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TRANSCRIPT:

Brad (00:00):
Welcome to the B.rad podcast, where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life without taking ourselves too seriously. I’m Brad Kearns, New York Times bestselling author, former number three world ranked professional triathlete and Guinness World Record Masters athlete. I connect with experts in diet, fitness, and personal growth, and deliver short breather shows where you get simple actionable tips to improve your life right away. Let’s explore beyond the hype hacks, shortcuts, and science talk to laugh, have fun and appreciate the journey. It’s time to B.rad.

Brad (00:38):
What I had to do was learn to slow down and emphasize aerobic development at comfortable heart rates. And that allowed me to build, build, build without interruption from that constant fatigue and breakdown and illness and injury when I was pushing my body too hard. And I think that’s what,Shelby’s describing where she heads out the door.

Brad (00:57):
Hi, listeners, viewers. I thought I would record an entire episode dedicated to breaking down and analyzing the comments from one of the greatest female middle distance runners in the world, the American record holder Shelby Houlihan. And what a pleasure it was to drive up to Flagstaff, Arizona and meet her at her high altitude training camp as she prepares for her long awaited comeback after a ridiculous four-year suspension for a very questionable doping violation. We talked about that at length in our first podcast recording together back in 2021 when the, really the tragedy of having her career taken from her right in the middle of her prime, getting ready for the Olympics, and then she had to sit for four years.

Brad (01:46):
You’re gonna hear all about the nuances of how that went down and the injustice of the anti-doping system in world elite sport. I know we have to do it. We have to keep these sports clean, but boy, can there be some imperfections and some victims? And it was really great to talk to Shelby on the occasion of <laugh>, her four- year suspension being up and her being free to return to competition again. The show was great. We got into so many aspects of what it’s like to be an elite athlete and how she expanded her horizons and, and her competitive disposition to try to become a more well balanced person. She went and got a master’s degree in sports psychology, so it was a long and really rich interview touching on a lot of topics. And we only really got to cover the, the physiology of endurance running and training and how an elite athletes train for a small slice of it.

Brad (02:46):
And so, I think I’m gonna do another show with her someday where we talk exclusively about training and performing. But she had some really amazing, thoughtful insights. And they came off during the interview, maybe as a casual comment when she said things like, I don’t really know that much about running, so I just listened to my coach. And we both chuckled after she said it. But behind these comments is some really profound insights. And I think think things that might help you as you navigate the very difficult challenge often of designing a optimal training program that balances stress and rest and keeping your ego in check as you pursue ambitious competitive goals. And so this, what I do was took a bunch of notes and provided some outline so that I can get deeper into some of Shelby’s competence and can give you my perspective on how they might help you or what, what she meant about this and that, especially with some of the training techniques and stats that she mentioned and how they fit into the big picture and what you can take from them to help with your own training program.

Brad (04:04):
So, it kind of reminds me of how this biohacking scene is getting a little out of hand these days, and we’re using a regimented, high tech, glossy glitzy approach to pursuing longevity rather than covering the basics. And I’m drawing the parallel to Shelby’s interview because here is one of the greatest middle distance runners on the planet. And her approach, rather than being robotic and highly technical and requiring all these devices and contraptions and blood lactate levels to measure, she seems to have a more flowing and intuitive approach. Of course, she has great guidance and the best coaching, but it was really interesting to hear those comments, and I was thinking to, wow. So if the greatest <laugh>, one of the greatest runners in the world is training like this, maybe you too, and I too, can chill out and back off of this overly technical biohacking type approach to overall health goals and longevity pursuits.

Brad (05:15):
Uh, also relatedly right around the time I was preparing this episode, I read an article in the New York Times that pretty much torched the Blue Zones movement and this mystical magical idea that there are pockets of extreme longevity around the globe, and that we can learn so much from these people and how they live, especially when the main promoters of the Blue Zones movement have been caught red handed manipulating their message and drawing, really inaccurate conclusions from the data that they gathered. The best example being that the blue zones have been widely touted as following a plant-based diet as one of their big keys to longevity. And not only is it not true,yt it’s been manipulated in the interest of, I guess, promoting a plant-based diet. And the authors and the leading researchers have kind of been caught and called out for that, where they admitted themselves.

Brad (06:19):
yeah, we kind of picked that one to promote ’cause we thought it’d be a good idea sort of thing. In fact, the blue zones that they highlighted in all the research and in the books have meet as a centerpiece. Each of ’em, except for the ,Loma Linda, California Seventh Day Adventist, where their religious beliefs preclude them from eating meat. Uh, but the folks in Greece and Sardinia and Costa Rica and Okinawa are following what would be called a balanced, natural, nutritious, whole foods diet as an attribute, as opposed to a junk food diet. But what the New York Times article was zeroing in on, interestingly, was that what do these blue zones have in common where they are touted to have outlying longevity? Well, how about poor birth certificate record keeping, as well as pension fraud, pension fraud, meaning that you assume the identity of your grandfather so that you can continue collecting a pension and saying that you’re 108 and you’re really 89 or what have you.

Brad (07:30):
And so this thing really flips the whole premise on its ear that these people are living in a certain way that allows them to get an advantage over their surrounding nations or other cultures. Okinawa as long been touted as the number one longevity pocket on the globe, and Japan has often been at the very top of life expectancy stats for both males and females for many years. I believe now Singapore is in the top slot for longest life expectancy. The United States of America with the most advanced medical system and the wealthiest nation on earth is pathetically behind. I believe there’s something like 37th in life expectancy. We are, I should say that since I’m an American, although I’m not gonna participate in those statistics, I’m going to be completely disregarding them and forging my path to extreme longevity by not getting in my own way and succumbing to all this, all these cultural forces that dramatically compromise our longevity, even with our fantastic medical advancements and other advantages, including affluence, which is a strong predictor of longevity.

Brad (08:39):
So you look at the top longevity nations and by and large, they’re highly affluent. And then you have the poorest nations in the world also have the worst life expectancy stats for many reasons. Anyway, it is kind of interesting that on a overall trend, looking at the life expectancy stats, you see the rich nations on top and the poor nations on the bottom, however, in the blue zones, how can these primitive living cultures have better longevity than major nations? And that’s where the article really hammered on them saying in other words, really. So some farmer in the jungles of Costa Rica is living longer than the people that they’re carefully tracking and engaging with all the modern medical advancements in nations like United States. Um, very hard to believe. And, that kind of gives us a pause to obsess in a biohacking mindset that these are the things that are gonna get us, you know, way, way past the norm.

Brad (09:51):
It comes down to basics and consistency. Things like prioritizing sleep and minimizing artificial light and digital stimulation after dark, avoiding silly crazy stuff that compromise longevity like chronic exercise or over exercise patterns. Or on the flip side, simply not even getting the basic level of everyday movement to promote longevity. So, getting away from the glitz and the magic and the fairytale stories that these folks in the jungle or in Sardinia, herding their goats and doing things that are gonna give ’em an advantage. And we can somehow, you know, obsess about that. It’s better just to take care of matters right here and pick up the low hanging fruit, for example, eliminating nutrient deficient chemically laden processed foods from the diet. And, reason I’m, teeing this up is because I see that tremendous parallel with how this top runner is training.

Brad (10:59):
And you’d think maybe from watching too many Hollywood movies that you’d see Shelby during her rest time when we had our interview hooked up to an IV or having a technician come in and <laugh> check her blood every 20 minutes and go back to the lab and put it in there to see what kind of workout she should do tomorrow. And instead, she’s talking about how in the off competitive season, she deliberately needs to unwind and chill out a little bit, such that she might want to go out dancing with her friends or ordering a Domino’s pizza. So it was very refreshing to hear that she is striving to live a normal, balanced everyday life, rather than becoming a cyborg robot in the pursuit of improving one more second off of her 1500 meter time. And interestingly enough, she has dedicated her life like the other elite athletes that she races against, to going for those marginal gains where you have to live and breathe the sport and push your body to an extraordinary level with an extremely grueling and time consuming training regimen just to knock off a second or two, but outside of the workout.

Brad (12:09):
And when the watch stops there’s a strong demand and requirement to calm, calm the heck down, and try to live a normal life. So, here is the American record holder, fastest female US runner of all time. I’m gonna take her comments and her example and stack it up against probably a hundred scientific studies with young, healthy college students. Were trained for six weeks with a certain protocol of high intensity interval training combined with cold therapy, and they improved 23%. So this is how you should train. I’m gonna put Shelby’s daily life and her, her casual comments during our interview as more important than dozens and dozens of studies. Nothing against medical science, I mean, health and exercise physiology and medical science. But we need to look to the elite athletes for what is the optimal way to live and become fit and healthy and strong for as long as possible.

Brad (13:11):
And I’m also referencing a lot of times on the show,t he fellow masters, track and field athletes that I compete with and enjoy watching. Like my former podcast guest, Sue McDonald, former podcast guest, Cynthia Monteleon, they’re both world champions. Sue McDonald has broken 15 world records in her age division in various events in the last year and a half. So whatever she’s doing, you absolutely cannot argue with or stick a scientific study in my face or anyone else’s face saying, you know, this is better. And this shows that you get a 23% improvement when you do this, that, and the other biohacking related behavior, it just doesn’t stack up as well as seeing what people who are pushing the absolute edge of human performance potential are doing. Ah, okay. So, takeaways. She is not overly obsessive or technical with her training and her overall approach to competition, and she has to be very mindful of balancing the overall stress and rest balance in her life.

Brad (14:20):
And she evkjhen related that she tries, she makes a concerted effort to sit around and watch TV a lot because that is a way to de-stress from the incredible physical stress of the workout patterns that she follows. And that’s kind of an interesting thought. I realized the same when I was a professional triathlete that pursuing these outside hobbies and interests that might have been intellectually stimulating and helped me live a more vibrant, balanced, adventurous life needed to be toned down because I was expending so much physical energy on my swimming and biking and running. So you kind of have to become a somewhat boring person with a very narrow focus, because anything you do, by definition, whether you enjoy it or whether it’s a negative, it’s still stressful in the same refrain and on the same stress scale scoreboard as the workouts. I did indulge in my writing career, and I got that started while I was a professional triathlete.

Brad (15:28):
And I think that gave me a good healthy psychological balance that I actually could sit down in front of a computer or a notepad and do something with my brain besides just swim back and forth looking at the black stripe at the bottom of the swimming pool, or pedaling my bicycle for miles and miles and hours and hours and running down the trails and running around circles on the track. So I think you do need a healthy balance in life. But as Shelby was describing, as she was pursuing that degree, a master’s degree in sports psychology, she had to do an internship where it was required that she woke up super early in the morning, like 6:00 AM and had to get down and work with a team of athletes for many hours. And she reported being just exhausted from trying to train while also trying to get a master’s degree.

Brad (16:18):
It just doesn’t go hand in hand when you get to the very, very top level of sport. Now, I don’t think there’s too many listeners up to this show that are going for the next world championships and the next Olympics like Shelby, so we can now step back and realize, okay, even if you’re a super competitive amateur athlete, you still have a nice slice of pie that you might best dedicate to, for example, getting a degree in studying or getting a job. Maybe it’s not even a full-time job if you’re able to set your life up accordingly, but you’re going to be pursuing other interests and hobbies, and that makes for a nice balance life. And it’s not going to make or break your recreational athletic career. But as you rise up, rise up to the next level, rise up to the next level, you start getting paid.

Brad (17:08):
It’s your profession. You got people counting on you, they’re paying you to perform, as has been Shelby’s case since the moment that she graduated from college and jumped onto the pro circuit and very soon made the Olympic final. So, she was on a rocket ship to the very top of the sport, and she had to continue to narrow her focus. Okay. That’s sort of the philosophical stuff that I took great interest in and wanted to share that she’s not a, a robotic cyborg training for the Olympics, but rather a person who is enjoying, kind of a more mellow and laid back approach and more intuitive approach to peak performance.

Brad (17:51):
And then we’re gonna talk about training volume. And I’ve talked many times on the podcast about how the, the importance of developing an aerobic conditioning base to support all more complex and more intense levels of athletic activity, whether you’re a tennis player, basketball player, or endurance runner.

Brad (18:15):
And so developing that aerobic system so that the faster paced runs can become less stressful and less destructive is the only path to success, especially in endurance sports. And so she’s gonna, I’m gonna cover her amazing workouts that she described in detail, but the only way someone could even aspire to attempt even half of such a workout is to have this phenomenal aerobic base where this machine is operating day after day after day, operating at a comfortable pace, a comfortable heart rate, and getting stronger and stronger and better and better at burning fat as the preferred source of energy. In other words, the machine is humming along and has tremendous endurance, such that the occasional revving up of the engine to do high performance, fast-paced stuff is not super destructive. Unfortunately, when most people pursuing endurance goals are not really taking the time to establish an aerobic base correctly.

Brad (19:18):
We have a whole giant chapter in our new book, Born to Walk about this, where you have to slow down, be patient, emphasize fat metabolism, exercise at heart, rates of 180 minus your age and beats per minute or below. That’s your fat max heart rate. That’s how you get better as an endurance athlete. Okay. I also wanted to point out, when we talk about building the space and training at a comfortable pace, is what happens is you also become resilient to overuse injury because you have such a tremendous capacity that when you do push yourself hard and do some killer workout or a high high degree of difficulty race, it doesn’t beat up your body. And it was interesting how Shelby reported virtually no injuries of significance to report over the course of her entire professional career.

Brad (20:13):
Unfortunately, that’s not the case for many other top athletes who have to battle and struggle through injury. So I’m gonna say that she’s been a small part lucky, but a very large part, smart and strategic, and able to look at her career from a big picture perspective rather than, again, obsess and stress about getting in the next workout, even though her knee hurts or her foot hurts, that’s how you get injured, whether you’re an elite athlete or a recreational athlete doing something that the body is telling you that you really shouldn’t do as a recipe for disaster. So talking about the base when Shelby was describing her weekly training patterns, she mentioned that she does three actual workouts or training sessions per week. And the other days she’s out there just running and exercising.

Brad (21:13):
And when we were trying to schedule the podcast, she says, well, I have workouts on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, or whatever she said. And I said, that’s an interesting way for an elite distance runner to talk, because you’d figured they’d work out every single day. And indeed, they do exercise and train every day, but an official training session where you have an objective and you have a time and you have a set of intervals or something that’s measurable and tangible is only a couple few days a week. So as she reports the other days of the week she’s consistently just getting out the door and running around eight miles, just building that base. That’s a lot of miles for kind of a casual off day as you might call it. But that’s what happens when you get to the elite levels that you can do something like an eight mile run at a brisk pace at high altitude, and have it be relatively speaking to the average person and the average endurance athlete a walk down the street to the market and a walk back home.

Brad (22:18):
Literally, it is on a par as measured by the physiological impact on the body and even the heart rate zone that she’s exercising in. And she talked about what that eight miler, the slowest she will ever go is eight minute pace when she feels crappy or beat up or whatever. And so running eight miles at eight minute pace, that’s an hour and four minutes at an altitude of 7,500 feet is a truly super human level aerobic machine. And that is how you go and break American records and win global metals and accolades. So boy, what an amazing body of work to get to that point where stepping out your door and going for a little session, even her dogs, her poor little miniature Dachshunds can’t even keep up. So she doesn’t take ’em even on her easiest workouts.

Brad (23:12):
Okay, now I wanna talk about the track sessions that she mentioned, because again, they’re just mind blowing super human level. But the only way to access the participation in a workout of such heroic epic level is that year in, year out, day in, day out, eight mile runs at a decent pace at high altitude, and there’s no shortcut to getting here. So if you’re a young listener and you’re an aspiring high school runner, and you wanna be like Shelby Houlihan and break the American record someday that eight mile run at eight minute pace at 7,500 feet altitude might equate for a new aspiring high school runner to a two or three mile run every day at a 10 minute pace. <laugh> at sealevel, but you’re building your aerobic base the correct way, as evidenced by maintaining a heart rate at or below fat max heart rate.

Brad (24:13):
So a comfortable dedication to aerobic endurance training is the way to access the epic workouts that make you a champ. And distinguishing distinguish you from the 23rd ranked person in the world to the number four person in the world as Shelby finished in 2019 World Championships. Here’s her template workout. I almost choked on my own tongue when she spit this out. Uh, yeah, I like to do 30 times, 300, 300 meters on the track jogging the a hundred to, to make the full circle, and the jog is in 30 seconds. So even then, it’s not a very, it’s not walking to the, to the next rep. It’s actually jogging around the track and then starting again with another 300. So that’s 9,000 meters of hard work. That’s almost five and a half miles, where the 300 meter repeats are run in a time of around 49 to 51 seconds.

Brad (25:11):
They kind of progress in sets of 10. So what she’s doing there is described as an anaerobic threshold training session where you are working at a heart rate and an intensity level known as the anaerobic threshold, whereby you could continue at that pace for quite a long time if you were doing an all out effort. But if you were to go faster than that pace for a bit of time, your body would start to accumulate lactate faster than you can remove it. The waste product from it’s hydrogen ion waste products into the bloodstream. They call it the lactic acid burn somewhat inaccurately from a literal standpoint, but it’s when the body is making lactate for a fuel source, fuel source and building these waste products building up in the bloodstream. So the threshold is when you’re producing lactate at the same pace, you’re removing it from the bloodstream so you’re not accumulating a higher and higher level of lactate to the extent that it would debilitate you.

Brad (26:15):
That’s the familiar burn in the muscles. Pretty soon you can’t keep going because you’re, you’re building up more and more lactate waste product. And so the threshold describes a workout that touches up against this this physiological point as described in laboratory setting as four millis of per milliliter of blood lactate level. So the, the magic four millimole reading, you can do it on a portable blood lactate meter or in an exercise physiology lab is the, is the spot where you’re producing lactate as fast as you can buffer it or remove it from the bloodstream. And so this workout of 30 times 300, by the end of the 300 meter effort run in 49 to 51 seconds. That blood lactate is right up there at four millimoles. Thereby, if she were to continue racing at that speed or running she would, you know, get into difficulty and have to stop.

Brad (27:14):
But instead, you jog for a hundred meters slowly and allow that blood lactate level to regulate, you start buffering acid more easily because you’re going slow for that wonderful glorious 32nd break before you have to again slam another session in 49 to 51 seconds for the 300 meter circle around the track. And there’s a whole bunch of different ways to do an anaerobic threshold type workout. But a, a session like this allows her to move at a pretty quick speed 49 to 51 seconds for 300 meters, and then by taking that break, not destroy herself with a workout that’s too strenuous, where the blood lactate levels build and build and build over the course of the workout, however long it takes to run 30 times 300. Um, that’s, you know, many minutes of hard running. But those brief respites allow the body to just bump up against that anaerobic threshold.

Brad (28:11):
And when you do workouts like this on a regular basis, you are able to increase your threshold a little bit higher so that you can run faster when it comes time to race. So this is a very popular training strategy amongst elite endurance athletes, especially middle distance runners who are for example, in a longer distance race, like a 10 K, you’re running probably just above that anaerobic threshold for the whole race. Indeed a lay person’s way to identify anaerobic threshold, intensity level is it’s the pace that you can hold for a theoretical all out one hour performance. So if you were to do a bicycle time trial for one hour, all out, like they have what’s called the hour record in cycling, or for a runner, if you were to contest a race that lasted for one hour and you went at the best pace you could for the entire hour, that would equate with your anaerobic threshold.

Brad (29:16):
So it’s not terribly brutally challenging for an athlete like Shelby to run at anaerobic threshold for only 300 meters. It’s the pace she could hold for an entire hour of an all out race. Furthermore, she gets to have a jog recovery every 100 meters till she completes 30 of them. The good thing about this is you can actually run at a faster speed because of the frequent recovery, as opposed to, let’s say, doing an anaerobic threshold workout lasting for five and a half miles or 9,000 meters that she did with 30 times 300, she would have to go progressively slower in order to keep the blood lactate below threshold level. Now there’s doesn’t mean there’s not a time and a place to do, for example, an all out one hour time trial at around anaerobic threshold is also a beneficial anaerobic threshold training session.

Brad (30:14):
But the middle distance runners, especially those who are competing in races that last less than an hour, right? They’re gonna have to learn how to go faster. And so that’s why threshold training has become so popular. There’s also a technique called double threshold, where the athlete does two separate workouts on the same day, morning and afternoon both of them touching up and doing intervals that work that anaerobic threshold. But each individual workout is shorter duration than one long brutal anaerobic threshold session, which might have been the template for years and decades before that. So these athletes will go out in the morning and they’ll do a set, and they’ll go out in the afternoon and do another set. Shelby did not describe doing the double threshold strategy. So it sounds like she’s doing just a a day of anaerobic threshold training on the track as she described.

Brad (31:07):
And then she also will do a different type of workout that might be a slightly different distinction, like more they call ’em a VO two max workout, where she described doing four times one mile repeats with more rest in between the mile repeats. And a lot of people are touting a similar session as beneficial for building VO O2 max. But these coaches and these athletes that are performing at the highest level have pretty sophisticated rationale for the workouts that they pick and that they are assigned. In Shelby’s case, if she’s not getting into the nitty gritty of the science of anaerobic threshold training, she’s just getting the email that says, okay next week we’re gonna take it up to 30 times 300 with progressions going from 49 to 50 to 50 to 51 to 50 to 49, and just go and do it and trust the coaching and the research showing that this will help improve your anaerobic threshold, which has a huge application to peak performance at her favorite events such as 800, 1500 5,000 meters.

Brad (32:13):
What’s interesting also when we talk about the difference between aerobic and anaerobic is how much aerobic conditioning is required even for a middle distance elite athlete that’s racing in events of very short duration. So in Shelby’s case, she’s also an elite 800 meter runner, and that race is completed in less than two minutes. The 1500, her bread and butter, where she has the American record of three, three minutes and 54 seconds. So it’s less than a four minute race, but the necessary training for such a race is a crap ton of eight mile runs to the extent that she’s running over 75 miles per week. So she’s running 75 times longer than her favorite competitive distance every single week and doing these amazing workouts like 30 times 300. So the hard work accumulates to a total of 9,000 meters in the workout, but she’s only racing for 1,500 meters in the 5K, the longest event that she’ll contest at the elite level for now.

Brad (33:25):
She, she dropped a hint that she’d someday like to become a 10,000 meter runner but that day can wait 5,000 meter runs for elite females take around a little over 14 minutes. In fact, she’s gonna be going after that record. She set the record in 2020. It’s since been broken, so watch out. I predict that she’s gonna grab that thing back running in the very low 14 minute range. But these are highly aerobic events, even though they’re running so fast and the event’s not lasting that much. Indeed, you can open up exercise physiology, tech textbook. We also cite these stats in the book Born to Walk, where they have the relative energy contribution of events of different duration. And amazingly, I, I was shocked to learn this even after decades in the world of endurance training, that an all out effort of one minute and 15 seconds is the 50 50 point where it’s 50% aerobic and 50% anaerobic.

Brad (34:26):
I would guess that the average fitness enthusiast off the street would answer that it’s 95% anaerobic or something, because for a minute in 15, you’re flying, you’re going as fast as you can. However, the aerobic system plays a huge role even at 400 meters. My favorite event there’s different research showing that there’s some individual variation, but for the most part, the 400 meter race is around two thirds anaerobic and one third aerobic. So you do have to have some endurance that’s quite a bit different than, for example, the a hundred meters, which is, let’s say at 98% anaerobic. You don’t need to train <laugh> by doing longer runs. In order to be a fast a hundred meter person, you have to be explosive and powerful, and you’re lifting weights. And even at 200 meters, there is some endurance component, but it’s pretty much of an anaerobic emphasized training.

Brad (35:17):
But once you get up to 800, 800 meter race is 66 to 70% aerobic. So these elite athletes who are running under two minutes, females a minute, 41 for the males in last year’s Olympics, are doing a huge volume of aerobic training because their race is two thirds aerobic. Now, when you get up to 1500 meters, again, these gals and, and guys are flying around the track at a very high speed, but the event is 80% aerobic. And then once you get up to 5K and above, you’re talking about 90% aerobic an hour race is 98% aerobic system and only 2% anaerobic system. And so we talk about the anaerobic threshold. That is the point where if you were to cross over and go faster, you’d start to get more and more anaerobic. That’s why you can’t do it for very long. So the anaerobic threshold, one hour time trial is paradoxically, I guess 95 to 98% aerobic system contribution, and you’re only getting a small contribution from the anaerobic system.

Brad (36:30):
Okay. I mentioned how she has a very intuitive approach. She has complete trust in her coach, but at the same time where she’s getting spoonfed these workouts by the coach without having to program herself and get deep into the weeds. She also describes the relationship with the coach as allowing for a tremendous amount of input and flexibility on the athlete’s side, where the coach compels the athlete to fill in the blanks rather than treating them like a robot and telling them what to do every single day. So in the parameter that shall be described, she only has a few quote workouts, end quote a week, and the other ones are fill in the blanks where she’s just heading out the door for a jog, has no involvement or interaction with the coach besides possibly reporting back at the end of the week or the end of the month that yes, indeed, I’ve gotten out the door every morning and done my eight mile run.

Brad (37:29):
So what does my next session on the track look like? Um, so I think that’s a really beautiful interplay between that desperate need for expert support and guidance, and a regimented approach, and a quantified approach where you’re trying to go for times and doing something that’s contemplated to support the development of your anaerobic threshold and is appropriate for the time of year, because these athletes have to peak for certain events. So they have different training phases that’s called periodization, where the winter training phase might be more aerobic in nature and more longer duration. And then you start doing, you start sprinkling in, this is the typical approach anyway. They start sprinkling in more sessions where you’re going faster and doing high intensity interval training and doing sets like 30 by 300. But maybe for hypothetical example, maybe her winter training blocks started with doing a workout of 10 times 300 for a week or two, and then going up to 15, and then going up to 20, 25 30.

Brad (38:33):
And then as you get into competitive season and approaching the championship events, Shelby reported that she’s going for the world championships indoors and then hopes to compete in the outdoor event world championships outdoors for team USA later in the year. Um, that’s when they start to do more sharpening per the traditional approach, where the intervals are shorter in duration, faster, not as voluminous. So I’m gonna guess with strong inclination that this 30 by 300 that she’s talking about in January might morph into something like eight times 200 at a, a much faster pace. Things like that is how the athlete sharpens and peaks reduce volume and maintain intensity is the typical formula or template for peaking. Um, I’m going to take this emphasis on aerobic endurance, even for middle distance runners back to the originator which is a lot of people give tremendous credit to New Zealand coach named Arthur Lydiard as a pioneer in the over distance space, or the aerobic emphasis base for middle distance runners.

Brad (39:50):
He’s one of the greatest coaches of all time. And beginning in 1960 and into the sixties and seventies, the tiny nation of New Zealand dominated middle distance running on the world stage. It started with Peter Snell, one of the greatest middle distance runners of all time shattering the world record in the 800 meters in the 1960 Olympics in Rome in a time of 1 44. And in 1960, that time of 1 44 remained a world-class time for decades and decades after. In fact, Peter Snell’s performance in the 1960 Rome Olympics on a crappy cinder track, not the rubber track, not the super spikes. His time of 1 44 would’ve made every single Olympic final since then, all the way up to 2024 when these guys finally had a huge breakthrough in the event. And now you had to do 1 43, 1 42 just to get in the Olympic final, which was won in a minute 41.

Brad (40:47):
So they’re, they’re making some incremental improvements. A lot of people are talking about the super spikes, the carbon carbon plated spikes that have a performance advantage in comparison to the previous generations of spikes, which were just a rigid soul plate and didn’t have this this innovation that a lot of people are either crediting or complaining are kind of distorting the long respected list of world records in the middle distance and long distance events, because now the athletes have, are, are pretty much going faster just comparing new spikes to old spikes. And Shelby had some interesting thoughts to say about that during the interview where she’s very reluctant and resistant to put on this new fangled spike that’s gonna make her faster because it just doesn’t feel aligned with her commitment to pursuing the sport in the most honorable manner, and perhaps comparing to athletes of the past who were wearing you know, inefficient technology compared to today.

Brad (41:49):
So it’s pretty interesting to hear someone who, there’s still a sliver of the population in the track scene. And some of these crazy fans still think that she intended to cheat and she was, quote unquote caught with a doping product in her bloodstream. And to kind of quell the debate once and for all, it’s really sort of outta context to wonder if the poor lady is telling the truth or not. Because what happened when she tested positive for this banned substance was that she had a microscopic amount in her bloodstream that had decidedly no impact on her physiology. So being, quote unquote caught with a quote unquote doping product when the amount was so small that it didn’t have any effect, is not really being caught cheating, and no one can claim otherwise because <laugh>, we know what it takes for the drugs to take effect and to alter physiology and to provide the massive advantages that happen when you go on a doping protocol.

Brad (42:51):
That’s, of course, against the rules. So it’s kind of silly how her reputation got tarnished because of this unfortunate event. And I think what it mostly highlights is how imperfect these testing protocols are where no one really knows how that substance got into her system. But there’s emerging research that the human can excrete nandrolone naturally endogenously from things like being under stress or taking birth control medication. I think it was one of the things mentioned. And also of course, you can obtain these metabolites in in, in food products. That’s why Shelby’s defense speculated that she might’ve got it from a tainted burrito at a food truck, an excuse that was widely ridiculed. But it was just a kind of a stab in the dark to say, we don’t know how this got into my system, and we have to propose some ideas here.

Brad (43:51):
And all that in the background now, which is great. But again, there was no cheating here in this story because athletes who are caught cheating are the ones that have super physiologic levels of drugs in their system that make them faster, stronger, and give them better endurance. And we should have severe and harsh penalties for the athletes that are taking substances to give them a decided advantage over people who are trying to race clean. And to Shelby’s credit like her, she’s truly tortured by the idea of putting on these spikes and going faster. And that is I, I guess that’s a testament to her character. I told her she should just put those things on and, and go after the record, because now the records have been set by people wearing the super spikes. And even her American record, interestingly of 3 54 0.99 from 2019 still holds, even though it was, it was set with the previous generation of spikes and the contend that these super spikes can improve an elite athlete’s performance for around a half a second per lap, maybe even more.

Brad (44:57):
Some people think. So if you chop off I mean, it’s almost four laps around the track for 1500. So if you chop another two seconds off of her American record, oh my goodness, it’s, you know, it’s in the stratosphere and it’s right up there with the current world record from the great Kenyan Faith Kipyegon. So the track aficionados are eagerly looking forward to Shelby’s return, hopefully convincing her to wear the super spikes so that she’ll be on a level playing field with everyone else in these championship meets and, and give it a run.

Brad (45:34):
And my personal opinion on this, hey, you can’t you know, roll back technological advancements in sport, and it is part of the sport to observe how things change. And the athletes in the Hawaii Iron Man are now going on much, much, much faster bicycles than we had available to us back in my day in the eighties and nineties. And in fact I had the Hawaii Iron Man triathlon age group record American record since 1989. So it held for 34 years, and it was finally broken in 2024, and that person shattered it by a ton of minutes. Even though it held for this long, now it’s gone, and that’s okay. And I don’t care that the person had a much faster bike than me. And it’s all part of sports is breaking records and taking advantage of whatever performance innovations short of that line that we must draw in, in elite sport, where the, you know, we have the ability to dope the human body to perform at, you know, superhuman levels. And that’s the stuff that we got to eradicate. And you can see a sport like cycling, Tour de France and professional cycling has been tainted for decades by the widespread use of the blood product EPO.

Brad (46:56):
And that’s the main way that endurance athletes can cheat and get a massive advantage, is to improve their red blood cell count and their oxygen carrying capacity in the bloodstream. Estimates are that an endurance athlete taking EPO can improve their performance by a shocking 6%. So 6% would be the difference from a gold medal to a 14th place, or someone who is, you know, still elite, but way back from the very top. And it’s, this is the drug that is the cyclists have used for so long, and that was the centerpiece of the Lance Armstrong controversy in cycling and when his ultimate confession years later. But I think the important takeaway to understand on the matter of doping is that when you’re in a dirty sport, like the Tour de France, everyone you see on television, all 200 riders are taking these blood doping products to gain this advantage.

Brad (47:57):
So the entire pack is going 6% faster than it did maybe in the seventies before the doping era occurred. But we, what we see in track and field obviously people are getting caught every year. There’s a rash of doping suspensions from athletes in the impoverished nation of Kenya, and that is because of that economic incentive causing widespread incentive to cheat. There’s also some really sorted influences of coaches taking advantage of athletes. There’s expose article talking about how these male coaches in Kenya will take promising female athletes under their wing, and then they’ll take over their careers and manage their careers and manage the money that they earn and buy in, in consequence of this, they will also introduce them to the wonderful world of doping and getting an advantage so that the coach can earn more money.

Brad (48:50):
And some of these female athletes have spoken out that, you know, how their lives were kind of taken over and manipulated and mistreated by opportunistic coaches. And I should mention that you know, an elite runner competing in in the, in the west and in the major events on the roads and also on the track can earn a decent living by our standards here listening in developed nations. But if you look at the per capita income of Kenya, it’s still only a few thousand dollars a year. So a good runner, not even a great runner who you see on TV, but a good runner who can come in seventh at the local half marathon in a town near you and pick up a check for $2,000 or $3,000 or maybe $10,000. We’re talking about a massive fortune when they take that back and put it into the economy in Kenya.

Brad (49:47):
So the incentive to cheat due to economic desperation is a real problem in elite international sport. And that’s why there’s been something like 90 doping positive tests just in Kenya in the last few years, catching all kinds of endurance runners. And boy, we keep fighting that battle and deal with all that stuff, especially the the dynamics that I just described where the coaches are taking advantage of the athletes. Whew, that’s an aside on doping. But back to pulling this whole show together and the interesting insights I talked about, Peter Snell who, whose transcendent performance proved that Arthur Lyniards techniques were a, a great foundation even for athletes racing at high speed for short duration. It’s still all about building that aerobic base. I learned this also as a triathlete where I trained really, really hard early in my career and did a lot of high speed lively training sessions in the swimming pool or in packs of cyclists down when I trained in Los Angeles, there’d be 60 or 70 or 80 guys on a ride, and the pace would be really fast the whole way, and it would be really a strenuous and challenging training session, training schedule to adhere to.

Brad (51:06):
And it didn’t always translate into great competitive performance. So what I had to do was learn to slow down and emphasize aerobic development at comfortable heart rates. And that allowed me to build, build, build without interruption from that constant fatigue and breakdown and illness and injury when I was pushing my body too hard. And I think that’s what Shelby’s describing, where she heads out the door and jogs at what’s a comfortable pace to her every single day, eight miles, unless she’s doing a proper session, which is more difficult, but is enabled by that wonderful base that she’s built. So, in summary here and tying in that those longevity comments and the BS from the blue zones that I talked about at the top of the show, I think we can all back off a bit from this obsession with self quantification and the tools and tips and tricks and expensive protocols of the biohacking world that are gonna somehow hack our way to better health when instead, we are better off focusing on the basics, like getting a lot of sleep, eating a nutritious diet, and following a sensible training program.

Brad (52:17):
And the most sensible thing to do is to realize that that aerobic conditioning base builds the foundation for anything else that you wanna do, especially those high stress, high performance workouts that are really challenging to the body. How’s that sound? I’d love to hear your comments, questions, feedback, please email podcast@bradventures.com. Thanks for listening, watching Talk to you soon.

Brad (52:43):
Thank you so much for listening to the B.rad Podcast. We appreciate all feedback and suggestions. Email podcast@bradventures.com and visit brad kearns.com to download five free eBooks and learn some great long cuts to a longer life. How to optimize testosterone naturally, become a dark chocolate connoisseur and transition to a barefoot and minimalist shoe lifestyle.