EP. 55: Super Shoes, Marathon Record Performances and Training Strategies w/Andrew Jones, PhD

Andrew M Jones PhD DSc is Professor of Applied Physiology in the Department of Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Exeter. He’s internationally recognized for his research in the control of, and limitations to, skeletal muscle oxidative metabolism; causes of exercise intolerance in health and disease; respiratory physiology, particularly the kinetics of pulmonary gas exchange and ventilation during and following exercise; and sports performance physiology and nutrition, particularly in relation to endurance athletics.

Prof Jones has authored more than 350 original research and review articles (>38K citations) and is co-Editor of three books. He is a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine, the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences, the European College of Sport Science, and the Physiological Society. Jones is Editor-in-Chief of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise and serves on the Editorial Board of six other international journals in sports medicine and exercise science. Prof Jones has acted as a consultant to a number of governing bodies of sport or commercial companies including UK Athletics, the English Institute of Sport, Gatorade Sports Science Institute and Nike Inc.

He's been an advisor and consultant to the Breaking 2 and INEOS projects with Eluid Kipchoge and professional endurance athletes including Paula Radcliff.

Professor Jones gives his understanding of the evidence of the performance effect of the so called “super shoes” and whether they explain the recent pro marathon runner excess performance and if so, by how much.

Amateur marathon runners may find interesting our exchange about the Boston Marathon and how it is getting harder to get into, and what amateur marathoners must do to enhance performance in order to qualify and get into the Boston Marathon today. Professor Jones gives his perspective on the popularized notion that when it comes to marathon training “volume is king” and if not, what would be the alternative.

We talk about distance runners that are getting older, and how Professor Jones recommends changing training, if at all, for those looking to remain competitive. Finally, we talk about science and evidence-based nutrition protocol throughout the training cycle and pre-race and race nutrition.
About Andrew Jones https://sshs.exeter.ac.uk/staff/profile/index.php?web_id=Andrew_Jones

Twitter/X https://twitter.com/AndyBeetroot

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The intersection of endurance, sport,health, fitness and light, challenging conventional
ideas and empowering people with the scienceof self propelled motion. This is the
Endurance Experience podcast hosted by Tony Ridge. My guest on this podcast is Professor

(00:21):
Andy Jones. He's a Professor ofApplied Physiology in the Department of Sport and
Health Sciences at the University of Exeter. Doctor Jones is internationally recognized for his
research in the control of and limitationsto skeletal muscle oxidative metabolism, causes of

(00:42):
exercise intolerance in health and disease,respiratory physiology, particularly the kinetics of pulminary
gas exchange and ventilation during and followingexercise, and sports performance physiology and nutrition,
particularly in relation to endurance athletics.Professor Jones has authored more than three

(01:07):
hundred and fifty original research in reviewarticles and is co editor of three books.
He's a fellow of the American Collegeof Sports Medicine, the British Association
of Sport and Exercise Sciences, theEuropean College of Sports Science, and the
Physiological Society. Professor Jones is editorin chief of Medicine and Science in Sports

(01:33):
and Exercise and serves on the editorialboard of six other international journals in sports
medicine and exercise science. He's actedas a consultant to a number of governing
bodies of sport and companies, includingUK Athletics, the English Institute of Sport,
Gatorade Sports Science Institute, and Nike. He's been an advisor to both

(02:00):
the Breaking two and Ineos project,and as you know, those are the
projects to shepherd the sub two hourmarathon with iliud. He's also been an
advisor to Paula Radcliffe, the formerwomen's marathon world record holder. He's been

(02:22):
one of the sports physiologists that I'vefollowed over the years and I've enjoyed his
research. So this was a goodopportunity to have him on because I wanted
to have a conversation about the marathonperformance that we've seen recently. Everyone's familiar
with what Elliot Kig has done withthe Breaking two and ineos projects and breaking

(02:50):
the two hour marathon in exhibition,and recently we've seen new players come out
of nowhere in the women's field togist Asepha. She recently broke the women's
world record to eleven fifty three inBerlin. That's incredible. That rivals many

(03:13):
of the American men in the UKmen's times for the marathon, and that's
an incredible feat. And then outof nowhere we had Kelvin kipdom a twenty
three year old prodigy in the marathonworld. It seems like he he's already

(03:39):
raced three of the sixth fastest timesin history, did a negative split in
then in the London Marathon, fastestdebut ever in the Valencia Marathon, and
then recently broke Kip Choga's world recordat the Chicago Marathon two hours and thirty

(04:06):
five seconds, nearly broke two hoursin a open event. So that was
just last month, and so mythought was to get Professor jones perspective on

(04:26):
what is driving all of the recentperformance, and particularly I wanted to ask
him about the so called super shoes, these new carbon plate shoes that everyone
is convinced, not everyone, butthere are some people that are convinced that
it's a contributor to marathon performance,and so I wanted to particularly talk to

(04:55):
Professor Jones about that and whether ornot there's significant evidence to suggest that they
are either dominant contributor or a contributorgenerally towards the recent rise in the performance
numbers. These are shoes that havecarbon plates in them, and I think

(05:18):
the rule now from World Athletics isthat they had to create a rule to
cap the size of the what theycall the stack height, which I think
for road events is forty millimeters becausethe shoes were the stack heights were starting

(05:43):
to get out of hand, sothey had to put in a rule just
to cap off the stack heights.So we talk about that and whether or
not there's evidence and perspective. ProfessorJones gives his perspective on the evidence that
the shoes are contributing to the performanceand for the amateurs to listen to the

(06:11):
podcast, Professor Jones and I havea conversation about marathon training strategy and given
that the Boston Marathon is getting harderand harder to get into. I think
you had to beat your qualifying timeby five minutes and thirty seconds this past
registration period, so it's getting harderto get into, and so I wanted

(06:35):
to get some questions into Professor Jonesabout training strategy for the amateurs who desire
to get faster, and I particularlyasked Professor Jones to comment on the popularized
idea that volume is king, meaningyou increase your weekly marathon training volume as

(07:01):
much as you can in order totry to enhance your race d performance.
That's a popular strategy. So Iasked Professor Jones to comment on the popular
eye strategy that volume is king,and if he doesn't think volume is king,
what does he recommend? And you'llfind that he has an interesting response.

(07:29):
I get Professor Jones's perspective on agingmarathon runners and whether or not marathon
runners should alter their training strategy asthey get older if they wish to remain
competitive. And I found this interestingbeing an aging marathon runner myself, and
Professor Jones was a stellar runner inhis early days but now continues to continues

(07:59):
to run and try to remain competitive, and so his perspective was very valuable
here, and so I highly recommendlistening to that exchange for all of the
marathon runners that are racking up yourrace count and getting up there in age.

(08:20):
And then finally we talk about somenutrition science and I get his thoughts
on an evidence based nutrition protocol throughoutthe training life cycle and then we also
touch on pre race and race nutrition. Very interesting conversation. I highly recommend

(08:43):
listening. And yeah, that's it. So, without further delay, I
give you exercise and sports physiologists ProfessorAndrew Jones. All right, I am

(09:03):
on with doctor Andy Jones. Thanksfor coming on to the podcast, right,
no worries, Tourny, nice tome. All right. So this
is a great time to have thisdiscussion as we've seen a lot of activity
in the marathon world, world recordsbroken, Boston Marathon qualifying, and you

(09:24):
know, distance running in itself hasbeen a hot topic through the summer and
obviously through marathon fall marathon season,and so I wanted to talk to you
about a number of different things aboutthe so called super shoes, and there's

(09:45):
been a lot to talk about thatwhether or not that the shoes are driving
a lot of the performance that we'veseen in the pro marathon field. I
want to talk about the Boston Marathon, and I think the Boston Marathon qualifying
hurdle was the highest ever. Ithink it's something like five and a half

(10:07):
minutes that you had to beat thequalifying time by, and so I want
to get your thoughts on how hardit is it is to become a Boston
Marathon qualifier and what you would recommend. And also for distance runners that are

(10:28):
getting older, older runners, youknow, how do they if they want
to be competitive, will continue tobe competitive? You know? What are
some tips for the older runners?And then of course I want to get
some nutrition, whether it be generalnutrition and race nutrition in there as well.

(10:52):
But before we dive into those,how about you just high level,
just give our listeners who you areand your background and you know how you
got into sports and in sports physiologyas your life's work. Yeah. Sure.
So. My day job is asa professor of applied physiology at the

(11:16):
University of Exeter, and I spendquite a lot of my time conducting research
into the limitations to human performance thedetermination determinants of human endurance performance, with
a particular focus on running. Someof our studies are done in cycling,
for example, just often because it'sa bit more convenient, but really it's

(11:37):
running that I'm particularly interested in,and that stems from the fact that I
consider myself a runner. I usedto be a pretty good runner as a
teenager and into my early twenties.And once you've got that identity. You
never really lose it, I think. So, you know, my running
has been a bit on and offover the years. It's sort of on

(11:58):
and sort of off. At themoment in that I'm I'm training these days
for marathons. I've got an ambitionthat I want to break three hours.
And the only reason I'm running marathonsis because I obviously never run them when
I was a teenager. So there'sthe opportunity to actually set a personal best
time. I've been carrying a fewlittle injuries lately, but anyway, so

(12:18):
it all starts with a fascination abouthow do I make myself faster? You
know, what is it that's holdingme back? How can I get faster?
What do I need to do intraining? You know, what do
I need to develop, What nutritioncan I take, et cetera, et
cetera. And you know, overthe course of I went off and studied
sports science and then it became exercisephysiology, and over the course of the

(12:39):
last thirty thirty to thirty five years, I suppose as well as conducting that
research, I've had the brilliant opportunityand you know, I'm kind of well
known in the running world. Forworking with some of the best athletes of
all time. So I work withPaula Radcliffe obviously, who was for a
long time the world record holder forwomen, and then I was involved in

(13:00):
Nike's break Into project and advised Ineosas well on the one fifty nine challenge,
So you know, worked a bitwith Elliot Kipchoghi and some of those
greats as well. So it's beenbrilliant to kind of have that sort of
parallel track where I'm doing the research, I'm trying to apply the research to
the runners, so there's always thatimpact that translation. But the work that
I do with the runners and myown continued attempts to run or to run

(13:26):
faster, informs my research. Soit's a very symbiotic thing. And I
get the chance to you know,lecture on this to students, talk at
conferences, come on nice podcasts,et cetera. So it's a nice it's
a nice, happy world that Iinhabit. Yeah nice. Yeah wow.
So Paula Radcliff Jogi, so you'veadvised some stellar runners, some historic runners

(13:48):
in the INEOS project as well.There's a lot there that is applicable to
this conversation that I wanted to havewith you and myself also getting up there
in age, you know, theprs are in a rearview window, and
I'm much interested in that. Asyou get older, if you want to

(14:09):
remain competitive, what do you needto do? So definitely that is going
to be something that I want toget your thoughts on. So let's let's
start though with the performance that we'veseen out of the pro marathon field recently.
So Kelvin kipped him, the newworld record holder seemed to just come

(14:33):
out of nowhere this time last year. I did not know that name.
He just seemed to come out ofnowhere. He had the fastest debut ever
in Valencia two one fifty three,and you know recently set the world record
at the Chicago marathon unbelievable times.I mean the second I think he ran

(14:58):
a negative split, and then youknow, well that's the second half faster
than the first half. And youknow the second half was you know,
probably would rival the open half marathontime for you know, most regions.

(15:18):
So and then we had the women'sworld record broken two eleven fifty three in
Berlin. Right, So you mentionedPaula Radcliffe. She held a record for
a long time, back in thetwo thousands and now to eleven fifty three

(15:39):
from to gifts Asafa. And sowith all of this performance, what are
your your what do you know aboutthe performance effect of these so called super

(16:00):
and do you think it's driving performanceor do you think it's something else.
I certainly think it's a contributory factor. I mean, first of all,
just to marvel at those couple ofrecords that you alluded to jesting, you
know, amazing, I guess Iwasn't surprised that Kiped them ran a world
record because the one his second race, the one that he didn't mention that

(16:22):
he's done three, was in Londonand he set the course record in London.
Now Kipchogi has won that race fivetimes. So for him, you
know, on his second ever marathon, to run faster than Kip Chogi ever
has after five attempts on that course, suggested that he was going to do
something. To be honest, Ididn't expect it would be in Chicago because
it's not notoriously a very fast course. I mean, world records have been

(16:45):
set there in the past, butnot for a while. And I don't
know if that's because the fields havebeen going to you know, to London
and to New York and to Berlinor what it is. But apparently it
is actually quite a fast course ifyou get good conditions. You know,
it's flat, and they did havegood condition so I think everybody wanting to
go to Chicago now. So it'syeah, so astonishing, and I don't

(17:07):
think it's going to be long.If he keeps himself fit and healthy,
doesn't get injured, that he'll actuallybreak two hours in one of these major
marathons, which of course was thepursuit when all of this kind of this
stuff kicked off. I think arguablyeven more remarkable as the two eleven because
you know, Paul is two fifteentwenty five when that was run, well,
I was just stellar. That bleweverything out of the water. So

(17:30):
to go, you know, almostfour minutes or about four minutes faster than
that is just stunning, isn't it. I think there's there's no question that
the shoes have made a difference.Obviously, as I mentioned, I was
involved in the break in two projectand that was an opportunity for Nike to
launch what was then the vapor Fly, And there've been numerous iterations of that

(17:51):
shoe. Since then the one percent, the alpha fly, and of course
other manufacturers are on board making theirown equivalent or alternative version. I think
when you do do the modeling ofthat, I mean, the original studies
suggested that the vapor fly and Ithink subsequently the alpha fly we've done some
work with these shoes as well,improves running economy. So this is the
oxygen cost of running at a givenspeed. You know, if you get

(18:15):
people to run on a treadmill forfive to ten minutes, you measure their
oxygen costs for that speed. There'sa particular level that it typically is at,
and you find that if you switchthem to one of these new super
shoes that it can be four orfive percent lower. Now, when you
model that, you know you're notgoing to get a four or five percent
faster overall marathon time, but youare going to get one, say,
a one percent faster marathon time ora two percent. But when you look

(18:38):
at it in the elites, Ithink you're probably going to get somewhere between
thirty seconds and maybe ninety seconds.So one of the interesting things about the
shoes that we know now is thatnot everybody responds the same way, right,
and responders high risk non response.Yeah, you get some negative respond
And also different people respond differently todifferent shoes, and nobody can quite understand

(19:00):
why this is. And of coursethere's a carbon plate and there's this relent
super resilient foam and lots of cushionin still very lightweight, and different combinations
of that seem to suit different peoplewith different fitness and different weights and different
running styles somewhat differently. So itcould well be that, you know,
some people are super responders to thesuper shoes and they're getting a very big

(19:22):
improvement in their performance as a result. The other bit of this puzzle,
though, I think, is that, as I mentioned, when you measure
running economy on a treadmill in thelab, you typically do it, you
know, sort of five to tenminute running back, and you do it
at a variety of different speeds.But of course five or ten minutes is
only a small fraction of the timethat you'll take to run a marathon.

(19:45):
And what's actually probably even more relevantis how does it affect your running economy
in the last few miles, notjust in the first few miles. And
it could be that those shoes arereally making people, you know, it's
preventing damage, it's preventing them losingtheir efficient See, they become more fatigue
resistant and so they can maintain theirspeed for longer, So the effect could
be even greater in the latter stages. And then the other element to this

(20:07):
is that it isn't it isn't justabout the acute effects on race day,
which is what I've been talking aboutso far. The top runners are training
in these shoes every day as well, because they know they get in supplied
by the sponsor, they don't haveto shell out three hundred dollars a pair
each time. And I think whatthey're finding is that they just recover so
much better. And as a consequence, they're either running more miles or they're

(20:32):
running those miles faster, so theyprobably get into the start line in better
shape as well. So it's acombination. Now, all of that is
to do with the shoe. Istill think it isn't just about the shoe.
I think essentially the world was inspiredby Breaking to You and Kipchogi and
this no human is limited you knowphrase that he uses so often. I
mean, my job is to finda limit that clearly everybody has some limitation

(20:55):
somewhere, right, But I thinkwhat he demonstrated is that you can,
you can everybody can do a bitbetter than they first realize. And it
you know, all of these otherathletes have been chasing him, and he's
just put things into clear blue water, and they're filling in the gaps now,
you know, and will eventually surpasshis achievements. And it's in the
same way that you know, RogerBanister did with the four minute mile back

(21:18):
in the day, which everybody initiallythought was impossible, and you know,
if you broke four minutes, youdie. And then the minute he did
it, well, within a fewmonths it was it just became kind of
run of the mill. Lots ofpeople were doing it, so it just
changes the mindset. Now I kindof feel a bit weird talking about psychology
as a physiologist, but actually sometimesyou just just set the barrier. I

(21:41):
think it's in human nature. Youknow, if the world record is say
two three oh one, then peopleaspire to run two two fifty nine because
they just don't believe that they're physicallycapable of taking minutes off a record.
I think Kip Chogi changed the mindset, and other people have followed suit on
that. Yeah, yeah, that'sinteresting. Well, I remember I had

(22:02):
with the Male Clinic Michael Joyner.He wrote back in the nineties. I
think he modeled back in the ninetiesof paper that of the sub to our
marathon is within reach or something tothat effect. But that was back in
the nineties, and I think oxygencost was part of that oxygen cars running

(22:23):
economy. I think there was oneother factor, yeah, vot max and
what he called fractional utilization. Soit's the percentage of your vot max that
you can sustain for periods. Yeah, those three things, and they do
work really well. You know.So when we were selecting the athletes for
Breaking two, one of the thingswe used was the Joiner model. We
measured those variables. We put itinto the equation, and you can predict

(22:45):
what they're theoretically capable of. Ittends actually to it can overestimate what they
can do. And that's partly becausewhat the original model doesn't account for is
this drift in oxygen cost over time, this fatigue that people will experience.
So I've actually recently modified the Joinermodel to include something called resilience, which

(23:07):
is all about you know, towhat extent do these factors actually changed with
time? And you know, peoplelike Kip Chogi, I'd let you into
it's not really a secret, butyou know, he was obviously one of
the best athletes that we tested,and we selected him as one of the
guys that we thought could potentially breaktoo. But his physiological variables weren't you
know, a million times better thaneverybody else. He was up there,

(23:30):
but he wasn't. His physiology didn'texplain quite you know, how much better
he was than he is than everybodyelse. And so there were some other
factors. And actually when you watchhim finish some of these races, and
particularly the one fifty nine challenge,he looks like he hasn't even run,
you know, when you see himsprinting across that finish line. And it

(23:52):
was the same with Kiptum actually inChicago. Those guys seem to be super
resilient, and I think that's aphysiological trait and I think it may be
courted by the super shoot as well, as I've already suggested. But there's
another dimension to those really top athletes. Paul Radcliffe was another one who was
running negative splits back in the dayas well. I know there aren't many
people who are capable of running closeto, you know, their personal best

(24:15):
for the half marathon and then gettingquicker. Yeah, yeah, I mean
the negative splits. I think maybeI've done it once. It's incredibly hard
to do, but it's characteristic ofthese athletes. It's to hold back in
the first half and then go inthe second half, and it's incredible when
it when it happens. I mean. So yeah, it's so you're saying

(24:41):
that there's a there's a oxygen costeffect with the shoes, but there's also
a recovery element that that is thecontributing factors here. Yeah, I think
two things. First of all,there's there's an effect on oxygen cost all
way through, which can be reallyquite big in some individuals wherein the right

(25:03):
shoe, I think it's preventing,you know, because when we're talking about
oxygen cost of running, the oxygencost of running in the first miles of
a marathon are very different to whatyou experience at the end. You know,
as you fatigue and your biomechanics changesand you're the type of fuel that
you're utilizing you shift a bit fromcarbohydrate towards fat that costs a bit more
oxygen. So you find that youroxygen costs, your VIEO two is rising

(25:27):
a little bit. You know,gradually with time, your vot max isn't
going up, if anything, that'scoming down. So you know, you're
getting closer and closer to the limit, and there'll come a point where you
simply cannot sustain that and you slowdown. So I think the shoe is
also reducing the extent to which oxygencost is drifting in the latter stages of
a marathon. But also it's aboutthe fact that they can recover more rapidly

(25:52):
from hard training sessions. You know, in the past, you run some
of you know, sometimes they goup to twenty five miles in training over
time terrain, and they don't hangabout. They do like tempo runs,
the progressive runs where they get fasterover twenty or twenty five miles, And
clearly most people are going to befatigued from that and it's going to take
a little bit of recovery. They'regoing to have to have an easy day,

(26:12):
go slow, do it. Butactually, you know, the anecdotally
what the athletes are reporting is thatthey're not finding it as fatiguing as they
once did. They bounce back,so there's a resilience in training so that
the next day they can get upand they can train twice and the speed
isn't impacted to the extent that itwas in the past, so they're able
to do more miles at higher speeds, and maybe that's just another stimulus to

(26:37):
their training. So as I say, yeah, the shoe is operating in
a number of different ways. Yeah, interesting. I mean I've held off
from getting any of them myself becausemy thought as as runner in as a
coach is that athletes always love tothrow money at their problems. They want
to go out and just whether it'sto triathlon bikes with the fancy wheels and

(27:02):
carbon frames, and so I've alwayspushed back on you know, look,
worry about your training, don't worryabout throwing two hundred and fifty bucks on
some shoes. So I'm not Butbut the other reason I have pushed back
on the on them is just becausethere's this sort of idea that all the
new performance is a dominant factor,that the shoes are a dominant factor in

(27:27):
all of the new performance, AndI don't know. I just think these
athletes are just incredible athletes. Yeah, absolutely, And I wouldn't want to
detract from from their talent and theirtraining. You know, putting on the
shoe in and of itself is notgoing to be enough. You've still got
to do run all the miles,You've still got to do all the training
in the shoe. And I wasn'tmeaning to, you know, I was

(27:47):
I was talking about the super elitewho can train in the shoe all the
time. I'm not implying that thelikes of I don't know how good you
are, but you know that mostof us shouldn't train in the shoe all
of the time. We probably couldn'tafford to anyway. But maybe if you
want that extra fraction of a percent, whatever it might be, maybe you
practice a little bit and you lacethem up on race day. But I'm

(28:08):
not suggesting that you train in themall of the time. I think there
can be some advantages. I mean, rotating shoes is a good idea anyway,
but actually not making things easy foryourself in training as part of the
process. Yeah, yeah, Idoubt I'd be a respond high responder,
but I will see. I'll giveit a shot. But I also think
money. Money is a powerful motivatortoo. I mean, I remember it

(28:33):
was back in two thousand and three, a guy by the name of Jeffrey
Mutai. You probably remember Jeffrey Mutai. He set the record on the Boston
Marathon course. This was two thousand, so this was twenty eleven, sorry,
twenty eleven. He set the recordout of the Boston Marathon course two
three h two, Jeffrey Mutai.But they didn't give them the record because

(28:55):
it's a net downhill that was onlyeleven. So this was before all of
those carbon plates. So I thinksome of it is the psychology in you
know, that was when we startedto see people go south of two oh
four Jeffrey Moutai and folks, acouple of other folks. And I think

(29:18):
the money, the money, Imean, these athletes now are what four
hundred thousand a couple of hundred thousandif you win, And I think the
money has been a powerful motivator forthese athletes. Perhaps Calvin Kipton is twenty
three, right, so and thenso they're getting into it earlier because of

(29:40):
the money. So maybe it's justa combined effect. Maybe it's just multi
factorial, right, Yeah, youraised some really good points. There are
absolutely for the I don't know ifhe's been to Kenu in Ethiopia, but
it's a major motivator. You know, some of those areas are really quite
poverty stricken and they it's part ofthe culture to run and they see these

(30:00):
people go away and they become localheroes, national heroes. They come back
with a ton of money. Theybuild hotels and hospitals and all sorts of
stuff, and they live the dreamand that does become something that's inspiring,
that fame and fortune element, soyou can't take that away. And I
do think more talented athletes are probablygetting involved. More of them are being

(30:22):
identified by agents and sponsors, sothere's more of the men and they're being
you know, they've got Elliot andothers as role models. I think on
the women's side there's a bit ofa lag there compared to the men's side.
So probably the women's record was readyfor revision more than the men's because
that was relatively weak. And nowyou've got supreme, supremely talented people coming

(30:45):
into the sport. And the otherthing, you know, that age thing,
is important as well. Of course, the conventional wisdom was that you'll
have a very short marathon career ifyou go to it too early. You
know, you start your life onthe track, and then if that is
quite what you know, you graduallymove up the distances, then you might
tentatively try the road. And you'regoing to be in your late twenties early

(31:06):
thirties before you turn to the marathon, and maybe that. We we know
that physiologically things change as you geta bit older. Your BO two max
is going to be a bit lowerwhen you're thirty compared to when it was
when you were twenty. We thinkyou can compensate for that by improving your
your running economy and your lactate thresholda bit. But I don't know if
you We just don't know. Wehaven't done the studies. But if you

(31:27):
train specific if you were a marathonand out and out marathon runner from the
get go, and you train forfor the marathon from an early age,
yeah, maybe you can do better. Who will never know? With kipto,
maybe you know, would you havewould he have been better advised to
wait a bit longer, race shorterdistances. It's hard it's hard to argue
that when he's run to zero zerothirty five and he's not. Yeah,

(31:49):
and why wait, because he's notgoing to get the same fortune running on
the track. Yeah, because he'sprobably not going to be There's just it's
that bit more competitive, and yeah, there's a heck of a lot of
money available for winning Boston and Londonand Berlin and others, Isn't that exactly?
And I think that's one of themotivators. I mean, I mean
everybody has those shoes. The Americanshave those shoes, they have them in

(32:14):
the UK. And it's also theyou know, the genetics of the Eastern
African runners, which is a wholeother topic. We could either have a
whole podcast on whether or not theempirical evidence behind that. I think that's
probably a factor, right, everybodyelse has the shoes. Yeah, yeah,

(32:36):
for sure, it's enhancing. Ithink, you know, if you
talk about the elites, I thinktheir performance has got a bit better in
part as a consequence of the shoe. I don't think you can deny the
technology. And maybe further down thefield, everybody's got a little bit quicker
as well, but it's hard toseparate the shoe from everything else. The
other thing about the East Africans that'sreally striking when you meet them or you

(32:58):
measure them, is how small theyare. It's really difficult for Americans or
Europeans to be, you know,fifty seven kilos, which some of these
guys are. So that's that offersan advantage in terms of heat dissipation for
example. Yeah, the anatomy isa bit different. They have long,
long shanks, long long Achilles tendons, so that's likely to be advantageous for

(33:22):
fatigue, resistance and economy, etcetera. So yeah, there's there's much
more to it than just the shoe. Yeah, absolutely, All right,
let's go to this before that.What do you think about Kip Chogi after
the world record? He didn't makea big statement, but do you think
he's going to try to He's theolder, older statesman. Now what do

(33:43):
you think he's going to do torespond? I think I think he'll try
and be He was, of coursevery generous, wasn't he in his praise
for Kelvin kupp Toon. And hewas right in saying that this was always
going to happen. I led theway they partly did it because I showed
them, they showed them the road, you know. So he's been generous.
He's certainly not not jealous, Ithink in any way at least not.

(34:06):
But I know that in his racebefore that, he ran in Berlin,
didn't he and he was hoping torun a world record there. He
was hoping to go faster than heever had, So maybe that, you
know, he felt the threat ofthe challenge from Kiptom and realized that if
he was going to retain his record, he needed to go quicker, and
he started off clearly with that goalin mind, and actually for him wasn't

(34:28):
as resilient as he normally is,slowed a little bit in that last bit.
So I think he obviously still feelshe's capable of going faster, and
he presumably has training data that supportsthat perspective. I know one of the
key things for him is going tobe the Olympics, trying to win a
unprecedented third consecutive gold medal. WhetherKiptum shows up for that as well,

(34:51):
that would be a hell of arace. He probably wouldn't know. The
course isn't going to be anything likeappropriate for running really fast times, but
terms of a head to head youcouldn't ask for anything more enticing. I
think whether Elliot has a chance totry for world record prior to the Olympics,
I'm not sure. He probably willbe inclined to run again in the

(35:12):
spring, but arguably the courses inthe spring aren't quite as fast as they
are in the in the fall,as you'd put it on the autumns i'd
call it. So, yeah,it's interesting, I don't think. Yeah,
And I suspect that Elliott was hopingto bow out, you know,
to to actually he's got to retireeventually. He loves running, I know
that. And he was trying toset himself new challenges by winning by winning

(35:37):
the Big six, I think,And of course he didn't manage to do
it in Boston when he ran thatrecently. So I think going back to
the drawing board, it was acase of try and win this third consecutive
Olympic gold and maybe draw a lineunder it there. But now that the
world record's gone, I do wonderwhether he's going to be tempted to have
one final till to getting it back, maybe in Berlin and you know this

(36:00):
time next year. Sometimes that's allyou need as a competitor. When someone
takes something that it was long yours, that's all you need as motivation,
and he'll go train harder. Andmaybe between the both of them we might
see it, like you said,the first sub to in an open event,
but ineos he still has ineos thatwhich was an I think it was

(36:22):
a great Yeah. Yeah, he'svery fastest marathon runner ever at this moment,
and so I'm irrespective of you takessome of those other factors out of
the equation. Yeah, absolutely,all right, So let's move to the
second topic I wanted to bring upwith you. It was the Boston Marathon
qualifying for amateurs and and so theBoston Marathon is perennially people try to qualify,

(36:51):
and and it's getting it's getting increasinglyharder and harder to qualify. I
mean, if you're if you're amail in your twenties or thirties, you
basically have to train for sub threehours. And so my thought is,
I think this time you have tobeat it by depending upon how many qualifiers
there are, there's a sort ofcurve, almost like a curve on a

(37:17):
test. And I think this yearit was five. You had to beat
your qualifying time by five hours andthirty seconds, five minutes and thirty seconds
or something like that. And it'sjust getting harder and harder. And I
think a lot of it has becausethey've added more categories more people. So

(37:37):
there was a big conversation about thecategories that they've added. They're just trying
to be more inclusive. I thinkthere's a couple more categories non binary category
as well as some impaired paired athletesimpaired athlete categories. So it's getting harder
and harder to get in. So, as a professional exercise physiologist and knowledgeable

(38:00):
and marathoning and training, what doamateurs have to do to increase their chances
of training to not only qualify,but to get in? And comment if
you can about the volume volume isking idea that the more volume you do

(38:21):
you better versus more shorter and anaerobicthreshold work or combination of both. What
are your thoughts there? Yeah,Well, first of all, it's it
is getting more difficult. I presumeyou know Boston is limited because just the
size of the city, right,Is that the problem? Yeah? Yeah,
yeah, Well you could always aimfor a different marathon. There's plenty

(38:49):
of them around, but I knowit's iconic. I just yeah, I
think if the thresholds are you,you're just going to have to train harder
to try to meet it. Sothen then the question comes, how do
you do that? Well, I'mnot really a volume is King kind of
a guy. It works for somepeople. I certainly think there's a minimum
volume that you need for any givendistance that you're trying to race and for

(39:10):
any given performance that you're trying toachieve, and it will be a bit
higher. So obviously, if you'rea marathon runner, you'll probably run more
miles and on average a bit moreslowly than if you're a five five k
runner. Also, if you're tryingto break two thirty, you're going to
be running more miles, and ifyou're trying to break three hours or three
thirty or et cetera, et cetera. That said, my own philosophy is,

(39:31):
do the minimum miles that are necessaryfor you to cover that distance in
the kind of time that you're after. But actually, you know, focus
more on the quality. I'm definitelymore of a quality is King person,
So yeah, don't compromise or sacrificeyour quality just to do a big mileage.

(39:51):
The bigger the mileage you do,you know, necessarily, the slower
those miles will be, and youcan start to get too far away from
race pace. Things become nonspecific.So you know, if you can run,
if you can run close to athree hour marathon, that means that
you're running at about seven minute milepace. And actually seven minute mile pace

(40:14):
should feel pretty comfortable for you,because by definition, you can run at
that speeds for three hours. SoI really don't buy the idea that it's
you shouldn't run close to seven minutemile pace for a lot of the training
time of your If you do sayfifty or sixty miles a week, there's
no reason why a lot of thosemiles couldn't be seven minute mile pace or
faster. You don't need to berunning at nine to ten minute mile pace

(40:37):
in my opinion. You know,it just becomes wasted mileage, what we
used to call junk mileage. Butthere's been this notion recently that you need
to do a heck of a lotof long, really slow stuff, which
is almost two for me, toofar away from your race pace, do
a few intervals and neglect the bitin the middle, and I just don't
don't buy that argument at all.The way that I used to train,

(41:00):
the group of people that I usedto train with, which included Steve Jones
who run two O eight o fivein Chicago in nineteen eighty five world record,
we didn't train that way. Wetrained a much more thresholder way,
much as sort of pyramidal. Ifyou're like, sure, you know you
do. You do your easy runs, you do your steady runs, but
your steady runs have a bit ofpurpose to them as well. You don't

(41:21):
deliberately hold yourself back on steady runs. You run at a pace that's comfortable
and is steady, it doesn't meanit's slow. And then you do tempo
runs when you actually challenge your challengingyourself a bit, but in a continuous
way. And then you do yourreps and you do your intervals. And
that's the way Paul at Radcliffe trainedas well. And you know, I
do see silly things written about theway Elliot trains, suggesting that he's running

(41:44):
a nine minute mile pace all thetime, which he really isn't. The
first mile, or you know,when you see him disappear after a couple
of hundred meters, he's still limberingup and it looks fairly slow. By
the end of those sessions, he'sgoing to be motoring. It doesn't mean
to say he trains hard all thetime or every day, but he does
a good of good high quality training, which includes you know, tempo runs,

(42:06):
progressive runs like these long runs thathe does are not jogging. You
know, he ends up finishing atclose to marathon race bas despite the fact
that it's at high altitude and it'son tricky conditions and he's in full training
kit. And then he'll do youknow, fifteen times a kilometer on the
track, or they might do thirtytimes a minute hard on and our fartleck.

(42:27):
So it's a whole bunch. SoI think quality is the important thing.
And I think if you give giveKip Chogi, you know, he
does about one hundred and twenty twohundred and forty miles per week, and
that's for me, as much asanybody would ever need to do. I
think you could actually run a topquality marathon off eighty to one hundred miles
per week. I mean Steve Jonesdid that when he runs two to eight
o five. He was running abouteighty to ninety miles a week, but

(42:51):
with high quality. He just reallydidn't do too much easy running. Paula
Radcliffe didn't either. So and ifyou gave Kip Chogi two hundred miles per
week, I swear he gets slower, not faster. Yeah, that'd be
much. And actually Steve Jones triedthat. So when he made his marathon
breakthrough and he ran two OA tofive and then he ran two O seven
to thirteen and just missed Carlos Lopez'sWheeldracker by a couple of seconds, everyone

(43:15):
was saying to him, you know, compared to two Carlos Lopez and Robert
di Castello and all of those guysfrom that era, he was running low,
lowish mileage and they were like,well, imagine if you were running
one hundred miles a week, onehundred and twenty one hundred and forty miles
per week, just how much fasteryou could get. Well, he tried
that, and he got progressively slower. In his fastest races were his first

(43:37):
three, where he ran two sevensand two eights, and he was training
at relatively low mileages for athletes ofthat caliber, pretty quick. Most of
his training runs were done at fiveminute mile pace, which is not far.
It was very close to what hewas running the marathons in. Yeah,
that's interesting that. I mean,I've heard people I've fallen between.

(43:57):
I've heard people just you know,swear by the volume is king. But
yeah, the average Joe, theaverage average marathon amateur trying to qualify for
the Boss and marathon, anything closeto one hundred miles is just out of
scope. They you know, theywere, they were completely fold. I

(44:21):
think oftentimes the amateurs will hit somewherebetween forty and sixty on average. So
your message is quality is king versusvolume is king, and a rattle bit
threshold running running at marathon pace andabove gold marathon pace is what you would

(44:46):
suggest. Sounds like yeah. Ithink you know, when when you're out
for a training run and you're goingto be below marathon race pase, that's
fine, but you don't have tobe too far behind marathon race pace as
long as you feel comfortable. Ithink you have absolutely have to train some
of the time at current and projectedfuture marathon race base because you want to

(45:07):
develop specific physiological, biomechanical, andpsychological characteristics that help you run at that
speed, and then to make runningat marathon race base more comfortable, you
need to do sessions that are fasterthan marathon race base on occasion as well.
So you know, it's not tosay that volume isn't important. If
you're only doing twenty miles a week. You're going to get fitter and better

(45:29):
if you do thirty, or ifyou do forty, or if you do
fifty possibly, but beyond that youstart to get some diminishing returns, I
believe, you know, and youstart to do training that starts to lose
specificity, even for the marathon.So you know, I think forty to
sixty miles per week at the amateurlevel is more than adequate, and there's

(45:49):
lots of other variables you can playwith within that that will enable you to
keep improving. Yeah, and youknow, I think, you know,
trying to hit that golden sub threemark that a lot of people are going
to need, especially people in thethirties or twenties and thirties, you know,

(46:14):
I think what people are trying todo is minimize that regression rate.
Right, So in the last youknow, five miles that my legs are
completely feeling like bricks and cinder blocks. You just can't move them, tear
them over anymore. And so that'sI think it's the fear with the volume.

(46:37):
Yeah, if you're doing quality isKing, how do you mitigate that
regression rate? Yeah, well Ithink you you know, within a say,
fifty mile training week, you canstill get some long runs in there.
Yeah, so you know, butwhat you don't do is just trudge

(46:58):
constantly. But yeah, the othervery got It's very hard to be generic
about this. Some people will benefitmore from higher mileage and less quality than
some people will. So I'm tryingto kind of give you my overall philosophy,
but there are outliers in this,and some people do prefer and seem
to swear by volume, miss King, And that's absolutely fine if that works

(47:20):
for them, and I think everyindividual has to explore that a little bit.
I had a coach back in theday who tried all this, you
know, before we knew more aboutthe science, and there's still gaps in
the science now, but he triedeverything from three hundred and fifty miles a
week where he was running ten milesfive times a day, to thirty miles

(47:40):
a week where he ran every mileas fast as he possibly could. And
actually his conclusion in the end,and he was an elite marathon he was
a two fourteen marathon runner. Forhim, in the end he found one
hundred miles per week was about optimal. But you know, to prove that
point to himself, he went tothese two extremes. So you've got to
you've got to expect. I'm notsaying to do that, but you've got

(48:01):
to experiment to find what works foryou. There's not you know, there's
not one size fits all. Ithink as far as training goes, and
what I'm not advocating when I saythat quality is king. I'm not saying
train hard every day, train fastevery day. You're still going to have
some easy days. You're going tohave a hard day, easy day.
Approach. It's just that you know, when you go out for a run,

(48:22):
you don't necessarily always have to keepholding yourself back. But the other
important element with training, whether you'reyounger or older, is consistency and just
making sure it almost doesn't matter whatyou do within each session, or how
much volume you do or what yourintensity, the really important thing is that

(48:45):
you train consistently, that you trainmost days, most weeks, most months,
and you have to be really patientand understand that training for endurance events
takes a long time. You know, it's not just endurance within the race
itself, it's endurance in a lifestyle. Really, you have to be really
person You have to endure. Youhave to and actually what you don't want
to do is a boom and bustype thing where you train really hard,

(49:07):
either with body more quality, getinjured, miss a few weeks, come
back, try and get yourself fitquickly again, and you just have this
sort of zigzag pattern. And whatKip Chogi in particular, and Paula and
others were very good at was knowingwhen to stop. I've been real intelligence
and bravery to say I'm just tootired today or i feel a niggle,

(49:28):
irrespective of what the program says,I'm not going to run for a day
or two. They'll do that,and they've got that mental strength to be
able to do it. But youalso need that mental strength. This cycle.
I've talked about physiological resilience, youalso need psychological resilience to just do
this stuff, be really dedicated toit for years on end. Sometimes if
you really want to hit that goal. Yeah, that's an interesting Yeah,

(49:50):
I think I'm with you one hundredpercent. I've never really done the super
volume. I mean, I've neverhit one hundred mile a week for instance,
anything like that. I've always sortof been and I like, I
enjoy the quality testing yourself and Ifelt, if I want to do something
in the race, I actually haveto do it in training, right,
versus not doing it and then hopethat on race day you're going to do

(50:15):
some super performance. But you mentionedthat segue into the age as you as
I've gotten older, we may beclose in age, but you know,
we might as well compare nights.What a well I've I mean, I've
happily you know, looked at myprs in the rear view Mirra, and

(50:37):
you know, I've done the bestI could ever do is somewhere between three
fifteen and my body type. I'mbuilt more like a NFL cornerback, so
you know, so my you know, power to weight ratio was just where
it was. But as I've gottenolder, and I've gotten more and more

(50:59):
comfortable with just going out and runningwithout any goal at all, just running
it for fun and not and youknow, just sort of doing it just
as a recreational event. But I'mstarting to think now, you know,
maybe I should, you know,try to push more and see if I
really wanted to go back and becompetitive again. You know, how how

(51:22):
would I do that? And what'syour Well, let me get your advice,
as you you know in your ownlife. And if you were to
advise a master's athlete who wants tobe competitive, would you would you have
them do anything different? Well?I would. I would first of also

(51:43):
do as I say, not asI do, because I'm the worst possible
example. I don't, you know, I don't follow my own sensible advice
sometimes. I'm actually my wife's gotinto marathon running just in the last few
years, and we're both in ourearly fifties now, and she keeps getting
better and she doesn't pick up anyinj but I'm really careful in monitoring it,
you know, prescribing the training,and with my own training, I

(52:06):
just get a bit too ambitious.I get too ambitious in the planning of
the training. I get too ambitiousin the execution of the training as well.
And I have been exactly one ofthose boom and bust guys I've just
mentioned where I you know, Ijust think when you're a bit older,
and actually probably particularly if you've runa lot in the past, which I
have, you know, over manyyears. I did a lot in my
teens, like I've mentioned, andI've had most injuries you can ever get,

(52:30):
and I think you're just left withthose those scars. I think you
actually are more likely to get injuriesin later life if you've been running for
a long period, even if you'vebeen running intermittently. So I seem to
be particularly prone to picking up allsorts of little niggles and stuff. And
it's I just get a bit excitedbecause I, you know, I've got

(52:52):
that kind of muscle memory or thatkind of psychological template, which is this
is this is how I used totrain, this is how it should feel.
And you know you're looking out throughthe same eyes, aren't you,
and you've you just start to getI can start to get a little bit
too excited, like this is brilliant. I'm starting to gain fitness, and
I just have this tendency to pushit a little bit and then I end

(53:15):
up breaking down and then it takesa while to recover. So I think
the best advice is to be reallypatient and not push things and look for
that consistency and make sure you warmup properly. It takes me an awful
lot long longer to warm up now. I used to be able to go
out the door and I'd be immediatelyrunning sub six miles, you know.

(53:35):
And now my first mile is,you know, probably nine minutes a mile.
The second one might be eight,and if I'm a bit fitter,
then I'll start to run, youknow. But I used to warm up
at speeds that are faster than Ican race out these days. And it's
really, it's really kind of sad. There is an effect with age you

(53:55):
mentioned vo two mags and being beingsomething that that might decline, But I
think there's also a psychological effect whenyou when you rack up a race count
over the years and decades, thedesire to go out and train at that

(54:19):
level to just get another pr thatdiminishes, right, So like I enjoy
now not doing the hard training andjust going out and just running it without
any time goal and things like that, and so that that happens over time
with I think. So I've notquite I've not quite got there, So
I'm still so I used to runmuch shorter distances fifteen hundred I did.

(54:44):
I did run half marathons actually asas a seventeen year older, but it
was generally short fifteen hundred, threeK, five K, ten k.
And the thing about marathons is obviouslyyou've got to train for marathons. So
for me, it was an incentiveto they fit into my you know,
middle years, and if you entermarathons, you've got to train for them.

(55:06):
So that was the incentive to train, to train daily. But then,
you know, I had a disasteron my first one I ran.
It was at the Sea of GalileeMarathon and the weather conditions were terrible and
I wasn't very well and I hitthe wall that wasn't much fuel available on
the course. I did three threethirty four, which I was a bit
disappointed with. I thought I'd domore like three fifteen. But then I

(55:27):
ran in Moscow a couple of yearslater and a few years ago from where
we're at now, and did andagain the conditions weren't good. It was
hilly, it was really cold,it was almost hailstone in you know,
it's just horrible, and I ranthree oh one. And not long after
that I ran you know, Iwas forty nine and I ran a fifty
eight forty two for ten miles,which was actually pretty good, and I

(55:51):
thought, actually, there's no reasonwhy I can't break three No, I
haven't had the Then COVID came alongand there were no races, and then
I've had a few injuries ever since, but I've given up the ghost of
trying to break three hours, whichin my mid fifties, which is quite
some feet. Actually that's not tobe sneezed, that kind of thing.
So I'm still quite competitive. Theonly thing I would say is, you

(56:12):
know, coming from that sort oftrack and shorter distance background, my sort
of natural tendency like you, Ithink, and because I'm relatively big bills,
I think I've got the physiology ofa distance runner, but the anatomy
of a physique of a middle distanceperson, if a boxer or something.
And I'm used to sort of pushinghard, you know, being competitive,

(56:36):
being alert to other competitors, breathinghard work, you know, all of
that stuff, and it's a bitalien to me with marathons because you've really
got to have the opposite approach.You have to switch off, you have
to kind of enjoy things which I'mnot quite you know, so used to
you, And it's actually battling theboredom for quite a long period and keeping
your mind focused, not letting thoselittle demons say to you, what the

(56:57):
heck are you doing? This isa ridiculous idea? Is in you know,
where did you sign up for this? And just managing your emotions and
your psychology during a marathon is forme one of the biggest challenges. Yeah,
I've gotten that that as well.I can relate for sure. So
that's some good advice for all ofthe aging marathoners that want to continue to

(57:20):
try to be competitive as long aspossible. Let's finish up. I've taken
a lot of your time. Let'sfinish up with just some nutrition. And
do you recommend a general nutrition protocol, whether it be daily nutrition throughout the
training cycle. But then also ifyou can comment on the two three day

(57:42):
window before the marathon and during themarathon, yeah, I don't. Again
in the same way that there isno magic formula and there's no one size
fits all for me, it's justyou know, good general healthy diet is
fresh fruit and vegetables. It's tryingto keep the carbohydrates, relatively high,
good protein sources, good fats,you know, good general mixed up.

(58:04):
Making sure looking at what your energyexpenditure is and relative to your energy intake,
and looking at your body mass andlooking at all that stuff. Hydration
is obviously important, making sure youreplenishing your sweat losses. You know,
there's a lot of talk and controversyover high fat versus high carbohydrate. I

(58:25):
do think that there's some evidence thatif you train in a glycogen depleted condition,
which you inevitably will if you're arunner, if you're doing a hard
sessions and long runs, there aregoing to be days when you start to
run or finish a run and yourglycogen levels are low and you're fatigued,
And there's some evidence that are actuallyis a good stimulus to adaptations in the
muscle mitochondria. So fine, butalso you want to go into some sessions

(58:50):
with high glycogen levels so that you'renot feeling terrible from the get going.
You can put in a really goodeffort and have high quality. So just
being aware of your glycogen levels,your periodization on a weekly basis of the
training that you're doing, and youcan burn glycogen with long slow runs or
with short fast runs, and justbeing aware of how you replenish that by

(59:12):
consuming sufficient carbohydrate is important. Youknow, you don't have to replenish everything
after every session. As I say, sometimes doing an easy run of a
morning in a fasted condition having donea session the night before probably is going
to provoke some benefits. But equally, if you're going into a tough interval
training session, then making sure thatyou go into it relatively fresh and pretty

(59:36):
well hydrated and with good nutrition isI think is sensible. And then when
it comes to the last few daysbefore a big race, it's something similar.
You know. I think if youmaintain a reasonably high carbohydrate focused diet
and your training is tapered away,you should find that the muscle glycogen level
start to stack up, and youfeel a little bit heavier on race day

(01:00:00):
and you feel maybe a little lethargicin that first mile, but it will
stand you in very good stead asthe race goes on. And taking advantage
of drinks and carbohydrate solutions and gelsand such like during the race itself is
important because you know if you're goingto bonk or hit the wall as we
call it over here. After twentymiles, it's going to because you've run

(01:00:20):
out of glycogen. So doing yourbest to train such that your glycogen stores
are at a high level, usingnutrition strategically such that you start the race
with high glycogen levels, and takingevery opportunity you can to take you know,
glucose on board such that such thatyou don't drain the you know,
such that your muscles are using theglucose that you're putting into your body while

(01:00:43):
you're running, so you're maintaining ahigh blood glucose level and that's feeding the
muscle in your area. That's importanttoo, is the products that are out
there in your view effectively the sameusing all the same simple carbohydrate sources frout
tose, deck glucose, glucose,They effectively the same in your area.

(01:01:07):
Yeah, they're more or less thesame. I think a lot of it.
There are some good products out there, and again it's a case of
just try if you see what youlike. You know, a lot of
the elites use Morton, which isa slightly sort of more liquid e gel
and doesn't have any much of aflavor to it. You know what we

(01:01:28):
are finding now is that if youuse a mix of different you know,
glucose and fructose, galactose, andso you can take more carbohydrate on board
per hour than we originally thought possible, and that can be beneficial, but
you have to train the gut forthat. It's not something you should try
on race day, but you couldactually get up to one hundred and twenty
grams per hour of carbohydrate in thatform. And if you can delay or

(01:01:52):
prevent you know, muscle glycogen levelsgoing critically low, then you will prevent
that drift in oxygen uptake, thatdecline in muscle glycogen, and that that
feeling of terrible fatigue that you canget over those last couple of miles as
such that your pace hopefully won't falloff of a cliff like I can higher

(01:02:15):
end of what the average person canabsorb. And they have to find what
that is in training, training thegut and things like that. Yeah,
absolutely, Yeah, Okay, wow, just flies by. Yeah, So,
any other final thoughts on what youon training or what do you think

(01:02:36):
we're going to see from the elitesor any other recommendations for athletes on training.
I think we covered covered most ofit doesn't. I mean, it's
quite interesting. You know, I'vegot a PhD student at the moment working
on We make these assumptions, andI think they're reasonable assumptions. They're quite
logical that if you do a certaintraining session that it provokes a certain physiological

(01:03:01):
adaptation, but there's probably an awfullot of crossover. So what he's trying
to do is have a group ofpeople do just low intensity training, no
intervals at all, just kind ofdo long, slow stuff as much as
they feel comfortable and capable of.And he's going to have another group doing

(01:03:22):
lots of high intensity training and nolong stuff, and we're going to you
know, take muscle biopsies. We'regoing to measure cardiovascular function, muscle metabolism
performance over a variety of different distances, and it's going to be interesting to
see whether specific training elicits specific adaptationsand impacts performance in different ways or not.

(01:03:42):
Maybe it doesn't matter what the heck. You do essentially the same adaptations
and more or less the same performanceimprovement. So you know, I would
just finished by saying, there's alot that we don't know about training and
just doing what you enjoy doing it. Consistently seeing things up, keeping it
interesting, doing long and slow,doing hard and fast, doing bits in

(01:04:04):
between, just kind of keeps it, keeps it interesting, keeps the body
adapting, keeps us fresh, itkeeps us moving forward, and keeps us
being able to do this sport foras long as possible. I'll be looking
for that research. Where could peoplefind you out on social media? I'm
on x as at andy beetroot.We didn't get to talk about beetroot.

(01:04:28):
Maybe we can do that another time. But dietary nitrot has been one of
my other topics and the world ofnutrition. And I am on Instagram,
but I you know, I thinkthat's Andrew dot Jones seven three seven zero.
I don't do so much on socialmedia as I used to. I'm
waiting for, you know, whatever'snew to come through because I think what's
there at the moment is not servingall of our purposes all too well.

(01:04:50):
Agreed, All right, thanks againfor coming on My pleasure. Enjoyed it.
Thanks again to Professor Andrew Jones,another scientist that I could just sit
and talk to for hours. Again, the time just flew right by,

(01:05:12):
and so I would recommend going tofollow him on X or Twitter, the
formerly known Twitter. I guess that'swhat we're calling it now X. He's
on x as Andy beat Root andyou'll find the link in the show notes.

(01:05:34):
And that was just a great conversation. So on the marathon performances and
the super shoes, I think youcould sense my skepticism of the shoes,
but I do absolutely accept that highresponders and super responders in the pro field,

(01:06:04):
maybe the training effect, the recoveryeffect, the overall effect gives them
a minute to ninety seconds tops.And the thing that people need to take
away with these SuperShoes, Like Isaid on the podcast, I've always coached

(01:06:24):
athletes to think that the most importantpiece of equipment is your body. And
as I mentioned, athletes always wantto throw money at the problems. If
it's not some product or some superbikes with the carbon frames and the super

(01:06:47):
wheels, and now it's the supershoes. I guess. But before you
go into your pocket and dish outthat two hundred and fifty to three hundred
bucks for shoes, which would haveto be every several months or so if
you trained in these consistently, howmuch performance do you think that was going

(01:07:13):
to give you as an amateur athlete. If it's only given the best runners
on the planet a minute to ninetyseconds, do you think you're going to
even respond half as well as them? So don't worry about the so called
super shoes. Worry about your training. It's cheaper as it relates to the

(01:07:38):
professional marathon performances. As you heardProfessor Jones say that, sure, the
shoes and the new shoe technology,it's contributing to performance. Sure, but
these are some stellar athletes that aremotivated to achieve new performances. Money is

(01:08:05):
a powerful motivator, and so theeffect is in all likelihood multi factorial,
and I think pretty soon all ofthis is likely to culminate to the world
record being broken again and perhaps evena sub two hour marathon in an open

(01:08:30):
event, a non exhibition event.In sport, we've always seen new technologies
and innovations that have increased or refactoredsome of the performances in triathlon. It
was the bikes. In my earlierpodcast with Mark Allen, if you go

(01:08:50):
back to that podcast, he talksabout some of the early bikes that they
used to ride on in the earlydays of the Iron Man race. Compared
to the bikes and the carbon framesthat we have. Now those bikes are

(01:09:12):
a dinosaur, right, and soin swimming there's the new swimsuits. So
there's always technology that might contribute tosport performance, and so we shouldn't discount
the incredible achievements of the athlete justbecause there's technological innovations. And that's my

(01:09:38):
position on that. As I mentionedon the podcast, in twenty eleven,
Kenyan runner by the name of JeffreyMootai came in and set the record on
the Boston Marathon course a two threeto two. That record still holds to
this day. That would have beena world record if the Boston Marathon course

(01:10:03):
wasn't a net down hill. Theydidn't give them the record at the time.
But my point was that this waslong before those shoes, and that
is when we started to see themarch towards runners going under two oh four.

(01:10:23):
So that I always think about thatin my mind, and that proves
to me that this is more thanthan just shoes. This is the dominance
of the East African runners is probablymore dominated by the knowledge base and learning

(01:10:49):
of their strategic and tactical running trainingthat has been built up over time,
as well as some favorable genetics ofcourse, and again money is a powerful
motivator. I hope that amateur athleteswere able to get a lot out of

(01:11:14):
this conversation with Professor Jones. Thosepeople that are just out there trying to
get faster. It's getting difficult toget in to the Boston Marathon and qualify.
And so one of the things thatyou heard was consistency the number one

(01:11:38):
contributor to performance. Whatever you do, you maintain consistency and you find new
ways to motivate yourself. Whether you'redoing volume is king, or quality is
king, or a combination of both, you have to find new ways to
motivate yourself and challenge yourself. Youcan do it. Remember, whether you

(01:12:06):
think you can or you can't,you're probably right. Follow event Horizon Endurance
Sport on Facebook, Instagram, andTwitter for training programs and services. To
become a member of our Endurance Institute. Over complete archive of podcasts, log

(01:12:28):
onto our website Event Horizon dot tv