind of say, okay, Alberto was the bad apple, but we’ve got Jerry Schumacher and he’s the best, and he’s wonderful, and still that Nike is just that one guy. But a lot of the stuff you talk about goes higher up than just Alberto Salazar. It goes to everybody above him, and I thought that it was really eye opening when you talked about salaries. In the world of running, it’s very secretive how much pro runners make, and you were able to find out that Kara Goucher got paid $35,000 while her husband Adam got paid $90,000 when they joined. Can you talk about that and about why they were willing to tell you that?
20:11 Compared to just about any other professional sport, coaches’ salaries all seemed incredibly low. And maybe it’s because obviously running doesn’t bring in the money that the NFL does. We don’t sit around watching running, at least not too many people do, which still I think is very bizarre that there’s millions and millions of runners in the United States and yet track and field and running is not that interesting to people. Why do you think that is? Why doesn’t running have the fan base that baseball or the NFL or something like that does?
22:24 I coach a lot of athletes and many of them just simply aren’t interested in what the elites do. And this leads me to my question for you. This whole scandal with the Nike Oregon Project, has it affected Nike at all as far as sales? People are still buying their shoes, right?
24:28 Nike is still paying for the defense of Alberto Salazar. Any insight on why?
26:13 Did you interview Mary Cain for the book?
26:57 Alberto was a son figure and a father figure and so many of the athletes say that, “He’s like a father. I love… “ Even Kara Goucher was like, “He’s a father figure to me. He’s the best,” and all of that, and now it’s a very different story.
28:26 You talk in the book about how Alberto Salazar who has $1 million budget or something, he has access to the latest technology, and massage therapists, and all of that, he would personally massage Galen Rupp, and there’s a couple things that you might be suspicious are going on there when that happens, but it seems like that was the testosterone. Is that what you found? It just seems weird to me.
31:29 There were stories of athletes being prescribed things for ailments that they didn’t have. Everybody on the team had a thyroid problem all of a sudden. And then there were the L-Carnitine infusions, and obviously infusing yourself with anything is against clean sport. But when they were caught, they just said, “Oh, it didn’t do anything for me.” Do you want to talk a little bit about the whole infusion story?
34:26 Is there a USADA test for L-Carnitine, because it’s an amino acid?
35:06 I’m surprised L-Carnitine hasn’t become more of the thing because to be perfectly honest, when this whole story broke, I was training for a marathon and I went to GNC and got myself some L-Carnitine. People see this and hear this, recreational runners or sub-elites, and they’re like, “Huh, that’s interesting.” And yet, they go ahead and follow that gray line. It’s almost like exposing the truth encourages more people to cheat, do you think?
37:44 I’d love to talk a little bit about the women at Nike. We learned all about Kara Goucher and her reduction clause. So when she decided to have a baby, she basically was not paid. So she was not paid for a very long period of time while she still was technically working for Nike. Again, this goes back to the contracts being super, super secretive. Do you think at least that has changed in the world of running for women as far as how they’re treated when they decide to have a family?
40:09 What do you feel is the future of sports and running and Nike?
42:52 Hopefully with the good example of the Bowerman Track Club, Nike might be able to change for the better from the inside, and then with work like yours, hopefully will change for the better from the outside.
44:13 Matt, what’s next for you with your running and your writing?
Questions I ask everyone:
45:01 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?
46:15 What is the greatest gift running has given you?
46:51 Where can listeners connect with you?
“As an athlete, I learned this through the reporting, that Alberto Salazar would try basically anything to try to improve performance. Now that’s not all drugs and illicit means. That’s kind of anything from massage to dry needling to whatever else might be in the popular culture of athletes at the time.”
“Athletes at the end of the day are 100% responsible for what they put into their body. Any athlete that’s working with Alberto Salazar, it does want to aggressively pursue hard training and they’ll do kind of whatever they’re asked or whatever they think can help them stand on top of the podium, and that’s the win at all costs sort of zero sum game that sports have become.”
“Of the $36 billion Nikes makes a year, some $4.6 billion of it is the run category, and so that’s I think their largest category, to sell to runners. Now it’s a different question of whether we want to watch those runners run.”
“You have to imagine years of training at a level you simply couldn’t maintain without drugs changes you physiologically. You’re steps ahead or you’re stronger or you’re faster. And so, that’s a whole other discussion, the long-term benefits of drugs and is someone still a cheat if they’ve gotten off them.”
Take a Listen on Your Next Run
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Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community
https://www.precisionhydration.com/
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We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.
The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.
The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!
This week’s guests are a little different from our usual guests such as Olympian Jared Wade or top race director Dave McGillivray of the Boston Marathon or yoga instructor Adina Crawford to name a few. The athletes in this podcast aren’t household names but still impact lots of runners. They’re founders of some of the top Facebook running groups around the world and they have agreed to collaborate on this special episode.
Facebook is a great platform for runners around the world to interact, share advice, and build virtual communities, which is especially important during these times. Coach Claire joined several of these Facebook running groups to try to find out what members were discussing and what questions the runners had.
For this episode, Coach Claire decided to focus on advice for how to keep running for as long as possible, and so asked each of the guests the same question: What do you include in your running routine that will help ensure you are running for life?
The responses were great. Each guest had something a little bit different to say, and all of it is good advice that will hopefully help keep you running and motivated for life. So get ready for six guests, one question, various accents, and some great answers coupled with Coach Claire’s expert commentary!
Question All Guests Are Asked:
What do you include in your running routine that will help ensure you are running for life?
Guests:
06:06 Karen Guttridge, Running Like A Wrinkly
08:30 Andy Jones-Wilkins, East Coast Trail and UltraRunners
11:50 Fred Scraire, Running Motivation Club
14:35 Mindy Bayless, Trail Sisters Asheville
16:14 Ken Michal, UltraRunning and Running Stupid
18:26 Steve Rice, Runners Helping Runners
Take a Listen on Your Next Run!
Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel
RunnersConnect Free Virtual Training Summit, Dec. 10-13
Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community
https://www.precisionhydration.com/
Guest Facebook Groups
East Coast Trail and UltraRunners
We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.
The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.
The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!
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Elite distance runner Becky Wade Firth, a standout at Rice University in Texas, was expected to turn pro after graduation. Instead, she chose a different plan that changed her life and how she looks at running and training.
Becky decided to travel the world, but not just to see and explore like a typical college-age kid. She applied for and won a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to travel the world to learn how others run. Over the course of 12 months, Becky traveled solo to 22 countries including Switzerland, Ethiopia, New Zealand, and Japan to learn about some of the world’s most fascinating running traditions, and she captured her experience and findings in her book RUN THE WORLD.
Coach Claire talks to Becky about how her year abroad affected her and what she learned from this incredible experience. They also get into Becky’s cross training, her experience with orthotics, similarities between recreational and pro runners, and Becky’s perspective on running in a year without in-person races.
Becky is still an avid writer and in addition to her book, you'll find her work all over the web in places like Runner's World, Outside, Podium Runner, Women's Running and more. She is also a food lover and traveler.
Part of two sets of twins born 20 months apart, Becky grew up in Dallas, Texas, before making her way to Rice University on a track scholarship. There, alongside the world’s greatest teammates and coach, she fell in love with the distance running lifestyle and by the time she graduated, was a junior national champion, an All-American in cross-country and track, and an Olympic Trials qualifier in the 10K and 3K steeplechase.
Since then, Becky has moved up to the marathon, signed with Flynn Sports Management, relocated to Boulder, Colorado, and gotten married. She’s competed in three more Olympic Trials (4 total: 2 in the 3K steeplechase, 2 in the marathon) and qualified for 2 senior USA teams (2018 and 2020 World Half Marathon Championship, the latter of which USATF sadly pulled them out of). She now has her eyes set on the 2021 US Olympic Track Trials, faster PRs over all distances, and many more writing projects—ideally a second book before too long!
Questions Becky is asked:
3:54 Instead of going directly from college to the pros, you took a year off to travel to 22 different countries to learn what runners do all over the world. What were some of the biggest similarities and differences you found when compared to American running?
5:19 Some of the countries you went to are obviously the big running countries that we all think about, Japan and Africa, New Zealand, all of these places, but you didn’t end up just going to those places; you took a couple of detours. Anything you want to tell us about that and what you learned about that?
7:17 Were you worried at all before you left? Because people who are on track to do amazing things in whatever sport it is, they kind of get nervous about change, they kind of get nervous about getting out of their schedule. Were you worried when you took off for a year that your running might suffer?
9:01 I think that if you want to learn more about your own country, the only way to do it is to leave it, so I highly encourage everybody who can in college just to get out of America to see what the rest of the world is like.
9:43 What was it like coming back to the States after that experience? Do you think it made you a better runner?
10:51 Recreational runners think the same thing as professional runners, “Are we doing enough? Should I be resting? Should I be doing heel lifts?” Or whatever it is. You just think that “I’ve got to do it in such a perfect way,” and there’s room for flexibility.
11:44 2020 has been obviously a very strange year for everybody, but I'd love to know how you are doing specifically and how you've been training.
15:12 Let’s talk a little bit about your cross training. I’ve looked through your Instagram. There’s a lot of pictures of you in the pool and I know you aqua jog. Can you help us out and give us some tips to make aqua jogging less boring?
20:03 Besides your book, you are a pretty prolific writer. You write articles for lots of running magazines and online places, so what are some of your tips? I know you recently wrote an article for Runner’s World about challenging the conventional rules of running. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
22:26 Why do you wear orthotics? What is it for you?
23:28 We think of orthotics as a temporary solution, but to hear that you’ve been wearing them for 10 years, that’s super interesting.
23:55 Another conventional rule of running you challenged in your Runner’s World article was the 30-minute window, that you have to eat 30 minutes after you stop running, and you found that not to be true.
25:08 One thing I’ve been asking almost everybody this year is without in-person races, s really hard for a lot of people to find motivation, and for a lot of people it’s going to be a really long time until we race again. Do you have any tips or any suggestions to kind of keep that spark, and what can you do as far as training goes in a world without races?
28:51 What’s coming up for you in the future? What have you got your sights on?
Questions I ask everyone:
30:00 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?
31:02 What is the greatest gift running has given you?
32:01 Where can listeners and charities connect with you?
“It really allowed me not only to see how the best runners in the world train, and some of the strongest, most kind of iconic running traditions are, but I also got to see so many just passionate recreational runners and see how running influences their life to just the same degree as someone whose career it is but in a different way.”
“I think there are maybe components of successful training systems that people maybe can apply, but there’s really not that. I think one of my fears was that I was going to go travel and see that what it takes to be a really good runner is to be like 100% dialed into running. That’s your life. That’s all you do. You do everything perfectly, and I literally never saw that, so that was kind of validating.”
“I think there are a lot of things you can do, nothing that is exactly like racing because I just find like the whole atmosphere, and like official results, and the community and everything, that’s really what makes road racing special to me and to a lot of people I think, but there are other ways to I think really stay engaged with the sport and stay on top of training and still work towards goals.”
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