200 Mile Strategy with Coaches Corrine Malcolm, AJW and Duncan Callahan | Koopcast Episode 89

trail and ultra runners what is going on what's happening welcome to another episode of the KoopCast after a two-week hiatus yes i'm back from the pacific crest trail yes i'm back recording podcasts i tried to bank as many of them as possible before i left for that expedition but i'm only one person and i could only get so much content churned out thank you guys for being really patient i am glad to be back home and back in the studio and recording podcasts again while that experience was an epic one i'm a firm believer of just getting right back to the grindstone and so here we are with another episode of the KoopCast on this episode we had a round table with our coaches and is all about 200 mile race strategy that season is coming upon us right now where a lot of these 200 mile events are in the very near future and so i wanted to get three of our crack coaches on the case in andy jones wilkins duncan callahan and corinne malcolm and myself to talk about how we set up sleep strategies nutrition strategies and pacing strategies for our athletes that are participating in these events if you are participating in one of these 200 mile events listen up or if you're thinking about participating in one of these events listen up it is full of a

lot of knowledge and a lot of things that you will hear from participants in these races is this is what i'm trying but we really don't know the formula we try to distill it down to the best best practices that we are implementing with our athletes across all of those areas this conversation is great it'll apply to not only people that are doing 200s but also i think the people that are doing particularly long mountainous hundreds will also get something out of this conversation much thanks to corinne ajw and duncan for coming on this podcast today so here it is i'm going to get right out of the way here's my conversation all about how to execute a 200 mile race plan we've all got athletes doing various 200 mile events some of them are doing the triple crown some of them are doing singular ones some of them are uh domestic i have an athlete that's doing tour de gant so what we're going to try to do is like alchemize all of the strategies for this big umbrella of 200 mile events realizing that they are all in fact different right bigfoot is a markedly different event as compared to tour de gant so just like we kind of use different strategies for 100 milers like hard rock versus western states versus javelina might have a lot of different strategies these 200 milers are going to have slightly different strategies as well but we're going to do our best to try to like i said just kind of alchemize it all together um so in our round

robin format that we're going to use here corinne you're going to get to start because it's ladies first always ladies first try to paint a broad picture of what are the major differences with 200 mile races as an athlete would see or experience them because most athletes are looking at this from the lens of okay i've done a 50 or i've done 100 most athletes are not jumping into the 200 mile distance as their first ultra running foray there might be some of those people out there very but very few what are the major differences from the athlete's perspective that they're going to see during the race itself i mean there's a lot of obvious things there right there's the the time on feet there's the the multiple nights for a lot of athletes that's going to be a big a big thing they've got multiple nights that they're going through um you know more more than two nights um as opposed to maybe doing 100 um i think nutrition becomes a major factor because you've got to eat for so long although the intensity is a lot lower so maybe that's maybe they surprise themselves and actually can eat a lot more and a lot of different foods than they than they typically do and maybe a shorter event so i think it's it's honestly it comes down to time which makes sense right you're making a you're doubling or tripling your distance that you've ever covered so logically you know it's going to take a lot longer to get from point a to point b um so i feel like those anything that physiologically ties into those kind of components of the the sleeping the eating and the needing to cover that much ground over x number

of days those are all of a sudden going to be you know how are we targeting those components of each of those races duncan how do you see it oh i guess you know not to be too general but uh doing a tuner miler is six to ten days off from work depending on where you live in the country in relation to your event six to ten days off from work from family life and i think that's a really big consideration so the thing i'm working with on a lot of athletes is you know banking as much credibility at home and as much credibility at work as possible going in and then just knowing you're going to have to pick up the slack on the back end i think that's a a really important distinction probably i'm overblown it thinking about it in terms of myself but you know i think that's uh important and one thing i remember when i got into the sport uh you know just a you know 100 mile is twice the distance but three times the duration than a 50 mile all right i mean the same thing is true for a 200 it's twice the distance than 100 but it's probably three times the duration i think that's some pretty good back of the napkin rough math so i think that ties in exactly what corinne was saying that you know anything that that goes great during 100 mile could be amplified over 200 anything goes wrong during 100 mile could be way amplified in 200 and you know i got some other thoughts on that too when we talk pacing and whatnot but i think those are just some generalizations to start i love the fact that right off the bat you're like we need you need to bank a lot of favors you need whatever like whatever you know brownie points that you can pull you're going to

cash in all of those chips and then still go into the brownie point debt after the fact and that's not only with work right but it's also with your crew and your pacers and your family and your spouse and things like that like i personally i had to pull out a lot of brownie points to get liz to crew me for two to g on because she had to basically she basically had to she had to burn all of her pto days just for this one event not all of them most of them for this one event and that's not a that's not a light ask for almost anybody super holistic too that's a very holistic approach right it's like physiology is where i go and duncan's like holistically this is a big ask for someone for their family for their employer i like i really like that immediate take on it i think is is a critical distinction yeah again i can see people coming from out of state to do leadville they can leave thursday morning from ohio be back sunday night in ohio if they're going to bigfoot or something you know it's a it's a sunday to tuesday or a sunday through when i mean it's it's seven to ten days commitment door to door so it's a big it's a big ask so okay andy you get to fill in any gaps that's a hard ask riffing off both of those i i think i remember first when i was first jumping from a 50 to 100 and somebody told me you know you're going to have four times the problems in 100 that you have in the 50 so you figure going from 100 to a 200 you're gonna have about eight times the problems so you really have to get your head prepared for lots of problems out there and uh

and whether they whether they're nutrition problems body problems uh the things going wrong missing your crew your drop bag getting lost all of those things get magnified and i think you need to be prepared for so many more problems in a 200 than in a 100 but it's it's more but it's also the ones that you experience are amplified because of the fatigue and the duration out there so you get a blister and 100 mile you can kind of like suck it up and just run with it for 20 miles you get a blister at the same point at 200 miler you have 120 miles to run with it so that gets worse if you don't treat it and same thing with nutrition and on and on and on and on so i'll ping off of that and say yes athletes need to learn to adapt better in 200 milers realizing that there are going to be more problems and those problems are typically amplified because of the duration and the fatigue is so much bigger than to than what they've experienced but i would i would add to that that that makes it all the less likely that you should wing it you know with especially with gear you know with your poles with your pack with the size bladder you have like you have to geek out a little bit more because if you just wing it same thing in 100 if you just wing it and oh well i can make it through the last 20 miles with my handheld broken or whatever you can't do that in a 200 and so it it's just the whole notion of everything being magnified i think is really important for an athlete to think about ahead of time

you know what where that really comes through actually is our lights i see more people that kind of they they they make a mistake at the 100 mile distance like they don't have good lighting they don't realize that their headlamp was only going to last six hours or whatever they can get away with that for a hundred mile race because you know they might have an aid station where they can swap headlamps out or they happen to bum one from somebody else you can't like that's a really big penalty in a 200 mile race where not only are you going through multiple nights but you're going through multiple full nights and in addition to that the aid stations are typically further apart so you can't get rescued if you have one of those lighting lighting failures and that's a big one i mean i can remember people who are watching the youtube video this will will see this but you will see a lot of people use their iphones out there as kind of like the final hail mary oh shit you know i've got to use this because you know i don't know how long my batteries actually last so to andy's point to geek out know how long your batteries last okay so you guys already with this overarching you know statement we've already kind of pinged off the outline that we have which we're going to go through pacing strategy nutrition strategy we're going to save the best for last so let's try to blow through the first two which is the sleep strategy which is the one that everybody wants to know about right that's the one so we're going to save that for the end it'll be like the apex of the whole the whole podcast so we touched on this a little bit andy you get to go first how do you set up the pacing strategy

for athletes that are doing these 200 milers particular ones that are like just getting into it from the 100 mile distance well i i most of all want them to pay attention well starting to pay attention to the course itself to think through what you know as you were mentioning the distance between the aid stations the terrain get a real sense of what that would be and then think through where their strengths and weaknesses are downhills uphills single track gravel road that kind of thing and then just pull it way back you know i i think there's as you all know there's so much more hiking in these things there's so much more stopping to take care of yourself there's so much longer to regroup in the aid stations so i would start with just sort of let's sit down and do a back of the envelope what's your time goal that sort of thing and then really just step it back in terms of what kind of pace per mile are you comfortable hiking comfortable taking in calories at the same time and then even a little bit of mimic mimicking that in training but that's really difficult for most people to do uh it's just like a lot of races though they've got to keep a lid on it in the first part and then make sure they're just focused on when they get tired when they get worn out that they're able to have some sort of goal on where when they want to get to where they want to get to so it's really like a three-part pacing strategy big picture where do they want to be at the end how they want to go from aid station to aid station and then how they want to take advantage of their strengths and

their weaknesses as they're managing the course what one of the things that athletes will routinely do is they use they use like they're kind of a cohort of people to determine where they are so they're going to a new race they go to ultra sign up they're like okay i have a 82.7 ultra sign up score whatever it is these people have done this race before with about that same ultra sign up score i'm going to base my where do i want to be off of off of them but i've always felt that with these types of races the data set's really thin you know because they're newer that's a lot more it's the the results are a lot more chaotic right it's not as consistent because you have these big like failure points you have somebody who's out there and all of a sudden they sleep for six hours you know that puts a big dent in you know whatever timing is so like very briefly like how would how do you work through that aspect of trying to paint the broadest brush of am i going to finish on tuesday or am i going to finish on wednesday right because that's that's the scale that you're talking about right or the precision that you're talking about you're trying to figure out what day you're going to finish on first i look at similar terrain events in terms of that they've done in terms of 100 miler are they a 20 hour 100 mile finisher are they going to a similar terrain 200 it's going to again it's a 3x it's going to be 60 hours or 65 hours in that ballpark are they a 30 hour finisher on a similar terrain course for 100 we're looking at 90 hours 90 hours plus over a course of 200

in terms of just getting that initial ballpark and motion of course that's the last time too that includes four five six eight ten hours of sleep um you know along those lines and that's i think the hardest thing to entertain is like yeah your moving time is going to be your pace during your moving time is actually going to be you know potentially feel a little strenuous your your elapsed pace is going to look a little weak because you're factoring in so much stop time i think that's a distinction that needs to be made so duncan you're taking like a mathematical approach to it almost versus a cohort approach that i mentioned earlier at least to get a initial framework and then yeah then maybe looking at the cohort i think there is some intelligence to that aspect so long as you're not getting too wrapped up in it but i think you've got to you got to have the high level approach it's okay what's my ballpark am i gonna like should i plan for 60 hours or should i plan for 100 right and that's the tone in on that you know that's such a big rate i mean i think that's kind of that kind of speaks to once again the the newness or like the novelty of these types of races that you have to start with such a broad end point if somebody's doing western states they know if they're a 24 or 25 hour finisher they know if they're scraping all the cutoffs 29 to 30 hours i mean typically in those 100 miles you can narrow it down to about an hour here we're trying to narrow it down to a day right it's not even proportional right we're narrowing it down to a day so crib we're going to move on to you like what do you have to say about this whole pacing proposition how should

athletes when they're looking at this which they're all doing right now how should they initially try to set it up so i think it's i think it's hard i think it's really easy to say i want to run this time and i think we fall into that same trap in um shorter distance racing as well right like i want like you get really focused on a time and so honestly one of the biggest things i've done with athletes who are inexperienced at the 200 mile distance i'm fortunate all my athletes that were in like a second or third season of 200s now which is really exciting um because we can narrow it in based off past experiences but i send them out like it one to test gear but we talked about testing gear right how important that is so all of my athletes have been on big fast packing missions this year and i know this is kind of tangential but i think it's really i think it allows them to settle into how how fast can i move over this terrain how efficient am i with my gear how efficient am i with my sleep setup how comfortable do i feel taking a trail nap versus you know getting into an aid station using a big sleep center and we're going to talk about that more later but i think that these big fast packing missions like i've got an athlete heading out on the wonderland trail just do it in three days pretty that's pretty relaxed it's very chill for her um she can definitely i think do it sub 24 in one push um but she's going to do it over three days just to like be out there and spend a lot of time on her feet um and break it into 30 mile sections but before her first 200 mile experiences we also sent her out on big backpacking fast packing missions as well to just dial in that pace that feel like what can i maintain all day what is my is this a 40 mile day is this a 60 mile day what does that

feel like on my feet um and i think when they can reign in that sense you know it's it's that is easier to feel than to say walk early and often right like you could just tell them that for pacing walk walk early and often but by having them go experience something different than a race that is multi-day that's self-sufficient um i think allows athletes to dial in effort and then we can correspond to that in a way we can extrapolate that out to what we think their pace might be and what the put the put some of the boundaries on the fast packing mission in terms of duration and or mileage just so everybody can kind of get kind of a context of it yeah so i've had them do anything from just an overnight so two days um and that might be 60 to 75 miles in two days um i had an athlete do section j of the washington pct um as a fast pack so he did kind of got a little bit of a late start went really late into the night slept for four hours and then finished it the next day um i also had an athlete who was supposed to go to big secchi which is 155 miles in the sierra um and he and he's got a lot of experience fast packing and so they were going to do 155 miles over seven days um or six days and so that i think is you know maybe the extreme for someone prepping for a 200 because that's a really big load but it happens to be something that he really enjoys doing so i think that you know it could be anywhere from that one night maybe pushing 70 75 miles in you know in two days or it

could be you know you could break that out to to 90 to 100 miles over a couple like over three days so obviously we could we could equate that to time too but i think it's easier to send athletes out on a route um when it comes to figuring out those fast packing and like a forte or like going out doing that are those fast packing trips for their at least when they're on their feet moving are they slower faster or the same speed than they're locomoting during the 200 mile race i think it depends on how long they're out there for okay so it could be either you could do it in either in any one of those three situations they could definitely be pushed faster than what they'll do over the 200 mile race i think when my athlete did his section j section it was faster right than what he covered for like cocodona for example um but i think you know it could also be slower if you know you're doing moab 240 and the fast pack that you're doing on is you know in the cascades and you're not moving that fast so that's specificity right there for sure yeah yeah and i wanted to i wanted to before people go out and say oh well i'm going to do this three-day fast packing trip and it's going to be equivalent or equal to what i think i'm what i think my moving speed is going to be on whatever they need to think through is the terrain similar how much does the fast pack slow me down compared to what my race kit is like all those things need to kind of be taken into consideration i still think that in any way you can drive it it's like plus or minus 15 whenever i've seen any of those like it's not that which which on

the scale of we're trying to figure out what day they're finishing on right let's go back to that that gets you to what day are you going to finish on it might not get to or is it the morning or the afternoon of whatever day but it'll get you at least what day are you going to finish on you know i'll just highlight there the importance of a training camp i think for a 200 mile prep phase um you know i have three athletes getting ready for bigfoot and they just you know they're they're fast runners too i mean these are like three hour type marathoners their normal daily run and 7 10 pace on flat ground and so they're totally different than bigfoot and so uh the training camp that they put together uh three of them went together um was a bunch of uh running and hiking between 18 and 23 minute pace you know which is kind of what they're on similar terrain vertical uh probably a little rockier it was in that priest area ajw i'm sure you've been there but um uh but anyway just the importance of training camp to really try to dial in some pace if terrain is an issue for you in your day-to-day running or week-to-week running so we're going to move on to our next topic and because and i think this is a good segue to it duncan so we'll kind of start with you because one of these one of the things that these training camps are good for is to dial in your nutrition which is once again something that's unique and it gets exponentially more unique as the duration kind of goes up we we all know the runners at the 100 mile distance that can survive off of gels and i always

bring up carl melzer because he's the best example of this he showed us 12 red bull exactly right he'd show up to the hard rock 100 with a 48 pack of vanilla gels and that was his nutrition and he could do it and he was really he was really successful at it there might be a 200 miler out there that has that strategy they show up with three to use your x to use your multiplier duncan instead of two it's three three 48 packs of gels and blows through those throughout the 200 mile race i doubt it but needless to say it's a little bit more it's it's more complicated so duncan how how are you having your athletes kind of incorporate their nutrition program into these camps and what does that look like yeah well i'd say you know first of all you the burn one thing to be aware of is your burn rate is lower right your intensity is lower your burn rate is lower and so if if your normal burn rate is 500 to 800 calories in an hour it might be 400 to 600 in a 200 uh something along those lines but also your ability to consume increases because the intensity is lower so i think that gap uh between you know the under fueled gap shrinks in a 200 if you're doing it right um i definitely am advising athletes on a more real food or whole food diet um i think you can get into trouble with that with high fiber right but a little more protein a little more fat a little more carbs something a little more savory potentially so athletes have been practicing with that on the trail the rice ball concoction is is a

famous one obviously uh and then the soup concept or the noodle concepts uh at self-built aid stations during the training camp i think that's really important uh so again so acknowledging burn rates lower acknowledging your ability to consume is higher and then really putting up an emphasis on more real food or more whole food uh i think is important and there's you know quite a few other distinctions all that you know hdw or corinne answer next but i mean there's you know there's quite a few other things to consider as well corinne you want to jump in on that yeah i think that most of the athletes that i've had who have done these 200 plus mile races because they are they're really 200 plus right we're talking about 240 we're talking about you know it gets it gets a little insane um and until last year i had no experience running over 100 miles and so i was you know guiding these athletes with you know the knowledge and using their experience and and it took a lot of time i think for me to it it took you know i think every time that you step up in distance personally as a coach you also kind of had this this new insight to bring into things with your athletes as well which i i just find i find valuable growing as a coach in that way um but so what i found with athletes too is that i feel like in a normal 100 and a normal um a normal 50 you know you're carrying a lot of your nutrition on you you're you're eating every 30 minutes it's it seems very you know rigorous and i find that most of my athletes in these 200s you know like lean towards they're going to come into a life station and aid station and they're going to eat more in that chunk of time because they're getting

their quesadillas their burritos their their their burgers their whatever whatever the aid station is throwing together and so they you know you're gonna they kind of have this influx of calories and because you're burning lower you're in you're often not taking in more than carbohydrates right you're taking in fat and protein and that i think sustains you for longer as well so you can get away with not having to be like i need to eat this thing every 30 minutes obviously encouraging athletes that you need to carry food with you because it is a long ways between aid stations but you don't i think have to be as in my in my experience and experience with these athletes you don't have to be as rigorous of like i need to take in 100 calories every 30 minutes you can get away with like i just ate a burrito so i'm good for 90 minutes or two hours and then i'm going to eat again and you're going to take something with you from the aid but you don't have to you know be pulling out gels and chews you know you can you know get in and get your get your ramen get your instant mashed potatoes get your quesadillas um take some of that in your pockets to go but it's not as maybe it's not as rigorous in a way to you know i i like i like this idea of being like i'm gonna have my big snack my meal in a lot of ways take some food with me on the road so that i can top up because it's 20 miles it's like it's the next aid station um but not you know needing to be you know eating every 30 minutes in this in these increments i think is is very different from a 50 and 100 to the 200 plus mile distance so this like uh strategy that we've colloquialized into nibble nibble sip sip might not be as appropriate as the duration goes up because as duncan mentioned you have

the ability to tolerate more and also tolerate more real stuff you don't need to nibble nibble sip sip in order to reduce the incidence of gastrointestinal distress you can eat and wait and eat and wait and eat and wait that's what it seems like if it's cocodona you had to drink a bunch because it was really hot day one this year for cocodona and their inaugural event but um you know carrying lots of fluids on them and actually i had an athlete who was with jameel at an aid station and or had heard that jameel was going to carry you know an extra something for this one section he's like jameel's carrying extra water for this section i'm carrying twice the amount of extra water for this section and it it paid off but i think you know if you stay hydrated as well you're gonna your stomach will continue to work well for you right and so i think it's you know you maybe you're you're sip sipping your way between aid stations but you your stomach will tolerate these bigger boluses of food just because the total intensity and total stress on your body for most of the pack most of the field um unless you're like way sub 60 hours maybe um you can get away with eating these bigger these more substantial meals in a lot of ways okay andy so the million dollar question for you is is this does this increase the number of oatmeal cream pies and or puking or decrease the number of oatmeal cream pies and puking or is it a combination of increase and decrease i think i don't know i i haven't been around 200s a lot but i think the puking is a little bit lower

actually for for some of these reasons the and i've found that people coming to the sport from like the backpacking and mountaineering background really are are are already ready for this take take the classic climb up rainier right where they go up to muir camp and they hang out and they sleep for like whatever four or five hours and they wake up at midnight they take a huge amount of food and they summit it and then they turn around and go all the way back down that's kind of a lot of what you're doing just multiple times in these 200s so take borrowing or take a backpack trip you're on a big backpack trip and you you hike for 13 miles and you stop for 45 minutes and you eat a ton of food your heart rate goes way down you sit down maybe you lay down and then you get back up and now you got to be used to you know get ready to that first mile after you've had this huge gut bomb is going to be painful but the more you do that the more you're accustomed to it um so i i would urge my athletes to to sort of lay low on the oatmeal cream pies until maybe until the last day save it for the treat at the end uh i i i'm glad this got brought up nobody nobody studied this scientifically but just through observation i think that the however you slice and dice it puking per mile puking per participant puking per hour is markedly not just a little bit markedly lower at 200 mile distance compared to other ultra ultra ultra marathon distances and it's

because as duncan led with the intensity so much lower you can tolerate more food stuff it's not this toxic combination of intensity management with calorie management at the same time because the duration is so long that the intensity is so low that you've got more opportunity to just to kind of either screw it up or take in real foods or just slow down if you get queasy right that's the that's actually people's biggest problem at faster ultra marathons is they're trying to push the envelope so much on both the nutrition and the pacing front simultaneously which kind of creates this like toxic combination of that that ultimately results in some gi distress so you still did so we solved the we solved the riddle of more oatmeal cream pies later and less puking let's let's take let's take a crack at the thing that people are like this is probably the most talked about thing in these 200 milers is because you have to sleep with exception for the winners and the people who set the course records and things like that almost everybody else the rest the 90 percent of the field they have to sleep at some point and that sleep can come in a combination of using the sleep stations and just fully kind of doing a reset it can you can use dirt naps you can use your crew vehicles if the rules allow for it or any combination of this and i and i remember this experience um in the days before trade is yacht a couple of years ago when i did it is i was just asking

some of the more seasoned participants what their strategy was for this and it could not have been on more polarizing like ends of the spectrum both in terms of when but also where you should sleep at the high alpine refugios after you've done a long climb no you you should sleep at the life bases down low after you've done a long descent you should sleep in the morning you should sleep at night you just sleep for two hours you should sleep for 20 minutes there was no there was zero consensus amongst all of that and i think that that that that story kind of aligns with other people's anecdotal tales of how to actually manage this and i don't i don't know if anybody's actually kind of like figured this out or not a lot of times it takes care of itself because they just go so long and then have to pass out in the dirt and then they wake up and they kind of do it again but let's start to to to kind of touch up let's start to touch on that and maybe we can kind of like peel back the curtain for what we think our athletes are going to go through and then if we've personally experienced this how we've kind of we've kind of managed it andy we're going to start with you on this one what do you have to say to this like sleep riddle that ultimately needs to get solved for these athletes it's definitely the great mystery right of these 200s it's kind of like what nutrition was in hundreds 20 years ago before we started figuring it out um i've i've actually tried we had i think i had seven 200 milers all at once uh two

years ago and uh and they were all over the map with sleeping there was some that would do the strategy of run and you're what you just said coop run as long as you can until you fall asleep in the dirt and then each time you fall asleep in the dirt is going to be a little bit closer to the finish line and then eventually you'll just make it through i had a couple of those and then i had the oh i'm gonna when it gets dark i'm gonna go to sleep i'm gonna set an alarm i'm gonna get up i'm gonna then they get there they have trouble falling asleep they feel like they're wasting time they get up and they start running again and they get sleepy an hour later and they fall asleep in the dirt um i do think there's no substitute to experience uh you know i'm currently coaching an athlete who's finished uh one 200 mile race and it was four years ago uh he had had difficulty uh with with uh staying awake and then he all of a sudden kind of got a whatever you'd call it a fourth wind on the third daylight day and just raced raced daylight on the third day and got it in before dark so i would say if they don't have experience doing it or if they have negative experience doing it coming up with some plan that you think might work but most of all being ready to adapt to that plan if you say i'm going to go to sleep at 70 miles and you're not sleepy i talked to don freeman about this who did the triple crown in 2018 he had this whole plan to sleep when he got to a certain point he wasn't tired

he went 20 more miles he was tired then and he went and fell asleep then i think the big question is and this is so personal how long do you need to sleep for are you could you get away with 45 minutes do you need two hours uh how are you going to manage you know coming up from that sleep and getting going again so i don't i i'm going to sit here and say i don't know the answer to that question how long do people need uh but i think there have been enough of these now that i think it was duncan earlier said you know if you're going to take 90 hours to do this thing you're probably going to have an accumulated 10 to 12 to 15 hours of downtime during that time you the best way to spend that is sleeping that's a good non-answer andy i'm not going to let you get away with that we're going to come back to a little bit so duncan we've used that we've used what you kind of started out with there's going to be a lot of downtime in this how how do you how do you structure it for the athletes that are preparing for it for these well i think you know so could you put out an article recently that i think offers a good framework um and then uh and i'll also highlight obviously you know if you're a race winner or competing for the win you're 60 hours or less or something the answer is probably a little different i don't know what the median time in these 200s is but what 84 hours sure yeah 88 or something okay and so we're talking 72 to 100 hours and so how i've kind of framed this out in my mind again not 100 sure is right or right for everyone is like that 36 hours so you get through 36 hours

essentially without sleeping and then you look for a you look for sleep maybe that's one and a half hours maybe that's four hours depending on who you are but that is a sleep window and then another 12 to 16 hours after that um you have a smaller sleep window one to two hours and then from there uh depending on your goal it could be one more real good sleep window two plus hours four hours assuming you're sleeping or you just after your second sleep window you revert to sleeping in the dirt as best you can i know it's not for everyone but as you get to finish that so that's one strategy one thing that i've brought up with several athletes i don't have an answer but i think it's a consideration is your caffeine consumption and how that impacts your sleep schedule during the race you know i would assume there's been some impact i don't know if you've got you you all have experienced that yourselves karen and the trt or you know whatever it is um but that might be a point of consideration and then the last thing i'll bring up is do you sleep on the trail or do you sleep in the aid station are guaranteed a quiet aid station sleep station ear plugs uh uh eye covering for for blackout those are some solutions i think people need to be prepared to use while they're on the trail it's so let me try to encapsulate that a little bit you're almost like anchoring the first one at a specific time so for everybody but the leaders we're talking about 90 percent of the rest of the pack

that might take 72 hours plus we'll put that in a box right 72 to 100 hours irrespective of that where you are 72 82 100 hours whatever it is that first sleeps time is anchored somewhere past 36 hours yeah it might be exactly and then it's more opportunistic i guess is the the best way to kind of summarize that right where there's some dirt or sleep station or some kind of combination of those but the the point is is that first one is kind of anchored i think that's an important thing i think it's at least important for the planning going in like i have a plan and now i need to be adaptable like you're saying about don ajw and i might go 20 more miles but i think at least to have a plan uh gives you some reassurance and then you can always adapt which i know we talk about all the time adaptability so corinne what do you have to say about this because you've personally you've kind of been at that razor's edge right of do i need to sleep or do i need not to yeah so i was gonna say once again i think it's like the sub 60 hour camp versus the everyone else camp um for me personally so i did taharim trail in just under 45 hours and finished around 2 a.m and i didn't feel tired i never felt like i needed a nap but i got in the car and immediately fell asleep um so i will say that like if i had been continuing on or if i had been if that had been a 200 mile race i i probably would

have had a trail nap coming up for sure and i think that for athletes doing these 200 plus mile races just like duncan said anchoring that first sleep approximately you know if you say you start at 6 a.m one day you go through the first night you go all the way through the first night you're gonna be fine you're gonna get sleepies in the morning but you're gonna you know the sun's gonna come up and you're gonna feel great um you're gonna push that the next day and then i think that there is some science about and i think this goes back to like our natural circadian rhythm a little bit um is that if you if you anchor that first sleep to be in the early hours of the morning before the sun comes up of that second night so that when you wake up you're waking up with the sunrise because that's going to help kick you back into action um feel a little bit less groggy hopefully it'll feel like more substantial sleep than maybe the two to four hours that you actually were on the ground for and then from there i think being opportunistic is really the name of the game it gets a little bit harder um excuse me with athletes in some of these races where weather might be a big factor and where trail naps become a little bit more dangerous um versus um using those using those life stations to sleep at and so i've had athletes in the past where it's like they've been opportunistic but man we've come up with so many different sleep bags to send them to those life stations so that they could sleep there if they needed to because it was so much safer for them to sleep there and some warm gear and have that warm gear at those places because you can you get to make a bag that you know is going to this is going to this life station um particularly athletes who maybe don't

have big crews um that has been really important um from a safety standpoint moab 240 can be really cold in the evening it's you know it's it's in october um it can snow overnight it can be hot during the day those are hard conditions to sleep in and so um you got to kind of play with that as well of having stuff you need so that you could sleep in a life station when you get there um while still you know having a good bivy and stuff so that you can safely take a trail nap um when you might be in more inclement weather um and i just i love you know then you got the people to the front who are doing the 15 second trail naps or as coop as you told me about the tour where runners are literally just putting their heads in their poles and when they fall off their poles they get going again um or putting their poles in the right direction so you know which way you're headed when you get up again which is super important and so um there's different strategies for everyone but i think the key is that most people are going to anchor their first their first sleep um kind of late into night two and then from there be more opportunistic either using a combination of trail maps um and trail of trail maps with life station sleeps um depending on weather and your personal setup and how comfortable you are falling asleep in those places yeah i remember somebody telling me that whenever i'm going to anonymize this as much as possible whenever he or she would take a trail nap they would put a piece of gear from their pack where they needed to go they would like literally like throw it down the trail 10 or 20 feet peel off and then take a nap so that they knew the right direction to go once they

once they woke up that's i mean you don't think about that when you're like oh i'm gonna take you know my grilled cheese sandwich at mile 70 where like everything kind of works out perfectly on paper you don't think about you wake up you're so disoriented it's like which way do i go down the trail you pull out gaia or whatever you're using and sometimes that's not that's not you know foolproof they would just literally throw a piece of gear down the trail and okay i'm gonna go and grab that whenever whenever i wake up here here's how i set it up i start out with going back to what we talked about very the very first what ballpark time frame are you in to finish then are the zero miles per hour material and i answered those two questions first and that has it's a little bit to do with okay are you trying to make the cutoffs do you have a particular time goal and on and on and on how how impactful is the finish and things like that and then that sets the framework for how much you can actually sleep and it's not the most precise you know formula in the world but then you know how much time you can spend going zero miles an hour is it four hours is it six hours is it 10 hours you're trying to put them in these in these in these general buckets and the reason i go through that strategy first is because that sets then the options and after that it becomes i take duncan's strategy of we anchor the first one and then it's a choose your own adventure so they know how much total time

ballpark they can spend going zero miles an hour after that first sleep which is usually into the second night then they start to deploy those options do i take a 30 minute trail trail nap do i spend two hours at a sleep station and things like that unless they have a whole lot of experience i try not to to extrapolate or guess that too much because i mean it really is throwing a dart at a dart board kind of blindfold i like the options strategy a whole lot more sometimes we'll dial those options in based on their previous experience so if they have a lot of backpacking experience as andy mentioned right they're going to be more comfortable finding a rock putting their backpack onto a rock turning that into a makeshift pillow and as long as the weather is good as corinne mentioned kind of falling asleep those people without a lot of backpacking experience they're going to want to get to an aid station where they can curl up in a sleeping bag on a cot or maybe in the back of their truck or whatever and kind of and kind of sleeping there so that starts to shade the strategy a little bit but i start with how much time availability is actually ballpark how much time availability is there actually there to go to go zero miles an hour and i never hesitate to bake in more sleeping than is the absolute bare minimum i think that's where a lot of these strategies go awry is a lot of people are looking at it as almost in corinne's situation where can i finish this and then pass out like what's the what's the

maximum tolerable amount of sleep deprivation that i can kind of possibly go through i don't really take that approach in these because i know the time gets the time doesn't totally evaporate so if you spend two hours sleeping that zero miles an hour doesn't go into thin air because you're able to go faster once you wake up and you're able to locomote and you can eat and you're a little bit more aware and you can you know negotiate down a tricky trail or kind of kind of whatever so i don't so anyway i use that to just to say that i don't hesitate to bake in more or to have options for more sleep than what might be kind of ideal from a timing perspective because i know that sleeping time doesn't completely evaporate into thin air you get a little bit of it back just in faster faster trail locomotion but it all starts out with the pre-planning of how fast can you go when you're moving okay what that sets the parameters how much time can you spend going zero miles an hour and then we start to run the if then choose your own choose your own adventure options corinne you wanted to say something i was just going to ask if have you talked about uh a wake-up plan have you ever had an athlete who you know obviously no one's going to fall asleep on the side of the trail for eight hours well maybe maybe but like you know at a sleep station have you had anybody over sleep go from a two hour sleep to a six hour and blow their whole race plan anything like that well i'll tell another funny story about tour de jant tour de jant they are on it like they give you two hours and at two hours

on the nose they they literally kick you they literally kick your cot and they tell you to get up and you know whatever language they speak and then and then you're kind of off and it's like a serious deal like you cannot commandeer that cot for more than the the allotted time um most people are just hurting so much that once they wake up they should just go but that actually brings up a really good question of how long is too long right is it more beneficial to get a big chunk or to break it up into into different chunks and i honestly have never i've never we can all round robin this again i've never run into the issue of somebody sleeping too long because they typically they just because the environment just kind of wakes them up and they and they kind of and they kind of get down the trail typically what i'm what i'm having my athletes do is set a timer for whatever we think is the best option one hour or 90 minutes or whatever just on their phone or on their on their watch or whatever but i don't know what you guys have to have to say about this like how long is too long strategy corin we'll start with you on this one yeah i don't know that there is a is it too long i mean you're working with a finite amount of time right like you can't if like as you mentioned there's only so many zero you know hours where you can move zero miles an hour although we we personally have a coach at cts who has um taken some taken some serious naps during 100 that's because he's fast

he's fast and he can take a four-hour nap at 100 yeah which is a little bit frustrating sometimes but um where if we can get him to stay awake he'd be very good but so i don't know about that but i do think that you know if if you don't have a crew like you know oftentimes my athletes will utilize their crew say hey like i want you to wake me up in 20 minutes hey i want you to wake me up in an hour and i think that you know having a good crew is really can be really beneficial if you don't have that or if you're at a place in the trail where you don't have that you know it really i don't i would struggle maybe to go to sleep because i'd be so nervous that i wouldn't wake up i'm that person who sets like 12 alarms if i've got to travel to the airport early in the morning because i'm like so afraid i'm going to oversleep um so i think that would be something to that my athletes might have to juggle but i don't know that there's a too long there's i mean you just you run out of time at a certain point and so i think that you work with them you work with near the minimum you know maybe that long sleep initially is two hours and then from there you go you go shorter but um i don't think anyone's going in saying hey i'm gonna sleep for eight hours here and then get going i just don't think that that's a realistic um expectation for any of these races i i don't have any experience to say otherwise i i like i like corinne's i like corinne's idea about the circadian circadian rhythms i think is how you say it i think if you map out the strategy based on when it's going to get light out when those those things are definitely impacts you know i've thought of i think of hundred mile racers who've done say UTMB or grindstone you know that start at the night time and they're like what

the heck i'm i'm getting sleepy and i'm only 30 miles into this thing you know because it's two in the morning and that's when they normally get tired right so i think one of the things about the sleep strategy or how much is too much right is if you can if you can settle into a sleep at 4 a.m knowing it's going to get light at 5 30 that's perfect here here's a caveat though to that second night uh starting sleeping on the second night if you go into the race with poor sleep management for whatever reason you're nervous for the you know preceding three days going into the race or you had some sort of big work project or whatever right if you're already behind on sleep i don't think you can get away with that to the same degree i think that you you're almost better and this is a point of communication between you know like coaching athletes that we have like leading up to the race if for whatever reason their sleep is poor leading up to it it's like hey take the first night first night take a take an hour take a couple hours right there if you've got enough of that you know zero miles an hour kind of padding uh based on based on your fitness level that's a better situation we didn't mention this i i always encourage people to bank sleep i know there's a lot of physiologists out there that's gonna you know knock around the terminology and say this is a better term versus that but but the the concept is very simple you're just sleeping more in the week preceding the race either by going to sleep earlier or waking up later up to about 10 hours that's actually really

effective for not only erasing whatever sleep deficit that you had going into it because nobody's you know nobody has very good sleep uh patterns and hygiene but also it does seem to be effective in terms of minimizing the impact of sleep restriction or sleep deprivation as well as as well as has a performance impact on how long you can go uh without it without initially sleeping so a little bit of this strategy is that we've mentioned at least to to to this point of the podcast is kind of idealistic and athletes are should be really mindful of what are you going into the race with you can go into a 50 mile race and not have good sleep it's not ideal but you're not going to fall asleep in the middle of 50 maybe our coaching colleague that we're you know teasing earlier might but but for a 200 mile i think it absolutely does change that first night versus second night strategy if for whatever reason everything gets gets gets screwed up kind of go uh going into the uh the race in advance one other thing that i want to mention that that i want to kind of get everybody's take on we're kind of running to the end of the podcast right now is that there's a difference between a trail nap and a sleep station and i'll go first this time since i haven't had the privilege of going first on this one but i think it's a i think it's a i think it's a better situation if you can push a little bit further into a sleep station and then get good sleep hygiene while you're there take all your clothes off get into your sleeping bag naked put

the blinders on put i put during two years on i had headphones and i had white noise in the headphones so i wasn't distracted by anything and you can actually fall asleep and get some high quality sleep if you if you go through those you know those two or three minutes just to kind of like wind down and get into an environment and get into a good environment versus putting your head on a rock and trying to get a few hours that way now that's that's an idealistic situation versus reality but if you can create that out on the trail either by pushing a little bit further or if you're close like if you're already in a sleep station and you're like a little bit tired i think it's better to like get that sleep earlier so that it's higher quality because once again you make it back up kind of in arrears but i've never i'm gonna yeah go ahead i want to i want to i can't wait to jump i'm gonna beat my mental training drum here and completely agree with you and say not only that but give yourself clean yourself off with wipes brush your teeth you know make it literally like you're going to sleep even if it's just going to be 90 minutes i think there's that mental thing of my shoes are off my clothes are off i'm clean i put deodorant on maybe splash some aftershave on and go to sleep journal what else do you do before you go to sleep you could journal yeah tuck your kids in right next to

you but the routine i guess i guess my point is is if you have if you're kind of like in between strategies right if you're in between okay i'm gonna i'm gonna try to set this up and sleep in the dirt i'm gonna try to set this up and sleep in a sleep station try to shade it more to where you're using the sleep station but take advantage of it like because the quality can be so much higher like really think about what do i want there from an equipment perspective what's the 60 second or 120 second routine that i want to go through just before i kind of go before i go to sleep and just like use like use all those tricks and try to create this like familiar as familiar as possible like at home environment even if you had a pillow from home i'm planning on taking that to to uh to tahoe just having a pillow from home like that kind of stuff i think goes uh goes a long way in terms of squeaking out like every last little bit of quality in those ridiculous environments go ahead corinne i think a lot of it has to do with experience kind of you know first time people going into 200 there's a you know i think they're asking themselves what stories do they want to be able to tell after the fact right so it's a lot more sexy to say oh i stepped on a rock you know a bear pooped on me i you know stepped on another rock fell asleep in my poles you know so really trying to steal that conversation to know what kind of result what kind of experience do you want to have in this versus you know what story you want to tell you know i've had i've had that conversation

with one or two people over the past couple years the goals of the athlete right i mean it kind of we kind of try to pigeonhole that into the time that they want to finish in but duncan you're absolutely right part of the goal framework for an athlete is is what what experience do you want to have do you want this to be an experience where yeah i learned how to sleep in the dirt or i learned how to learn this other skill or whatever i think that's an important concept because in in most cases you've got time like these are set up the race director set these set these things up to for people to succeed not to fail so they're setting their cutoffs for the aid stations and also for the for the race as a whole so that reasonable people with reasonable fitness can complete it as long as they're not hitting some like epic failure point not to say that they're easy or to trivialize the effort or anything like that but the race directors want they want to keep you know a reasonable time frame on it so that they're not out for there for weeks but they're trying to they're trying to set things up so that athletes succeed and not fail and to that point there's intentional kind of cushion in this whole deal and as we see with western states everybody pushes that cushion until the very end and finishes in the last hour grid you're going to get the final word of the sleep thing because you've been chomping at the bit i know it yeah so i would just say that you know as as we discussed between the difference between like a sleep station or life station versus versus a trail nap although one definitely does sound sexier than the other um is this notion too that i i think of trail naps is like it's emergent that is an emergent situation where you need to go be on

the ground right now for your own safety for your own sanity and you know preferably maybe that's when you've got a pacer with you or something but i do think that that is that is a more emergent sleep situation and that can be planned or you know as as part of your kind of ad hoc plan for the adaptability portion of this right like those are going to be short ideally they're going to be only as you need them so that you can get quality sleep in those sleep stations particularly the early sleep stations that you might encounter you know versus like i told my crew for trt like hey i'm not going to try i'm going to try not to sleep but if i need to i'm just going to sit on the ground for 15 minutes and then we're going to get going again or whatever like setting that kind of expectation um so i wouldn't think of those like yeah i'm excited to you know go lay down on the ground for four hours like i think you need to be prepared for that emergently you know and have the year with you that necessity that will you know keep you safe in order to do that if you need it but an ideal situation right and that's what we keep going back to is the idealistic situation with 200s and you know you can plan for an ideal race and get something totally different but is to utilize the sleep stations to the best of your ability earlier like you know you know in day two and day three um and use those trail naps those rock naps whatever they might be as emergent holdover naps that are just going to give you that 30 minute or that 15 minute reset or according to walter the 90 second reset um you know an extreme example there to to keep moving down the trail i know that you unintentionally took many a trail nap towards the end of tour as well um where you physically just woke

up on the ground a bunch and so it's like once again that's probably a fairly emergent situation as opposed to a a planned i know i'm going to go to this point and nap so that's kind of how i delineate i think those two forms of sleep that you might encounter during a 200 plus event yeah and then the final complicating piece is when is your caffeine commitment point at what point do you just start whatever your caffeine strategy is you start deploying that because you know you have to make it to the finish line without the next deal because that's like a you can't you can't retract that right especially if you're like a slow metabolizer like myself like i know if i start taking caffeine i'm not sleeping for the next eight at least eight hours at least so you've got it it's like a it's like a commitment point which it's a whole nother kettle of fish that we can that we can handle on another podcast all right we're gonna wrap it up there like tim ferris there you go there you go all right we're gonna wrap it up there thanks you guys for coming on the podcast today i hope everybody who's listening to this now has a more successful 200 mile race plan in regards to pacing nutrition and sleep and sleep andy duncan corinne thank you guys thanks thank you thanks have a good one all right folks there you have it thanks again to everybody listening after this two-week hiatus i really appreciate your listenership this podcast comes to you without sponsorship or without any sort

of other financial entanglements that is an ethos that i started at the very beginning of this podcast way back in 2019 and despite multiple attempts for people to want to come on and sponsor this podcast i have remained true to that i do it for you guys for the community because i want the information contained within this podcast to be really authentic and unadulterated from any sort of outside influence appreciate the heck out of each and every one of the listeners and thank you to our guests today for getting on the KoopCast today as always you guys we will see you out on the trails you