The None to Run Podcast

Hey. What's up, everybody? Welcome to episode number 20 of the HealthInomics podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kennedy, coming at you from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and thanks as always for listening. This is lesson number four of my get started running series.

Be sure to sign up if you wanna join my five part email course to help you get started and discover the enjoyment of running. Head over to Healthianomics.com/startrunning if you wanna sign up to that. Today, I chat with Steve Boyd. I'll give you a bit of a brief, intro, on Steve and who he is. Steve is an elite Canadian distance runner, a three time national champion on the track and road, an active masters competitor who now coaches the physical Kingston Running Group and Queen's University Cross Country Track Club.

He's got some impressive PBs, at 800 meters, one fifty two, 15 hundred meters, three forty seven, 10 k, twenty eight forty one, a half marathon time of one zero three thirty six, and a marathon time of two seventeen twenty eight. Those are some some ridiculously fast times. In today's podcast, I chat with Steve about what a program for new runners looks like, how Steve screens the runners he works with before setting up their running program, whether alternating walking and running is a good place to start for new runners, what matters more time or distance especially for beginners, What's the most common mistake that runners make? Advanced training strategies that new runners can also benefit from. I talked to Steve about whether or not generic running programs taken from the Internet are good for beginners.

Why beginners should include strength training in their programs, which strength training exercises are best for runners, and specific considerations for aging runners.

I think you're gonna get a lot out of this episode. For all the

links I mentioned in this conversation and a full transcription for all you readers, head over to healthenomics.com/twenty, and I hope you enjoy the episode. Thanks for listening.

Welcome to the Healthinomics Podcast. Boosting your health and fitness IQ one episode at a time. And now your host Mark Kennedy.

Welcome to the show Steve, it's an honor to talk to you.

Thanks. Glad to be here.

That's great. So for those listeners who aren't familiar with you, why don't we just start, maybe you can just give us a little background on, who you are, sort of, I mean, where where you grew up, how you got into running, and a quick overview of your running career and and what you're up to right now with regards to running.

Sure. If you want an overview of my career, it might take a while because

It's been a long one.

Six years long. But, yeah, like a lot of Canadians athletes, came out of a hockey background and wanted to do that until I was probably 14 or 15 and like a lot of people realized I was a little too small but I got a lot of conditioning from the other sports I'd done, basketball and hockey. And so I just by accident ran a primary school race in 800 meters and won that and thought, well, that was too bad and just kind of kept going from there because I was winning. So this is in Kingston, Ontario back in the late '70s and then '80s, I went to Frohnak High School here in Kingston. Started doing well, pretty well in grade nine and ten, running middle distance eight and fifteen.

Finished high school, decided to stay here at Queen's University because the team at that time was defending CI's champ. Were in some ways the Guelph of the day although their dynasty wasn't I think they won three out of five years or three out of four. So it was a good choice. That's

pretty good though.

Yeah, we were a solid team so it really for me at the time didn't seem like a compromise with the NCAA which had some offers there as well. So I stayed in Canada and ran in the CIS and was all Canadian I think all four years.

Were you running cross country or what other distances were you running?

I was running primarily cross country. I I did a little bit of indoors but not until third or fourth year because in those days, the trials for the national cross country, the world cross country championships were in February so I usually focused on that during the winter. I only ran indoors I think in my third and fourth year.

Okay.

So I went on from there to I was running professionally while going to grad school at New York University in Toronto. I ran the roads, made several national teams, got better and better into my mid to late 30s, ran a marathon in my late 30s, ran two seventeen. I had a lot of wins and up until age 38 more or less retired and then took it up again and I didn't stop running but I stopped competing for a couple of years, a year and a half and went into masters and then sort of redoubled my focus there and broke some records and won some national titles and so on and that's kind of brings me to where we are now at sort of fiftyfifty one, cranking it out and thus like still relatively healthy so.

Congratulations and are you focusing, obviously you're still running but you're also coaching, correct?

Yeah, along the way I started coaching. I started coaching my teammates back in Toronto back in the 90s then had a few private clients just before I moved back to Kingston to start teaching at Queen's University. Also I got a doctorate during those years as well and had two kids and we raised those kids too.

You're busy man.

Yeah, at one point sort of late 90s it was ridiculously busy. I was working, I was running professionally. So I was teaching, finishing my doctorate running and trying to raise kids and make the Olympic team in that year. So I got pretty busy but I was able to do some coaching at that time. In February I came back and I started a small group called Physical Running which is what I do now with four or five women in the neighborhood who just wanted to get in shape.

I had a lot of success with them, built the group over the years and then launched the online aspect in I think it was 02/2006, '2 thousand and '7 and then 2010 started coaching at Queen's University here in Kingston, Alabama. I've been doing that for the last, I guess I'm in my fifth year now.

Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah. I've been following your blog for a while. Alex Hutchinson, who, who you know obviously Yep. Pointed me to your blog, a while back.

So that's sort of how I I got to know you a bit better. I I I've heard about you before in your running, but I didn't know you had, you know, your site and your online or your coaching and your and your blog there. So anyways, to anyone listening, I would recommend checking it out and I'll put a link to your site in the in the show notes for sure.

Yeah. Thanks. I I never know who reads that thing. I just, once in a while, throw something up there. I'm not as good about updating it lately because I'm just been so busy, but and and my posts tend to be pretty long too.

So

Yeah. You know what? I I've read all your stuff, and a lot of that, you know, your posts are timeless pieces so it doesn't really matter that you haven't updated it that often really.

Well you know that's kind of the idea is that I create content that's not sort of dated in any way, know, I mean it's more coaching advice rather than kind of what I had for breakfast that day.

Yeah. No. It's great. So today, as I mentioned to you before we, started the call here, I want to talk about, or focus on mostly new runners. I'm doing a series here, on the blog and podcast, for new runners.

So when if someone comes to you, someone who's maybe maybe they did a little bit of sport growing up, but they're they're new to running and maybe they wanna lose some pounds, where do you start those people and what what sort of does their program look like? I know it it's gonna differ depending on their background, but sort of, I guess, take me through your process and what are sort of the questions you would want answered for that person.

Yeah. I actually have an in an intake, inventory that I that I I give to all new runners and I I rarely get people that are real beginners, rank beginners, the kind of people that go to running room and kind of learn to run. Most of the people I take on have done a little bit of running, maybe not as much now as they've done in the past but they're usually fairly committed runners who want to get to the next level. And what I ask them is basic stuff. What's your age?

What's your height and weight? What are your PBs from 100 meters to the marathon? What's your injury history, what are your short term goals, what are your long term goals and then I ask for a picture or video of them so I can have a look at a little sense of how they move and then we go from there.

So that's great and when you get that picture video, what are sort of the what's going through your head there? What are you looking for? Are you looking at obviously a video of them running or and or walking? Are you looking at for their form or what sort of things are you looking for?

Usually, I, you know, I look at sort of, you know, what kind of shape they're in. If they're if they obviously have weights, some people think that they're they're they have a decent weight to to train heavily and they're actually a little heavy so I'm careful about loading their volume. Yeah. Also just you can sort of sense by how somebody moves, how much running they've done, in particular their cadence. We can get a video and if you see that their cadence is up 180 and above that you know they've done a fair amount of running or they naturally have a high cadence which is a great thing to see.

When someone's turning over 150, one and 60 steps, you know that they haven't developed the neural pathways and they're probably going to be putting a lot of stress on their body when they run. They're taking a lot of weight within stride. So these are the little things to help orient you so that you don't get the person doing too much early on. And I have a rule that or a goal I have for all new athletes and it's that they don't get injured in the first year at all. So sometimes I have to be quite conservative with them and all that data on their injury history and their athletics history really helps them kind of avoid injuries in the early going.

Mhmm. Yeah. No. That's fantastic. And for these people, you know, once you've gone through the the intake process, where do you start them?

What sort of I mean, I say they're say they're looking their goal is to run, anywhere from five to 10 k. Do you start them on a on a running slash walking program, or is it just running, or what does that look like?

Well, like I say, most of my athletes have done a little bit of running, so we we we take a a short term goal. Short term would be in the next three months, medium term goal would be within a year and then long term is what they hope to achieve in the sport. So we start right away in the short term goal. The person's goal is to run a five ks then I mean the lowest volume I'd have somebody on and when I first started my group in the early 2000s, all four of my athletes were doing this but generally about five days a week, forty five minutes for their easy runs and they have two workouts in there, two long sessions, a tempo run and an interval session, intervals between one and three minutes, one and five minutes. Tempo is between twenty and forty minutes and they get the days off after those workouts and that's a bread and butter kind of program and you sort of see how far they can go on that and some people can go up to a year on that still improving and we don't really add volume until they stop improving.

So that would be, that's typically the lowest volume. Somebody's not ready to do at least that much, I generally tell them to go away and run on their own for a while and try to work their way up to that much so that we can so we get going a little more quickly. It's not worth my time in theirs if they really aren't at the point where they can run even that much. So again, I don't really deal with kind of rank beginners, I then tend to deal with people who wanna get to the next level.

Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. For for people though that say weren't at that level, like is walking, alternating walking and running a good place to start?

Yeah, walking, yeah absolutely it's great. Know what running room does with the start to run with the ten and one is fantastic. You even start someone at one and one if they had weight to lose and they had the usual run of shin and lower leg problems. It does take a while to build up the strength in the calves and feet to be able to run particularly if you're carrying a little extra weight. So just spending time on your feet is great.

Walking two or three hours at a go is fantastic or an hour, an hour and a half, whatever you have, is great and it's a great way to prepare to run. And if you just start to feel good, throw a little bit of jogging in there and you're away. I mean my mother started running like that years and years ago when I got her going and she ended up running two marathons and like a forty one minute ten ks when she was in her 40s and she's just walking. She was a smoker as well, was pretty remarkable.

That's amazing. And then another question I I get once in a while, and I love to hear your take on. Initially, what's what's more important? Is it time on the feet or distance run for you know, we're talking, again, for beginners. Maybe maybe they're a bit below sort of some of the athletes you're working with.

But Yeah. Yeah. What

I always I always go with time. I don't want people to feel time pressure to cover a certain distance in a certain time. I mean, actually all my athletes all the way up to elite level run on time. I know roughly what the top people are gonna run per kilometer per, you know, on an hour run or an hour and a half run, but I still give them time duration rather than distance. With beginners, definitely.

I mean, you think in terms of minutes, absolutely.

And why is that? What's the rationale behind

Well, again, I don't like people to know to think about how they're going because then they feel time pressure and they think that they often think know, it's intuitive to think that if I do it a little faster, I'll get I'll get a better workout out of it. And and that's the enemy of of consistency really is that people feel like that running a little faster is better. It's better right away to think of them and have them think in terms of just be out here for an hour or forty five minutes or whatever hitting the ground without any pressure to go faster. And that way they develop good habits around their training and they realize that easy is easy and that if you want to get the most out your workouts, need to come in with the volume in your legs but not with undue stress from running too fast on your easy days. So it's all about developing good work habits in the early stages.

That makes a lot of sense and I think for, you know, for a new runner as well, their body will be, in a little bit of shock, and their body is only gonna know, like, how long they were out there. It's not gonna know whether they went, you know, eight kilometers or 9.7 kilometers. It'll just know that they're out there for, you know, six sixty five minutes.

That's right. An hour is an hour. It's it's more or less the same for an elite runner as it is for a beginning runner. Even a little more stressful local structures for beginning runners. Like I say, the calves and feet take a real beating if you haven't been on them a lot particularly if you're a little bit heavier.

So yeah, it's just getting them used to getting out the door every day and there's a mental aspect of it as well. Like eventually they're gonna have to run a little bit faster for an hour and it's just good to get them in the habit of going out the door and being on their feet for that even if it's just walking. Just getting in the habit of getting out the door every day for a decent chunk of time.

Yeah. I'd say I've I've only run two marathons. The first marathon I trained for when I was living in England. I all my training was based on time. My every run I went was based on amount of time.

And then my second one, I I ran, all my training based on distance. You know, I had a coach I worked with and I, you know, obviously, run 12 k, run 16 k, and, it's yeah. It's it's interesting to see. I, you know, I had totally different mindsets in sort of both sets of, training. I'm not sure which I like better but I could see the benefits to both.

Well, know, when we're doing, know, a lot of the reason I do that too is that it's just simpler when I'm writing a plan. I don't have to convert the person's training pace to a particular distance every day. I just know that it's time and I'll know roughly how long it takes them to run a 10 ks in an hour versus half an hour. So it's easier that way. But I really do think if you give somebody a set distance, they're gonna start tying themselves over that distance and they're gonna want it to be a little quicker than than the week or the day before.

Yeah.

So I just think whenever you can eliminate that, it's it's good to do it.

Yeah, makes sense. What are some of the most common mistakes you see newer runners make? Yeah.

Well just that, I mean trying to go too fast too soon. I mean go back to my mother when she first started, I got her running and I told her to run between two telephone poles and then walk one telephone pole And she said, I don't know what, I can't get beyond like a mile and a half or two miles or something. So I said, alright, I'm gonna run with you. I'm gonna see what you're doing. And so she takes off out the door at, you know, way under four minute k pace just hammering and I said, what are you doing?

And she said, well, that's what I see you doing, you're going pretty fast. And I said, well, it looks fast but it's not fast for me. So we slowed her down and within two weeks she was running seven miles straight. So it's starting too fast, you know, timing yourself all the time, not really working. Thinking that you get two weeks or three weeks in like that, you're really getting somewhere and not realizing that you need to take a much longer view.

You need to do things that are gonna keep you consistent for weeks. The biggest mistake is yeah, it's just biting off more than you can chew. Usually in terms of speed, not in terms of volume. People will rarely run, you know, start trying to run two hours a day but they might start trying to run half an hour a day as hard as they can and they don't go anywhere when they do that.

Yeah, and it seems to me it just makes it less enjoyable too. I mean, you're a new runner, you go out there like your mom did and start hammering it. Your lungs are burning, your legs are killing you and you're not going to want to go out the next day because it just sucks.

You're absolutely not and then if you throw a bunch of, you know, the kind of delayed onset soreness you're going get as a result of that, you're just going to think if this is running and I don't really like it and that's kind of the point my mother was getting to and I know other beginners. There's a little more general knowledge now than there was then but I still see people trying to university students barreling out the door of our Phys Ed Center on a spring day or a warm day in the winter and you just know where that's going. They're gonna get shin splints and sore caps and they're gonna say, I can't run. I'm one of those people who can't run. I meet people all the time who say, I can't run, it hurts my knees or I can't run, it hurts my shins or my feet.

And you say, Well, how fast do you run? How far do try to run? Well, I try to run quite hard and you know that means basically all out. Again, just bad habit. They just said bad habits early on and sometimes it's hard to break those actually too.

People get a little success doing that, think that that's the way to go. So yeah. Yeah.

Okay. And then what about training strategies? I mean, obviously, there's lots of advanced strategies, but are there any training strategies or strategies or methodologies that you would use with, your elites that would be suitable for a beginner runner or a runner that's been running for a little bit such as, I don't know, sprints or hills or Yeah. Plyometrics and things like that?

The basic structure of every program I write is is is roughly the same whether it's for the relatively new, you know, relative newcomer, beginner or an elite. You know, you need to learn how to run, you need to learn how to run easy and you need to learn what easy is. You need to learn what tempo running is, what interval pace running is, what rep pace running is. These are roughly the pace you can run for an hour on your best day fully tapered would be tempo pace. Interval pace is roughly the pace you can run all out for eleven to twelve minutes.

Your rep pace is the pace you can run all out for roughly four minutes. So your easy pace is conversational, you can speak in full sentences, no distress. You need to learn all these basic paces and those are the building blocks for any program. So every program I write has two types of faster running per week. It may change throughout the year depending on the macro cycles.

So a long run, a tempo run and a harder interval session or rep session and that doesn't change whether it's a 45 year old beginner or someone like Dylan Weiss, it's all the same. That's the beauty of the sport is that beginners, not rank beginners but people with a little bit of experience can train like elites can. And some of them can even do the same kind of volume in minutes as elites can as well. I have a 52 year old who runs just over three hours for a marathon, didn't start till she was 42. I mean she can run 150 ks a week.

Wow, that's amazing.

Yeah, if they're built up carefully and if they understand the basic elements of a training scheme, they can go a long way. I mean, this athlete understood how to run easy, nailed their paces on workouts all the time and just really looked after herself and ten years later is one of the best 50 year olds in North America.

Wow. And what about plyometrics? I mean, that's a fairly demanding exercise. If people don't know that is sort of, I guess, loading the muscles, like bounding type exercises, jumping, and that type of thing.

Yeah. Those are great. But, again, there's there's like with every kind of training, there's a cost benefit and it really depends on the athlete and the distance they're training for us whether we would integrate that stuff. Middle distance runners, it's yeah. It's young middle distance runners are still pretty resilient.

It's it's it's absolutely mandatory. Older distance runners, I would never have them do that. Again, there's a benefit to every kind of training you do but in some cases the costs outweigh potential risks outweigh the benefits. So I would never have a runner over about 35 do any kind of kind of plyos. 20 year old middle distance runner going to Queen's University, absolutely.

Yeah.

Do that kind of stuff. Again, not in every case, would depend on how how injury prone they were. If they had a history of foot and lower leg problems, we'd be very wary of that stuff. I generally prefer static lifts like the heavy lifts, squats and upper body stuff, Bulgarian lunge, all that kind of stuff, just basic licks and tough calf raises. But if an athlete is particularly resilient, no injury history really to speak of, we can do some jumping up and down, sure.

Okay. Another question I'd like to ask is, is there a place out there for generic running programs for beginners? And if so, how can a new runner get the most benefits? I know. I'm gonna I'll probably getting an interesting, answer because you're a coach, and I you you Yeah.

I think I know what your answer is gonna be but I know I'd like to see what you think there.

Yeah. Well, I think we're in an interesting juncture now with running. There's so many runners, big races are selling out months ahead of time. One of the biggest problems I have now is that we try to plan for somebody and they say, I can't get into certain races because it's sold out. And as a result of that, there's actually more information available online than there's ever been before.

There's just huge volumes of information. We're past the point where it's actually useful. There's now so much that people don't know how to sort through it and you can in two seconds can Google up some kind of generic plan and follow it. If you're particularly good at sifting through and processing information about how to approach running and knowing how to run easy, just having good instincts that way. You can get away, you can go quite a long way on say just a prefab running room program that you can download.

You can do pretty well on that. And I actually have had a few athletes coming off those who wanted to take the running to the next level but it managed to do reasonably well on those. It just depends on what you want to get out of your running. Generally speaking, I think most people can't. There's too much information and some of contradictory so they just get overwhelmed and they're better to go to somebody they trust.

That said, there are a lot of people doing specialized coaching as well who, you know, I wouldn't name names but they really don't have the experience and background to do it. They maybe can talk and talk and they're good self promoters and all that but they really haven't worked at a high enough level to really be able to guide people in that way. Not because there's just lots of money out there to be made in doing it. So generally speaking, I would recommend that if someone can find somebody they trust that's affordable for them or even locally, mean it's not just online, there's a lot of good, there's a lot of coaches operating around locally now who can help you out and there are other runners who also run and find out who they're working with or maybe they're self coached and they're doing a good job. You always prefer an actual human being who you can talk to even if it's another athlete over something you just download off the internet because then you can't.

A of the coaching process is what you do when things break down. I mean, plans rarely go according to spec. I mean, they just do. And so what you're following a plan, what do you do when it falls apart? How improvise from there?

Mean, of what I do is that kind of thing. It's not going exactly according to plan. Had to miss a day or this or that happened. Now what do I do? People are at a loss when they're in that situation.

That's where coaching is. Mean, a lot of people could write a basic program and send someone on their way, but you really have to have some experience to be able to help somebody actually work through it.

Yeah. That really resonates with me. Again, I did my first marathon, took a generic Runner's World marathon program. Of course, I felt good, and I, you know, was very athletic growing up, so I ramped up the volume way too quickly. Yeah.

Ended up with iliotibial iliotibial band syndrome, plantar fasciitis, And then I didn't have anyone there. You know, obviously, I went to a physio for some treatment, but I didn't have anyone there to course correct me and to, you know, help me get out of the the hole that I dug myself into. Whereas the second time around, I had a coach and I know, everyone's gonna get little issues here and there and miss some workouts and get sick or traveling or whatever, but it helped me immensely get through the program, you know, injury free and and feeling good and healthy.

That's an extremely familiar story for me. I mean, probably a third of the athletes I coach approach me saying, I'm injury prone. I can't seem to run above x amount of kilometers a week. And I say, Well, let's just see about that. Let's just see how it works when you're actually doing it properly and you're getting feedback on a regular basis.

And I've had people that said they couldn't run at all and they've now three, four years in without a single problem, without a single missed day. They're just rolling along, running. They didn't think they could race more than 10 ks. Now they've got two, three marathons under their belt and they're running fast. Yeah, if you can have somebody basically to help you avoid really obvious mistakes and keep you from going back to square one all the time, people could really go a long way.

People's minds are blown by what they can do if they avoid those obvious mistakes.

And you mentioned some strength training, earlier. What are, well, first of all, is strength training important for a runner? And, you know, don't need to spend too much time on that if you don't want to. And then, also just what are two or three great exercises? You mentioned a couple.

Any other exercises that you recommend your runners do?

Yeah. Strength is a huge thing for us. You know, from university age runners all the way up to master's athletes, It's really important when you're starting out, particularly for female athletes to develop pelvic stability and power to avoid injuries in the long term. But it's also extremely important once you're over 40, in particular over 45 to maintain muscle mass. There are a lot of injuries that result from just loss of mass and the big stabilizers in the lower body.

You see people lose glutes and quads and all that and they lose pelvic stability and their belt or knee problems, IT band problems, anything all the way down the chain. That's absolutely crucial. Younger runners, I wish I'd known this when I was younger, but how to do a proper core routine. So your planking, your ball curls, your side leg raises, there's a million things you can do that now you can go online and pick four or five solid things and do those for core. So developing core strength for younger athletes and then developing a little bit of upper body power.

Again, fairly simple. Body weight exercises are great. So pull ups, push ups are made. Push ups are an underrated exercise. They're fantastic.

Pull ups, push ups, some rowing. Rowing is very good for runners because it counters that posture, the tendency for the shoulders to roll in.

Open you up a little bit.

Yeah, from being a fixed arm, hands in front position all the time cause the shoulders to curl. So that's another reason to avoid crunching kind of activities that shorten the muscles in the front of the body. So a lot of pulling, rowing. But you can also do stuff for the shoulders, you know, dumbbell press. I do a lot more dumbbell press now than bench.

I don't really do bench anymore at all because I find it tightens my chest and neck and stuff. So I do dumbbell presses. Dips, parallel bar dips are fantastic. Just a simple kind of curl overhead press, one arm presses with the dumbbells are fantastic.

And then you mentioned squats and Bulgarian lunges as well?

Yep, a squat like a goblet squat, people know what that is, You hold the dumbbell in front of you for balance and you squat down. For all the runners who can't handle a lot of resistance and again, you don't actually need a lot of resistance to start getting gains in those areas. A middle distance runner may throw a back squat with a fair amount of weight on or a front squat. Most runners don't need to do that much if they're not running middle distance, know, gobble squat is good or put a ball, Swiss ball against the wall, hold a couple of dumbbells and do a two legged or one legged squat that way, that's fantastic. To open up and do like a single leg with the Bulgarian squat is really good.

Just make sure you're not overloading that. Most people can do that with no weight at all and get a decent benefit from it. If you're fairly strong, you've worked up to it, can grab a couple of dumbbells, you know, 10 to 20 pound dumbbells and throw a good load on there as well. So that stuff, you know, I've done some kind of lifting since I was, I was just thinking about the other day, since I was 13 years old. I did when I was age 12 and 13 and didn't do it again until I was 20 but I'd pretty much done some kind of strength training for over thirty years.

And it wasn't always the best stuff but I think I benefited from doing anything at all. I wish I knew then what I know now about the imports of all the lower body stuff, the squatting and then calf raises and all that. Calf raises and other good things. I think I could have eliminated a lot of the problems I had in my late 30s which resulted from really just kind of atrophy, you know, catabolism of the big stabilizers in the glute and low back and which caused me to have back problems late in my thirties which I then was able to fix with strength training in my forties. So again, wish I had known all that and I like to make sure that young athletes know how important that is, they want to have long careers.

Okay, that's great and that's a good actually transition to sort of the last question before I know we're running short on time here but, considerations for aging runners and you mentioned obviously muscle mass being one. Is there any other considerations for the aging runner?

That's really the big one. Also be aware that your recovery rates are a little slower. You you're like, if you look at your skin, your skin's getting a little, you know, a little bit stretched and stuff so your collagen is basically wearing out which is what happens when you age while your connective tissues are also made of collagen, they get a little stiffer and they break down a little more quickly and take a little longer to repair. So recognize that your feet, plantar fascia, your Achilles, IT band, anything that has that kind of connective tissue is vulnerable as you get older. So those things take a little longer to repair and you are tearing those down every time you run faster.

But again, keeping the muscle mass up really helps unload those structures a little bit If you're bearing weight in a balanced way where it's supposed to be born, you can go a long way towards preserving those structures. But just realize you're older, it takes a little longer to recover and you're also going to get less bang for your buck when you do train. You get less of a robust response because all those growth factors are not there in the same quantities that they were when you were in your 20s and 30s. So you're gonna get less bang for the buck, you have to work harder to get what you get, particularly in the weight room, you gotta work pretty hard. But it's not like you can win, you're not going to win, you're getting older.

You can lose a little more slowly so that's the name of the game. Older runners now are really, I say this to people all the time, are really reinventing the sport in the sense that they're showing what's possible at advanced stages. I'm blown away all the time by what people my age and older can accomplish and even people who haven't done it all their lives and people who have done it all their lives are just incredible. Ed Whitlock or Bernard Legat down in The US who's 40, still running world class times. I think my generation of athletes is showing that you can do Basically we're gonna rewrite the age grading tables in favor of sort of showing that athletes can do a lot more advanced ages than anyone ever thought they could.

That's gonna come from great sports medicine, it's gonna come from great physio and just basic knowledge about how to preserve the body.

Yeah, no, it's great. I hope to follow in your footsteps and just keep healthy and keep running and keep improving as long as I can and then be okay with the point where I'm not actually improving anymore, but just running and staying healthy and doing what I can.

Absolutely. And I tell people all the time it's just as much fun. I mean, there are moments when you think, ah, shit. I, you know, wish I could I wish I could run as fast as I did before but it's the same challenge all the time and there's the same camaraderie, there's the same thrill of competing and all that and there's the same general health benefits. I tell people, you're a fairly young guy, you're going go through difficult times in your lives, you're you're having kids or job stress, try not to give up your athletics, not to give up your running.

You will thank yourself double fold in the few years down the road when you're still doing it. Now we've had friends that gave it up because they were having kids and they felt like we were being selfish for not giving it up and now they envy us and wish they'd stuck it out just for those two or three years when they were under a lot of stress. It's a good stress reliever even if sometimes it feels like it's adding to your stress. In the long run you'll thank yourself.

Well I'm deep into that now. I've got almost a three year old and a two and a half month old so and running's one of the things that's keeping me sane.

Yeah, that's the hardest time of your life to do it. You get through this you know in decent shape and still in a routine and it's all gravy after that. Yeah, just give yourself another two years and you'll be good to go.

Yeah. Before we end here, mentioned recovery for aging athletes. Is it do you have any rules of thumb or any anything you follow with regards to, like, how do you know if you're ready for your your next workout? Maybe you're feeling a bit tired or sluggish. Is there is there any signs that, you know, maybe you should skip your workouts?

Or

Yeah. My I mean, my recovery rate's still pretty good so I I can still get two decent sessions in a week but there are times where they don't go as well and I find it it's even for me, it's a moving target. There are some days when I can get away with a couple of days recovery in between which is what I've always done and then there are other days I just can't. So I'll bail on a workout after a couple of reps if it's not going well and I'll wait another couple of days to go back at it. But generally I'm pretty good, my recovery rate is good and as you get older, it's a moving target.

In some days it works, some days two days is good, some days it's not enough. But then also there's a lot of variability between athletes. I have a Masters athlete now, Chris Mercy, who just ran two twenty three marathon on his fortieth birthday. I mean, that guy can run 200 ks a week and run a marathon and recover two or three weeks later and he's 40.

Yeah, that's amazing.

You really have to get to know yourself and you know the athletes you're working with. Generally, I mean, he probably had crazy recovery rates in his twenties So they probably slowed. He was just always amazing at recovering. So you just kind of know what your personal rates are like and know that that's gonna get a little worse as you get older. I don't know what the rate, again, varies from person to person.

But expect it, just sort of anticipate it because it's going to happen. And then be prepared, don't be so hung up on your plan and that's again where a coach comes in, if someone can give you permission to postpone a workout for a couple of days to make sure you get the quality.

I think it's important for people to know too. I mean, if you miss a workout or two, you're not gonna lose any fitness. No. Yeah. If anything, if you're you're not feeling it or you're maybe you're starting to feel a little sick, you're you're not gonna lose any fitness and you actually perhaps benefit from taking that workout off and resting and then come back and when you're feeling good and you'll be able to get more benefits from your next workout.

Absolutely. Like, what I call your gross capacities take a long time to gain and a long time to lose. Now if you're getting sick and hurt all the time then there's obviously something wrong with your plan it will erode your fitness but you're right, you can't be hung up on any one session. Also think about it, if your goal is to run as much as possible, do you really want to run the risk of being off for a week or two because you had to get that one workout in. And if you're getting sick and stuff, your injury risk goes way up when you're sick.

When you're inflamed and you're tight, you're going to get, you know, you're a lot more likely to get injured if you got a virus. So you're better just to it's like the old stitch in time saves nine, it's always been true. Get to know your body when you can work through something and when you can't. It's not an exact science but you get better and better at it and if you have a good coach you'll be able to maximize your odds as far as that stuff goes too. But generally speaking, it never pays to be too hung up on the plan.

Like the plan is not ordained by God or anything, it's just a plan. It's not perfect so if you have to deviate from it, it's not the end of the world.

Yeah. No, that's great advice. Well, Steve, I don't wanna take, any more of your time. I know you've got a trip out to BC, tomorrow you mentioned. So thanks very much for your time and expertise.

It was great talking to you and I'll be sure to put all the links to to your blog and your coaching services and some links to the exercises that you mentioned, which will help a lot of runners for sure.

Excellent. Well, glad to be a help, and good luck with your your future endeavors.

Great. Thanks very much, Steve. Okay. Bye.

Thanks for listening to the Healthinomics podcast at www.healthinomics.com.