January 30, 2020 • 45 mins
In this podcast episode, I chat with Alex Hutchinson.
Alex Hutchinson is a National Magazine Award-winning journalist whose work appears in Outside Magazine, The Globe and Mail, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and other publications.
His latest book, came out in February of 2018, is ENDURE: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance.
He lives in the same neighbourhood as me in Toronto, but is sadly too fast for me to run with!
In this episode we talk about:-
How Alex improved his PB in the 1,500 meters when he had been stuck at the same time for years! This is a crazy story, which you’re gonna love.
-
What is the central governor theory and why your body works so darn hard not to hurt itself?
-
Pain tolerance. How the heck do pro athletes and Olympians push through pain and ways you can push your self more than you thought was possible.
-
Tips for optimizing both your physical and mental performance when you just getting started running.
-
What we can learn from Olympian about the common cold and some rules for you to decide whether you should run or not when you’ve come down with something.
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Treadmill running – is it actually different than running outside? If so, what can we do to make it more realistic!
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Running on a low carb diet – what you need to know!
-
And more!
Please enjoy my chat with Alex Hutchinson!
LinksFollow Alex on Twitter @sweatscience
Check out Alex’s book - Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mark Kennedy (00:00):
Hi, everyone. I'm Mark Kennedy, and this is the
none to run podcast episode 35with guest Alex Hutchinson. Alex
Hutchinson is a nationalmagazine award winning
journalist whose work appears inOutside Magazine, The Globe and
Mail, The New York Times, TheNew Yorker, and other
publications. His latest bookcame out in February as Mind,
(00:23):
Body, and the Curiously ElasticLimits of Human Performance. He
lives in the same neighborhoodas me in Toronto, but is sadly
too fast for me to run with.
In this episode, we talk abouthow Alex improved his PB in the
1,500 meters when he had beenstuck at the same time for
years. This is a crazy story,which you're gonna love. What is
the central governor theory andwhy your body works so darn hard
(00:45):
not to hurt itself? Paintolerance. How the heck do pro
athletes and Olympians pushthrough pain in ways you can
push yourself more than youthought was possible?
Tips for optimizing both yourphysical and mental performance
when you're just getting startedrunning. What we can learn from
Olympians about the common coldand some rules for you to decide
whether you should run orwhether or not you should take a
(01:07):
rest. Treadmill running, is itactually different than outside
running? If so, what can we doto make it more realistic?
Running on a low carb diet, whatyou need to know and much, much
more.
Please enjoy my chat with AlexHutchison. Welcome to the show
Alex. Pumped to finally have youon the podcast. I think it's
been a long time coming. To givethe listeners a bit of
(01:29):
background where we met, I thinkI first met you at your book
signing, your Cardio Awaits booksigning, about seven years ago.
You can correct me how manyyears ago that was.
Alex Hutchinson (01:39):
Eight eight years ago. That's a it's a
you're drifting way back intothe past. Yeah. You're it's it's
been a long long time.
Mark Kennedy (01:45):
Way back in the archives. Anyways, welcome and
it's, yeah. It's great tofinally chat.
Alex Hutchinson (01:51):
Yeah. Thanks. It's been, it's it's it's been
good to, keep in touch over theyears and nice to have a chance
to chat in this context.
Mark Kennedy (01:57):
Yeah. And also, on a side note, we live in the same
neighborhood and see each otherperiodically at the butcher and,
walking down the street. So,that's kinda cool too.
Alex Hutchinson (02:08):
Yeah. It it it's it it is weak of us to be
doing this by Skype, but we'veyeah. I've Yeah. We both have
young kids. Mine are asleepupstairs, so so this is the the
way of the modern world.
Mark Kennedy (02:18):
Exactly. As I said before we started recording,
that we yeah. Next time, wedefinitely have to do this with,
perhaps a beer in our hands inperson.
Alex Hutchinson (02:26):
Yeah.
Mark Kennedy (02:27):
So I wanna get going here. So I wanna talk
mostly about, I guess, the thetopic of your latest book, which
is entitled Mind Body and theCuriously Elastic Limits of
Human Performance and I guess,yeah, that would be a great
place to start. Can you tell ussort of why you got interested
(02:47):
in that topic of sort of themind and body connection and why
you thought you wanted to writea book about the topic.
Alex Hutchinson (02:57):
Yeah. I mean I guess it I mean, the the basic
question I was trying to ask inthe book was what defines our
limits? What like I didn't startout thinking it was going to be
in the mind or the body. Justwas curious like what what is it
when you're pushing as hard asyou can that what is it that's
maxed out? What is it that'sholding you back?
(03:19):
And that's a direct kind of aninterest that comes directly
from my experiences running. Istarted running in high school.
I think you start out with theimpression that your limits are
purely that there's somethingsort of mathematical about it
that, you know, Oh, I can getfaster if I do x, y, and z to my
(03:44):
lungs, my heart, my muscles. Butif you run long enough, you
realize that it is verydifficult to predict how you are
going to perform on any givenday. That it is never the same
from one day to the next.
Know there must be some otherelement in there. That is what I
wanted to explore in the book.What is it that makes every day
different and that determineshow dig how deep you can dig on
(04:07):
a given day.
Mark Kennedy (04:09):
Okay. And and you've got a really interesting
story I'd love for you to sharewith my listeners because,
probably many of them or most ofthem haven't heard it before.
But can you share that storyabout when you had your
breakthrough race? I believe itwas in the 1,500 meter race, in
Quebec, I believe.
Alex Hutchinson (04:25):
Yeah. For sure.
Mark Kennedy (04:26):
Yeah. That that's a great story. And if you could
sorta tell that story, that'd beawesome.
Alex Hutchinson (04:30):
Yeah. I think I think it kind of, it it gets to
the heart of what I mean by thecuriously elastic limits of
human performance. Mhmm. So whenI was in university, my my goal
in life was to run a sub fourminute fifteen hundred meters.
And, excuse me, you know, fourminutes is a is a is a sort of
(04:51):
mythical barrier for runners forthe four minute mile, of course.
1,500 meters is a little shorterthan a mile, so this was this
kind of poor man's four minutemile barrier that I was trying
to break. And, and it'ssomething I initially thought
would be fairly straightforward.I ran four zero two in high
school, in my second year ofrunning, I guess it was. And I
thought it would be prettystraightforward to just keep
(05:11):
getting faster from from year toyear. But I actually hit a
plateau and so for four straightyears, I ran either four zero
one or four zero two.
And so by the time I was 20, Ireally had the sense that I was
kind of exploring my body'sultimate limits. That I've been
training hard for four years,was running the same times over
and over again. So I thought Icould run three fifty nine, but
(05:32):
I didn't think there was muchmore because clearly, I just
kept running the same times overand over again. And and
basically, to to sort of cut along story semi short, I was
running this totally meaninglessrace and, in in, in Sherbrooke,
it was, as in, this was 1996.And I came through the the first
lap, and every 200 meters in anindoor race, you have someone
(05:53):
yelling out your the the time soyou know how fast you're going.
Mhmm. And the timekeeper yelledout twenty seven seconds for the
first lap, which is way, way,way too fast. And so I had this,
you know, thought in my head ofI'm doomed. This is gonna be a
miserable four minutes. But Ialso was had this other sort of
thought in my head.
It was like, I feel pretty good.And I came to the second lap and
(06:15):
it was fifty seven seconds andit was the same thing. That's
way too fast and yet I feelpretty good. Third lap was the
same thing. And so at thatpoint, I was kinda like, I I
don't know what's going on.
I but I I'm having a great day,so just stop worrying about it.
Stop thinking about it and justrun. Yeah. Just push yourself.
And so I put my head down andand just ran.
And I ended up running threefifty two point four, which was
(06:38):
a nine second personal bestafter four years of running
basically the same time over andover again. And, you know, the
the the postscript is I wascelebrating with teammates and
saying then one of them had hadtime you know, taken my lap
times for me so that I could putthem in my training log. And, I
was sort of saying, man, Ireally started fast. He was
(07:00):
like, yeah, not really. Youknow, you're thirty or thirty
one seconds.
Was like, what? I thought I wentout in twenty seven. And it
turns out the timekeeper, he hemust have I I'm not sure exactly
what happened, but he must havebasically missed the start and
started his watch three or fourseconds late or something. So he
basically tricked me intothinking I was having this
amazing day, the greatest day ofmy life. And as a result, I did.
Mark Kennedy (07:21):
Yes.
Alex Hutchinson (07:22):
And so that was a that was a weird thing. But
what was maybe even more whatstuck with me more is that I
never had trouble breaking fourminutes again after that. And in
fact, I I ran faster in my youknow, the race after that, I ran
three forty nine. And the raceafter that, I ran three forty
four. So there was this kind ofhuge breakthrough for me that it
(07:43):
it wasn't all in my head.
Obviously, my training was goingwell. But but there was this
moment where I was able to getaway from my expectations of
what I thought I should be ableto do and and and sort of
unshackle myself from from allthose thoughts. And so after
that, could never think aboutlimits in the same way. I could
never think, oh, I finished arace. Well, I guess that's as
(08:03):
fast as I can go.
That's as fast as my body'scapable of. There was always
this question of, well, that'sas fast as I ran, but was there
more in the tank if I could havefound some way to to uncork it?
So I think that's kind of thatquestion lurking in my mind is
what sort of bubbled up againten years later when I you know,
in in the mid two thousands whenI started writing about the
(08:24):
science of endurance as ajournalist, then and then it's
what sort of built up over aboutten years, then finally
culminated in the book lastyear.
Mark Kennedy (08:32):
I love that story. So were your other times under
four minutes on indoor tracks aswell or outdoor track?
Alex Hutchinson (08:39):
So, yeah, the the three fifty two was indoors,
and then that was the end of theindoor season. Went outdoors
around 03:49 in my first raceoutdoors, and then 03:44 in my
second one. And then he he doget it. Outdoors tends to be a
little faster. The conditionsare less reliable, but but it's
a it's a bigger track, and andand it's nicer weather, and it
just tends to be faster.
Mark Kennedy (08:58):
Yeah. So I was thinking, I mean, the the indoor
track, I mean, that that's a lotof running on the curves. So,
technically, it should be alittle slower, but, anyways, but
I love that story. So did youknow about the, like, the
central governor theory? And forpeople who don't know what that
is, can you explain what it is?
But did you know about sort ofthat at that time, or is that
(09:18):
something you dove into sort ofonce you got into your training
evolved and you got moreinterested in the the running
performance?
Alex Hutchinson (09:27):
You know, it's it's not something I knew about
at all during my running career.Like, I what as so now and I'll
get to what what it is. But
Mark Kennedy (09:35):
Okay.
Alex Hutchinson (09:36):
During my during my running days, I was
very much a a a sort of, I don'tknow how to put this, a sort of
nuts and bolts. Don't don'twaste my time with sports
psychology. Like it's all aboutwhat your muscles are capable
of, what your VO two max is andthat's all I thought that was
all what it was all about. Andso after my my serious
(09:59):
competitive career was done andI was I was I shifted careers
and started became a journalistand started writing about the
science of sport, I started, youknow, I started out in in that
very traditional vein of of thethe sort of the body as a
machine. You learn how the partsof the machine work and then you
improve the parts of themachine.
And I was writing that sort oflike, here's how you hydrate,
(10:20):
here's how you train. And I cameacross this research from a guy
named Tim Noakes in South Africawho had proposed something
called the central governortheory. And he proposed it back
in the nineties, I just didn'tknow about it. Mhmm. And the
basically, the the main gist ofthe central governor is that you
cannot push your body to itslimits because you're wired in
(10:43):
some indeterminate way.
You're you're wired. Your brainis wired to protect you, to
prevent you from pushing rightto those limits. Because if you
push right to those limits,you'd be you you know, if you
run until you keel over, you'lldo yourself irreparable damage.
And so, you know, you noticethat you can you can watch the
Olympic marathon and there mightbe a finishing sprint for the
(11:05):
gold medal. And the guy who'salready run 42 k and comes
second by a few seconds, hedoesn't keel over and die.
He looks a little disappointedthen he jogs off to do his warm
you know, grabs a flag and jogsjogs around the track. So it's
like even when people should bepushing to their absolute
limits, they're not pushing tothe point that their muscles
stop working or their heartstops working. And so this is a
(11:27):
very, very controversial idea inexercise science because the the
whole twentieth century wasbasically, built around trying
to understand trying tounderstand humans as if they
were sorta like cars where ifyou under if you know the size
of the engine and how much gasis in the tank and the
temperature of the radiator, youcan know how fast and how far a
car will go. And and and, youknow, you don't really need to
(11:49):
feel worry about how the car isfeeling or anything and the car
doesn't try and slow you down ifit if it's worried about running
out of gas. And so this in thein the early two thousands, this
idea was starting to reallygenerate a lot of controversy
and so I started writing aboutit.
Excuse me. And, I initiallythought, you know, circa
(12:12):
02/2008, if you asked me, Iwould have said, I'm gonna write
a book about Tim Noakes' centralcovenant theory and how the
brain holds you back and whatthat means for people who are
trying to, you know, push theirlimits and and learn to run and
things and learn to pushthemselves in endurance sports.
It didn't end up being thatsimple and I ended up as I dug
further into it, I realized,okay. Noakes doesn't necessarily
(12:34):
have all the answers either.People who criticize his ideas
and there's a lot of debateabout, yes, the brain is
involved in determining when wereach our limits, but how is it
involved and what does it meanto say that the brain is
involved?
Is it all subconscious or allvoluntary? And there's there's a
whole bunch of sort of academicdebates going on and it ended up
that's why it ended up taking mesort of nine years or whatever
(12:56):
to write the book. The deeper Idug, the less simple it was and
the more nuanced there was intrying to understand how both
mind and body kind of worktogether to give you the sense
that you've pushed as hard asyou can.
Mark Kennedy (13:10):
Yeah. That's great. Thanks for, for
clarifying what it is and andsort of how it relates. Now I
guess that somewhat ties intopain tolerance and the fact that
what people perceive is that,you know, Olympic athletes and
professional athletes are bornwith this ability to endure pain
(13:31):
more than us regular folk. Canyou talk a little bit like how
are those Olympic athletes andprofessional athletes able to
cope with the pain and do isthat something they're born with
or is that something that we canenhance as we, become more and
more trained and and fitourselves?
Alex Hutchinson (13:54):
Yeah. I think that's a that's a really
excellent question that sort ofgets to the heart of this
because there is there's lots ofevidence that even though it's a
cliche, it is true if you dosome sort of pain tolerance test
and, you know, you can inflictpain in various ways with sort
of ice baths or, cutting offcirculation or whatever. And and
the people do these studiesMhmm. And they find that well
(14:16):
trained athletes are have ahigher pain tolerance in pain
tests that have nothing to dowith their sport than the
average person. And in fact,they find that elite
international athletes havehigher pain tolerances than well
trained, you know, amateurathletes.
So there really is somethingthat athletes learn to tolerate
pain more. But what's notnecessarily the case is that
(14:39):
they were just born that way.Now we can't answer the question
really fully and say, you know,exactly, you know, it's it may
be that some people are bornwith a sort of more, let's say,
some benign masochism. They theyenjoy Mhmm. Pain a little more
than others.
Mark Kennedy (14:57):
Yeah.
Alex Hutchinson (14:57):
But but it's undeniably true that you can
that this is something that getsbetter with training. And in
fact, even in eliteinternational athletes, what you
find is their pain tolerance, ifyou test it repeatedly, it goes
up and down throughout a year.It's highest when they're in
their best fitness, when they'repreparing for a race, it's
lowest in the off season. Whatthat tells us is that we can all
(15:22):
get better and there's studiesthat show this too. The process
of training, the process ofgoing out for a run will have a
measurable effect on yourability to tolerate discomfort
in other areas of your life, butalso during running.
One of the ways I think about itsometimes is sort of like eating
spicy foods. When, you know, ifif you try a, you know, a spicy
(15:46):
curry for the first time andyou've never had spicy foods
before, I mean, and I'mremembering some some very spicy
a very spicy curry I had a longlong time ago before I knew much
about spice. It there's nopleasure. You can't feel
anything but like screamingpain. And over as time goes on,
you just let you you learn toturn down that panic reaction
(16:07):
and just understand, okay, thisis this heat is part of the
experience and part of thetaste.
And instead of just feel hearinglike alarms ringing in your
ears, you start to detect youstart to enjoy the flavor a
little more and and be able totolerate higher levels. And I
think that happens to everyonewho, you know, begins running or
(16:28):
any other sport like that, wherewhen you start out, if you just
try and go out for and run amile, you get all these signals
that feel like serious alarmsignals. Your legs start, you
know, you're out of breath, youcan't breathe, you can't get
enough oxygen into your lungsand your legs might be hurting
and your heart is pounding, andit feels like something is
(16:49):
seriously wrong and you know youhave to slow down or you're
gonna die. Six months later, ifyou stick with it, for sure
you're you're fitter, your heartis stronger, you know, what your
muscles are are more efficient,all these things. But what I
think people often don't realizeis is that they've learned to
contextualize that discomfort ina different way.
(17:10):
So they're getting the samesignals and it's just like, oh,
yeah. I'm breathing hard andthat means that I can't keep
this pace up forever, but itdoesn't mean I have to stop now.
Mhmm. And you start to explorethat, being able to think of
feel this discomfort not as analarm signal, but just as
information that tells youwhat's going on in your body. I
think that's I mean, I don'tmean to overstate it, but I
think that's one of the mostimportant things that happen
(17:32):
when people start training.
I mean, physical stuff is very,very important too, but I think
the mental stuff is underratedboth in terms of what it does
for you to allow you to runfarther and faster, but also
what it does for you in the restof your life.
Mark Kennedy (17:44):
Are there any particular strategies other than
the the obvious of just, youknow, keeping at it, keep your
momentum and getting fit, butany particular strategies for
coping with pain? Other mentalshifts or strategies that you
know of that professionals use?
Alex Hutchinson (18:04):
Yeah, there's a bunch of things. I mean, one of
the ones that I like becausethere's been a bunch of research
on it recently that tries toquantify its effect. Like you
can there's a lot of things thatpeople do and I'm sure they
work. I'm a big fan as as ascience journalist of things
that people do and at work andpeople have tested in the lab
(18:26):
and and done their best toquantify how it works. So one
one important technique ismotivational self talk.
And this is basically theprocess of becoming aware of
your internal monologue. We allhave words running through our
heads. Maybe not at all times,most of the time. And so in the
(18:50):
context of you go out and you'regoing for a run, and if it's a
hard run, if you stop and listento what you're saying to
yourself, you may well find if,you know, if you're like me, you
may well find you're sayingthings to yourself like, you
know, this sucks. Why why did Iwhy do I why did I sign up for
this race, you know?
Why am I doing this? This ispointless. This is I'm there's
no way I'm gonna be able tosustain this pace. And and
(19:12):
there's a lot of evidence thatthose sorts of words, those
sorts of messages make it makeit more likely that you're gonna
give up or slow down. Becausefundamentally, one of the things
that comes out of this sort ofcentral governor research is the
idea that, the master switchthat determines whether you're
(19:32):
you can keep whether you cankeep going or whether you're
gonna stop or slow down.
The master switch is your yourperception of how hard you're
working. That it's not there'sno physiological thing. You
don't slow down because yourlactic acid is too high or
because your oxygen is too low.All of those things stay in a
sort of in a reasonable range.But and when they affect how
(19:54):
hard the exercise feels.
And when it feels too hard, youdecide to slow down. But if
you're telling yourself, thissucks. I can't do this. You
decide to slow down a little bitearlier. And so if you can learn
to replace those negativethoughts with positive thoughts
with, I've trained for this.
I I can do this. It's supposedto be hard and and I can push
through it. It makes it For agiven level of physical
(20:15):
discomfort, it makes it morelikely that you're willing to
say, alright, I can keep goingfor a little longer at this
pace. And it sounds kinda like,I I gotta be honest, it it it
sounds kind of cliched and andcheesy and hokey. And that's why
when we I had a sportspsychologist that was working
with the my university trackteam back in the nineties and we
just ignored her.
We just we we couldn't take itseriously, which is why which is
(20:38):
why I like the fact that therehave been a couple of really
powerful studies recently thatthat show how much these these
sorts of techniques work. So I'mable to sort of put aside my
skepticism and say, okay. Thescience says it works.
Mark Kennedy (20:50):
That's interesting. So okay. We got
motivational self talk. Is thereany other sort of quick, tips or
strategies that, have beenproven to be effective?
Alex Hutchinson (20:59):
So I I would again, it it it's almost painful
to be here dishing out the thethe same cliches, but but, I
think mindfulness is, you know,obviously, it's been a big
buzzword for the last five yearsor so. Mhmm. But the basic
principle of mindfulness isnonjudgmental self awareness.
(21:21):
And when it comes down to it,that's also the basic principle
of what it takes to run close toyour best, close to your limits.
You have to because you there'sactually some really interesting
research that shows if you can'tfeel pain, if you don't feel
pain, and you can block pain byinjecting fentanyl into into
(21:42):
your spine, You and that'll youthat's a one way block so that
you can't feel discomfort orpain from your legs, but you can
still send, like, send messagesto your legs to tell to tell you
to keep running or keep cycling.
If you do that, you get slowerrather than faster because you
it's you can't pace yourself.You can't sort of ride that edge
of being right on the edge ofsustainable. You need pain and
(22:05):
discomfort to allow you tounderstand where your limits
are. So mindfulness is a way ofbeing able to be in tune, be
aware of what your body'stelling you, be aware of what
you're feeling, how your legsare feeling, without
interpreting that, but doing itnon judgmentally. So you're not
saying, this hurts, oh my god,therefore I need to stop because
(22:27):
it's the worst.
You're just saying, this hurtsto this degree and that's where
it needs to be. If I'm if I'mgonna run this five k as fast as
I can, I need to be hurting thismuch at this point in the race?
And so you you you're in tune.You're feeling the discomfort,
but you're not judging it.You're just aware of it and
you're letting it pass on.
I think with the experience ofrunning, over time people get
(22:52):
better and better at that. Ithink maybe a way of fast
tracking that, and this is notsomething that has been tested
rigorous. There's been a littlebit of research on mindfulness
for athletes, but it's quitehard to do a proper placebo
controlled trial of this stuff.It's a little more speculative,
but I think that's a powerfulway whether you do a formal
mindfulness practice or whetheryou just you know, use one of
(23:15):
these apps that's available oror or other sort of guided
techniques to to get towardsthat space where you're able to
feel negative things withoutwithout overreacting to them.
And again, I I I'm sort offlicking quickly at some
research here, there's there'svery interesting research in,
(23:35):
like, elite adventure racerscompared to normal people
showing that when and they putthem in brain scanners and they
Mark Kennedy (23:43):
Yeah.
Alex Hutchinson (23:43):
And they're basically breathing through
through a straw and then theypinch the straw sometimes. So
you're you're sitting in thistube, of the of the brain
scanner doing cognitive tests,breathing through a tube, then
all of a sudden it gets reallyhard to breathe. And most
people, when that happens, theyfreak out and they get a lot
worse at the cognitive teststhat they're doing. The big
adventure racers, along withother people like Navy SEALs,
(24:06):
when that tube gets pinched,they respond to that. They
actually get better at thecognitive task because they they
they they're aware, okay, thisis now getting hard.
So they realize things aregetting serious and they get
they get more focused and theythey they really zero in and
they actually get better at theat the cognitive And so what
(24:26):
they're avoiding doing, if youlook at the brain activity, if
you look at the areas that sortof responsible for monitoring
how their body is feeling, whenthey're when they're breathing
normally, it's at one level. Andwhen things go crazy, when the
breathing is restricted, itstays at that level. They're
just always being aware of theirbody. Whereas for most people,
(24:46):
under normal circumstances,they're kind of not aware of
what's going on with their body.The brain activity in that
region is low.
And then when something whenthings get serious, it goes way
it goes through the roof. Theyoverreact. Mhmm. And so instead
of under reacting andoverreacting, you wanna just be
constantly aware of what's goingon in your body and not
overreacting to it. So I thinkmindfulness in that and and so
they've done some tests showingthat you can produce that sort
(25:09):
of brain pattern with an eightweek mindfulness, training
programs.
So so I think that's anothertechnique that's kind of
interesting to consider.
Mark Kennedy (25:18):
Yeah. Absolutely. There's, yeah. As you said, it's
become quite a popular topicover the last five years, and
I'll put some links to somedifferent sort of mindfulness,
or meditation type, apps. I useI use one basically every day.
It's called Calm and, yeah, Icould say the effects of the
(25:38):
positive effects of themeditation and mindfulness have
hit like many levels of my lifeincluding athletic endeavors in
my running and cycling. So,yeah, far from a scientific
experiment, but I can say thatit definitely helps. You become
more focused. And like you said,when things do get tough, you
tend to focus on it less. Like,you're like, yep.
(26:00):
It's hard. It's supposed to behard. Let's keep going. So,
yeah, I'll put some links tothat in the show notes. This is
a good segue too because I knowa lot of people are addicted to
their devices and data.
And, you know, people lot a lotof my beginner runners, they
have Garmins or Fitbits,whatever. Are there reasons to
(26:23):
sometimes leave those at home?
Alex Hutchinson (26:27):
Yeah. This is a this is a a touchy topic. You
don't wanna tell people thattheir devices are not cool.
Yeah. And I and I think it's athere's a lot of personal choice
involved.
So I don't wanna prefacing herethat I'm about to say that I
think there times when it'simportant not to be tethered to
(26:49):
the device. Let me put it thisway. Ultimately, if you want to
push your limits, you have to beable to feel where those limits
are. There is no chance anydevice connected to your body is
going to be able to feel moreaccurately than you yourself are
when you are pushed to yourlimits. Now, when you are
(27:15):
starting out running, you haveno idea where your limits are.
And so I think there's a reallyuseful role for various sorts of
devices whether it's heart ratemonitors, GPSs, power meters and
things like that. Of helping youquantify and learn the feeling
of what what is sustainable,what is unsustainable, because
(27:39):
it's just as important. To learnyour limits, you sometimes have
to go past your limits. It'sreally useful to feel to know,
okay. That was too hard.
Now I know what too hard feelslike More importantly, now I
know what it feels just beforeit gets too hard. I think
there's a useful role for thosedevices. I think you just have
(28:01):
to have a note of caution to toknow that sometimes you need to
be tuning in tuning into how youfeel. And not and by tuning into
how you feel, that doesn't meanlooking at your wrist Mhmm. To
to to ask what it's telling youabout how you feel, but to
actually know how you feel.
Because that's going to be thebest way for you to get the most
(28:22):
out of yourself. Let's sayyou're running a race or you're
trying to push yourself, there'sonly one way to know whether
you're at your limits and that'sto feel it. Now the the one
thing the one other thing I'lladd about devices is just
everyone's different. Everyoneis responding to different cues,
(28:43):
different motivations. So partof my device skepticism is the
knowledge that I am an absoluteobsessive data geek.
I'm a guy that in the nineties,you know, before it was easy to
collect a lot of data onyourself, I did it by hand. I
would do things like everymorning for years, I would
(29:04):
measure my heart rate as soon asI woke up just by counting and
putting my fingers on my wrist.And then and then stand up and
fifteen seconds later, measureit again because the difference
between those two numbers wasthought to be a good predictor
of your or a good assessment ofyour overtraining and whether
you're, and and your recoverystatus. And I would plot all
that data in LOTUS one, two,three, and have running
(29:24):
averages. Like, I love data.
And so the problem is in themodern era, it's so easy to
collect lots of data Yeah. ThatI can easily I could turn it
into just this thing where I wasconstantly looking at my, you
know, this every every kilometersplit, every average pace, every
rolling average pace. And so Ineed to be be careful that I
don't spiral into that. There'sother people who have the who
(29:45):
are completely at the other endof the spectrum who, you know,
who barely know what day it is,let alone how many miles they
ran yesterday or whatever. Andfor them, a device might be a
useful motivating tool or auseful kind of accountability
tool.
So so there's a lot of differentso I I'm I I guess what I'm
saying is there's no, like, oneanswer about what's right or
(30:06):
what's wrong. Mhmm. But thebottom line is make sure that
you're sometimes tuning into howyou feel. And a great thing to
do is if is if you like yourdevice, if you think it gives
you good information, and so on.Sometimes, just, you know, put
it on the underside of yourwrist or put a piece of tape
over the over the the display sothat you've got it and you can
record it, record your activity.
(30:27):
But see see if you see whathappens when you don't know how
fast you're running, when youdon't know how how far you're
you've gone or whatever and seehow that workout plays out. And
then you can you can go backafterwards, download the data
and say, wow. I ran a lot fasterwhen I did or a lot slower or
whatever the case may be when Ididn't know how fast I was going
because that's always a goodexercise.
Mark Kennedy (30:46):
Yeah. I I tried it. I've never actually covered
my my Garmin with tape oranything. I do I try to see how
long I in the run I can gowithout looking at it, but it's
so funny. Your mind's like, takea look.
Take a look. Take a look. And,yeah. I I don't think I've ever
probably got further than, like,fifteen minutes probably without
having to look at it.
Alex Hutchinson (31:06):
Well, I'll I'll tell you something about that. I
I I, for a few years, I trainedwith a coach in The States named
Matt Matt Centroit senior, avery sort of prominent coach
whose whose son actually won theOlympics, the Olympic fifteen
hundred, in 2016. And he was avery he's the opposite of me,
But I'm saying there'sspectrums. He he's a totally
intuitive coach, not a data guy.Whereas I was always a, you
(31:28):
know, an anal obsessive dataguy.
And so he we'd be doing trackworkouts and he'd say, okay, I
want you to guys do okay. Go runa mile and and run the four laps
in, you know, seventy, sixtyeight, 60 six, 60 four. And so
if it was my turn to lead,especially at the start, I'd be
really paranoid. You know, hehad to give us specific
instructions. I didn't wannascrew it up.
(31:50):
You know, if you did screw itup, he'd yell at you. So I would
be checking my watch and, youknow, if I the lap the the track
is 400 meters outdoors, youdon't wanna come through 400
meters and realize that youscrewed it up. So I'd be like,
okay. I gotta check at 200meters. Make sure I'm on pace.
And then you don't wanna be offpace at 200. So I got to the
point where every workout, I'dbe like, we if I was leading,
(32:13):
I'd be checking at 100, thenchecking at 200, then checking
at 300, then checking at 400,and then, you know, checking at
600, checking at 800, like, justconstantly checking my watch.
And and Centro would get thecoach would get furious when he
saw me check my watch all thetime. You've gotta feel you
should be able to run 68 plus orminus half a second without any
(32:38):
watch and without thinking aboutit. Stop checking your goddamn
watch all the time.
And I'd be like, okay, coach.And then I'd try and learn to
check my watch just withoutwithout noticing, but he'd catch
me. And so we'd be in the middleof a hard interval and he'd say,
you know, Hutchinson, take yourgoddamn watch off and throw it
in the infield. And so I'd toI'd be running along at a very
fast pace, taking off my watchand like tear rolling down my
(32:58):
cheek as I threw it to theinfield. And then doing the rest
of the workout.
And then and the worst thing waslike so then he's like, don't
worry, I'll time you. And sohe'd yell times at you as you
ran by and I would try andmemorize them because I wasn't
gonna have them on my watch andI needed to put them on my
training log. And then, like,after I've been training with
them for a while, I you know,sometimes, I I was hurt, you
(33:19):
know, you'd be hurt or whatever.You wouldn't do running and so
you'd just be standing aroundwatching the other guys and
you'd notice that he'd say,okay, here goes a group. They're
starting their interval.
And he turned around and say,oops, I missed the start. And so
they'd run the first lap and hejust make up a time as they went
by. He'd be like, 68. And I waslike, holy crap. All these
splits I've been writing down,he's just been making them up
half the time.
(33:39):
So anyway, sorry, long ramblingstory to the point of which
though is that this was one ofthe times when he would make me
take my watch off. I realizedhow hard it was and I realized
how dependent I was. I I I knewon a rational level. It's it's
insane for me to be looking atmy watch every hundred meters. I
need to be able to feel it.
But as long as I had it, Icouldn't stop myself from
looking at it. And so sometimesI needed someone else to say,
(34:02):
take the goddamn watch off.
Mark Kennedy (34:04):
Yeah. So there you go, everyone. Tell your, your
brother, your sister, yourpartner, your kids to, take your
watch for a run and hide it. SoI just got three more questions,
and they kind of all centeraround some articles you've
written on, Outside magazinethat I think would be
interesting for, my, None to Runaudience. First one being, you
(34:28):
wrote an article about, what wecan learn from Olympians about
the common cold.
I do get that question a lot.People, you know, when they get
sick, should they run, shouldthey not run, other things they
can do so they don't get sick.So, yeah, I'd love just to get
your your your coolest notes onon that article.
Alex Hutchinson (34:47):
Yeah. I mean, this this was actually a really
cool article. I I can'tremember.
Mark Kennedy (34:51):
I think
Alex Hutchinson (34:51):
it was the Norwegian Olympic team, where
they they brought, like, thisspecial machine that can
diagnose not just are you sick,but what is the specific virus
that you have. So they couldfigure out who is passing
viruses to whom at the lastOlympics. And, you know, a lot
of people got sick and you couldsee that they they could see the
(35:12):
patterns. They would trace,like, who passed it on to whom.
And so they could see it's like,oh, here was patient zero for
this particular infection.
How did it pass on? Oh, look.This person was sitting in front
of that other person on theplane on the way over to
PyeongChang or whatever. Yeah.And that person got sick two
days later and then this personwas rooming with the other
(35:32):
person so they got sick two dayslater and then this person was
competing, you know, in the sameevent as this other person so
they got sick.
You could watch these infectionsmove through and you see that
proximity is a real issue. Firstthing you can learn about the
common cold is wash your hands.You you know, like, really pay
attention to those things. Itmakes a difference, the people
(35:53):
you're with. And and, you know,people could probably hear, have
a I have a sore throat and acough right now.
I have a a three year old and afive year old daughter daughter.
So it's just like, I wash myhands as much as I can, but but
Mark Kennedy (36:07):
Your body's getting exposed to germs. It
hasn't seen probably twentyyears.
Alex Hutchinson (36:12):
Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, at some point, I
just have to hope that both mydaughters and I rebuild some
immunity quickly. In terms ofdealing with it, just the one
thing that's worth keeping inmind is basically the neck check
or the neck rule. If you havesymptoms above the neck, if
(36:33):
you've got a sore throat, you'vegot a runny nose, you can run
through that.
I won't go so far as to say it'sgoing to cure you or anything
like that, but getting outside,getting some exercise is
probably good for how you feel.If you've got something more
serious deep down in your chestor a fever or anything like
(36:54):
that, then it's probably betterto just back off and let your
body recover. And even if youare even if you are, it's just a
runny nose or whatever likethat. You know, it's not the
time to try and push throughthrough to new levels. Get out,
get some fresh air, get someexercise, but, you know, live to
fight another day.
Mark Kennedy (37:13):
Yep. Okay. Another topic that, comes up, a lot is,
especially with the wintercoming throughout much of North
America is a lot of, my runnershead to the treadmill. And a lot
of them actually just prefer thetreadmill in general, even, you
know, throughout the nicer timesof the year. So how does
(37:36):
treadmill running actuallydiffer from running outside?
And are there things that peopleon the treadmill should be doing
on the treadmill that, you know,should they wanna make the
transition will make it, easierfor them?
Alex Hutchinson (37:50):
Yeah. So there's a ton of studies on this
and they all produce differentresults. A hundred different
studies will tell you a hundreddifferent things on how
different treadmill is fromoutside or why and what you can
do about it. I think one of thethemes that emerges when you try
and look at all the studiestogether is a big factor is just
familiarity. The less the lessyou run on a treadmill, the more
(38:12):
you're likely to be different.
Wow. When you you're the themore the more differences there
are between running on thetreadmill and running outside.
If you're comfortable on thetreadmill, then for the most
part, you know, you can run verysimilarly to how you run
outside. Fundamentally, it'sit's the same thing. Now if you
(38:35):
do most of your trading on atreadmill and then you want to
go run a five k outside, thereare some things to consider.
One is that, in terms of pace,treadmill doesn't have any
headwind so theoretically it'sslightly easier to run on a
treadmill than to run outside.One way of getting over that is
to or to compensating for that,you can put the incline at half
(38:55):
a percent or maybe 1% dependingon how fast you're running. Half
a percent for slower paces, onepercent for faster paces.
That'll sort of simulate theeffects of of air resistance
outside. The other thing is thatthe treadmill belt's generally
softer than the roads.
If you go from all treadmill allwinter and then you head outside
(39:16):
and do all roads, there's forsome people at least, there's a
risk that your legs will willsort of suffer from the pounding
a little bit because they're notused to it. So it's a good idea
to make the transitiongradually. If you've got a road
five k coming up and you'redoing all treadmill, then start
by, you know, getting one roadrun a week and then move up to
two or whatever just to just tomake sure you've got your your
(39:37):
legs are familiar to theslightly harder surface of the
road. So it's it's do do nothingsuddenly, I guess, is the the
the sort of thing to remember.
Mark Kennedy (39:46):
Okay. And, last question here, and, I don't
think we've talked aboutanything about diet yet, but,
anyways, a lot of people areinterested in incorporate the
ketogenic diet right now. Sowhat what are the the what's the
research saying right now withregards to the ketogenic diet as
(40:07):
it relates to, running andendurance sport in general?
Alex Hutchinson (40:13):
Yeah. So I'll speak to that on on in the
context of endurance sport. Thethe the health aspect is a whole
another Yeah. Yeah. If you'dasked me this question ten years
ago or maybe even five yearsago, I would have said, don't be
crazy.
I mean, if you especially if youwanna run something longer like
a marathon or something likethat. There's no way you can run
(40:34):
it with no carbohydrates.
Mark Kennedy (40:36):
Yeah.
Alex Hutchinson (40:36):
And the fact is now we know that's not that's
incorrect. You can you can run aperfectly good marathon on a
ketogenic diet and as a result,of course, can run a good five k
on a ketogenic diet. If youwanna run your best possible
five k or marathon or whatever,I think although this is
(40:57):
controversial and debatable, myreading of the evidence would be
that you're not gonna do it, ona ketogenic diet. That that, you
the in exchange for gettingreally good at fat burning on a
ketogenic diet, you give up alittle bit of carbohydrate
burning. And if you're gonna runat high intensity, like
especially in a five ks, youneed to be able to burn
(41:19):
carbohydrates fast.
Because fat the advantage of fatis that you have tons of it so
you don't run out which isgreat. But the advantage of
carbohydrate is you can burn itmuch more quickly. Even if you
get far better at fat burning,carbohydrates are still faster
and so they're able to fuel youat a higher rate of exercise,
the high intensity stuff. If youwant to go to the Olympics,
(41:40):
you're almost certainly going toneed to eat a relatively high
carb diet. If you want to run areasonably good five k within
your personal goals, I think youcan probably choose whatever
feels fine for you.
If if you're on a ketogenic dietfor whatever reasons, whatever
(42:01):
reasons, motivate you and andyou're doing it, you know,
properly and and getting thecalories you need and so on,
there's no reason that you can'trun and and and incorporate
running or other enduranceactivities into your into your
routine and and, and do it verywell. So I think that's that's
probably the message I wouldwanna look, it's a controversial
(42:23):
topic, but what what I wouldsay, yeah, is, you you can do it
either way. But I I guess theone the one last caveat I would
say is I would not, despite someof the hype, I would definitely
not say, oh, if you wanna runfaster, should switch to a
ketogenic diet. That's not areason to switch to a ketogenic
diet, but if you're on aketogenic diet, that's, you
know, more power to you.
Mark Kennedy (42:44):
Mhmm. And just before we wrap up, so is there
any particular science researchin the running world or
endurance sport world right nowthat's exciting you?
Alex Hutchinson (42:55):
You know, it's it's that's a a good question
because, you know, my my bookcame out last year and I've been
trying to figure out what I wantto write about next. And it's
like, man, it's it's a hard it'sa hard thing to figure out
something that I really, reallywanna spend a ton a ton of time
on. But, you know, the there'sthere I mean, to me, the the
(43:20):
thing that I came away from mylast book thinking is that
sports psychology is more realthan I thought it was twenty
years ago. What's exciting isthat people are now studying it
in a more quantifiable andrigorous way. They're trying to
say, Well, let's give a bunch ofpeople one sports psychology
intervention and other peoplewill give them a different one
and we'll see which one doesbetter.
(43:42):
We'll see what, you know okay.We talk about motivational self
talk. Which works better if ifpeople tell themselves, you can
do this? Or if people can tellthem tell themselves, I can do
this. And starting to get andthen it turns out that there
seems to be a positive effect ifyou say, you can do this.
That there's something aboutdistancing yourself from the
struggle that that works better.So that that I'm finding really
(44:06):
interesting and exciting thatit's it's sort of moving beyond
the sort of let's go with ourintuition and and and sort of do
what, you know, the the gurustell us to do. So let's test it.
Let's figure out what works bestfor people. And there will never
be a universal answer.
We're all different. We allrespond to different things. But
yeah. So the sort of quote,unquote, the new sports
psychology, the the sciencebased version of it, I'm finding
(44:26):
pretty interesting.
Mark Kennedy (44:27):
So I think this is a great place to wrap up. Alex,
I just wanna say thanks so muchfor taking the time to chat. As
I said, hopefully, next timewe'll do it in person with a
beer in our hands. But, where'sthe best place for people to
connect with you or follow yourwork?
Alex Hutchinson (44:42):
Probably Twitter's the easiest place to
find me. My my handle is sweatscience, all one word. And, you
know, when I have whenever Ihave a new article or when I
read something that I findinteresting, I I post it there.
So that's the easiest place tofind me. I do have a a a
website, alexhutchinson.net,that has a little more detail on
some old articles and has beenupdated as recently as, like,
02/2006 or whatever.
But, yeah, Twitter's probablythe more the more up to date
(45:03):
place to go.
Mark Kennedy (45:05):
And your books available on Amazon and all
other places where books aresold?
Alex Hutchinson (45:10):
Yeah. All other places including your your local
independent bookstore, but,yeah, definitely Amazon too.
Mark Kennedy (45:16):
Awesome. Okay. Thanks again, Alex.
Alex Hutchinson (45:18):
Thanks, Mark. I really appreciate the chat.
Hi, everyone. I'm Mark Kennedy, and this is the
none to run podcast episode 35with guest Alex Hutchinson. Alex
Hutchinson is a nationalmagazine award winning
journalist whose work appears inOutside Magazine, The Globe and
Mail, The New York Times, TheNew Yorker, and other
publications. His latest bookcame out in February as Mind,
(00:23):
Body, and the Curiously ElasticLimits of Human Performance. He
lives in the same neighborhoodas me in Toronto, but is sadly
too fast for me to run with.
In this episode, we talk abouthow Alex improved his PB in the
1,500 meters when he had beenstuck at the same time for
years. This is a crazy story,which you're gonna love. What is
the central governor theory andwhy your body works so darn hard
(00:45):
not to hurt itself? Paintolerance. How the heck do pro
athletes and Olympians pushthrough pain in ways you can
push yourself more than youthought was possible?
Tips for optimizing both yourphysical and mental performance
when you're just getting startedrunning. What we can learn from
Olympians about the common coldand some rules for you to decide
whether you should run orwhether or not you should take a
(01:07):
rest. Treadmill running, is itactually different than outside
running? If so, what can we doto make it more realistic?
Running on a low carb diet, whatyou need to know and much, much
more.
Please enjoy my chat with AlexHutchison. Welcome to the show
Alex. Pumped to finally have youon the podcast. I think it's
been a long time coming. To givethe listeners a bit of
(01:29):
background where we met, I thinkI first met you at your book
signing, your Cardio Awaits booksigning, about seven years ago.
You can correct me how manyyears ago that was.
Alex Hutchinson (01:39):
Eight eight years ago. That's a it's a
you're drifting way back intothe past. Yeah. You're it's it's
been a long long time.
Mark Kennedy (01:45):
Way back in the archives. Anyways, welcome and
it's, yeah. It's great tofinally chat.
Alex Hutchinson (01:51):
Yeah. Thanks. It's been, it's it's it's been
good to, keep in touch over theyears and nice to have a chance
to chat in this context.
Mark Kennedy (01:57):
Yeah. And also, on a side note, we live in the same
neighborhood and see each otherperiodically at the butcher and,
walking down the street. So,that's kinda cool too.
Alex Hutchinson (02:08):
Yeah. It it it's it it is weak of us to be
doing this by Skype, but we'veyeah. I've Yeah. We both have
young kids. Mine are asleepupstairs, so so this is the the
way of the modern world.
Mark Kennedy (02:18):
Exactly. As I said before we started recording,
that we yeah. Next time, wedefinitely have to do this with,
perhaps a beer in our hands inperson.
Alex Hutchinson (02:26):
Yeah.
Mark Kennedy (02:27):
So I wanna get going here. So I wanna talk
mostly about, I guess, the thetopic of your latest book, which
is entitled Mind Body and theCuriously Elastic Limits of
Human Performance and I guess,yeah, that would be a great
place to start. Can you tell ussort of why you got interested
(02:47):
in that topic of sort of themind and body connection and why
you thought you wanted to writea book about the topic.
Alex Hutchinson (02:57):
Yeah. I mean I guess it I mean, the the basic
question I was trying to ask inthe book was what defines our
limits? What like I didn't startout thinking it was going to be
in the mind or the body. Justwas curious like what what is it
when you're pushing as hard asyou can that what is it that's
maxed out? What is it that'sholding you back?
(03:19):
And that's a direct kind of aninterest that comes directly
from my experiences running. Istarted running in high school.
I think you start out with theimpression that your limits are
purely that there's somethingsort of mathematical about it
that, you know, Oh, I can getfaster if I do x, y, and z to my
(03:44):
lungs, my heart, my muscles. Butif you run long enough, you
realize that it is verydifficult to predict how you are
going to perform on any givenday. That it is never the same
from one day to the next.
Know there must be some otherelement in there. That is what I
wanted to explore in the book.What is it that makes every day
different and that determineshow dig how deep you can dig on
(04:07):
a given day.
Mark Kennedy (04:09):
Okay. And and you've got a really interesting
story I'd love for you to sharewith my listeners because,
probably many of them or most ofthem haven't heard it before.
But can you share that storyabout when you had your
breakthrough race? I believe itwas in the 1,500 meter race, in
Quebec, I believe.
Alex Hutchinson (04:25):
Yeah. For sure.
Mark Kennedy (04:26):
Yeah. That that's a great story. And if you could
sorta tell that story, that'd beawesome.
Alex Hutchinson (04:30):
Yeah. I think I think it kind of, it it gets to
the heart of what I mean by thecuriously elastic limits of
human performance. Mhmm. So whenI was in university, my my goal
in life was to run a sub fourminute fifteen hundred meters.
And, excuse me, you know, fourminutes is a is a is a sort of
(04:51):
mythical barrier for runners forthe four minute mile, of course.
1,500 meters is a little shorterthan a mile, so this was this
kind of poor man's four minutemile barrier that I was trying
to break. And, and it'ssomething I initially thought
would be fairly straightforward.I ran four zero two in high
school, in my second year ofrunning, I guess it was. And I
thought it would be prettystraightforward to just keep
(05:11):
getting faster from from year toyear. But I actually hit a
plateau and so for four straightyears, I ran either four zero
one or four zero two.
And so by the time I was 20, Ireally had the sense that I was
kind of exploring my body'sultimate limits. That I've been
training hard for four years,was running the same times over
and over again. So I thought Icould run three fifty nine, but
(05:32):
I didn't think there was muchmore because clearly, I just
kept running the same times overand over again. And and
basically, to to sort of cut along story semi short, I was
running this totally meaninglessrace and, in in, in Sherbrooke,
it was, as in, this was 1996.And I came through the the first
lap, and every 200 meters in anindoor race, you have someone
(05:53):
yelling out your the the time soyou know how fast you're going.
Mhmm. And the timekeeper yelledout twenty seven seconds for the
first lap, which is way, way,way too fast. And so I had this,
you know, thought in my head ofI'm doomed. This is gonna be a
miserable four minutes. But Ialso was had this other sort of
thought in my head.
It was like, I feel pretty good.And I came to the second lap and
(06:15):
it was fifty seven seconds andit was the same thing. That's
way too fast and yet I feelpretty good. Third lap was the
same thing. And so at thatpoint, I was kinda like, I I
don't know what's going on.
I but I I'm having a great day,so just stop worrying about it.
Stop thinking about it and justrun. Yeah. Just push yourself.
And so I put my head down andand just ran.
And I ended up running threefifty two point four, which was
(06:38):
a nine second personal bestafter four years of running
basically the same time over andover again. And, you know, the
the the postscript is I wascelebrating with teammates and
saying then one of them had hadtime you know, taken my lap
times for me so that I could putthem in my training log. And, I
was sort of saying, man, Ireally started fast. He was
(07:00):
like, yeah, not really. Youknow, you're thirty or thirty
one seconds.
Was like, what? I thought I wentout in twenty seven. And it
turns out the timekeeper, he hemust have I I'm not sure exactly
what happened, but he must havebasically missed the start and
started his watch three or fourseconds late or something. So he
basically tricked me intothinking I was having this
amazing day, the greatest day ofmy life. And as a result, I did.
Mark Kennedy (07:21):
Yes.
Alex Hutchinson (07:22):
And so that was a that was a weird thing. But
what was maybe even more whatstuck with me more is that I
never had trouble breaking fourminutes again after that. And in
fact, I I ran faster in my youknow, the race after that, I ran
three forty nine. And the raceafter that, I ran three forty
four. So there was this kind ofhuge breakthrough for me that it
(07:43):
it wasn't all in my head.
Obviously, my training was goingwell. But but there was this
moment where I was able to getaway from my expectations of
what I thought I should be ableto do and and and sort of
unshackle myself from from allthose thoughts. And so after
that, could never think aboutlimits in the same way. I could
never think, oh, I finished arace. Well, I guess that's as
(08:03):
fast as I can go.
That's as fast as my body'scapable of. There was always
this question of, well, that'sas fast as I ran, but was there
more in the tank if I could havefound some way to to uncork it?
So I think that's kind of thatquestion lurking in my mind is
what sort of bubbled up againten years later when I you know,
in in the mid two thousands whenI started writing about the
(08:24):
science of endurance as ajournalist, then and then it's
what sort of built up over aboutten years, then finally
culminated in the book lastyear.
Mark Kennedy (08:32):
I love that story. So were your other times under
four minutes on indoor tracks aswell or outdoor track?
Alex Hutchinson (08:39):
So, yeah, the the three fifty two was indoors,
and then that was the end of theindoor season. Went outdoors
around 03:49 in my first raceoutdoors, and then 03:44 in my
second one. And then he he doget it. Outdoors tends to be a
little faster. The conditionsare less reliable, but but it's
a it's a bigger track, and andand it's nicer weather, and it
just tends to be faster.
Mark Kennedy (08:58):
Yeah. So I was thinking, I mean, the the indoor
track, I mean, that that's a lotof running on the curves. So,
technically, it should be alittle slower, but, anyways, but
I love that story. So did youknow about the, like, the
central governor theory? And forpeople who don't know what that
is, can you explain what it is?
But did you know about sort ofthat at that time, or is that
(09:18):
something you dove into sort ofonce you got into your training
evolved and you got moreinterested in the the running
performance?
Alex Hutchinson (09:27):
You know, it's it's not something I knew about
at all during my running career.Like, I what as so now and I'll
get to what what it is. But
Mark Kennedy (09:35):
Okay.
Alex Hutchinson (09:36):
During my during my running days, I was
very much a a a sort of, I don'tknow how to put this, a sort of
nuts and bolts. Don't don'twaste my time with sports
psychology. Like it's all aboutwhat your muscles are capable
of, what your VO two max is andthat's all I thought that was
all what it was all about. Andso after my my serious
(09:59):
competitive career was done andI was I was I shifted careers
and started became a journalistand started writing about the
science of sport, I started, youknow, I started out in in that
very traditional vein of of thethe sort of the body as a
machine. You learn how the partsof the machine work and then you
improve the parts of themachine.
And I was writing that sort oflike, here's how you hydrate,
(10:20):
here's how you train. And I cameacross this research from a guy
named Tim Noakes in South Africawho had proposed something
called the central governortheory. And he proposed it back
in the nineties, I just didn'tknow about it. Mhmm. And the
basically, the the main gist ofthe central governor is that you
cannot push your body to itslimits because you're wired in
(10:43):
some indeterminate way.
You're you're wired. Your brainis wired to protect you, to
prevent you from pushing rightto those limits. Because if you
push right to those limits,you'd be you you know, if you
run until you keel over, you'lldo yourself irreparable damage.
And so, you know, you noticethat you can you can watch the
Olympic marathon and there mightbe a finishing sprint for the
(11:05):
gold medal. And the guy who'salready run 42 k and comes
second by a few seconds, hedoesn't keel over and die.
He looks a little disappointedthen he jogs off to do his warm
you know, grabs a flag and jogsjogs around the track. So it's
like even when people should bepushing to their absolute
limits, they're not pushing tothe point that their muscles
stop working or their heartstops working. And so this is a
(11:27):
very, very controversial idea inexercise science because the the
whole twentieth century wasbasically, built around trying
to understand trying tounderstand humans as if they
were sorta like cars where ifyou under if you know the size
of the engine and how much gasis in the tank and the
temperature of the radiator, youcan know how fast and how far a
car will go. And and and, youknow, you don't really need to
(11:49):
feel worry about how the car isfeeling or anything and the car
doesn't try and slow you down ifit if it's worried about running
out of gas. And so this in thein the early two thousands, this
idea was starting to reallygenerate a lot of controversy
and so I started writing aboutit.
Excuse me. And, I initiallythought, you know, circa
(12:12):
02/2008, if you asked me, Iwould have said, I'm gonna write
a book about Tim Noakes' centralcovenant theory and how the
brain holds you back and whatthat means for people who are
trying to, you know, push theirlimits and and learn to run and
things and learn to pushthemselves in endurance sports.
It didn't end up being thatsimple and I ended up as I dug
further into it, I realized,okay. Noakes doesn't necessarily
(12:34):
have all the answers either.People who criticize his ideas
and there's a lot of debateabout, yes, the brain is
involved in determining when wereach our limits, but how is it
involved and what does it meanto say that the brain is
involved?
Is it all subconscious or allvoluntary? And there's there's a
whole bunch of sort of academicdebates going on and it ended up
that's why it ended up taking mesort of nine years or whatever
(12:56):
to write the book. The deeper Idug, the less simple it was and
the more nuanced there was intrying to understand how both
mind and body kind of worktogether to give you the sense
that you've pushed as hard asyou can.
Mark Kennedy (13:10):
Yeah. That's great. Thanks for, for
clarifying what it is and andsort of how it relates. Now I
guess that somewhat ties intopain tolerance and the fact that
what people perceive is that,you know, Olympic athletes and
professional athletes are bornwith this ability to endure pain
(13:31):
more than us regular folk. Canyou talk a little bit like how
are those Olympic athletes andprofessional athletes able to
cope with the pain and do isthat something they're born with
or is that something that we canenhance as we, become more and
more trained and and fitourselves?
Alex Hutchinson (13:54):
Yeah. I think that's a that's a really
excellent question that sort ofgets to the heart of this
because there is there's lots ofevidence that even though it's a
cliche, it is true if you dosome sort of pain tolerance test
and, you know, you can inflictpain in various ways with sort
of ice baths or, cutting offcirculation or whatever. And and
the people do these studiesMhmm. And they find that well
(14:16):
trained athletes are have ahigher pain tolerance in pain
tests that have nothing to dowith their sport than the
average person. And in fact,they find that elite
international athletes havehigher pain tolerances than well
trained, you know, amateurathletes.
So there really is somethingthat athletes learn to tolerate
pain more. But what's notnecessarily the case is that
(14:39):
they were just born that way.Now we can't answer the question
really fully and say, you know,exactly, you know, it's it may
be that some people are bornwith a sort of more, let's say,
some benign masochism. They theyenjoy Mhmm. Pain a little more
than others.
Mark Kennedy (14:57):
Yeah.
Alex Hutchinson (14:57):
But but it's undeniably true that you can
that this is something that getsbetter with training. And in
fact, even in eliteinternational athletes, what you
find is their pain tolerance, ifyou test it repeatedly, it goes
up and down throughout a year.It's highest when they're in
their best fitness, when they'repreparing for a race, it's
lowest in the off season. Whatthat tells us is that we can all
(15:22):
get better and there's studiesthat show this too. The process
of training, the process ofgoing out for a run will have a
measurable effect on yourability to tolerate discomfort
in other areas of your life, butalso during running.
One of the ways I think about itsometimes is sort of like eating
spicy foods. When, you know, ifif you try a, you know, a spicy
(15:46):
curry for the first time andyou've never had spicy foods
before, I mean, and I'mremembering some some very spicy
a very spicy curry I had a longlong time ago before I knew much
about spice. It there's nopleasure. You can't feel
anything but like screamingpain. And over as time goes on,
you just let you you learn toturn down that panic reaction
(16:07):
and just understand, okay, thisis this heat is part of the
experience and part of thetaste.
And instead of just feel hearinglike alarms ringing in your
ears, you start to detect youstart to enjoy the flavor a
little more and and be able totolerate higher levels. And I
think that happens to everyonewho, you know, begins running or
(16:28):
any other sport like that, wherewhen you start out, if you just
try and go out for and run amile, you get all these signals
that feel like serious alarmsignals. Your legs start, you
know, you're out of breath, youcan't breathe, you can't get
enough oxygen into your lungsand your legs might be hurting
and your heart is pounding, andit feels like something is
(16:49):
seriously wrong and you know youhave to slow down or you're
gonna die. Six months later, ifyou stick with it, for sure
you're you're fitter, your heartis stronger, you know, what your
muscles are are more efficient,all these things. But what I
think people often don't realizeis is that they've learned to
contextualize that discomfort ina different way.
(17:10):
So they're getting the samesignals and it's just like, oh,
yeah. I'm breathing hard andthat means that I can't keep
this pace up forever, but itdoesn't mean I have to stop now.
Mhmm. And you start to explorethat, being able to think of
feel this discomfort not as analarm signal, but just as
information that tells youwhat's going on in your body. I
think that's I mean, I don'tmean to overstate it, but I
think that's one of the mostimportant things that happen
(17:32):
when people start training.
I mean, physical stuff is very,very important too, but I think
the mental stuff is underratedboth in terms of what it does
for you to allow you to runfarther and faster, but also
what it does for you in the restof your life.
Mark Kennedy (17:44):
Are there any particular strategies other than
the the obvious of just, youknow, keeping at it, keep your
momentum and getting fit, butany particular strategies for
coping with pain? Other mentalshifts or strategies that you
know of that professionals use?
Alex Hutchinson (18:04):
Yeah, there's a bunch of things. I mean, one of
the ones that I like becausethere's been a bunch of research
on it recently that tries toquantify its effect. Like you
can there's a lot of things thatpeople do and I'm sure they
work. I'm a big fan as as ascience journalist of things
that people do and at work andpeople have tested in the lab
(18:26):
and and done their best toquantify how it works. So one
one important technique ismotivational self talk.
And this is basically theprocess of becoming aware of
your internal monologue. We allhave words running through our
heads. Maybe not at all times,most of the time. And so in the
(18:50):
context of you go out and you'regoing for a run, and if it's a
hard run, if you stop and listento what you're saying to
yourself, you may well find if,you know, if you're like me, you
may well find you're sayingthings to yourself like, you
know, this sucks. Why why did Iwhy do I why did I sign up for
this race, you know?
Why am I doing this? This ispointless. This is I'm there's
no way I'm gonna be able tosustain this pace. And and
(19:12):
there's a lot of evidence thatthose sorts of words, those
sorts of messages make it makeit more likely that you're gonna
give up or slow down. Becausefundamentally, one of the things
that comes out of this sort ofcentral governor research is the
idea that, the master switchthat determines whether you're
(19:32):
you can keep whether you cankeep going or whether you're
gonna stop or slow down.
The master switch is your yourperception of how hard you're
working. That it's not there'sno physiological thing. You
don't slow down because yourlactic acid is too high or
because your oxygen is too low.All of those things stay in a
sort of in a reasonable range.But and when they affect how
(19:54):
hard the exercise feels.
And when it feels too hard, youdecide to slow down. But if
you're telling yourself, thissucks. I can't do this. You
decide to slow down a little bitearlier. And so if you can learn
to replace those negativethoughts with positive thoughts
with, I've trained for this.
I I can do this. It's supposedto be hard and and I can push
through it. It makes it For agiven level of physical
(20:15):
discomfort, it makes it morelikely that you're willing to
say, alright, I can keep goingfor a little longer at this
pace. And it sounds kinda like,I I gotta be honest, it it it
sounds kind of cliched and andcheesy and hokey. And that's why
when we I had a sportspsychologist that was working
with the my university trackteam back in the nineties and we
just ignored her.
We just we we couldn't take itseriously, which is why which is
(20:38):
why I like the fact that therehave been a couple of really
powerful studies recently thatthat show how much these these
sorts of techniques work. So I'mable to sort of put aside my
skepticism and say, okay. Thescience says it works.
Mark Kennedy (20:50):
That's interesting. So okay. We got
motivational self talk. Is thereany other sort of quick, tips or
strategies that, have beenproven to be effective?
Alex Hutchinson (20:59):
So I I would again, it it it's almost painful
to be here dishing out the thethe same cliches, but but, I
think mindfulness is, you know,obviously, it's been a big
buzzword for the last five yearsor so. Mhmm. But the basic
principle of mindfulness isnonjudgmental self awareness.
(21:21):
And when it comes down to it,that's also the basic principle
of what it takes to run close toyour best, close to your limits.
You have to because you there'sactually some really interesting
research that shows if you can'tfeel pain, if you don't feel
pain, and you can block pain byinjecting fentanyl into into
(21:42):
your spine, You and that'll youthat's a one way block so that
you can't feel discomfort orpain from your legs, but you can
still send, like, send messagesto your legs to tell to tell you
to keep running or keep cycling.
If you do that, you get slowerrather than faster because you
it's you can't pace yourself.You can't sort of ride that edge
of being right on the edge ofsustainable. You need pain and
(22:05):
discomfort to allow you tounderstand where your limits
are. So mindfulness is a way ofbeing able to be in tune, be
aware of what your body'stelling you, be aware of what
you're feeling, how your legsare feeling, without
interpreting that, but doing itnon judgmentally. So you're not
saying, this hurts, oh my god,therefore I need to stop because
(22:27):
it's the worst.
You're just saying, this hurtsto this degree and that's where
it needs to be. If I'm if I'mgonna run this five k as fast as
I can, I need to be hurting thismuch at this point in the race?
And so you you you're in tune.You're feeling the discomfort,
but you're not judging it.You're just aware of it and
you're letting it pass on.
I think with the experience ofrunning, over time people get
(22:52):
better and better at that. Ithink maybe a way of fast
tracking that, and this is notsomething that has been tested
rigorous. There's been a littlebit of research on mindfulness
for athletes, but it's quitehard to do a proper placebo
controlled trial of this stuff.It's a little more speculative,
but I think that's a powerfulway whether you do a formal
mindfulness practice or whetheryou just you know, use one of
(23:15):
these apps that's available oror or other sort of guided
techniques to to get towardsthat space where you're able to
feel negative things withoutwithout overreacting to them.
And again, I I I'm sort offlicking quickly at some
research here, there's there'svery interesting research in,
(23:35):
like, elite adventure racerscompared to normal people
showing that when and they putthem in brain scanners and they
Mark Kennedy (23:43):
Yeah.
Alex Hutchinson (23:43):
And they're basically breathing through
through a straw and then theypinch the straw sometimes. So
you're you're sitting in thistube, of the of the brain
scanner doing cognitive tests,breathing through a tube, then
all of a sudden it gets reallyhard to breathe. And most
people, when that happens, theyfreak out and they get a lot
worse at the cognitive teststhat they're doing. The big
adventure racers, along withother people like Navy SEALs,
(24:06):
when that tube gets pinched,they respond to that. They
actually get better at thecognitive task because they they
they they're aware, okay, thisis now getting hard.
So they realize things aregetting serious and they get
they get more focused and theythey they really zero in and
they actually get better at theat the cognitive And so what
(24:26):
they're avoiding doing, if youlook at the brain activity, if
you look at the areas that sortof responsible for monitoring
how their body is feeling, whenthey're when they're breathing
normally, it's at one level. Andwhen things go crazy, when the
breathing is restricted, itstays at that level. They're
just always being aware of theirbody. Whereas for most people,
(24:46):
under normal circumstances,they're kind of not aware of
what's going on with their body.The brain activity in that
region is low.
And then when something whenthings get serious, it goes way
it goes through the roof. Theyoverreact. Mhmm. And so instead
of under reacting andoverreacting, you wanna just be
constantly aware of what's goingon in your body and not
overreacting to it. So I thinkmindfulness in that and and so
they've done some tests showingthat you can produce that sort
(25:09):
of brain pattern with an eightweek mindfulness, training
programs.
So so I think that's anothertechnique that's kind of
interesting to consider.
Mark Kennedy (25:18):
Yeah. Absolutely. There's, yeah. As you said, it's
become quite a popular topicover the last five years, and
I'll put some links to somedifferent sort of mindfulness,
or meditation type, apps. I useI use one basically every day.
It's called Calm and, yeah, Icould say the effects of the
(25:38):
positive effects of themeditation and mindfulness have
hit like many levels of my lifeincluding athletic endeavors in
my running and cycling. So,yeah, far from a scientific
experiment, but I can say thatit definitely helps. You become
more focused. And like you said,when things do get tough, you
tend to focus on it less. Like,you're like, yep.
(26:00):
It's hard. It's supposed to behard. Let's keep going. So,
yeah, I'll put some links tothat in the show notes. This is
a good segue too because I knowa lot of people are addicted to
their devices and data.
And, you know, people lot a lotof my beginner runners, they
have Garmins or Fitbits,whatever. Are there reasons to
(26:23):
sometimes leave those at home?
Alex Hutchinson (26:27):
Yeah. This is a this is a a touchy topic. You
don't wanna tell people thattheir devices are not cool.
Yeah. And I and I think it's athere's a lot of personal choice
involved.
So I don't wanna prefacing herethat I'm about to say that I
think there times when it'simportant not to be tethered to
(26:49):
the device. Let me put it thisway. Ultimately, if you want to
push your limits, you have to beable to feel where those limits
are. There is no chance anydevice connected to your body is
going to be able to feel moreaccurately than you yourself are
when you are pushed to yourlimits. Now, when you are
(27:15):
starting out running, you haveno idea where your limits are.
And so I think there's a reallyuseful role for various sorts of
devices whether it's heart ratemonitors, GPSs, power meters and
things like that. Of helping youquantify and learn the feeling
of what what is sustainable,what is unsustainable, because
(27:39):
it's just as important. To learnyour limits, you sometimes have
to go past your limits. It'sreally useful to feel to know,
okay. That was too hard.
Now I know what too hard feelslike More importantly, now I
know what it feels just beforeit gets too hard. I think
there's a useful role for thosedevices. I think you just have
(28:01):
to have a note of caution to toknow that sometimes you need to
be tuning in tuning into how youfeel. And not and by tuning into
how you feel, that doesn't meanlooking at your wrist Mhmm. To
to to ask what it's telling youabout how you feel, but to
actually know how you feel.
Because that's going to be thebest way for you to get the most
(28:22):
out of yourself. Let's sayyou're running a race or you're
trying to push yourself, there'sonly one way to know whether
you're at your limits and that'sto feel it. Now the the one
thing the one other thing I'lladd about devices is just
everyone's different. Everyoneis responding to different cues,
(28:43):
different motivations. So partof my device skepticism is the
knowledge that I am an absoluteobsessive data geek.
I'm a guy that in the nineties,you know, before it was easy to
collect a lot of data onyourself, I did it by hand. I
would do things like everymorning for years, I would
(29:04):
measure my heart rate as soon asI woke up just by counting and
putting my fingers on my wrist.And then and then stand up and
fifteen seconds later, measureit again because the difference
between those two numbers wasthought to be a good predictor
of your or a good assessment ofyour overtraining and whether
you're, and and your recoverystatus. And I would plot all
that data in LOTUS one, two,three, and have running
(29:24):
averages. Like, I love data.
And so the problem is in themodern era, it's so easy to
collect lots of data Yeah. ThatI can easily I could turn it
into just this thing where I wasconstantly looking at my, you
know, this every every kilometersplit, every average pace, every
rolling average pace. And so Ineed to be be careful that I
don't spiral into that. There'sother people who have the who
(29:45):
are completely at the other endof the spectrum who, you know,
who barely know what day it is,let alone how many miles they
ran yesterday or whatever. Andfor them, a device might be a
useful motivating tool or auseful kind of accountability
tool.
So so there's a lot of differentso I I'm I I guess what I'm
saying is there's no, like, oneanswer about what's right or
(30:06):
what's wrong. Mhmm. But thebottom line is make sure that
you're sometimes tuning into howyou feel. And a great thing to
do is if is if you like yourdevice, if you think it gives
you good information, and so on.Sometimes, just, you know, put
it on the underside of yourwrist or put a piece of tape
over the over the the display sothat you've got it and you can
record it, record your activity.
(30:27):
But see see if you see whathappens when you don't know how
fast you're running, when youdon't know how how far you're
you've gone or whatever and seehow that workout plays out. And
then you can you can go backafterwards, download the data
and say, wow. I ran a lot fasterwhen I did or a lot slower or
whatever the case may be when Ididn't know how fast I was going
because that's always a goodexercise.
Mark Kennedy (30:46):
Yeah. I I tried it. I've never actually covered
my my Garmin with tape oranything. I do I try to see how
long I in the run I can gowithout looking at it, but it's
so funny. Your mind's like, takea look.
Take a look. Take a look. And,yeah. I I don't think I've ever
probably got further than, like,fifteen minutes probably without
having to look at it.
Alex Hutchinson (31:06):
Well, I'll I'll tell you something about that. I
I I, for a few years, I trainedwith a coach in The States named
Matt Matt Centroit senior, avery sort of prominent coach
whose whose son actually won theOlympics, the Olympic fifteen
hundred, in 2016. And he was avery he's the opposite of me,
But I'm saying there'sspectrums. He he's a totally
intuitive coach, not a data guy.Whereas I was always a, you
(31:28):
know, an anal obsessive dataguy.
And so he we'd be doing trackworkouts and he'd say, okay, I
want you to guys do okay. Go runa mile and and run the four laps
in, you know, seventy, sixtyeight, 60 six, 60 four. And so
if it was my turn to lead,especially at the start, I'd be
really paranoid. You know, hehad to give us specific
instructions. I didn't wannascrew it up.
(31:50):
You know, if you did screw itup, he'd yell at you. So I would
be checking my watch and, youknow, if I the lap the the track
is 400 meters outdoors, youdon't wanna come through 400
meters and realize that youscrewed it up. So I'd be like,
okay. I gotta check at 200meters. Make sure I'm on pace.
And then you don't wanna be offpace at 200. So I got to the
point where every workout, I'dbe like, we if I was leading,
(32:13):
I'd be checking at 100, thenchecking at 200, then checking
at 300, then checking at 400,and then, you know, checking at
600, checking at 800, like, justconstantly checking my watch.
And and Centro would get thecoach would get furious when he
saw me check my watch all thetime. You've gotta feel you
should be able to run 68 plus orminus half a second without any
(32:38):
watch and without thinking aboutit. Stop checking your goddamn
watch all the time.
And I'd be like, okay, coach.And then I'd try and learn to
check my watch just withoutwithout noticing, but he'd catch
me. And so we'd be in the middleof a hard interval and he'd say,
you know, Hutchinson, take yourgoddamn watch off and throw it
in the infield. And so I'd toI'd be running along at a very
fast pace, taking off my watchand like tear rolling down my
(32:58):
cheek as I threw it to theinfield. And then doing the rest
of the workout.
And then and the worst thing waslike so then he's like, don't
worry, I'll time you. And sohe'd yell times at you as you
ran by and I would try andmemorize them because I wasn't
gonna have them on my watch andI needed to put them on my
training log. And then, like,after I've been training with
them for a while, I you know,sometimes, I I was hurt, you
(33:19):
know, you'd be hurt or whatever.You wouldn't do running and so
you'd just be standing aroundwatching the other guys and
you'd notice that he'd say,okay, here goes a group. They're
starting their interval.
And he turned around and say,oops, I missed the start. And so
they'd run the first lap and hejust make up a time as they went
by. He'd be like, 68. And I waslike, holy crap. All these
splits I've been writing down,he's just been making them up
half the time.
(33:39):
So anyway, sorry, long ramblingstory to the point of which
though is that this was one ofthe times when he would make me
take my watch off. I realizedhow hard it was and I realized
how dependent I was. I I I knewon a rational level. It's it's
insane for me to be looking atmy watch every hundred meters. I
need to be able to feel it.
But as long as I had it, Icouldn't stop myself from
looking at it. And so sometimesI needed someone else to say,
(34:02):
take the goddamn watch off.
Mark Kennedy (34:04):
Yeah. So there you go, everyone. Tell your, your
brother, your sister, yourpartner, your kids to, take your
watch for a run and hide it. SoI just got three more questions,
and they kind of all centeraround some articles you've
written on, Outside magazinethat I think would be
interesting for, my, None to Runaudience. First one being, you
(34:28):
wrote an article about, what wecan learn from Olympians about
the common cold.
I do get that question a lot.People, you know, when they get
sick, should they run, shouldthey not run, other things they
can do so they don't get sick.So, yeah, I'd love just to get
your your your coolest notes onon that article.
Alex Hutchinson (34:47):
Yeah. I mean, this this was actually a really
cool article. I I can'tremember.
Mark Kennedy (34:51):
I think
Alex Hutchinson (34:51):
it was the Norwegian Olympic team, where
they they brought, like, thisspecial machine that can
diagnose not just are you sick,but what is the specific virus
that you have. So they couldfigure out who is passing
viruses to whom at the lastOlympics. And, you know, a lot
of people got sick and you couldsee that they they could see the
(35:12):
patterns. They would trace,like, who passed it on to whom.
And so they could see it's like,oh, here was patient zero for
this particular infection.
How did it pass on? Oh, look.This person was sitting in front
of that other person on theplane on the way over to
PyeongChang or whatever. Yeah.And that person got sick two
days later and then this personwas rooming with the other
(35:32):
person so they got sick two dayslater and then this person was
competing, you know, in the sameevent as this other person so
they got sick.
You could watch these infectionsmove through and you see that
proximity is a real issue. Firstthing you can learn about the
common cold is wash your hands.You you know, like, really pay
attention to those things. Itmakes a difference, the people
(35:53):
you're with. And and, you know,people could probably hear, have
a I have a sore throat and acough right now.
I have a a three year old and afive year old daughter daughter.
So it's just like, I wash myhands as much as I can, but but
Mark Kennedy (36:07):
Your body's getting exposed to germs. It
hasn't seen probably twentyyears.
Alex Hutchinson (36:12):
Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, at some point, I
just have to hope that both mydaughters and I rebuild some
immunity quickly. In terms ofdealing with it, just the one
thing that's worth keeping inmind is basically the neck check
or the neck rule. If you havesymptoms above the neck, if
(36:33):
you've got a sore throat, you'vegot a runny nose, you can run
through that.
I won't go so far as to say it'sgoing to cure you or anything
like that, but getting outside,getting some exercise is
probably good for how you feel.If you've got something more
serious deep down in your chestor a fever or anything like
(36:54):
that, then it's probably betterto just back off and let your
body recover. And even if youare even if you are, it's just a
runny nose or whatever likethat. You know, it's not the
time to try and push throughthrough to new levels. Get out,
get some fresh air, get someexercise, but, you know, live to
fight another day.
Mark Kennedy (37:13):
Yep. Okay. Another topic that, comes up, a lot is,
especially with the wintercoming throughout much of North
America is a lot of, my runnershead to the treadmill. And a lot
of them actually just prefer thetreadmill in general, even, you
know, throughout the nicer timesof the year. So how does
(37:36):
treadmill running actuallydiffer from running outside?
And are there things that peopleon the treadmill should be doing
on the treadmill that, you know,should they wanna make the
transition will make it, easierfor them?
Alex Hutchinson (37:50):
Yeah. So there's a ton of studies on this
and they all produce differentresults. A hundred different
studies will tell you a hundreddifferent things on how
different treadmill is fromoutside or why and what you can
do about it. I think one of thethemes that emerges when you try
and look at all the studiestogether is a big factor is just
familiarity. The less the lessyou run on a treadmill, the more
(38:12):
you're likely to be different.
Wow. When you you're the themore the more differences there
are between running on thetreadmill and running outside.
If you're comfortable on thetreadmill, then for the most
part, you know, you can run verysimilarly to how you run
outside. Fundamentally, it'sit's the same thing. Now if you
(38:35):
do most of your trading on atreadmill and then you want to
go run a five k outside, thereare some things to consider.
One is that, in terms of pace,treadmill doesn't have any
headwind so theoretically it'sslightly easier to run on a
treadmill than to run outside.One way of getting over that is
to or to compensating for that,you can put the incline at half
(38:55):
a percent or maybe 1% dependingon how fast you're running. Half
a percent for slower paces, onepercent for faster paces.
That'll sort of simulate theeffects of of air resistance
outside. The other thing is thatthe treadmill belt's generally
softer than the roads.
If you go from all treadmill allwinter and then you head outside
(39:16):
and do all roads, there's forsome people at least, there's a
risk that your legs will willsort of suffer from the pounding
a little bit because they're notused to it. So it's a good idea
to make the transitiongradually. If you've got a road
five k coming up and you'redoing all treadmill, then start
by, you know, getting one roadrun a week and then move up to
two or whatever just to just tomake sure you've got your your
(39:37):
legs are familiar to theslightly harder surface of the
road. So it's it's do do nothingsuddenly, I guess, is the the
the sort of thing to remember.
Mark Kennedy (39:46):
Okay. And, last question here, and, I don't
think we've talked aboutanything about diet yet, but,
anyways, a lot of people areinterested in incorporate the
ketogenic diet right now. Sowhat what are the the what's the
research saying right now withregards to the ketogenic diet as
(40:07):
it relates to, running andendurance sport in general?
Alex Hutchinson (40:13):
Yeah. So I'll speak to that on on in the
context of endurance sport. Thethe the health aspect is a whole
another Yeah. Yeah. If you'dasked me this question ten years
ago or maybe even five yearsago, I would have said, don't be
crazy.
I mean, if you especially if youwanna run something longer like
a marathon or something likethat. There's no way you can run
(40:34):
it with no carbohydrates.
Mark Kennedy (40:36):
Yeah.
Alex Hutchinson (40:36):
And the fact is now we know that's not that's
incorrect. You can you can run aperfectly good marathon on a
ketogenic diet and as a result,of course, can run a good five k
on a ketogenic diet. If youwanna run your best possible
five k or marathon or whatever,I think although this is
(40:57):
controversial and debatable, myreading of the evidence would be
that you're not gonna do it, ona ketogenic diet. That that, you
the in exchange for gettingreally good at fat burning on a
ketogenic diet, you give up alittle bit of carbohydrate
burning. And if you're gonna runat high intensity, like
especially in a five ks, youneed to be able to burn
(41:19):
carbohydrates fast.
Because fat the advantage of fatis that you have tons of it so
you don't run out which isgreat. But the advantage of
carbohydrate is you can burn itmuch more quickly. Even if you
get far better at fat burning,carbohydrates are still faster
and so they're able to fuel youat a higher rate of exercise,
the high intensity stuff. If youwant to go to the Olympics,
(41:40):
you're almost certainly going toneed to eat a relatively high
carb diet. If you want to run areasonably good five k within
your personal goals, I think youcan probably choose whatever
feels fine for you.
If if you're on a ketogenic dietfor whatever reasons, whatever
(42:01):
reasons, motivate you and andyou're doing it, you know,
properly and and getting thecalories you need and so on,
there's no reason that you can'trun and and and incorporate
running or other enduranceactivities into your into your
routine and and, and do it verywell. So I think that's that's
probably the message I wouldwanna look, it's a controversial
(42:23):
topic, but what what I wouldsay, yeah, is, you you can do it
either way. But I I guess theone the one last caveat I would
say is I would not, despite someof the hype, I would definitely
not say, oh, if you wanna runfaster, should switch to a
ketogenic diet. That's not areason to switch to a ketogenic
diet, but if you're on aketogenic diet, that's, you
know, more power to you.
Mark Kennedy (42:44):
Mhmm. And just before we wrap up, so is there
any particular science researchin the running world or
endurance sport world right nowthat's exciting you?
Alex Hutchinson (42:55):
You know, it's it's that's a a good question
because, you know, my my bookcame out last year and I've been
trying to figure out what I wantto write about next. And it's
like, man, it's it's a hard it'sa hard thing to figure out
something that I really, reallywanna spend a ton a ton of time
on. But, you know, the there'sthere I mean, to me, the the
(43:20):
thing that I came away from mylast book thinking is that
sports psychology is more realthan I thought it was twenty
years ago. What's exciting isthat people are now studying it
in a more quantifiable andrigorous way. They're trying to
say, Well, let's give a bunch ofpeople one sports psychology
intervention and other peoplewill give them a different one
and we'll see which one doesbetter.
(43:42):
We'll see what, you know okay.We talk about motivational self
talk. Which works better if ifpeople tell themselves, you can
do this? Or if people can tellthem tell themselves, I can do
this. And starting to get andthen it turns out that there
seems to be a positive effect ifyou say, you can do this.
That there's something aboutdistancing yourself from the
struggle that that works better.So that that I'm finding really
(44:06):
interesting and exciting thatit's it's sort of moving beyond
the sort of let's go with ourintuition and and and sort of do
what, you know, the the gurustell us to do. So let's test it.
Let's figure out what works bestfor people. And there will never
be a universal answer.
We're all different. We allrespond to different things. But
yeah. So the sort of quote,unquote, the new sports
psychology, the the sciencebased version of it, I'm finding
(44:26):
pretty interesting.
Mark Kennedy (44:27):
So I think this is a great place to wrap up. Alex,
I just wanna say thanks so muchfor taking the time to chat. As
I said, hopefully, next timewe'll do it in person with a
beer in our hands. But, where'sthe best place for people to
connect with you or follow yourwork?
Alex Hutchinson (44:42):
Probably Twitter's the easiest place to
find me. My my handle is sweatscience, all one word. And, you
know, when I have whenever Ihave a new article or when I
read something that I findinteresting, I I post it there.
So that's the easiest place tofind me. I do have a a a
website, alexhutchinson.net,that has a little more detail on
some old articles and has beenupdated as recently as, like,
02/2006 or whatever.
But, yeah, Twitter's probablythe more the more up to date
(45:03):
place to go.
Mark Kennedy (45:05):
And your books available on Amazon and all
other places where books aresold?
Alex Hutchinson (45:10):
Yeah. All other places including your your local
independent bookstore, but,yeah, definitely Amazon too.
Mark Kennedy (45:16):
Awesome. Okay. Thanks again, Alex.
Alex Hutchinson (45:18):
Thanks, Mark. I really appreciate the chat.
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