How to Taper and Determine Race Pace for Optimal Performance

Finn Melanson [00:00:10]: Hello, fellow runners. I'm your host, Finn Milanson, and this is the Run to the Top podcast, the podcast dedicated to making you a better runner. With each and every episode, we are created and produced by the expert team of coaches@runnersconnect.net, where you can find the best running information on the Internet, as well as training plans to fit every runner and every budget. Are you ready for the big spring races like Boston and the London Marathons? In this podcast episode, we dive into two key factors for your race day success tapering and determining your race pace. We'll discuss why we recommend a three week taper with an 85% to 90% mileage reduction three weeks out and a 70% to 75% reduction two weeks out from a marathon. You'll also learn why it's important to maintain medium intensity workouts to stay mentally sharp. And finally, we discuss how to determine your race pace using clear markers from your workouts leading up to the race and how to adjust mid race if needed. So, whether you're a seasoned runner or new to the game, these tips will help you crush your spring races. Lo's Smart Protein takes the guesswork out of finding the optimal protein amount and blend for you by drawing data from your wearables and fitness apps such as Strava, Peloton, and Apple Watch to provide specific dosing recommendations after every workout. If you're looking for better and safer headphones while you run, then you need to check out Oledance. Their open ear design delivers premium sound while still allowing you to hear your surroundings to stay safe. Head to Oledance.com RTT to learn more.

Michael Hammond [00:01:59]: All right, everybody. Welcome back to the Runners Connect. Coach Chat. Coach Michael Hammond here, head coach at Runners Connect. I've got Andy Cozarelli with me as well, olympic Trials marathon qualifier. So she's going to have a lot of good tips for us today. Today we're talking about really what most of our athletes are talking about within our community, which is everybody's getting ready for those big spring races. We've kind of shaking off the winter a little bit. Everybody's seeing some warmer weather, some spring kind of peeking through. And thus comes the races. Now it's racetime. We got Boston, London, these big races coming up, big Sur, a lot of big races, marathons, half marathons that people have been training all winter for, and everybody's wondering, how do I make it happen? Now? I've done all this training. So the big things people are talking about are the taper, which is obviously super important. For those who don't know, a taper is essentially when you just decrease the training a little bit heading into race day. So you've got all this hard training that you're doing. You don't really want to continue that hard training. You want to taper down effectively into the race, but you also don't want to do it too much. We'll talk about that. And then the other big thing is that people want to know, okay, I've done all this training. How do I determine what pace should I go run? Marathon is a 26 miles distance. How do I determine what actual pace I should target? What are the markers that I should be looking for? So Andy, let's start talking about the taper. Really, I think that the biggest thing I like to talk about with tapering is that the first thing I want to get across to people is that tapering should not really be this massive, huge decrease that maybe some people think it is. I think that a lot of people think that. I've seen athletes, I've seen runners who maybe before they join runners, connect, they will have had a race that going into for the taper. They'll just do almost nothing for the week or two leading in. They'll do maybe a couple of easy jogs, but they'll take a lot of days off. They'll just have a lot their mileage goes from like this to just crashes into the ground. So that's a big thing that I like to get across to people right away is that the taper shouldn't necessarily be this massive, massive decrease. There should be like a controlled way that we kind of lessen the intensity and workload throughout.

Andie Cozzarelli [00:04:13]: Yeah, I think it's really interesting too, because there's people who also will be on the side of, well, I don't taper well when I rest, I feel more stiff or like, this happens. And I think that the problem with that is that running more is not necessarily the answer. It's to do the mobility work. It's to do the stuff that's going to keep the stiffness out. Because really that taper is supposed to help us to start to save some of that energy and get ourselves prepared to put all that extra energy into the marathon. And so we got to make sure we taper right where we're not resting too much. But we also don't want to tell ourselves, well, I don't rest well, so I need to keep going through it and just run it that way. And I think that that's something that often happens with runners. And then I also see the big thing I see often is because you're not also just going to suddenly feel better when you reach the taper. You're not just going to all of a sudden just be like, oh, I feel fantastic that people start to try to test themselves on those last few runs going into the marathon. They start thinking like, oh, this pace feels hard. I don't know if I can do marathon pace. Let me try to squeeze one more workout, one more test at marathon pace within a long run or any of those things. And it doesn't often help. It often is just going to make them a little bit more tired. It sucks some of their energy away. And so it's really important to know, stick to the plan that you have for your taper, don't try to modify it, don't try to run faster. Keep the energy in the legs, kind of keep storing that up, and then the fueling piece comes in and we'll talk about that, I think, a little bit in depth, a little bit further on. But those are the big things that I often see with marathoners or even just tapering for any kind of race, is that really that feel that they need to do a little bit more just to give themselves that extra reassurance. But so much of racing is just trusting the training you've done already and just letting yourselves continue on into race day and just see what happens. We're not going to know 100% what's going to happen on race day at any point. And so it's better to just not stress about things that we can't control and just focusing on what we can do, what we can just get to race day. Ready?

Michael Hammond [00:06:26]: Yeah. You brought up a few things that we've seen people over the last few weeks kind of bring up. One of the big ones that I feel like we're kind of tackling a huge part of the taper right away is kind of the mental component is that when you go into a taper, it's very easy to think that you're going to go from feeling that you're just going to feel so amazing all of a sudden. Like your legs are just going to have all this extra energy. And I think the problem is because you mentally think that the result is inevitably going to disappoint you. It is, yes, in theory, physiologically, of course, your body's going to have a little bit more energy, your legs are going to have a little bit more spice to them, you're going to feel a little bit better. But because you've convinced yourself that it's going to be just the clouds parting, like amazing, ridiculous feeling, you're going to be disappointed, you're going to be let down, and then you're going to think you feel like crap because of that. It's interesting how that mind body connection starts to work. I've been through this myself. I've had times where tapering into a race where I'll just expect it to be so great. And that's where we get into another big one that I've seen, I mean, literally seen several examples of within our own community over the last week or so is people talking about basically they do one of their taper workouts. And for us at Runners Connect, a very common workout is something like we'll have you just do a very basic short tempo, like 3 miles or something like that. Or we'll do maybe sets of mile repeats, but not super hard. We don't want anything to be super hard, but we also don't want to just jog around. We want to keep the feel of race pace in your legs. Like Andy was saying before, and what people do. They'll log the workout, and then they'll say, this felt kind of hard. I don't understand. I thought this was supposed to be super easy. And that's kind of where I get into that big mental component of it, is that if you go into it expecting that it's going to just be this absolute jog, it's not going to feel like that. It's still race based. It's still, like, maybe not a super hard effort, but it's a harder effort than going for an easy jog. If you had done that same workout, I like to tell people, runners, connect, athletes, I like to tell them this. I like to say if you would have done this same workout a month ago when you were in, like, heavy marathon training, you would have thought nothing of it, I promise you. You would have thought it was a very typical type workout. You would not have really had much to say about it. It would have been a very typical day to day, week to week type workout because it's in the taper that becomes this huge mental game for people. So I think that what Andy's talking about and what we're trying to get to here is that I think you have to set expectations. You have to manage expectations. You cannot go into the taper thinking that it's just going to be this absolute magical elixir that's going to take you from if you're feeling like you're in the gutter right now, to just feeling absolutely amazing just because you taper off your training a little bit.

Andie Cozzarelli [00:09:31]: Right? Yeah. And I think the other thing and this was something actually, in the fall, I was supposed to run indie, monumental marathon, and it was in the taper that I started getting some aches and pains. For me, it was probably some stuff that had been lingering. But when you're in the high volume weeks, your body, the perception of pain is reduced technically because of the fact that you're putting so much extra stress on your body that those little aches and pains, you don't notice them as much. And so when you reduce volume, you start to actually feel some of those aches and pains coming out because you're just more hyper aware, because you're doing a little bit less. You're not pushing the body quite as hard. And so I remember actually, I was googling this because I was trying to reassure myself, and mine was a little bit more in depth. I think I actually had an injury that was going on. I think I just pushed through it and figured out a way to get through it. And then the taper, it started to get worse. But that is actually common, not actually getting injured. So my scenario is different, but it's common that you might start to feel little things popping up, and it's just kind of making sure that you take care of your body. Continue to do the stuff, the stretching, anything. That you can do to just keep things mobile and be able to feel good on that side because that's also a very common thing. And oftentimes people are resorting to, oh, I'm just going to stop running. I'm just going to take the next five or six days off so I can get to race day. And in some situations, that's probably effective if something is actually critically popping up that we'd rather get you to race day than get to race day injured. But I think it's kind of finding that balance, figuring out what you can do, what makes sense, having a PT or somebody in your corner that you can go to, to really assess, is this a normal aid campaign or is this something that maybe I do need to rest from? And so it's finding what that feels like, what that looks like, and being able to manage all of that, because I think that's also another critical thing that happens that mentally we're stimulated again with what pain feels like. And so we start to see some of those things kind of creep in there. And so it's just important to not let those things kind of overwhelm you and get extra stress, because that extra stress is also energy that we're wasting in the taper that we don't want to be expending if we don't have to. So have everything figured out ahead of time on that. Be prepared. Maybe even plan like a massage or a PT appointment in your taper to preemptively. Get ahead of any of that. If it does pop up, you're going to be prepared ahead of time.

Michael Hammond [00:12:02]: Absolutely. Yeah. I think what you just talked about with the feeling little like aches and pains here is just like you said, it's exactly the same as what I was talking about with the workouts a month ago. Two months ago, when you're in heavy training, this would have been just a normal occurrence. But because you've got the anxiety of being closer to race day, you've got that mentality of being in the taper, everything just gets magnified, it seems like. So I do want to just to kind of take a step back and give people a little bit more specificity for those who maybe aren't, because most of the listeners of our podcast are not actual athletes of ours. So just to give you an idea of what our typical taper philosophy is, this is obviously going to be molded to the individual based on their needs and based on what has worked well for them in the past. Especially when we work with people for years, sometimes we'll find that things maybe the typical philosophy doesn't work as well. So we'll mold it to them. But what we typically go for, and this is talking about the marathon, of course, each other race has its own kind of different way we taper, but when we're about three weeks out, the taper begins it's a three week taper. That's what we do. So three weeks out, we're going to reduce the mileage to about 85, 90% of where you were at before. We're going to maintain intensity at that point. Like, we're still going to have some workouts. We're not going to just go to just easy jogging. And then we're going to reduce the long run volume ten to 20% thereabouts. If your last long run was 20 miles, we're not going to repeat another 20 miles run. The three weeks before race day is typically where we have people do their last big long run effort. That's done after that. Those are going to go down two weeks before the goal race. Now we're reducing the weekly mileage to 70, 75% thereabouts. We're going to do one like medium intensity type workout. Not super hard, but just a medium intensity. If your tempo intervals are usually like 9 miles thereabouts. Now we're going to do maybe 6 miles. Keep the pace the same, just so you still work in the same systems. But we're not going to go as hard or as long as we would in heavier training. And then we're going to really reduce that long run. Now we're going like 50% to 60% lower for the long run. We really want to get that long run much, much lower so that we're not beating up the legs. Then the week of the race, the actual race week, significantly reduced mileage. We're still running. In fact, we actually aren't big believers in taking a lot of days off, but we're really reducing the mileage. We're doing one maybe like a taper tempo, maybe like a mini fartlic type session, something that's light but still keeps your legs moving so that you remember how to run fast. We don't want to go a week and a half without doing anything faster than easy pace heading into the race. And then the other thing we like to do, we really like for people to run the day before the marathon. This might sound like a really small thing, but it's something that we found works really, really well, is like really the couple of days, maybe sometimes I'll have people take the two days before the race off. But typically we like for people to be running those two or three days heading into the race because it just keeps your blood flowing, makes you get some jitters out and not feel so nervous. So often we've had people who this is years ago at this point, before we kind of figured out that we really needed to do this, where people would not run the day before. Or maybe we'll have people who they travel the day before so they can't run. And you just find yourself feeling really stiff on race day. You're not getting that blood flow, you're not loosening up the system. So that's our general taper philosophy. But again, it's molded to the individual and sometimes certain things work really well for people, but that's like 80% of it right there is how we do it. And it really comes down to just that general philosophy of we're just going to slowly, steadily creep down. We don't want to be if you're running 40 miles a week, we don't want to go 40 miles and then all of a sudden, three weeks out, you're just running 1012, 15 miles a week. We don't want to do that. That's just way too much for your body. And typically that also has to do with timing the taper. We want to time the taper right, which is why it's that steady, steady decrease down.

Andie Cozzarelli [00:16:00]: Yeah. And I think those workouts often in the taper are more so targeting that marathon pace. And so sometimes that may feel in some situations, it may feel like it's a little bit easy and you want to push faster. But we're really trying to get the body to know what that pace feels like, because part of the marathon is recognizing what your pace is supposed to be, what that feels like, and being honest to it. Because the first half of the marathon, you're going to be feeling like you can run faster. And we don't want to do that. We want to be able to lock in, run that pace, know what pace we're on, not feel ourselves getting a little too fast in the middle. Because oftentimes that's what causes some of those late race crashes is that we ran a little too quick and even 5 seconds too fast in the marathon is a big difference. So it's really about finding yourself, recognizing what that pace feels like and really nailing it down instead of trying to test yourself. I think something that's important to recognize, too, is those last few weeks of the marathon or training. We are not going to be building a whole lot of fitness. So trying to squeak out some extra workouts there or push a little harder just to get a little bit more fitness gain is not really going to pay off a whole lot. You're not going to get I mean, I think a lot of those types of workouts, it takes already like ten days to 14 days to actually see the benefits of those. And so if we're trying to get more benefit out, we're probably just doing more harm than good. Think of those last few workouts as I like to think of those last few workouts as just maintenance. My college coach used to say, the hay is in the barn when we get to a certain point in training, meaning that there's not more, that we don't have that much more to do. We're just maintaining the fitness in the legs, reminding ourselves what pace feels like and then just keeping some amount of that pop in the legs so the legs aren't just completely just atrophying. That's the way I like to think about it of just kind of getting stale. That's how I used to often feel if I didn't do enough. Kind of like getting some legs moving a little bit. So that's why that's important. And one thing I also sometimes recommend is even the day before doing a couple of strides just to kind of get the biomechanics down to remind yourself what that feels like, because that's a huge piece of we're not trying to go super fast in the marathon, but we still need to remind ourselves what those mechanics are and how we want to move, how we want to drive the knees all of those things just for just reinforcing good form, which is something that can also cause some cramping within the marathon if our form breaks down. So really think about all of those last few workouts as just being those touch points for maintenance going into the race. Prepare yourself from all those angles.

Michael Hammond [00:18:38]: Totally. I thought of while you were talking about not insisting on doing super hard workouts, I thought of cramming for a test back in college, they always said the night before the test, you should just go to bed. You really shouldn't stay up late and study the night before because you're not going to remember the information, you're not going to internalize the information, you're not going to internalize the concepts like you think you are. We're all so cocky. I did that. I was guilty of that, thinking that you're going to in reality, you'd be better if you studied until 09:10 p.m. And then go to bed. And then actually you're going to better process the information and absorb it. I think of it very much the same with running. And like you said, even if you think that maybe you're going to get something out of doing this hard workout right before a week out, you're literally not going to benefit from it. You're not going to recover from it. Remember that we improve from training when we recover from training. You don't improve when you actually do the workout. You improve when you recover from it. So if you don't have the time to recover from it, you're not going to actually benefit from it. And we don't want to spend the taper recovering from new workouts. We're kind of spending the taper sort of recovering from a lot of the training that we've been doing up to that point. Those two months or so going into the taper are big for us. The way we give our athletes. Those two months are marathon specific. Lots of really quality long runs with like surges and fast finishes and tempos in the middle. Lots of big workouts. We'll talk about some of those key workouts when we talk about marathon goal pace, but it's a lot of hard training and we want to make sure you've absorbed that training. That's a big part of what the taper is too. It's not just, I need fresh legs for race day. It's also I need to absorb all this heavy, heavy training that I've been doing up to this point. Let's talk about some of the more specific questions that we've been getting from people here's. One that we have gotten for a long, long time is sometimes people will talk about nutrition first, and then we'll kind of go dive a little bit deeper first. But a lot of people ask about how should I eat? How should I change what I'm eating? People like to get really specific with their nutrition in terms of not everybody, but some people like to get really specific with it, where they're like.

Andie Cozzarelli [00:21:04]: I.

Michael Hammond [00:21:04]: Want to eat this many calories because I'm running this many miles. Like, here's my BMR basal metabolic rate. I'm running this many miles, thus I need to add this many calories. Well, those same people are now thinking in the taper, well, I'm running a little bit less. I'm doing less intensity. How much do I need to decrease in terms of nutrition? And really, you know, the funny thing is I like to go pretty simple with this stuff. I think we'll talk about a few specific tips in a second. But I like to tell people to really don't change anything. I don't like for people to get too crazy obsessive with nutrition anyway. That same philosophy for me continues into the taper. I think that the only leeway I'll give is maybe get a little bit more dialed in. Let's say you drink a little bit of wine. Let's say you drink like let's just give a crazy example. Not a crazy example, but like a random example of you drink two glasses of wine every evening, whatever you two glasses of wine, maybe reduce it to one. You don't have to go crazy. You don't have to eliminate a bunch of things. And really, that's where the biggest reason I don't like people to make big changes is because I don't like people to eliminate because then you may not be replacing that. And again, remember, we're not just fueling the taper. We're also recovering from all this training that you've been doing before that point. So your body it's not like day one of the taper. All of a sudden, your body is going to be like, oh, well, I don't need that many calories anymore. My calorie needs are now like 400 calories less a day. That doesn't happen. That's not the way it works. So I really don't like to tell people to make those big types of changes. Andy, what are your thoughts? Like, what do you generally tell people to do with that?

Andie Cozzarelli [00:22:46]: Right, yeah, because I'm big on intuitive eating more than anything. And so I think if you're obsessing over it, I think, again, we're adding stress to the situation about what am I putting into my body? Is this going to be good? And you're constantly thinking about it, and I don't think that is a productive way to think about fueling. And the other thing is that I sometimes am hungrier in my days off. I find myself needing more fuel on those days and it's more tied to what we were talking about, that you actually need a little bit more fuel to recover. And so in that sense, that's where that intuitive eating comes into play. Don't overindulge, but think about like, okay, am I hungry? Do I need to eat something? Go ahead and eat. And that's, I think, an important thing to consider. And then especially on race week, the only thing that I slightly change is that I eat more simple, if that makes sense. So nothing that's new, but just less I don't need extra fiber, so we can just kind of eat more simple, just white rice, things like that. I think it's also important that on race week is not the time for you to be thinking about eating necessarily super healthy. We don't have to be eating all the vegetables and all the at the time as we get closer to the race where those simpler carbs are going to be okay for our systems because those are going to help us to have those in our system. They're easier to digest and we don't want to end up with stomach difficulties on race day because we ate a bunch of vegetables the day before or something like that. So like the beginning of the week, I eat pretty normally and then as I get closer to race week, I'm just eating a little bit more simple stuff. One of my favorite things to eat and snack on is like pretzels because you got your salt and then you've got your carb. And they're real easy on the digestive systems. And so that's something I have found has worked well for me. But yeah, like you're saying, Michael, I'm big on trying, not trying to make huge changes on race week. I think if we're focused also super heavily on eating more carbohydrates and you cut back and you're not eating enough protein, we're also doing a disservice to our body in that sense. Like, we need that protein. So we need to make sure we're still getting good protein and still getting the carbs. So we don't want to focus too heavily on one thing or another that we start to shortchange others pieces of our diet. The only thing that I change is really just eating simpler, more boring, I would say, after the race is when you can indulge in that burger and all the things that the greasy, fatty stuff that your body needs after marathon anyway. That's a great time to kind of reinsert those foods that you really like. But on race week, it's just better to probably just eat simple and things that your body's used to, things that aren't going to be problematic.

Michael Hammond [00:25:28]: Yeah, that's where I don't want to repeat a cliche. Too much, but you just got to find what works for you a little bit. It's funny, I probably started this when I was, like 21 or 22. The night before all of my biggest race, every race, any race, I would have a pint of beer, no questions asked. And there were certain people that would think that that was just the craziest, most insane thing in the world. And I was just like, man, you know, it's funny, at the time, I didn't think about the nutritional aspect of it whatsoever. I didn't care. For me, it was just a nice, relaxing thing that I could do. I am not the guy who can go. This gets into kind of like I don't want to get too into this part of tapering, but really, for me, I was a little anxious heading into races. And the last thing I wanted to be doing the night before a race is sitting in my hotel room, like twiddling my thumbs, thinking about the race, thinking about, oh, my strategy. Did I eat perfect this week? Did I do this? No. I would go out, I would sit at the bar with my coach or with a friend, or if my family happened to be if anyone from my family happened to be traveling for my race, I would sit with them. I would sit at the bar and I'd have a pint of beer. I didn't care. From a nutritional aspect, the funny thing is it's carbs. Who cares? Okay, fine. Is a little bit alcohol maybe going to affect a little bit of your sleep, whatever. But again, I say that I was never going to be that person that's in that perfect pod, perfect type situation. It just was never going to work for me because the more I put myself into that shell, the more I got into my own head personally. So that's where as much as we're sitting here talking about all the theory and the philosophy and the physiologically, what works best, the studies and stuff, there's no study that's going to say, yeah, having a pint of beer the night before a race is good for you. But it worked for me. I enjoyed it. I liked it. It helped me relax, and it just made it a more comfortable experience, a more fun experience for me. Go ahead.

Andie Cozzarelli [00:27:34]: What's funny about that is I remember being I must have been it was later in my college career, and we did a race in New York, I think, and it was just me and other teammate and then the head coach, Geiger, and then our Headwoman's coach, Laurie. And it was just us at dinner. And so all of us were it was the four of us, like the other girls with me. She was also over 21. And so we were sitting down to dinner and Laurie was like, are you going to have a glass of wine? And I was like, it was a weird question to have from my coach because I had my own eating issues through college, and so alcohol was one of those things that I was kind of like, oh, it's bad for you, blah, blah. I was like, all freaked out by it. And then when I heard her ask me that, and then she started saying, like, oh, yeah, no, I used to drink a glass of wine before all my races. Is and Lori was a national champion in the Five K, I believe, and really decorated athlete. NC State ran professionally for a few years after. And so when I heard that, I was like, wow, I never even thought about that. But yeah, I think even when you talked about sleep there, for some people, they don't sleep the night before. So if you drink a glass of wine and your sleep is not as good, but you are actually sleeping, that's better than not sleeping at all, right? People do not sleep at all. And there's been studies that show, like, the night before the race, the sleep isn't really that indicative of it's not going to impact performance a whole lot. It's really kind of that race week that we want to make sure we're getting good sleep. So if you don't sleep the night before, the race not going to impact you that much, but if you can get a little bit better sleep and be a little less stressed going into the night, that's going to be better for you than being worried about how the alcohol is going to impact you. So there was actually a girl at one time I told this story to one of my teammates post collegiately you actually know Michael, but I told her the story about how Laurie had asked me if I was going to drink wine before the race or whatever. And she took that so literally that she drank a glass of wine before the race started. I was like, that's not what I mean.

Michael Hammond [00:29:36]: She drinks like a bottle. She takes like, a bottle, like right?

Andie Cozzarelli [00:29:40]: And I was like, no, not like an hour before the race starts. This is like the night before. So that's not what we're talking about. But the night before, go for it, right?

Finn Melanson [00:29:57]: Protein often takes a backseat to carbohydrates when we focus on our nutrition, but getting adequate protein, especially post workout, is absolutely critical for recovery. But there's so much conflicting information about just how much our body needs to be optimal. Is it zero eight or 1 gram/lb of body weight? Does it matter if you're male or female? Enter ELO. ELO's Smart Protein takes the guesswork out of finding the optimal protein amount and blend for you by drawing data from your wearables and fitness apps such as Strava, Peloton, and Apple Watch to provide specific dosing recommendations after every workout. Lo Smart Protein comes in either grassfed whey or pea protein and can include other functional ingredients like probiotics and ashwagandha to help you recover faster and support your goals. Take the guesswork out of all this and get the right amount of protein after every workout. Go to lo health and enter code RTT for 50% off your first month. That's ELO health and enter Code RTT at checkout for 50% off your first month. When you're running outdoors, hearing your surroundings like traffic and other runners around you is critical to staying safe and healthy. But listening to your favorite podcast or music can also be essential to staying motivated and enjoying those long miles. That's why we're excited to partner with Oledance Premium Headphones. Designed specifically with runners in mind. The unique design of their headphones allows you to still hear everything going on around you so you can stay safe. But my favorite part is that their open ear design means your ears will never get tired or fatigued even after 2 hours or more of listening. That makes them perfect for those super long runs. So if you're looking for better and safer headphones while you run, there's no better choice than Oledance. Just visit Oledance.com RTT and use the code to P to save 20% on your purchase. That's O-L-A dance RTT to save 20%.

Michael Hammond [00:32:05]: You got to find a little bit of what works for you and you have to work within your own mental capacity too. As I said, a lot of this stuff becomes mental. I mean, from a training aspect, there's a lot of things that we look at at runners connect that here's a good one. A big part of training for us is that typically the people we work with, we work with a lot of faster people, boston qualifiers, stuff like that. But the majority of our clientele is more like 4 hours for the marathon or slower. That's typically where our clientele lives with them. So typically when someone is running like ten minute pace plus for their easy days or for their long runs, we don't really want those people to run 2022 miles long runs in training. We just don't. It's so much time on your feet that it just becomes like physiologically it becomes just like this overwhelming stress on your body. So typically we won't write schedules that have for those people that have 2020 2 miles in them. Sometimes we will get often we'll get messages from those people that will say because we like it to be a very back and forth thing. We don't want a schedule. We never give somebody a schedule and it's like, here's the law, it's our way or the highway. We want to learn what works well for people. And often we'll have people who say, look, I understand your reasoning. We'll explain our reasoning. We'll say, this is why we didn't want to do any of these super crazy long runs. And they'll say, I hear that, I understand it. At the same time, I just don't think I'm going to have the confidence heading into the race. I don't think I'm going to have the mental confidence heading into a marathon if I haven't done at least a 20 miles or in training. And we'll be like, you know what, that's fine. I think that there's that balance between what is ideal from a physiological standpoint in training and also what works well for the athlete and gives the athlete confidence. I look at having a glass of wine or a beer the night before race as a great example of that. Your classic scientist or someone like that would tell you like, oh, that's so terrible, whatever. And yet when you live the experience, you understand. Anyone who's raced, who's trained for races and especially has run at a high level understands the insomnia of a night before a race. You're right. What's it worth? What's it worth sitting there and thinking about the race, not being able to sleep, being stressed out of your mind, what's it worth? Is that really worth it? Just because you skimped on that one little tiny glass of wine, it really wouldn't be worth it. So I think with all of this stuff, this is not to say that all these tips that we're giving are meaningless. It's more to say that you as an individual have to take things and kind of like adapt them to yourself. This all comes with experience. This all comes with just trying stuff out. And I think that the whole taper itself can work this way. So that's why we're talking about with nutrition is the last thing I would want to do is have somebody just be like, all right, I have to go from whatever my normal diet is, whatever it is, to all of a sudden, I have to be like, insanely regimented. I have to limit my calories. I have to do this. Next thing you know, you're all stressing out, you're going crazy just thinking about your food all the time, maybe you're hungry or whatever. We don't want that at all. So really I just tell people, keep it mostly the same, maybe just dial it in a little bit extra. It's funny. One of the examples I gave before was like, if you have two glasses of wine, only have one. And then I was like, have it the night before. So hey, if those two glasses of wine or whatever help you, if you're doing well in training and feeling good and recovering from your workouts and you have two glasses of wine every night, by all means don't stop just because it's the taper. There's no need to stop if it's working well for you. So that's really where I did want to mention one other thing with the taper before we move on to goalpace, is that oftentimes this is not uncommon at all. We've seen this so much over the years, oftentimes people will gain a little bit of weight in the taper for a marathon. Not uncommon at all. Really, the biggest thing I want to say with that is that you just shouldn't worry about it at all. In an ideal world, you're not even stepping on that scale. To be honest with you, I don't think it's worth it. I think that if you're training I've always believed that if you're training right, eating properly and generally living a healthy lifestyle, then your weight is going to figure itself out. In general, of course, there are exceptions. Of course there are. Maybe people have, like, I don't know, blood work issues, hormone issues or whatever, but for the most part, it's going to find its own way, and you shouldn't sit there and try to tinker with it like crazy, because I think that you're just going to find that again. You're just going to limit calories. That's what you're going to do. And then you're not going to recover as well. The runs are going to feel harder, and then you're just not going to be as glycogen fueled heading into race day.

Andie Cozzarelli [00:36:39]: Yes, 100%. I think a lot of people start to freak out about it. It could be water weight, which we don't want to expend all of our water. Then if we're trying to store it up, the more carbs you're eating, the more that you're retaining water. So important to recognize how that comes into play, that it could just be a little bit of that. And so as long as you're feeling good and you're following everything, try not to let that get in your head. I'm a big proponent of not really using the scale because I think that especially right before race, because I think that those are things that are just going to interfere with how we think about our performance, as opposed to being something that's going to help us with our performance. So I'm big on when we get into race week, start taking out variables that are going to make you overthink how fit you are or even like I use this aura ring watch. I won't look at it on race week so much because I don't want it to tell me that I'm not recovering well or that I'm not I mean, if I'm not recovering well, that's a different thing. But I don't want it to start interfering with how I think about how I feel. I just want to let my body do its thing and just get to race day ready for everything. And so these are like, start cutting out those variables. And the scale could be one of those things that you start to just ease away from and just let your body be what it is. And sometimes you need that extra little extra body just to kind of be able to get through that marathon. It's a big endeavor. You need to have the fuel, water strength. You need the hydration. You need all the things to feel to accomplish it. It's only you that's going to even notice that extra weight that you're feeling. No one out there is going to be like, oh yeah, that person. So it's just important to just trust yourself, trust the training. And I think that leads into a little bit more about some of the workouts and then also just the goal paced kind of conversation. Trusting your training and just being able to just trust what you're doing and trusting your body is what makes a successful marathoner.

Michael Hammond [00:38:44]: Definitely, yeah, I like what you said about kind of not over utilizing the tools and stuff like the scale. Because honestly, and I mean, the last thing I'll say on the weight is like, look, the only thing you're going to lose during in three weeks is water weight, which you need. You literally need that to get through the race. You're just going to bonk, you're just going to crash. So whatever your weight is before the taper, I want that to be your weight after the taper. Do not worry about it. Don't step on the scale. Just eat normally, eat healthy. Like I said, maybe dial it in a little bit more, just a tiny bit closer to level ten. But even that, if you're doing great, recovering well, training well, don't make any changes. Really don't do anything. So we want to kind of segue into that, talking about how do people determine their goal pace. This is a question that over the years, literally every year in March and then kind of in before the big fall marathons, it's always the biggest question that we see within our community is like, okay, I've done all this training and how do I determine the goal pace? Some people listening might think that's a little bit weird of like, why are people that are within your own training plans, like, that are following your training plans? Why don't they know what their rate space is? And that really I just want to kind of preface everything we're talking about with determining your marathon pace, with the fact that when we write schedules, we do not really take I don't want to say we don't take into account your goal at all. Of course we do. Of course we take into account your goal, but it is not the top of our hierarchy in terms of how we determine your mileage, your training paces, your workouts, all of that. It's really not that important because if you think about it, a goal is an arbitrary thing. Like, if you say you want to run X amount faster in the marathon, it's great. And I think goals are fantastic. I'm a big proponent of having big, big goals, but it's really arbitrary. Let's say you just ran I always like to use like, ridiculous extreme examples. Let's say you just ran like, a four hour marathon and you see, oh, you've got this Kenyan guy that just ran like a two hour marathon, like 201 or two flat now is like the world record. I want to go break, I want to go break two. I'm going to go beat him. I'm going to go beat this guy who's been doing this since he was like eleven years old and literally lives in a camp where all he does is train, sleep, and eat. And you say you want to run 2 hours in the marathon and are we just going to give you those training paces? Of course not. Of course not. The funny thing is that that is really, I hate to tell you, that's no less ridiculous than if you just ran 4 hours and you want to run 340. For us to just give you 340 paces for all your training, that's no less ridiculous. Those are both ridiculous things. And unfortunately, that's the majority of what online training and kind of like most training schedules that you can purchase online, that's what most of them do. You just kind of plug in your goal pace and then bam, it just spits it back out at you. That's not how we do it. We really go based on your history, based on your current fitness as much as possible, like the absolute ideal. If someone just ran like a half marathon, that is perfect. Like a half marathon that went well, maybe they didn't bonk. It wasn't like 90 degrees or anything like that. It went well. On the whole, that is a perfect scenario when someone joins because that's going to be an excellent data indicator of where their fitness is. We're of course going to use their other races they've run in the past, their mileage that they've been running. They usually give us some examples of workouts that they've run. So that's what we like to design training schedules around. So that's why when we get closer to race day, that's why people are like, okay, now we've done the training, we're getting into my taper. What should I target? Now when we get into that, I think that we really like to look at some key workouts. That's probably the number one thing that I do. Let's say someone asks and we've had this all the time, let's say someone asks, all right, I'm two weeks out. What should my goal pace be for my marathon? Like, here's what my goal is, but what do you think I should target? Where do you think I should head out at? And I like to look at some key workouts. For us, the big thing is there's never going to be one specific workout that's just like the absolute indicator that just doesn't exist. That's not a thing. The only thing that would be that kind of indicator is a race, like the race itself. So there's never going to be a perfect indicator. The things I like to look up, look at are tune up races are somewhat of a consideration. They're not a perfect consideration because Andy, how often have we seen people who will run like, a relatively poor tune up race before, like three or four weeks out from their race, and then the race is great. I remember one of my favorite things to tell people is Ryan Hall one time, if I remember correctly, it was before he ran his marathon PR, which, unfortunately, wound up being his lifetime marathon PR. But it was like, four weeks out. He ran a half marathon, only a tiny bit faster than the pace that he ended up running for the full. It was just I think what it came down to was he was so into that marathon build, so into marathon pace that was so native to him that tuning it up for a half, it just didn't really happen. And most people would have written him off like, oh, he just ran, what was it, probably a 63 minutes half or something like that, which of course is crazy fast. But when he had run like a 59 minutes half before, 59, 43, I think is the American record, people are saying, oh, he's out of shape, writing him off. And then he goes at the marathon and runs like that pace for he goes through the half at what he had just raced it at. So tune ups are a decent indicator, but by no means a perfect indicator. I like to look at for us, we're really big on steady runs. That's a huge part of our training is doing steady runs. Like, people in the triathlon world will know this is like lt one type training, but really it's just like roughly marathon pace to 30 seconds/mile slower than marathon pace, something like that. I want to see that's not to say sometimes I don't like to tell our own athletes, this is a little bit of inside baseball. I don't like to tell our own athletes that I look at steady runs because then I worry that they're going to go, like, push them faster so that they oh, these are a big indicator. I'm going to go run these way faster so that my pace gets faster. It doesn't really work like that. I don't want you to know that I'm looking at those, but I really like to look at steady runs because I want to see how comfortable is somebody at those steady type paces, how comfortable are they? Are they doing these? And they're just like, man, that was a walk in the park. I felt great. It only felt like tiny bit faster than an easy run. Or are they maybe unfortunately, this happens sometimes, but we try to prevent this as much as possible. Where somebody was maybe doing those steady runs and being like, that was more like tempo effort. That was pretty tough. That's a bad indicator. But the other side is a really good indicator. So steady runs are a big one. And then there's some specific workouts that I said before how there's really no one perfect workout, but we do have this one workout that we give people typically in marathon training, that if there had to be one indicator, it would definitely be this. We call it two by six. So people do you do 6 miles at marathon, basically marathon goal pace, and then you take ten minutes rest, and then you do another 6 miles at that pace, and sometimes it'll be a little faster. Sometimes we like to it's not necessarily just marathon pace, sometimes it'll be faster than that. But that workout is a great indicator because it's just so, like, you can't the way I like to say it is you can't fake that workout. You cannot fake your way through that type of workout. I like looking at those types of workouts that you just can't fake. I think, andy, you'll probably have stories of this, too, where sometimes in college it was really interesting after college, where you'd have a lot of people that were training together and doing relatively similar workouts, and yet on race day, you'd have like a one to two minute spread over, like, ten k or over six k for women. It's kind of interesting to see that. And what it comes down to typically, is that the people that are at the front in the race, they were within themselves in those workouts. Their efforts were spot on. The people at the back were all out on those workouts. Like, they were pretty much going flat out. So that's really what I like to look at is not just what were your times for those workouts? I really like to look at what were the efforts, how easy was it, how comfortable was it, how quickly did you recover before the next one? On the long runs, what were you able to do for paces on your fast finish? Because that's another one that if you're doing an 18 miler with a fast finish, it's just kind of hard to fake, like being able to do a pretty good pace at the end of that. So those are the things I like to look at, is just really the efforts themselves. But almost more importantly, for lack of a better way to say it, how hard were those workouts for you?

Andie Cozzarelli [00:47:38]: Yeah, and I'm also of the opinion of I like to look through go through several of the workouts. It kind of depends on, right, what race that we're looking at. So with the marathon, we want to see what those tempo efforts, those steady runs, what are they all looking like as a whole and kind of going through them, checking to see if there was any outliers. Was it windy? Was there some weird thing going on that could make those a little bit off pace? I kind of like to look at the season as a whole in some ways and kind of work my way through it, because I think that sometimes we boil down our race times to a workout and think, if this workout isn't perfect, I'm not in shape, I'm not going to race well, all those things. But I think that it's good to recognize. And I heard this from Alexey Pappas when she spoke once about the rule of thirds, about how a third of your workouts will be good, a third of your workouts will just be okay, and a third will just be not good. And so that's normal in training, that you're going to have some that are good, some that are not so great, and so not looking at each specific workout and looking at, oh, I'm not fit because of this specific one, I think is something that can prepare yourself to mentally not run as fast as you think you can. You're going to go into that race being down on yourself, and as soon as it starts to hurt or as soon as you start to slip, you're going to give up on yourself. And so I think that it's good to go through and remind yourself of the good things, the good workouts that you did, put those in your back pocket and say, hey, I did this, I'm prepared because I know I did these different workouts well. And just because this one wasn't as great, that's, okay, I'm going to let that one go. It's going to be my rule of thirds that's not going to count. And so I'm just going to let that one be an effort I finished, but an effort that maybe I didn't feel as great on. And so I personally, when I look through, I pay attention to a lot of the longer tempos for the marathon just to kind of see what we were hitting, the combination of the steady run and the long run, because we do that often at Runners Connect just to see how they ran both of those efforts. Because like Michael said, a lot of people will run the steady effort. Perceived effort is way higher than it should be. If you're running an eight out of ten on the effort scale for a steady run, that's more of a tempo effort at that point. So we want to make sure that those steady runs are more in. That like five to six range. That's what I typically look for, and that's kind of indicative of what a marathon should be like. Those beginning of the race should feel like a little bit of a five or six out of ten, and then it'll build, right? So that's kind of where I'll look through all of those different indicators to see, okay, where are we generally? What's coming? Another thing I think is important to recognize, and I always ask people this is, did you feel like you were forcing this pace in your workout? Like, did you feel like you were. Pushing your body to run this pace and it wasn't coming to you and you weren't able to latch onto it. It was just kind of like you were constantly working and it was hard. I think that's kind of one of those things that yeah, when you're in the depths of training and you have that accumulative fatigue and all that stuff is there, that's going to happen. But if you're feeling like you're constantly doing that, that's an indicator that we're maybe a little bit pushing, that we're kind of like Michael said, when you have a spread of athletes running the same workouts in the same times. If you're running at the upper end of that and it's not coming to you at all, then we're probably working a little harder than we should be. And we're not getting those physiological benefits of those workouts because we're outside of what we should be running. And that's where those feeling like you must run your goal time over what's being prescribed comes into play. And I'm big on I want to have that communication piece of we set the training at the beginning and some runners, if they're relatively new, we could see this progression in their training over time. They could start at one spot, which we need them to start there but they could continue to get faster as they do the workouts. And so if we don't have the communication there to know how are things going, how are these efforts feeling, then it's hard to get them in the place where we're pushing them and getting them fitter and showing what their bodies can do. And so I think that's an important piece of the training is to just be able to recognize how you're moving through it. We need to start at the right zone in order to get where we're going. And so for trying to overshoot that from the get go, we don't typically see progression, we just see stagnated results. And so that's where that training to where you are now. And there's always opportunity for growth. We could always change your paces, we could always increase them. But if we're already starting too high, it kind of can shoot us in the foot a little bit.

Michael Hammond [00:52:14]: Totally. Yeah, Andy, that's a good point. It's funny, while you were talking about that, there were two things I thought of that I want to talk about. We didn't really have this written down but in addition to kind of the goal marathon pace stuff is number one. I absolutely thought of when you were talking about kind of the perceived effort and not artificially manipulating that. I thought of like, easy pace. Easy pace is a big one where you can't force your easy pace to get faster. It doesn't work like that. It doesn't go that way. It's not I do my easy paces faster, thus I get fitter. It's I get fitter, thus my easy paces get faster. Really? What it comes down to. A lot of your training paces are like that. You can't force it. You have to. This is why we talk about threshold. We train at our threshold so that we can make that threshold go a little bit higher. So that was the first thing. The second thing I thought of was just really, like, the confidence side of getting ready for a marathon. We're talking about the taper. We're talking about your goal pace heading into the race. I think having that confidence heading into your race is a huge factor. One of the things that you mentioned that I advise people all the time is to just literally look at all of your training, literally look throughout. Sometimes it's easy to forget everything that you've done. It's easy to forget all the crazy hard work that you've put in all the miles, even if it's easy to focus on, like, oh, I really bungled that last taper tempo, or I missed this workout or whatever. Maybe I missed a run, whatever. It's really easy to focus on that, like, the micro. And then what I remind people is like, dude, look at the macro. Look at the last three, four, five months that you've put in of work. You've worked really hard. So that's where when we're talking about finding people's goal pace, it's kind of a big puzzle. It's not just this one little piece that we're looking at. We really look at your entire training plan. Yes, we focus on workouts in the last month or so of heavier training just because you're just fitter it's more accurate representation of where you're at right now. But I really tell people to look at their training, look at everything that they've done, and to build confidence from that. Even if there's, like, a week or two missed for an injury or something like that, it helps to really kind of take that step back and look at it from the bird's eye view. And then you'll be like, oh, wow. Yeah, I really have done a lot of training for this. I've really worked really hard for a long time. Andy, what are your thoughts on kind of helping people build confidence in those final week or two heading into their race?

Andie Cozzarelli [00:54:48]: Yeah, I always think about, let me pull out these workouts that I know went well for them, and I bring those up and I say, these are all the good points that we have here. So even when I create a race plan for somebody, that's what I'm looking for. Look at all these things that you did. And I think that that helps to get themselves in that mental space of, like, you know, I think I can do this. And I also remind them to think about how they mentally felt and how they got themselves through those efforts. What did you feel like towards the end? Because it was probably hard, but how did you mentally stay engaged. And so reminding them of all of these little pieces that will affect how they perform on race day, I think helps to get them in a good headspace. I like to consider what other factors are involved in this workout or this training that you've been doing. Was it warm, was it this, was it that? And look like kind of thinking about all these things as a whole. And then also I like to create sort of a multiple paces to go after. I think that when we think about having I must run this time, that I think is almost anti your confidence building a little bit. It's really hard to think about this is the time that I really want and because it just puts this pressure and expectation on you. And so whenever I look at pacing and give people pace plans, I like to create different options. Let's create these different places where we can know that, okay, this is going to be feeling comp. I can start here, maybe on the lower end of my goal and then see how I feel and then work through the race that way. And then I think it creates multiple avenues to build confidence within your race and your performance. And then I think it also just allows you to come away from any race experience with something positive to take away. Because there's also things outside of your control that even if the training was perfect, it could be warm on race day. So many things could happen that won't be things that you're going to be able to manipulate or change. And even the race I was supposed to Indianapolis come race day. I think if I had been able to run that race fit, I probably wouldn't have reached my goal anyway, even though I was fit enough to run the goal I was going for. But the weather and the conditions on race day wouldn't have been optimal for me running as fast as I had been fit for. And so I always try to take them through the process of training because I think the process is probably the most important part of the training, recognizing all the barriers and the obstacles that you went through to get to race day. Because I think at the end of the day, we want to make sure race day is in a celebration of that and not kind of this stressful event where we're not sure what's going to happen. And so that's the one thing I focus on is just like, look at all the things we did as a whole to get us here, to get us to the start line and that's what matters. And even if this race isn't our best race ever, there's more opportunities to grow from this experience. And so training, as long as we can be consistent, is always going to build on itself. We're always going to be able to get a little bit more and a little bit more as we progress through things. And so I always try to approach it from that standpoint of there's more to this. This is not your only chance. This is just a chance to see what you can do.

Michael Hammond [00:58:11]: There's something you mentioned while you were talking about that, you mentioned giving people, like, multiple times to target. I almost shouldn't be saying this because I feel like I'm revealing the magic trick a little bit, but a common thing that I will do with runners, connect athletes, is like, I'll give them I think I got this. I can't remember who I got this idea from, but basically, like, an A goal and a B goal. So the A goal is like, yeah, this is like, what we really want to achieve. We really want to get this. But it's a reaching goal a little bit. The B goal is the more realistic, the more absolute, grounded in reality. I'm not saying the A goal is like, silly, but the B goal is like, we know you can do the B goal. What I will frequently do for people is I'll give them an A and B goal to target, and this will be in a discussion with them. Of course, what I'm doing is that I'll have them target the B goal for the first, like, half of the race. The reality is that I'm trying to aim them towards the A goal, but I know that it's only going to happen if they run a smart race and if they get to the half confident, if they get to that half confident, feeling good, feeling like, wow, this is easier than I thought it was going to be. They're going to be like, all right, now I can remember Coach Michael's race plan of I'm going to pick it up this much. If I'm feeling good at half, that's where that B goal can start to morph into that A goal. Next thing you know, people will maybe they won't quite achieve the A because maybe they left a little bit too much time in the bank, but that's okay. They're still going to run really fast. So, like I said, I almost shouldn't be saying that because I feel like I'm kind of revealing something that we do, like, sort of the trickery, but it's for people's benefit of kind of giving them that building that confidence, that look, this B goal, there's zero doubt in my mind that you can achieve this. Of course you can achieve this. The A goal, I believe you can do it, but it's going to be harder. It's going to take a really good day. Ignoring conditions, ignoring of course, that stuff matters a lot, but from your perspective, it's going to take a really good day. There's nothing wrong with that. So that's kind of a way to kind of get around that because I don't want to send them after the eagle and have them blow up. But I also don't want to hold them back too much and leave too much in the tank and run a poor race because of that. So it's kind of striking that balance so much. But, yeah, I like what you said about building the confidence with kind of like using the workouts that went well and that, you know, you did well, but also kind of like being willing to throw out workouts that maybe didn't because that's just how it goes. So many people that's where I love having with runners connect, having there's a community there of people who kind of see other people's training. They see like, oh, wow, this person had a pretty crappy workout this week. Wow, I want to see how their marathon goes. And then you go check their marathon a week or two later, and it goes great. Everything goes fantastic. That workout was literally meaningless to their fitness and to what their training was. It was just a bad day for whatever reason it was anyway. We could talk about confidence building, I think, in races forever, because that's such a huge topic. I think I'm going to mentally jot that one down as a topic for a future coach chat, because we hear about it all the time. It's something I know we each individually have struggled with. I've had times where I've done really well with that. I've had times where I've done not so good with that. So I think we could have quite a bit of discussion on that. But Andy, I wanted to close it out with you had a couple of examples from within our community of people that you feel like kind of are within their taper and examples that you want to portray to people.

Andie Cozzarelli [01:01:47]: Yeah, so I found one, and I think it's a wonderful example of why you don't need to force the training in order to see results. Michael Ebon is the one we were going to talk about here. So he raced, I think, this past weekend, and I went through some of his training, and most of his workouts were centered around kind of a four hour marathon. That's what a lot of his paces were kind of based on. And he consistently trained for did the workouts as prescribed. He consistently did his easy runs, easy hit through his entire taper. His easy runs were either on the slower end of his pace range or right in the middle or somewhere in there. So he never tried to test himself. He really just trusted what he was doing and followed the workouts. And he had run CIM, which is a notoriously fast marathon, in December, and ran a 408. So coming into this one, I don't know what his expert I don't think his post that he said he didn't really have a lot of he didn't expect to run as fast as he did, but he ended up running a 348. So training for around a four hour marathon and then dropping that much additional time is huge. And it just goes to show that also, you don't have to be trained to the highest extent to be able to outdo yourself on race day if you get there, not overcooked. And so it was great to see that. It was great to kind of be able to follow some of his training and go through all of that. And he felt good through all those runs up until race day. He did all the things and he did all the workouts. He didn't push them too hard. And Nick, he came out running super strong race and having that, basically, he did have that 20 minutes PR. So it probably exceeded his expectations and super exciting to see that kind of stuff happen. But wonderful example, I think, for what can happen on race day if you give yourself the chance to get there ready, feeling good, you did the training and just see what happens. Go out conservatively. I always say that. Go out conservatively and just see what happens. And he had a great race and super pumped to see that.

Michael Hammond [01:03:56]: Andy, I knew a coach once who said, I want you to get to the starting line. 80%. I want to make sure I get this right. 80% fit but 100% healthy. And I really liked that quote, because if you're 100% fit but only 80% healthy, the 80% healthy, 80% fit but 100% healthy person is probably going to beat you because they're not gimpy, like they're going to get to the starting line. There's a certain confidence that builds with that. We can all agree that when you have an injury or something like that, even if it's just a little niggle or whatever, your confidence takes a hit, too. You just don't feel right. You don't feel like yourself. You feel like, what's going wrong? All you're doing is thinking about that injury. So, yeah, I liked that quote that I thought of that while you were talking about. But Michael, by the way, Mike, we debated before the podcast how to say your last name. We settled on thinking it's Ebon, but if it's Ibon, I'm really sorry. I apologize. But I wanted to read his race report. He said, if you told me three months ago when I finished CIM in 408, that three months later, I would shave 20 minutes off my time and finish modesto in 348 and BQ, I would tell you you're bonkers. But I pulled it off. I executed the training plan to a T, and it paid off with a BQ. So thanks, coaches, for all your guidance. So I just loved hearing that because I think you're right. That's a great example of kind of like I think after CIM, what I perceive it as is that Michael just kind of said it's not that he threw expectations to the he didn't throw them out entirely. But he just kind of said I think it was just kind of a case of like being like, look, I'm gonna I'm going to kind of like sometimes as a coach, sometimes the best athletes are ones who how do I say this? Like, how do I say this delicately? Who kind of just say, I'm just going to do what you say. I hate to say that because it sounds like I'm just like, absolving any individual responsibility. Or also maybe it sounds like I'm saying athletes are stupid, which is not the case at all. What I'm saying is that if you're working with a coach or a good team of coaches, you get to know each other, you learn your ins and outs, you learn your strengths and weaknesses, and then that coach gives you a plan. And that coach has good intentions and knows what they're doing and is smart. The reality is that most of the time you'd be better off just blindly following the plan. I know that sounds stupid and so many people I'm telling you, I have that mentality too, where I like to know, why am I doing this workout? Why are my pace is this, why aren't my pace is this? I'm that same way. And even I remember I had a point in college where I definitely was sort of that athlete for a little while where I was kind of like always questioning everything I was doing and is this the best thing for me? Always thinking of the other scenarios. And there was definitely a point where I just said, you know what, I believe that my coach knows what he's doing. He knows me really well at this point. We've gotten to know each other really well. We have a good, trusting relationship. I'm done. I'm going to lay it at his feet and he's going to figure it out. My coach went on to Coach National Champions and went and coached the University of Oregon. So now it's funny. Now he's this big proven coach. Back then, he wasn't he was younger, he was super unproven. I was his fastest athlete at that point, and it took a lot of kind of blind faith. And by the way, with Michael ebon. I don't mean to place this all on you, but I'm more so talking about what I saw with your progression. Kind of talking about that in a bigger theoretical sense of there. Definitely is that element where you need to kind of find if you're going to work with a coach, you need to find one that you trust, that you trust completely, and you kind of need to let them do their thing. I'm not saying never give them feedback or never give them any of your thoughts or anything like that. What I'm saying is that you got to trust the plan a little bit. And I think that that can bring a lot of confidence, and it can also just reduce a lot of the anxiety and a lot of the negativity. I've always said that a great training plan is worth nothing if you don't believe in it. I could give you the most perfect physiological training. We could do lactate testing on you. We could do Vo two max testing. We could do everything. We could do blood work every single day. It still would not matter in the slightest if you didn't trust it, if you didn't believe in it. So my hats off to Michael. I'm giving ourselves too much credit. Michael's the one who went out there and crushed his training these last few months and did a big 20 minutes PR. That was all him. But I think it just illustrates the example of, like, there definitely is that element of you just kind of have to trust the training. Of course, the training needs to be good. The coaches writing it need to be smart and need to be experienced and need to know what they're doing. But there definitely is that element of kind of like, removing yourself from it. I've always read that I'm ranting a little bit here, but I've always read that the people who will go and live amongst the big Kenyan training camps, one of the biggest things they always say is how fascinating it is, how little they think about it. They literally just go do their training, and then they go kick a soccer ball around, or they go do chores, like within Elliott Kipchogi's camp. They all have chores. They all have things that they need to do, or they'll go to their jobs or whatever it is that they're doing. They just don't think about it. They just train. They just do what the coach says. They do the training, and then they go about their day. I think there's a huge value to that of just kind of removing your head, getting your head out from the depth of thinking about training so much and just kind of trusting the process a little bit.

Andie Cozzarelli [01:09:44]: Yeah, I think all of my best races were run when I had no idea. A lot of times, it's like the first time I did a race, it would be like my best race until it finally broke through again. But most of the time, it was like, when I didn't know what I was doing, I raced better. And so funny story was that when I was at MC State, the head men's coach who was technically the head coach at the time, Raleigh Geiger, he sat us down before. He always gave us these ridiculous speeches before races. And so this was before cross country, I think, nationals, maybe. And he sat us down. Or maybe it was ACCS. I think it was ACCS, actually. He got baby pictures from all of our parents, and then he did a slideshow of them, and the entire time, we're all sitting there like, why are we doing this? What's the significance? And he gets to the end and he just goes, Run like a kid tomorrow. And we were like, oh. So thinking about the concept of how children go, if you've ever seen a kid race or a kid do anything, they go as hard as they can. They don't think about it, they just do. And so he's basically giving us that illusion of, like, remember what it felt like then and just go out there and do that where you don't have any concept. And I mean, to an extent, don't go out like a child where you run, you sprint the first and then you walk for a while, but not thinking too hard about it, just getting in the groove, getting in the zone, having fun with it, and just trusting your body to just get through it. So, yeah, I always think about that when I think about when I'm an overthinker, I overthink everything. And also this ties into the concept of, like, if your watch is telling you that you're overtraining or overreaching or any of that stuff or the most likely thing that you're going to see on race week is that you are unproductive, don't worry about it, don't listen to it. It's not true. I've had my watch on a starting line after the warm up, tell me I needed 48 hours of recovery. Not true. 100% not true. So these are those things that don't let those interference come in. Trust yourself. Run like a kid, have fun, run like a kid.

Michael Hammond [01:11:57]: I like that a lot. That's great. I think we'll end it on that because I think that that's just such sound advice. Like she said, you have to add the caveat of don't go out the first mile like a kid would, because kids are let's be honest, I have a child. Kids are a little dumb. They'll go run really fast the first mile and die or whatever, but run like a kid with that sort of carefree attitude of I just want to do the best I can and not worry about it too much. So I love that. So, Michael Lebon, big shout out, man. Awesome performance. I loved highlighting that. That's fantastic. Everybody out there in your tapers and getting ready for your goal races. Try to relax about it. As much as we give you all these tips, yes, take those into account. Yes, implement them, but also just try to relax. Have that glass of wine, have that beer or whatever. Just chill out, relax. Look at all the body of work that you've done and accept that the haze in the barn, there's not a whole lot you can do to make the race better. There, unfortunately, is a whole lot you can do to make the race worse. So just relax, get it done, and best of luck in all of your spring races. Anyway, that's it for us. Thank you so much for listening, everybody, and we'll see you next time.

Andie Cozzarelli [01:13:03]: Bye.

Finn Melanson [01:13:18]: Thanks for listening to the Run to the Top podcast. I'm your host, Finn Mulanson. As always, our mission here is to help you become a better runner with every episode. Please consider connecting with me on Instagram at Wasatch, Finn and the rest of our team at Runners Connect. Also consider supporting our show for free with a rating on the Spotify and Apple Podcast players. And lastly, if you love the show and want bonus content, behind the scenes experiences with our guests and premier access to contests and giveaways, then subscribe to our newsletter by going to RunnersConnect. Net podcast. Until next time, happy trading.