How much to climb, how to find a coach and trail advocacy⎮KoopCast Episode 23 Audience Questions

what's going on trail runners welcome to another episode of the KoopCast i am psyched that i have your ears for listening today got lined up today another audience question special you know i started the first audience questions is a little bit of a experimental format because when the covid19 pandemic started just wrecking havoc on everything one of the things that it wrecked havoc on which is this is a very low priority in the big scheme of things everybody but one of the things that wrecked havoc on was my production my production schedule i had a number of interviews lined up that were in person that those cans all got kicked down the road and then i also had a number of uh content that was already banked that i really felt wasn't very relevant at the time and so i decided to make the proverbial lemonade out of those lemons and cobble together a question and answer session from all of you listeners and i really like the format i've always enjoyed that format when i go out on book talks or if i go on talks at specialty retail stores it's just something that i really enjoy and i feel that uh everybody always has one specific question that they want answered and they get a lot of value out of just having that one question answered and in addition to

that there are other athletes out there that are asking the exact same thing so i like the format so much i decided to do it again i opened up the hotline and for those of you sitting down next to a pencil or a p and a piece of paper always sounds so old school pencil and paper but you can write this down 719-357-6394 you can always call that line and that voicemail is always open and i take those questions and i'm going to pump them directly into this episode of the podcast if you are savvy enough you can take the voice recording feature on your smartphone and uh record a memo and just send it to me via social or via email and i will pump it into the podcast as well but in any case we have a great show lined up for the listeners today it's a kind of a combination of a lot of different questions we've got one on climbing how much climbing should one do to get ready for a race we have a couple questions that i i really personally very like and that's on the business of coaching i like opining on on all things having to do with how coaches can get started how they can get mentorship and and everything kind of related to the business side of things and then we have something on trail advocacy which i have spoken about uh in a previous episode of the podcast with uh claire gallagher and mike foote so sit down buckle up get your ears ready really psyched for this and here is installment number two of audience questions

all right here we go on to the first question this first question is from ben in philadelphia and he has a question on climbing and if i were to guess before i knew that ben was asking about climbing in philadelphia i would guess that he doesn't have enough of it in fact in my experience in trail and ultra running irrespective of where you live people think that they cannot do enough climbing there's no way that they can that they can over climb they should always do more of it and in particular with vertically deprived cities like philadelphia pennsylvania unless you're running up and down the rocky stairs a lot that could certainly be the case so let's hear ben's question about climbing hey my name is ben i'm from philadelphia pa and my question is what have you done in your own training to become a better uphill athlete and how much climbing do you recommend to your elites when they're in sort of peak training for these big mountain races um thanks a lot jason really love the show all right thanks for the question ben i really appreciate it and first off um i'll say that what i've done in my own running to improve my climbing is really inconsequential i really lean on the kind of the collective experience that i've had coaching a

number of different athletes um i encourage athletes to think about climbing not in terms of amount as you're alluding to and your question is very specific in how much climbing do i need and and that's a very common way to think about things because we always think about how much mileage do i need how many intervals do i need some sort of quantity that at the end of the day will result in some type of improvement i think about terms i think about climbing in terms of how specific it is to the race and what i like to do with my athletes is to look at the races that they're doing and figure out what the climbing and descending rate is that they're going to experience during a race and what i what i mean by that is just take the total amount of climbing and divide it by the total amount of miles and more specifically it's the total amount of elevation change so climbing plus descending divided by the total amount of miles and what we try to do in training is we try to match that as closely as possible in the last six or eight weeks of training leading up to the event in order to really hone in on the specificity of training most athletes are not fortunate enough to go out and do course recons or you know in the very fortunate situation live on the course and things like that those those are very

few and far in between but many athletes have a trail system with some variety of trails that they can um that they can access that have different grades and different amounts of climbing per uh per unit distance and so what i encourage athletes to do is to look at all of their normal training routes and look at the race that they're doing and as the race gets closer and closer and closer try to match their training up mile for mile with a total amount of climbing and descending to where it's similar to what you'll experience during the race and i like that that kind of gross view of climbing and descending and by gross view i mean the amount of climbing and descending per unit distance because when you're doing that over the course of miles and miles and miles you're inevitably going to be close to experiencing the different grades and the different uh pitches and things like that that you're actually going to experience during the race sure if you're training for the hard rock 100 you're not going to have a 3 000 foot climb at a 14 grade that you're going to have access to but if you can get close to the amount of climbing and descending close to not exactly but close to the amount of climbing and descending that the whole course has that's not a bad way to that's not a bad way to to train for an event with which you're not going to have access to the course

beforehand so that's how i encourage you to look at the amount of climbing and the amount of descending that you need in training to get ready for a race it's not the amount it's the rate that matters great question there all right our next question comes all the way over from the uk this listener has a question on how to select the right coach for him let's take it away let's hear this next question hi thank you so much for a great podcast i have a question related to coaching that i struggle with a bit and that was interesting to hear your opinion on it and that is how do i as a runner find out what coaching service would be the best for me because there are so many coaches out there and they are so hard to tell the difference between them because all of them want to sell their services and most of them seem to use their own running career and their own running results as their main selling points but listening to your podcast there clearly is a lot of other things to it so and as a person hasn't had a coach or if you don't you don't know what you don't know and as an experienced consumer of coaching services i guess it's hard to know what to look for and if a big name coach just uses a simple

spreadsheet you you would imagine that's the way to do it and sort of how do you know what to ask for and how do you know how to find the right coach for you and thank you very much for a great podcast okay this is a this is a fascinating question that uh that i get a lot from athletes out in the field because as the as the listener alluded to there are a lot of coaching options out there and rather than answer the question myself i decided to bring in some reinforcements for this question in our athlete services director dominic all the way from a mile away from me here in colorado springs colorado dominic welcome to the KoopCast what's happening coop it's good my brother uh i was mentioning you off air this is rather bizarre that we are literally about a mile away from each other yet we have to get on a video conference to discuss the answer to this particular question right it's important stuff it is important stuff here okay so let's get into it a little bit um the reason that i wanted to bring you in to add uh to the answer to this question is is you you've got a particular domain expertise here within your role as athlete services director at cts one of the things you do consistently is you match up incoming athletes with our pool of coaches it's a big that's a big part of your role uh that you have

and you you do that more than maybe anybody in the country to be honest with you um but what i don't want to do is have this be a 10 or a 15 minute sales call on cts coaching so let's try to broaden this question out a lot and discuss how does a runner just like the just like the person who asked this question how does a runner actually navigate these waters of filtering through all of the coaches that are out there and finding the best one that's for them it's it's it's such a it's a it's a cool question because i i've been matching athletes now and then believe it or not my eighth year with cts and matching athletes so um i i've matched a few if not um uh probably over a thousand but um i think that it's funny because the answer to the question is in the question and and the athlete needs to ask themselves who's the best coach for them they have to ask themselves what they want because if you try to go into this through the through the front door and say okay there are 50 000 coaches out there which one of them is for me you'll be there all day and you'll always be second guessing yourself what the athlete needs to do is they need to ask start asking themselves some questions what do they want out of coaching what do they expect from the expert the uh the experience uh what are their goals um because let's face it here are your goals a relationship with a

coach to have somebody to talk to to ask questions about your training to talk about nutrition to to just discuss the things that you can you can no longer do comfortably at home our our spouses and our our families are only are only so interested for so many years or or whatever and hearing these things so a lot of people are just looking for somebody to to kind of go through this experience with um the athlete needs to ask themselves are are they are they looking for a ton of science to be involved um are they looking for um the newest uh uh most fancy shiny product out there to go with the fancy shiny coach um and let's face it there's the reality of how much money do you have sure i would love Jason Koop to be my coach but i can only spend 50 a month so from that point you need to start making that decision and now you can you can filter down that that pool of 50 000 coaches down to uh something a little bit more of of what you're looking for and now you can start looking at those uh looking at the individual coaches with uh a little more ammunition on what you're looking for hey i'm very science uh and very data um centric i i like to pour over the data on a daily basis and i want somebody who has run the race um several times that i'm doing okay great well now you start looking at the coaches

and you say this guy has a degree from here and he has a specialty in this and he's run uh you know western states or or whatever event that you're training for and so you can kind of filter that that pull down um with that i would recommend to anyone once they do get to a certain point um to that they have some coach options that on paper look like what they're looking for um that they should have the ability to speak to those coaches before just signing up blindly um with them on a website because what looks great on paper again Jason Koop might be a fantastic coach for lots of people and there are lots of people that are like oh we just we just don't communicate great we do it just it happens we all have different personalities and that's uh that's so important this coach athlete relationship is only as good as you can have the greatest science in the world but if you are not receiving that information from that coach in a way that you understand it appreciate it want to share with your coach each week want to be honest with your coach um and trust the information that they're giving it's uh it's it's it's really it's just it's a useless you know study or a training plan that you could just throw in the trash um so that the communication is so important um but uh the main thing is the athlete needs to ask themselves some questions of what are their expectations for the coaching and then go from there i like that because i think a lot of uh athletes they get into this

proposition of hey i want to coach and they immediately start doing the research they scour the internet they google ultra marathon coaches they google western states coaches or some somehow and then that's and that serves as this initial uh foray into finding a coach when in reality and i completely agree with you they need to take a step back and think why do i want to coach what that what things can the coach bring to the table for me is it is it is it accountability is it court specific knowledge is it some sort of you know physiological orientation around the training program is it some constellation of all of those variables and then based on that this huge sea of coaches that are represented by their websites at this point starts to kind of naturally get filtered down and then they can start making those inquiries out whether those inquiries or phone calls or emails or a combination of all of those i want to ask you something really specific about about those initial phone calls so let's assume the athlete has done their job they've kind of done their homework they've gone through this list of things that they want to get out of coaching and they've narrowed the list down to four or five people that they then want to interview how would you advise an athlete to go through that interview process like what questions are important for the athlete to ask and what things can they actually draw out of the coach and i'm

specifically reminded of this from one point of the question that the listener mentioned he said that he doesn't know what he doesn't know and i think a lot of athletes are in that same situation where they're evaluating coaches and they're interviewing coaches and they know what they know but they obviously don't know everything and they don't know kind of what's behind the curtain a little bit so what would be poignant for these athletes to actually start asking coaches as they start this interview process i it's funny as i think you could probably write a book on different questions to ask coaches and so forth let's let's assume a couple of uh consistent variables here and that would be let's assume you've done your research and you've come up with a list of coaches that all on paper look like the coach that you want to use this guy has an exercise physiology degree they're a nutritionist and i see that they've done the event that i want to do everyone is is is apples to apples across the board to really simplify this coop get on the phone with the coach and just talk to him for 20 or 30 minutes we've all done this long enough we all love what we do we know we're talking to somebody else about running or you know in my case cycling uh you're just going to talk you've already decided they've got the education that you want they've got the experience that you want and the goal here is just to find the person that you're going to look forward to talking to each week because from there the rest is easy if you're just looking at somebody who is the

who looks right on paper let's do this the reverse if you if the athlete is questioning this this way of going about things think about it this way you sign up for coaching what if that coaching company just said okay um joe's a runner uh mary's a running coach there you go there's your new coach you can't just say they're a running coach they're for me uh it's that's why it's really important that uh that you have the opportunity to speak to them and again at cts i know that we we have the option for athletes to do what we call coach consults um based on some basic information that the athletes will give us on events that they're training for and some of their expectations on coaching uh i assign two different coaches for them to speak to uh that fall into those uh those categories um and they they have the option to um speak with both coaches and when they at i get at least 75 of the time i get a call back that says i talked to both coaches they're awesome i i need your help and i tell them the same thing every time pick the coach that you got off the phone with and just organically felt like i i want to talk to them each week that would be great that that i really enjoyed talking to that person sharing the information about my training so and what you're getting at is there has to be a personal connection and like a like a meaningful sociological type of

connection between the athlete and the coach that goes beyond their resume their knowledge of the sport their knowledge of this particular race whatever stats they can put up in racing and things like that that interpersonal connection between those two people in a lot of ways supersedes the experience the knowledge base and things like that not that those are unimportant those are absolutely important but to your point of you you know you have these coaching options out there a lot of people would be well served to just say hey listen i connect with this coach more than i connect with these uh with these with these other coaches that's not a bad way to do it certainly that that that that's absolutely correct and i i i again i i feel confident that um again if you're you're going to this thing apples to apples with coaches that have similar backgrounds uh your choice should very very simply be don't try to overthink this the person the coach that you you seem to communicate best with um because that is what will take you uh take you the furthest in uh uh in reaching your goals um otherwise the majority of the time is spent on wondering whether you trust what they had to say or did they listen to you and and man if you can get past all that you're it's uh uh it's it's it's it's pretty simple after that okay so we've got these kind of two basic steps right figure out what the athlete wants from coaching

or the athlete should figure out what they want from coaching go and interview the coaches and try to find or the coaches that they've narrowed down and try to find some sort of interpersonal connection that they have between themselves and the coach i want to dig for just another moment a little bit further into the you don't know what you don't know um coaches deliver their coaching services in a myriad of different ways some people use google spreadsheets some people use final in the running world they use final surge some other people like our like ourselves in our coaching group we use training peaks and in addition to that there's a there's a very wide array of the time commitment that each coach spends per athlete and that's going to have different value depending upon the answer to the very first question that the athletes come up with what do i actually uh what do i actually want out of this but it's hard for the athlete to tell just from a website what the coach is actually doing in the background in terms of are they looking at the training are they modifying the training how are they actually building things how would you advise an athlete that in in in this listener's case doesn't really know how to navigate the space of what do i actually get like what's the product that i'm actually receiving what questions would you advise that athlete to ask those potential coaches to like peel the curtain back a little bit on that sure i again but just keeping things simple that that coach

the athlete should ask the coach what should i expect from a a day a week and a month of of coaching from you as a coach and because it's different that that you know uh you know that coach depending on the the level of package that you sign up with will say on a daily basis you won't hear from me every day but you'll do all your workouts and every couple of days i'll make a comment on your uh on you know or weekly i'll make some comments and send you an email on your workouts and then do that monthly and so forth so ask the question what can i expect what what would a week of training look like for me as i interact with training peaks and uh schedule a call with you each week what what would what would that uh what would that look like um and after that when after athletes sign up for coaching and they've picked their coach then they get into the details of the coach will ask how do you like to communicate text you know uh google hangouts phone email whatever those specifics can come together but um that uh that initial call just ask the question what can i expect what what can i um and i often ask athletes um when i have the opportunity to speak to them what type of athlete they are and and maybe athletes have to think to themselves how are you motivated do you operate better with a drill instructor or a cheerleader uh and those those are the two extremes i can think of and you'd be surprised at how many people will say i absolutely need a drill instructor i need somebody to say

are we training here or or or what because i don't you know i i can uh i can have somebody you know i don't have to write your training program or you know whatever are we going to get out there so uh and some people just want to be patted on the back so those are the type of things too that uh that's another question you can ask a coach so so well i want to know first off before we get into this any further what's the ratio of cheerleader requests to drill instructor requests um i'd say 65 drill instructor requests from a very practical perspective what you were talking about is is you said just ask the question directly like what am i going to get what am i going to get am i going to get a schedule every week are you going to look at every single workout are you going to do this are you going to do this like actually what am i going to get out of this don't be afraid of that you're paying for the service yeah and that's that's you know that's uh and that's something that the coach should feel feel comfortable answering awesome awesome man well i appreciate it dominic thanks for your time appreciate it getting together over the phone here i hope the listeners found it valuable anything else you want to leave listeners with no i i think that's it but just just just be honest just be honest with anything in your life but with the coaching to uh ask questions give on this information to your coach uh and you'll see nothing but success uh down the road awesome man well we're going to bring you on for a full episode uh sometime later on down the line so for those of you

listening right now expect dominic's beautiful voice for a whole hour and a half and we will dig into all things coach athlete relationship you good with that dominic yes dude awesome man let's do it all right thanks coo all right this next question is from ryan from illinois he has a question as a up-and-coming ultra running coach about how to market his services during this time and this is a question that i actually kind of find quite fascinating because i've had to navigate it personally and then we've also had to navigate this uh at cts as a whole so why don't we hear ryan's question and then we'll get into uh some of the answers and nuances of it hi coach koops this is ryan haywood calling from chicago illinois and my question is as a up-and-coming ultra coach what is the best plan of action to take right now i don't want to feel like i'm trying to sell myself when and be tone deaf to the situation that's going on around the world but how can i be proactive uh in letting people know that my services are available or how can i add to the community i would love to hear your thoughts on how i as a as a coach can add to the community and not try to just have somebody buy my program because i know you know budgets are tight right

now and people aren't thinking about hiring a coach but i still want to to remind people that that i'm out here uh ready to help them so thanks a lot uh and uh i look forward to your answer wow ryan uh what a great question and i really appreciate the opportunity to answer it um first off just the fact that you are conscientiously thinking about this right now i think will go a very long way the fact that you're processing this whole situation in terms of hey i still want to provide advice and be a part of the community but at the same time i need to apply some sort of sensitivity to the situation just the fact that you're thinking about it right now i think that you are uh absolutely on the right foot um what i'll say right out of the gate is that you don't have to immediately shut down any of the advertising or marketing that you've got uh that you've got out there yes the market is going to contract a little bit and yes we do need to be sensitive to the situation but things still are slowly chugging along in bits and pieces and i've taken on new athletes in fact this week i took on a i took on a brand new athlete and uh we still see people interested in coaching at the time uh but at the same time i think it would be an error to as you have alluded to to just blatantly start

promoting your services or increasing kind of the intensity or the frequency of any of the marketing uh that you are uh that you are putting out there um so what what i what what i think i'm going to offer up here are some are some examples of coaches out there that i think are doing kind of the right thing in terms of how they're reorienting uh their their marketing efforts during this time and also some examples that i think are going to go awry of just being sensitive to the situation uh that's out there before i get into that though i want to make this section i want to make the content in this section abundantly clear i want to make it abundantly clear to the listeners out there that the opinions that i'm about to express are mine and mine alone and that really goes true for any part of the podcast here but in particular since we're talking about coaching and we just got off the phone with dominic who's cts's athlete services director i just want to make it absolutely crystal clear abundantly clear that the opinions that i'm about to express are mine and mine alone and nobody else's so with that being said and to tag on to my my previous comment i think that you would be well served to continue to put out content and to continue to advertise kind of as you already are from a frequency perspective but you can certainly pivot a lot of that dialogue into making it more relative

to what athletes are going through during this pandemic and we've uh we've tried to do that i've tried to uh produce a lot of content on my blog that's more relevant to what athletes are going to from a psychological perspective and emotional perspective trying to deal with a lot of the race cancellations and at the same time realizing that quite frankly they're bigger fish to fry in the world right now compared to the race that you have or the race that you would have had that just got canceled or the fitness that you have right now that might be deteriorating because of your shelter in place uh situation so some sensitivity to that around the content that you're producing is absolutely warranted and i think will earn you a lot of respect from the people that you get to communicate out there in the space um i will bring up a really good example of a company that uh they kind of won the marketing game to be honest with you uh over the course of the past several days and uh this is personal pete coaching out of canada who put on the quarantine backyard ultra now the first thing that i'll say about this is it was an absolutely phenomenal thing for the community to become involved with they brought together thousands of athletes from around the world in this virtual backdoor format and really provided an outlet for those athletes to not only go and test themselves physically in this uh backyard ultra format but also get together socially uh via the zoom uh via the zoom

video links that they were providing and just you know shoot the shit and banter around a little bit it was a really neat thing i had several athletes that participated in it and i tuned in and you know watch them run around their neighborhoods and on their treadmills and things like that and i and i got a really big kick out of it but pertinent to the question all eyes were on them for those three days nearly three days they were able to get uh some coverage of the event in trail runner magazine uh runner's world some of the endemic publications but as well as the non-endemic publications like the washington post and uh in the new york times so kudos to those folks over at personal peak for putting that event together i think it was a really big win for the community as well as a i hope it is a big win for uh for their coaching business now there have been some examples uh uh as ryan has alluded to of companies that are just being a little bit tone deaf to the situation and you guys you you the listeners out there y'all know i keep it real i don't mind uh calling some of these companies out a lot of them are in the nutrition and health and wellness space where they have taken this pandemic and used it as an opportunity to sell their supplement or sell their wares as a cure or a treatment for the virus or for the infection that is caused from the virus and uh fortunately the

ftc has been looking out for these companies and a lot of them have received cease and desist letters but relative to coaching there have been some coaching groups out there that have also used this pandemic to kind of spin their services into being relevant when they are really not and the biggest offender of this i happened to come across a week or so ago comes from peter defty who is the founder of vespa and also the founder of the optimized fat metabolism coaching group i subscribe to their content because i like to keep abreast of what's going on and they put out a blog post several days ago and uh also was accompanied with a youtube video which was much in line with what a lot of the other coaching companies were doing out there they were trying to get out relative relevant information to their athletes to help keep them healthy during this time and a lot of this a lot of the content in this blog is is is very reasonable wash your hands use an alcohol wipe when you don't have access to soap and water and things like that some of the content is quite frankly bizarre using a nasal rinse or antiseptic mouthwash or you know uv light like a tanning bed or something like that to quote unquote kill the virus but relative to the question and i'm not going to go through this entire blog and spend

the time debunking it when there's not somebody on the other end of the line to provide some sort of counterpoint i don't think that that does anybody any good but relative to the the the question at hand which is how to be sensitive during this time i do think that this post runs afoul with that is not specifically because they're trying to insert their services in turn as being relevant during this pandemic when they are in fact not and the specific post or the specific point from this post goes as follows and i'm going to read a direct quote to make sure that i give it its full credit the point is or the point goes intermittent fasting this is another tool of ofm and it really will help you in fighting covid19 and the post goes on to say if you are reading this and have not made any efforts to increase and optimize your fat metabolism consider getting started here and it has a link to uh link to their coaching packages this is a this is an example of making your services relevant when they should they should not be let me let me be crystal clear from the first statement that intermittent fasting will quote help you in fighting covid19 there is absolutely zero evidence of this zilch nada none

no evidence at all that intermittent fasting will help you in fighting covid19 and you don't have to be an immune an immunologist or virologist to understand this the virus is new so these studies actually haven't been done at all now you could say that i'm cherry picking the article or something like that and saying well what they really meant to say what peter really meant to say was is that intermittent fasting is part of a healthy lifestyle and this healthy lifestyle is going to support a healthy immune system and in a healthy immune system is going to help you in fighting covid19 those five or six or seven degrees of separation then therefore makes this point relevant first off that's not actually what they're saying they're saying quite literally intermittent fasting this is another tool of optimized fat metabolism and it really will help you in fighting covid19 but if you want to make the lifestyle argument the research on that is equivocal there are things on both sides there is research that intermittent fasting can improve some markers of immunity in research that has been done on mice most of that research not all most of that research is in mice there is also research mainly in mice that says that intermittent fasting will make your immune system or markers of your immune system worse there are things on both sides so even if you wanted to make the lifestyle argument it's kind of null

and void because the research is equivocal on both sides of that equation but that is honestly irrelevant to this particular statement the statement the statement is intermittent fasting which is another tool of optimized fat metabolism which is the service in question that we're talking about will quote will help you in fighting covid19 that is a clear stretch of the coaching services that peter is offering into this pandemic it's quite frankly not true and this statement is in poor taste because as i mentioned from the onset this we have bigger fish to fry right now people we're going to lose loved ones we a lot of people are going to lose their businesses people are fighting kind of tooth and nail uh particularly our frontline health care workers we need to be focused on bigger things than doubling down on our intermittent fasting and improving our optimized fat metabolism at this stage of the game that is the real error in this it's trying to make your services relevant when they are in fact not and they are bigger fish to fry so i appreciate the question there's some examples of who i think's doing it right who i think's not doing it right let's move on to the next question all right here we go we're ready for the next question this question comes from somebody in my local

area that i just happened to see out on the trails a few days ago it is from rebecca who has a question about trail work and trail advocacy let's take it away rebecca hi coop this is rebecca from colorado springs i actually saw you earlier today on the mid-columbine trail which reminded me i wanted to submit a question to you uh my experience a few minutes after our interaction inspired this question um as i continued up there's some places where uh the trails become quite narrow due to erosion uh definitely needs some clc so my question is around volunteerism and trail runners uh kind of part one of my question is what is the latest and greatest data on trail runners who volunteer maybe numbers or proportions uh maybe there's something else out there part two of the question is uh let's assume participation maybe isn't the absolute best we think it could be what do you think we should aim for as a trail running community and finally uh how do you think we will get there what will enable awareness and inspire actions to really cause a big meaningful shift i'm really interested for your take on this uh thanks for doing what you do all right all right rebecca great question it was good to see you out on the trail just to paint this picture a little bit further uh the mid-columbine trail which she was referring to is actually uh right behind my house here in colorado springs it goes up cheyenne canyon which is right near norad the north american what does norad stand for

n-o-r-a-d north american radio defense system or something like that it's where they track santa now all the all the defense mechanisms have been kind of pulled out of the pulled out of the mountain but anyway it's a beautiful trail i get to run it a few times a week we also use it for our trail running camps which this year have been canceled but in other years uh becomes kind of a staple of uh where we run our camps out of it is an absolutely beautiful trail but as rebecca mentioned it does need some tlc it's a difficult trail to construct and to maintain because of all the loose pikes peak granite that comprises the majority of the surface of the trail and in addition to that on any normal week it gets a ton a absolute ton of traffic and as many trail runners are now aware with the covid 19 pandemic and a lot of people having to shelter in place the the trail systems are just getting overrun uh there's a lot of people out there some people say there's too many people out there some states and uh local uh local governments are taking the steps of either closing the trails and parks down outright or at least limiting parking to try to reduce the numbers but the real consequence of that outside of the social distancing norms that are being violated which is the most important thing right now but the long term one of the long term real consequences of that is going to be trail erosion

you can only take so much traffic on a particular trail at any one point in time and to to answer the first part of the question directly in terms of statistics on how many how many trail runners or how much volunteerism can trail runners really take credit for to be honest with you there's really no good source of information like that and i think that that is quite tragic because i think that's something that we should be able to track as a group like other groups do hunters track this uh the atv user group uh tracks this as well mountain bikers through imba uh they have a pretty good data set in terms of how much time that they put into the trails but trail runners uh just by virtue of a lot of different things mainly because of just the fact that we're so widespread and there's no kind of organizing body to put an umbrella over us all we don't have very good data on this and um i i i i feel this is definitely an i feel statement because we don't have the data i i feel that we do not contribute to maintenance of trails and the construction of trails to the proportion of which we use them and that's a tough statement to make because i love the community that i'm in i think there's a lot of great people that uh that are in a lot of the local trail running communities that try to organize and

advocate for trail building and trail maintenance but when i look at the landscape uh there are far bigger organizations out there that have a way bigger uh footprint than trail and ultra runners and i don't have the perfect answer on how to solve that um a lot of races have tried to contribute to that by making uh making uh making the requirement to enter their race or part of the requirements to enter their race to volunteer to you know build a trail or volunteer in an ultra or something like that uh i.e. mandatory volunteerism as oxymoronic as that uh as as that sounds um but certainly there is no unified way to do it and i i do think that one of the primary ways to get a better fix on this and to organize the community as a whole is to have some organizing entity some nationwide organizing entity that can harness the collective power of all the trail runners out there and make decisions in terms of what uh priorities are out there uh uh in in the country in terms of trails to build and in trails to in trails to maintain that's a that's a really big leap um to get one of those organizing bodies but it's been done before i always point out emba which is the mountain biking world they've done a fantastic job um there's a we have a lot of local uh emba advocates here in colorado springs and they build and maintain a lot of the trails here and they do an

absolutely fantastic job but in terms of trail running like i said it's really it's very piecemeal and uh i think that's rather unfortunate because we are big a big user uh user group of the trails so what you can do locally is go build your trails locally and i think that most trail runners don't truly understand how difficult it is to build and to maintain a trail and regardless if you if you have done trail work or if you have never done trail work i think a good exercise for everybody to do is to find a trail project where they literally build a trail from nothing they either reroute a current trail because of something that's going on or they're built or they're building a new connection and the reason that i think uh trail and ultra runners should partake in that type of activity specifically is because it really points out how difficult it is in most areas almost in all areas to build something out of nothing nothing trails if we get if we have one of those types of projects here and i crew lead a lot of those projects and in my local area if we get 50 or maybe 100 feet if the trail construction is really easy done in a day with a crew of 20 people that's a pretty freaking good day but we can only do that on one day during the weekend

and so you can easily do the math 100 feet a day 52 weekends out of the year that's one mile of trail that's easy math i just did that on my head right on the spot that's one mile of trail if you have a group of 20 every single weekend out of every single year that does not constitute a whole lot of trail inventory so my point with that is is realize that truck construction takes a takes a lot of hard work it takes a lot of man hours and we should not uh um we should not take that for granted so get involved locally uh if you have the opportunity to build a something out of nothing trail definitely do it there are always opportunities locally to get involved and we we can't we we honestly we can't do in almost all areas you can't do enough of it there's always something there so get involved locally i think that is the path out i really appreciate the thoughtful question and maybe our next trail building project will be on the mid columbine trail that i passed you on just recently and that's the end of the show folks appreciate it thank you for listening thank you to the listeners for calling in and asking such awesome questions or like i said like i said on the onset of the podcast i really enjoy answering those i really enjoy hearing what is on people's minds helps me out

as a coach helps me out as a podcaster to listen directly to the audience and know what they're thinking so if you have something to throw in the mix you can record a voice memo on your iphone or you can just simply dial the hotline up 719-357-6394 and there's a good chance that i will play it and answer it on a future episode of the podcast we got a lot of cool stuff coming up i do think that within the next few weeks i'm going to get back to the regular production calendar of stuff that i have banked i've got stuff on hiking and running i've got a really good podcast on heat acclimation i've got some stuff coming up with usada all just kind of waiting for the right time that everybody's ready to release this stuff so appreciate appreciate everybody being patient if you have not gotten the chance to do so go ahead on over to itunes and give this podcast a review or a rating on itunes it helps out a lot as everybody knows who's been listening i'm not taking any ads on this podcast just doing it for your entertainment my entertainment and hopefully you guys get some good knowledge bombs dropped on you to help your ultra marathon performance a rating or review helps out tremendously appreciate everybody listening we will see you guys and gals out on the trails you you you

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