The Neuroscience of Ultrarunning Part 2-A Coach Roundtable | KoopCast Episode #183

trail and ultra runners what is going on what's happening welcome to another episode of the KoopCast as always i'm your humble host coach Jason Koop and as promised coming off the heels of last week's podcast with dr scott fry i have two of our coaches on the podcast today to discuss what they learned and what we are applying with our athletes immediately so on the podcast today you're going to hear from ajw and jones wilkins as well as neil palace and we discuss what we learned from the podcast as well as how we're going to take that into our day-to-day practice with our athletes i mentioned this during the podcast last week but i'm going to take the time to re-emphasize it again last week's conversation with dr fry was one of my favorite conversations of all time this is something that i am continually becoming more and more fascinated with as my coaching career develops and so because of that point of fascination you guys get to be the recipients of not only hearing from the experts but also hearing from the practitioners in terms of how we're going to take it into the field with our athletes all right folks with that as a backdrop i'm getting right out of the way here's my conversation all about what we learned from last week's podcast with coaches andy jones wilkins and neil palace

before we start out yeah i think it goes without saying we should uh we should bring up some caveats none of us none of us are neuroscientists that's correct is that correct neil's nodding and he's laughing none of us are neuroscientists i'm not but i'm a performance coach and i've had new applied sports psychology training so gone to graduate school and that and i'm clinical social worker so i've kind of got that edge and kind of i knew where he was coming from and i thought it really i was just you know really interested i was really hoping he would get into more nitty-gritty stuff you know the nerd in me was coming out and i was like okay dig into this well dr fry told me he's going to come back on the podcast uh like i said he his new venture will be a winner um i i i would bet every nickel that i currently have in my bank account on that um but um that's neither here nor there so neil like you yeah i'm sure we're geeking out on all this what's the what's the thing that you took away from from uh the previous podcast so i i think one of the things that just you know there were a number of things that jumped out at me but one of the main things that jumped out at me was his discussion around cognitive load and how that impacts pain and this is something that you know that i've you know been aware of and i know i've even heard

even heard dr uh justin ross talk about it a little bit and you know and something i brought up in my ultra running you know metal skills for ultra runners training is that when you are under that kind of load load you know your stress your stress is high you're not getting enough sleep you got all this stuff on your plate all that stuff going on you are going to be be pain is going to be more recognizable to you you're going to be more influenced by those factors if you're exhausted you're not getting fueled right if you've got stress at home you know you know life stress that stuff is going to knock you out and you know to me that's something i work with you know with my athletes looking at that we can look at all our athletes is like what is that load like for you how are you sleeping you know and i've got i've got a couple athletes that you know that i work and look at wow you're under a lot of stress let's cut this let's cut the load down here but you also need to be cognizant of it when you're going to the race you know you know what is going on how much sleep you had the last month your pain and this is the pain part jumps out at me is that you're going to be more susceptible i should say to you know hey you know you're going to feel that a little bit more so how do you deal with it how are you going to deal with that when it comes time to to push i have this a lot

with the athletes that i that i work with that start to have all of those other life influencers come into the mix which that happens right we work with real people in the real world that have a lot of different uh they play a lot of different roles in life and it's really interesting because they'll go out and they'll go do a workout and a lot of times the data which you guys know i look at a lot the data will say the exact same thing that it always says right no better no worse kind of like right down the middle but in the post activity comments you'll just see something that's like that was hard very like very simple and very discreet and i think it just goes to i think it just goes to say like you can always kind of like muscle through things right or just effort through things i guess is a better way to put it right you could just put forth more effort to achieve a similar or the same result but it's just like harder from everything they and they describe this like pain part of it that you were mentioning neil right that they're they're you know they the pain the workout pain that they're experiencing is greater but i i've just found that the way they express that is really simple and they just say that was hard that workout was hard like the result was the same but it was harder right exactly you know i mean i think of you know someone you know in particular who's just under a lot of personal stress a lot of work stress and lifting things and you and you could tell by those comments

what's that pain threshold is a lot lower you know whereas you know this person has a very high pain threshold to begin with and now because of all that other stress all that stuff added on there that pain threshold's going down so that workout's going to be a lot harder so that's that's the stuff that stood out to me and it was really it's really cool to see that and hear that from a neuroscientist i want to like take that and take this concept into a race perspective in a second but what's the course correction right because you can apply a lot of different ones you can either reduce the workout load by work reducing the intensity and or reducing the volume of the intensity that you're doing you can give more space between that workout and the next workout you can reduce the total amount of load or is there just no course correction at all and you just let it be hard and tell them to kind of muscle through it like i think that the like the people listening are going to be like okay well i'm going to have these hard days like how should i like course correct yeah i think there's definitely all those options i think one of the things that he got at a little different angle and i may have mentioned this in the past is this idea of acceptance right of like if you have knowledge self-awareness is key if you have knowledge you're under all that you you're going to know that you're going to be influenced by those factors you know that that threshold's going to be lower if you know that

threshold's going to be lower because of all this stuff going on that's going to give you power there that okay maybe okay yeah if i feel snap you know i should probably stop you know but you know i'm going to push it or i'm going to go by that perceived exertion right now and do the best i can and i'll tell athletes that you know hey go by that perceived exertion let go of that pace i don't want you looking at that anymore go by that perceived exertion but that self-awareness is key if you could tap into that know that i mean i've been aware of things that happened before racism you know that i'm like okay yeah oh yeah i remember this i'm under you know this all the stress and yeah i'm gonna feel all this stuff on my body and how do i manage it at that point now i have this understanding of that and he talks also about doing things experiential right you know he was very key on you know this isn't about a handout right you know that you know we're not giving people right hands we are doing things experientially if you get them into practice on your um you know on the long runs you're climbing it you know going up and down hope pass you know you've had a week you know it's a tough week and this is it yeah you're going to experience that pain and how do you adjust to that and adjust that threshold know that threshold's there it's like okay i'm gonna feel this i'm gonna explore this this is i love feeling that stuff out it's cool to be aware of one of the one of the things that occurred to me uh

coop in in kind of in the course to answer the course correction question is if that cognitive load is so high and so extreme in the stress is apply some of the same principles that we apply uh to a training plan when we're setting someone up to taper and we actually have them taper their cognitive load it may they're they're not it may not necessarily be that their big event is in three weeks but the things we do in a taper right that are that are somewhat specific and formulaic reducing volume by a certain percentage reducing intensity but not all intensity you know reducing frequency but not going down to nothing i think if you apply those same principles to the to the brain you can potentially lighten that load a little bit it won't necessarily it won't necessarily solve all the problems but you could lighten the load a little bit yeah 100 100 and here's where i think it comes into conflict right it's if you're trying to maximize the workout load at the same time that that cognitive load is is higher than your normal baseline and i asked the course correction piece because i was trying to internalize this uh on on my drive up here before the before the podcast uh recording that there's only very few times within an entire training cycle where i'm asking an athlete to truly maximize the amount of

physical output that they can do for one particular workout or for like a little cluster of workouts or something like that and think about it right it's like a training camp right we talk about this a lot on a podcast where they like 3x their volume they're truly trying to maximize their like kind of like physical output right there or maybe it's one like one not that one hard workout is super key but maybe it's one hard workout during a four or six week period where that record that one workout represents the true kind of physical maximum that the athlete can kind of tolerate i kind of view the course correction it has to be it has to be kind of in line with and taken into in conjunction with whatever physical load that they're underneath at the time because for the rest of the time if you're shooting let's just say it's 75 percent at their maximum there's a little bit of bandwidth right you can just kind of say you know what you got it like kind of deal with it a little bit like not to be you know too terse or anything but deal with it a little bit and then just recognize like how close they are getting to that like ultimate like they're that ultimate maximum load right there's because there's a risk point you know where you don't you don't want them to get injured and you know helping them to facilitate you know once they have that awareness okay this all this stuff is going on okay how do we facilitate it so you know that they are taking care of their bodies and de-stressing and taking care of their minds you know we can do that as coaches how are you offloading

this stuff you know go talk to a therapist you know talk to you know do stuff to de-stress make sure you're getting that sleep and eating the nutrition and you know and and doing all that other stuff because that's what people kind of get lost in but at the same time you know i mean i know early in january i had a good a couple athletes who were just had so much going on and we were just building up for marathons and building up for other big races and it was like you know what i'm i'm not going to go crazy with this right now we're just going to you know you know keep it keep it lower and they and they and they did great you know it was just a matter of being cogn for me to be cognizant on this they can communicate that as well here's the i'm going to take a little bit of a right-hand turn on this because here's the other thing i started to think about with this cognitive load i have given constant amount of grief to the people who set uh nutrition timers on their watch and this started out in triathlon and he knows where i'm going with this this started out like the triathlon world right where every 30 minutes if you guys have ever been around an iron man there's these constant beeps from people's going back to going back to the timex days before like gps watches every 30 minutes to remind you to eat a gel and that would annoy the crap out of me just because i can't stand the beeping but now i'm kind of thinking about it from the standpoint of you know what if that's like one less brain cycle that you have to put in to the whole race day yes that

you can those things become additive right i mean it's a it's it's just like a physical load can be additive day after day the cognitive brain cycles are additive as well and not that the not that the nutrition timer is the thing that's gonna like make or break it but it's one more thing and then if you can decrease the cognitive load by another thing something else that's like that you can you know that you were thinking about that you can then make automatic and then you can add a third thing and then you can add a fourth thing and then you can kind of add a fifth thing that's when the cumulative effect of reducing the cognitive load starts to really make an impact once you can start to figure out like three or four or five six six different things to where you can just take off the table and automate versus having to think through i think that makes a huge performance impact huge huge huge you know and if you can pair one thing with another gel water the more you pair things the less you have to think about right you know you you know you brush your teeth you go meditate or whatever you know whatever it is you're doing you know during the races gel water anything you can do like that is going to help significantly i love that i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna regret giving this advice but now i can now i can envision different like pitched audible alarms for different things like one for nutrition and then one for some sort of psychology thing and then it's just oh my god it's gonna get so

somebody's gonna do that out there and then i'm gonna bear the brunt of everybody having to listen to it it's time to say my mantra okay exactly exactly exactly yeah exactly i'll be going up hope past this summer and uh and hear all the beeps yeah but but i think the the the like the point once again is well taken that either in a training situation or a race situation first off to your point neil recognizing that there is going to be a cognitive load and that can impact our kind of relationship and our perception of the effort-based pain that we're going through and the second thing from a ergogenic point of view specifically during or specifically during a race but not limited to but more specifically during a race trying to figure out different things to reduce that cognitive load and to just automate whatever processes that you would normally have to think through is i think a really can be a really big impact love that yeah definitely i'm reminded of i forget which film it was but it's actually interesting in this era of films about ultra races ultra runs we see a lot of footage of runners with their crews right elite runners interfacing with their crews and this cognitive load piece i'm reminded of one of the one of the years rob crarr won western states there was a film made and there was a lot of interaction between he and his his main crew christina in the race and you could tell they had prepared

in such a way to keep rob's cognitive load completely low because they weren't even they weren't even asking one another questions right you didn't even want to ask because because asking a question of a runner makes them they have to use energy thinking about that answer um coop coop i saw it with on the live stream of UTMB with you and katie in cormier this past year you and katie shied one of your athletes uh there was there was some give and take but a lot of it was just you know without the spoken word eat this change this sock do this and i think in the race environment that can be really really helpful now i know i know later in the race you had to go out to stores and buy food and change the whole nutrition plan and and do the ultimate like audible on that one but at least halfway through the race you really had it was that i mean was was i know she was having nutrition stuff but there had to be some sort of cognitive thing going on also but here's the thing even with the audible though like i watched everything unfold on the live stream i'm like okay this is a reasonable solution i'm going to go out to the store and i'm going to get this stuff and here's a reasonable solution based on what i'm seeing kind of on the feed and you know just my own experience when i would see her at the next at the next aid station it was not how you doing what can i do to fix this like is just is it great did you throw up like like 100 different questions it's like here this is how we're gonna

i remember this very distinctly i said here's how we're gonna fix this like not asking the question i already have the solution and yeah sure it's a little bit of a dart at a dartboard right this is how we're solving it and once again a little bit of it is just deliberate that i just wanted to present the simplest solution possible but now looking back on it like retrospectively yeah i mean it's one of those things that you can absolutely like absolutely take off the table you also see the opposite go awry where you see the frantic a thousand questions i'm jumping up on the up and down in the air like i'm on a freaking pogo stick like just so much excitement and so much you know verbalization and things like that at aid stations and you can almost see like the energy getting drained from the runner right in those situations like because they've run 100 kilometers right and their crew has driven for two hours like those are two very different physical loads that they're coming into the exact same point in time with and i think a lot of times we need to like recognize that when we're helping out athletes that yeah there's a time to like lift them up but there's also a time to meet them where they're at and i think more often it's the latter than the former especially when things are going well like when things are going well get out of the freaking way yeah and just meet them meet them meet them where they're at but to this cognitive load like to this cognitive load piece i mean we're kind of extending this into how

crews and pacers and things like that can like help their runners that that is a big part of it as well like you just to just to ping off of the rob cryer example make everything as automated as possible it's like a pit crew like i have i have athletes that work in motor sports they're the best they're the best in these stations because it's this is easy you know when you've got a freaking formula one car coming into a pit into a pit like that's a really hard thing to orchestrate and when they're a part of that they realize how complicated that is so they go into an aid station at you know on 100 mile race they're like this is freaking easy like there's like this is it i just got to take gels and go okay easy so so there's absolutely a part of this like cognitive load reduction that i think people can people who are helping runners out crew pacers etc can kind of like realize if you can automate things for the runner and then not ask so many freaking questions it actually ends up going a long way i mean that's why you know you see when you get more experienced crews like the crew that comes out there for the first time it's just like okay chaos you know when you get more experienced crews there's less talking they know you know but i could talk to i can speak to my wife and you know it's just a nod you know look and and that's it you know and that and that's that if you can get your the newer ultra runners on board with that and how what does that look like how do you practice that that you know that could be the tough part but i think you can communicate that well to your

athletes beforehand you know hey months beforehand let's figure out a way to dial this in ajw is really good at this because i've seen them work this at western states specifically where you have the meeting with the crews and it ends up being extremely effective in in one way one way that it is extremely effective is because you're taking the pressure away from the runner to explain that to all of these people that have all of this energy and they want to help out as much as possible and the tendency in that situation is to just do more right ask more questions be kind of completely prepared and at the end of the day you're driving to an aid station you're handing somebody gels like we have to remember that when the crews start to line up you're like just don't get lost remember all your stuff and yeah there's going to be a critical moment here there where you can really kind of like shine through and we can all you know go over those like like glory stories or whatever but at the end of the day you're driving somewhere and you're handing something off like don't like don't go like don't over complicate it and and on the on the on the meeting thing that's i i i find it really important and it's really as much more for the crews than actual the runner when you take western states for example so you're right you're just driving somewhere to hand someone gels but you're gonna have to park somewhere far away and it's gonna be hot you're you're gonna you're gonna have to get on some rickety old school bus with you know 40 other people and scream and go down this dirt road and

then you're gonna be dropped off in the middle of this hot you know in bug infested place and wait for your runner for four hours you want to prepare them for that yeah it's taking or they're prepared for it it's like hey remember ajw said we got to take this shuttle and it's gonna suck yeah exactly well that mental proper that preparation is that that's taken off some of that cognitive load that's one less thing you're worried about not one less thing you're thinking about and so it's like okay this is what i'm gonna expect all right i'm gonna go next can i go next coop you go next okay so my critical takeaway was your relationship with workout related pain is malleable and i love that for a couple of reasons and it's everybody's gonna initially thinks like oh man i can just get tougher by doing hard workouts that's not why i really love it what i what i really love about it is it explains a lot of what i personally as a coach can explain and let me give you a great example for forever we have wondered why athletes get better particularly from high intensity workouts so rapidly because it doesn't make sense on a physiological level

they do one workout on tuesday and then they come back on saturday and they're better that should not be the case they should be worse right because there's some cumulative fatigue that's happening there's nothing from a physiological phenomenon that is improving the athlete from tuesday to saturday they're not building more mitochondria they're not developing more red blood cells there's nothing going on at the muscular level or at the cardiopulmonary level that would be an improvement right it's a typical classic physiological improvement yet they're better from one day to the next and a lot of a lot of that can be explained by this by this malleability that we have with our relationship with pain we used to just say we we would like colloquialize uh this we would colloquialize it and say oh the athletes just figured the workout out and i said i i probably said that a hundred times when i was you know they're just figuring the workout out well now i have i actually have a neuroscience principle to apply to this colloquialization okay they're figuring the workout out but really what's happening is they have changed their relate part of what's happening is they've changed their relationship with pain and they just know better what they can tolerate they can accept what they can tolerate to a greater extent and they're in therefore perform better that's why i love that malleability aspect because it explains to me as a coach something that i could not put my finger on because i was looking at it

through a physiological lens and i couldn't tease apart what was going on physiologically to explain the short-term improvement that we see all of the time it even happens in back-to-back workouts and we've blinded athletes i've told you guys this in our coaching group we've even blinded athletes to some of these back-to-back workouts where we'll have them do a really hard workout and we won't tell them what the workout is the next day and then we come back the very next day and do the exact same workout and they do better on the second one there's no there's no there's no it's no sense at all but now like once again now i've got a little bit i'm i don't think that this explains all of it but i've got a little bit of a lens to kind of like look through that and explain what's going on yeah i just saw that uh with an athlete who is doing vo2 max intervals and we're at the end of the block and she does you know five by three minutes and she's like this was great this felt so much better than you know two weeks ago you know and she should have it should have been harder and and you know we'll see we'll see i think it is going she's going to go ahead and actually do a 5k in about four days and i think it's going to play out in this 5k too because now she's adapted not to just well there wasn't these physiological adaptations but there's this mental adaptation of like this pain tolerance oh yeah and when you when you see an athlete have that sort of experience you know that that workout on tuesday and all of a sudden they're better on saturday it's it's hard to

not only explain it to them um but it's hard to explain it to yourself uh uh and so uh and and i also think i also think it does vary a little bit like everything we do from athlete to athlete based on how you know how how much how long they've been at it but we definitely see it with a younger athletes and be less experienced athletes where that just happens and next thing you know they're like well if i go at this rate i'll be able to you know make the olympic trials so i still i still have with even with really experienced athletes that know better i still have to constantly remind them most of the time you should get worse before you get better and the getting worse piece happens over two to three weeks and the getting better piece almost happens over two to three days right i mean that's the prototypical kind of setup where work work work you get a little bit worse and then you get better and i think that when once again i like this malleability piece because it gives me a communication tool to say hey listen if you are getting better particularly with high intensity work where the pain is where the workout related pain is extremely high if you are getting better here's specifically why that might be why that might be happening right here here is a plausible reason that is one thing that might be going on of what can explain this aq performance improvement

when you really are supposed to be more tired so that that that's why i just really like that piece right there because like i said it just gave me a tool that i didn't have before that i've always been searching for i've got i've got to tell this athlete story i've got it because it's just it's just i i i i i i've been i've been getting in trouble with some of my athletes for telling athlete stories on on your podcast but this this just coop this just happened today so i've got an athlete uh who's in the vermont vermont 100 so says seven weeks from now and is doing a hundred k in nebraska this weekend so seven weeks out 100k he he came over uh to the trails and ultra running from a triathlon background so he is freaking out because right now appropriately so he's in the getting worse stage he's definitely getting work right and and there's he should have no expectation of this 100k by the way vermont 100 will be his first 100 miler so no no expectation of a time goal or anything his goal for 100k of course is his gear his nutrition uh you know being able to finish strong uh you know maybe it'll be there'll be a little bit of heat and so forth but truthfully you know the last three weeks as we've gone into this 100k he has by any objective measure quote unquote gotten worse but it's really not worse you know and and yet for the self-doubt that comes in as that's going on

is is real and so you know the conversation today was look go out to nebraska enjoy this 100k it's all going to be fine and we'll talk on tuesday exactly exactly once again i mean it get like knowing that this is going on back to neil's original point at the very beginning of the podcast right knowing that a lot of this stuff is going on that's the real alpha yeah right that's the real alpha like being able to understand being able to explain it because now that you understand that you've got the communication tools and not just to go i don't know like like because that doesn't that actually reinforces the negative right the fact that we can't explain like what's what's going on so i think the big learning lesson in this is just these things are having a material impact on on on everything and to my point on the malleability aside the malleability side we now have a piece of communication that we can kind of bring forward to the athlete which is extremely impactful absolutely absolutely all right all right it's your turn so it was early it was early in your conversation with dr fry but you talked to you you highlighted this notion of the brain as a prediction machine and his answer was brilliant and then it immediately brought me down kind of the the rabbit hole of of of coaching and working with athletes and and managing the mental side of both training and racing and he

talked about the way in which our our brains sort of have this three-step process of sensory feedback so they get sensory you get sensory feedback whether you're he talked about whether you're stepping over a rock or you know or it's hot out or it's raining or but you're out and you're doing things and you get feedback from the senses of that experience the second is you then have your past experiences you know the last time i went down and i immediately was thinking the last time i went down this hill it was a lot um you know it was a lot dustier or the last time i climbed up this it felt a lot easier or that sort so you base your past experiences on uh on that sensory awareness and then your brain goes to this prediction machine mode where given the sensory experience and my or sensory feedback and the past experience this is what i predict is going to happen or that my brain is predicting what's going to happen and i i see that happen all the time you know in in in training in the mail and in the I predict is going to happen or my brain is predicting what's going to happen.

And I see that happen all the time in training and in racing. Take racing, for example. You get into an aid station. The athlete is tired and worn out. And they're like, this is the same way I felt at this aid station last year when I dropped out. So of course, their sensory feedback is saying they're nauseous. Their past experience is saying this is where I puked last year. And the prediction is they're going to puke again. Yeah. Yeah. It's incredible. So I have real time experience with this as we're recording this now four or five days after the Memorial Day weekend training runs up in Auburn, where I had a handful of my athletes do the training runs.

And I had some that came out of the training runs with the feeling of, and this happens every year. Oh, that's not that hard. It wasn't that hot. Those climbs aren't so bad. And others that are like, oh my gosh, am I going to be able to finish this race? It took me so long. Those climbs are so steep. It's going to be much hotter a month from now. And of course, you got to work with both, right? You got to work with the confident person that's saying, well, you only did 32 miles. It's a lot different going through those canyons with 40 miles on your legs. And the others where you kind of want to prop them up and say, look, it's okay. You've got four weeks left. You've got a big batch of training. It's not just about three days. But that part of the prediction machine that your brain just kind of goes there.

Gosh, you asked in your notes to Neil and I when we were preparing for this podcast, how would we apply that? Almost there's some stuff in that podcast immediately with our athletes. Absolutely. The prediction machine will be one for me. Here's here's I you hit the nail on the head with this, Andy, and I'm going to I'm going to peel it apart a little bit more. So with all of this feedback that our brain is integrating, especially when you've gone out on the course or you've kind of had these, you know, like long training runs or whatever, and you continually have a negative experience, whatever that negative experience is, you mentioned GI distress. That is a huge one. Here's where you really hit the nail on the head with the prediction model. That I think is extremely important for athletes to understand is that on the either on the negative side or on the positive side, because you are integrating everything that is going on and that has gone on in the past.

If you consistently have negative experiences, I feel bad after 50k, I'm going to throw up after 100k. I can't run through the middle of the night. I had a training camp. And after the third day, I kind of blew up or whatever. Understanding that your brain, a large role of your brain is to be this prediction machine. You have to apply a harder course correction in those come race day, because it's anticipating this experience that you have already had. And I always bring up this classic example of we know that the best predictor of GI distress is previous GI distress. Not what you took in for breakfast, not what you ate during the middle of the race, not how many carbohydrates you're taking in per hour or anything like that.

The biggest predictor is previous GI distress and a large component of that. Sure, there's genetic and physiological predispositioning and things like that. But a large component of this to this prediction machines, to the brain's role as a prediction machine is I always have GI distress. I'm going to go through a race. I'm going to have GI distress again, because that is my experience, right? I'm predicting the future from what I have previously experienced. And related to the camp model, it's extremely important to set those camps up for success, because you're going to be going through the exact same point at the exact same points during the camp as you do as you are going to do during the race. And then making sure that that camp is set up for success is a big part in the what you get out of the camp at the at the end of the day, because your brain is going to predict that come race day.

Well, and I think the camp model is a beautiful one, too, because, yes, you want to set it up for success. But you also, as we've talked about on this podcast and others before, you're overloading, you know, sometimes by two, three X. So there's the potential for it to be to be a negative experience is is very real. You know, but but but I but I can think back, you know, way, way in the past in my early years of running 100 milers, where a group of a group of us got together in Southern California for the Angeles Crest train for for a do it yourself, Angeles Crest training camp. And the Tom Nielsen was the guy who who put it together. And he pretty much kind of said that he would give a talk before each day. And he would say the goal for this third day, which he always made it the hardest day.

But the goal of this third day is for you to feel positive about the race at the end. And when I think back on that now, you know, 20 plus years later, you know, what brilliant what what brilliant and we and we did, you know, 75 miles of the course in three days and some of it was hard. And but yeah, if you for us as coaches now, if you can set up that camp where there's a where it leaves a good taste in your mouth at the end. And that's a lot of that, by the way, and I know we're not necessarily getting into the nitty gritty of the camp, but that means making sure as they're going out, they know the course they're going to run. And they're you're if we're providing do it yourself aid stations, you're you're doing, you know, maybe the same things they're going to use on race day foods that they know, that sort of thing. It's so powerful the way that positive experience impacts come race day.

So powerful. Well, and now we know why. Right. Yeah. Now we know. Yeah. Now we know. It's a big reason why. Right. Because your brain is literally integrating these experiences of the past of what they are going to be during the present. And if you can create that, you know, that experience when especially when it's actually out there on the course. And I honestly think this leads a lot of this. This this gives a lot of weight to setting up those things almost in the exact same condition. I had I just thought of this. I have this actually right now where I'm going to have athletes that go over to UTMB. And or they're going they're going to do UTMB and they have the opportunity. They're elite athletes. They have the opportunity to live in Chamonix for four or six weeks in advance of the race.

And one of the things that I've been wrestling with a lot is do I have them do a lot of their running starting at 5 p.m.? Hmm. Because that's when the race starts or 6 p.m. They might change it between now and then. I can't ever keep track of stuff. 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. UTMB. They just kind of make up the rules whenever they want to. But you had to get that in there. Yeah, I just had to get it in there. I love the I love the I love the Polettis, but they do change their rules a lot. They do change their rules a lot. But my point with that is, is is if we start to think about once again, the brain as a integration machine or as a prediction machine that's integrating all of these, you know, past and present happenings into into into what is supposed to happen kind of down the line. That's not a bad strategy, to be honest with you.

Like and we see this with athletes a lot where you just have a hard time with the night starts. Oh, my God. They have a hard time throughout the night. Right. And it's because they don't have that experience. A lot of times it's because they don't have the experience of running through the night. I'm kind of like I've been leaning towards this. I'm going to shift some of their workouts towards the evening time. This this is kind of going into that calculus. Certainly. I had a I had a buddy of mine. Not not nobody I coach, but I had a buddy of mine who you probably know, Scott Jaime, 10 time hard rock, 10 time hard rock finisher. He would depending on which direction the course was going, he would do a nighttime training run starting in Uray. You know, he would either he would either do Uray to Telluride or Uray to Sherman or, you know, or no.

Sorry. Sorry. Not always Sherman. Uray to Grouse. But doing especially that direction, Uray to Grouse. You want to run that that trail with the cliff going down off the side and you know you're going to be running it, running it at night. Train on that at night. Western states runners will often go out and do Robey point to the finish, you know, at night. So that now there's also the counter argument since you're going to run it in the dark. Maybe you should train on it in the light so you see what it looks like. But but I mean, my I have my theory of Americans having trouble at UTMB, American men having trouble at UTMB is because of that night start. I think it gets in their heads. Well, once again, past past experiences integrating into the future. Maybe vicariously, vicariously through all the other previous male failure points.

They're like absorbing all of those. And it's in their brain is literally predicting from from that from those integration points. One one one thing. One thing I and I'm I'm not a, you know, death before DNF, but an observation I have made and it might have to do with this past experience or the prediction machine is that in observing athletes, maybe who've been in the sport for a long time, had like a long stretch of years without ever dropping out of a race. And then they drop out once. And seven months later, they drop out again. Yeah. And they drop out again. I mean, I don't want to say that dropping out is something that is like a disease, but it I often wonder if once you've done it once you it's easier to give yourself permission to do it again.

Or, oh, I know what this feels like. I'm not going to finish. I'm just going to drop out. That that could also be part of a prediction machine impact of the brain. We're going back. Yeah, going back to the hard course. Correct. That's a hard course. Correct. If you get two or three negative race experiences like that, where it's three or four DNFs in a row, that is something that is difficult to course. Correct. And kind of get the train going back on the right tracks for like for for for for for sure. And this is sports. Right. Like we're let's just take it out of ultra running. Right. And just look at streaky sports. Right. Where you get you get a team, they get on a hot streak and yeah, they get on a hot streak. And this is part of the reason. Right. Or they get on a losing streak.

You have a pitcher. Right. Who goes out and he gives up, you know, three dingers in his first 10 pitches. And he does that for game after game after game after game. It's not that he's a bad pitcher. Something is, you know, mechanics or any different than they were 15 days ago. It's just that he has this experience in his body is like literally putting it on repeat. The next time he goes up to the mound, the next time he goes up to the mound and next time he goes up to the mound and you see all these sports psychologists, they have to apply like hard interventions to break that cycle. Oh, I mean, think of the yips, the yips in golf. I mean, it's, you know, or it boggles the mind. But no, absolutely. And and I think as as coaches, we you know, if I have an athlete that's kind of on that DNF train, it might be OK when we're planning next year's calendar.

And goal number one is finishing a race, you know, pick it, pick a disc, you know, whatever the distance they've been DNFing, you know, goal number one is finishing a race. That might mean a low key race, not one that you have to travel to or have a lottery or all those things. So it's like that's the simple goal of finishing that race. And and it is hard because I think I think if you drop out of one, OK, I can swing. You drop out of two, you drop out of three going on four. It's like, OK. And then it's like, can I am I even going to be able to do this again? You don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I I've said this to a number of athletes that have gone through that have gone through really inconsistent or bad performance periods for a long period of time.

And I've had my fair share of turnaround stories that I could just go and list up on a whiteboard right now. But the the one of the unifying things and all of those turnaround tales has been to put small wins on the board first. Mm hmm. Yeah. And that small win is different depending upon the situation. But the theme is the same as you're putting something manageable and you're setting out setting it setting it out as a very discrete goal from the onset. And then once you get that small win on the board, you celebrate the hell out of it. And then you move on to the next one that's a little bit more challenging. And then you move on to the next one because that momentum thing. Right. Once again, the brain being a prediction machine, that momentum.

The movement component is actually really huge. And it's I think just in my observation and my experience, I think it's magnified on the elite athlete side whenever they go through those periods of, you know, I had a bad race here. I had a bad race there. I had a bad race there. It's really, really, really important to get that first win on the board in whatever kind of like way you can. And you have to set it up that way in whatever way you can to kind of turn the ship around. Now, that doesn't mean that like all of a sudden they go from zero to hero. It's still time to like get back to whatever level of performance that they kind of want to get back to. But you have to. You don't have to. But it's you set it up a whole lot better when you can set up that initial win on the board.

Well, I'm Coop. You you're absolutely right. You do have a long list of comeback stories and it's an impressive list of people. And part of it is not a lot of not all comebacks happen. You know, some some folks will and part of it has to do with the athlete or the circumstance. You know, the athlete has to be willing to sign up for Joe Schmo's fat ass 50K, you know, and and and maybe not not travel to Europe this summer, but instead, you know, focus on getting a really good finish at, you know, Miwok or something. Right. Like those are those you grow from those. But they sometimes, especially on the elite level, it takes a little swallowing of your pride and being like, you know, OK, I know I still have gas in the tank and I'm not able to expend that gas.

So, you know, what am I going to do here? And it is true because I think it does have a quick falling domino. The small the small win can become a big win relatively quickly after that. But but if you don't even if you don't even get the small win, you're you're kind of just flailing. It's it's really hard. It's really hard. And I once again, I've had this with athletes. They, you know, drop out of UTMB three or four years in a row. Right. And they just want to go back to UTMB and go and kick ass at that race. I'm not saying that you can't do it because, you know, you're we're not going to put limits on people in that way. But what I am saying is a better way to construct it is to put smaller wins on the board to build up to that big win. And I would say the same thing in a non elite athlete situation.

Like going back to our GI distress example earlier, if you always have GI distress at mile at, you know, kilometer 50, let's try to go 55K. Like, let's don't even worry about 100K. Let's not get there yet. Let's go to 55K. Like that's the small win to like put on the board. Or instead of having like an AJW, you know, level puke fest, which you're so renowned for instead of having that, let's just get a little bit nauseous. Right. There's there's like the small win right there. Instead of having this completely overboard, you know, GI issue session. Let's just let's just deal with a little bit of intolerance for a while. I think that's a that's a perfectly appropriate like small win. Trust me, once you if you've run if you've run 100 milers and puked in all of them, if you can go through the 11th one and not, that's not a small win.

That's a huge win. Speaking from experience. This is awesome, man. That's a great place to leave it on puking and you're puking. I appreciate you coming. I appreciate you coming on. I this is as I mentioned during the intro, this is one of my favorite podcasts to record was with Dr. Fry. And I don't know whatever reason or for whatever reason, just kind of like struck a chord with me. So I'm happy to like bring you and Neil back on the podcast to kind of like discuss some learning lessons. He was really he was really, you know, for someone with that kind of academic credential, he was really accessible and easy to understand. You know, he'd be worth having on again. I mean, for sure, because he's he's coming back.

I go. I already trust me. I already go to him to come back on the podcast and we're going to dive into like one area, like really specific, like pain or something like that. Really specifically. All right. All right, man. All right, folks. There you have it. There you go. Much thanks to coaches AJW and Neil for coming on the podcast today and enlightening everybody about what they took away from last week's podcast. Unbeknownst to you guys, the listeners, we did not coordinate any of this in advance. We all came up with three very different topics and three very different aspects of what resonated with us after listening to Dr. Fry. I hope that you guys out there listening took something away from last week's podcast as well as this week's podcast as well that you can take out into the field of training.

I know everybody is getting ready for the races and your relationship with pain and how you manage yourself psychologically is definitely one of those aspects that you can leverage. If you have a little bit of knowledge in order to improve your performance. I appreciate the heck out of all you listeners out there. If you like this podcast, please share it with your friends and your training partners. If you found the information valuable, there's no better gift that you can give to the people that you love that you think are meaningful in your life is to give them a little bit of information that you gleaned from this particular podcast. That is it for today, folks. And as always, we will see you out on the trails. We'll see you next week.

We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week. Thank you.