May 28, 2025 • 21 mins
In this conversation, the Matt and Blake discuss the importance of discipline over motivation in training for an ultra marathon. They emphasize setting realistic goals, incorporating mobility and cross-training, and the significance of running with purpose through hill and tempo runs. The conversation also highlights the necessity of recovery and tapering to ensure progress and prevent injuries.
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Chapters
00:00 Discipline Over Motivation
05:00 Setting Realistic Goals
09:59 Incorporating Mobility and Cross-Training
14:58 Running with Purpose: Hill and Tempo Runs
20:04 Recovery and Tapering for Success
Takeaways
Discipline is essential when motivation wanes.
Setting realistic goals helps maintain focus and progress.
Mobility exercises are crucial for injury prevention.
Incorporating cross-training can enhance overall fitness.
Hill and tempo runs add purpose to training.
Recovery weeks are vital for muscle rebuilding.
Avoid comparing yourself to others during training.
Progress takes time; patience is key.
Stay consistent with training to achieve goals.
Enjoy the journey and celebrate small victories.
Keywords
discipline, motivation, ultra marathon, realistic goals, mobility, cross-training, hill runs, tempo runs, recovery, tapering
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is where discipline overtakes motivation.
You know, motivations, you know a luxury when you have it, but a
lot of times discipline is goingto is going to be the thing that
you need to get through it. I like that I've never thought
of motivation as a luxury, but that makes total sense because
sometimes it's just not there. This is Couch to 50K How to
(00:22):
finish your first ultra marathon.
All right, let's dive in here. Mobility.
All right, dude, how are we? Doing doing good.
You know, it's month 2 month 1 was awesome and but also
(00:47):
difficult, right? There was a lot of soreness just
and fatigue. You just like general, I'm just
tired, you know, mainly like immediately after the next
morning and like, you know, following the the protocol here,
like walking, lot of walking, running and doing my cooldowns,
(01:10):
doing doing the things we're talking about.
But it, it still got me, you know, it, it definitely still
kind of, it was just really hardright in, in outside of the
workouts, Like I, you know, I'vegot the, the excitement and the
momentum and there there's the, everything's in place and, and
that's a lot of fun. But outside of, of the program,
(01:32):
right? Like the normal times when I'm
trying to play with my kids, I'mlike, oh man, I just want to go
to bed. Yeah, I did.
I think that will that will get better that part.
But bad news, we're going to call month 2 the boring month.
Like you mentioned that excitement, you know that first
(01:53):
that initial like, oh, I'm excited, I'm doing something
new. I'm going to get after it.
The motivation now you're still really far away from the goal.
We still got a long way to go and you're not going to do a ton
different this month. We're just going to slowly
increase a few things. And so it's going to be a
(02:16):
challenge because you got to, you got to want to.
This is where discipline overtakes motivation.
You know, motivations, you know a luxury when you have it, but a
lot of times discipline is goingto is going to be the thing that
you need to get through it. I like that I've never thought
of motivation as a luxury, but that makes total sense because
(02:36):
sometimes it's just not there. Yeah, it's a weird thing, right?
Like sometimes you're just not, you're not feeling it, like you
don't want to do it. And that's where the the
discipline comes in. And, you know, being so far out
still, there's going to be the thought of like, I still got
time, you know, I still got time.
But you know, we're, we're progressing.
(02:58):
We're progressing every week. And you don't really have time
to not progress every week to get to the goal.
One of the things that we're going to kind of put in our head
this month, our mentality is going to be the dream big, but
create realistic goals. And what we mean by that is like
what you're going to go try and do, you know Holcomb Valley race
(03:20):
up here in Big Bear, 33 miles inthe mountains in June, Like that
is hard. That's a big goal.
That's a really big goal for anybody to do.
But you don't need to tell yourself you're going to go out
there and win the race. You need a, the realistic goal
of finishing and being successful is big.
(03:41):
That's a big, that's a big goal as it is.
So don't overdo it mentally. You know, remember that when you
started, you were on the couch and you're going to run 33 miles
in the mountains. And that's a huge goal anyway.
And we're going to train like the goal is extremely important
(04:02):
and it matters and but we're going to set a realistic 1.
And so for you, that might be this time, right?
For somebody else, it might meanthis time, right?
We're not, we're not really getting into the specifics of
what your goal is, but let's be realistic with what we're
training for. I think that will help from
(04:25):
getting yourself to a place where you beat yourself up.
You start comparing yourself to other people.
You start looking at, you know, what this guy's doing, what that
guy's doing. All of a sudden, your goal might
not seem as big. You know, it's like, oh, like,
I'm not like going out there to win.
Why do I need to follow this plan?
And why do I need to run four days?
(04:45):
You know, I could probably do itif I only run two days a week,
you know? But remember, we're coming off
the couch. We got six months to get
ourselves ready for a 50K, and that's going to take a lot.
That's a really big goal and let's just keep it in check.
I like it. Yeah.
No, that's really helpful because it's, I've always been a
bit of a procrastinator. And so that that mindset
(05:08):
definitely rings true for me. Like, oh, it's four months away
still, I could probably skip this one.
I'll make up for it next week, right?
And then that's just a week lostor at least a workout lost,
right? Yeah, absolutely.
And that's, that's, that's an important thing to keep in mind
for sure. Well, and so we named this the
specifics of this month mobility, not that we're super
(05:33):
old, but we're getting up there and we just spent a month, you
know, running significantly morethan we did for the last year.
And one thing we don't want to do is injure ourselves.
I think as we get older, overuseinjuries like the most common
thing, and I think a good way toprevent that is to really on
(05:55):
your your workouts, you're like outside of running workouts
start to like incorporate some kind of mobility exercises.
I think like YouTube or, you know, just Google like a like
APT routine for like your your hips and your knees.
(06:15):
But just like generally activating outside of running is
going to go. It's really going to help as we
progress like. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I've been through a couple rounds of of PT and I remember
coming out of it this years ago,but thinking all of this could
have been prevented if I would have been doing these exercise
(06:37):
I'm doing for rehab as prevention, right.
Where's the PT as prevention? I wish that was preached about a
little bit more. Maybe the industry doesn't want
us to, but it's, it's a big thing, right?
Like if, if you're doing those exercises and strengthening the
little muscles and the stabilizer muscles and that's
how you prevent the injuries in the 1st place.
(06:58):
And that's probably the thing that I'm most worried about
derailing this whole thing is some sort of injury or sickness
or something that would set me back, call it a month, right?
And now we're out of time, right?
I mean, I'm, I'm doing this in real time, six months leading
right up to this race. Like there there is no time to
(07:19):
be wasted or, or to take a set back.
But that's, that also goes to sustainability.
I mean, that's how I'd like to live my whole life, right?
Nobody wants to be sick. Nobody wants to be tired and
injured and, and trying to always overcome that, right.
Let's stay out in front of it, prevent it, stay healthy, stay
fit. And, and, and like switching
Gears of touch, like I have already felt coming out of the
(07:42):
first month, the difference in, you know, I talked about the
pain already, but I've, I've also noticed the, the uptick in
fitness, right? It, it, it only took a a quick
month of really low intensity stuff as as prescribed that
coming out of it and like, OK, yeah, it's only been two days.
(08:02):
I feel ready to go, you know, and, and that's a cool feeling,
which does kind of balance out for me mentally the, the
motivation side of it, right? Because that's a motivator for
me because I'm like starting to see the changes or feel the
changes, the better way of putting it, right.
Haven't seen a huge change in like my body composition or
(08:24):
anything like that. Not yet.
It's coming. It's coming, it's coming.
But you know, it's, it's, it's along game.
We're playing the long game here.
We're doing a long race. It's a, it's a long, a long
thing that we've set up and I, Iwant to stay patient at the same
time. But it's exciting.
It's exciting to already have seen a little bit of fitness
come back and feel that endurance base start to, to
(08:47):
widen and deepen a little bit towhere I feel like I can go a
little bit longer. Like I'm feeling good at the end
of the, the workout as opposed to being gassed.
And I think that will go a long way.
Hopefully we can keep building on that.
Yeah, well, and, you know, one more note on it being the boring
part and then we'll get to the exciting part of the month.
(09:08):
But, you know, mobility exercises are like not the thing
that's going to get you chicks at the gym.
So you just, you got to, you know, remember that you're doing
it for a purpose. Right, Right.
And that's the last I'll say about it being boring.
Now for the exciting part, we'regoing to really start to like
(09:28):
run with a purpose. So like let's let's come up with
some specific types of runs. We're going to call like a
normal run, like a base run. We're still running three to
four days a week this month, butwe're going to take two of our
runs and we're going to make them specific.
(09:50):
One of them's going to be a hillrun, like hill repeats or just a
hill. And the other one's going to be
a tempo run. A tempo run is going to be like
a high intensity, almost like a race effort run.
Whereas now we've kind of been going out with like said we're
going to walk, we're going to move, we're going to run just to
(10:12):
get out. Now we're going to kind of try
to bring a purpose into the run.And so each week on out of your
four runs, you'll do like 1 hill, one tempo and then two
base runs. All right, yeah, there.
There's already a little bit of fear.
Creep it in right there, Tempo runs sounds.
Hard tempo runs are hard and when it comes to the hill runs
(10:37):
like let's not go, you know, runup Sugarloaf just yet.
So I would probably like, you know, start out with repeats
instead of a big one big hill. There's, you know, it's obvious
that running uphill is hard, butrunning downhill is arguably
(10:59):
harder on your body. So it's not going to be as hard
on your muscular, you know, system, but it's, again, there's
a lot of impact and that impact wears you out.
And when, when it's almost like body hardening, you know, so
like going uphill when you're tired, it's just like it's
(11:21):
exhausting, but going downhill when you're hurting hurts like
it, it, it doesn't feel good andyou slow down exponentially.
So when we're talking about hills, we're talking about and
down, not, not just going up. Now we go find like a, you know,
like a quarter mile hill, something that's going to take
(11:42):
you a few minutes to go up and do a few of those repeats in a
regular run. So run yourself over to a hill,
do some up and down work and then run yourself back.
I think that's a good way to getget the hills going later.
We're going to want to be doing big climbs, big descents, but
(12:03):
for now, let's run ourselves over to the hill, run up and
down at a few times start to like figure out how that feels.
There's a lot of technique, you know, especially if you're
you're starting to incorporate some trails in into the runs.
Running downhill on trail is, you know, it's like loose rock
in there's every steps different.
(12:23):
You really got to focus. So you just like getting
yourself in into that. And then when it comes to like
the tempo run, don't like we've talked about last month, you
know, and, and stuff like don't you don't need to like go out
the gate sprinting like more ease yourself into it.
But let's put in some like hard miles in the middle of the run
(12:47):
that are they should feel like they should.
You should really be exerting yourself.
Your heart rate should be high. You shouldn't be able to carry
that pace for for too long. And then your other two runs,
you know you're going to want tokeep those at like your base.
Same thing. Walk at the start, get going,
get yourself moving, run, walk alittle bit in the middle, walk
(13:10):
at the end. But also we're going to increase
our mileage just a little bit each week.
So we're last last month we wereprobably what like 9 to 10/11/12
something around there. Now we're maybe getting up close
to 15 or so, just maybe each runis 1 mile longer.
(13:31):
Don't, we're not looking to do like any long runs yet.
You might start to be feeling like you're ready, like I could
go out and run 10. But again, like there's a whole
recovery part of it. And we're, we're really focused
on consistency in the frequency and like dialing in like how we
(13:51):
run and kind of running with a purpose this month.
I like it yeah, we we should definitely make sure we we come
back to like hills, hill and pacing strategy for sure in in
detail. I don't think we need that quite
yet. It's it's time to just start
doing it right. Let's conquer some hills, do
some repeats, get the body feeling it, and then we can talk
(14:13):
about how it incorporates into an actual race pace, pacing,
strategy. You know, how hard are you going
up how and down and and those types of things.
Excited to cover that a little later, but for now, yeah, get
out there and do some hill repeats.
Yeah. And don't you know, keep the
heart rate up, You're probably going to be walking on the hill.
If you pick a like a big enough,you know, steep enough hill,
(14:37):
pick something significant, you know it's it's going to, you
know, it should be a workout. You know where your base runs
are kind of like a consistent when you get into the hill, it
should be like a different feeling.
It should be a you should be a little bit of a grind.
Yep. And then coming down, you don't
want to let off. OK, that was my next question.
(14:59):
Do I get to walk back down the hill?
No, you want to run, all right, I think run down the hill.
I you know, you want in this we'll talk about later.
You don't you we're really not thinking about the race yet, but
you don't want to give up free speed, you know, and downhill
has a lot of momentum with it and then you know, so you but
(15:22):
what I think you want to do is you want to build your body up
to withstand the impact of running down the hill, but you
want to accept that gravity, right?
The hard it's, it's harder on your body, but it's not hard on
your cardiovascular system, if that makes sense.
It does, yeah. We're going up.
You're probably taking really short steps and it's really
close together. And it's not really that like
(15:44):
impactful on your body. But your cardio is probably like
your heart rates through the roof and you can't breathe and
it's not coming out of your, youknow, so they're just different
difficulties, but you really want to get good at both.
OK, sounds good. So bomb it up the hill.
Little active recovery coming back down, still moving fast,
pushing forward. All right, all right.
(16:05):
Wrapping my head around it. It's it's, it's feeling good.
I feel excited about it. I think it's exciting because
you're going to get to incorp bygoing out and seeking out a hill
you know you're going to put yourself up on in a different
position. You're going to see some new
things. It's going to start to get
exciting. You're going to start to feel, I
(16:26):
would imagine by the end of the month, the hill that you choose,
if you stick with like the same one is going to be way smaller
than it was the first time you ran up it.
Yeah, you know, and just. Like month one when everything
started to get a little easier week by week.
Yeah, I like that. I mean, that comes back to our
mantra for the month, right? Dream big, but create realistic
(16:46):
goals. We're staying realistic, but
we're we're dreaming. I like that.
Yeah. And I think there's a little bit
of, I don't know how to say it, but this is kind of where you
can start to feel like an athlete.
(17:07):
OK. You know, if you're that's sexy.
Well, like who's doing hill repeats, You know what I mean?
Yeah. Like you weren't doing hill
repeats last month. You're just trying to get off
the couch. So, you know, there's like, it's
like a reward, you know, like now you're like, you know, OK,
like I'm going up some hills. Like I'm doing something.
I'm doing like some specific runworkouts that's like going to be
(17:31):
good for your mental, your mental health or I don't know,
mental health or just, you know,your motivation.
It's going to keep you motivated.
You're going to start to feel like this is have paying some
dividends, but it's going to keep introducing harder things
to you, you know, as the plan goes on.
I like it. Are we still cross training this
(17:53):
month? I still get to do some other
stuff. Yeah, absolutely.
Cool. That's exciting.
Yeah, you, I don't bike riding, rowing, the gym, rock climbing,
you know, Yeah, rock climbing isgreat for mobility, all the
like, different movements, you know, and the high stepping and
(18:14):
the twisting your body in weird ways.
Rock climbing is a really good. I love to go like scramble, like
we're really lucky up here. So I go over to like North Shore
and there's like boulders that are really easy to climb around
on, but you can get in all different kinds of movements and
all different, you know, I thinkthat stuff's really good to keep
(18:35):
your body in a, in a healthy place.
Riding a bike's great too. Riding a bike is is awesome.
Great. Yeah, that sounds good.
Even though it's freezing out. And the last week of our month,
we get to pull back a little bit, relax a little bit again.
We're going to get deeper into recovery and and that that taper
(18:55):
week, if you want to call it that, maybe that's more of like
right before the race, but it's still more of a recovery week
than than the other 3. So we'll what are we doing
there? Yeah, we're going to.
Like back off significantly so, you know, cut it down to 2 two
runs. I mean, if you're extra tired,
just run once, do the cross training or, you know, run twice
(19:20):
and and don't do the cross training.
If you, you know, maybe there's a opportunity to take a nap
instead of do a run, sleep in a little bit, you know, don't
waste it by partying, you know, but but take a little bit more
(19:42):
time to recover. So it's very important as we
progress to have these off weeks.
So the, the, the more we get into this training, the more the
off weeks going to feel like a disservice, you know, because
you make I got to be, I got to, you know, your body's going to
(20:02):
be used to running, you know, and doing all this stuff, but
it's progression. You, you're going to gain a lot.
Your body, your muscles, your all you're doing.
For these first three weeks of the month is breaking your body
down and then you give yourself a week to let your body kind of
build itself back up. The idea being you come out of
that rest week stronger because,you know, you break it all down
(20:26):
and then it comes back and it's stronger if you just keep
breaking down and you you don't let yourself come back.
That's that's injury. You know, that's like injury one
O 1. So yeah, take enjoy the week.
That's like, you know, as we talked about, like with your
schedule, like this is schedule your your trip schedule your
thing. You know, I mean, don't you
(20:47):
don't have to have running overtake your life, But if you
want to go do something, see if you can put it into that last
week, you know, just make it, make it easy on yourself.
A little mental break, a little physical break, and then you
jump back into it at the start of next month.
Awesome. Yeah, that feels good.
Dream big realistic goals. Oh yeah.
(21:09):
Feel good about month 2. Just go do it.
That's it. All right.
Cheers. Cheers.
Couch to 50K is an elevated SoCal project.
All rights reserved.
This is where discipline overtakes motivation.
You know, motivations, you know a luxury when you have it, but a
lot of times discipline is goingto is going to be the thing that
you need to get through it. I like that I've never thought
of motivation as a luxury, but that makes total sense because
sometimes it's just not there. This is Couch to 50K How to
(00:22):
finish your first ultra marathon.
All right, let's dive in here. Mobility.
All right, dude, how are we? Doing doing good.
You know, it's month 2 month 1 was awesome and but also
(00:47):
difficult, right? There was a lot of soreness just
and fatigue. You just like general, I'm just
tired, you know, mainly like immediately after the next
morning and like, you know, following the the protocol here,
like walking, lot of walking, running and doing my cooldowns,
(01:10):
doing doing the things we're talking about.
But it, it still got me, you know, it, it definitely still
kind of, it was just really hardright in, in outside of the
workouts, Like I, you know, I'vegot the, the excitement and the
momentum and there there's the, everything's in place and, and
that's a lot of fun. But outside of, of the program,
(01:32):
right? Like the normal times when I'm
trying to play with my kids, I'mlike, oh man, I just want to go
to bed. Yeah, I did.
I think that will that will get better that part.
But bad news, we're going to call month 2 the boring month.
Like you mentioned that excitement, you know that first
(01:53):
that initial like, oh, I'm excited, I'm doing something
new. I'm going to get after it.
The motivation now you're still really far away from the goal.
We still got a long way to go and you're not going to do a ton
different this month. We're just going to slowly
increase a few things. And so it's going to be a
(02:16):
challenge because you got to, you got to want to.
This is where discipline overtakes motivation.
You know, motivations, you know a luxury when you have it, but a
lot of times discipline is goingto is going to be the thing that
you need to get through it. I like that I've never thought
of motivation as a luxury, but that makes total sense because
(02:36):
sometimes it's just not there. Yeah, it's a weird thing, right?
Like sometimes you're just not, you're not feeling it, like you
don't want to do it. And that's where the the
discipline comes in. And, you know, being so far out
still, there's going to be the thought of like, I still got
time, you know, I still got time.
But you know, we're, we're progressing.
(02:58):
We're progressing every week. And you don't really have time
to not progress every week to get to the goal.
One of the things that we're going to kind of put in our head
this month, our mentality is going to be the dream big, but
create realistic goals. And what we mean by that is like
what you're going to go try and do, you know Holcomb Valley race
(03:20):
up here in Big Bear, 33 miles inthe mountains in June, Like that
is hard. That's a big goal.
That's a really big goal for anybody to do.
But you don't need to tell yourself you're going to go out
there and win the race. You need a, the realistic goal
of finishing and being successful is big.
(03:41):
That's a big, that's a big goal as it is.
So don't overdo it mentally. You know, remember that when you
started, you were on the couch and you're going to run 33 miles
in the mountains. And that's a huge goal anyway.
And we're going to train like the goal is extremely important
(04:02):
and it matters and but we're going to set a realistic 1.
And so for you, that might be this time, right?
For somebody else, it might meanthis time, right?
We're not, we're not really getting into the specifics of
what your goal is, but let's be realistic with what we're
training for. I think that will help from
(04:25):
getting yourself to a place where you beat yourself up.
You start comparing yourself to other people.
You start looking at, you know, what this guy's doing, what that
guy's doing. All of a sudden, your goal might
not seem as big. You know, it's like, oh, like,
I'm not like going out there to win.
Why do I need to follow this plan?
And why do I need to run four days?
(04:45):
You know, I could probably do itif I only run two days a week,
you know? But remember, we're coming off
the couch. We got six months to get
ourselves ready for a 50K, and that's going to take a lot.
That's a really big goal and let's just keep it in check.
I like it. Yeah.
No, that's really helpful because it's, I've always been a
bit of a procrastinator. And so that that mindset
(05:08):
definitely rings true for me. Like, oh, it's four months away
still, I could probably skip this one.
I'll make up for it next week, right?
And then that's just a week lostor at least a workout lost,
right? Yeah, absolutely.
And that's, that's, that's an important thing to keep in mind
for sure. Well, and so we named this the
specifics of this month mobility, not that we're super
(05:33):
old, but we're getting up there and we just spent a month, you
know, running significantly morethan we did for the last year.
And one thing we don't want to do is injure ourselves.
I think as we get older, overuseinjuries like the most common
thing, and I think a good way toprevent that is to really on
(05:55):
your your workouts, you're like outside of running workouts
start to like incorporate some kind of mobility exercises.
I think like YouTube or, you know, just Google like a like
APT routine for like your your hips and your knees.
(06:15):
But just like generally activating outside of running is
going to go. It's really going to help as we
progress like. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I've been through a couple rounds of of PT and I remember
coming out of it this years ago,but thinking all of this could
have been prevented if I would have been doing these exercise
(06:37):
I'm doing for rehab as prevention, right.
Where's the PT as prevention? I wish that was preached about a
little bit more. Maybe the industry doesn't want
us to, but it's, it's a big thing, right?
Like if, if you're doing those exercises and strengthening the
little muscles and the stabilizer muscles and that's
how you prevent the injuries in the 1st place.
(06:58):
And that's probably the thing that I'm most worried about
derailing this whole thing is some sort of injury or sickness
or something that would set me back, call it a month, right?
And now we're out of time, right?
I mean, I'm, I'm doing this in real time, six months leading
right up to this race. Like there there is no time to
(07:19):
be wasted or, or to take a set back.
But that's, that also goes to sustainability.
I mean, that's how I'd like to live my whole life, right?
Nobody wants to be sick. Nobody wants to be tired and
injured and, and trying to always overcome that, right.
Let's stay out in front of it, prevent it, stay healthy, stay
fit. And, and, and like switching
Gears of touch, like I have already felt coming out of the
(07:42):
first month, the difference in, you know, I talked about the
pain already, but I've, I've also noticed the, the uptick in
fitness, right? It, it, it only took a a quick
month of really low intensity stuff as as prescribed that
coming out of it and like, OK, yeah, it's only been two days.
(08:02):
I feel ready to go, you know, and, and that's a cool feeling,
which does kind of balance out for me mentally the, the
motivation side of it, right? Because that's a motivator for
me because I'm like starting to see the changes or feel the
changes, the better way of putting it, right.
Haven't seen a huge change in like my body composition or
(08:24):
anything like that. Not yet.
It's coming. It's coming, it's coming.
But you know, it's, it's, it's along game.
We're playing the long game here.
We're doing a long race. It's a, it's a long, a long
thing that we've set up and I, Iwant to stay patient at the same
time. But it's exciting.
It's exciting to already have seen a little bit of fitness
come back and feel that endurance base start to, to
(08:47):
widen and deepen a little bit towhere I feel like I can go a
little bit longer. Like I'm feeling good at the end
of the, the workout as opposed to being gassed.
And I think that will go a long way.
Hopefully we can keep building on that.
Yeah, well, and, you know, one more note on it being the boring
part and then we'll get to the exciting part of the month.
(09:08):
But, you know, mobility exercises are like not the thing
that's going to get you chicks at the gym.
So you just, you got to, you know, remember that you're doing
it for a purpose. Right, Right.
And that's the last I'll say about it being boring.
Now for the exciting part, we'regoing to really start to like
(09:28):
run with a purpose. So like let's let's come up with
some specific types of runs. We're going to call like a
normal run, like a base run. We're still running three to
four days a week this month, butwe're going to take two of our
runs and we're going to make them specific.
(09:50):
One of them's going to be a hillrun, like hill repeats or just a
hill. And the other one's going to be
a tempo run. A tempo run is going to be like
a high intensity, almost like a race effort run.
Whereas now we've kind of been going out with like said we're
going to walk, we're going to move, we're going to run just to
(10:12):
get out. Now we're going to kind of try
to bring a purpose into the run.And so each week on out of your
four runs, you'll do like 1 hill, one tempo and then two
base runs. All right, yeah, there.
There's already a little bit of fear.
Creep it in right there, Tempo runs sounds.
Hard tempo runs are hard and when it comes to the hill runs
(10:37):
like let's not go, you know, runup Sugarloaf just yet.
So I would probably like, you know, start out with repeats
instead of a big one big hill. There's, you know, it's obvious
that running uphill is hard, butrunning downhill is arguably
(10:59):
harder on your body. So it's not going to be as hard
on your muscular, you know, system, but it's, again, there's
a lot of impact and that impact wears you out.
And when, when it's almost like body hardening, you know, so
like going uphill when you're tired, it's just like it's
(11:21):
exhausting, but going downhill when you're hurting hurts like
it, it, it doesn't feel good andyou slow down exponentially.
So when we're talking about hills, we're talking about and
down, not, not just going up. Now we go find like a, you know,
like a quarter mile hill, something that's going to take
(11:42):
you a few minutes to go up and do a few of those repeats in a
regular run. So run yourself over to a hill,
do some up and down work and then run yourself back.
I think that's a good way to getget the hills going later.
We're going to want to be doing big climbs, big descents, but
(12:03):
for now, let's run ourselves over to the hill, run up and
down at a few times start to like figure out how that feels.
There's a lot of technique, you know, especially if you're
you're starting to incorporate some trails in into the runs.
Running downhill on trail is, you know, it's like loose rock
in there's every steps different.
(12:23):
You really got to focus. So you just like getting
yourself in into that. And then when it comes to like
the tempo run, don't like we've talked about last month, you
know, and, and stuff like don't you don't need to like go out
the gate sprinting like more ease yourself into it.
But let's put in some like hard miles in the middle of the run
(12:47):
that are they should feel like they should.
You should really be exerting yourself.
Your heart rate should be high. You shouldn't be able to carry
that pace for for too long. And then your other two runs,
you know you're going to want tokeep those at like your base.
Same thing. Walk at the start, get going,
get yourself moving, run, walk alittle bit in the middle, walk
(13:10):
at the end. But also we're going to increase
our mileage just a little bit each week.
So we're last last month we wereprobably what like 9 to 10/11/12
something around there. Now we're maybe getting up close
to 15 or so, just maybe each runis 1 mile longer.
(13:31):
Don't, we're not looking to do like any long runs yet.
You might start to be feeling like you're ready, like I could
go out and run 10. But again, like there's a whole
recovery part of it. And we're, we're really focused
on consistency in the frequency and like dialing in like how we
(13:51):
run and kind of running with a purpose this month.
I like it yeah, we we should definitely make sure we we come
back to like hills, hill and pacing strategy for sure in in
detail. I don't think we need that quite
yet. It's it's time to just start
doing it right. Let's conquer some hills, do
some repeats, get the body feeling it, and then we can talk
(14:13):
about how it incorporates into an actual race pace, pacing,
strategy. You know, how hard are you going
up how and down and and those types of things.
Excited to cover that a little later, but for now, yeah, get
out there and do some hill repeats.
Yeah. And don't you know, keep the
heart rate up, You're probably going to be walking on the hill.
If you pick a like a big enough,you know, steep enough hill,
(14:37):
pick something significant, you know it's it's going to, you
know, it should be a workout. You know where your base runs
are kind of like a consistent when you get into the hill, it
should be like a different feeling.
It should be a you should be a little bit of a grind.
Yep. And then coming down, you don't
want to let off. OK, that was my next question.
(14:59):
Do I get to walk back down the hill?
No, you want to run, all right, I think run down the hill.
I you know, you want in this we'll talk about later.
You don't you we're really not thinking about the race yet, but
you don't want to give up free speed, you know, and downhill
has a lot of momentum with it and then you know, so you but
(15:22):
what I think you want to do is you want to build your body up
to withstand the impact of running down the hill, but you
want to accept that gravity, right?
The hard it's, it's harder on your body, but it's not hard on
your cardiovascular system, if that makes sense.
It does, yeah. We're going up.
You're probably taking really short steps and it's really
close together. And it's not really that like
(15:44):
impactful on your body. But your cardio is probably like
your heart rates through the roof and you can't breathe and
it's not coming out of your, youknow, so they're just different
difficulties, but you really want to get good at both.
OK, sounds good. So bomb it up the hill.
Little active recovery coming back down, still moving fast,
pushing forward. All right, all right.
(16:05):
Wrapping my head around it. It's it's, it's feeling good.
I feel excited about it. I think it's exciting because
you're going to get to incorp bygoing out and seeking out a hill
you know you're going to put yourself up on in a different
position. You're going to see some new
things. It's going to start to get
exciting. You're going to start to feel, I
(16:26):
would imagine by the end of the month, the hill that you choose,
if you stick with like the same one is going to be way smaller
than it was the first time you ran up it.
Yeah, you know, and just. Like month one when everything
started to get a little easier week by week.
Yeah, I like that. I mean, that comes back to our
mantra for the month, right? Dream big, but create realistic
(16:46):
goals. We're staying realistic, but
we're we're dreaming. I like that.
Yeah. And I think there's a little bit
of, I don't know how to say it, but this is kind of where you
can start to feel like an athlete.
(17:07):
OK. You know, if you're that's sexy.
Well, like who's doing hill repeats, You know what I mean?
Yeah. Like you weren't doing hill
repeats last month. You're just trying to get off
the couch. So, you know, there's like, it's
like a reward, you know, like now you're like, you know, OK,
like I'm going up some hills. Like I'm doing something.
I'm doing like some specific runworkouts that's like going to be
(17:31):
good for your mental, your mental health or I don't know,
mental health or just, you know,your motivation.
It's going to keep you motivated.
You're going to start to feel like this is have paying some
dividends, but it's going to keep introducing harder things
to you, you know, as the plan goes on.
I like it. Are we still cross training this
(17:53):
month? I still get to do some other
stuff. Yeah, absolutely.
Cool. That's exciting.
Yeah, you, I don't bike riding, rowing, the gym, rock climbing,
you know, Yeah, rock climbing isgreat for mobility, all the
like, different movements, you know, and the high stepping and
(18:14):
the twisting your body in weird ways.
Rock climbing is a really good. I love to go like scramble, like
we're really lucky up here. So I go over to like North Shore
and there's like boulders that are really easy to climb around
on, but you can get in all different kinds of movements and
all different, you know, I thinkthat stuff's really good to keep
(18:35):
your body in a, in a healthy place.
Riding a bike's great too. Riding a bike is is awesome.
Great. Yeah, that sounds good.
Even though it's freezing out. And the last week of our month,
we get to pull back a little bit, relax a little bit again.
We're going to get deeper into recovery and and that that taper
(18:55):
week, if you want to call it that, maybe that's more of like
right before the race, but it's still more of a recovery week
than than the other 3. So we'll what are we doing
there? Yeah, we're going to.
Like back off significantly so, you know, cut it down to 2 two
runs. I mean, if you're extra tired,
just run once, do the cross training or, you know, run twice
(19:20):
and and don't do the cross training.
If you, you know, maybe there's a opportunity to take a nap
instead of do a run, sleep in a little bit, you know, don't
waste it by partying, you know, but but take a little bit more
(19:42):
time to recover. So it's very important as we
progress to have these off weeks.
So the, the, the more we get into this training, the more the
off weeks going to feel like a disservice, you know, because
you make I got to be, I got to, you know, your body's going to
(20:02):
be used to running, you know, and doing all this stuff, but
it's progression. You, you're going to gain a lot.
Your body, your muscles, your all you're doing.
For these first three weeks of the month is breaking your body
down and then you give yourself a week to let your body kind of
build itself back up. The idea being you come out of
that rest week stronger because,you know, you break it all down
(20:26):
and then it comes back and it's stronger if you just keep
breaking down and you you don't let yourself come back.
That's that's injury. You know, that's like injury one
O 1. So yeah, take enjoy the week.
That's like, you know, as we talked about, like with your
schedule, like this is schedule your your trip schedule your
thing. You know, I mean, don't you
(20:47):
don't have to have running overtake your life, But if you
want to go do something, see if you can put it into that last
week, you know, just make it, make it easy on yourself.
A little mental break, a little physical break, and then you
jump back into it at the start of next month.
Awesome. Yeah, that feels good.
Dream big realistic goals. Oh yeah.
(21:09):
Feel good about month 2. Just go do it.
That's it. All right.
Cheers. Cheers.
Couch to 50K is an elevated SoCal project.
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