The Race Recovery Cycle with CTS Coaches Adam Ferdinandson & Neal Palles #232

Ever wondered how elite trail and ultra runners manage to stay competitive throughout a jam-packed racing calendar? Join us as CTS coaches Neal Pallas and Adam Ferdinandson unlock the secrets to mastering the race recovery cycle. From developing tailored recovery plans to navigating the intricacies of transitioning between different race categories, this episode is loaded with actionable strategies to keep you performing at your peak while steering clear of injury and burnout.

What happens when you need to balance high-intensity training with essential recovery? Addison lays out a comprehensive framework for categorizing race sequences, helping athletes pinpoint the critical phases of their training regimen. Whether transitioning from B races to A races or tackling back-to-back A races like Western States and UTMB, you'll gain clarity on how to optimize your training peaks and recovery intervals. And let's not forget the psychological aspects—physical healing isn't complete without addressing your mental well-being. Discover how maintaining supportive relationships and engaging in enjoyable activities can help you stay mentally sharp and avoid burnout.

Finally, we dive into the practicalities of tapering and reintroducing intense workouts post-recovery. Neil and Adam share their expertise on individualized tapering strategies, emphasizing the importance of choosing races that align with your personal interests and values. Plus, get insider tips on monitoring your progress and knowing when to push the intensity. From determining appropriate recovery times to the benefits of community engagement at races, this episode offers a holistic approach to sustaining peak performance throughout the racing season. Don’t miss our invitation to join us at the Javelina 100 and explore how being part of the CTS family can elevate your running game.

Additional resources:
SUBSCRIBE to Research Essentials for Ultrarunning
Buy Training Essentials for Ultrarunning on Amazon or Audible.
Information on coaching-
www.trainright.com
Koop’s Social Media
Twitter/Instagram- @jasonkoop

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Trail and ultra runners.
What is going on?
Welcome to another episode ofthe CoopCast.
As always, I am your humblehost, coach Jason Coop, and this
episode of the podcast helps usto manage a topic that I know a
lot of athletes have a keeninterest in this time of year,
and that is how to manage therace recovery cycle.

(00:29):
You signed up for a couple ofraces this year, or maybe even a
series of races, and what doyou do in between those races in
order to maximize your successfor the next race that is coming
up?
This is one of the most commonquestions that I get on
Instagram.
How much recovery do I needafter the first race, or when

(00:51):
can I start training after thefirst race?
And I think the answer to thatquestion has a lot to do with
what the entirety of the cycleactually looks like.
So, on the podcast today, tohelp us put a dent in the answer
to this question, our CTScoaches, neil Pallas and Adam
Ferdinandson, who take us downto the root of what they do with

(01:12):
their athletes and how theyapproach it from a framework
perspective.
So if you have a couple ofraces or several races lined up,
you're going to want to listenclose and hopefully, even if
you're a self coach, you canapply some of the learning
lessons from Coach Adam andCoach Neil to your training and
to your race recovery process.

(01:32):
Alright, folks, with that outof the way, I am getting right
out of the way.
Here's my conversation with NeilPallas and Adam Ferdinandson,
all about the race recoverycycle.
Thanks you guys for coming onthe podcast, just so people can
get voices to names situatedreally quickly.

(01:56):
First off, we've got NeilPalace, one of our coaches.
Neil, you want to say hi?

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Hey, this is Neil Palace.
I'm one of the CTS coaches andI'm also a psychotherapist and
mental performance coach here inLongmont, Colorado, and Adam.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Ferdinandson, you want to give everybody a hello.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Howdy everybody, and I guess I'll introduce myself
too.
I'm an ultra running coach.
I live in Fort Collins.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Colorado CEO Jeff Pierce to his first
ultramarathon period.
Finish right.
He had never done an ultrabefore the Leadville Char 100,
or did he do one?
I'm still confused with this.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
He did a 50k, but there's a pretty big gap between
a 50k and Leadville.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Okay, alright, so just barely an ultramarathon to
an authentic 100 mileultramarathon and you helped him
pace that, which is a big ask,because it's the boss and it's
kind of it's big if you get itright and big if you get it
wrong.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
I like to say yes to things and then realize it was a
mistake right before.
So glad it went well.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Well, we can go over how big of a mistake it was
before.
We had a lot of banter aboutthat waiting at Twin Lakes.
So the topic of the podcasttoday is going to be on the race
recover cycle.
Like you guys, like a few ofyou guys, have been through and
I've certainly been through thisas well we have athletes all
over the spectrum of this wherethey're using the entirety of

(03:14):
most of the year, six months ornine months out of most of the
year, to race, and sometimesthat's one race, sometimes
that's two races, sometimesthat's one race, sometimes
that's two races, sometimesthat's three races, sometimes
it's 12 races.
There's all different kind oflike permutations in this, and
the genesis of this podcast isactually the roots of it are in

(03:35):
one of the more common questionsthat I get asked and that is
how long do I need to recoverafter x being 50K, 50 mile, 100
miler, a specific race orwhatever?
And I normally don't answerthat question very specifically
in a public format, because abig part of that question is

(03:56):
well, what is after X?
Is there something after X?
Is there not something after X?
And there's a whole host ofother things that we're going to
get into, but my point with theintro here is there's context,
that's, of which there are kindof endless variations and
permutations of right, and we'regoing to try to bucket them off

(04:16):
as much as we can to provideathletes some guidance on this,
because we're sitting here inthe end of August recording this
conversation.
There's a lot of athletes thathave either just finished or
they're going to do their firstor second race or somewhere in
the middle of this very muddyprocess, and they kind of want
to know how to navigate this andhow to kind of train for them.

(04:38):
So I'm going to open the floorup to Addison first, because
we're all in the position hereof where we've got to, where we
have to help athletes kind ofmanage the entirety of this
process, from first race tosecond race to third race.
And so I want to start out,adam, with you is.
First off, let's describe thelandscape as you see it in terms

(05:00):
of helping athletes from raceto race.
Can you try to likecompartmentalize?
Compartmentalize it, so tospeak, or at least put it in
generalized categories.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah, I'll do my very best, but first of all, this is
a conversation that hopefullyis happening not right now in
the middle of race season, butthis is a conversation that
typically happens in fall inwinter when you're signing up
for these races during lotteryseason and we'll get to this
more later but so much of itdepends on, kind, of what your
goals for each race are.

(05:30):
So I have broken it down intolike three and a half categories
.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
There is Whoa whoa, whoa, wait a minute.
Half a category, so this islike one, two three and then
three A or subcategory ofsomething else.
You'll find out.
All right, a or subcategory ofsomething else.
You'll find out.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
All right, all right.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
We'll get there, all right.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
All right.
So there is an A race to a Brace, there's a B race to an A
race, then there's a race to arace in the small caveat.
That's kind of a B to an A raceis a training race leading into
an A race and I think that kindof deserves to be its own
category within there and eachof these kind of have

(06:07):
subcategories of how closetogether are they, is the
terrain similar, and it goesinto this kind of flow chart I
have in my mind of how you dealwith each of those and then you
layer it into the athlete's lifeand their goals and you
hopefully come up with a plan.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
Okay, Can I, can we just jump right into the
programming piece of it basedoff of that?
Sorry, neil, I know I was goingto give you a chance to like
silo it off, but I think this isa pretty good launch point.
Yeah, you guys, good with that?
Okay, so the root ofeverybody's question that I
alluded to earlier is they wantto try to get a fix on how much

(06:47):
they should train between theraces.
And the way that I think aboutit in context of the framework
that you just presented, adam bythe way, we had no coordination
before this, but it kind ofperfectly fits into my thought
process is where should the apexof training be Like?
Where should the most importantpart of training, which is

(07:07):
usually the biggest piece oftraining, the most hard, the
most difficult piece of training?
When you're going from B raceto A race, it should be in
between the B race and the Arace.
When you're going from A raceto B race, it should be before
the A race, so before the firstrace.
When you're going from A raceto A race and this is kind of

(07:28):
where it gets tricky, and I justhappen to have a lot of
dialogue recently around thiswith my athletes who did Western
States and now we're going todo UTMB in the order of 10 days
as of when we're recording thispodcast.
So that's definitely A race toA race, two biggest races on the
planet or the most importantraces from an elite perspective
on the planet Western States toUTMB.

(07:48):
My opinion, which is notuniversally held, but my opinion
, is you still apex the trainingoff of the first A race for a
multitude of factors theproximity of the races, how the
training kind of like shapes up,but there's a whole host of
things.
But I still have or at leastwith those athletes that I have

(08:09):
worked with, I've still had themdo their most important their
biggest kind of block oftraining before Western States,
as opposed to cramming it inbetween Western States and UTMB.
But I can certainly see ascenario where the A race and
the A racer have enoughseparation between them to where
the apex of before both ofthose races is the same, and we

(08:31):
can probably have some dialogueon that in just a little bit.
So when?
So I think as a generalizedframework, b to A to B, a to A
the context that is the mostimportant there is where do you
want the hardest part of yourtraining, the most important
part of your training, and usethat as the anchor point for

(08:54):
everything else.
And as a very pragmatic exampleof this, when you're talking A
race to A race, and becauseWestern States and UTMB somebody
can look up the exact weeks inbetween hand, but it's something
on the order of seven.
Because they are so close,there's not the opportunity to
build back up to where you werebefore you entered western

(09:16):
states.
There's not enough time for therecovery process and the build
back up process, and sotherefore, forcing that issue
becomes extremely problematic,because you end up doing too
much and too short of a periodof time, and so you have to rely

(09:38):
on a lot of your kind of likepreviously built fitness.
What is A, b and C or whateveryour rank ordering framework is
extremely important because itdoes set the training ramps from
an early perspective not instone, but it sets them a lot,
because you have this one thingor these two things that you're
kind of like ultimately aimingat, and it's hard to.
Those are, like a, movableobjects right, you can always

(09:59):
move the training around, butyou can't move the races around
because they're a fixed you know, know, there are fixed dates,
unless you're doing an FKT orsomething or something like that
, but anyway.
So I wanted to lay that down assome of the training context
behind that particular framework.
Whether you're looking at A toA, to B to A, really look at it
from the where's A and thenbuild your training to its kind
of most important before thatand then everything else kind of

(10:21):
takes takes care of itself.
So I'm going to turn it over toNeil now, because we're going
to go over a framework first.
I mean, do you want to eitheradd any context to it or is
there a different framework fromhow you actually approach it
from the get-go?

Speaker 3 (10:34):
You know, I think one of the things is looking at
those two different races, likeWestern States or UTMB.
To me those are two really bigdifferent races in as far as the
amount of climbing you're doingat UTMB and how you're layering
that in there.
But knowing that and yeah,those are seven weeks apart,

(10:55):
there's not much you can do, sofocusing on the first one makes
sense.
I was just thinking of my ownexperience of focusing on.
I had a mountain bike race, ahundred mile mountain bike race,
followed a week later by 100mile run, both of them A races.
And the reality is, you knowokay where's my weakness?
The mountain bike, and so thathad to come first.

(11:17):
Had running been my weakness,that would have probably taken
more priority.
And I have athletes who arejust like that.
They're coming from a mountainbiking background and they're
going back into running andwe're still biking, but our
focus is on that running, ifthat makes sense.

(11:37):
Well, so let me back it up tojust generalize the framework
right.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
So you're talking about the lead man, which you do
, not just the 100 bike and the100 run, but those are the
pinnacles of it all.
Yeah, and what makes itproblematic or at least
challenge problematics at theright word really challenging
and also rewarding to do, is thefact that they are two very
hard races that are within closeproximity of each other, that

(12:03):
are different disciplines, onebeing mountain bike and the
other one being running.
And so, from a frameworkperspective, what I'm kind of
hearing from you is look at whatyour biggest limiting factor is
and aim most of the trainingthrough that limiting factor and
kind of leave it up to a littlebit of hope and a little bit of

(12:23):
faith that your strength willkind of take care of itself.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah, yeah, you know, I mean I think about.
I mean like UTMB in my mind isokay, utm comes last.
If someone is not a goodclimber, I want them to become a
good climber in that, you know.
Does that make sense?
Hopefully that makes sense.
You know, and maybe we disagreeon that.
Does that make sense?
Hopefully that makes sense.
You know, and maybe we disagreeon that, but you know, I want
them to be able to do that asopposed to you know some of the

(12:49):
other variables, but they'realso going to gain a lot of that
strength going into Westernthat way.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
So that's how I look at that.
So you worked with one of ourcoaches, madison, on the cycling
piece of it specifically, andremind me how long you two had
been working together before theAlmost a year and a half, two
years almost so shout out toMadison.

Speaker 3 (13:08):
Yeah, to Madison, for sure.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
And you'll fully admit, cycling is not your forte
.
Oh no, especially mountainbiking, oh no, okay good, I just
wanted to get that kind of likeget that out there, because I
think that's an important pieceof it.
So one of the principles oftraining that we try to instill
in all of our coaches is thatyou work your weaknesses as far

(13:31):
away from the event as possible,and that is because they
typically take the most time todevelop and you want to make
sure that you leave adequateamount of space to take care of
those, such that closer to therace, you can really focus on
your fitness and kind of likeother areas.
So I think the way we're goingto talk about cycling a little

(13:51):
bit, but I think the way thelisteners, who are predominantly
a running audience, can alsothink about this, is the analog
being I'm really bad ontechnical terrain or, as you
mentioned, neil, I'm really badat climbing, or I'm really bad
at going uphill.
Why don't you take thelisteners what you and Madison
went through in your weaknessfrom a cycling perspective,

(14:11):
starting like a year and a halfago, to ultimately get you ready
for the Leadville Trail 100mountain bike race, which is a
hard race to complete?

Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah, I mean, you know, in thinking about it and
knowing that run was a weeklater, our focus was really
strength and climbing on thebike.
So doing more it would be forceworkouts and trying to figure
out what a good analogy torunning would be.
But these muscle tensionworkouts were you working
neuromuscular system, and thenthat was a primary objective,

(14:48):
whereas taking the running wasdown to a minimum.
I think we had 75 minutes as along run, which is really really
a low, short amount of timeearly on we're talking october
last year, you know.
You know, and progressing,really focusing on the run and
late, or focusing on the bikeand focusing on time at

(15:09):
intensity, as as we got closerand closer to the race, and yeah
, so you know, I don't know ifthat kind of helps projected,
but we, you know.
But again, also working ontechnical skills, you know, and
getting out on the trails asmuch as I can early on, so
that's not even a factor.
You know that not out on thetrails as much as I can early on
, so that's not even a factor.
You know that, not even afactor when it comes to August.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
So the analog if we want to bring it into the
Western States UTMB prototype,which is not the only prototype
that's out there, and for theathletes that there are all
these similar analogs, and ifyou're part of this analog group
, I think that you can easilykind of translate this into what
you're doing is if yourweakness, for example, to use

(15:52):
climbing as the as one of theexamples that we've used before
is you would try to shore upthat weakness as early as
possible October in your case,october before an August next
year race.
That's eight months, ninemonths, right, yeah, that's a
long period of time to notexclusively work on that but
work on it to to to a greatextent.

(16:13):
And then, as the race kind ofcomes forward, is where the more
classical fitness andperiodization and time and
intensity and things like thatstart to take place alongside
the other things that you can do.
That might make a difference.
Right, right, absolutely.
Adam, do you want to addanything to that?

Speaker 2 (16:36):
Not too specifically to that, but I do want to almost
go back and answer youroriginal question because I like
to give specific answers tovague, frustrating questions
like how long do I recover afterUltras, because we love to say
it depends.
We know people are listening.
That could probably rip apartany answer you give with some

(16:56):
other counterexample, but mykind of framework, just to put
some sort of hard numbers on it,is if you're racing a hundred
miler, you probably aren't goingto be back to your best health
and or doing significanttraining where it looks and
feels good for three to sixweeks.
It's a big range.

(17:17):
It can be longer, it can maybebe shorter, probably not.
Though 50 miles to a hundred Ktwo to three weeks, and a 50K
three days to two weeks,depending on.
Is a 50K a giant stretch foryou?
Was it an easy paced trainingrun?
So it runs the gamut.
I wanted to give some hardanswers that the listeners can

(17:38):
at least see if they're in somesort of ballpark of
reasonableness.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
Okay, so let's expand upon this a little bit.
Neil, you can kind of give yourframework and then I'll go
through mine, because that isone of the bigger.
As I mentioned from the onset,one of the bigger questions on
everybody's mind is how do Idetermine how much recover I
need after X?
So you're trying to providesome hard answers there and
people can write in theirnotebooks or etch in their mind
the framework that you've justgiven Neil their notebooks, or

(18:04):
etching their mind the frameworkthat you that you've just given
Neil.
What do you have to say or addto that?

Speaker 3 (18:07):
I want to know what happened during the race.
You know, how was the, what wasthe intensity, what happened
during the race?
So if they run a hundred milerand they come out of it with
Rabdo, for example, you know, onthe extreme side we might want
a little bit more recovery, youknow.
And or if they've been, ifthey've had races after races,

(18:29):
we want, we probably want alittle bit more timeframe.
I mean, you know, even lookingat myself without their five
races in a period of two months,I'm looking definitely three
weeks, you know, not thinkingabout another race,
psychologically, I don't want toeven go there for a little bit.
Some people, they have thatdrive to do that.

(18:50):
But if we can help them todevelop that, to realize that
your fitness isn't going todisappear overnight, we're
probably jumping into adifferent question and we could
work ways to not have thatfitness disappear but also to
get that recovery in is, I mean,it's so critical.

(19:11):
So, yeah, I think you know,yeah, I'm going to go back to
that.
It depends on the individualand the response to the race.
You know, if they, if theirlegs are completely trashed or
their butt there, they've gotthe little niggles that we need
to take care of, then it's goingto be different.
You know, if it was a marathon,you know, and I've got a lot of
athletes who'll do a fastmarathon in April and they want

(19:32):
to do an ultra Sometimes theywant to do an ultra in May.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
Boston marathon and then an ultra right after that.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
I know you have athletes like that, Okay, okay
okay, you know, and we got toyou know, structure it.
You know, we got to you know,you structure it.
So how does that work?
And I also convinced that, okay, maybe those three easy weeks
is going to lead to that betterultra in a month.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
Yeah, so, adam, while while you're going through that
and Neil was discussing this aswell I went back really quick
and kind of spot checked.
Some of my athletes that I justmentioned have this like
Western States UTMB prototype,and most of those athletes are
using about two and a half tothree weeks before really
turning the training back on.
Now that's not to mean thatthey sit on the couch for two to

(20:17):
three weeks, but thatgeneralized timeframe I think is
pretty close.
Maybe an elite athlete, like Isaid, two and a half weeks at
the very minimum, but your threeweek timeframe for anybody else
who's reasonable, as long asit's a reasonable a hundred and
you don't have rhabdo and or youdidn't, just you know
completely, you know under kindof a contentionally underperform

(20:38):
right, use it as a trainingrace, I guess, is a better way
to put it, I think as well.
I think is very well put.
And knocking my memory bankaround a little bit, I can't
remember the time where I'veever, even where there's been,
even when there's been kind oflike race pressure put on, I
can't remember a time ever whereI've had an athlete elite or a

(20:58):
regular athlete that has usedless than a two week period
between a hundred mile race andthem what I would call serious
training, or reasonably training, to something else.
I can't imagine that I've everdone it with less than two weeks
.
It's always been greater thantwo weeks.

(21:19):
So if you want to kind of put alower boundary on it or some
guardrails around it, theguardrail around that lower
boundary, I would certainly say,is two and a half weeks and
then becomes the other questionwhich we've kind of already
gotten into, is what should themaximum amount of time be before
you start to see reasonablefitness deterioration?

(21:41):
Adam, you look like you're chomchopping at the bit to comment
on this one, so what do you haveto say about that?

Speaker 2 (21:49):
I was just going to cheekily respond that it depends
, but usually along the way inthis process.
It depends on yes, Along the waytoo, you'll get some period of
time usually like a week to 10days out, where the muscular
soreness is gone, the blistershave healed, you no longer
remember the pain and you'regoing to feel kind of fresh and

(22:10):
fine walking around and you'regoing to think you're recovered
and that your coach is a bigbaby holding you back so much.
So that's something I see playout a lot.
And then you go out and you dosay 90 minutes or two hours.
You're going to feel thatfatigue.
So I just wanted to bring thatup that just because you're
walking around and feeling okaydoesn't mean that you're ready
for some serious training.

(22:31):
There's some deeper, lingeringfatigue.
But so the goals after the race.
If there's another race close by, then you don't want to play
the game of pushing out recoveryas far as you can, while
getting away with it, Unlessthere's some sort of other
factors could be your kid istraveling for a baseball team

(22:52):
across the US.
Those are realistic things thathappen all the time.
And then you play that game ofhow long can we maintain If
you're going into an off-season?
I think it's a different story,Not really what we're talking
about here today, but thenthere's a lot of lifestyle
elements there and you can pushit out quite a bit.
You probably don't want to gono intensity for too long.

(23:14):
You want to sprinkle otherparts of their life and have
those take the wheel for a bit.
And the question is,legitimately, what can I get
away with and maintain?
And I know we've kind of saidinternally no one comes to us to
maintain.
But I think in the short termit's actually a very common

(23:36):
proposition that people have.
So you want to be able to havethat conversation and if you
want to put a hard guideline onit, you know, if you were going
into your 100 miler doing 10hours a week, then you could get
away with a month or two ofdoing five hours a week, maybe
sprinkle some intensity.
In the second month you couldprobably even do less than that
and I don't think it's not much.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
It's not much is what you're getting to.
I mean, that's a 50% reductionthat a lot of people would kind
of get bored with, but in termsof I'll use the word preserving
as opposed to maintainingpreserving your fitness and
improving other areas of yourlife that you usually have to
put on the back burner.
That's why I don't like theword maintenance, because really

(24:18):
, if everything is homeostaticright, if everything is the same
, then we really aren't doingour jobs.
We've got to improve something,and it's not always related to
somebody's.
You know cardiac output ormuscular endurance, or you know
lactate threshold, ftp orwhatever we want to say.
Sometimes those get preservedor at least minimally

(24:39):
deteriorated and other areas oftheir life improve because of
the structure that we're puttingtogether.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
And you can even use that time to focus on things
like hey, technical running wasan issue in this last race.
So you know, while you have allthis extra time, drive the
extra 20 minutes to thetrailhead with the technical
terrain that you don't like, andif you roll your ankle it's not
a huge deal.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah, you know what I use this time to do is build
brownie points.
I do everything I can.
You know I put a lot of timeinto, you know, travel around
the summer, during races anddoing training and things like
that.
I definitely burn my fair shareof brownie points.
And then when I'm not doingthat, I build those brownie
points back up during the winteror whatever, and then I deploy

(25:21):
them.

Speaker 3 (25:21):
You're talking about at home, at home, definitely at
home.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
Yes, definitely at home between me and my wonderful
wife Liz, who's very supportiveof my coaching career.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
I was doing the same yesterday.
Yeah, exactly, oh, hey, I canhelp with that.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
Let me go get that.
There's been this coat rackthat we were given, I think, at
Christmas, and it's now Augustand I have not I have not
installed it on the wall yet, sothat is going to be either an
activity that I do duringtapering for Muggion or
afterwards when I'm building mybrownie points back up.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
Okay, A very reasonable use of the time and
those are literally theconversations that we have with
athletes is things like that.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
So, neil along, this isn't the same line, but I kind
of want to bring in yourexpertise on the
psycho-emotional side of things.
So a lot of times when we talkabout event recovery or race
recovery, we pigeonholeourselves into and I'm just as
guilty of this as anybody elsewe pigeonhole ourselves into

(26:24):
when are we physically capableof performing like we did
pre-race?
When are our muscles not sore?
When have we repaired all ofthe physical damage and things
like that?
And the fact of the matter isthat's only one component of the
recovery process that we'vejust been talking about and
trying to give some guardrailsaround.
So I was wondering if you couldtake some time and kind of

(26:45):
encapsulate this other componentof recovery, which is just as
important, if not more importantin many cases, which is a
psycho-emotional piece of thekind of the toll that the
training and the racing processactually takes.
What can you say to that partof the recovery process?

Speaker 3 (26:58):
And I think you know, one of the biggest components
is preventing burnout.
You know, when we go from raceto race, we are setting
ourselves up to just getemotionally burnt out and, like
you discussed, like we aretaking away from other parts of
ourselves when we're focusing,you know, and some, each

(27:19):
individual is everyone'sdifferent, ok, and everyone has
a life that you know it's goingto be different and they're able
to focus on things a little bitmore so than others.
Me, as a family person, youknow, I have a daughter.
You know what I have neglected,some of those parts, and so I
need to refocus on that and sothat is fulfilling that need for
me and those values that I havethat I need to take care of.

(27:44):
And then you think about themonotony of some of the training
.
Okay, we're doing this.
Okay, now we're back to steadystate runs and we're doing it,
and there's some monotony thatpeople do get, you know,
psychologically, I don't want tosay bored, but it's here we go.
You know, okay, I'm doing thisand there's a grind.
When you stop, that grind, justbreak where you could explore

(28:10):
and go, do something totallydifferent, like for myself, even
looking at it in apsychological perspective,
what's going to help me most isgo and just have a random
adventures, you know, and justgo, and you know, and guess what
I'm keeping fitness, you know,by going on a long bike ride or
checking things out.
And, hey, I want to go up andover the pass and, you know, go

(28:30):
down into winter park and comeback, and, you know, do all that
to go up and over the pass andgo down into Winter Park and
come back and do all that.
And that's feeding this otherneed instead of just training.
So taking that mental break Ithink is huge.
And even if someone's not doingthat mental break and they've
got to get another race, is howcan we change the training up so

(28:51):
it's a little bit lessmonotonous and a little bit more
stimulating in a psychologicalway?
And it's like bit lessmonotonous, you know, and a
little bit more stimulating andin psych, in a psychological way
, it's like oh, this isinteresting.
Yeah, let's do something alittle different here.
How are we going to do that?

Speaker 1 (29:00):
you know, what's interesting is like I've begun
to appreciate over the course ofmy coaching career how
different everybody approachesthat psychological break.
And I'm going to give twoopposite ends of the spectrum
and not to pigeonhole everybodyinto both of these, because
there's endless flavors inbetween these two ends, but I

(29:22):
definitely have both of thesetypes of athletes.
There's the one athlete thatfinishes their apex race and
they don't want to see theirshoes for three months and I
maybe have to encourage them alittle bit more.
Like hey, listen, like go outfor a hike, go ride your bike,
go go do something.
Don't just like put your shoesin the closet but they don't
want to look at it, like that'show it's, like almost, like it

(29:44):
almost evokes like a visceralreaction Like oh my God, I
trained.
I never want to see my freakingshoes again or my pack, or like
some something, some sort ofvisual reminder.
The other end of the other endof the spectrum is they want to
do copious amounts of activitybut not train.
It's like they want to becomelike a serial hobby jogger or

(30:06):
something like that, like theyjust want to go and explore the
mountains because it's therethey most people are really
passionate about being outside.
So they want to go and ridetheir bike 30 hours a week or
they want to go hike 40 hours aweek or something like that, if
they have the capacity to dothat.
Both of those, for thoseindividual athletes, are

(30:26):
psychologically recharging right, because they're doing kind of
what they want to do is whatthey.
But from a physical standpointwe've always got to blend the
physical and thepsycho-emotional.
They're probably too extreme tobe like the most effective to
do both of those.
So I'm wondering I'm going togo back to Neil Adam and then
we'll throw it over to you I'mwondering if you have anything
to say about that, because we dosee these in sports.

(30:48):
Right, ultramarathons attractextreme behaviors and it's a
prototype that I'm sure a lot ofpeople can identify with.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
Yeah, I think you know, just going back to their
goals, what are their personalgoals?
What are the long range goals?
You know?
And there's that you know,there could be that one person
who just, hey, you know they'vehad this floating from race to
race or not.
You know, hey, I want to trythis one, I want to try this one
, maybe next year I'll do this.
Well, let's get a good pictureof what that looks like.
You know, what are the valuesunderneath that?

(31:16):
What are the personal valuesunderneath that?
Maybe adventure really is thatdriving force and we need to go
and, you know, find somethingthat's, you know, an adventurous
race.
You know, but I think you couldfind that middle ground by
really looking at what the longrange, the big picture, is for
them.
What is their ultimate goal?
You know, hey, do I want toimprove my fitness at?

(31:38):
Okay, as a guy in his fifties?
You know, yeah, I want to.
I want to be faster again.
So, okay, what's going to taketo get there while sitting
around for three months?
Probably not going to help methat much.
How can I develop that?
You know, yes, I need time offand I could do some adventurous

(32:00):
things, but maybe I'm throwingin some workouts in there, a
little bit more, you know, andgradually building that, so
working with themcollaboratively to figure out
where that space is.
Now, what are your thoughts?

Speaker 1 (32:09):
Well, okay, I promise to throw it back to Adam, but
I'm going to just mentionsomething cheeky, since you
mentioned 50.
Unbeknownst to you, I'mliterally in the middle of
writing an article for UltraRunning Magazine that I think is
going to come out in theNovember issue, and the title of
it, which I completelyplagiarized from Joe Ferrell and
our mutual colleague JimRotberg, is they wrote a book

(32:32):
called Faster After 50, but I'mtaking a take off, I'm playing
off of that a little bit, orsorry.
The book is Fast After 50.
And so my take on it is fast inparentheses er after 50
question mark and one of thecheeky title aside, one of the
points in this short 2000 wordarticle that I make mention of

(32:54):
is that when you do reach 50,one of the things that you have
to change is being moreconsistent over longer periods
of time at the expense of reallybig peaks and valleys in your
training.
That's a big change.
As athletes ages is that whenthey're young and full of
testosterone and piss andvinegar and things like that,
they can handle big, huge30-hour weeks and then go down

(33:17):
to zero weeks for weeks on endand bounce back because they
have the underlying youthfulphysiology to accommodate that
when you're in your 50s and thatphysiology has been compromised
.
One of the things amongst manythat should change is those
peaks and valleys.
Not that they don't exist, butjust that they're smaller, and

(33:38):
that makes all the sense in theworld, like if you spent three
or four months doing nothing.
Neil, first off, I don't wantto be around your household if
that was ever the case but justfrom a physical yeah, just bad
scene, but just from a physicalstandpoint, that's a way bigger
hole to dig yourself out of.
As opposed to adam.
How old are you?
You can, I'm 26.

(33:58):
26 as opposed to half your age,26, adam ferdin henson.
If he took three months off,he'd probably be right back to
baseline in like two weeks.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
It's amazing seeing that difference of you, know,
and all my athletes, yeah, youknow, I mean I have folks that
are in their 20s and folks thatare in the 50s and 60s and it's
definitely that you have to have.
You have to have thatmaintenance and I know
personally, if I don't, yeah,there's trouble in the household
all right, adam.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
So we picked on your age for too much, so you know
you get to jump in you gave itaway.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
That's a carefully protected secret there.
But as far as managing theathlete's emotional state
between these races, I think notexactly what we just said.
But a lot of times you hearthat we listen to their feedback
, we wait until they're excitedto race again, and what I also
listened to is the feedbackbefore the race, because
sometimes everything kind ofwashes out after a week and they

(34:54):
can maybe think that they feelmore fresh.
But if all of the comments werekind of negative, like oh my
gosh, another day in the hot sun, those kinds of comments that
will play into how I feel it out.
Because as much as I trust allthe athletes, I think I'm also
here to be the person that sayslike actually, you were really
suffering a few months ago and Iknow you well and I know that

(35:15):
you want to keep pushing and itmight be to your detriment.
So sometimes stepping in andpushing back just a little bit
and you'll see the full range,just like Hoop was saying,
people that will take way toomuch off time and just run away
with it and, you know, to thedetriment of their own fitness,
which is fine if they're okaywith that.
But then there's people wherethere's a lot of anxiety when

(35:41):
the training is taken away andthey are texting you every day
waiting when is it coming back,when is it coming back?
They know what numbers theywere doing before, they're very
aware of it, and so you have tomanage that and sometimes push
that out further than they wouldlike.
And so you have to manage thatand sometimes push that out
further than they would like.
Even if there's an abundance ofexcitement and motivation to
get back to the training,Sometimes you have to step in a
little extra.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
I think the framework that we're all kind of circling
around is this kind of like two, this like two pronged gateway
to get back into training, andit's not a first prong and a
second prong, there's both ofthem.
One prong is the physical side.
When are they physically, youknow, capable of running again,

(36:21):
repair all the muscle damage,repair whatever it's kind of
like going on?
there's a myriad of stuff fromyou know, aches and pains to
rhabdo, as we mentioned earlier,but repair the physical side.
Second piece of it is thepsycho-emotional side and that's
do you want to go and trainLike, do you have like the fire
inside of you to go back andkind of train?
And I know that those arereally kind of like fuzzy

(36:41):
gateways right, we don't havelike stoplight monitoring
systems to do both of those.
But I think that's fine and ifyou're paying attention to both,
I think you've got a prettydecent framework.
I'm going to throw a surprisequestion at you guys.
So if you need to stop andthink about it, please do so and
you can throw it back to me andI'll help you stall.
But a common thing that a lot ofathletes will want to do and I

(37:03):
know a lot of coaches do this aswell is to provide some sort of
like workout as a little bit ofa litmus test to one or both of
those gateways that I justmentioned.
So instead of just doing easyrecovery run 30 minute recovery
run, 60 minute recovery run andgo spin on the bike for 40
minutes or whatever, providingsomething of a harder stimulus

(37:27):
just to see if that recoveryprocess on one or two of those
fronts, or both of those fronts,has gone to completion, or to
get a gauge on what percentagethat actually is.
Adam, I'm going to pick on youfirst, since we've left it with
you.
Do you find room in your kindof like repertoire when working
with your athletes to dosomething like that, or what are
your thoughts around it?

Speaker 2 (37:48):
Yeah.
So to be transparent with it,it's actually something I'm just
kind of playing with right now.
I usually don't.
It's something that I've wantedto start doing more and
actually there's a guy who'sprobably doing it tomorrow and
we'll see how it goes.
But I think it can be hard tosee, because I've had the
experience where you think it'sall green lights, all systems go
and you throw a monster workoutat them, thinking that it's

(38:10):
really ready to get back totraining and it can blow up, and
then you have to readjust andthere's the psycho-emotional
component there as well whereit's a hit to their confidence.
My coach thought I was going tobe ready and I'm not.
What's wrong?
So I think the tester workoutgives the coach a buffer and
some confidence before throwingthem into that.

(38:30):
So monitoring the performance,because in all the day-to-day
easy runs it's really hard tokind of look through the data
and say, oh, they're ready,they're ready to go.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
Yeah, and that's kind of what I'm getting at.
It is easy runs are easy topass, or easier to pass than a
hard workout, and I think that'sone of the reasons why you
start to see this as commonpractice, neil.
You go ahead and jump in.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
Okay, don't throw anything at me, because here's
what I'm going to say.
I like using strides, you know,and we'll all introduce strides
, because I think there's aneuromuscular stimulus there and
if they're fatigued, that youknow they're going to, let me
know.
I can feel like that didn'tfeel good, that didn't feel
right, and so if we're doingsomething as simple as you know,
five by 20 seconds, five by 15seconds, with, you know, a good

(39:13):
minute or a minute and a halfrecovery, you know, I'll see.
Okay, can we move through that?
That's good, you're able tohandle that.
What can we tolerate, you know,can we tolerate something a
little bit harder here, a littlebit longer?
Okay, let's get, let's do atempo run.
So it's like the gateway beforethe gateway, before the gateway
you know I think you know, and Iknow you know that I can speak,

(39:33):
I'll speak for myself.
When I do that, if I'll dostrides, I'm like, oh yeah, my
body is not right.
It's a bit harder, you know,and that's, and it's really easy
, you know really easy withoutyou know a low cost, right, you
know it's not.
You know there's no, you knowfairly little risk.
Whereas starting to jump into atemp, you know a longer tempo

(39:54):
run, or steady state run, oreven a three hour, you know long
run, I think that is it's agood entry point and then kind
of progressing there, okay, thatworks, let's see how we feel.
That's kind of a progressionover a short period of time, I
think.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
So I've spent a lot of time thinking about this,
neil and I have done that in thepast and I do maybe not
specifically with strides, butwith a smaller workout and then
a slightly bigger workout asbeing like a dual gateway and in
the.
Why I deploy that as opposed tomy normal strategy, which I'm

(40:30):
going to go, which I'm going todivulge in a second, is, if I'm
not sure, like if, for whateverreason, there's just like
something I'm like you should beready to go, but you're not,
and like if I'm just kind oflike questioning things, as I'm
looking at the data and as I'mlooking at their feedback, I
will use a very what I wouldcall a very low dose litmus test

(40:53):
to see if you can go to thenext litmus test, and that's
really what you're doing.
You're using strides orsomething relatively simple 20
minutes at a slightly harderintensity, right?
Something like that to give anathlete an initial and to give
you the feedback of, okay,they're ready for the other
litmus test.
If I'm questioning what's goingon or if I'm unsure about the

(41:16):
timeframe, I'll use a two-stepprocess.
Normally, when I use thattwo-step process, it's 50% and
then 80%, and what I mean bythat is is I take a workout and
that's let's just say it's fiveby 10 minutes, for whatever
reason.
Right, five by 10 minutes.
I'm going to make the mathreally easy.
Let's just say it's 60 minutesof tempo, a 60 minute interval.

(41:37):
So if I wanted to apply, or if Iwanted to use that as a litmus
test, in my normal framework Iwould take about 80% of that,
which is 45 minutes or 50minutes or something like that,
and I'd say go do this workout.
And here's why I like to dothat is first off is if I'm I
feel that if I'm paying enoughattention to what's going on, I

(41:57):
should be able to get therecovery process close so I
don't have to use a two-stepprocess, meaning the first step
is going to be too easy and it'snot going to give me useful
data.
Not that it's useless, but it'snot going to give me useful
data.
So I'd rather jump to a workoutthat is hard enough, that gives
me useful data, but not so hardthat it has the potential to

(42:20):
set the recovery process back in.
Anywhere between 70 and 80% ofthe maximum time at intensity is
kind of like where I've landedfor that, and I would say in
nine out of 10 cases.
I jumped straight to thatbecause I can get a fix on the
at least I feel in in, infairness with many of these
athletes.
I do have a little bit more ofa sophisticated monitoring

(42:44):
process that uses heart ratevariability and subjective
feedback and things like that,and I've gone through that in
previous podcasts and I'll I'lllink that up, but that that
enables me to be a little bitmore not that you're ever
certain, but it gives you alittle bit more confidence that
you've got the timeframe righton when that first workout is
going to be.
So by using that 80%, I feelthat both I get first off a

(43:06):
productive workout, because 80%of your maximum volume and
intensity is still a productiveworkout, but also a big enough
stimulus that you really get agood litmus test of hey, are
they ready to go?
And then you can kind of liketitrate from there.
Okay, you know, if they're 90%recovered or whatever you want
to figure, okay, we're going togive a little bit more space
between this workout and thenext one.
If they're a hundred percentrecovered, you just go.

(43:27):
You just kind of go on.
So to Neil, to specifically tothis like two-step gateway or
this like what I would call likea minimum dose to get one on.
I have done that, but it'swhere it's, usually in the times
where I'm a little bituncertain for whatever thing and
I I just want to test it out.
I don't think there's anythingwrong with it.
I do like to be a little bit,or I think that I can get a
little bit more certain, justwith other things, though.

Speaker 3 (43:50):
That makes sense.
That makes sense.
I also love the idea of lookingat the other data HRV data
Because I think that if everyonecould get on that, that could
be so powerful.
Just having that informationand all the other subjective
information, even you knowyou're thinking about just
general mood, how you know?
How are they feelingemotionally?

Speaker 1 (44:11):
I'm telling you guys, I went through this in one of
our continuing guides in termsof what mood, how you know, you
know how they feelingemotionally.
Yeah, I'm telling you guys, Iwent through this in one of our
continuing guides in terms ofwhat I practically do and it's
taken me a long time to like getsuper comfortable with this.
But a morning heart ratevariability reading, which
anybody can do, you doesn't takean aura ring, it doesn't take a
whoop strap.
All it takes is the camera onthe back of your smartphone and
you can get the free version ofthis and do it combined with

(44:36):
some standardized subjectivemetrics, and with 90% of my
athletes I use this, the defaultmetrics that HRV for training
uses.
I might change it for one orlike one or two athletes, but if
anybody would get on thatprogram, it takes two minutes in
the morning.
Do it for three months.

(44:56):
And this is everybody's hang upis they want instant red light,
green light, yellow light stuff.
Do it for three months.
It took me a year of doing thiswith athletes before I really
wanted to like incorporate it ina in a sophisticated fashion or
in a meaningful fashion.
So think about that for asecond.
It took me a year of doing itacross several athletes where I
was like, okay, this is how I'mgoing to use this, that is the

(45:19):
most effective, low cost, lowestbarrier to entry, lowest time
commitment, everything kind oflines up that you can, that you
can use.
And even if you're just usingit for yourself, if you're
self-coaching far more effectivethan just relying on the
automatic readiness, whatevernumbers that your aura ring
gives you or whatever.

(45:39):
If you just do it in themorning, take the subjective
questionnaire, gather a lot ofdata and then where it really
shines is there's two sides ofthis.
First off, when you're trainingreally hard to keep you away
from the edge and because you'llsee the edge pop up kind of

(45:59):
concurrently in the monitoringas well as with just your total
volume, right, you'll see it popup and you can decide how much
risk that you want.
But the second value, reallyhigh value piece is just what
we're talking about the recoveryfrom the races, because
everybody you're going to lovethis Everybody's subject to
recency bias.
So especially when you'rerecovering from a race, you're

(46:23):
telling me you feel good, butreally what you mean is I feel
better than yesterday, andyesterday I felt like such shit
because I rode 100 miles on mymountain bike really hard.
So it's just like it's not thatyou felt good, absolutely, it's
just that you felt better fromyesterday.
Because that's your point,because that's your point of
comparison.
Using this monitoring systemand trying to get everything

(46:44):
kind of almost to equilibrium isa great way to weed through
that recency bias in this race.
Recover part Neil, go ahead,yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
No, I have.
So I used HRv for training foralmost like three years, maybe
four years, and I could lookback at races and when and you
could see when I was actuallynot recovered and started
training.
Yeah, yeah, I kept on digging ahole, like after bighorn.
I was like, okay, I gotta starttrading for javelina.
And there was a big hole therethe week before the hundred, the

(47:16):
hundred run, you know, afterthe hundred bike I could see a
big hole that I dove intomidweek and you know, and didn't
get out of that and so you know, yeah, it's an incredibly
powerful tool, especially onceyou have that data and you can
look back and reflect on it.
That to me, you know, becauseeveryone's going to be have a
little different response, and Icould look back at things as

(47:40):
well.
I had COVID that week.
I could see where that went andyou start to learn these
patterns that, ok, maybe ittakes me, maybe it takes me
three weeks, maybe it takes mefour weeks, maybe it takes me
two weeks, and that's why I loveit.
I've got at least one athletewho gives me the data and will
you get a red flag things andslow things down if he, you know

(48:00):
, is starting to get into thered here yeah, it's the fact
that you've been using it forthree years.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
You're starting to see the value right, because
it's not just, it's not threeweeks and in really three months
.
I think that's kind of what alot of people recommend, but I
honestly think that's a littlebit too early.
I, with the athletes that I'veworked with that, have done it
for over a year reallyconsistently.
That's when it becomes a highvalue proposition, because then

(48:26):
you can see the patterns andthen it becomes.
It can become a little bit more.
I'm choosing my language reallycarefully here.
It can become a little bit more.
I'm choosing my language reallycarefully here.
It can become a little bit moreof a leading indicator versus a
lagging indicator, which is thesituation you're kind of stuck
with for the first three months,is?
It's usually always a lie.
It's like, oh well, shit.
Yeah, I went really hard thelast two days and now all of my

(48:48):
monitoring metrics are in thetanks.
That's a lagging indicator.
When you can turn it into aleading indicator and change
your workouts for the next twoor three days so that they're
more effective, that's where allthe gold is right there.
Okay, switch topics, and this isto our last topic and we're
going to talk about the taper.
I want to specifically talkabout the taper going into the

(49:08):
second race so we can describetapering.
I've talked about it in my booka lot.
I did a podcast with Inigo SanMilan and just other podcasts
where we've talked abouttapering ad nauseum before.
So I'm not going to get intothe first one but I want to kind
of like compare and contrastand if there is a compare and

(49:29):
contrast between the taper goinginto the first race and the
taper going in to the secondrace, so, adam, we're going to
turn it over to you first.
Since Neil and I just battedback and forth the last topic to
death almost.
What are the comments that youhave in terms of how to actually
look at the taper going into asecond race comparatively to the
tapering that goes on in thefirst race?

Speaker 2 (49:51):
So there's the proximity of the races and
there's also the importance.
If you have another A racethat's six months away, then
you're probably going to bedoing a very similar taper
because you had great traininggoing into it.
It's also something you reallycare about and it's probably
going to be whatever tapersworked for you a solid two to
three weeks, something like that.

(50:11):
Then you get into the realm andwe've all had this where
there's pretty close racestogether, like three to six
weeks apart.
You know, maybe it's a 50 mileand a hundred K and it just gets
weird.
It gets awkward.
No one feels great about itbecause it's not the perfect
structure that coaches like tosee and that the athletes like
to see to really feel confident.
But it doesn't mean thatanything bad is happening there.

(50:33):
But what you'll usually see isyou go through the recovery
period that we've described,depending on the length of the
race, and then you throw in acouple weird weeks of almost
noncommittal.
We're not doing heavy trainingbecause you weren't quite ready
for it, and if you had beendoing heavy training before this
, well then we'd be in themiddle of a more aggressive
taper right now.

(50:54):
So you use the same principles,but people not to my knowledge.
They don't study how to do thattaper.
They study how people taperwhen you have a big training
load going into it and when youdon't, you have to adapt those.
And of course, if it's a lowerpriority then you just do a much
less complex deloading phaseand give them an easy-ish week

(51:16):
before.
It's something like that.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
Neil, do you want to jump in on that one?
It depends.

Speaker 3 (51:22):
On Depends on.
Yeah, it depends on how that Arace, the first race, went, you
know, and so I have you know, wecould probably, you know, okay,
so I've got at least one personwho's going didn't finish
Leadville and they want to goand jump into another race.

Speaker 1 (51:39):
Okay, common scenario .
Yeah, totally common scenario.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
Very common scenario.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
Revenge racing.

Speaker 3 (51:44):
Yeah, binge racing, you know, and I wouldn't call it
binge racing.
I mean, he didn't really, youknow, we didn't get really far
at Leadville, so we're able toget.
Okay, that's kind of more of atrading run.
So we really tapered hard forLeadville.
You know, I do want to have alittle bit of recovery and he's

(52:04):
traveling a long distance too,and so how are we, you know?
So there's those scenarios too,you know that you're that are
playing into it.
Okay, this person's travelingoverseas.
Okay, how do we, you know,manage that?
And so I think right now we'reprobably doing more of a you
know what would be a 10 daytaper and still having bringing
in some intensity that he wasable to manage prior to the
first, the first race.
And it could be a totallydifferent scenario where we have

(52:26):
four weeks and maybe we can doa 14 day taper.
You know, or maybe you know, orhave a lot of marathoners where
, yeah, I want a two-week taperbecause that's been really
intense, and now we're goinginto an ultra, a 50K, and it's
maybe a lower priority, maybeit's a B race.
Okay, maybe we can get awaywith something a little bit

(52:48):
shorter seven days or even 10days or okay, maybe two weeks if
they're really fatigued fromthat first race.
But it's really what's going onwith the individual I hate, you
know, going back to that what's.
You know what's going on withthem.
What are their, what you know,what are their lists of things
they have to do at home.
So you know, you know and youknow how am I managing that for

(53:11):
the you, you know how are theymanaging that right now.
But this guy, you know, goingfrom from leadville, you know,
didn't quite get, you know, 30miles in and then he's going to
to possibly another race.
Yeah, our taper is going to be,you know, we don't have much
volume that we're managing rightnow and so it's within a two
week period really.

(53:32):
Even seven days is probablysufficient, okay, so.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
So I'm going to like walk.
I'm going to kind of walk thelisteners through like how this
kind of like looks sequentiallywhen I do it for athletes.
Like what are the?
What do I look at first?
Well, first off, I'm just goingto assume that I have a taper
that I'm confident that works.
The vast majority of theathletes that I work with I've
been working with for multipleyears and we've figured out a

(53:58):
taper that works for them.
If you're unsure of how yourtaper or if your taper actually
is working, use a standardizedframework and I'm not going to
spend too much time on this butuse a two-week taper.
Cut your volume by 50% thatfirst week and then the week of
the race cut it by another 50%.
You do the same cut to thevolume of intensity.

(54:21):
So if you're doing five by 10minute intervals, normally you
would do two to three by 10minute intervals on that first
week of the taper and then oneto two the second week.
You guys, it's very simple mathhere.
But my point with that is is,assuming I have a taper that I'm
reasonably comfortable withworks.
Well, you guys know how much Ilike to use previous training to

(54:42):
mold and shape future training.
It's always a constant thingthat we're talking about in
coaches what worked in the past,what do you want to change,
what levers you want to pull,and things like that.
Tapering is so highlyindividual that it's one of
those things where, if I findsomething that works, it might
be and I would say definitely is.
Actually, I'm thinking aboutthe only thing that I will copy

(55:03):
and paste on an athlete'sschedule.
If I have two weeks that workas a tapering for an athlete,
I'll take those two weeks andI'll copy.
I'll look at three years agothis worked and I'll copy and
paste it into whatever racethey're going into.
And that's just because if itain't broke, don't fix it.
That's how and I'm using thatto relay how individualized that

(55:25):
can be and if you findsomething, don't monkey around
with it.
So that's the first thing isI'm assuming I have a taper
tapering strategy that worksover to standardized two week
period.
So if I do have an athlete thathas two races, the very first
thing I will do is I will takethat taper, however long it is

(55:45):
two weeks, 10 days, 18 days,whatever magic formula that we
kind of came with and I willliterally copy and paste it from
whatever race it was, theprevious race to the next race.
I will then look at the space inbetween.
And the space in between hasn'tmaterialized yet, right,
because we haven't gone throughthe recovery process that we

(56:07):
just talked about.
Is it going to be two weeks?
Is it going to be three weeks?
Is it going to be six weeks?
As Adam had kind of mentioned,is the top guardrail for a 100
mile race, for example.
But there's going to be sometime in between there.
Sometimes it's going to overlapand sometimes it's not.
But the reason I just take thatentire process and I plunk it
down to see the spacing inbetween is because I want to get

(56:28):
a gauge on does that space inbetween create a similar level
of fatigue in a similarsituation as a normal race?
And if the answer to that isyes, that taper remains the same
Meaning.
If I have enough space betweenthe races to recover and go
through a normal trainingprocess and generate a normal

(56:50):
amount of fatigue, why would Ichange the tapering process
Unless the tapering processdidn't go well?
Right, that was the firstassumption.
We know we have a taper thatworks when that space is
compressed down, or let's saythat there isn't enough time to
generate as much fatigue.
And this is Western States, utmbto a T, and I think that the

(57:10):
athletes that are training forWestern States, my opinion is
they apex their training beforeWestern States and then they do
something on the order of 90% orsomething like that of what
they did at their peak weeksbetween Western States and UTMB.
It's not quite an apex, but I'musing that initial tapering as
the framework and I'm shorteningit, not making it more or less

(57:32):
dramatic, not making the dropoff more or less dramatic.
But instead of 14 days I'll use10 days, instead of 16 days
I'll use 12 days or somethinglike that.
And that's because the fatiguethat you had in the first
situation where you apexed yourtraining isn't quite as high, so
you don't need quite as long ofa period of time to recover
from it.
That's the framework that Ikind of go through when I see

(57:53):
these two races is also alwaysstart at the end, right, I think
that's always good.
Coaching framework is to startat the end, because the end is
your hard anchor point, and thenthe tapering and the resting
process is kind of this it'seither the heart, the equally
hard anchor point or justslightly less rigid of an anchor
point.
I'll start there and then seewhere the overlaps and the gaps

(58:15):
are and if I have enough time totrain, it looks exactly the
same.
And if it's not, if it's notenough or they have to come off,
that apex a little bit, I justshorten the time frame.
Very simple process makesperfect sense.
That's if you get the taperingright, which that's a whole
nother ball of wax.
Inigo majica, that's who I wastrying to think of.
I said inigo San Milan earlier.
Inigo Majica.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
When you said San Milan, I was confused.
Somebody needs to correct me onthat.

Speaker 1 (58:38):
Inigo Majica.
Sorry, both Inigos, I apologizefor confusing you two.
So anyway, any other commentson the second taper of this
tapering process that we're kindof like going through, like
either on the short side or onthe longer side.

Speaker 3 (58:53):
That makes perfect sense, you know, I think short
side or on the longer side, nowthat makes perfect sense, you
know.
I think, yeah, and it's kind ofwhat I was getting.
I like how you structured thatand yeah, and how to look at
that, okay, I like yourframework.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
All right, that's where we're gonna leave it.
Then I was gonna open upanother ball wax.
We'll save it for another.
We'll save it.
We'll save it for another pot.
It was gonna be.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
You can keep going.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
You know it was gonna be the revenge racing which I
always it always like comes up.
I mean, we just got done withLeadville.
We might as well talk about it.
We just got done with Leadville.

Speaker 3 (59:19):
You should bring me on for a revenge race.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
We got a little bit of time.
Maybe we'll kick it around for10 minutes.
We just got done with Leadville.
Leadville notoriously has a 50%finish rate year to year.
I don't know what it was.

Speaker 3 (59:32):
It was a little better this year.
Oh, what it was.
It was a little better thisyear.
Oh good, it was a little bitbetter, and it was.
I think it was warmer, butmaybe even last year, maybe not.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
I don't know Well, anyway, it's notorious for
having a pretty bad finish rate,anything south of 60%.
You got to kind of look at iswhy is that the case?
It's not like it's that hard ofa rate.
It's hard, but it's not likeanomalously harder than anything
else.
But my point, my real pointwith that is is it causes people
to like want to get revenge ontheir poor race performance.

(01:00:04):
They start, they look at ultrasign up and either after the
fact you know, they call us andsay, hey, I signed up for such
and such, which is three weekslater you let's go and do this,
or they ask you preemptively ifit's a good idea.
But does that change the?
Does that change this racerecover process when it cut,
like unlike what Adam mentionedearlier, it's a conversation

(01:00:27):
that you had very early in theyear to set it up.
This is something that came upat the last minute and we're
picking on the Leadville peoplefor a revenge race.
But this comes up in othervariations Races get canceled.
We all have all these like fireclosures and things like that.
Every year you might get COVIDall the time yeah.
You get, you get COVID orsomething like that before the

(01:00:47):
race and you have to, and youhave to shift things, shift
things down.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
but it's hard to stylize all of those

(01:01:37):
no-transcript, then yeah, you go, bring it to another race.
If it's still a race thatmotivates you and excites you
hopefully is a similar terrain,so the training isn't a giant
mismatch then yeah, I kind oflike it.
I think it can be a goodmotivator for some people,
though Make sure that you juststill really want to do it and

(01:01:59):
you don't get to mile 60 andrealize what am I doing here.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
The similarities thing actually just made me
think of this story.
I was at a hard rock and ZachMiller as everybody knows, he
was not cleared by hard rocksmedical to compete there because
he had to have emergency.
He had to have emergencysurgery on his appendix and he
had to have it removed.
And I was sitting in your awith him and I don't coach.
I do not coach Zach.

(01:02:23):
I don't want anybody to getthat impression.
Zach is probably uncoachable,although I love him to death.
But he was asking he's likewhat should I do now?
Cause he kind of, he was kindof in the same thing.
He's like I really wanted torace, I was super fit.
I was super fit for this exactrace.
What do I do now?
Do I jump into something nextweek?
Do I jump into something twoweeks from now?
Do I completely pivot and do arace like Leadville, which is

(01:02:46):
completely different?
But I can capitalize on myfitness and I just use that.
I'm not going to tell you whatI gave him, the advice that I
gave him, I just use that.
I'm not going to tell you whatI gave him, what the advice that
I gave him, but I use that asan example to go.
That's a plight that everybody'skind of going through in these
situations is how do I find thebest fit?
And I honestly don't know thebest way to navigate that.

(01:03:06):
Like as a coach.
I try to find something that isstill genuinely interesting to
the athlete, because I thinkthat is usually the biggest
mismatch.
Meaning, even if you went from,let's just say, like utmb to
javelina right or I'll use abetter example actually, because
they're more approximate andmore extreme diagonal defu to

(01:03:27):
javelina two very different,very, very different races right
, even in those situations, ifjavelina was really exciting to
you, hey, I want to go run loopsaround the desert or whatever
Great, if that's what interestsyou.
Sure you might not have thebest training match between
those two, but if you'regenuinely enthusiastic about
doing the race.
That's usually what I try tolead with when I'm counseling

(01:03:51):
athletes that are in thissituation is find something that
is genuinely appealing to you,because you have to remember
that you are coming fromsomething that you deliberately
plucked out of the sky and youdecided to devote a lot of your
time and energy towards and thatshouldn't be discounted the
fact that you chose, whateverrace that you got, you know, the

(01:04:14):
rug ripped out from under you.
I don't think that sentimentshould be kind of like
discounted by just plunkinganother race down.
That second race that comes upmight not be, and probably is
not going to be, as equallyinternally motivating for you or
interesting to you, but it'sgot to be.
It's got to be close to giveyou the best chance of success.

(01:04:37):
Neil, what do you say?

Speaker 3 (01:04:38):
Oh, absolutely Absolutely.
It has to be interesting andexciting to you.
I mean, you know and I'll seepeople who do like a marathon.
You know I got into Chicago andnow it was a bad Chicago, you
know.
Or you know I got sick and Icouldn't do it.
Now what's the next best thing?
You know, and it's not a racethat I'm excited about.
You know, let's go toPhiladelphia.

(01:05:00):
You know, and you know it's notgoing to be as rewarding.
And you know, again, you got tolook back at why are you doing
it.
You know what is.
You know what are the valuesthat you have behind it.
Is it just, you know, are youjust chasing a Boston qualifier?
Or, you know, can we?
Okay?
You know it wasn't a great raceor you didn't get to that race.

(01:05:22):
Maybe we can hold on to that.
You know, work on that fitnesshere.
Now you got this base, we takea little time, a little downtime
, and then we build up even moreand you're stronger because you
didn't race hard for threehours or two and a half hours or
whatever that is.
But really, I think it's mostimportant that they have to be
interested in it.
It has to be interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
Well, and that's where we can come in.
It's like architecture inbetween the races be damned.
We can figure that out Whetheryou're playing more off of your
previous race, training andfitness, or you have to go
through a whole new cycle or ifit's an awkward time in between.
And I think that's kind ofremarkable that we're saying
that as coaches that, like thecoaching part of it or the

(01:06:05):
training part of it takes a farback seat, at least in my
framework and Neil from whatyou're saying as well, and
Adam's nodding his head.
So I think we're all inagreement here that, hey, we
want to put you in the perfectphysiological state, or whatever
.
That takes a far back seat inthese types of circumstances.
To, hey, what else motivates you?
What else Can you get into this?
Can you get into that?
Don't just pick something outof the sky, because you quote

(01:06:27):
unquote want to take advantageof your fitness.
That can be true.
At the same time, that you alsofind something that is
meaningful to you, that hasclose to the same amount of
emotional engagement which is aword I use in a book same amount
of emotional engagement thatyou had with your previous race.
I think that's something that'ssuper important.

Speaker 3 (01:06:48):
Yeah, absolutely yeah , and it's exactly why I go do
lead man over and over again.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
There's this emotional engagement.

Speaker 3 (01:06:56):
It really hooked me, you know, and I love it, you
know.
You know why are you doing thisdeal?
Cause I like it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
You like it, but you're going to get it one day,
man, If you like it so muchyou're going to get your, your
your clock is ticket man, but Ibelieve in you.

Speaker 3 (01:07:10):
I'm looking at a two year plan now.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
Good, I like that.
I like that.
It's like we mentioned.
I hope you don't mind mementioning this on the air, but
because you're so close to thecutoffs in both of those races,
it's an exponentially moredifficult problem.
Not a linear, not a double,because you've got to get
everything right in twoconsecutive weeks, or almost
everything right in twoconsecutive weeks, and a big
piece of the firepower that youcan put behind it is you're
highly motivated to do it.

(01:07:40):
You got to have all thosearrows in the same direction
absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:07:44):
Now.
There was a time when I was notclose to the cutoffs.
They're actually, you know, wayahead of the cutoffs on the run
but because I've been focusingon the bike, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
Yeah, I mean what a great story.
And like learning a new sportand what that actually like with
a real person you're a realperson, you're a father, you're
a professional, like how thatactually, even though you're
training super hard, detractsfrom the specificity.
Like I think it's a great storyfrom another podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:08:12):
It's very class.
It totally detracts from thespecificity you know.
But I mean again, you know, themore I think about it is like I
love figuring out the puzzle,you know, and I love working
with madison on that andfiguring out, okay, what's the
puzzle here?
One of the pieces of the puzzleis recovery right now.

Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, you'll get it.
I have faith in you, man, likeI said, your clock's ticking,
but you're gonna figure itsooner.
I hope you figure it out soonerthan later.
Don't say clock's ticking,that's true.
Your clock's ticking for theperformance.
How's that Not?

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
in total, All right cool, that's great.

Speaker 1 (01:08:44):
All right, we'll stop being silly, we'll let
everybody go.
Thanks you guys for coming onthe podcast this time and also
it was really cool to see youguys in leadville this past
weekend.
Neil on the competition side,adam on the support side you
guys are wonderful.
Everybody has nothing but thebest to say about you two as
professionals and you two aspeople, and it's an honor to
call you guys colleagueslikewise, like, absolutely

(01:09:07):
likewise.

Speaker 3 (01:09:07):
You know, being on that competitor end of it, um
was so amazing to go into our,our tent and just see, see the
love from the coaches that isthere, that they gave to
everybody and that wasincredibly powerful to
experience it for me and, youknow, I know our athletes have

(01:09:27):
experienced the same thing.
So that was, yeah.
I just wanted to finish withthat.

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
Thank you Best time of every year going to races.
That's why we do it so muchwith that.
Thank you.
Best time of every year goingto races.
We do it so much.
All right, folks, there youhave it.
There you go.
Much thanks to coaches Neil andAdam for coming on the podcast
today and taking us through alittle bit of framework and
hopefully stimulating everybodyelse's brains on how to manage

(01:09:54):
your own race recovery cycle.
I know there are endlessvariations of this, whether
they're two weeks apart or fourweeks apart, or eight weeks
apart.
A, b, b to A, a to A.
I understand that we can't gothrough every single scenario,
but I hope the generalizationsthat we gave can offer some
insight into how you canactually create this for

(01:10:15):
yourself if you are goingthrough this race recovery
process.
We mentioned at the very end ofthe podcast the Leadville Trail
100, and I wanted to take amoment just to touch on that
just a little bit more.
Going out to races and seeingour athletes perform and compete
at these races is one of thethings that, over the course of
the last several years, we havestarted to put a lot more of an

(01:10:36):
emphasis on.
We've made huge efforts at theWestern States 100 this year at
the Leadville Trail 100.
This year we will be going outto UTMB, which is coming up very
soon, where we have over 40athletes competing in that race,
and we'll do the same thing atthe Javelina 100.
And the reason for that is,first and foremost, we like it.

(01:11:01):
We like seeing our athletes kindof take all the training that
we've been giving them inelectronic format and actually
putting it into the field.
That's something that gives usgreat joy as coaches.
But also we feel that we canmake a difference for the
athletes that are coming intoaid stations and maybe they need
some tough love or someencouragement or maybe even just
gel or to even get their feetpatched up.
So if that is something ofinterest to you, come by our
tent at Javelina and come andsay hi to us.
Like later in the year.

(01:11:22):
We would love to see you, we'dlove to bring you into the CTS
family and hopefully bring youon as a CTS athlete for whatever
your race schedule looks like,whether it's a singular race or
a series of races like we talkedabout today.
That is it for today, folks,and as always, we will see you
out on the trails.