Zach Bitter

00:01five four three two one boom and we're off what's up brother how are you good good thanks for having me on my pleasure nice to meet you man you know it's it's funny that you just brought up dr atia you know when we were we were you were saying that you download the podcast you were saying i gotta get that guy on yeah yeah it was funny i i was at auto downloads and that one popped up and i remember thinking about a week before that i was like well when i when we first scheduled this one i was like i tell joe about dr atia he was one of the kind of first guys i really followed when i kind of dove into kind of the high fat approach to to nutrition so um yeah he's a fascinating guy it was a great listen i had to listen to it like twice so yeah he's a weird guy he's one of those guys where you talk to him and you think oh this is like a normal really nice guy and then as he starts getting

00:48into the medical aspect of things you go oh okay you're a fucking super genius yeah yeah he tricks you yeah i remember one of the first things he ever said that really kind of resonated with me was i think someone was asking him about like what the effects are or the ketogenic diet in terms of like micronutrients and what maybe he'd be missing based on kind of like that normal profile of what you're supposed to get and and he was just like you know it's it's interesting because most of those studies and recommendations are based off of basically a standard american diet or a higher carb diet so he's like well you might just not need the same we need to do more and he's always looking to kind of push the envelope a bit so cool guest for sure yeah and you know i'm fascinated by you and i'm fascinated by anybody who does the kind of shit that you do i mean please explain to people all the

01:39different ultra marathons you've done and like what you've accomplished yeah you know it's it's interesting because like i still kind of see myself as a pretty average runner because like um i mean i competed in high school and made state cross country and state track and that kind of thing um for a small school and then i went to a small division three school and was you know pretty much you know average amongst a real good program at the d3 level and uh i always just did kind of like running longer though so um like once i got done with college i kind of decided well let's let's see what's longer than some of those traditional like collegiate races of like 5k to 10 kilometers and uh you know i started kind of just dabbling that stuff and then in in 2010 i think i actually did my first ultra marathon you know partly because i was just like looking around and there turned out

02:28to be one in the state i was i was living in wisconsin at the time and uh there was one that uh was kind of in my neck of the woods and i actually had just decided to go back to grad school and that one had a thousand dollar prize purse on it i was like you know what if i if i can win that thousand bucks go a long way during grad school so i did that one and i ended up winning it and it uh it definitely hooked me it was like the type of thing where i was like i want to do more of these and um by 2011 i kind of jumped all in at the end of the year and and did 350 milers and i think it was about a nine week time frame and uh that's so crazy yeah and i mean it gets crazier there's there's some freaks out there um there's guys who will do like a couple and a weekend and stuff like that so i mean it never ends um but yeah you know it was one of those things where after that i was totally hooked so

03:18what is it that got you hooked um you know it had to be partly just a little bit of success you know i wasn't necessarily used to winning so like i mean i've had good races and good times relative to what you probably see like in an average person but you know when i went to like a competitive 5k competitive marathon or something like that um you know i wasn't going to win unless it was kind of a local race so kind of finding you know it's like anything i guess you kind of gravitate to what you feel you're good at and then that kind of piques your interest um so that was part of it the other part was just uh i really enjoyed doing the long run like when you break up kind of like a training week you have like a variety of different things you've got like kind of you know base level runs you've got specific workouts for the distance and then most training programs are gonna have a long

04:05run once a week and that was the one that was always my favorite so wrapping my head around doing a bunch of those a week instead of just one was was really kind of appealing to me and when you're putting that much time into whatever you're training for it's i think important to enjoy it so being able to kind of enjoy the training process a lot was really appealing to me um and uh and then it's just the variables the when you're out there for that long there's so many variables to consider and it's like it's a blast for me to kind of like work through those plan for those and then adjust to them on the fly when you're out there and you know things inevitably go wrong or things pop up that you didn't expect so it's it's uh it's just uh it's it's kind of hard to explain but it's it's weird one of

04:46the things in ultra marathon running that people always say is like they'll have a race and even if they have a bad race say like i'm never doing one of these again and then the next day they're on uh on the internet looking for another race so it's there's this weird thing about it that you don't really know until you do it but it it sucks you in that's the case with a lot of people when they talk about things that are like that they have to suffer through you know i've heard that when guys talk about like those extreme hikes you know when they you know like they do that you know that one that goes from georgia all the way to maine you know that it's insane yeah what is that called the appellation trail yeah that they say i've never fucking do that again and then they're like okay what other what other hikes can i go it's just once the pain the physical pain dies down there's something

05:26about that challenge that stimulates in people like you and people that are into these really long distance things like there's something about distance there's something about like like you were saying like you weren't the best runner in high school or college right but there's something about the mind of an ultra marathoner it's a different mind the person the type of person that can run 100 miles 200 miles 238 miles those type of people they're different people and there's like there's a strength a mental strength and the ability to just keep going on and on and on that i'm absolutely fascinated with yeah you know it is interesting too because it's uh the sport's grown a bit quite a bit in the last decade or so but it's still very much kind of a niche group and then when you kind of hang out in that group you start to kind of normalize it a little bit i think so then you start thinking

06:15like oh 100 miles it's just what we do and then you you know you actually try to like separate yourself from the fact that you've done a few of those or separate yourself from the fact that you've been hanging out with other people of doing it and you realize oh this is actually kind of a weird thing to kind of do as as a human nowadays it's fucking very weird how many of these things have you won uh i don't know how many i've won it's i think i've done just shy of 50 total now um you know everything from 50 kilometers so the furthest i've done is 200 kilometers which is about 125 miles um yeah i i'd have to look to see how many i've won it's it's it's really goofy because when you start getting into the longer stuff like 100 miles and beyond you start at least in my training program you start to kind of pick smaller races to kind of use as training runs um and some

07:04of it i think is just because for me if i'm going to go out and do like a 30 mile or a 40 mile training run or something like that it's kind of tedious to do that by yourself and then plan all the logistics of it so if there's a race nearby and that's not too hard to get to it's easier just to sign up for that go and do that so some of those you know i'll win if they're if they're small enough even though i'm not necessarily trying to go for you know go all out so to speak because i'm hoping to recover kind of and and get back into training um so you'll pace yourself at one of these local races maybe yeah you know the way i describe it is um and this is this is a real hard thing for a lot of people to do i think it's uh like you go into a race saying this is going to be a moderately difficult long run so maybe a little faster than what i would do if i was just going to do it by myself

07:49like unsupported that sort of thing and then i always tell myself 80 is the hardest you can go if you want to be able to come back and start training on time to meet the actual goal or the a race um so when i do those it's like it's one of those things where like you know who knows someone might show up that's that's like as fast as you or maybe a little slower than you normal and if they're deciding to just hammer it that day they might beat you and you got to be okay with that um does the competitive part of you flare up for sure well yeah it does and that's the hardest part and that's i think the main reason why some people won't do that approach because there's certainly people who just they stay away from races unless it's their a race and they just say i'm if i'm going to do a long run i'll do it on my own and and you know not do that or you know there's certainly i'm sure folks

08:34who do it and then they get caught up and then end up leaving their a race out on on the b race i guess so to speak so um yeah it's interesting it's a it's kind of a sport that i think is still a lot to learn which i think is actually the case for a lot of things that you know even things that are well established you know there's always something to learn or new things to pick up on well it's one of those things right when once once someone runs 100 miles and then a bunch of other people start doing it like you said it almost becomes normalized and then people start to try to push that boundary now i've been hearing talk about uh the woman candace who runs the moab 240 yeah yeah they're talking about doing a 500 i heard that i was like you're out of your fucking mind people are gonna die but maybe that'll be normal in five years we'll get used to like four five day races yeah so so it's

09:25really fascinating it took me a couple of years to do this before i got into the sport but once i was in it for a couple of years i kind of did a little a little little research to see like what the deal was with some of this stuff and the the funny thing is like that type of a distance isn't even unheard of uh they actually they're i forget what the book is called but they actually had in madison square garden they used to host a six-day event where guys and gals i'm not sure if gals were doing it back then but um guys for sure were going there and seeing how far they could run in six days and uh yeah i know crazy and uh i think if i remember right they would actually people were betting on them that way and so they'd fill it up like people would come and watch this like spectacle what year was this it was in the late 1800s i think is when they started it i'm not sure

10:09wow here it is six day cycling the six day grind at mass and squareboard garden probably ran too oh wow look at this man so some crazy person decided to leave the bike at home i guess this is super old we're looking at this on youtube folks it says six day cycling the six day grind at madison square garden and so it's just a track and these people are this is old timey shit these look this looks like the 30s right yeah that guy just went down and so they're they're just riding their bike for six days oh shit when they wipe out oh my god they probably had terrible breaks back then right yeah that was their feet probably right or the railing yeah yeah so this is so endurance sports like this are nothing new yeah it's actually fascinating when you like kind of look into it because nowadays in the united

11:01states the trail running scene is definitely way bigger than like the road running or certainly the track the track scene but that wasn't always the case if you look back into like the 70s and 80s there was a pretty big surge in ultra marathon running uh for flat fast stuff that's where we see a lot of the the records coming from um so that's like a track and you run as far and long as you can on a track like track or a road or really flat road i had goggins on david goggins oh yeah and he was talking about uh the first time he did one was on a track okay just ran in circles on a track which is almost got to be more taxing for your mind because you're just seeing the same shit over and over and over again yeah it's it's really fascinating to me because i've done i've done both i've done 100 milers on the trail and i've done 100 miles on a 400 meter track and uh the fascinating thing is it is

11:46like what you said it's almost a different event where mentally you're doing everything you can on that track to kind of separate yourself from the actual environment envision yourself being somewhere else you know looking forward to little things to kind of not necessarily be thinking too far in advance because that can get overwhelming whereas when i'm out on the trails it's like you're usually in a pretty pristine beautiful area and you can kind of just take it as it comes and say oh cool now i get to see that or this is a neat area or i like this section and you look you look forward to that kind of diversity whereas on the track it's you know you see it once and you've seen it every time um and then it you know it just kind of beats you up mentally from that side of things um but then you know there's other things about that too that that help out like logistically when you're on a track

12:29for 400 meters you bring out one person you put everything you may possibly want on a little table and if i want something i say hey can i get that 400 meters later i have it and even even if we mess it up i'll get it 400 meters after that so yeah whereas you know the trails it depends they've gotten a lot better with aid stations as the sport's grown um but like you know you mess up your aid station or if you get caught up in the moment and just blow through it and don't take care of yourself you might have to suffer for an hour plus before you get help again so that's where it kind of gets a little different i think logistically when you're on the trails versus versus on the road and um um but but yeah it's it's kind of a different thing the track is interesting too in the sense that you're essentially making that same exact motion exact motion the whole way so like there's

13:14certain areas of your body that fatigue um and they don't get a break turn the turn and just running flat like running flat you're going to kind of localize some of the way you stimulate your muscles or your gait is going to be pretty similar throughout whereas when you're on the trails like you might be going on a slight incline a steep incline a slight decline a little bit of flat some rolling all kinds of things in between and then trails can be kind of undulating so you're just kind of moving all that forces around your legs a little more than you would be when you're running on a flat surface so you know it's one of the things that i always tell like my coaching clients and and myself when i'm planning for something is like if you really want to meet your full potential like specificity is king

13:52you need to be on that environment in the environment you're going to race on and really get your body used to kind of that type of a motion and um it makes it a little more interesting when you're doing a track race because that means some kind of long runs on a track so um you're kind of balancing doing just enough to get ready for it and not doing too much so that when you get to the race you're like screw this i've done too much of this already i don't want to see another loop um yeah it's kind of a an interesting concept it's it's interesting to me too that you're if you're planning to run 100 miles like what you were saying about running these shorter races as a training run which makes sense because how else are you going to prepare for 100 miles like if you just decided to just go out and run 100 miles

14:31you'd have to like map it out like how far is 100 miles where am i going to park like where am i going to put water and yeah and then people will also kind of get uh like forget about the aspect of just all the stuff surrounding the race that you can kind of fine tune when you're doing a race as a kind of training run where like you know usually you're going to travel a little bit for stuff like this um so you're probably going to stay in a hotel the night before you're going to you have to wake up early in the morning you have to get your your your gear ready and so it's kind of like going through that um process of what you're gonna have to do on race day so then when your big race comes up you're like okay i've done this three or four times in the last six months so i know what i'm doing now what's different between you and a lot of guys and this is one of the reasons why i

15:14wanted to talk to you about this is that you you are on a fat burning diet you're essentially you're on a ketogenic diet and running these races yeah you know it's it's a little interesting because the way i kind of at least the way i came into it like i explored the ketogenic diet mainly because i started noticing some things pull this thing oh sorry it's no worries about it yeah yeah so i started um kind of exploring the ketogenic diet back in late 2011 because i started noticing some some goofy things going on with my body from from the from the high level of training and then and then the racing and um that was right around that same time i did those 350 milers in nine weeks uh i would wake up like three or four times at night and then like i'd have to like pee all the time at night and i'd have like swelling in my ankles and stuff a lot of just like huge energy swings throughout

16:05the day like i would you know i was i was a teacher at the time so i remember thinking like every day at like one or two o'clock i could have laid down and take a nap on spot if i had had the opportunity to so it was just like a lot of weird things that i thought was pretty abnormal for a 25 year old male at the time and um and so it was kind of becoming clear to me that what i was doing was either unsustainable or the way i was doing it was unsustainable and you know i was really intrigued by the sport and i didn't really want to necessarily back off of that if i didn't have to so that's when i kind of started to explore nutrition and diet and things like that and um i was very much following what i would have considered a healthy diet before that at the time it was it was high carbohydrate but it was like what you would you know think of as a healthy high

16:52carbohydrate diet with like what was a normal meal um you know i'd wake up and i'd usually go for a run and then have like some oatmeal raisins maybe some fruit or something like that some some eggs or something with with that in the morning so not junk food just no it was clean it was like clean like you know you know what you say they say like get your whole grains fruits vegetables that sort of thing i definitely you know focused heavily on that and made sure i wasn't eating like junk junk food i wasn't going through fast food restaurants or eating oreos and bonbons and that sort of thing so um so it was kind of interesting to me to think like okay i didn't really realize that it was necessarily the nutritional side of things like it wasn't it wasn't like a big slap in the face in the sense that oh i just got to cut out the junk because like according to most people i wasn't eating junk i

17:38was eating really good food um so you know that's when i kind of got introduced to some folks like uh dr volick and dr finney who were kind of i guess i guess they're pioneers of like the this latest wave of kind of the high fat approach and um you know they were i started reading their books listening to podcasts and things like that and and you know it was interesting because i i was i was training upwards of 20 hours a week at the time and you know i started kind of thinking like uh how much time am i going to invest in in just running you know how can i kind of kill two birds with one stone and and that's kind of when i discovered podcasts and thought this is sweet i can learn something and train at the same time um and so i just kind of like went all in on listening to a bunch of you know podcasts and stuff like that and um actually one of your previous guests uh ben greenfield was one of

18:28the first podcasts i really kind of did a deep dive into and he was always kind of like uh rolling out stuff that was like kind of new or cutting edge so like um he definitely had a lot of information there and um i was he's a maniac yeah don't take his advice on what he does with his dick yeah he's shooting stem cells into his dick yeah he's turning himself into a guinea pig but he's an odd duck but yeah he he definitely had a lot of info from guys like dr finney and dr volick and uh you know i was lucky to meet those guys too on a couple occasions and um with dr volick i've done some podcasts with him and certainly in like exchanged emails and stuff when i've had questions and uh so i kind of just tested it out you know i was like what's the worst that can happen i can just i can always go back you know it's not like i have to stick to this for the rest of my life if it's not something

19:16your issues were swelling and energy and and how why'd you attribute that to your diet like what was making you think that it was your diet that was doing that to you yeah so you know i wasn't sure i thought i thought for sure that something i was doing was wrong and did you get your blood work done check your hormone levels all that stuff yeah you know i didn't have probably as much blood work done as i would have liked to to really like look at stuff and and see like the way i look at blood work is if you're doing it regular like often enough and not changing things that's when you're going to see the most because you're going to see changes versus just like oh i'm chronically low in this or i'm always low in this but it doesn't seem to be an issue uh but you know there was no big red flags on my blood work like nothing that would have said said like thyroid disease right yeah nothing nothing

20:01quite that wrong and you know it wasn't like the wheels were coming off at that point there were these were small things that i kind of associated like nagging things they there are like things i could get through um but they weren't ideal so you know i'm kind of been a curious person like my whole life so i was i'm i'm was just looking to kind of optimize i guess more or less and and i didn't know if it was gonna work i i was was terrified that i'd find out it wasn't and then i would have to stop running as much right and at the time i was like that doesn't sound like what i want to do so um this was just something i decided to explore first um and it it's it's really goofy because like i've certainly evolved and kind of how i use it from that when i first started when i when i first started i went like really kind of really low carb like that clinical ketosis level where you read about where

20:52they're like 50 grams of carbohydrates or less and you know i did that for about i think it was like four to six weeks and um i didn't have as hard of a time as what i think i've i've seen some people have with it you know you have people talking about everything from like the keto flu to just like feeling really lethargic for a while before that kind of metabolic switch flips um what i kind of noticed was um i felt really good doing like really like low level type mundane tasks just like day-to-day work and things like that but like maybe every second or third day i'd go for a run and just feel awful and um i kind of knew enough about it that i thought okay let's give this a solid four weeks before i make any judgments on whether that's going to be something that sticks around or not and you know after about that point my energy level is kind of normalized um and then you know i was so

21:43at that point i was like excited i was like this is sweet i'm well i should have mentioned too like during that process i started sleeping through the night again which was like kind of really an eye opening thing for me um because usually like i'd wake up at least three times what do you attribute that to um you know i i don't know for sure but uh you know it could be anything from just the amount of stress i was causing on my body from kind of two angles from the training plus like you know like i don't want to demonize carbohydrates because i think they have a place i think they're a great tool i just think like the the question everyone should ask is at what level do they become kind of a margin of diminishing returns for you and you know what i think was likely happening is that you know i was reaching past that margin of diminishing returns and um it was causing more

22:34stress than what my body was was able to tolerate and that was causing cortisol spikes or something like that that was waking me up at night um but you know who knows really like it's uh it all i know is the only thing at that time i changed was my diet and we should probably point out that this is not universal that everybody's diet is going to affect them differently some people are fine with carbohydrates yeah there's a lot of people out there that eat a high carbohydrate diet and they have zero issues with it whatsoever and it's that's one of the weirder things about people you know it's that we are so variable depending upon your ancestry you know what part of the world they evolved yeah yeah it's it's fascinating to me because i mean i'll look at folks doing complete opposite of who i am and they're they're doing just fine yeah um and it's you know then i'll look at

23:19some folks too that are doing the opposite of me and they're doing just fine for a while and then they ultimately start noticing the same kind of things i did and then they can clean it up uh so it is kind of yeah i think at the end of the day you just got to be kind of honest with yourself and you know some people i think are really really robust and they can they can hit their body with that high octane fuel carbohydrate like day in and day out at a high level and it doesn't seem to bother them much but you know other people i think just that it can kind of it's like playing with rocket fuel a little bit where you know a little bit can be great and too much of it can kind of burn you up a little bit so you're saying that you started off at like 50 grams of carbohydrates a day the real strict ketosis diet what did you eventually move to um so the way i call it i periodize

24:06it so like when i look at my year you're you can pick out a week where i'm kind of in peak training and then pick out a week where i'm kind of in like a recovery phase or off season and it looks like two completely different lifestyles so my first thought after kind of like working through the whole ketogenic approach um because i should add to like um once i got like feeling good about that i started adding back speed workouts and things like that and i definitely noticed that i was missing kind of that last year like it was a lot more difficult to go out and really throttle down like i could run all day at a slow pace but if i decided to go out on the track and do like 400 meter repeats at like a really fast like a really fast pace um it was really hard to kind of to be able to do that that's a common complaint rob wolf you know rob wolf yep rob wolf had a similar issue he's gotten like very

24:56heavily into jujitsu and he was telling me that he just can't stick to that 50 grams of carbohydrates a day yeah and still have the the energy to go hard does does do you know does rob wolf work out more than one time a day i do not know um he looks very fit though i'm not sure what his uh what his schedule is but i know he works out very hard and if he's doing jujitsu this really it's very difficult to do jujitsu any other way than hard sure yeah you know this is one thing i've always been curious about too and you know i'm not i'm not trying to come come on here and say like everyone should switch to doing what i do i mean i think you should follow your own your own your own personal self and if you'd be honest with yourself you feel great do what you're doing if you don't then probably look to change something but like one thing i'm always looking at now or suspecting is

25:41that like it's more about the recovery between efforts than it is about the intensity of the effort or the duration of the effort in terms of how much carbs you need to bring back or want to bring back because i've also had circumstances where like i'll do like a big workout or a race or something like that and then i'll go really easy for like a week and during that week i'll go like super strict keto um because i'm recovering i'm not doing anything intense i'm not doing anything too long um so that's that's the point of my training where i kind of say all right let's get rid of the start the fast acting fuel sources i don't need them right now and reset that whole fat adaptation thing so you feel like you the fast acting fuel sources like carbohydrates you only really need them when you're pushing hard right when you're really running fast yeah and i actually think it's

26:27it's when you're doubling down on those on a regular basis so like if you're working out really hard for like 45 minutes to an hour a day i think you can probably get away with almost a ketogenic or like a really low carbohydrate approach because you're giving yourself like 23 plus hours between sessions for your body to kind of restock glycogen stores from other areas like you know from fat and proteins and things like that i think when you start getting into a system where you're like myself i'm doing two days a lot and then sometimes one of those is a speed session that's when i feel like i need to bring some of the carbohydrate back and i think it's probably just to get some of the glycogen at a little faster rate because that is going to replenish your glycogen stores faster as a carbohydrate than like a fat or a protein probably would so how many grams of carbohydrates a day

27:09would you have on a day like that um when i'm in like peak training which is about 20 hours a week of running strength training and mobility type stuff you know i'll probably let myself get up to like 15 to 25 percent of my intake from carbohydrate um what do you think that is in grams uh probably it depends a lot on like what i actually do um because i don't count calories very often i i used to just to kind of like see what was going on and then i kind of got intuitive with it uh gram wise you know it's probably anywhere from like two to three hundred maybe and then when i'm in those phases of training it's really intense in terms of like just uh or i shouldn't say intense it's just really tedious in the amount of time and energy required for it now are you blood monitoring at that time are you checking your millimolar levels i am sometimes like when i'm like when i get curious

28:04about that type of stuff or i've done it in the past i've actually what i did originally is i got the the blood ketone monitor and i also got one of those ketonics uh like it's like this little usb thing and then you blow into it and yeah how is that accurate um i think there's i think there's varied results i think they've gotten a lot better with it um but what i did is i actually measured my blood ketone and then i would use that and i tried to find kind of like if mine was matching what that thing would say so i kind of had and i got it to where i kind of had an idea where certain ranges on that thing would kind of indicate whether i was in ketosis or not um so like i very much is coming out of ketosis during peak training like when i would especially when i would get up to two 300 grams of carbohydrate i would come out of ketosis uh and i probably go back into ketosis throughout that

28:53that phase um when you say go back in and come out like what kind of time period are you talking about uh it the time period was more indicative about what i kind of ate during it too like if i did if if if i did or i shouldn't say what i like how i kind of structured those two to 300 grams of carbohydrate like if i did like a big bolus of it in one meal i'd get back into ketosis a little quicker because then i wouldn't come back to the carbohydrates again for a while you vary in inside the day yeah yeah like i would like if i in in here's where it got kind of interesting i guess is i do a lot of my the heaviest bulk of my training in the morning so i typically wake up and have some like coffee with like coconut milk or heavy whipping cream or something like that and then uh you know go for my run so then when i get back from a run you know it might be two hours sometimes even three

29:45and uh you know at that point i just slept for eight to ten hours then you know by the time i got my run you know i hadn't i probably hadn't i had essentially done like a small intermittent fast for the most part um so like even when i had the higher amounts of carbohydrates i'd find myself going back into ketosis at the end of something like that sometimes um but really it was to me it wasn't necessarily a question of whether i was in ketosis or not because that really wasn't important to me um performance is important exactly yeah and what i wanted out of this approach was um i wanted to be able to rely on my body to body to burn high levels of fat when i needed it to but i also wanted to be metabolically flexible enough where if i needed to hit the gas pedal i could do that as well um and i think that's where people get a little uh uh confused or up in arms or something because

30:38there's not a whole lot of studies that kind of look at that specifically like can you do that or can you not do that some people think it's kind of an all or nothing thing where you either get really fat adapted or you get really carb dependent and then everything else is kind of like you know this gray area that you can't really get into but that's not my experience you know my experience has been that like i can get look here here's my kind of litmus test if i can go out for like a four hour or even five hour run with no fuel other than water and electrolytes then i'm fat adapted enough i don't need to get any more fat adapted than that because i can't eat during a race and everyone else is going to be so like i don't really need to get more fat adapted that from a performance standpoint um so when i get to that point then it's like how many how many carbohydrates can i bring back to kind of

31:24give me that extra nudge or that extra fuel substrate um have you ever tried mixing exogenous ketones with carbohydrates um not greenfield was talking about that he said it's like doing steroids he said it was incredible yeah there's again he's he's a maniac he's a maniac yeah there's a who else was it was it dominic d'agostino was playing around with that stuff quite a bit too or he might have helped uh he might have helped uh with the the creation of some of that stuff i know there was uh i'd have to look back in my emails and stuff but i i actually had uh there was a guy who was doing a real clinical version of the exogenous ketones and um he had sent me one a while back to kind of do a little test for him and uh it it was like just this little canister of exogenous ketone and he wanted me to kind of

32:12check my ketones when i woke up in the morning take that test it 15 minutes later and then test again after my run is that like a ketone ester yeah i think so super potent stuff tastes like godzilla's dick yeah matt brown brought some of that in it's like yeah did you test your ketones when you took it no i didn't i didn't have a monitor on me but it tasted terrible but i felt great yeah after it was oh you and you have to take it with uh glucose yeah yeah see i think that's maybe that's where i messed up but uh um besides that like my ketone level shot up i woke up that morning i think i was at like 1.0 millimoles or something like that i took that exogenous ketone um and 15 minutes later i test i was at 3.7 millimoles wow so it was like okay stuff works yeah it works but i don't know here's what i here's my question is with that stuff from a performance standpoint is like it's people are

33:04looking at that kind of i think more like an electrolyte where it's like i take this on top of my energy source um whereas that's actually an energy source a fairly potent one too so like when i'm out there racing and i'm trying to kind of limit and i'm trying to eat a certain amount so that i kind of keep that energy where i want it but i'm also trying not to go overboard because i don't want digestive stress um that's interesting so like as you're running you have to maintain like a certain amount of food in your system but you don't want to have a large meal yeah yeah because like basically the way i simply to simply put it like digestion requires blood volume you know to move into your gut and like digest the food so when you're running especially when it's hot your body's also trying to use your your blood volume for muscle function and cooling and things like that so by kind of

33:55introducing another use for that blood volume your body's probably is is running out of resources to kind of make all those things run smoothly um which is why a lot of times in ultra marathons people find out like they have the worst luck with like throwing up and stomach issues when it gets really hot out because their body's got to go double down on the cooling side of things with the blood volume and then it's like well something's got to give so it just pukes up everything you put in your stomach oh wow um yeah so you know is there a way to mitigate that uh eat less that's it just so when you if you're running like what's a size portion like what would you eat to say if you're doing a hundred miler yeah and you have to pause for fuel um you know i'll i'll typically aim for around 100 to 200 calories an hour when i'm doing and doing a hundred miler and to kind of put that in perspective

34:43when i was uh high carb i was aiming for three four and sometimes even 500 calories an hour so when i kind of went into the approach where fat was my primary fuel source the the need for that carbohydrate essentially got cut in half if not more and for me that's a win as long as energy levels are the same because it means i have to eat less during the race if i do it's one less logistic thing one less potential stomach issue um so what's a typical meal a typical meal like while you're running oh while i'm running uh you know i usually stick to like uh um uh like water-based stuff so like i'll use a product called um x endurance fuel five and it's essentially like a really really high level sports drink um with like a varying it's got it's it's carbohydrate based and i can tell you why i use carbohydrates instead of fats during a race in a minute too if you want

35:34um but it's like five different types of kind of carbohydrate that release at varying points so you get some that's kind of a little quick jolt and others that are more sustained like kind of like a sweet potato type of a release um so i'll be just trickling that in so like if i'm doing like a hundred miler and let's say i'm aiming for like 30 to 40 ounces of water uh per hour to kind of stay on top of hydration i'll put um you know two like 100 to 200 calories worth of that stuff in that water so then i'm kind of killing two birds with one stone and getting my fuel in as well as hydrating at the same time so what and why are you taking carbohydrates while you're running instead of fats yeah so that's that's the other thing like and and i see this as as somewhat of a i don't know if it's an issue necessarily but it's an interesting thing for at the very least is when you when i talk

36:21to folks who are like really into the high fat approach you know some of them are like zero carb or like really ketogenic all the time 24 7 uh they'll be taking in like fat sources during a race and i've never understood that um just because when you look at your body's energy systems during a race like you have your glycogen stores and then you have body fat and i think a lot of people kind of get misled and they think oh i'm a really lean runner so i can't rely on body fat when in reality even the leanest endurance athletes have enough body fat to get through an endurance race like even if you're four percent five percent body fat at your leanest you that's a much bigger fuel source than your glycogen reserves so when i'm doing a race i've got enough fat to take care of the fat metabolizing portion of that energy uh requirement for the race what i might run out of is those

37:11glycogen stores which are really small in comparison so i'm trying to just slowly trickle in the the the sugar or the carbohydrate during a race um just enough to kind of keep my glycogen stores where i want to be so i can hit the gas if i need to um but not at the level where it's going to cause stomach distress or compromise or heavily compromise my body's like willingness or ability to burn fat either that's fascinating so like as you're running your body could switch back and forth between fats and carbohydrates because you're so fat adapted yeah and i you know it's actually probably happening like simultaneously it's just at different rates like like someone who's really fat adapted they could be running kind of the same effort and the fat adapted person might be like burning 80 fat 20 carbohydrate and the carb dependent person might be like a 50 50 split

37:58so that carb dependent person is going to exhaust their glycogen stores a lot quicker or they're going to have to fuel themselves at a much higher rate to make up for that deficit and um when you look at like how difficult that is because you know some of these especially some of these mountain races where you're running uphill it's like you you might be burning 800 plus calories an hour and it's that's a different animal right yeah uh-huh yeah and it's really hard to replace that on the fly yeah those running uphill ones i would i would think that's a much more difficult race yeah you know i mean it's a different setup it's you know it's one of those things where i'm pretty new to that actually like um most of my ultra running career i focus more on flat stuff and part of that just because i've lived in a lot of flat areas and like i was kind of saying earlier if

38:42you really want to nail a race you have to be specific so i learned kind of early probably around like 2013 or so that was in my best interest to make my peak races flat ones if i really wanted to meet my full potential um now i live in phoenix so i've got a lot more access to mountains so i can get on the trails and do some significant climbing right out my back door so um i've certainly been able to practice that more and as i've gotten more competent at it i do recognize like oh it's not quite as hard as i thought it was originally because i was going into it essentially under trained whereas now it's like i go into it i'm like oh i'm i'm more adjusted to this so i mean it's still hard like going uphill is hard no matter how you skin it but it's like it's one of those things where if you kind of figure out the pace it shouldn't be any more hard like it should be just as hard to run

39:30flat because you're gonna have to run faster um and it's just then it just comes down to i think the right training and you know pacing everything right it's interesting you're saying you're living in phoenix do you run the summer in phoenix because phoenix is fucking insanely hot so i moved there in january so good move yeah big wake-up call come june you're like whoa yeah it'll be it'll be warm um i actually kind of like it because right now i'm i'm training for the western states 100 and that's in it starts in squaw valley and ends in auburn california uh and they go through like these four canyons that get can get brutally hot like 110 plus some years um and you run with like a vest where you have water bottles attached to you or anything yep mm-hmm yeah that stuff has come such a long way since i started the sport i remember when i first started it was pretty

40:18primitive type stuff and now the the sport is i think through hiking plays a big role in this too has gotten like so popular or popular enough where now companies are really dialing that stuff in where you can get like a pack um that just sits nice and snug on you and you can put well like i use i use a brand called nathan they have like ones have bladders on the back where they also have ones you can put water bottles on the front um and then just you know different setups and stuff so so yeah that's like a must in the heat because even in early mornings it's got to be brutal in phoenix right yeah uh i mean i'm i have yet to see the worst of it why'd you move there uh well part of it was um i want to carry a gun well i'm looking at crazy laws well i moved from sacramento so let's say i'm looking into that now but yeah so it's um it was it was a combination of things

41:10for me like uh i'm trying to kind of balance a few different things i i train a lot i also work for one of my primary sponsors ultra footwear uh and like for me to be able to kind of do the stuff for them that i was wanting to do it made more sense to be in phoenix just like product testing and stuff like that yeah that and just like putting on like like small group runs and events and things like that in the area uh like if i wanted to invest or if i wanted to kind of appropriately handle the territory phoenix made a lot more sense in sacramento northern california has just grown so much for that company in the last couple years that like they needed to get someone in there who was going to do full-time plus to really cover the area um and then i you know i also got engaged in in january as well so uh um my fiancee she she was best served being in the phoenix area too so it was

42:01kind of a mutual uh she was from dallas originally and um phoenix was kind of like a mutually good spot for both of us so uh um we we both kind of looked at it it was like well what do we want and it was we want trails right in our backyard but we also want access to flat stuff and we we actually kind of want the heat because like there's races where you need that to train for so when it gets hot earlier you can prepare for them uh much what a crazy reason to move to phoenix i'm enjoying the heat for training yeah well i'm not even the craziest one in the house my my fiancee is a savage she uh yeah her name is nicole caladropoulos she like you know how like i thought i've always thought i'm a hard worker and someone who like puts a lot of time and effort into things i do and then i met her and uh you know i like to she's she's cut from the jockle cloth let's put it that way nice so yeah yeah

42:53she'll do like she she works for a company called towers watson um and uh kind of does uh manages the midwest division for like stuff so she'll be on like a conference call with amazon and then you know go out and run three hours after that and then come back and get on another conference call and just keeps going and going and going so yeah it's uh you know it it was it made sense for her job and my job to kind of be in phoenix and with as busy as she is and as busy as i can get from time to time like it's nice to be able to go out your backyard and be on the trail five minutes later whereas both of us didn't have that before we both had to drive to get to any kind of trail especially her dallas it was a lot of just like flat road running yeah in her area so um dallas doesn't have hardly any hills

43:36no no you will and that's that's that's what is impressive with like so she's done western states a few times the race i was telling before with the canyons and she's been sixth place there twice just training on flat roads basically that's crazy does she do anything to augment that like doing lunges or anything like that uh she does uh some strength work and stuff but really you know a lot of it was just you know she would go out and run and run a lot and then i'm sure like she hasn't met her full potential at that specific event or certainly like mountain type races just because she wasn't trained in mountains right right yeah and she's she's good though so like i mean she was a division one recruit for college and stuff back in the day so like you know she's got some running talent no doubt um and then she puts in the work because consistency is a huge thing like if you

44:22can't find the specific stuff and you're really geeked about a specific race like i don't think not having the right training environment is reason to not do it if you're excited to do it um so like for her she was more excited to get out on the trails than she was to go you know do something on a track or a flat road like i was so um for her it was like even if i'm not quite where i would like to be i'm going to do it anyway now i'm not familiar with ultra footwear but what i wanted to ask you is does anybody wear like minimalist shoes and run these ultra marathons yeah yeah there was a there was actually a gal i cannot remember her name this is a couple years ago who ran ultras in um those vibrant five fingers really yeah yeah and the trail stuff too so um you know she must have been a beast yeah yeah yeah it's hard to run just a couple miles yeah and it's you know it's interesting

45:13because so ultra footwear made the shoe this last year called uh the the vanish and it's essentially a minimalist shoe um just like a little bit of fabric on the top super super hard flat base and that's kind of what i like when i'm on a road or a track um so i was wearing the vanish the vanish yeah pull that up and see what that looks like and it's uh so i went to this this this ultra race and i wore those thinking i'm gonna have the lightest shoe out of anyone here three guys show up running completely barefoot what yeah they ran an ultra marathon barefoot yeah yeah dude that's another level yeah there was one there was one guy who's christ he's like a 222 or 223 marathoner and he's barefoot and he said like he runs a marathon barefoot so he doesn't do the marathon barefoot he actually said that uh so that's a little bit of padding in that it looks like or

46:01there's a lip on the outside is that the vanish or is that it says vanish okay yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so i mean there's there's a little bit there's like a there's like a carbon fiber plate and you see where that little cut is in there there's like a carbon fiber plate in there that makes it a little more firm so what i'm looking for in a shoe and i'm looking for kind of like that natural feel is something that's got a firm midsole or a firm durometer because like i don't want to squish down into the shoe i want to pop right off the ground um and i think like really like that is just i mean you've probably experienced this with the with the vibrams where like um if you spend the time your foot feet get stronger and stronger and stronger and it's only a matter of time before they get strong if you just got to keep kind of working at it just like you know a weightlifter you know when

46:46they start out weightlifting they're nowhere near where they are 10 years later um so like for me back in 2012 i think i kind of like you know i read born to run have you heard of that book yeah i've heard it's amazing yeah you know i i read that and i was like this is intriguing you know and it made a lot of sense too it's like you know if we were meant to have a wedge on our heel like we would have had a wedge on our heel yeah no that's that's a ridiculous thing that nike came up with and it's really unfortunate that so many people have adopted that and they run heel first like that yeah well and and the problem i think too is that like the a shoe is essentially a cast for your foot even even that vanish that i had up there that's a little cast compared to what you're normally going to see but it's still a cast that's why i like those five fingers because there's nothing there's just a very

47:37very flexible piece of rubber underneath and it's a glove for your for your feet yeah yeah and you know people just don't know that i think that you can really work those foot muscles to a point where you can exhaust them the way you would in a shoe um it just takes a lot of time because like if i broke my arm and put a cast on it and then like six eight weeks later got the cast taken off i went back in the weight room and did a normal routine i would be wrecked the next day so when you take your foot out of that shoe cast you have it in or take it out of the position it's gotten used to and put it in a different position it's like taking a cast off and trying to do that full mode of mode of uh training or motion so like you know i when i first kind of got an ultra running i i i worked my way down to a

48:20minimalist shoe i spent probably six months before i was running exclusively in something that was um really minimalist and when i say minimalist i mean zero drop and no cushion or little to no cushion because i think some people confuse that too like that the shoe you sell up there because you're like oh it looks like it's got a little bit of padding there so that's like zero drop with cushioning right or that shoe really doesn't have a lot of cushioning but um there are shoes that ultra makes it does and what that does is it takes you from like the way i describe is this is someone in like a um someone in a traditional running shoe real built up cushion a lot of support is on one end of spectrum barefoot runner like those dudes that i ran into at the track um they're on the other end of the spectrum there's all these steps in between to get to that so like i can't believe people run

49:06ultras barefoot yeah it's crazy i don't think there's too many people look at this fucking savage look at this dude barefoot ted oh yeah barefoot ted yeah ted he also uses this the sandal yeah runs in a sandal yeah well that it wasn't that in the born to one that these guys had made sandals out of tires yeah uh-huh yeah i've been using something called a pull up this vivo vivo barefoot i've been using these um what i like about these is that i don't have to look where i step there's no cushioning at all the trail one i use that one the far left the far left yeah that one um there's no cushion to it but it's got some tread and the bottom is hard enough so that i can run on hard rocks and then i don't think about it it's hard to tell in that image how little there is underneath it but there's uh there's nothing going on in terms of like there's no squish to it at all

50:01there's just some good size knobs so you have uh some good um some good tread you know so you can you know you can get good traction and dirt and mud and stuff like that yeah they weigh nothing that's yeah and you can crumble that thing up so your foot muscles are flexing every which way they work yeah that's cool yeah it's made a big difference with me man but honestly the five fingers are probably the best for that they just don't have as much traction and i have to look where i'm stepping you know like i have to be careful like sharp rocks and stuff i have to look down don't step on that one look out i don't like looking i'd rather just run and with those i can just run just flow through it yeah i can get a faster pace with those yeah and that's that's that's where i kind of draw the line too is like when i'm on the roads and on the track i don't mind

50:47having that like no cushion type of thing but then when i go on like the trails in phoenix it's very rocky yeah and hard and then i'll use like a shoe called the king mt that's kind of like the one you had there it's a little less nimble i would say than that one but it's got that that like really aggressive lug it's got the foot shaped toe box so i don't feel like my feet are getting pinched together what do you think barefoot ted does on like on the trails those trails i think he probably wears those sandals oh probably right yeah just something where he's got just something that keeps him from getting cut yeah but there are guys who just do that barefoot too fucking i think they're very few but it's it's it's doable have you ever seen that show dual survivor it's one of those wacky survivor shows i don't know if i've seen that one this one guy i think his name's cory who has

51:33the most disgusting feet i've ever seen in my life almost as disgusting as that one guy was cutting the the bottom of his feet off and feeding it to dogs remember that guy with a knife yeah that video is awful to watch but uh this guy walks barefoot everywhere and his idea is like you got to toughen your feet up because you might not have shoes you know they they get real crazy with this whole survivalist yeah so this guy is basically has i'm not joking like a good solid half inch of callus under his entire foot it's amazing what the human body will do when you put it in a position to need to yeah when it has to adapt i mean that's one of the reasons why i'm fascinated by guys like you these ultra runners is because the for the average person that's an impossible feat but you've built there's that guy's foot look at that dude what in the fuck it looks like elephant skin yeah it's fucking

52:22gnarly um but the guys like you have adapted your body to this position where you know you can do that and it's just a matter of putting in the training runs and making sure you're fueling up correctly and you know a hundred mile race is not a question whether or not you could do it it's how fast you could do it yeah you know it's it's interesting the cool thing and this might go back to what you asked like why ultra marathons and i think it is part of it too is like in a hundred miles it's almost like it's not a matter of when is something going to go wrong it's um or i should say if something is going to go wrong it's a matter of when and how do you respond to it right so what's a typical thing that goes wrong um you know i think a lot of people will have like cramping or they'll they'll bonk i mean this is one of the reasons why i love the high fat approach is because like

53:11bonking from the like energy side of things is essentially non-existent explain bonking to people don't know what you're talking about so so bonking is essentially what happens and it's it's i think it's actually more common in the marathon just because people are running a lot faster in those but essentially what's happening is you're depleting your glycogen stores to the point where your body doesn't really have access to that fuel substrate anymore and if you are trying if you're not good at metabolizing fat or you cannot burn fat at a high rate at a decent clip it grinds you to a halt you see people staggering and falling over losing their mind hallucinating and stuff like that in those situations um so like you know bonking is something that is is an issue with ultra marathon because you're out there for so long if you get behind on

53:54fueling you know you could bonk and stuff like that so you know part of the reason you know i talked about before with like there's a lot of logistics with an ultra marathon and there's these variables are just just just so prevalent when you're out there that long that if you can eliminate some of those or reduce the potential of them flaring up that's usually a win because then there's less chance of something popping up that you wouldn't expect or an uncertain thing happening during the race and but i mean it still happened you know i've done i would say the most efficient 100 miler i've done is uh when i i ran 11 hours and 40 minutes and 55 seconds at a race in 2015 holy shit you ran you ran 100 miles in 11 hours yeah that was that was on a that was one on the track and i don't give a fuck if it was on the moon that's crazy you ran 11 hours you ran 100 miles yeah so i think

54:42the thing that how long does it take to drive 100 miles okay it takes it i mean if you go 100 miles an hour it takes an hour well it might take me longer to get to the airport if the traffic on the that is fucking crazy how zach bitter broke the u.s. 100 mile record you average seven fucking minutes per mile for almost 12 hours dude that is insane that is fucking insane burt kreischer he brags when he runs seven minute miles for like three miles what did what did burt end up running that the la marathon six and a half six and a half i think it was i think it was shorter than that i think it was five five something yeah no no no ari's dad yeah five and a half he's oh fucking jamie jamie's giving me a bad route well i'll say i'll say i'll say this here bird if you're listening contact me i'll get you to four and a half in six months burt you heard him new challenge

55:40zach is fucking man if he tells you can do it dude that is that is an incredible number that you broke the u.s. 100 mile record by running seven fucking minutes per mile it's it's that's crazy the thing the interesting thing i thought about that event was when i was talking about efficiency is i stopped twice during that race and it was for maybe a total of like 60 at most 90 seconds total and it was just it was just to pee two times so like you ever thought about just peeing your pants and just keep running well black shorts keep the party rolling there was a guy who did that uh it was two years before i did that race and he was trying to break 13 hours and he was like right on the edge i mean he just whipped it out and peed all over the track i'm pretty sure oh god why would he be just peeing his own pants i

56:28don't know yeah i mean i think that's probably what i would do and um it's uh yeah that guy dudeed himself well everyone who's been doing endurance sport long enough will have a have a situation like that unfortunately that guy's got it in the front of his legs he must have just exploded lost it must have been a bomb bomb went off oh yeah it's uh you know it's it's okay to poop your pants this guy's a sign is that him with the same guy or a different person yeah it's very uh sensitive subject for folks yeah in your pants yeah if it's it's a it's a running joke in the endurance running community though because if you do it long enough it's gonna probably happen to you eventually oh it has to right i would imagine you're running a hundred miles and your body's gonna there's gonna be misfires for sure how do you time your meals like before you run like say if you're

57:14gonna run a hundred miles when's your last meal before you get there yeah so i'll eat a big dinner the night before probably around like four or five o'clock and what would that be um so i'll do like a huge steak uh i try to keep 16 ounces 20 ounces yeah at least um really mm-hmm 16 20 is probably a pretty good number how much do you weigh uh 140 pounds give or take that's a lot of fucking meat that's crazy well this is where it gets fascinating with the lifestyle thing i was telling you about is like there's days during the year where like i'm in training where i'm metabolizing two to three times my resting metabolic rate so i've got to feed myself appropriately for that um and that means a lot of steak wow so is that your primary food source um i don't know if i'd say steak for sure but definitely fatty meat sources um a lot of like uh like saturated fat-based oils like coconut oil

58:06um like ghee that sort of thing um but yeah i don't i don't shy away from meat i usually have meat or eggs for every meal for the most part interesting in every meal i should say yeah there's a lot of talk lately about the carnivore diet there's a lot of people that are delving into that including jordan peterson's daughter which is a really interesting case because she had severe autoimmune disorder like she has some severe issues with like horrible arthritis where she's had um i know she's had hip replacements and i believe she's having an ankle replaced soon too okay like severe issues and if she eats anything other than meat it flares up horribly it's really crazy yeah i've never i'm not i want to try to talk to her maybe even get her in here but um i've never heard anything like that i thought i heard somewhere um it was after the last time you had jordan on where

59:01he was telling you about how he just basically eats meats and greens where that was on his daughter's recommendation yeah i think he's cut out all vegetables right now for at least a trial i thought i saw something about that um but yeah it's it's one of those things where i think like some it's like what i was saying before like why i don't necessarily want people to say like well zach is saying everyone should do exactly what he's doing and then you know they that's important to bring up yeah yeah everybody's body is different for sure i mean to the point where like you have people like that like when i had like the issues i were having were incredibly minor compared to jordan peterson's daughter like like i mean she's in a spot where you know she had to make changes if she wanted to even just probably do daily activities um and you know that's that that's i think the hard part for people

59:47to kind of understand is like there are people are at different stages that some people like no one's breaking themselves overnight so it's like this is something that's chipping away at people and sometimes it chips away at them quicker you know some people and takes longer for others uh so if you have an issue like that it's like you almost have to go back to square one and say what are give me a couple things that i know aren't going to upset me and let's start from there and see if we can start adding things back eventually maybe or um you know the we uh you know sean baker you had on the podcast we actually started recording some podcasts together and um we are having this gal come on who's been a carnivore for eight years and she was kind of in that situation where she had a whole bunch of goofy

60:30things going on even with the keto protocol and she eventually just cut everything out but meat and has been doing great ever since and that's a vegan's nightmare yeah and things like that like well i just i wish people could separate their ideology from the reality of certain people's bodies and and unfortunately and this is very unfortunately you got to separate also all your all the horrors that we associate with factory farming and all the other things that we associate with meat and meat consumption those things are real and terrible and you absolutely should be avoided and absolutely factory farming should be illegal yeah i mean i think it's one of the most the great horrors of modern society i really really do but take that away and you know some people don't think animals should die at all but they don't live forever and other animals eat them and it's just like this is just a part of

61:17life yeah then you're into health and whether or not consuming meat is actually healthy and there's no evidence that it's not there's none yeah you know the thing that like i want a vegan to sit me down and explain to me is that like when i look at bioavailability um of micronutrients it's like you can't find much better than liver like no it's like the stuff is super available like that's why alpha wolves immediately go to the liver when they kill something yeah so like it it and it so like it's like i need that like i don't know i'm sure there's ranges of what people can do in terms of absorbing something like like a non-heme iron versus a heme iron but like for me it's it it's like i'm gonna if my iron levels were low the first thing i'm going to i'm doubling down on liver yeah doubling down on liver and

62:10it's like as far as nutrients yeah yeah you're just talking about just from a purely objective standpoint consumption of nutrients organ meats are some of the best yeah for sure you're aware chris kresser mm-hmm yep chris was a macrobiotic vegan and you know i mean he was like fully hardcore and just was having all sorts of huge issues his body just didn't react to it and he fixed all that by eating organ meat and that's like his primary food source yeah um what's the gal's name there's a a lady who she i can't remember what she had uh i'm not going to think of it but if i do i'll remember but she did pretty much the same thing but some people are fine with the vegan diet too that's the other thing that's important to point out it might not be the best for them in terms of like bioavailability bioavailability of nutrients but it's certainly better than the standard western

62:59diet for sure american diet but yeah for some people they can get by with it and not have any issues well and some people get away with even more i mean courtney de walter yes she's candy right she eats candy and drinks beer and eats nachos we took her to a bagel place she fucking chowed out bagels and cream cheese she's a fucking animal man i read an article about her not too long ago and she said that she's got like candy jars sitting around the house yeah and she's like before i go for a run i'll go anywhere from just like you know nibbling on it to a small stomach ache so we're not operating from the same field i guess in that regard she's a real freak man you know um there's people that know her that just they're stunned by her because what's interesting about her is she's not a fast runner in per se like like the way she would run a marathon she'd run a

63:45marathon in like three hours so did she here did she talk about how she got into running when she was on here i believe she did do you remember her specifically jamie just sort of like you she ran in high school i think a little bit yeah well she was uh teaching as well okay yeah while she was teaching she was running and doing these things and then eventually she was able to get enough sponsors so she could run full time which is what she does now but with with her i think and this is one of the reasons why i'm fascinated by you folks with her it's her mind her mind is just unbelievably powerful when she was experiencing cornea edemas right her she couldn't fucking see man she was literally blind she barely could see her feet and she still won yeah she fell cracked her head open blood's pouring down her head and she's still won was that at run rabbit run i don't think that was

64:35what it was yeah i think that's what it was and there's an image of her crossing the finish line literally can't see shit she's got her hands in front of her she's covered in blood like she's a fucking savage she's she's if you take the interesting thing about ultra marathons is like we kind of we're small enough sport where it's like you can't really say like oh i'm a hundred miler it's like okay everybody would know yeah it's like yeah i know what you're talking about so like you have everything from a 50 kilometer that's got over 10 000 feet of climbing and descending to a six day event on a track and they're all the same sport yeah when you look at like people who can kind of do really well at all of them or in courtney's case really well at all of them you can't find a better female on the female side of things someone who can do it better than that like no she does it

65:17she always goes on the track kills it she goes in 240 miles through the mountains kills it it's it's crazy yeah she's something on really really unusual you know uh a buddy my friend brian was texting me about her while she was getting brian is uh he doesn't even run i don't think or barely i mean he's not a but he was just so fascinated by this one woman that was so far ahead of everybody it's like what the fuck is she doing man yeah she beat the second place guy by 10 hours in a 238 mile race 22 miles she was ahead of him yeah that that's an interesting topic too where like the where like men and women in ultra marathoning and how that kind of like where it's one of the rare races where women can win yeah and it's the the interesting thing to me about it is women can and do win some races um but when they're like like courtney's very much the most i would say talented person to do

66:10one of the 200 milers yet like there hasn't been a lot of what like the the top of the sport hasn't really moved into that i mean courtney certainly is top of the sport but she's think she's the best i think she's the best woman all around right if certainly in the united states do you think she's the best at running those 200 milers uh no is it dependent upon altitude gain and loss and probably and just variables to the day i i think like so like i mean there's there's some like there's a guy named killian jornet um and he how do you spell his last name j-o-r-n-e-t and uh he won the um or he he's he's he's essentially the best mountain runner by far like there's maybe one other guy who could maybe compete with him at something under 100 miles but if it's like he's he's he would probably like beat everyone by who knows how much in a 200 we've seen one of

67:04these videos before yeah he'll run on these he'll run on these like ridge lines and like it'll be like death on both sides and he just play that these fucking guys yeah so oh i have seen this this isn't even nearly as thin as some of them get oh my god yeah that's that's crazy look at him it looks like a freak too a gopro strapped to his head that's got to throw your balance off he's running with a gopro put that down pay attention that was my son i'd be like pay attention where you're running kid jesus yeah he's interesting because i mean his parents were like mountaineers i think and like so he was like basically playing in the mountains at like age three and basically grew up doing this stuff so oh my god yeah so he's the he's the type of guy who like he's he's probably the best in the sport right now and it's oh my god he's jumping around he's an

67:51asshole he's an asshole he's he is running folks what is this uh video it's on his instagram i don't really know okay and it spell his name k i is that two l's one l one l i a n j o r n e t and he's running in chamois how do you say that chamonix chamonix chamonix chamonix france and he's running on what looks like the fin of a shark if a shark was the size of a mountain this guy's a fucking animal man that is so scary oh the interesting i get sweaty my hands are sweating i freak out it's scared just watching it and so he's the best yeah on the mountains for sure he doesn't do anything that's not mountainous like he did western states and won it in 2011 and he was complaining about it being too flat oh jesus christ what is the gain and loss of elevation that was net downhill so it's 2300 or 23 000 feet down 17 000 feet up what so he's complaining about that yeah it's too flat

68:5517 000 feet up and it gets much crazier than that you can do you can do like 50 milers or 100 k's that have the same profile as that so you can get like if you're doing like what he's doing that probably does feel kind of flat for him like he likes that steep technical stuff so but yeah so as far as the mountains go he's he's the guy to beat for sure and he'll do races on a regular basis when he is running because he's actually a professional skier too so like he's only running basically half the year and he's skiing the other half jesus christ yeah yeah so he's he's a fun dude to follow for sure um but yeah it's uh when you look at like some of the races that are kind of the big races like western states 100 is the most competitive 100 miler in the united states and ultra trail mont blanc which is actually by chamonix where you saw that video um is probably at least uh last year was the

69:42most competitive in the world um those are the races i like to look at to kind of see like where the divergence is from the males and the females uh and if you look at like course records and winning times like you know the men are finishing like two plus hours ahead of the women on a pretty regular basis on that type of stuff and um at ultra trail mont blanc you know sometimes it's four or five hours uh and then so then you can kind of like it actually kind of is more in line with what you see with other endurance distances like marathons and stuff like that uh the crazy thing about it though is uh that doesn't mean that's going to happen every time like there's certainly years where women do really well and finish like in the top 10 amongst in like like western states or utmb um one year in 2006 uh this gal nikki kimball uh she finished third overall at western states was

70:33which is the highest finishing finishing place for a woman other than this other lady named ann tracen who she doesn't really race anymore but she was she's kind of like the legend of the sport from the women uh where she's she's uh um won western states like 14 times and had like 20 world records at one point and stuff like that and um but nikki nikki kimball she finished third and part of it was because that was like the hottest year in the canyons on record and if women do one thing i'm pretty confident women do better at these hundred miles than men is they're not nearly as stupid like the men will go out and like if it's competitive it takes one or two guys to kind of run a little too fast and he's going to bring five six seven guys with him and then it's it's actually a fascinating racing concept i think because then it's like if you're watching it you're like okay one of these

71:22guys is gonna have the race of his life and hold on for dear life and run a spectacular time everyone else is gonna blow up epically when's it gonna happen so you can thin out that men's field really easily when that happens i think the women are a little smarter than that they can happen in moab right wasn't wasn't there a guy that was like way out ahead uh yeah that might have been the case yeah he dropped off yeah he was couldn't keep it up he was probably running way too fast for what he was capable of doing and you see that all the time and it's really easy to do at 100 plus miles because really at the end of the day like if you feel comfortable at the start you're probably going too fast now how do you pace yourself and something like that like what do you are you using your watch are you are you counting steps like what are you doing yeah um i like to get to a point where i can

72:05use perceived effort which is basically like listening to my body i can know like okay this is a little too hard i need to dial it back um i'll use heart rate a lot in training to kind of get myself to the fitness i'm looking for your rich roll was talking about that he was saying that he tries to stay under 140 or in the 140 range yeah and the thing about heart rate that i where i kind of deviate from heart rate is when you start getting into these really long events that go past like two or three hours heart rate starts losing its value in terms of being able to trust it as like a metric that's going to tell you to do the right thing like there's so many things that can kind of disrupt that from like dehydration to just cardiac drift all kinds of all kinds of things so i think like if an athlete really has things dialed in they can use heart rate and training

72:50and they can look at heart rate if they want but they also need to connect that with perceived effort so that if something goes wrong with that or it starts you know issues start coming up with the heart rate side of things they can still kind of like reflect back in on themselves like okay this is a sustainable pace for me or this is not a sustainable pace for me rich roll we should point out is a vegan yeah and you know he's one of the few guys that is fully functional has no issues at all keeping that diet up yeah yeah and i think he took i mean he puts a lot of work into that i think oh you have to yeah he's i mean you really have to be just super dedicated to making sure you're getting the proper amount of nutrients making sure you get microalgae and all the different forms of b12 and yeah yeah and whenever someone comes to me and says like i'm a vegan or i'm a vegetarian or something

73:33like that it's like who should i look to and he's the first guy i point to he's like if there's someone doing it right it's him so yeah no he's definitely doing it right now when it comes to something like moab 240 how does someone like courtney blow that whole field away like that um i think some of it is just that's a really new event like i think they're in their like third or fourth year for 200s there's three of them in the united states and they'll probably be four or five in the next couple years so it really hasn't it's in its infancy i mean think of it like uh like with ufc like back like in the 90s like and then where it is at today right so like those 200s are kind of like ufc was in the 90s i see and i mean if that becomes a thing if people start gravitating toward it um then you'll start you'll see some of these course records just get blown out i mean we saw

74:19that with the 100 mile distance and we've seen that with you know a lot of other trail course records um because like a lot of fast guys and gals have moved into the sport in the last five ten years so we've just been it's been like just deeper talent pool more likely to get a complete genetic freak more likely and the other thing too is like um a lot like a lot of times what you have is you get competitive enough in a sport then um people start playing with fire and training and they're doing it because they know they have to get to their optimal best and sometimes they over train right over train get hurt and then but then the people that make it through that are there as fit as they can get so then you can see you can see some really good times do you peak for a race yeah definitely the same like way a fighter would peak for a fight yep i'll usually pick two maybe three races a year and

75:09those are the ones that i'm really gonna try to nail those are the ones where like i'm gonna like try to do everything i can to be ready to hurt during that race and then i'll usually do maybe it's usually ranged like i'll usually do about six to eight ultra marathons in a year and then the other ones are kind of like those training races that i talked about before or every once in a while get invited to a race that's like overseas and it's like a free trip to go to china or something like that well speaking of hurting during a race i know that a lot of ultra runners are utilizing cbd and even using edible marijuana while they run and that they found that this is a great performance enhancing yeah yeah i don't have you ever messed around with cbd or yeah not not not within workouts though like more as like a sleep aid than anything but like or an inflammation thing so it's like more

76:03of a post workout there was an esquire article or maxim one of them guy guy magazine type things and it was all about uh marijuana and ultra running and that it's it's somehow or another uh become a big part of it but for a lot of these guys yeah i think you know it's interesting because like you know marijuana use i'm not sure about cbd but marijuana use is like is illegal in competition but yeah it's like all of them uh yeah it's it's so there's like a usada type stand yeah it's the same it's the usada protocol so i think i think it's like it has to be below a certain level for like that's great then so they they're testing you for epo and all those things yeah i mean it's still pretty primitive and ultra running um like there's testing at some of the big races uh and that's even relatively new like in the

76:53last year or so so like western states they'll test they'll test uh the top 10 on each side and then a few random people and then i think utmb which is the other big hundred mile i was talking about they test like i was tested after when i broke the 12-hour world record in 2013 i got tested after that um have there been any big superstars that pissed hot um there's been people who have uh they weren't like individuals that were like kind of like a poster child of the sport necessarily though limbs lance arm right nothing nothing like that so um and it's it's really interesting because like i mean there's certainly people skirting the rules and ultra marathon running um i have no doubt about it but what do you think they're doing uh probably like what is it uh i doubt they're doing like blood transfusion things like tour de france style because i mean that's an expensive hard thing to

77:47kind of put together you need a doctor essentially if i'm understanding it all right so they're probably just doing little like minor things like maybe like peptides or something like that would be my guess um but i also do think it's not nearly like people i think nowadays like with icarus and all that stuff like now people are on the opposite side of what they were a few years ago where they they suspect everyone's doing it versus i know they're not doing it they haven't gotten caught yet which is where we were probably a few years ago um in ultra running i think i think the culture plays a huge role in that i mean like when you had lance on i think he was pretty good about talking about like how like you know like you come into the sport you go over to europe to race and like they ask you to get on a

78:28protocol if you say no they send you back like it's like you know that's a cultural thing then too like like it's like you you have to do it to be in the sport almost and with ultra running it's kind of the opposite i think um i think the culture is stay away from that stuff like like we don't we don't want that because it's a mind thing almost more than anything which is why people like courtney who aren't maybe the fastest marathon runners but have this just bulletproof mind that allows them to compete and that you really there's no supplement for your mind for willpower yeah yeah and there's things that can go wrong just from the duration you're out there yeah i can imagine i mean it seems to be so much of it seems to be your ability to deal with discomfort and pain and just press on yeah you know the way i describe ultra marathon running is it's still a running sport seeing runners

79:19high the athletes use marijuana to improve their training what was that in was it in uh i typed both those in yet but guardian came up stone marathon runners may seem like walking contradictions but there are hints that the drug and long distance running could go hand in hand i'll tell you what man i've only done it a few times where i got super baked and went running it feels awesome it feels great you feel so scared though like ah what am i doing but i would imagine for for some people it's uh it's it's uh you know euphoric 50 of the runners i mean are avid cannabis users say almost none of them are open about it says avery collins yeah yeah avery collins is you know he's interesting because he's he's a spokesperson for marijuana use and you know like i mean i don't you don't have to look far into like marijuana and how it got

80:09to be where it is in terms of its legality or illegality to recognize there's some tomfoolery going on there like yeah i mean you don't have to be like a historian to find out like like why that's criminalized well whereas alcohol isn't and that sort of thing yeah um and avery's been like a pretty big proponent about kind of uh de-stigmatizing it um and but you know he understands at least you know he understands that it's illegal in competition and i think he's been tested at least twice after races i mean he was six that western states last year so he had gotten tested for that and uh caffeine illegal in competition no um i think at a certain level i think it is although they may have just removed it i'm trying to remember if i saw that right but it used to be like you can have caffeine but at a certain level it would be illegal but it was like the equivalent

81:00of like 16 cups of coffee or something like that so you'd have to put down like four of those nitros or six of those nitros right before your race if you wanted any any chance of going over that and you'd probably go into cardiac arrest before that anyway and by the time you got to the end of the race it would probably be out of your system anyway yeah well it's interesting i actually this is diverging a little bit but i i read a story a while ago that there was some high school kid who's playing football and he like slammed a red bull or some one of those like high caffeine energy drinks and then like was like on the kick return team or something returned to kick for touchdown was just jacked out of his mind slammed another one and then went back on the field and had a heart attack or something like that i'm sure it could happen if you go too hard yeah it's not just caffeine right a lot

81:42of those things have a bunch of other wacky stimulants in them too yeah you remember red lines oh yeah i took one of those once i drank the whole bottle and then i looked at it says like four servings i'm like oh shit well each serving is like 150 milligrams of caffeine or something nuts yeah well and then they put a bunch of other stimulants in there that people don't know about so yeah taurine and all sorts of other shit in there yeah yeah yeah the kind of those pre-workout supplements were kind of wild yeah oh remember those uh ripped fuel i took ripped fuel once and went to a jiu-jitsu class i had to stop i had to stop training i'm like i'm my heart is beating so fast i could die here like this is this is not good and that was right before they pulled it off the market cut it in just in time i guess there was another thing they pulled off the market too that was killing people was it called

82:28jack 3d oh i think i remember hearing about that stuff yeah yeah yeah they that killed a few folks i think it killed a few folks in the military so you know you're not talking about like some fucking sickly old man's like i'm about to get checked no it's like fucking soldiers yeah yeah i mean i'll use caffeine in races i think it's pretty clear that caffeine is a performance enhancing and it just happens to be one that's that's legal and it's a mild performance enhancing for sure are you using coffee or are you taking pills a little i've done a variety of different things um and i've done uh like i did a race once where i was trying to figure out like my fueling rate and like kind of what was ideal and this was a while ago but i did 100k race and i did nothing but mountain dew and it was like wow i think i took in it ended up coming out to

83:20about 158 calories an hour of just mountain dew with some elect i added some electrolytes to it i feel like if you if you're just sitting around doing nothing mountain dew is probably terrible for you but if you're running hills and really kicking ass like that the amount of fuel you're burning mountain dew might be a great move if you don't go overboard i mean so does at every aid station at pretty much every race really yeah so it's definitely something people have identified as useful but like since then i've been uh that product i was talking about before the x endurance fuel five they make one with a little caffeine in it too so now i'll usually if i want caffeine i'll just use that instead of the non-caffeinated one um but then i'll do like you know i'll still sometimes do a little bit of soda especially at the end of the race um just to kind of change

84:00things up a little bit because that's the other thing too it's like if you do the same thing you know after a while it's like just give me something different yeah well i know floyd mayweather drinks soda after he works out oh really yeah and and people are like what an idiot and i was like maybe not first of all maybe the best boxer of all time so definitely not an idiot he's doing something right he's doing something right and if he's that good on top of you know having a terrible diet and i think part of his like terrible diet is a joke like he'll eat cheeseburgers and shit and show you and say look motherfucker i'm kicking everybody's ass eating cheeseburgers but not really he really does home when the chef's making some gourmet meal yeah i mean he has a personal chef there was a whole article about it recently but i think that the fueling up with like

84:44really heavy sugary drinks after a very hard workout it's not a bad idea to replenish the glycogen in your muscles yeah i think that depends i think like i think the science is pretty clear if you're on a high carbohydrate or at least a higher carbohydrate diet that you know carbohydrate and protein within like you know 30 45 minutes of the post-workout is going to be in your best interest a lot of people like chocolate milk for that right yeah that's gotten that's gotten kind of like labeled as that perfect ratio yeah um of protein with sugar sugar yep where where it's not clear or at least it's it's getting clearer is like where the variance there is for someone like myself who's following a high fat approach yeah um and we we've had a little bit of a glimpse into it from some studies uh and i the

85:32interesting thing is what they they did this one study called the faster study um and it looked at uh like it was it was 10 guys who were on a high fat diet and 10 guys who were on a high carbohydrate diet and um the guys on the they try to pair them up as twins so like similar like performance achievements similar like body metrics and then kind of compare the two and the the high fat cohort actually when they finished the one of the workouts was a three-hour treadmill session and then they were they taken like blood tests and stuff and they had like the oxygen mask and things like throughout the course of it and they tested things before or after um and one thing they they saw was like uh the the high fat folks actually had this kind of big like surge of glucose in the bloodstream post-workout

86:17so the thought is like you might not want to double down on that if you're in a fat adapted state because like i mean some of the levels this is it goes back to it would have been like like this is what something i'd like to ask uh dr atia about um is that like you get these big kind of post-workout like blood glucose spikes um sometimes to the level of like what would look like a type 2 diabetic um but it's not it's not it's it's in a different context than what you would see in someone who's just like following a normal diet where that would be kind of a red flag and um so like to kind of to hit the body with another source of glucose essentially might not be affecting you the same way so yeah it's it's it's interesting stuff so like it's actually like um what i've done sometimes too is after a big hard workout if i'm not hungry i don't always eat right away i wait for my stomach to come

87:09around and like my body to say you're hungry just to let all that stuff kind of go through and then then i'll have uh depending on depending on what i'm doing next like i'll if i'm if i'm taking an easy day or a couple easy days i'll go like really low carb but if i'm going back out that afternoon for another workout or the next morning for like a speed session or something like that that's when maybe i would try to drop in a little bit of carbohydrate to kind of speed up the glycogen uh side of things so i'm ready for that next one well zach you're a bad motherfucker i wish you all the best i really appreciate you coming down here and talking to us and it's uh fascinating what you do man and thanks thanks for having me on thank you thank you very much man thank you