EP. 56: A Marathoner’s Journey w/Running Influencer and Coach Elizabeth Clor

Elizabeth Clor is an endurance athlete, McMillan certified coach and contributor to the popular running blog Racing Stripes. She runs competitively at all distances from the 5K to the marathon. She made the transition from recreational runner to high performance runner and documents her experiences in her book Boston Bound, a 7-Year Journey to Overcome Mental Barriers and Qualify for the Boston Marathon. She graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in English Language and Literature and is a full-time marketing professional.

About Elizabeth Clor
https://linkin.bio/elizabethclor

Racing Stripes
https://www.elizabethclor.com/

Elizabeth on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/elizabethclor

Elizabeth Clor on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@ElizabethClorOfficial

Boston Bound Book

Audio Book:
https://mysoundwise.com/soundcasts/1695060715450s

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Boston-Bound-Overcome-Barriers-Marathon/dp/1530680581

Follow Us:
Facebook: https://Facebook.com/EventHorizon.Tv
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EventHorizonTv
Instagram: https://instagram.com/eventhorizon.tv
YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/EventHorizonTv

Support Us:
https://Patreon.com/Endurance
https://paypal.me/EnduranceExperience

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The intersection of endurance, sport,health, fitness, and life, challenging
conventional ideas and empowering people with thescience of self propelled motion. This is
the Endurance Experience podcast hosted by TonyRidge. Hello and Happy New Year.

(00:21):
My guest on this podcast is ElizabethKlore. She's an endurance athlete, a
McMillan certified coach, and contributor tothe popular running blog Racing Stripes. Elizabeth
runs competitively all distances from five kto marathon, and she made the transition

(00:45):
from relatively recreational runner to a highperformance runner, and she documents her experiences
in her book Boston Bound, aseven year journey to overcome mental barriers and
qualify for the Boston Marathon. Iread the book. It's very interesting and

(01:10):
the book is in the show notes. I highly recommend it. And Elizabeth
also graduated from the University of Virginiawith a BA in English Language and Literature
and she's a full time marketing professional. Very interesting person too. She sort

(01:30):
of a jack of all trades.She danced or had a dancing history and
also plays piano. And I thoughtthis would be a good podcast to follow
up the podcast I had with ProfessorAndrew Jones, Episode fifty five, because

(01:51):
it's the perspective of someone who wenton the marathoner's journey. That's the title
of this podcast, and it's themarathon's journey from the perspective of someone who
started off as a recreational runner.Had to go through a process of iterative

(02:19):
failure and success, failure and success, and ultimately it took Elizabeth about seven
eight years to become a Boston Marathonqualifier. I've seen athletes who have gone
through the same thing Elizabeth went through, where you have some goal, some
pr qualify for the Boston Marathon orsomething, and get frustrated to have to

(02:46):
go through those boom and busts cyclesof success and failure to try to get
there, especially the Boston Marathon,which is getting more and more competitive.
They the standards and twenty twelve,twenty thirteen, and then they increase the
standards again in twenty nineteen and twentytwenty, and it's you know, basically,

(03:12):
if you're a male in your twentiesor thirties, you need to train
for a sub three hour marathon.And then the women's the times are thirty
minutes south of the men's times,and so in the end, it's getting
really difficult to qualify for the BostonMarathon, and it's they're letting more and

(03:37):
more people into the race. Andas a result, I think the last
round we saw what you had tobeat the qualifying time by about five and
a half minutes. And so Ithink elizabeth experience is one that is important

(04:02):
to share. In the end,I think it demonstrates that regardless of what
your goal is, if you havea sound plan, you remain consistent,
you adapt and evolve and never giveup. And that's exactly what Elizabeth did.
And so she offers the perspective fromsomeone who has had to travel through

(04:27):
the wormhole, has had to figurethings out and discovered in the end,
the science of self propelled motion.She's obviously an advocate of the McMillan system,
and I thought it would be interestingfor people to hear this perspective.
And of course she chronicles this wellin her book Life Setbacks, Relationship Setbacks,

(04:55):
dealing with social media and the anxietyof having to perform for the community
out on social media. And sowe talk about the book, the inspiration
of the book and her motivation forwriting it, we talk about her massive

(05:21):
social media presence that she's built andI highly recommend you follow her. All
of her social media links are inthe show notes. And we talked about
comparing herself now to when she wasa recreational runner and what was the differences

(05:48):
between those two individuals and what contributedto the evolution between those two individuals.
And then Elizabeth takes us through agiving training cycle. We talk about,
yeah, some of the core underpinningsof UH her training cycle now aerobic versus

(06:15):
anaerobic volume versus high volume versus lowvolume, et cetera, indoors versus outdoors,
and then UH we talk about someof her favorite things that she likes,
training apparel, race nutrition, recoveryaids and things like that, and
so you can get some of herrecommendations. And then finally we finish up

(06:38):
and talk about her end game,what she has left to accomplish, and
some of the things that she wantsto focus on, and that question that
all endurance athletes have to contend withas they start to age, rack up
a race count and figure out how'sthis gonna end or if it's going to

(07:00):
end at all. So it's avery good conversation, A very good podcast
to start off the new year,and without further delay, I give you
Elizabeth Klore. All right, Iam on with Elizabeth Klore. Thanks for
coming on to the podcast. Absolutely, thank you so much for having me.

(07:26):
Okay, So, I've been followingElizabeth for quite some time on social
media. She's a running influence,so we were a pretty big following,
and she's been one of the mostdedicated running influences that I've seen. I
followed quite a number, but she'sstanding out significantly. And what do you

(07:50):
have? Over about one hundred thousandor close to one hundred thousand followers on
Instagram almost I'm at around just overninety right now. Okay, that's all
quite a quite a big following.And what I noticed, though, is
that you're you're pretty dedicated. AndI did read your book Boston Boston Bound

(08:16):
m HM. Seven Year Journey ofthe Trials and tribulations and successes and Pitfalls
of a Boston Marathon Qualifier. That'snot the actual tagline. What's the actual
tagline? Let me get the actualtagline? So I get it right.

(08:39):
Oh gosh, I don't have thebook in front of you. There it
is long. It's a seven yearjourney. Do you overcome mental obstacles and
qualify for the Boston Marathon? That'sright, And I got it on audio
book. Oh and I know,yeah, the audiobook. So you're you're

(09:00):
the reader of the audiobook. What'sthat. Do you have to actually record
that in your apartment or a house. No. I went to a recording
studio and I had a professionally done, and it was a It was a
new experience for me. I'd neverbeen to a recording studio before. I
do have some sort of informal trainingand doing voice type of things, but

(09:24):
with this, I really wanted itto just sound natural, like my voice.
So, but sounding like yourself isn'talways that easy when you know you're
being recorded, so it was challenging. But I tried to just read it
as if it was my own selftalking, and I think it came out
pretty good. There are times whenI feel like I'm talking a little bit

(09:46):
too quickly, and I wish Iwould have slowed down some parts of it,
but otherwise I think it came outpretty good. Yeah, it was
a It's a quick read, andI like to get things on audiobook because
I can read it while i'm andso I went through it in a couple
of days. Oh great, butit's a it's a great it's a great

(10:07):
little book. I think runners,especially the runners that have gone through all
of those pitfalls to try to qualifyfor the Boston Marathon, we'll find it
interesting. I'm going to put thelink to the book in the show notes.
So oh great, yeah, absolutely, everyone, all the listeners go
out and check it out. Andthen your blog is Racing Strikes Elizabeth Klore

(10:31):
dot com. How long have youbeen running this blog? How many years?
Oh? I started my blog intwo thousand and six. If you
two thousand and six, it wasactually it was a MySpace blog. It
was on MySpace, and I actuallywas part of a group of runners on

(10:52):
MySpace that over time became relatively large. But then somewhere around two thousand and
nine, everyone was getting off ofmy Space, so I moved all my
posts over to Blogger, where I'vebeen maintaining my blog ever since. Right,
right, and so you have avery dedicated blog, big social media
following the book, and so youknow, I have podcasts with people that

(11:16):
I think would have an interesting perspectiveand have good conversations, and so I
wanted to let's start and jump injust so people know who you are,
you know, to describe your backgroundas a marketing corporate person, your experience,

(11:37):
and then running and how you gotinto running, and then the blog
and how the blog led into thebook and and the social media presence.
So if you could just take takeas much time as you want with this
one and give our listeners, uh, you know the full fifty thousand foot

(11:58):
you okay, absolutely, So youknow, since you mentioned my job,
I will start out with that.I am the chief marketing officer at a
technology company. I've been in marketingfor my entire career, that's over twenty
years now, and it's technology marketing, business to business and it's something that
I really enjoyed because it allows meto be both creative and analytical at the

(12:22):
same time. So I really enjoythat. And then running is something I've
been doing for over twenty years now. I started after I graduated college in
two thousand, just on a treadmill, just as a way to stay in
shape and keep active, kind oflike you would use any piece of gym

(12:45):
equipment. It was just part ofgoing to the gym for me, I
didn't really discover i'll use the worddiscover like road racing until almost five years
later in two thousand and five,when I kind of just happened upon a
race on the treadmill. I wasin my comfort zone. I could listen
to my discmand this is before theyhad iPods, and I knew I could

(13:09):
control the distance in the pace,and it was a very controlled environment and
I had my music and I wascomfortable. So I didn't really try to
do any running outside. There wasnothing about it that really appealed to me.
But when I went to my reunion, my five year college reunion,
there was a two mile race aspart of the program and I didn't even
find it. It was my roommate, who was my college roomate, who

(13:31):
was also my roommate for this reunion. She suggested that I do it.
So I did, and I ranthe whole thing, talking to one of
my classmates who was a guy thewhole time. And then I didn't I
wasn't really focused on it. Butafterwards I had won first place for the
women and they handed me this UVA. I went to the University of Virginia,

(13:54):
this really nice University of Virginia likemug like silver steel played it or
I mean not real silver, butthat was the color. So anyway,
it felt it felt awesome. SoI was like this, this is actually
really cool. And so then thatsame guy that I had been running with
said, well, why don't youdo a ten k race this next weekend

(14:16):
in d C. Which is whereI'm from, from the Washington, d
C metro area. I live rightoutside in Virginia. So I said,
sure, what's a ten k?What is that? I don't know what
that is. And I've been runningfor on the treadmill for however long he
I was six point two miles.I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah,
I can do that. I cando that. I do that on
the treadmill all the time. Soso then I did the ten k and

(14:41):
I ended up doing really well andmade all the first time running mistakes,
like we ran in all cotton,didn't use support a potty, so you
imagine how that went, all allof the things. But I really enjoyed
it. And then so from thereI decided I would tackle a half marathon,
and then from there I decided Iwould do a marathon. So that's

(15:01):
how kind of I got hooked intoit in two thousand and five. So
I've been running races since five,so almost twenty years. And I ran
my first marathon in two thousand andsix. That was the Delaware Marathon.
And I chose that one because actuallymy friend was doing it and it was
her idea to run a marathon,and so she sort of persuaded me to

(15:22):
do it with HER's I think that'show a lot of people get into running,
by the way, is they havea friend that does it, and
maybe they're casual runners, and oneof them has the idea, or one
of them has been doing it,or they broke the other person in.
So I know that's how I gotroped in, and I hope that I've
roped other people into. So Istarted running, and pretty shortly after I

(15:46):
started running, this was back infive oh six. These are the days
of my space. I love writing. I got a degree at EVA in
English and I've just been writing eversince I could pick up a pen,
like short stories. Whatever. Iknew I wanted to be a writer of
some sort for my career, whichI do do a lot of writing in

(16:07):
marketing, a lot of marketing typecopy and things like that. But I
started writing my blog on my Spacebecause I enjoyed writing. Blogging was really
in back then, so I everyone'sblogging, and I want to be a
blogger too, So I actually theblog was about I. It was about
running mostly, but I would alsohave a lot of posts that had nothing

(16:29):
to do with running, just aboutmy life as a single woman in her
twenties, just trying to figure outlife and career and relationships and friends and
family and things like that. Butthen a lot of it was really personal
and it was limited to my MySpacefriends. So when I moved it over,
it just became all about running.So that's really how it started.

(16:51):
And then I just continued doing racesof all distances and writing about it.
And then I wrote the book bookin twenty sixteen, and that's also when
I sort of started with the Instagram. And I started the Instagram because I

(17:11):
wanted to let people know about thebook, try to get some people reading
the book, which I had published, thinking that I'd be lucky if like
fifty or one hundred people read it. Like I really didn't think it was
going to go anywhere because I hadself published it, nobody knew who I

(17:32):
was and all of that. Butmy husband really persuaded me to write it,
to publish it because I had areally I think, strong and helpful
story to tell to others who maybegoing through the same thing. Really encouraged
me to write it to get thestory out there, and so I did.
And having been in marketing, Iknow how to use social media.

(17:56):
I knew how it worked. Ihad just never done it for myself.
So I started to just uh,build up the Instagram account to promote the
book. And then here we are. Yeah, and that's you know,
you started in the golden age ofblogging, and I remember these days everyone
had a blog. And and thenuh, it's certainly started to snowball into

(18:26):
other medium social media, various socialmedia platforms, and then and then podcasts,
and now podcast is sort of anew blog. But even in the
book, so you you were ableto take and your your background as a
marketing professional surely help. But takeall of that and then take all of
those blog posts and say, wow, I think I have a book here,

(18:49):
a really good book. And Ithink what comes across in your in
the audiobook hearing you as the reader, you can tell the parts that were
very important and emotionally important that comesacross as the reader, and I think

(19:10):
someone who is either tried to qualifyfor Boston or you know, even just
marathoning generally, it can be veryemotionally draining sometimes and sometimes you're training and
training and you're not getting the resultsthat you want and you go, my
goodness, what's going on is sometimesyou just feel like you want to quit,

(19:32):
and then the next day you feellike you just want to get back
on the horse. And then,especially with the Boston qualifiers who've also like
yourself, took several years from whenthey started running to actually qualifying. So
it took you what seven years,correct? Yeah, seven years of trying

(19:52):
In the seven years I didn't countlike the first two years of marathoning in
which I wasn't trying to qualify becauseI was so far away, But seven
years once I set my mind toit, seven years worth of actual attempts
to qualify. Then you can addtwo years on of just like learning how
to run a marathon. Yeah,And then you know, you're talking about

(20:14):
a lot of ups and downs thatyou went through, and you know,
some of the personal things you talkabout in the book, eating disorder and
disordered eating and anxiety and life lifeissues. Talk about that pouring your life
out into a book. Yeah,there was a lot of personal things that
I did share in the book thatI don't necessarily share on my Instagram.

(20:41):
I do sometimes share them in myblog. It's kind of like, I
have such a large Instagram following,and I have people that see my posts
that aren't even following me. It'slike, if you take the time to
get to know me, if youwant to sort of invest in my journey
and really understand, and you're goingto read my blog, then you'll get
to sort of see some more personalinformation and some more personal aspects of my

(21:06):
journey. I'm not going to necessarilypour out all the details of my eating
disorder on my Instagram. It's notthat I'm ashamed of it. It's just
it's not something that I really wantto have blasted out to the world.
In that context, you can't reallydescribe a lot of things that happen personally,
a lot of personal trauma or strugglein an Instagram post. I mean,

(21:30):
you only get so many words.So I feel like if I'm going
to put something really personal out there, you just don't have a lot of
space in that little square. Itlike almost it almost minimizes it, right,
It's like, well, here,you know, I suffered an eating
disorder for however many years and itwas really hard, and I had all
of this trauma because of it thatdrove it. And I'm just going to

(21:52):
reduce that to one square with liketwo hundred words, Like I just don't
feel like that, like I cando that. So the book, in
some of the blog posts, Igo in a little bit deeper and I
talk about that type of thing,and I think I almost think I forgot
what your question was. No,it was just the yeah, what was

(22:14):
it like pouring your life out intoa book? I think I think people
can resonate. Many people can resonatemale, female, young, old,
can resonate with the life issues thatyou're having. And then at the same
time you're trying to train, andat the same time you have some goal,
whether it's Boston Marathon or just somegoal in your head. And coaching

(22:38):
athletes, I found that many peoplejust have some thing, whether it's people
trying to get sub three for Bostonor just some pr that they're trying to
get and they're not doing it,and they're trying to figure out why they're
not doing it, and sometimes everything, all the training seems like it's lining

(23:00):
up, but you still come upshort on race day and you're left scratching
your head, going what in theworld is going on? And so all
of that came through in a book, and I'm reading the book and just
sort of recalling this, you know, from my days as an endurance athlete,
but then also as a coach coachingcoaching athletes do the same thing,

(23:21):
and it's very interesting, very interestingread. And so you're you're talking in
the book about the progression, theevolution. So when you compare yourself from
when you started to when you finallyget to the point where you've you've peaked

(23:41):
and gotten to the Boston qualifier orwhenever your peak was to be able to
run what three fifteen is your prthree fifteen very four? That's very close
to mind, by the way,So what do you think what were the
combination of factors that contribute it tothat evolution? So I think this is

(24:03):
especially new marathons want to know this. What's the delta between the elizabeth when
you started running to the peak performer? Huge huge difference and that is,
in fact why I wrote the book, because I noticed such a difference in
myself and I had made such achange in my own personality that it was

(24:26):
such a big difference that that's whyI felt compelled to write a book about
it. And I thought that manyother people could be going through something similar
but feeling quite alone, so thatthe book would help those people that were
feeling alone know that they're not alonein feeling like this when everyone else around

(24:47):
you seems to be qualifying for Bostonso easily, or they make it look
easy, but you're struggling, Especiallylike if you run with a club or
a group of runners and everyone seemsto be making p progress and you know
not, that can feel very lonely. So I mean, that's one of
the reasons I wrote the book wasto show that this is actually something that

(25:08):
a lot of us do go throughand sometimes it just takes a while.
But to go back to your questionabout the difference between when I started,
it's much more of a personality differencethan necessarily. I mean, you can
see I got faster and more fitter, that's obvious in the difference of my
marathon time. But I really seethat as a product of the changes that

(25:33):
I made to my mindset and sortof how my personality changed to it.
Much more relaxed mindset, not soperfectionistic, definitely not as rigid. I
saw running when I've initially approached itas very very black and white, like
it's a time on the clock,it's a pace, it's a training,

(25:56):
it's this, this and this,this is the this is literally the math
equation, and when you do themath equation, you get ex result.
And when that didn't happen for me, I just I couldn't tolerate it because
I approached running as a perfectionist whosaw it as something. And actually that
was one of the reasons that runningappealed to me. Is someone who was
recovering from an eating disorder, lookingfor control, looking for structure, looking

(26:22):
for something that if I played bythe rules, I would get the outcome
and I could control it. Andthere wasn't somebody else coming in and saying,
yes, you can do this,something that I could do all on
my own. And that's where inlife, you know, my early life
leading up to the eating disorder,I always felt like out of control,
like I needed a teacher to giveme an A on my paper, or

(26:44):
I needed a guy to say yes, I want to be in a relationship
with you. Anything that I wantedI had to have someone else's stamp of
approval. So with running, Ireally saw it as something that I could
just do without anyone's approval, whichI mean, it is, it is,
it's true, But what's not trueis that like you just have to
follow XYZ and then you'll get theresults that you need. So that's where

(27:04):
I really tripped up, so todayor when I peaked rather or both.
Actually it's much more of a relaxedmindset and knowing that running is just a
very big puzzle. There are lotsof pie sits to it, lots of
facets. Running as a sport isvery simple. You just put one foot

(27:29):
in front of the other, butthe things around it are not so simple.
You have to have the right nutritionand fueling. You have to know
how to hydrate properly. There's strengthtraining, there's injury prevention. There's the
mental aspect, there's the technique.There's the pacing strategy, there's knowing how
it feels. There's everything around yourform so much else the weather. Obviously,

(27:53):
the weather's a big factor too,which no, none of us can
control or even anticipate how it's goingto impact us. So taking all of
those extra things that aren't part ofthat nice math equation and understanding what they
are and how they play in andwhat is controllable and what's not, and
just doing my best given that bigpicture. That's really how I approach it

(28:18):
now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they're reading the book and
you finding coaching and then becoming anadvocate of the McMillan system that unlike that
surely help you in your in yourprogress as well. And then some of

(28:41):
the the the issues you talked aboutwith athlete psychology, and then what I
call social influence. And that's theflip side of what happened with the social
media and straw of a right,So you have that sort of athlete psychology,

(29:07):
uh influence, social influence of performingfor your peanut gallery, your your
community. Yes, and sometimes thatcauses anxiety. You feel like you have
to prove to your community that you'refast and you can still do it.

(29:27):
And I I realized that the athletesgo through an evolution and when you start
off this way in the first fewyears, but then as you start to
rack up your your race count,you start to care less and less about
that to the point where you youyou eventually evolve. Two. I remember

(29:52):
one part in your in your bookwhen you're you're thinking to yourself and you're
like, I can do whatever Iwant. That was my number. That
was my biggest epiphany as a runnerand as a person. Yeah. Yeah,
everyone, every athlete I think getsto that point. Eventually. You
start off caring a lot about howpeople perceive you and what people think about

(30:14):
your races and such, and thenand then get to that point eventually.
And that point in the in thebook, I sort of chuckled because,
I you know, if you've beenin the endurance sports long enough, eventually
you get to that point. Butathlete psychology, social influence, it's a
it's a big factor in a runnersevolution. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,

(30:37):
I think when you're starting out,because when you're starting out there's so much
progress to be made. You don'tunderstand that there's a big, huge puzzle.
You just see that math equation likeif I train this this, I'll
get a PR And usually you do. I mean in the first like two,
three, even four years of running. It's like relatively easy to get
a pr You just have to dothe training and you will and then you

(30:57):
kind of want people to see itand around you doing that. But then
like you mature and you realize thatit's not just about the prs, it's
not what about like what other peoplethink. And I mean I have,
as we said, just over ninetythousand people following me on Instagram, and
if I really cared about what theythought every time I went out and ran

(31:18):
a race, and that would giveme anxiety that I wouldn't be able to
perform at all. So it's somethinglike back back in the day, I
couldn't have imagined having this many eyeson me. Yeah. Yeah, And
you know, I use these socialmedia platforms as a as a publishing channel.
I don't. I don't use them. I think you either fall into
one of the categories where you're reallygood and you're really good on your platforms

(31:44):
with sort of being a brand.That's why you have such a such a
big following, whereas someone like myself, I'm really bad at that. I
use these platforms as a publishing channel. Yeah, and they're good if you
have a business, a podcast,you can publish and that's it, but

(32:04):
I think you got to you gotto be really good at it, and
you're you are really good at it, and so you know, it shows
that you're an experience marketer and brandand McMillan. So I had a note
here to talk about McMillan. Soyou you found a McMillan system, and
I'm sure that that was a bigcontributor in your evolution. Greg. This

(32:28):
is bought the system by Greg McMillan. It's a very well established training system.
So how did that help you?Uh? Immensely. And I worked
with coach Andrew le Minchello, who'sa Olympian. He was an Olympic athlete

(32:49):
and he worked directly with Greg McMillanfor many years and I and so I
trained under Andrew to call him Lemon, and he really this was I want
to say. I started working withhim, I think in twenty fourteen,
so about ten years ago. AfterI had done training plans from the book

(33:12):
like the Fitzinger Method from Advanced Marathonand I have done that. I had
worked with sort of a local coachwho was sort of ahead of this running
club who we just did group workouts, though he didn't really tailor anything to
me. So this was so likeLemon was the first coach that wrote a
specific plan for me, and whatI found to be the best part of

(33:37):
working with him in the plan wasthe variety of workouts that he gave me.
And it wasn't the same tempo runs, the same interval workouts which I
had been doing for years, likeOkay, it's Thursday, it's five mile
tempo, or it's Tuesday. It'seither eight hundreds or mile repeats, and
I've just been doing those over andover and over again, and there's no

(33:58):
variety. And so both mentally andphysically, my body was like, you
know, I've already absorbed all thebenefit I can from this schedule and from
this program. So when I startedworking with Lemon, he introduced all sorts
of new workouts, some of whichI liked, some of which I didn't.
But it was important for me todo the ones that I didn't because
those were the ones that I reallyneeded to do. And the variety and

(34:21):
the different types of workouts and themethodology worked so quickly on me. I
mean after a year with Coach Lemon, I mean my times just dropped,
dramatically dropped. I went from likea marathon PR. I think of one
forty or sorry, half marathon PRof one forty one to one thirty five.

(34:44):
Wow, in about a year.And this isn't someone this is not
a new runner ian. I've beendoing half marathons at that point for like
seven years, and I was likestuck in like the low one forties.
Yeah, yep, And that's whatstructure. Structure really has an impact,

(35:04):
right, And so I think oftentimesnew marathons, especially new marathons, struggle
with the difference between working out andtraining. There's a big difference between working
out training and then a system likeMcMillan or for me it was it was

(35:25):
Joel Friel, it was Jack Danielsrunning coach Jack Daniels. It was those
in early influenced where I really startedto understand the difference between working out and
training, the difference in training froma recreational athlete and say someone's training for
high performance or Boston Marathon qualifier orOlympic qualifier, and then that's really that

(35:52):
was it, and that's when Ireally started to understand, oh, this
is really a science of self propelledmotion. So let's let's talk about you
know, the training cycle now,and just so you can give some of
your your learnings and teachings to ourto our listeners. So if you're in

(36:17):
a given training cycle, now,what are some training principles you know,
say, for someone who wants toperform what recommendations would you give just a
based upon your learnings from Milan oryour own experience. Yeah, I mean,
I really think it depends on theathlete and sort of what works for

(36:38):
them. I've found what works forme, and what works for me is
I can run really high mileage andthat does work well. And I could
go for like a month with norest days because I've worked up to that.
I mean, for most most athletes, you really need to work up

(37:00):
to running every day without a restday. But if when I'm sort of
in the peak of my marathon training, I'm not doing this all year round.
If I have, you know,four weeks, four or five weeks
where this is going to be thepeak of my training, and I'm gonna
sort of jam as much mileage asI can into there and spread it out,

(37:22):
but not necessarily have like not berunning a bunch of twenty two or
twenty four milers, like spreading itout across the week, I can safely
run upper sixties, lower seventies noproblem. And I think if I if
I personally, if I have justbecause I just sort of have this base

(37:43):
that I that I've built up overthe years and years and years. So
if I just sort of pick thefour to six weeks that are going to
be like the intense training and reallyhave high mileage during during those weeks,
then I can be very successful atthe marathon. So to go back to
your original question, like what woulda typical training cycle be for me?

(38:04):
And once again, it depends onan athlete. Because I do coach a
few athletes now I am a McMillancertified coach. So yeah, I like
to start out every marathon training cyclewith hills because I think hills really form
the basis of that leg strength thatyou're going to need. And often when
the marathon is in the fall,it's a Hills are a great workout to

(38:28):
do in the summer because you're notso much focused on the pace. You
can get hung up on the paceand when it's hot, you're just going
to be slower and it's sort ofuseless to say, oh, run your
marathon pace when it's like seventy fivedegrees, it's not really going to be
feasible. So I think that workoutsthat are in the summer, like hill
workouts, are more sort of likefartlegs where you're doing one or two or

(38:52):
three minute intervals. Those work reallywell early in the cycle to get the
legs ready, especially if it's inthe summer, and then once you have
that kind of foundation, then incorporatingstarting to incorporate tempos. McMillan is a
big proponent of the steady state,which is sort of somewhere in between your

(39:14):
marathon and your half marathon pace,which is a good introduction to a morel
lack tape threshold type of work becauseyou sort of ease into running a faster
pace for a more extended period oftime, but it's not as hard as
like a traditional tempo or a lacktate threshold, so you can do you

(39:35):
can work at it for like thirtyor forty five minutes without feeling too worn
out by it. So then afterthe hills, I like to do steady
states to kind of get ready forthe more traditional tempo and lack tap threshold
runs, and then when it's asthe marathon gets closer, like starting eight
weeks out, then it's more aboutblack tape threshold, different types of tempo

(39:59):
runs like I like to do nontraditional tempos where you're doing like a wave,
you're alternating like ten k pace andmarathon pace to sort of help the
body. This is one of theMcMillan's learnings is instead of doing like a
traditional lac tape threshold like tempo forsix miles, alternate between ten k pace

(40:20):
and marathon pace for six miles,right, yep. So so stuff like
that with a lot of variety,and I think it's it's still important to
be doing VO two max work allthe way up to the marathon, just
to keep that machine sharp and tomake your marathon pace feel easier. I
see a lot of programs where youdon't really run much faster than marathon pace

(40:40):
when you train for a marathon,and that may work for some people,
that doesn't work for me. Ilike to run much faster than marathon pace
to make my marathon pace feel morecomfortable. Yeah exactly, yeah, yeah,
And I think that's the difference.Some of newer athletes will do the
you know, sort of big banglong run at the end of the week.
They don't do too much during theweek, and then they do another

(41:04):
big bang long run at the endof the week, and you quickly realize
that you need to run more thanthat if you want to perform. Right,
So, you know, somewhere betweenwhat I call two x two times
the marathon a distance in the weekto two and a half x that's what
fifty two to sixty five miles,that's really where you know if you want

(41:29):
to perform. Most people who performare falling somewhere in that two to two
and a half x range. Andthen I've seen or coached very advanced marathons
who do three x three times themarathon distance in the week, and that's
really the upper echelon of runners.But I think when you look at the

(41:50):
data, yeah, if you wantto perform, you want to even get
close to running Boston Marathon on average, you need to really run. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean I see alot of plans out there too that
just there's advanced plans where there's liketwenty milers every weekend, or there's twenty
two milers, twenty four milers.I feel like, at least for me,

(42:14):
I don't like to over emphasize thelong run. I think that having
I think it's more important that youhave a good distribution of that mileage throughout
the week. Creed agreed, Yes, yeah, And it also makes your
long run feel easier. If you'rerunning thirty miles a week and twenty of
the thirty is your long run,that is going to feel very hard.

(42:35):
If you're running seventy miles a week, twenty is not going to feel that
difficult. Yep. Yeah. Andthen when people hear these numbers, the
newer marathoners, they're like sixty milesin a week. But you know,
there's different ways, you know,to cope with it. Morning sessions,
evening sessions. I like to prescribefor some folks. But you're right,

(42:55):
you know, having a distribution throughoutthe week versus the big bang at the
end of the week. What aboutindoors outdoors? Do you do a lot
of treadmill running? Not a lot. I have a treadmill, and I
actually bought it for the recommendation ofCoach Lemon since I happened to be very

(43:16):
heat sensitive and I was getting sick, actually very sick like with mono like
illnesses in the summer. I thinkI talked about it in my book.
In the summer of twenty twelve,got very sick with mono, very sick
also in the summer of twenty sixteenfor three months, also in the summer
of twenty eighteen, and so westarted noticing a pattern that I would get

(43:37):
very sick in the summer, andwhat we thought it was was my heat
sensitivity just killing my immune system,and then I get a virus, and
then I wouldn't be able to recoverbecause my immune system was just murdered.
So I bought a treadmill mainly forsummer running, which I know most people
buy it for like winter running,but I bought mine for summer running.

(44:00):
If the dew point gets like aboveseventy two ish, I'll use the treadmill
in the summer, and then ofcourse in the winter, if it is
icy, i'll use it. Thesnow doesn't bother me. Rain sometimes,
yeah, see how tough I'm feeling. But yeah, I usually only use
the treadmill and those in those typesof situations. Yeah, it's a robot,

(44:23):
and you know, it's a trainingtool. Intervals. It's good for
especially like I only have twenty minutesand you can just jump on the treadmill
for twenty minutes or time sensitive situation. I'm sensitive. Yeah, Like I
just posted like earlier this week howI had a like an eight o'clock flight
I had to get to, soI only had like half an hour,

(44:45):
So I woke up at four anddid thirty minutes on the treadmill and it
was like perfect for that. Yeahyeah, yeah, And you can do
a thirty minute workout that would reallychallenge you. Awesome. Yeah, I
mean I could talk have a wholehour on just talking training. Yeah.
So how about this, Let's talkabout some of your your favorite things and

(45:08):
give some recommendations to our listeners.You know, race, nutrition, recovery
aids. How about apparel? Doyou have any favorite things? To start
there with apparel? So, Ilove the brand Rabbit, and I love
pretty much everything they make because Ilike the colors tend to be really bright,

(45:30):
which I love, and their clothingfits me really well. Like they
have this one pair of shorts it'scalled the First Place, which I wear
for all of my races, andevery time they come out with a new
color, I get one. SoI have like eight pairs of those but
yeah, I would say for apparel, Rabbit for sure. I also like
Roadrunner Sports Corsa. That's their theirhomegrown brand, Corsa. Their stuff is

(45:55):
really good. I really love theirtheir tights and they may excellent jackets too,
so they and they have great colorsas well. Yeah, sneakers,
any with any particular brand, youknow? I am so I have so
many different shoes and I do nothave a particular brand that I go to

(46:17):
more than often. So right nowin my rotation, I've got like a
Brooks Ghost in my rotation, I'vegot the Adidas Adios Pro. I've got
the Nike Invincible Run. I've gotthe Socony and Dworphin Pro. Got a
New Balance, super Comp Trainer andSuperComp Pacer. So I have a lot

(46:40):
of shoes. I don't really havea favorite. It just kind of depends
on what type of running I'm doingand what sort of feel I'm in the
mood for nice wearable tech, uh, any wearable technology. So you're using
garment, Apple Watch? What Iuse Garmin for my running. I have
an Apple Watch, which I actuallyuse as a phone because I do not

(47:01):
carry my phone when I run.I'm very old school so if I need
if I feel like I'm gonna bein a situation where I need to make
a phone call, I have mywatch, so I'm we need to call
my husband if I'm in a longrun or something, and that's coming very
sometimes. That has been so helpful. It's like it's also if I'm running

(47:22):
somewhere, like if I'm a businesstravel and I need to get an uber
because I got lost, or ifI need to hit a panic switch.
So Apple Watch is great for thingslike that. So and I'll be double
fisteing. I'll be wearing the garment. Everyone's like, what do you watch
to watch? I haven't. Yeah, you and I are the same,
I have well where Yeah, we'retwo of those those people. So garment
on one arm, one risk,apple Watch on the other. Yeah.

(47:44):
And if I'm not wearing my appleWatch on the other, I'm wearing my
fit bit. Yeah. Because nowthe fit that I wear twenty four to
seven because I like it to trackmy sleep and I've got like five or
six years of sleep data, fiveor six years of data for resting heart
rates. So I think heart rateand sleep data is super important to track.
So I always have my fitbit on. Yeah, well, Garment is

(48:06):
still I think leading for endurance athletesand train athletes, and they still they
still are the leader with the technology. And then Apple watched Ultra now is
trying to compete with that. Ithink they're still farther away. But I
think Apple for the phone capability andthe medical tech. The medical tech that

(48:29):
Apple has is pretty good and sobut if I were Garment, I'd be
shaking in their boots a little bit, just because if Apple really gets better
and they still got a ways togo for the athlete, I think Garments
should be afraid for the next nextfew years. I think. Yeah.

(48:51):
And there's also the weirdo purists likeme. I don't like a feature rich
garment. I only want it.I just wanted to show my distance in
my pace. I don't need amillion. I don't need it to like
pay my bills or like, yeah, the text messages. I don't want
a text message on my garment.Yeah. I just want it to be
like a running watch that times me. So I maybe I'm probably the minority
there, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting to see where this this fight

(49:16):
goes between Garment and Apple and whoeverelse comes out the wearable technology is just
it's going at life speed, medicaltechnology, wearable tech. And which treadmill
do you have? I have theNordic Track commercial. I believe it's twenty

(49:36):
four fifty two four five zero andI bought it back in twenty nineteen.
So the design today I think ofthat model is a little bit different,
but it's one of the ones thathas like the I Fit trainer and the
iPod monitor, and I absolutely lovethat because you can run like literally anywhere
in the world with a variety oftheir trainers, and I love their trainers.

(50:00):
They're so motivating. I always learnsomething, so it makes running on
the treadmill more interesting to hear whatthe trainer has to say and to run
like in Africa or in like Japanor somewhere like that. Yeah, nice,
have to check that one out.I have not tried it. Okay,
Nice? Any other any others?I would say so. I sometimes

(50:23):
run with music. Not I don'trace with music. I don't do hard
workouts or intervals, but if I'mjust going out for a nice, easy
run, I do like my shocksheadphones for sure. Are they aar buds
or are they kind that you knowthey're not they're not air buds. They're
like they fit outside of the ear. So what makes them different is so,

(50:45):
first of all, I have verysmall ear lobes, so anything that
just sits inside the ear will alwaysfall out. I've tried like everything under
the sun. So these sit justoutside of the ear. And the benefit
of that is, first of all, I'll fit almost anyone, doesn't matter
how big your ears are, becausethey don't go inside of them. And
you can also hear what's going onaround you because they don't sit inside of

(51:09):
the ear. So I run onstreets sometimes there's cars, and I have
to be able to hear if there'sa car coming, so I can't be
having a headphone blocking out all thenoise. So the shocks, it's great
there. The sound quality is great, they fit, the price point is
reasonable, and the battery life isphenomenal. Yeah, and I have to

(51:30):
check those out. I've yet tofind anything that solves the fallout problem.
You start sweating, you start going, and then they fall out and you
start pushing them back in. Oh, then you should definitely try shocks.
Yeah, check them out, racenutrition any particular or do you find them

(51:51):
all to be similar in the same. Definitely not all the same. There's
two that I rely heavily on andI probably won't try anything else. Actually,
maybe there's three. So the Morton, I don't know if it's pronounced
Martin or Morte Martin whatever. Theirgels are just so easy to digest.
I find that when I take them, I get just a nice quick burst

(52:14):
of energy. So I tend touse those for when I'm racing. I
can just get them down quickly,get the energy I need quickly, And
I use the gels. I'll usuallytake one caffeinated per race, and then
if it's longer, all the otherones will just be the non caffeinated.
They have a this came out afew years ago with a solid that is

(52:34):
just a bar of energy that tastesreally good that I'll use if I just
need feel like I need extra energyduring the day. And I also use
so that's one. And I alsouse a lot of the u Can products.
And I've been using you Can.Yeah, I've been using you Can
for years and years and years.If I'm doing a long run, I
have, I'll drink their energy powder. I'll mix it with water and I'll

(52:54):
drink that before and that's just anice pre run, gets everything ready to
go, and the energy will distributeevenly and slowly, versus with a morton,
which is like a quick burst,which will wear off quickly. Like
with morton, once you take it, I feel like you still have to
keep taking it, like every fortyminutes. With a u Can, you

(53:15):
can just take one and it willjust slowly release, so you can.
Also they have gels as well,and I'll use those. I use them
more in training to get that sortof slow release benefit. I don't necessarily
need to be running super fast intraining. I just need a good source
of energy and I think that youCan is great for that. Yeah.

(53:36):
Interesting, Yeah, the science hereis interesting trying to get that amount of
carbohydrate that can actually absorb into yourbody. And Martin was popularized by the
Kipchoge and some of the Eastern Africanrunners that were sponsored by Interesting to see
how this will develop. So let'sfinish up, and I think we can

(54:00):
probably talk for hours if we wantedto about a lot of this stuff.
What do you have left to accomplish? And you know you talked about coaching,
Now, what do you have leftto accomplish? And do you ever
see yourself pulling back on endurance andconcentrating on some other things, and you
know the sort of quote unquote endgame. In fact, you know many

(54:24):
athletes have to at least consider theend game or whether or not there is
an end game. So what doyou what do you think about this?
Well, I'd like to run aslong as I'm able to, mostly because
it's for health reasons, right thecardio ask you with fitness, and I
enjoy it as well. I sortof see myself as I age and as

(54:47):
I slow down and I'm not reallychasing prs as much. That's when I
want to do like the bucket listraces. Everyone says how wonderful and beautiful
Big sur is, but it's notnecess necessarily something I want to run now,
or I still feel like I couldbe focusing on getting like a lifetime
pr or going to run the Paris, running the marathon in Africa, so

(55:10):
all of those bucket list like experienceraces. I want to be able to
run well enough that I can actuallydo those like into like my sixties.
So that's sort of I guess Isee that as maybe the end game.
I'm coaching now. I just started. I just got my certification last summer.
I do that. I have afull time job, so I don't

(55:32):
have time to do more than justa few athletes. So but you know,
when I retire from my full timejob, I could probably take on
more athletes. I want to writeanother book, but I don't necessarily want
it to be about running. Iwant it to be I'm considering writing a
fiction novel, which has been adream of mine since I was a child.

(55:55):
But with the full time job,with running, with everything else going
on in my life, I hadthe focus to sit down and try writing
a novel and maybe it'll work.Maybe maybe I'll figure out this novel writing
is just a child in fantasy.I'm not cut out for it, but
I at least want to give ita shot. And you were a dancer,
right, maybe more dancing. Iyou know, I feel less able

(56:22):
to do that now than ever,so I think that that's definitely dancing is
definitely on the decline. I'm thankfulfor every little jump I can do these
days. Well, maybe that's thefiction book. It'll be a dancer dance.
It starts off with a big endeavorand she's she's going, she's trying
to get it. She's something's happening, she's succeeding failing, and then she

(56:46):
maybe that's that's the book that youneed to write. Wow, I wanted
to be I wanted to have somelike suspense and trauma in it, like
I wanted to be a dark book. Yeah, there's like this dark side
of me that I feel like Idon't ever let come out, but it
will in the book. And AlsoI also play piano, so I've started

(57:06):
to do more of that, morerecording myself playing the piano, and there
are some songs that I love tofocus on really learning and getting to a
really good point. So jack ofye, well, see, we don't
have kids, so I have time, you know, I have time to
do all of these other hobbies soaside from my my full time jobs.

(57:30):
So I do see myself focusing morelike on the piano and on my writing
sort of in the future. Veryinteresting. Well yeah, and I think
you you know, to go backto the the end game. I think
that's definitely a place where many athletesgo. I've seen it myself, and

(57:52):
that you start to take all ofthe information you've garnered, all the stuff
that's in your brain and then helpother people live vicariously through them. And
then you start thinking less and lessabout the prs, those that are in
the rearview mirror. And now youstart thinking about the bucket list things,
the you know, going overseas,doing some overseas events, bucket list races.

(58:17):
Yeah, and pacing. Oh,I love being a pacer. That
is one thing I have. Ipaced. I've been an official pacer,
only an official pacer once, butlike an unofficial pacer more than that.
And I'm very good at it.I have to say, I'm good at
it and I love it. LikeI did one of those Tracksmiths five K
races and I was the official pacerfor twenty six and it was like clockwork.

(58:42):
We were hitting, we were hittingour splits. So that is so
much fun. So I definitely wantto do that. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, Wow, very interesting.This was a great conversation. And where
can people find you? Just tolet let people know which platforms you're on.

(59:02):
Sure, So Instagram is just atElizabeth Klore first name, last name,
all one word, and then mywebsite is the same www dot Elizabethklore
dot com all one word. Andyeah, those are the two. Those
are the two main places for nowthat I'm on. Of course my book

(59:23):
as well. My book is availableon Amazon, and the audiobook is available
on Amazon, Audible and Spotify andpretty much any audiobook platform is It's available
almost everywhere. And the audiobook isread by Elizabeth herself, so you'll actually
get a treat and hear her.And I'm going to put the link to

(59:46):
the book, her Instagram, herwebsites, everything in the show notes,
so you can go link link tothem right now while you're listening. And
so, yeah, that's great conversation. I could I could talk to you
for hours a little bit. Youget me on here, like, thanks
so much for coming on to thepodcast. Well, thank you for having

(01:00:08):
me. I've enjoyed speaking with you. Thanks to Elizabeth Klore for having this
conversation with me. I really enjoyedit. I highly recommend you go out
to the show notes follow her.You won't regret it. There's a lot
of running influencers out there, butI'm sure that you'll find that Elizabeth has

(01:00:32):
one of the most genuine and interestingplatforms. Not only her running pursuits and
advice, but also you'll sometimes getflashes of her dancing and music pursuits as
well. Truly a very eclectic andinteresting individuals. It definitely stands out among

(01:00:57):
the other running influencers, and Ihighly recommend the book Boston Bound. I
had a great joy reading it,and it just really sort of took me
back over my own twenty year historyof running and coaching. So one of
the things that well, I gotmany things out of that conversation and reading

(01:01:21):
the book, but one of thethings that I wanted to just leave you
with was this aspect of social influenceand the anxiety that comes with social influence,
particularly with new runners, because Ido think you go through an evolution
as a recreational athlete or a highperformance athlete where you start off in the

(01:01:46):
very beginning caring a lot about whatsocial media or people out on social media
think and whether people still think thatyou're fast, and having to justify everything
that you do. But I thinkeventually, as Elizabeth had the epiphany as

(01:02:07):
well, listen, I'm just goingto do what I want. I can
do what I want. I don'thave to let the anxiety of social influence
control me, because ultimately that justleads to a derailment of process. I
think Increasingly, coaches are trying topull athletes back from broadcasting their training on

(01:02:36):
social media, their training and racingon social media, just because of these
reasons. Anxiety, the anxiety beingone that people feel, the anxiety that
they need to perform or justify performance. And also, I mean, if
you have if you're a high performancecompetitive athletes, certainly a pro athlete,

(01:02:59):
you don't want to tip your handto your competitors, let your competitors know
what you and your coach are doing, right and so. And then you
know, people are looking at whatsomeone else is doing and then thinking in
their minds, should I be doingthat too? And so these are all
the problems that occur with broadcasting details. I think I told the story one

(01:03:24):
time that I had an athlete,a marathoner, who very good athlete,
very good runner, trying to qualifyfor the Boston Marathon. And she went
out a race and for some reasonor another was having a bad race,

(01:03:47):
and she took the phone out inthe middle of the race and was already
posting on social media trying to justifyin front run to her community about why
she wasn't having a good race andwhy she wasn't going to qualify and why,

(01:04:10):
you know, just trying to justifyin front run the performance. And
I think in the end what happenedwas all of that was weighing on her
during the event, and then thatanxiety effectively contributed to the performance in the

(01:04:34):
event. And so I think withthat particular example, it was just a
moment of athlete psychology that we hadto sit down and work through and try
to get her to the same epiphanythat Elizabeth came to is you don't have
to justify your results or your performanceor your plans with anyone, no one.

(01:04:59):
In the end, I think you'llhave better performance and just all around
happiness as an athlete and increase yourlongevity if you simply have your plan execute.
Sometimes you just need to go outand just run, just to run
for fun and enjoyment, without reallyhaving any anxiety of about performance. You

(01:05:25):
have your plan, you execute yourplan, you remain consistent and then adapt
and evolve. Your form will followyour function, your training focus on that
and everything will be fine. SoI hope you enjoy this podcast and looking

(01:05:46):
forward to bringing more for the newyear. Thanks for listening. Follow Event
Horizon and during school on Facebook,Instagram, and Twitter. The training programs
and services to become a member ofour Endurance Institute. Over complete archive of
podcasts, logo onto our website aventHorizon dot tv