Training and the COVID-19 Pandemic with the CTS Coaches⎮KoopCast Episode 18

what's going on trail runners welcome to another episode of the KoopCast i'm your host jason as always and today we have an extra special episode lined up for you um it's undeniable right now that this covid19 virus has kind of gripped the country and also gripped our small little ultra running community alongside it we all play a part in helping to manage this disease and making sure that the spread of it is as contained as possible but at the same time we're all athletes and we're all trying to train for events and get better and you know run long distances and we've got you know things stacked up on the calendar some of them been canceled some of them are going to go on and some of them really don't know what's going to happen with it and so for this episode i brought all of our coaches together during our normal continuing education session and for those of you that have listened to this podcast several times uh you've heard me make mention of this uh we get together every single week as an entire coaching department and we throw up uh you know one of a variety of different topics to discuss and sometimes they're incredibly technical discussions we recently had roger crom on from the university of colorado at boulder to talk about developments in footwear specifically uh the new nike vaporfly and alpha fly shoes all the

way to topics that are much more benign where we where we discuss athlete schedules and kind of how to you know how to manage this workout and that workout and you know how to plan and and forecast for seasons that are uh that are coming up and i've never uh i've never had the intent of broadcasting those continuing education sessions publicly they're just really not meant for that the audio usually isn't very clean as you can imagine with you know several people in the same room there's a lot of talking over each other but i think with this virus and how on how it's impacting every single athlete it became a good use case to use that platform and broadcast it to everybody and so you guys get to really eavesdrop in uh on that uh on that conversation i also invited uh into the fold eric lee who it was actually kind of a hilarious situation where he joined us quite literally from his lab in boulder colorado while he was doing lab work in boulder colorado with pipettes and graduated cylinders and all this lab equipment behind him he was actually running experiments and talking at the same time it was uh uh it was really quite fun but eric's a pretty badass ultra runner uh in his uh in his own right but he also has a master's degree in immunology and infectious disease uh alongside his 14 years of laboratory experience uh working on drug and vaccine uh development so he brings a little bit of uh of technical expertise which we leaned on uh in this podcast and in this discussion as well if you have

not had the chance to read coach corin malcolm's excellent article on i run far on this virus please go and do so it's a better resource even the one that i actually prematurely wrote uh back at the very beginning of march far better article than that and a great uh resource for all athletes this is not going to be a podcast about social distancing and washing your hands and not touching your face all of those guidelines still exist right now and i think that finally over the course of the last several days that message has gotten out and that message is very very clearly conveyed in corinne's uh in corinne's article so rather than be a dead horse again with that advice which you guys have heard and you guys everybody out there should already be doing we wanted to talk about from a very practical perspective in the here and now what athletes should be doing with their training when their races get canceled when their races are kind of up in the air and when they've got races in the fall from a practical perspective what you should be doing with your training and then also how to handle the uncertainty that accompanies this this absolutely incredible time that we're in where we don't know what's going to happen week to week the recommendations that the cdc is putting out is changing day to day uh corinne herself and another one of our coaches uh stephanie how uh are are based on on house arrest

right they can't leave their homes out there in san francisco except for essentials like grocery shopping and exercise and and things like that so these things are quite in flux and they're changing every single day and it impacts athletes in terms of how they're actually training and how they want to train and so what we wanted to do with this conversation is keep it practical keep it very pragmatic keep it kind of on the ground level of what athletes should be doing day to day with their training to keep themselves healthy but also keep their fitness kind of rolling at the same time so without any further ado here we go here's all of the cts coach not all almost all of our cts coaches talking about what athletes should do with the covid19 virus and how you guys should handle your training um so as i mentioned earlier i want to do just we'll start we'll kind of start out with just a quick voice intro from everybody uh i'm obviously the host i'm Jason Koop i'm the host every week next we have john hi john fitzgerald here helena montana how are things in helena john not too bad we just got some fresh snow so it's been fun to get out on the trails with the dogs i'm glad you guys have fresh snow and that's the only thing you have to worry about whether the snow is fresh or what's the opposite of fresh stale i mean we had ice is never fun for a single track

but that's not a bad thing to be worried about okay we also got steph stephanie how um i'm up in mill valley california and are you currently under house arrest or quarantine or are they calling it yeah currently currently under house arrest i don't know that sounds more descriptive to me um yeah it's i've got everything i need though i've got my chocolate and wine here and i should remind the listeners it's uh 8 18 in the morning in mill valley and stephanie's already on her first round of chocolate and wine i'm just i'm just saying i haven't i didn't say i'm indulging in it yet all right stuff and special guest today eric lee eric take a second and introduce yourself hi i'm eric lee um infectious disease immunologist from boulder colorado um we're currently on you know social distancing measures not full lockdown but all of our restaurants and bars are closed down and we have a little bit of a failure of audio here eric is actually in his lab in boulder colorado so we can see all of the equipment and agents and things like that in the background it's actually kind of a little bit of a hilarious scene some people are still working exactly some people are still working from their proper offices you're one of the few because you have important work to do all right next up we've got uh ajw hey this is andy jones wilkins i'm checking in from my office in wilson arkansas uh where nobody is in school except for me and why don't you give a quick rundown of what you guys are doing with the kids

there well we're uh we today's day one of our remote learning program yesterday was a planning day for the faculty so we've got two weeks of remote learning and it's pretty interesting to do remote learning for like pre-k and kindergarten kids it's a little bit easier for high school and middle school but uh we've had to be really creative and uh using a lot of video conferencing and the teachers have been great and the parents have been great so we'll see how it goes uh we're we're technically only closed for two weeks but i suspect it'll be longer than that yeah uh liz and the listeners will know my wife liz is a high school english teacher here in colorado springs colorado they're basically going through the exact same thing where they're all their teachers and the students at the same time are having to learn how to do remote based learning and implement it kind of all in one flow on a more personal note i think what's interesting is all these colleges are closing down so i have a lot more kids in my house than i used to all right next we've got darcy hey this is darcy i'm in logan utah uh i have a middle schooler and a high school and we're up and running as of tomorrow with the home learning and we're mourning the anticipation of no senior baseball season for my son so we're getting all the backcountry ski gear waxed and ready to see as long as they're still oh my gosh hi this is chantelle calling in from outside of gunnison

self-isolating on my ranch our ranch um so business as usual really and chantelle you've been like helping the local community out uh with this as well why don't you go through a little bit of that uh yeah so the last since last friday i guess i've been helping with our um community uh department of health and uh human resources and so i've been helping to translate into spanish all the different um orders and guidance that's going out to the local community so so that's changing has been changing pretty rapidly since gunnison county is one of the epicenters in colorado for the covet id outbreak and you're you're also in a little bit of a unique situation because you're in a somewhat of a shelter-in-place uh situation and you have a high density of uh at-risk population why don't you describe that both of those real quick yeah so the community of gunnison um and crested butte they're have small population of about 8 000 people but the number of people who are identified as high risk based on their health conditions or their age is about 2300 so that makes the situation pretty dangerous for a lot of folks in their community awesome all right thanks chantelle so we're probably one of the early early places where they've asked people to to stay home um to stay away from public places on friday they announced that um no gatherings of 50 people or more and for people age 60 and over

to to stay home and and not go to any of those public places and then before the the national guidelines were announced yesterday um they changed that to 10 people um so we've got you know the restaurants and a lot of businesses having to close down and um people ordered to to stay home and to work from home as much as possible and they kicked everybody else out of town right all the tourists are like have been told to leave they did yeah so all the i mean the ski resorts were all shut down so that's you know that's across across the um the state but they also ordered all hotels to close down and even um you know these third-party rentals like airbnb so all those folks were were told they had to leave by the quickest route possible so whether they fly out of here drive out of here just you know to get out of here and so today is the the last day i believe that our airport's going to be operational our local airport totally unbelievable all right well thanks for chipping in for the community chantelle really appreciate that thanks so we're going to move on to corinne which is in another one of the hotbeds of the lockdown zone corinne why don't you say hi real quick hi i'm corinne malcolm and i am sheltering in place in san francisco california is that the official terminology that they're using there sheltering in place yep it's considered sheltering in place with the idea that we've closed down local businesses except for essential businesses like grocery stores um gas stations

hardware stores um and essential city personnel and we're allowed to go outside to get to those places to go to essential medical visits and exercise so we're still allowed to exercise as long as we don't mess this up there you go so don't screw it up people for the sake of corinne's exercise um okay so i wanted i wanted to get everybody together on this week's continuing ed to talk about kind of two two facets that we're having to deal with right here right now uh with our athletes the first one is more of this short term what does my training look like today tomorrow this week next week this month uh we've obviously we've had a ton of cancellations uh happen with races and that uh that obviously kind of propagates down the line where people have to kind of rearrange their schedules but also we have athletes that are a little bit in limbo they have athletes or they have races that are in may or june that still you know may or may not be off the table and they still have questions about should i should i train for these races should i train hard is that going to be something that compromises my immune system is it safe for me for me to just run you know run inside run on treadmill if i have access to a treadmill run alone if i can accomplish that via the appropriate social distancing so that's the first piece of what i want us all to talk about is just this practical day-to-day training advice that we're really giving our athletes right now and the second piece of it is is what to do with this long-term planning ambiguity that we have in the space right

now where we really don't know what's going to happen in may june july august september and um that always that always has a lot of different facets to it it's got a psychological facet to it meaning athletes don't really kind of know uh how to just how to handle things but also how we do it from a practical planning standpoint uh in terms of how the long-range plan works and how their periodization works uh throughout the year so why don't we start out uh with uh with just a couple of examples of uh what you guys have been going through just uh with your athletes uh andy since you've got your mic hot right now why don't you go ahead and and kick things off i would thank you coop and i think that this is a great conversation very timely i i'm finding uh a couple of things first of all um with cancellations and also the unknown uh some lagging motivation among athletes uh that um that the the absence of the somewhat deflated feeling of of just um no longer having something to train for so still working with athletes on keeping them motivated keeping them focused uh sort of trying to find the glass uh half full uh challenges around uh having kids at home all of a sudden for for working uh working families uh having job uncertainty i mean all of these things are i think i think are having a weight on on um on people's motivation what i'm trying to do in several cases is

compartmentalize and saying you know one thing you can control at least until they until they prohibit exercise outside which i really hope they don't uh i think the one thing you can control is this you know this hour a day this 45 minutes a day this two hours a day that are yours for your for your training so i'm trying to keep that going as the one sort of predictable part in their lives and it seems to be helping in these early days so keep keep the workout routine i think is a is a theme that you can kind of glean from that um so and i think that that's something that's that's really valid for a lot of athletes i want to know has anybody like drastically changed what their athletes are doing because of a an event cancellation or b because they're just they're just worried about the increased risk of infection from doing hard long arduous you know whatever it is type type of training i can i can chime in on that if you guys can hear me yeah go ahead chantelle so i have um the one athlete who's had to drastically change things things is my one athlete who is in austria because they are on he's in innsbruck which is um one of the areas that's been hit particularly hard as a tourist destination so he has a curfew and because of his online job can't get outside when he's allowed outside to exercise so thankfully he's been able to

get a trainer and we've had to move some of his training to being indoors on a on a bike but at least he's been able to be a little bit flexible to move things around and as andy said the biggest key here is let's control the things we can control and use the time we have to do things um so that's that's been an interesting one does anybody else have any athletes either in spain or france where they're giving tickets for people at like participating in outdoor not just running but running cycling any sort of outdoor activities anybody have any of those athletes steph you've got some i have an athlete uh he's on the border of switzerland and italy so kind of huh right in the thick of it and what have you guys done well we've taken the approach and this is sort of what i have with a few other athletes of like yeah this is impacting your training but this is also a humanitarian issue and maybe this is lower on the priority like let's focus on keeping you safe and healthy because ultimately that's way more important so although you can't train right now this is not the new normal this is just a period of time where it's it's okay and probably beneficial to be unselfish and put that aside and follow the rules like i think that's important be a rule follower we

in alter running we tend to be rule breakers a lot so i know that's a hard thing for a lot of people to get over john uh you i know you've got an athlete or two that have been that's been dealing with this as well what's your experience with those athletes been like yeah so um i have an athlete over madrid right now and he's typically on an airplane like every other day so that's obviously been um that's not happening right now but as far as the training similar to steph it's just really focusing on you know health and pushing training aside um focusing on the step that the athlete is currently in and not getting too overwhelmed by the fact that they can't go do intervals um so that's been really helpful and just having that time to reflect on what really matters you know is it the training is it the intervals or is it loved ones and uh you know our health in general and so it's been an interesting time for athletes to have that reflection how who out here has had an athlete where you've intentionally changed the training not because of an imposed restriction and eric we're gonna i'm gonna bring you into the tail end of this question here not because of an imposed restriction but because of either your or the athlete's desire to i just want to keep myself as healthy as possible and do the minimum amount of exercise that it takes to maintain a healthy immune system so darcy why don't you kick us off with this one yeah i've definitely been doing that especially with

my athletes in the medical profession because i want them to go into this as healthy as possible so i've been um one specifically alternating literally a rest day every other day and then backing down the total volume and more taking the approach of like we're using exercise as a stress relief right now um so keeping their health the first priority both mentally and physically um just so that they can continue their jobs and doing that frontline service that we're anticipating we'll need them for well they have a multiplier effect right i mean if we keep them healthy they're there they are then able to keep other people healthy so i think that's really poignant yeah steph you want to jump in there as well yeah i've got two situations i've got um a couple older athletes and older meaning one is like approaching his 80s um and so he's you know healthy but it's still one of those things where yeah his he might be a little more at risk um and then i also have an athlete who's pregnant and so really minimizing any potential extra stress on the body right now um so just doing the the base amount of training i guess to stay just keep your foot in the game basically so that just looks like reduced volume and reduced intensity on on both ends so they're just getting out to move and really it is for stress relief or just um maintaining some consistent running yeah it's sometimes with the at-risk populations like it's you have to take obviously we have to take a lot better care of them

i actually canceled a podcast interview the interview that was going to go out this week was going to be with lindsey golich over at the olympic training center who a lot of you guys know she manages their high altitude performance center there um and she is going to give birth to her first first child in like 10 days and so we were like okay let's let's postpone this for for for for a little bit later the whole training center shut down that's another uh that's kind of another issue eric i want to kind of bring you into the mix here because we're talking about um athletes that can be negative negatively impacted from their work routine in specific regards to their immune function what sort what what sorts of things can you kind of illuminate uh for us and maybe reemphasize some of the points that uh that kind of came out in the article that uh corinne just wrote on iron far uh certainly yeah so i guess the first thing is kind of what stephanie alluded to is um don't necessarily think about it as exercising but think about it in regards to stress on the body and the physical system um so there's actually been several studies i've shown that just general exercise load low to moderate actually been good for immune function and just overall health so definitely being active is good um but then on the converse of that anything that's going to extremely stress your physical system whether it's you know a super long run hard tempo work is going to depress your immune system for some duration of time um most of the research has showed it's pretty it's pretty transient if it's like just a single

bout of exercise um but if you're dealing with chronic stress as as some i think stephanie alluded to with like health care workers where they're already stressed out you don't want to add that extra stress onto the system and depress the immune system any further um so what they have shown is i said most of the most of the immune like immune suppression is very short-term looking at less than 24 hours even a couple hours afterwards um so they got single single hard effort and then if somebody's sleeping or recovering they should recover back to normal levels pretty fine and so you might be slightly more susceptible initially but it shouldn't it shouldn't prevent or alter your long-term immune in response to any kind of infection that you do require i almost kind of look at this and i'll open this up after standing on a soapbox for a little bit i almost kind of look at that proposition is that's just if you're doing training the right way that you shouldn't be compromising your immune system that much anyway and we see this all the time with athletes that are either training with hard doses these are either long runs or hard runs too frequently or they increase their total amount of training stress and i like the way you position that eric they increase their total amount of training stress too quickly they're more susceptible to getting sick we see those types of you know correlation studies come out every other year every other year it seems like but whenever i see that i just look at that and go that's bad training design um but at the same time during this time i think that like just hedging a little bit on the under of training even more so is not a bad thing one

the events are all getting the events are all kicking the cans down the road right nothing's going to happen for the next realistically for the next maybe three months and so from a training perspective taking the pressure off actually makes sense even irrespective of the outbreak right now just because you don't need to put that much kind of pressure on but then you add the aspect of you just want to hedge a little bit on a little bit more on being more healthy i think is a really smart thing yeah and what i wanted to add as well is just remember that right now like emotional physical emotional and like psychological stress is also a big additive in addition to all of that this is going on so just people being stressed out by the just day-to-day activities it's going to add to that corinne and steph i'm going to cue you guys up for a question because you're probably more acutely dealing with um this like emotional stress that goes along with having to stay you know confined in your house all day um and i know that you guys also confer with a lot of people in the san francisco and mill valley area and i have athletes out there as well so i'm going to pick up some tips here but how are you guys specifically dealing with this so i think for me it's just kind of being able to look at the fact that i can still go outside to exercise i just need to be smart and use caution i.e. no big group runs that kind of thing um until i lock down golden gate bridge or something i can still drive across to the headlands and go for a run um i think that's the biggest thing race my my

race that was supposed to be this upcoming weekend was canceled um my race in june potentially will be canceled so trying to just keep the focus on doing what i can right now and getting as much sleep as possible as well and that's the nice thing about my teaching job going remotely is that i don't teach until 8 a.m and if i'm teaching from my living room i get to sleep a little bit longer and being sleep deprived can definitely take a hit at your immune system and so i think you have to focus on what you can focus on um you know not dwelling not like staying off facebook staying off twitter maybe consuming the news once a day um for your own sanity and then checking in with each other too um i joke my birthday is coming up april 2nd we're still going to be hopeful i mean possibly sheltering in place and i've been joking that we'll be doing a google hangout for my birthday so um i think it's important to do what you can to still move your body to do it safely and then to like stay in contact with the people that are close to you getting out for a run with one other person that kind of thing to check in um or just facetiming something of that nature i think is going to go a long way during this i think we can all rally and send corinne some cupcakes for her birthday once it kind of comes around and andy andy i'm going to want you to chime in here really quick since april fool's day is coming around and you have one of the most epic articles always come out every single april fool's day have you thought about are you gonna are you gonna touch it or this is this one of those like comedy it's too soon moments where you're afraid to where you're afraid to opine on something

regarded to covet 19 well i i think as most of you know that's april 1st is my favorite holiday of the year and uh usually right around the new year i start thinking of topics of uh what i could do you know um i was thinking there could be some right they've already they've already canceled barkley barkley is usually a good target i don't know i was i i always like targeting the good folks over at UTMB so i think i've probably got something in mind there that uh that i think katherine will get a kick out of but you know it's still a couple weeks away and the way this thing is going you never know so no definitely not too soon for a covet 19 april fools that's for sure i'm glad i'm glad all right let's get back to practical matters steph you're dealing with the lockdown as well which has a lot of uh it just has a lot of psychosocial elements to it what have you been handling it yeah i mean similar to karen it's like you do what you can you focus on the things you can control and i go back to the overall um idea behind this is to keep everyone safe and healthy and so instead of trying to work around it like okay how can i still do the things i normally do i'm more in the camp of i'm accepting this and it's temporary and it's for good reason so yeah maybe i'm not able to go move as much as i would like but you know i there's a reason for that and um i i guess i've been a little

more conservative and respectful um and partly it's because i'm you know i'm recovering from an injury myself so i'm not i'm not moving as much um but i think getting outside has been important get fresh air um i've been doing that solo um you know not in groups of people and it's it's just kind of refreshing to not just be cooped up in your house because that that can be a lot after a while you can go stir crazy but i do think it's important to follow the guidelines because they're there for a reason so i think the take-home message we can kind of send to people is exercise and be healthy be physically and emotionally healthy train but not too much don't get greedy with your training just like you should never kind of get greedy with your training don't get greedy and don't spoil it for everyone else i agree with that and i would say too if you need to take this time to i mean i think it's i think it's natural to be disappointed that your race got canceled i think that's it's like it's akin to an injury in a way it's like my inbox is flooded with 30 athletes who all got injured at the same time and but it was an emotional injury um i think it's fine to grieve not being able to race i mean we need to keep it in a bigger picture right like we're doing this for a reason but i do think that i've got a lot of athletes that i'm about that i'm implementing with this with who had a race in the very near term you know coming up in april and we're going to take them through that taper because it's not only physical it's emotional and so we're utilizing that time to let them step

back and exhale and not worry about you know training for x y or z that we're punting down the road and so i've got a lot of athletes who are going to go through taper for without a race at the end of it and i think you can use that as a mental a mental kind of reset as well because i think a lot of us just need to feel like it's okay to exhale so that's what i'll be implementing um with a number of people in the coming weeks let's kind of let's let's riff off of that a little bit corinne because that's another area that i want to get into we've got athletes that are both in this like short term and this long-term planning right the short-term people they've kind of had their they've had their races canceled and you know and that's everywhere from georgia death race to lake sonoma which is in the middle of april i know i saw some things at the beginning of may that were canceled uh we're canceling uh both the camps that i was running here in colorado springs old training magazine camp the dipsy's canceled right and a memorial day camp uh that announcement will go out uh later today uh uh so anyway all kind of all the way into may but corinne your point is well taken and i'm doing the exact same thing with my athletes that we're training for something like nine trails which is right around that which would have been right around uh the corner and uh lake sonoma where i'm kind of keeping their training as if the race would would happen or moving the taper up a little bit just to allow uh kind of allow a little bit of breathing room because you've trained hard anyway and you need to rest like irrespective of the virus going around that would be that would kind of be part

of the plan and it's a smart thing with the virus uh kind of going around but i want to hear from some other people like because i know we were going to have over 20 athletes at lake sonoma so maybe we can use that as as the prototype almost what are what are you guys doing with some of your athletes that had at that had races in the april and maybe early well we can go back to march now march april and early may type of time frame well i have i have one who had a more immediate one which was behind the roxin moab um that was supposed to happen this weekend um so for that particular athlete who's been training hard and is a new parent and was super excited about you know being able to test his mettle so to speak he is still going to do a little challenge but closer to home so he's going to you know do a use it as a as a longer day out because the time is already you know accounted for with family coverage and all of that stuff and using it as an extra long training run so he can still kind of like feel that he can sort of test himself out a little bit but also in in a safe way that he's not going to you know get hurt or be too overtaxed and we talked about you know not wanting to um overburden the immune system or not to fall and get hurt and have to go to the emergency room or

anything like that so for that one athlete who's got an immediate plan um that's what he's going to do because for some of these races they've offered people if you can submit your strava data um you can still get um you know like an honorary honorary medal and and t-shirt and things like that so for some they do want to still do that but you know we want to keep them safe while doing so yeah and i think a lot of that is an individual choice whether they still want to go through like putting themselves through that through that stress and strain of doing the kind of the makeup race or the makeup activity um but andy let's kind of let's let's hear from you because i know you've got another some athletes that are going through this as well yeah i i i went back in sort of my personal experience from from 12 years ago when when western states was canceled on the wednesday before the race and um you know obviously this is a much much greater magnitude than that but it was still a moment in time where you had you know 380 people figuring out what they were going to do instead of running this race and it was three days before the race and in reminding those athletes i think that that have been in that case and it not three days before but you know within the next month they had events that are now canceled uh i've asked them do you want to go ahead and do a do your own uh you know a do a do-it-yourself thing which could be a lot of fun with one or two other people do you want to just uh scrap it and you know start over with something later on down the calendar uh do you want to just

go with the flow i think their response has largely been they rather go ahead and do the do-it-yourself thing uh and do something to to use that pent-up i don't want to say pent-up energy but but use that training benefit to something that that is meaningful to them that that has a that of course coop as you wrote about in in the book the emotional connection to an event all of a sudden that emotional connection the floor falls out of it because of the cancellation if you can find something else for them to emotionally connect to you can perhaps maintain that momentum and that motivation i think the the the corollary to that of course is if they are going to sacrifice their immune system or they're an older athlete like some of steps or i have a 66 year old athlete who's kind of re-evaluating things i think that's a whole separate kettle of fish and one that you want to you want to address with them kind of on a almost day-by-day basis but i think looking back at past cancellations and what has worked for people is probably a good step to move forward from it yeah and the the caveat that i always add to that andy is that i agree that there's this like emotional finality to doing to doing a race or doing event but when i have athletes that are evaluating that i i always wholeheartedly remind them that their fitness does not go to waste and i think that that that's a negative psychology that we get too caught up in that somehow because the race didn't happen their

fitness is going to like evaporate into thin air thin air and that never happens right fitness is always a chronic thing it takes months to build and months to kind of deteriorate and and and and so that that needs to be i think that as coaches we need to be mindful of reminding our athletes of that when they go through these times that all the work that they've done just makes them stronger for the next time they get to toe the starting line or whatever it doesn't evaporate into into thin air uh john we'll uh we'll move over to you now uh do you have any athletes that are in this situation yeah definitely um i have a lot of athletes like i guess we all do that are having events canceled um of an athlete that was um getting ready for canyons and hoping to get a golden ticket there and so that's been tough uh he's got two kids so there's a lot of other stress as well with kids being at home now um you know work being um you know thrown off a little bit as well but just like what you guys were touching on it's still like you know what can we still do right now and you know talking about some some potential uh races or just targets for later in the season there's still still uh things that we can do and and weaknesses that we can kind of touch on as well so you know i think a lot of athletes we are kind of reeling or i am reeling back the intensity a little bit and just the overall workload just because there's other stressors in life and if we ignore that then you know that's uh not going to be beneficial to the athletes so definitely taking that into consideration the other thing that i've uh trying to work on with my athletes right now is

to do trying to put together like a some kind of a virtual race for athletes that live all over the world and so uh i'm going to try and uh pick a pick a time frame it doesn't have to be a particular day but just to rally all my athletes that live all around and get out and do a run together it doesn't have to be an ultra it can be a 10k but we're all going to share a photo of of the route where we ran and uh just kind of have a little bit of connectedness with that so i think that i'm definitely looking forward to that yeah that's a brilliant idea eric i think you're in a little bit great idea i think you're in a little bit of like one of like the trap races because correct me if i'm wrong you're signed up for san juan and high lonesome correct that is correct i was actually in boston as well so i just got that news like last week so it's been kind of a changeover from road running just to going back to trails all of a sudden okay so what are you how are you viewing this proposition of maybe or maybe not racing the san juan solstice 50 which that's one of the hardest if not the hardest 50 in the country that's at the end of june and then high lonesome which is another super hard 100 at the end of july uh yeah at the moment i'm really just kind of looking forward to the immediate future basically um so kind of as some other people alluded to with boston being canceled i'm a couple friends and i are planning on doing a kind of our own hard half marathon in town locally just to give our fitness a little test and kind of put those road legs to some good use but then kind of picturing like right now i'm just thinking of san juan and high lonesome more as you know big long kind of like kind of like kind of goals or kind of like unsupported runs i guess or or just kind of like

not necessarily thinking about as a race in the immediate future just going on training and you know being super fit and being ready but you know if it doesn't happen that's you know there's nothing you can do about it and i wonder if you can chime in on and corinne i want you to jump in second on this because you guys have a similar situation we're in so eric you run with the rocky mountain runners every so often correct and this is just to set the stage for everybody this is a huge running group in boulder colorado that is very well known kind of across the state and really across the country you can see their green shirts are quite prevalent at any ultra marathon that that you go to they have a very robust they have a very robust community and the runs that they hold are are very well attended and i i would i would be willing to gather although i haven't been on a lot of them i'd be willing to gather that that that in the past they have violated a lot of the social distancing that has now become quite commonplace uh amongst amongst communities how are you guys dealing with that in boulder right now with that robust group training uh activities that you guys have uh so yeah correct you have just the latest scene for everybody else so the rocky mountain runners group we have about 200 people on 200 people that are on the list um that are you know involved in some way or shape or form um it's pretty regular for us to get runs that are 15 to 30 people um so large definitely large groups more than is is kind of appropriate at this current time we actually just posted a public notice to our our pages that we are not going to be organizing large groups for the foreseeable future until we get better guidance from the state and also from national

officials um but mostly what's going on within the group though is that basically people are kind of self-isolating into smaller i guess if you want to call them semi-running family units and so everybody has their kind of like their regular training partners that they'll go out and train with um most seen groups of three to four people five people at most um so kind of self-isolating into those smaller groups understanding that of course there is some risk when you're out with anybody else to any degree but as i kind of mentioned earlier it's good for everybody's sanity to be out with other friends and other people around even if not necessarily directly interacting just you know having that social interaction may help us small groups maybe we should study like the snot rocket ratio before and after this whole outbreak amongst training groups because i i went out on a run with one of my regular training partners uh yesterday morning and i was definitely more conscious of that definitely um corinne you you know san francisco running company has a has a fantastic group run on saturdays and sundays that we regularly see all the instagram stories and pictures of 20 30 40 50 people up on mount tam what's happening with that group so right now they've been following kind of what's coming down from governor governor newsom um so last weekend we were still holding to that 250 person um ban which we're not at 250 people so it was not really a concern um i would say and we're gonna i think the plan is to continue to follow along

those lines so we went from 50 to 10 and i think with the shelter in place act essentially the i mean the store itself has gone to online and phone and phone order only so and that speaks volumes for what will happen with the group run as well over the next three weeks um eliminating it and the same thing that eric mentioned in boulder it seems like i mean on sunday that'll probably be the last um bigger group that i was with and i was with six other people um i think we're going to kind of pare down to family units um are kind of like typical maybe running partners where you go out with your one person and you're you're safe you know you kind of you keep it at that six foot distance i think we have to be conscious of that i think it's really easy as ultra runners and trail runners to be like oh we can social distance in a group of six to eight people or ten people um no you're way closer together than you than you think you are at that six foot um distance and so i think we have to be conscious of who we're interacting with on a regular basis and trying to keep probably the assemblance of a routine um i trained with that that one person or that two that other like the two other people consistently um as opposed to like mixing and matching a ton so kind of going down to your family your family units even if it's a non-traditional family but the the shop runs themselves will not be existing during the shelter in place just due to that limitation are people still touching the door or is there like a big jar of hand sanitizer at the door that people can like squirt on it and then touch it or last friday we definitely all touched the door

um and i'm part of our kind of our tam morning runs here as well and they there's been a lot of discussion um not so much in the wednesday tam morning group but the friday tam morning group like is it safe how many people are going to go do we think we can do it and so it's been good to have those conversations and not it being this like blatant disregard for the rules it's been it's been a conversation and i think that speaks volumes for um our running community and the people who are who are going to listen and be you know kind of take conservative measures for this being a humanitarian like a humanitarian kind of global issue not just you know affecting our little community it's such a iconic thing to like touch the door or either eric or adam where you guys are located the plaque at the top of green mountain like those types of like rituals it's almost like an in run reminder of what's actually going on outside of the run right contact right i mean it's it's it's i don't i don't know i know i hadn't even thought about that until now well the other day we all like like elbow bumped or like foot tapped after the run and then we all went and pet the same dog so i was like okay we need to like reevaluate maybe what we're touching but yeah we're gonna see a bit of that change go ahead john oh i didn't uh yeah i don't have anything sorry oh sorry i thought you were gonna chime in there that was my bad okay let's move to uh let's kind of keep on this on this uh

theme of like more long-term planning and go even i hate to do this because the news and everything just changes so quickly but i do think that there's a good contingency of athletes out there we just talked about the ones that have the lake sonomas the san juan solstice the high lonesome like eric had but then there are other athletes where their future is even more opaque they're doing UTMB they're doing the bear they're doing things in september october javelina right september october november i just had somebody uh sign up for something in february of 2021 like way down the road and i'm still i still my my counsel is like sign up for it but i you know who knows i mean we still might be dealing with this if we screw it up uh that long down the line but let's let's kind of keep with like the september october november type of time frame there's a lot of like really good really classic ultras that i know our athletes are signed up for and we know other athletes are signed up for what are the practical guidelines that you guys are listening or that you guys are giving those athletes right now you know i've i we've talked about it in continuing eds before i i people have qualifier itis you know and they they they're worried about they're going to lose their western states qualifier and their hard rock qualifier never mind the fact that the race those races themselves might not happen this year but you know and a lot of people plan their whole years these days around their qualifiers or their UTMB points or things like this and uh and and of

course a lot of people try and check those boxes in the september october november uh race window so i'm you know i'm telling them you know yeah it's you know our your long range plan is geared towards that grindstone finish or the bear finish or the uh one of the other interesting things that's happening is some of these races that are postponing instead of canceling are postponing and then they're putting the postponement date right on top of something that maybe an athlete was also doing for example i had an athlete i have an athlete who's was in the world's end 100k and the bear 100 miler the world's end 100k postponed and announced their new date to be the exact date of the bear so i mean there are things like that that it means i have you how can you even control that but i think from a from a micro standpoint you got to try and keep that hat on that yeah we're going to continue training for these fall races when we don't know what's going to happen but i mean we might as well you know stay the course and and hope for the best provided they they're able to maintain their motivation that's what i'm doing at least yeah that's solid steph you want to chime in real quick yeah i kind of have a same thought moving forward with with um race planning and it's just there's so much unknown right now that i think you just have to stay the course because if you try to think like well if this happens or this happens it's just too much and you can't really bank on anything right now so i think in my mind it's just a way to like you continue to train for those big goal races but ease

off the gas a bit there's just not that pressure and that's really good and comforting right now because it maybe it means you don't need to go out for your four-hour run you just need to go out for an hour or two on the weekend and just you know maintain some consistency because we just can't say like this race is going to happen yes or no or it's going to be moved um and i know some races have been postponed like for example nine trails i think was postponed and already set for a date in june and that's that to me seems too soon so it's you know like um yeah that might happen but it actually might not happen we just don't know the full you know the impact of this what it's going to have on our i guess even this entire year yeah for sure stop prognosticating right i think is a good one eric you want to chime in here yeah just something quickly before i head out though um just something more i guess the coach to think about is that as if this does keep spreading around is that people are going to be putting put on like quarantines and actually being asked to stay home and not go out and exercise even too even if they're not sick um i know stephanie has one athlete that's supposed to be doing this right now and i've told her she shouldn't be training um but just something to think about and like be kind of aware of and discuss with your athletes kind of what to do and how to deal with that and that you know taking a week or two off or very low isn't going to be the worst thing for your you know your health overall and for everybody else's health too yeah it kind of relates to the point that i made earlier that your fitness doesn't evaporate and i athletes that have that i've worked with that have been injured or gotten sick have kind of heard this same spiel that all you're doing when

you miss training is you're just first and foremost you're just moving the stress around to other areas training and stress doesn't like evaporate into thin air you're allowed you your body can replace it and shift things around to a certain extent but it's certainly not a one-for-one loss if you lose two weeks eric in your example right of training due to a quarantine that doesn't mean that those two weeks evaporate into thin air it just means when you come out of those two weeks you have a little bit more freshness underneath your legs to kind of train with it's it's certainly not a one-for-one loss and i use that dialogue as um a little bit of a like a comfort like a like a comfort to athletes because they feel that they're gonna just like lose everything that you know that they've been striving for for the past several months because of whatever piece of mistraining whether it's injury illness or in this case a a government mandated quarantine which i've never i've been coaching for almost 20 years now i've never thought i've had to deal with this government mandated quarantines never thought about it all right eric i know i know you gotta go man let you go thanks for your time uh chantelle can i chime in yeah yeah chantelle go ahead just thinking along those lines you know if you're if you're at home for two weeks and as you you make a great point that fitness doesn't evaporate so you know if there are things you can do from within your home whether it's you know uh you know some video you can follow online for some yoga or um you know an at home no equipment

required strength training routine just to feel like you're still getting some movement because that's so important and the things you can control while you are at home are making sure you're getting good sleep making sure you're eating properly and all those things that you know are within our control that we can do to make sure that when we are released back into the wild so to speak that we're in a good that we're in a good condition yeah i'm totally i'm totally with that darcy you want to chime in with any of this yeah i think just backing that up and like keeping it in perspective as we keep saying you know like two weeks indoors is not the end of the world you it's an opportunity to get creative honestly um and maybe work on some uh weaknesses you know if you're one that tends to skip over the strength training that your coach gives you uh this is an opportunity to to really dial that into part of your routine your daily routine so i think in any challenge there's always that hidden opportunity um so it's a good good chance to jump on that honestly darcy are you saying that some you have some athletes that skimp out on your strength training routines come on i would be the first to raise my hand personally but yeah i mean we love running we love those like endurance exercise endorphins and you know it's usually or often unfortunately not until injury starts to creep in that we start to pay attention to the glute medius exercises that we should be doing two or three times a week for

five minutes so you know i think good no i was just gonna say i think that it's it's all about habit and routine and this really might be a good opportunity to lock in some new habits that we can roll with once we are back out in the wild yeah i pulled my uh trx and all my exercise bands out of the van and they're sitting in my basement ready for use they've got a lot of dust on them right now all right correct there's also a lot of um organizations putting out free kind of home exercise content be it pt strength be it more substantial strength be it um yoga streaming there's a lot of people that are coming out with kind of um either it's being streamed via zoom or google through your local like your local gym um my local yoga studio is doing that for the next three weeks where they're going to do streamed classes that we can sign up for and get a zoom invite to um so i think that's something that we can do during this time is you know i joked with some friends about it being my like oh okay i'm going to come out of this like stronger and more flexible you know over the next three weeks because i don't have an excuse to not do it because i am at home so i think that you know there are like there can be very positive takeaways from this as well i also joked yesterday we were out on a trail run um and we had great interactions with people in passing and passing safely um and i was like maybe we won't go to the trails to escape humans anymore we'll go to the trails to have minor

human interactions and we'll be a lot nicer and more compassionate to other trail users on the like on the outside of this um because i did i had like amazing i complain in montana everyone says hi on the trail in california it's a lot more rare i feel like and so to have those interactions yesterday um felt really meaningful and so i think that that's something that could positively come out of this as well the reports out of some of the bigger cities like boston and chicago are their parks are inundated with people which kind of presents another problem right because you've got too many people and a bit in a bigger area but it's still too many people too close together but to your point corinne just the fact that people are getting outside and maybe being a little nicer to each other you know it's not the worst thing in the world okay let's uh let's let's kind of put a pin in it there you guys but i want everybody to start thinking about like we've done this exercise before and i'm going to spring it on you guys now because it's always better when it's spontaneous and this is the one piece of advice that you have to boil down into 60 seconds that can apply for any athlete that is training for an ultra marathon for 2019 john i'm going to put you on the spot you're the first one what's your one piece of advice that you're going to give everybody 2019 coop 2020 i'm living in the past 2020 i'm i'm stuck in covid 19 that's why that's why it's like so prevalent in my mind so 2020 yeah you know like i think i already mentioned this earlier but um you

know this is this is the time to to reflect you know and it takes some time to think about what these events really mean to us you know for the athletes that were signed up for a race that got canceled what the actual act of moving moving the body what that means to to the athlete um and to uh yeah to really have that time to think about what they what the athlete really values in all this it can be a very powerful exercise and one that i think could be often overlooked in this moment but um you know i've had a lot of athletes that you know have taken it different ways and and that self-reflection has been very powerful for them and i think when they when we get through this they're going to be able to take that that reflection and take it into their training and i think that's going to be be very powerful for you yeah so i would say definitely the self-reflection piece and you know you know really what what does that individual really value and and and all this so i think that's that's what i recommend that's awesome john steph you're up next yeah i kind of uh will follow that same theme and say this is a time to think about you know the bigger picture um how does this setback or opportunity rather fit into the bigger picture of your what running means to you both racing training just getting out in the trails and it is a great time for really thinking about that and thinking about the little things that we ignore and not just from a selfish training standpoint but like connecting

with your family um or you know doing things that maybe get pushed to the side i think it it's just a really good opportunity to bring that back to the center um because running tends to take over everything at times because it it you know it can be something we think about every single day um and so this is just an opportunity to let it push it back a little bit um and focus on other things that fulfill us and i know that's not really you know for training for racing per se but i think it's important for being a human well i mean we're humans i say this all the time we're humans before we're athletes so that is very well taken all right andy all right so cue the there goes ajw again trope um but i'm gonna say this is time for mental training you guys can do your yoga and your strength and all that but i know i beat this drum all the time but whether it's the mental training and trying to compartmentalize all this crazy news we're hearing all day or the mental training that requires us to pivot and adapt as our events are canceled or the mental training that just is required to have to face another day of this craziness of sitting at home for three weeks straight like corinne and steph and i'm pretty sure the rest of us are going to have to do pretty soon a good time to think about what am i doing today to train my mind for that ultra finish that i'm going to have in the fall or in 2021

or wherever uh it's there are never there is never a quarantine on mental training oh my god i love that that's let did you plan that last line there's never a quarantine on mental training did you like write that down and know that you were going to end with that like punctuative statement not not not really it was it was inspired by corinne's article the other day i was thinking that you know there was there was actually so much in that that that made me think about this that i not the line itself but just that the idea of uh of being able to use this time for that so yes no corn no quarantine for mental training i love it all right darcy you're up next can i cheat can i give two pieces of advice sure yeah there are no there are no rules anymore by the way so there's so many rules number one get excited get out the map start planning um this isn't going to last forever um so even if it's not a sanctioned organized event um figure out what excites you um the second one is keep keep a sense of humor securely in place it's so easy to read the news and get overwhelmed um with all the negativity so take time to laugh like every hour if you need to schedule it in and watch some silly youtube blooper like do that like keep laughing keep smiling surround yourself with people if it's just facetime that you know will laugh and giggle easily

i think that that's really important awesome darcy corinne you're up next so i think for this my biggest piece of advice is just to be be pliable and i'm trying to focus on that too to be to be flexible to know that this is not a permanent state of being that we will come out of this that there will be races down the road um and so i think we're gonna you know we're all gonna mentally taper and we're gonna get back to training um following whatever rules are in front of us and we're gonna have to adapt on the fly because um as a person who's trying to currently keep an article up to date things are changing quickly and so i think it's really important to continue to be pliable during this time and to know that things are going to change the unknown is scary but you know we're all in this together we're going to continue adapting yep and i'm going to riff off of that for my one and you guys have heard this at camp and that's adapt and i originally came up with that for in an ultra running specific situation because shit hits the fan a lot in ultra running and if we have learned anything over the last few weeks shit is going to kind of keep hitting the fan day after day after day and runners and people are going to have to adapt you know one day we can fly back from europe i've barely made it back under the travel restrictions next day we can't fly back from europe next day we are under quarantine next day you know who knows what's going to happen tomorrow the next day and the next but you can always control how you adapt to all of those situations and so

if anything i just want i just want runners and and people as a whole just to adapt to the situation uh the situation that's that that's in front of us we'll get over it this is going to be a long-term deal but uh as i mentioned on on billy yang's podcast as humans we always do a pretty darn good job when we're united against one single cause we tend to come together against the one single bad thing that we can all focus on and say yeah you know what we're gonna you know we're gonna make this thing right and so that gives me a whole lot of hope that we have one singular thing that we can all agree is not going to be good for our society if it gets out of control and i've got i've got a lot of hope in that so adapt to the situation it's going to change every single day every single week good luck keeping up with your article corinne i don't want that job all right guys we're going to sign off on that appreciate all you guys hopping on the phone again i know this is a special one i think it turned out really well uh we're going to sign off now and for those of you listening to the podcast i'll listen to the post script on this one i'll have a few uh summary points and maybe wax poetic if i'm so inclined all right guys see you later all right to our runners what'd you think hope you got a lot of good information out of that hope that you can really look at the rest of your season and what you're trying to plan and really

all this ambiguity that's out there i hope you are looking at that through a little bit more of a rose-colored lens remember all this stuff is just temporary we're going to get through this you're going to still be able to train to a certain level and we're going to come out the other side we might not know where that other side is but we are certainly as a society going to come out of the other side uh i'd be remiss to mention that once we signed off on the podcast one of our coaches actually mentioned to me that uh we feel that we felt that we struck a really good balance between athletes desire to train and them playing a role in society as a whole and if anything like if anything times like this need to remind us that we're not only members of the trail running community but we're also members of this community that we just happen to call planet earth and this virus this outbreak this pandemic if anything should provide us all a little bit of pause and a little bit of thought behind the fact that we all have an impact that we can play on this society thanks to all the coaches for getting on the phone not at the last minute because we have these uh calls scheduled every week but really for adjusting their schedules at the last minute to discuss this uh special thanks out to eric for joining us from his lab out in boulder colorado quite literally while he was working to provide some expertise on his neck of the woods we're very appreciative of that thank you guys for listening if you have not had the chance to do so go ahead and

give this podcast a rating or a like on itunes that that helps the podcast out a lot i have a couple of programming notes for you uh covid19 virus actually affected this podcast i had two podcasts scheduled to record uh earlier in the week both of which got canceled and both of them i was really psyched about so i'm just gonna have to tease you all with them right now and hopefully kind of wet your appetites for what might come down the pipeline in the next few weeks uh the first one was with lindsey golich over at the olympic training center she manages their high altitude and environmental physiology lab there and we're going to talk about heat and altitude acclimation so poignant for uh for runners even if your your events this summer might be hanging in the balance it's still all really good information and she really is uh quite an expert uh in that field and someone that i've known for a very long time uh having managed her and uh i actually put her in a supervisory role uh here at cts before she moved on to the training center where she was responsible for managing and mentoring a lot of coaches so i have a lot of respect for her uh we will reschedule that at a future point in time uh to be determined but hope to get that out to you guys soon and the second one that i had canceled which i was just i was so psyched about because i've been working on this since like november of last year and it finally materialized on monday of this week yesterday on the 16th we were going to get i was going to get together with uh the u.s anti-doping agency usada

here in colorado springs and talk with their former cfo or their former sorry the former coo john frothingham and tammy hansen who's responsible for their athlete uh education program and we were going to discuss doping and ultra running what and what some potential solutions might be since we really don't have one right now but we have to cancel that one as well or postpone it we're going to reschedule it sometime in the next few weeks and i promise i'll get that podcast out to there to you guys so i'm going to do my best to keep this thing on a regular schedule i usually drop these on wednesday or thursday i'm going to drop this one a little bit early because of the news cycle but i'm going to do my best to keep things going each and every week um despite all the programming hiccups and it's just because i love doing it for you guys so once again thanks for listening you guys i normally sign off with i'll see you out on the trails but i'm not gonna i'm not gonna be able to see a whole heck of a lot of people with all the races being canceled but once we do make our once we do get ourselves through this i guarantee you i'll see you on the trails then and until then stay healthy stay happy go do some training keep your heads up people we'll get through this peace out so