What Athletes Should Be Doing Right Now with Coach John Fitzgerald | Koopcast Episode 77

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 this episode of the podcast is a coaching special many of you out there many of the listeners will know that i work with a coaching group of which we have about 11 or 12 if i remember correctly specific ultra running coaches and while we work with our athletes on an individual basis we also use our collective coaching group as a way to harness the knowledge of all of us together because we are greater than the sum of our parts and so what i wanted to do on the podcast today specifically is to peel the curtain back a little bit on what some of those conversations look like so i invited on the podcast today one of the very first coaches that i hired for ultra running specifically and that is coach john fitzgerald and we had a really cool conversation about what is going on right now with athletes during this transition period from covid where races did not happen at all to now the races are going to gradually slowly come back online we talked about that in addition to that we talked about this new phenomenon of personal projects and fkts and how those can get woven into successful athlete training and successful athlete goals john is

one of the coaches that i work with on a daily basis that i have the most tremendous amount of respect for his athletes absolutely love him and you're gonna see why in this podcast so here we go let's get right into it here's my conversation with coach john fitzgerald so like i said i was saying earlier i did zangray this weekend and you know here here's where i have to show a little bit of humility here i thought that it was 100k until like the week before the race i think like i don't i don't know what happened like i missed some critical piece of information from the from the race because i signed up during the covid year which they were going to do their first edition of the 100k so the course is traditionally 50 miles and it's on this point-to-point course they had to change it they had to change it one year because of some forest service issue and they were going to come back with a point-to-point 100k which was going to be awesome this is going to be like totally epic i'd seen the entire course in pieces um and it's hard it's rugged it's everything that it's cracked up to be it's a classic 50 miler and extending it to 100k just makes it even better it's not like they have to contrive the start of the finish it's just more of really awesome trails and i started checking my emails on it like the week before like literally the week before the race i'm like wait a minute this doesn't match up because the information i was getting from one source

was saying that it was 50 miles and the information i was getting from another source said that it was 100k and so finally i learned i mean it was like six i'm really embarrassed to admit this is like six or seven days before the race that it was actually in fact 50k which was kind of a blessing for me because i was a little under trained going into it but i think that the the the whole thing just goes to demonstrate that it's weird right like right now is like really weird because not only are races literally up in the air you know we had several when san diego was canceled right just recently is that what it was san diego it wasn't postponed to or was it anyway races are being canceled or postponed or in my case it switched from 50 miles to 100k and then back and then i missed the and back and back part of it and then in addition to that for athletes that are traveling internationally which you know both of us we coach athletes that you know that that are either coming to the united states to run or live in the united states and are playing or doing things things abroad i've got athletes that are doing the tour de jaunt and some of the UTMB races and things like that they're still in a little bit of limbo because they don't know not only will the race actually happen but what are going to what are the the quarantine restrictions going to be into the country that they're going to and back into the united states and those might that might change from now until when kind of whenever

the race is and so there still is this cloud of ambiguity that's been going around the the the athletes and we've been having to manage this at coaches and so that's what i wanted to that's what i wanted to talk about i personally had to live this because i made a mistake on my on my end not realizing that the race had changed distances but i got to use that i got to use that as a little bit of intro just to say it's weird so john like what like what have you been noticing with your athletes that are in this situation where they kind of they just don't know what the future holds right yeah um you know there's been a a lot a lot coming up with that i mean the mixed emotions i think uh nervousness for the for the athletes for the events are actually gonna gonna actually go through uh canyons 100k just happened this past weekend and i had a couple athletes racing that and i know for a while that was still kind of a little bit up in the air and there's some last minute changes to the course there at the 100k the vert went up a little bit so the athletes were you know a little bit nervous about that and the cutoffs um so i think yeah the races that are actually going off you know because it's been a while i think one of the athletes going into canyons that had been close to two years uh since the last time they had towed the line and race so um you know that's i think it's going to be kind of normal to to feel nervous and anxious going into a race like that um i've had athletes travel all the way down to uh argentina and uh get turned around there by the customs there and you know that's uh gonna ruffle

some feathers and uh just uh yeah you know a little bit stressful and having to go home and quarantine back at home so i've seen kind of a mixed bag of athletes that are nervous anxious heading into the races and then other athletes that are a little bit hesitant to book flights and kind of go through with you know traveling uh across seas so yeah it's been quite a stir so let's put our coaching hat on a little bit because i think that some of the some of the changes that we all just went through are going to continue to happen right in my case i thought that i was going to run 100k and ended up running 50 miles but you're right in canyons this weekend i had athletes in canyons they changed part of the course things like that of different varying magnitudes are absolutely going to continue to happen and they're going to unfold in a variety of different ways some of them might be the rate the day of the race right the week of the race some of them might be a month before the race or two months before the race does that materially change the training going into it and we could just use canyons as an example right there's no way you could have changed the training by the time that they made that change right you're not going to change because they made it like two three days before the race maybe a week before the race but if you would have known about those small changes would that materially change any of the preparation going into it uh not really exactly as far as a couple thousand feet of vertical change i mean it's still up down up down

so uh i wouldn't necessarily have an athlete do you know increase their vertical throughout the week because that small change so yeah there's you know a lot of it's just kind of uh slowing things down a little bit and realizing that it's in a way kind of splitting hairs the the big difference that it's going to make i mean 50 miles compared to 100k they're both really hard um you know um and i know you get the question a lot coop about uh long runs and when's the longest run going to be but it's not like you're going to really you know increase the duration of your long run for 100k too much exactly so i brought up the easy example which is canyons no i don't think you would change the training at all i even think with the stupid mistake i made i probably wouldn't have changed anything right i mean i i mean maybe like three or four percent or something like that like when we look at the entirety of training all the way from january to now which is you know april 24th or whatever it was right maybe there's a little bit here a little bit there but the difference between what i thought i was running which is zane gray 100k and what i ended up running which is zane gray 50 which is totally my fault just to reemphasize that i still don't think the training would be that like all like all that much different and so my point with that for the for the athletes that are that are out there that are going to experience these changes is that yes you're going to have to change your logistics right if you if crew's not allowed crew's not allowed you're going to have to

you know figure out how to do things with drop bags and you know maybe longer aid stations and things like that that's absolutely true yes you're going to have to deal with the course change turn right here turn left there and there are people at canyons that uh that had recon the course that when they went on the new course they were actually confused as to which direction to go so yeah those things are actually going to to be at issues they're actually going to be issues but in terms of the training which is what most people get nervous about right have i done enough that fundamentally doesn't change all that much yeah not really at all you know i think logistics uh you know if an aid station is separated you know there's a longer distance apart uh you're going to want to factor all that in uh doing your homework on the course making sure there's not any crazy changes to the start finish things like this like you said turns but no as far as the training goes i mean i think it's just putting in the consistent work and you know not really uh yeah hitting the panic button and feeling like you got to do more which i think athletes tend to constantly feel like they're not doing enough and they got to kind of up the ante a little bit so well one of those things that fuels it is something that you've mentioned earlier it's been a while right i mean it's been sometimes two years since athletes have towed the start line and maybe even longer and there is a routine to getting into races right i mean there's not just a routine with the training part of it but as the race kind

of gets near you start drawing these parallels between the climbs that you're doing during training and the climbs that you're doing the race the nutrition that you're doing in training and the nutrition that you're doing in the race eight stations in the races trying to like kind of visualize or or or kind of experience them in training for some for in some aspects that doesn't exist or that hasn't existed for for a while and i think a lot of the nervousness that we mentioned earlier with athletes has to do with the the fact that they haven't towed the start line they've kind of gotten out of that gotten out of that routine so are you doing anything specific with your athletes that are kind of returning to racing after this some you know maybe two-year layoff in order to kind of like prepare them for those elements yeah yeah a few things i mean in conversation with the athletes just kind of letting them know that they're not the only ones feeling you know this anxiousness or feeling nervous going into the race i mean just pinning on the thought of pinning on a number right seems so maybe intimidating or things like this but you know they're not the only one you know and it can be easy to maybe feel isolated like oh my god but a lot of people aren't racing or haven't raced in a while you know and so i think that's helped a lot of athletes just kind of keep it a little bit more cool going in and almost kind of look at it as again depending on what the race is for the athlete if it's been a big race if it's something that's been more of like a training race or a stepping stone leading into a bigger race it's kind of looking at it more of like a dress rehearsal in a way

you know kind of have that mindset which kind of keeps it a little bit more relaxed um kind of going through the motions if you will so that's kind of helped a lot of athletes kind of calm down a little bit but then also with the sport of ultra running i think you and i can both agree that the community aspect and getting people together so i've talked a lot of athletes about that and um and they get really excited in a good way so i think it's a matter about channeling that excitement with being back with the ultra running community and uh you know sharing stories after the race and things like that so i always like to bring that part up about the race and that gets athletes pretty pumped it can almost be too overwhelming though because we haven't seen everybody in in such a long time i was at black canyons earlier this year just you know spectating and and supporting some athletes out there and the one and they still had very a very covid compliant type of aid station setup apps that was absolutely the case but even with that even with everybody kind of spread out and it's point to point course which kind of like spreads the support and you know people that are watching out as well even with all of those elements at play there still was an enhanced level of enthusiasm there and it was the first time that i thought that oh wow when athletes do go back to races especially the really big ones there's going to even be a bigger spotlight on this concept to not burn

all your matches before the gun goes off right right right that's a good point you bring up yeah just kind of you know being a being around the energy before the race i'm thinking i'm going to races like UTMB in western states you know that there's a lot of pre-race hype and energy so yeah just being mindful of that too and not kind of overdoing that well it's it's compounded by especially in those big races the fact that with almost all the athletes right the athletes that that are just normal that have had to go through some sort of lottery process they've had to wait to get entry into it for sometimes three four five six seven years and then wait after covid to get back it so there's this like huge amount of like pent up you know energy that's even that that is that that's multiplied by the time you actually get to the start line and i actually think with those bigger races that's going to be like for people like you and i who are working with these athletes that are going to UTMB going to western states going to these big uh big races that uh that we're going to have to like very consciously manage that with our athlete groups in terms of the energy expenditure in the days just a couple of days leading into the into the race and just making them aware of all the pitfalls of that oh 100 i mean you know we know that yeah when cortisol is is raised i mean we're you're burning through uh glycogen and you know and all this and just being on your feet moving around so

uh i would say could definitely make or break your day for sure uh the other one too is athletes getting pulled off of wait lists too that's been happening more and more well you know i think maybe it's over athletes coming over from overseas can't make the race so i'm having athletes that are getting into western states that they're like totally this isn't going to happen so now it goes like the race they weren't going to get in they get pulled off the wait list and so there's that that excitement uh in that situation as well where athletes are kind of yeah now they're in this big race that they didn't think they're going to get into okay so practically so practically right let's let's use that as an example but i think that a lot of athletes can extrapolate this to i i don't know what's going to happen four months from now i think i'm going to be in this race i think it's going to happen or it like in your case i'm not in western states i am in western states like what are you doing with your athletes just kind of presently in april in may like really acutely to get them ready for either something that is different like a wrinkle that's gotten thrown in the schedule that they need to take advantage of or this unknown element like what are the practical pieces that athletes can kind of put in place like right here right now for the next several weeks as all these races are either coming back online or changing or whatever they're going to do yeah no that's a good question i think it you know goes to you know uh how can we leverage that event still to continue to put in the work now and be best

prepared for that event so i mean obviously the consistency doesn't go away um i think more than ever just because a race is kind of a question mark i think we can still use that as um how can we be more capable worth their training today and you know if it's an area of our training that an athlete needs to work on then we start getting to work on that and improving that weakness getting it closer to a strength and so um i mean i think it goes back to do we want to just arrive at the race ready or do we want to you know uh see what's available to us today and make the most of our training now um if it if the race gets canceled for some reason you're you're really fit you're really fit you put it it's not the worst thing in the world you know i always thought it's just like okay chucks there i know it's you know not fun but you're in really good shape right now you know and so what what else can we where else can we steer the ship to you know and so this it's not like it all goes to to the wayside and it's not worth it um so there's a lot of creativity being uh that i'm seeing with athletes too um i've had athletes pick up other sports too that they used to engage with back in the day uh you know for instance is the race that might have that was supposed to happen in the spring and got pushed to the fall and so there's been you know a little bit more time to kind of experiment again hone those weaknesses a little bit get them get them up to strengths and and still you know

again put in amazing work so uh yeah i've seen all the good things actually come from that although there is a bit of the anxiety too with it that i'm not saying that that's not there but as far as the training what's trained is if it's going to happen and still you know see what we can do yeah i was a big believer in that almost to you know uh my own detriment last year that the races are still going to happen you're still going to train and the worst thing that happens is you're more fit at the end of the day and i think what we'll start to see this year is the athletes that went through that process and this and that psychology they're ready like they're not pushing the panic button because they did all the work last year right throughout covid without any races and things like that and they don't have to create these big monumental training ramp ups and take all the risks and get hurt and things like that because they never really kind of they never they never really kind of skipped a beat it's the athletes that for whatever reason and we're not going to get into that on this podcast but for whatever reason because of the ambiguity took a leg down in their training now that everything's ramping back up they're having to make up for all that lost time and normally train and that ends up being in a lot of cases just a little bit um it can be just over overwhelming that's where people make mistakes right because they feel that they're behind and they double down on their workload and that just kind of spirals that that all kind of spirals out of control um for the athletes

that are in the former group i want to get your take on this for the athletes that are in the former group that have kind of like done their homework like almost universally maybe 85 or 90 percent of the athletes that i've been working with they're in this phase where they're taking a volume leg up they spent january february march doing a lot of intensity low like lower types of volumes a lot of intervals kind of like laying the intensity foundation it's winter nobody wants to go out and do eight hour runs in the snow and things like that and now that things are starting to clear up the intensity gets uh it doesn't get completely put to the side but it starts to have less of an emphasis and then the volume starts to really ramp up here and i kind of like this for two reasons is one creating this initial volume leg up puts less pressure once the real racing starts to get underway and you have and you're having to maximize volume so if you can imagine the training arc not only in april and may but also uh july and august there are two big volume ramp ups right now and then the volume kind of stays level and then during july and august when a lot of people have big key races around that's like the final that's like the ultimate uh volume leg up but it's really taking advantage of the intensity that they that they've laid down right now i don't know if you have the same experience with the athletes that are kind of in your group john where they're all kind of going through similar cycles at a similar time frame or not yeah i'd say so and again going

back to the athletes that are kind of more process driven you know really into the flow and uh the day-to-day approach again not saying that the the goal the race doesn't matter but they're they're very much so into you know uh getting out the door the next day and putting in the work yeah they're they're they're in a good spot now in the sense that they have a good foundation they've done the uh the high intensity work that for an ultra runner can be maybe a little bit more intimidating maybe not the top of the list of things to do and now that yeah they're sitting there with you know um being able to get into the more specific training with the leg up and not having this kind of pressure feeling like they need to kind of cram for the exam kind of a thing which um can never be a good thing obviously from an injury kind of side of things too feeling like you got to kind of put in the work in a condensed fashion so um yeah i'm also seeing just the the athletes that are realizing the benefit with not having that interruption with more frequent racing the taper the race i'm injured i got to recover from the race um so they're seeing the value and just the consistent work and layering week after week of consistent training and what that can do uh to your fitness um and then yeah getting into the summer months where this the the snow and the high country melts out people are excited to get up into the mountains and that's when you want to be putting in the bigger days so um uh yeah i can definitely relate to that for sure with my athletes you brought up something and i'm gonna ping off of it okay there's this there's this notion out there that because 2020 contained no racing and ultra runners are

notoriously over racing in quotation marks they're over racing that 2021 because there was no racing last year is going to be the year of prs and course records and everybody is going to smash all of all of their goals because they were forced out of this over racing cycle that is very clichely tied to trail and ultra running are we going to see that are we actually this is this is banter total you know total prognosticating on our parts are we going to see all the course records get smashed and all of the you know everybody's prs get smashed and look back at this and go yep we were really over racing before now and now we've learned our lesson is that can actually happen um i don't i don't agree on that entirely but i do think that there'll be some some athletes that have some pent-up energy that they they might kind of let one loose on the day and and and uh surprise themselves but i don't think we're going to see a complete you know 360 180 of uh results but again i think they're going to be athletes that maybe haven't seen their full potential because they maybe have overraced that like whoa you know i can pick a couple races that i'm pretty excited about and just kind of really focus on those and you know if anything i think it'll just be a good experiment for athletes to kind of maybe see the difference between racing maybe a little bit more and then racing less and how they feel yeah i i agree with you i think we're going

to see a mixed bag or we'll see some athletes well some athletes will benefit from the lack of racing but i think that we'll see just as many it'll be about 50 50 right because the racing wasn't there and because the racing serves as a training stimulus in a lot of cases right and they're missing that that those athletes are going to be those those athletes are going to perform worse than they normally would it's this is an impossible comparison but i remember way back when covid started this was like part of the banter that kind of went around and i was personally it's just my opinion once again it's just banter yeah i was like wait wait wait hold on a i don't think that we that we were chronically we as a community chronically over race as much as what has been portrayed b i don't think that everybody does that to the same to the same extent but anyway it's certainly an interesting facet because even with the initial races and canyons is a really good example of that some of the feedback that i'm getting at least on the elite side is that there is a little bit of rust that get needs to get knocked off and some athletes are intentionally trying to knock that rust off with personal projects and and you and i have talked about this before in some of our coaching calls some of these personal projects are like they're 500 better than races in terms of how cool they are and how neat and how impactful they are how impactful they have they have uh been with athletes do you see that as like an element that continues to go forward now that athletes that have been now that that athletes have

experienced this these personal projects that that they've been doing yeah 100 i mean you know i think that the the personal projects the fkts i mean they're they're only going to get more popular you know i think it's kind of getting in a way back to the roots of kind of ultra running kind of getting out creating an adventure having that creativity with it as well you know some athletes are hitting the you know some of the more well-known trails uh you know the pct the the at things like this arizona trail just got a uh uh supported fkt on that um but i think it's it kind of scratches a little bit of that itch of that competitive uh drive that you know all of us athletes have in one way or another and so i think it's a healthy thing i think it's they're definitely here to stay and i think they could provide tremendous growth for the athlete too whether they choose to do it supported and you know have their coach or their family come out and support them or they do it solo and kind of have a little bit of like a vision quest kind of deal there's definitely growth in that for sure so i i totally agree with you and i'm going to tack on to that i still think that we're going to have demand outstrip supply in terms of the the demand for racing and the supply that the community of race directors can actually uh put out there especially especially here in north america and i think because of that because of that inequality between too much demand and not enough supply that can actually catch up we're still going to continue to see athletes take on these really cool things because now there

are more and more blueprints out there for them to actually look at there are more and more people that have done the grand canyon rim to rim to rim to rim the more people that have done the arizona trail there are more people that have done uh the pimi loop you know up in the up in the northeast and so this this the information that's out there not just for the elite athletes but for every everyday athletes as well the amount of information that they can draw from not only logistically but also from an inspirational standpoint just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger so i agree with your sentiment that we're that's going to be here to stay and it's going to be interesting for us as coaches to try to help athletes navigate that help athletes navigate these personal projects that go alongside their racing goals that they that they might have have you had that with your athletes that have had these kind of like two things that are running in parallel like a traditional race and also personal projects oh yeah and that to me coop has been like the real fascinating part and fun to work with athletes on i have an athlete doing the big foot they're actually doing the triple crown of 200 milers and you know a couple races got you know swept underneath them and so we're kind of sitting there oh you know what can we do and a question i like to kind of post my athletes it's like well what's available to you right okay you don't have the race that you signed up for but you know let's take a look around and what can we get into and so he's out in virginia he has the appalachian trail uh in his backyard so we schemed up some fast packing and some pretty fun routes he has

110 mile route on the at through the shenandoah national park and so he's on he's just i mean ecstatic like he is he doesn't even talk about the 200 milers it's all about the you know this uh this this uh adventure on the at and so and that's all again you know how specific can he get for a 200 miler you know he's going to be out uh unsupported he's going to have everything on his back and he's going to be covering 110 miles with quite a bit of elevation gain so he's like a kid in a candy store he cannot wait to get out on the at and that's all leveraging that towards his bigger goals later in the year the the 200 milers so um yeah it's just been really fun to hear the excitement with the athletes too as we kind of talk through the details and just get ready for for those adventures so yeah it's been really cool so i hone in on two two components of these personal projects the first one you just mentioned access right and second one you mentioned without without even realizing it and that's inspiration it's the things that they look at and they can say wow that is really freaking cool i have i've always wanted to do this but i've never you know there's always some excuse but as i mentioned earlier the amount of information that is out there for athletes to draw upon is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger and then that barrier those barriers that they've put up i've never had the time i don't i can't put it together i can't you know conceivably you know wrap my head around it or whatever those barriers are going to seem seem less and less insurmountable

because more people do it and because of the information out there and so that inspiration piece of it is just easier for athletes to grasp onto and if you have those two things access and inspiration that's a really powerful combination for these personal projects so much so that it starts to like almost engross all of their thoughts because it's like they're spending every waking hour like looking at maps and thinking about what food to take and you know the things that they're going to experience along the way it's cool oh 100 yeah i mean again athletes can get really fixated on the events and they obsess over it and again that's not a bad thing but i think when we have these other objectives whether it's a workout or a training camp or a weekend that they get to get out into the mountains like we can get really excited about the little steps along the way i mean talk about creating a sustainable fun process and you know with your training i mean it's just unbelievable that the athletes are just you know yeah just getting this i don't know if it's a second wind but uh uh yeah just being able to get out and see more of their backyard too i've had a lot of athletes that they didn't even know it was there right some of the stuff whoa like i didn't know that was in my backyard that's really cool so there's been a tremendous amount of growth from it and inspiration like you said and i mean just the the tools too um like you know the mapping devices like i've been coaching a lot of athletes i do a lot of off-trail kind of fast-packing stuff myself but getting athletes to think outside the box and not necessarily just follow a known path but to

create their own um and you know and so that at first that might have been a little scary for an athlete to think about and now they're thinking about doing creating their own route that no one's done before so that's that's added kind of a different element a different twist to it too but that's been really fun to coach athletes on as well so our athletes are lucky right not to toot our own horn too much but they have a collaborative partner in this with coaches like you and i right because we we we definitely we've been very conscious about this within our within our coaching group uh throughout covid that we're going to have to help lead athletes more so than we were used to leading them because before we kind of had it easy and i think we are now recognizing this is the races come around they either get drawn or they don't get drawn and then that kind of sets the table but what's happened what's happened since covid is is we've had to play a more active part in curating what that athletic experience is going to be is it a race is a personal project and things like that and that curation is not nobody teaches you that in college or in coaching school or whatever that's something that we've all had to adapt to as coaches i want to break that down a little bit because there's not because the listeners out there that there's going to be a lot of them out there that are that are self-coached and that's totally fine and they're just navigating this themselves but i think that the lessons that we've kind of learned as coaches on how to curate that experience or curate these personal

projects in conjunction with our athletes because they always have to lead the way right i think that that that we can all athletes can kind of learn from that can kind of learn through that process so what have you specifically done with your athletes in that vein to curate those personal projects yeah um you know i think well it depends on what they originally were kind of coming to me for coaching for you know whether it was training for an ultra you know things like this but i mean just taking for example a lot of the athletes i coach at 80 percent or so are training for an ultra marathon they like to be outside they like to be in nature right so we kind of start there you know it's kind of like some of these events that might have gotten postponed or canceled you know what type of landscape was was that race you know was it a mountainous race was it you know um was there some aspect of of the route that really caught your eye right so kind of i just kind of bring those concepts up with the athletes and then i get them to think more about like well where else can we access that you know and so um you know kind of gets the athletes thinking a little bit and again i don't like to just you know give them well hey check this right out i eventually will get there if they can't find it but i like to get them to kind of do their homework a little bit you know and so that's for example that's for the at the shenandoah came about i was just like you know well your 200 milers have quite a bit of climbing they've got some technical footing what do you have out your door and so a week you know maybe it was a couple weeks go by and my athlete brought up the appalachian

trail section so it's more of a process it doesn't happen overnight you know you kind of get the creative juices flowing again the question of like what do you have access to what's available to you kind of it has the athlete maybe scratching their head a little bit um you know the question of like where are some areas that you've always wanted to go visit you know what's there right and so they break out the maps they start looking at different areas that they can go you know visit and see what's available there so it's more about just asking questions with the athletes and kind of sparking a little bit of that curiosity i think curiosity really comes to the surface and i think once an athlete gets curious then there's more digging there's more investigation and then that's where you can get out and go discover right so um so it's been asking questions and just kind of guiding the athlete along the way so yeah i think the athletes that are out there that are trying to figure out what what what this might mean for them they would be they would be well suited to take that curiosity question to heart like what things are you naturally drawn to that come to mind first is it a feature is it a particular trail is it a type of environment really hot really cold really rocky you know whatever and then use that as an initial thread to pull on right you're helping them you're helping them get to that initial thread but it's really interesting that that you mentioned you just kind of provided the first one or three percent and then they kind of run with it right yeah yeah

exactly yeah you know and it can maybe easily kind of jump a little bit further along and say check this place out check this place out you know but i might just pull a few uh uh parks state parks in their area um a section of a trail so i kind of give them a little bit of some clues to kind of look into and it's that process again because again i think the athletes learn a lot from going through the process not just like oh yeah let's just pick this one let's just pick this trail um so i think it's more about that process and going through it that again going back to you know encouraging an athlete to pick an ultra because they there's something really special about it because they're freaking hard and you want to find a race it's the same thing with these big objectives just to and i think if you go through the process you're patient with it you're going to really find that meeting and that value of why you're doing it i love that because the process that you go through on these personal projects can actually be retrofitted back into the races because all too often you've had athletes like this and i've had athletes like this athletes get into races that they just don't want to do they fomo into them because everybody else is doing it or they feel that they have to because it's close to them or because what kind of whatever reason and it ends up it ends up in a lot of cases being kind of a resentful process because they didn't like what they were gonna they didn't like what they were training for in the first place this where you have unlimited choices to choose from

right you can go anywhere and do these things it kind of grounds them into hey these are the things that i'm really interested in that are really cool let me take that process and apply it to the racing scene yeah totally yeah and you know a lot of athletes find that i've had athletes that have gone the adventure route the fkt route and then they go back into the racing and they're they're kind of like the racing's fun and all but uh i kind of like that that adventure that i designed um no offense to the race director but uh i kind of liked what i put together but um but yeah i think it's a it's a perspective shift as well right you know uh for sure and i uh i think the athletes that when they take the time they design the fkt or the adventure um it's a little bit i don't know if it's low key uh but the the the expectations are uh a little bit lower potentially there's a little bit less stress going into it for at least some of the athletes personally that i've coached um so that can just kind of be refreshing for us with this too there's not as much hype around it and start line finish line and all that kind of stuff yeah yeah exactly i totally yeah okay so there's one there's kind of one element of what i think is also going on or maybe we're kind of at the tail end of it that we haven't touched on yet because we're kind of presenting this rosy picture of you know everything's awesome and you know people are smashing these fkt's and the racing season is coming back and

all that's great right i think that that's i think that is absolutely amazing it's been a long time coming but there are athletes that we've worked with where we have really tried hard to turn something around where just the whole litany of circumstances all of these races being canceled athletes go from these really high highs i'm going to do these awesome things to these really low lows right and it's hard to pull athletes kind of like back out of that kind of like back out of the pit but now is the time so what have you been what have you been doing with that kind of cohort of athletes with those athletes that just they just need they need to kind of like turn around their prospects and their thought process on what the future holds for them right yeah no that's um that's a lot of that is happening right now i think it's uh you know that we're in a transition another transition for sure um you know there's a lot of stress um out there why am i doing this right you know uh not second guesses but kind of in a way so i think for me it's just been kind of slowing the athletes down a little bit and kind of having them to kind of pause and just kind of take a look and you know really ask some questions that might not be easy to ask but i think if the athletes ask these questions why am i doing this what does this bring to me that you know brings uh brings about a clear understanding and can help with more of

the the next steps or the direction they want to go right um so instead of kind of getting wrapped up in like you know i'm not enough i haven't raced in a year or you know again a lot of athletes are feeling isolated because they haven't raced and or they a friend actually had the opportunity to go race but theirs got canceled so they're feeling a little isolated so i think it's just having the athletes slow down really can kind of take some time to think about what it is that they really want to do and realize that that's a process that doesn't happen overnight as well and um and realizing that you know yeah we don't need to necessarily you know have an event on the calendar that you're building up to to be enough and to be great i think you know athlete can still you know uh be empowered and better themselves in training it doesn't have to be necessarily tied to an event um so i've seen that quite a bit so it's giving athletes some space slow down some some uh self-reflection if you will and i think that can go a long way i'm totally with you on the slow down part and i'm going to add one piece and that's zoom out because we get i would agree with that the the the the athletes that i see that are having a like a just for whatever reason a really hard time right now getting back into things they think that they have to be immediately better next week or everything has to be solved they have to know their race picture their training picture and things like that next week and when you get them to zoom out sometimes that zoom out lens is two or three years

right you're here now yeah three years ago you were look what you were doing then that provides the context that it's really not all that bad even for the athletes that we mentioned earlier that had a hard time with covid their training really suffered for whatever reason their health care worker and just couldn't spend the time or they just got in a rut or whatever if you zoom that lens out that performance decline is a very very very small bump in a extremely long road that might last for some runners decades right even if it's just a few years they're still way better off right now than they were you know a couple of years ago and that zoom out process provides i think that like the perfect perspective to say you know what i don't have to get it all back in a month or two months and i'm way better off now than i was you know two years ago or something like that so if athletes just slow down and zoom out a little bit that's going to go a long long way 100 you know athletes are in it for the long haul i haven't yet coached an athlete that just wants to be good for a month or two um it's you know most athletes they want to they want to you know be in it you know and running for many many years so i think you're right on that coop it's just kind of take a step back slow down you're not going to lose a ton of fitness even if you decide to take a couple weeks a month off or you know again maybe you engage in a different sport to kind of freshen things up a little bit but i think there's this uh uh i see this kind of need to kind of constantly be trying to kind of do things or do the next big

thing and it's like you don't have to do that if you don't know what you want to do slow down and it'll it'll it'll come it'll come with time with patience so right not every week has to be a PR because yeah yeah exactly we don't have to be you know riding we can't ride the wave non-stop every day right we're gonna have to come come off the wave a little bit and that's a healthy healthy thing to do so well i still think that this is like one of the coolest like coaching transition points that i've ever had in my career because i've nobody's ever really gone through this where we've had kind of our competitive industry like shut down for a whole year and now it's just getting booted back up online it's not all it wants right it's like one of those slow you know commodore 64 boot ups or apple 2e boot ups remember those old computers that took like five or seven minutes to boot up and it seemed like it was forever i think the race is getting booted back up or going through this similar process or it's just gonna take you know it's just gonna take some time for everything to kind of come back online and it's gonna come back online in stages some are gonna be different some are gonna be in a different format some are gonna have certain restrictions around them but we're starting to see we're definitely starting to see indicators that you know that that these things are coming back and like i said earlier it's a really neat it's a really neat transition because there's there's some excitement in the in the air about it so the athletes that kind of like miss the boat can get back on it they

don't have to get back all all on it once and the athletes that have been training the whole time are finally like yes like everything is here and there are more options out there because of all these personal projects and fkt so it's just this cool confluence of all these really you know of all the all these things that have been you know percolating for a long time 100 yeah and like you said that can be potentially overwhelming for some athletes as well just the you know now the options of like creating your own adventure race is now popping up so again i think my advice is you don't have to know exactly what you're going to do right away i can't i think just slow things down ask yourself you know what are some areas of my fitness that you know i want to improve on you know and maybe some kind of objectives goals come about from that too um so yeah and i think for going back to your going back to that sentiment that you don't have to exactly know what's coming up fundamentally training doesn't change all that much and i'll also say the outcome like the improvement because we're all we're trying to improve athletes right that's one of our one of our big goals here even if the order gets switched around a little bit if you back that if you back your lens up and you zoom out to a year-long lens the improvement that you squeak out still doesn't change like all that much as long as you're process oriented week to week month to month you're still working on things you're still you're still going to improve and i've heard that from a lot of athletes that do have this ambiguity

uh or this uncertainty i guess is a better word this uncertainty in the future it's like well what should i be doing right now because i don't know nine months from now exactly how this is all going to unfold and i just tell them listen it's not going to change all that much and even for whatever reason if it did doing things in a slightly different order fundamentally doesn't change the growth prospect that you're going to go through when you look at things over nine months now if something changes in the last three months that's a different that's a different deal especially if it's dramatically right you go from 100 miles to 50k or something like that 100 miles to a marathon that that would have an impact but when we're looking at things that are six months nine months down the line that might get changed a little bit changing up the sequence of things really doesn't have that big of an impact at the end at the end of the day and i feel that that provides a lot of relief for athletes just to get on with it right exactly yeah that space that time um you know depending on where they're at i mean if they're just running easy um you know a lot of the time spent with running is not going to be hard it's going to be generally more comfortable running period so um i think i always tell athletes you know if we're not doing intensity that's okay we can still grow and develop by just getting out the door and still putting in good solid work so um i agree with that as well i think uh yeah it gets a little fuzzy when there's a quick change 50k to now i'm

going to do 100k and it's in a shortish time frame a quick change that's really dramatic right yeah quick change that's you know maybe it's 10 around the edges whatever like but a quick change that's really dramatic like one year they canceled UTMB it went from 100 miles to 80k or 90k or something like that because of the weather that had a big i would say that that's a that's a market impact but that happens very very very rarely and i don't think i don't think that uncertainty right at the end of the day is so big right now that you can't design very effective training that is going to pay off at the end of the day because you and i know as coaches like we can go through case studies they are all remarkably similar to each other we could line up 100 athletes that we all coach within our coaching group that have 100k 100 milers or whatever in august and september they're going to overlap like a term like a tremendous amount and that's not just because we're all in the same coaching group but that's because we're that's because the the event demands are so very similar once you get into these longer distances that the event demands kind of take care of the training architecture by themselves right yeah plus or minus some weeks maybe a month but yeah that's that's kind of pushing it so it's very very small time frame we're talking about it's not years exactly exactly exactly nor is it dramatic

nor would you go from like 20 hours a week to 10 hours a week right you're cutting your volume in half because of something it doesn't it doesn't change fundamentally that much i mean if you're if an athlete changes like if they're going from like a mountainous ultra to like a track event that that would shift a little bit but that's not happening no no that's not happening i mean typically it's like one trail to the next or like in canyons they add a couple thousand feet or right the course gets cut off short or there's an aid station or something like that and i think the point that we're trying to make is that even even in these types of situations you have to realize in your training right now it doesn't fundamentally change a whole lot so if you stay the course you're still going to improve and even in the absolute worst case situation the rug totally gets pulled out from underneath you and the race doesn't happen you're still fitter than than you were before and that is not a bad thing not a bad thing at all no and not a bad thing for just a year you know again zooming out and the following year next you know i have athletes that yeah i mean to be honest i have had some athletes that you know they've kind of said you know what there's nothing that i can that i'm really that excited about that i want to really train for in 2021 and we're looking into 2022 right and so they have that much more time to because they are seeing the benefit in order of consistent work without the interruption you know and so

they're like you know what's wrong with that what can we do with another year of this type of work so that's interesting because i i actually hadn't put a whole lot of thought into this before because of the lack of racing and the work is uninterrupted you have more guideposts to go from that the training is effective sometimes the racing actually interferes with all those guideposts because we don't yeah we don't have the luxury of like throwing people in a physiology lab every three months and like very precisely determining are they better are they not a lot of times we're using the training normalized graded pace and you know how they feel on the training and you know maybe they're doing time trials or they're doing intervals around a certain you know loop or whatever where they know yes where they know week to week month to month kind of where they're standing that picture is hard to paint and it's harder to paint when you have races kind of interrupting it but because of this continuous nature of training and that there's more there there are more of these guideposts you actually can see the improvement in training and then it's almost you don't have to race right because a lot of people use races to prove that their training is working right yeah when you have when you should have the training itself yeah oh exactly yeah that's been fun to see um awesome man all right so any final words of wisdom for the athletes that are coming back into racing right now that we can leave people with yeah i think you know as athletes start to get back into

you know if the race has popped back on the calendar um or if it's gotten kind of pushed to the fall which has been a common theme right after their race is getting kind of i don't know if i want to say kick down the road but yeah um is you know again i go back to it's going to happen and it's happening to not just you but it's you know the the cancellations the the postponements is it's very much so still 2021 and that's okay um it's it's not just you there's other athletes that are having races that are getting kind of thrown thrown around there's other athletes that don't know what they're going to do you know and i think that can be a hard spot to be in because it's like you know i'm used to racing three times a year and i haven't raced at all and am i enough like oh my god i gotta prove myself and i think the proof can be in just like again what i said is about going out and discovering and getting getting creative with the approach to the process of training um and not just necessarily feeling like it needs to be attached to an event a month two months away it can be right here right now what can i do with uh with my training today and i think that can be a very powerful way for athletes to go into another transition so that's awesome you got a lot of tools right here right now that are free and easily accessible all at your disposal very wise sports man um thanks man thanks for coming on the podcast today your athletes are better off having you as a

coach john i've always had a ton of a ton of respect for you appreciate it coo thanks for having me on yeah man absolutely oh by the way what's on your calendar what's on my calendar um people want to know this um i you know i think last year i might have brought it up with the group but uh did the bob marshall wilderness open with actually another friend of mine i chantelle's coaching uh brandon who i think was on the podcast at some point yeah uh so we're gonna head back out into the bob marshall wilderness and that's a traverse it's about 120 miles uh a lot of it's off trail navigating through grizz grizz country lots of wildlife out there um so that that's kind of a fun adventure that's coming up in about four weeks i'm gonna give a go actually on the long trail which i've been wanting to do for quite some time so that's kind of a will be kind of a big uh big project for me and that's going to be in july so i'm going to do that unsupported uh starting on the northern uh terminus and heading south down to massachusetts so that's going to be yeah the long trail for the listeners out there that don't realize what it is it goes the length of vermont from north to south or south to north john's going to go north north to south i've had an athlete that's gone out there for the last few years it is really hard it is a really especially the northern part is a very hard very technical trail it gets a little easier once you link up with the appalachian trail but uh yeah it's freaking it's a it's a sweet trail yeah yeah so i'm really excited about that something i've been wanting to do for many

years and then i'll do the rut at the end of the year but i'm excited also to announce that i won't be doing the bear 100 this year uh which i'm actually really thrilled about that how many times have you done the bear this is why this is uh not nine times so nine nine starts i say nine starts i finished it uh seven times uh so this would have been my 10th year but yeah i'm just excited to shake it up and i have a lot of athletes that go out because they know that i've raced it so many years so i have i think six athletes that are signed up for this year again wow so i'm excited to be on the other side and get back and crew and and uh yeah just help out at the race this year so awesome john you're gonna have a good one man you're gonna have fun on the long trail yeah awesome all right man we'll see you yeah man all right trail and ultra runners there you go there you have it that was really fun thank you to john for coming on the podcast today like i said john is one of the coaches that i have the most amount of respect for i get to see his athletes at all these races a lot of them uh that we mentioned on the podcast and they have the best things to say about john and you can see why on this particular podcast appreciate the heck out of everybody listening today and as always we will see you out on the trails you