The None to Run Podcast

I'm Mark Kennedy, and this is the Healthenomics podcast episode 28 with guest coach Jay Johnson. Welcome back, everybody. As always, thank you for listening. Happy New Year to you and your loved ones. If you're new to the Healthinomics podcast, this is typically an interview based show where I talk about some of the best minds in running from coaches to physiotherapists to nutritionists and even some athletes themselves.

And if you listened to my podcast before, thanks for coming back. If you enjoy the podcast, I'd really love it if you could leave an iTunes review. It only takes a minute, and these reviews really help the podcast reach new listeners. Before we get to today's interview with Jay Johnson, I wanna let you know about my none to run challenge. The next challenge will start on 04/01/2017.

The challenge is a great way to stay motivated, get support, and help you make running a habit. And there's some great prizes to be given away like free running shoes, t shirts, and lots of other cool running gear. I wanna challenge you to throw long distances, fancy running gear, and fast paces out the window. One month, five runs of five minutes or less per week. Are you in?

Go to www.nonetorun.com/challenge to sign up. On to today's interview with Jay Johnson. Jay Johnson has coached collegiate, professional, and adult runners for more than fifteen years. Jay has also coached three US champions and has helped dozens of other adult runners reach personal bests over distances from one to 100 miles. Jay earned his master's in science in kinesiology and applied physiology from the University of Colorado, a degree he started working on while running on the varsity cross country team which is chronicled in the book Running with the Buffaloes.

In this episode, you'll learn the most common mistakes made by beginner runners, whether or not there is a place for walking in a beginner running program, how to best transition from running with walk breaks to continuous running, the best way to warm up before a run, what you'll notice when you start performing strength and mobility work as part of your running plan, Jay's recommended stretching routine, specific workouts to help break through plateaus in your running, why you must run strides, and much more. The show notes for this episode will be at Healthenomics.com/20eight. There you'll also be able to download the transcription for the episode. Enjoy the show, everybody. Welcome to the Healthenomics podcast.

Boosting your health and fitness IQ one episode at a time. And now your host, Mark Kennedy. Hey everybody. I've got Jay Johnson here. Jay, welcome to the show.

Alright. Thanks Mark for having me.

Yeah, no problem. I've been, looking forward to, talking to you for a long time. I've been a big fan of your work. I've got, your book in front of me and I've, listened to many of your pod cast which have helped me become a better runner. So anyways, it's great to have you.

So can we start, maybe you can just give us a bit of a background on you to sort of where you grew up, where you went to college and how you got into running and eventually becoming a running coach?

Yeah, yeah. I grew up in a little town that's south of Well, it's not as little anymore, but it's called Castle Rock, Colorado, just South of Denver. But I mean, it was small town when I grew up there. Mean, fast forward to college, once I got to college at the University of Colorado, all the teammates kind of ahead of me and behind me and into my class, none of them had ever run-in like elementary school summer track programs. But I did do that, like third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade.

So yeah, I ran when I was younger, and I was a serious basketball player in high school. But I think my junior year, it was pretty the writing was on the wall that I was going to be a better runner, and started training a little bit harder. But it was a different era. I mean, I ran 30 miles a week roughly in high school, which is almost a joke now for high school kids. I actually have a camp at the University of Colorado that I've been doing for Let's see, this will be our sixteenth year doing the camp.

It's called the Boulder Running Camps. Thirty miles a week for a I mean, I was serious my senior year of high school. You know, to think that I mean, I'd done 10 miles once in high school and I'd done eight miles twice.

So what are high schoolers running now? Just out of curiosity.

Yeah. I I I mean, there's a there's a range. I would say a serious boy at camp isn't running any less than 40 or 45. And we don't have any of the teams coming to our camp who are doing, let's say, sixty five and seventy and seventy five miles a week. At the high school level, you could consider that kind of a high mileage program.

The one asterisk I'd put on that is, I think, at least in The US, a serious high school athlete should take their summer training very seriously, and be able to put in more miles then, because they're not in school. So you might have a woman, a girl who's running 50 miles a week during the summer, and then backs it down to 45 during the school year. Or a boy who hits 60, maybe even 65 for a couple weeks in the summer, but is going to average around 50 or 55 during the year. But, yeah, I I was barely fast enough to run at the University of Colorado. I ran four twenty five for 1,600 meters, you know, and and and I I grew up at 5,000 feet of elevation.

So, you know, had I been at sea level, that'd be about a four nineteen probably. Yeah. Like just barely under 20. Yeah, and I ran at CU. My coach was the iconic Mark Wetmore, who I think at this point, it's either him or John McDonald who will go down as the most successful cross country coach in the history of the NCAA.

Mark and Heather coached both men and women, I think the nod has to go to Mark. But when I was there at CU, we weren't a nationally recognized I program, I think the team finished third my freshman year. So I mean, it was just becoming a national contender. And then I ran on the team that was chronicled in Running with the Buffaloes, the book by Chris Lear.

Okay.

And so, Adam Gaucher, who won the NCAA Championship, was my roommate, my first two years in college. Know, I'm sure we'll talk about my marathon book at some point, but I mean, he still lives in the area and came out to the book signing. Had another teammate come out who lives local. No, I had two or three teammates that came to that book signing. I ran at the University of Colorado when Chris Litter wrote Running with the Buffaloes, I was starting my Master's in Kinesiology and Applied Physiology.

I knew I wanted to coach, So after getting that master's, I went to The only job I could get, basically, was at a junior college in Kansas. But looking back, it was great because I was the head coach. So all the recruiting, you know, even things like fundraising at this small community college, I was able to do those things. But then I had the opportunity to go back to CU and be an assistant coach for Coach Wetmore for six years. And then, had our first child, and I decided to get out of college coaching and be a stay at home dad, but I also coached professional runners up in Boulder at that time.

I was living in Denver at this time, and coaching professional runners. So, I coached three different US champions. One guy, Brent Vaughn, one US cross country woman, Renee Mativier Bailey, won a three ks title indoors. And this guy Fernando Cabada won the US twenty five ks champs when I was working with him. And I coached some other post collegiate or professional athletes as well that didn't run quite as well, but still ran at a high level.

And now, basically, I coach adults online. I have a client base of about 20 right now. If anybody's listening out there and you want to coach, I've got room for a little more, not too many more. And then I alluded to the Boulder running camps, which is this high school running camp that I've been doing for this will be year 16. And we're expanding we have three camps in Boulder, and then we're expanding this year to one camp in San Diego as well.

Awesome. Yeah, that's sponsored by Nike. I'm really blessed to have a really noteworthy Nike sponsorship, where kids get a shirt, a backpack, and a pair of shoes from Nike, and it's a custom backpack, a custom shirt for our camp, a nice pair of training shoes. Having those relationships has been really nice for camp.

That's great. Thanks for the background, a little bit of history on you, and give the people a bit more context as we chat further here. As I mentioned earlier, my audience is primarily, beginner runners, people who are just sort of starting out in their journey. Perhaps maybe they've run a five or 10 k in the past. So I'm excited to see where our conversation takes us.

So my first question I guess is for beginners and when they're just getting started out, how do they structure their training to start? Is a place for walking in the beginning?

That's a really good question. Think Jeff Galloway is the one who's really popularized this idea of a run walk. I've got two clients right now out of the 20, so that would be 10 who are on a run walk program. One woman is a woman, I believe in her mid fifties or so. I should know her age exactly, but I don't.

But she's fantastic. She's somebody who's run many marathons, but is coming back from a pretty significant injury. So she's doing something where she might run for seventy or she might be out there on her feet for seventy five or eighty minutes, and she might chunk it where she does fifteen or sixteen minutes of running, and then a one minute brisk walk. Now, when you put that all together, it's pretty much like a seventy five or eighty minute run. Okay?

I have another woman I coach who's in Minneapolis, who's younger, but has also had some injury issues. And she does I kind of leave it up to her. She had some hip issues that came up back in December. And so for her, over the course of a fifty minute run, she might only do six minutes of running and one minute walking, or ten minutes of running and one minute walking. What what what I think is important and and and this just a little background too.

I really think you need to progress through you race a five k, and then you race a 10 k, and then you run a half marathon if that's what your goal is, to run a half marathon. But if your goal is to run a marathon, you have to do those three three distances first. Okay? I I see this too often. And granted, I'm the author of a book called Simple Marathon Training.

Right? So I I believe people should run the marathon if they're motivated to. But but that book, most people, will assume that you've run a half marathon already. So to to go back to kind of this around walk thing, I I think you really have to keep the walk brisk. And I think when you're going from, let's say, just getting off the couch or going from more of a sedentary lifestyle, or maybe you're somebody who's done some other athletic activities, but you just haven't run seriously, I think it makes a lot of sense to do the run walk.

But I do think that running a 10 ks is realistic for most people and not having to walk that. The flip side is, you go to the half marathon, which is over twice as far, I mean, well over two times as far. I don't think there's any shame in walking part of that race. I coach an international athlete as well, somebody who started the run walk program, and now runs half marathons really well. So, to your listenership, I think if they're willing to be really patient, and by patient, I mean over the course of three or four months to a year to a year and a half, you can go from somebody who isn't a runner to somebody who can run a full marathon, or excuse me, a half marathon, or a marathon too, if that's what your goal is.

But I think the half marathon distance is the sweet spot for a lot of people who are new to running.

Okay, that's great. What about running for time versus distance in the beginning? Is time on your feet the more important piece to look at in contrast to running certain distance on a training run?

Yeah, And I'll use my Simple Marathon Training book. It's going to be a simple running training. Simple running training is the what's the term? The imprint of the I have a small publishing company now that's going to make multiple books. So simple running training, this approach is foundational to simple marathon training.

The idea is you have one workout during the week. Well, subtitle to the book is The Right Training for Busy Adults with Hectic Lives. So assuming your listener out here is somebody who is busy and has a hectic life, we wanna run by minutes during most of the runs during the work week, okay?

Okay.

Because you wanna know that, hey, I have an hour for the workout, or You know, I have an hour for the run, but I have to do five minutes to warm, you know, to do the lunge matrix and leg swings, which we can talk about. And then I have ten minutes to do, you know, core strength, hip strength, and hip mobility after the run. But at least I can say, Hey, I need seventy five minutes to be able to do all that. And for some people, it might only be a forty minute run. So then you do five minutes, and then forty minutes, and ten minutes, so now you're at fifty five minutes.

I think on the weekend, running for miles makes a lot of sense. I think that that's a time where if your loved ones and your family are bought into you becoming a better runner, you can approach and say, Hey, whether it's a five mile run, or a 10 mile run, or a 20 mile run, you can commit to running that distance. Think Saturday morning is best for most people, because you knock out that run and then have the rest of your weekend to do what you want. So it's minutes during the week, and then it's a run based on mileage on the weekends.

Okay. Then what's the best way or is there any particular method that you would recommend to facilitate the transition from someone like those two women who you're coaching who are taking walk breaks to continuous running, or is it just more of a play it by your see how you feel type thing?

Yeah. These are not your normal runners who hire me in terms of They're not abnormal, but my point is they're very serious about their training. So they're chomping at the bit to do the entire fifty minutes or eighty minutes or ninety minutes as a run. Does that make sense? If anything, I'm the one holding them back saying, We still need to do the walk breaks, because it's To use Coach Wetmore, my college coach, used one of his terms, he talks about the next logical step.

So if you're starting from a place where you can only run a mile or two, and you want to run a 10 ks, which is 6.2 miles, then it makes sense that you're going to have some walking breaks in between when you're doing your four or five mile run. But if you take the next logical step week after week after week, you should get to where you can run five miles and six miles and seven to eight and so on. Yeah, so I think that if you're motivated, you're going to over the course, I mean, it could be a month, it could be twelve months, but at some point, you're going to advance to where you're running the whole time. And just to give you an example, like, one of the clients, she's doing about fifty or fifty five minutes on her easy day, and she's doing it in chunks of fourteen minutes of running, and then one minute of walking. Well then she can back down pretty soon to just a forty minute run with no walking, or forty five minute run.

So the idea is you build up to more time on your feet with the walking, but you've got those walking breaks. And folks, when I say walking, it's a brisk walk. It's not just like you're running and then all of a sudden, you just are walking slowly. It's a brisk walk to keep your heart rate up. But then, at some point, you go back down to just you know doing a nice slow run the entire time.

Okay. I hear a lot from my readership and listenership about their common struggles and I see some common mistakes but what are some common mistakes you see with beginner runners?

I would say in races, going out too fast, I think is really important in not having a sense. Of the things about simple running training is that you're going to learn to run by feel. Now, this isn't a new cut There's basically nothing in simple running training that's a new concept that I came up with. I mean, there's maybe two wrinkles we can talk about that are a little bit different. But learning to run by feel, So not using your Garmin and running at a certain pace, or not using your heart rate monitor to run at a certain heart rate, but just learning to run at a comfortable pace.

So let's say you're racing a 10 ks, you should be pretty comfortable not comfortable, but you should be running very controlled for the first three or four miles, and then it should get exponentially harder. But learning how that sensation, that feeling of running a controlled pace, a challenging pace, but a controlled pace, I think is important. I think that's a mistake that beginning runners make a lot of times, is there's music at the start line, and everybody's excited, and then the gun goes off, and you just get caught up in what everybody else is doing. You go out too hard, instead of paying attention to how your body feels and running at the appropriate pace.

I know I've done that.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and we all have. I'm somebody who has only run, I don't know, maybe a couple road races in my entire life, because I was a high school athlete and collegiate athlete, but ran a ton of races. Whether you're running a collegiate five ks on the track, or you're running your local five ks where there's music playing at the start of the race, it's easy to get caught up in the energy of that race. But I do think it's more so for people running road races, just the way they kind of hype up the start line.

It's just easy to end up, quote, going out too hard. There's one more thing too. I think just a general mistake is not being patient with your training. You know, let's say somebody is going from only running a mile or two a couple times a week to saying, I want to run a half marathon. That's a big jump from two or three miles all the way up to 13.1 miles.

And being able to really be patient with your training and not be in a hurry, I think is hard. And I think so often you see new runners being impatient and trying to make that jump too fast. And then the third thing is, I'm a big believer in non running work. So there's this acronym, SAM, S A M, for strength and mobility, so specifically core strength, hip strength, and hip mobility. So I believe you have to do the same work after every running workout.

And the idea is you do that work to strengthen your chassis, right? Now your engine is your aerobic engine, is your heart and lungs, and that aerobic metabolism will improve quicker than structurally, you know, your muscles and your tendons and your bones and your ligaments and whatever. You know, your chassis doesn't improve and get strong as quickly as your engine improves. So often, two or three months into training, you see people with injuries, whether it's an IT band, or plantar fascia, or a patellar tendon issue, a knee issue. And it's because they've gotten fit, which is fantastic, but their chassis, their structure isn't able to handle their engine.

And so I firmly believe that you've got to do non running work while you're doing the running work. And a lot of runners, new runners are pretty open to this, which is really nice. It's people who've run-in high school and maybe in college, and are just used to putting in the miles that don't necessarily like to do that type of work. But again, in the simple running training system, you've got to do that work every day that you run.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of that work and so that leads to a couple other questions I have I guess. So how what what is the structure of a workout look like for a beginner? I'm assuming I'm I'm thinking you're gonna tell us it's gonna look similar to you know, a beginner to what a a pro does. How does how is it structured from the warm up to the run to that strength and mobility work that you say you should do afterwards? What does that all look like in say like a forty five minute time increment that someone might have?

Yeah, let's say the run is forty five minutes, Okay? And then we'll say that then we have an hour to work out. Okay? So folks, you can look this up online and find the videos for this. You do the lunge matrix, so LM for lunge matrix, and you do leg swings, LS.

So LMLS, lunge matrix and leg swings, takes five minutes. And that's how you need to warm up. And yes, you're listening to an audio, but you gotta write this down and then check it out on YouTube and see see what you need to do for your warm up. That's what need.

Sorry, I did interrupt you, but I'll I'll put the links to all these things in the show notes as Okay.

Cool. Cool.

Okay. Keep going. Sorry.

Yeah. Thanks, Mark. So then the idea is then you have your forty five minutes to run. And like on an easy day, forty five minutes might be an easy day for is an easy day for a lot of that the adults that I coach because again, like they only have an hour to work out, so forty five minutes is the run. Now, I want to come back to this, the idea of doing strides in the middle of that run.

But then, you know, you finish with ten minutes of the SAM work I'm talking about. So now you do five minutes warm up, forty five minutes of running, ten minutes of It is kind of cool down type work, the way we have Sam organized. If you just follow the exercises from start to finish, from minute zero to minute ten, it's going to bring your heart rate slowly down. Yeah, so that's what you have for sixty minutes. Know, strides folks, when I say strides, it's a short amount of running, so it could be twenty or twenty five or thirty seconds at five ks pace most of the time.

So if you're training for a half marathon or a marathon, you just run at five ks pace. And then you'd take and again, you don't look at your watch necessarily, you just kind of run by feel. Like, Okay, this kind of feels like five ks pace. And then you jog really easy for sixty to ninety seconds in between those strides. And one of the things that I think is novel about the simple running training, or you know, that you can read about in my Simple Marathon Training book, is this idea that you do the strides as part of that forty five minutes.

And historically, you know, whether you're a high school runner or you're a professional runner, the idea was you do your run, and then you do the strides afterwards. But the problem was, so often, people would run out of time. A busy adult would run out of time, and they'd end up skipping the strides. And you need to do strides a couple times per week. For the very beginning runner, it's not as important, but if you're somebody listening to this where you've run some five Ks, run some 10 Ks, maybe run a half marathon, and you're trying to run a PR, you need to be doing strides twice a week.

When you're doing this SAM or strength and mobility work in the lunge matrix throwing in the strides there a couple times a week, what changes will a runner notice to their running? I know for me, I guess it's hard to explain a little bit but to me I feel like a stronger runner and I actually noticed from my wife video recording me running, but my running form changed in a good way I just became a more efficient stronger runner, but I'd like to hear from you. What will the runners notice when they start doing this work on a regular basis?

Yeah, I think what you're going to feel is you just feel stronger kind of biomechanically when you're doing the SAM work. Strides, I'll touch on that in a second, when you're doing all this work, it's strengthening your hips, strengthening your glutes, you're just going to feel stronger and you're going to feel better running faster paces. Does that make sense?

That makes Sometimes

harder workouts kind of feel out of control when your body's weak. Yeah, that's something that you're just going to feel like a stronger athlete. Runs with strides, basically, template of this week would be your easy runs on Monday and Friday. And then your workout on Tuesday, and then your long run on Saturday. So you're doing the strides, for instance, on Monday before your Tuesday workout, and that means that you're going to feel better on Tuesday having done some fast running, I e, the strides on Monday.

Okay? And then the same thing for the long run on Saturday. If you're on Friday, you did some strides and you're running five k pace, now when you go to do the long run on Saturday, it just feels easier. Yeah.

I like it. And what about stretching? Where does that fit in? Do you recommend stretching? If you do, should runners fit that in?

I believe in active isolated stretching or active isolated flexibility is another term for it. Or the term you guys are going to remember is called rope stretching, where you use a rope to do some stretching. And my friend Phil Wharton and his father Jim Wharton have brought this work into the running world. They've been doing it for three decades now, I think. You've got to look it up.

Mean, this should be in the show notes. Wharton Health. So look up Phil Wharton's rope stretching. And there aren't many examples on YouTube. There's a couple videos of Phil doing things for running times, now defunct magazine that was awesome.

But there's still some videos out there. Static stretching, and let's use an example too. Let's say static stretching is similar to yoga, where you're holding these poses for a while and you're breathing and whatnot. I think that has less of a place compared to the rope stretching, but the rope stretching is something you haven't seen before. If you're really serious about being a better runner, you really should get to consider doing the rope stretching.

Okay.

And it's something that if I've got 20 clients, probably 10 of them do it. And the 10 that do it, I mean, I'm going to knock on countertop here because I don't have any wood. But, know, knock on countertop, they're all staying healthy. But I think the rope stretching, you know, if you were to go back and do some sort of, you know, analysis, there would be a strong correlation between the athletes that do rope stretching and the athletes who don't have injuries.

I want to ask you too about plateaus. A lot of people get frustrated when they plateau, maybe beginner runners been at it for six months or something and they notice they they stop getting faster, for for whatever the reason. Is there any particular workouts that you you might recommend for to help people perhaps get faster and stronger that they might not be doing in the beginning?

So you're asking for a specific workout to

to Yeah, like any or different workouts like perhaps it's some kind of an interval workout or I don't know some kind of creative workout that may be different than just the person going out and you know blasting out a run with strides. And maybe it's something with regards to hills. I'm not sure. I'm just curious of your thoughts.

Yeah. I think the progression run is a really simple workout that people can be doing. So let's say you do something like, you know, the one that I use most often with the clients I work with, they'll do a ten minute warm up jog and a ten minute cool down jog, and they're going to do fifty minutes of a progression. So that fifty minutes is comprised of twenty minutes at a steady pace, then fifteen minutes a little bit faster, then ten minutes a little bit faster, and then five minutes fast but controlled. And so you have to change pace.

You have to speed up three different times in that workout. And what it teaches you, it teaches you, you know, a couple things. But the first is to run conservatively so that you have the ability to speed up. And number two, it teaches you, you know, how to pay attention to how your body feels to make sure, okay, I'm speeding up, but I'm not speeding up too much. And then that last five minutes, I mean, you have to be really focused.

You're going be running the fastest pace that you've run throughout the workout. And I always want people to say, I could have run five more minutes. You know, you're doing a five minute segment at the end, but I want them to say, I could have run even five more minutes if I had to, meaning they could have run ten minutes at that final pace.

Okay.

So it's not a hill workout. It's not an interval workout. If the listenership is more of the beginning runner, think there's a lot to be said for staying away from the track, and just being on dirt roads and trails, and doing progression runs, and fart licks. You know, I have a workout where we do four by eight minutes with three minutes steady running in between. So that's a solid forty one minute workout.

You know, you just want to be doing aerobic workouts. So the idea that you'd go to, you know, if a lap is 400 meters, and you do 10 by 400, and you know, stand around for 60. I mean, that workout has its place in let's say 5,000 meter training. But for most people listening to this, that's not what they should be doing right away.

I want to respect your time. Before I get into asking you about your new book, again which I have in front of me, I want to ask you too, what are some of your favorite resources or books or podcasts or any running resources other than yours, which of course I'm gonna recommend everyone. But any other resources that you can provide for the runners out there?

Yeah. I think there's a lot of good training books out there. This I I I really think that Simple Marathon Training is the book you should buy for this simple reason. It teaches you the simple running training method that works for people, you know, who have a lot going on in their life and need to keep things very kind of straightforward and simple from week to week. Obviously, the Daniel's Running Formula is a great book, but I do sometimes take issue with, you know, that everything is based on paces.

And the problem with that is that if you wake up, let's say, on a Tuesday morning, and your child was up until midnight coughing, and you got three hours less sleep, you're not going to feel as well as you normally do. And so hitting the paces that are prescribed in that book isn't going to make as much sense. One book I would, and I think he's been on your podcast, Matt Fitzgerald, he has his book Run. It's not one of his most popular books. The title is Run.

And the subtitle is, I think it's called The Mind Body Method of Running by Feel. But it's all about running by feel. So that would be the number one book I would recommend. And then this one probably doesn't fit your listenership, but for people who run multiple marathons and have the ability to put in a lot of miles, I think Advanced Marathon Training is a great book.

Whose book is that? Whose book is that one?

So that's Pete Fitzsinger and Scott Douglas.

Okay.

Have written that book, and it's, you know, it's at least 10 years old, maybe it's 15 years old, but it's really good information. And then, a book that I have to mention, but I don't think you should go out and get it, Arthur Lidyard's book, Running to the Top, or the copy I have is called Running the Lidyard Way. It's basically the same book. If somebody's into the history of training, that's a great book, but it's kind of hard to decipher. Unlike, let's say, the two books, I've you know, the Daniel's Running Formula where it says, do this on this day.

Mhmm.

The linear books I mean, says do do a, b, and c on, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, but it's harder to understand how that training works.

And then your book came out, was it a month or two ago?

Yeah, it came out November 1. Yeah, 11/01/2016. Yeah.

Okay. And it's called Simple Marathon Training, the Right Training for Busy Adults with Hectic Lives.

Right. I think the subtitle is what's really important, that if you're a busy adult with a hectic life, which I'm going to assume a pretty large percentage of the listenership is, the training is made for you. And let's compare that to, let's say, Advanced Marathon Training, which is a great book, but has people running seventy, eighty miles a week in some of their plans. A lot of people can't handle that.

And would you say your book, and I think it would, but even if you're not considering running a marathon, I think this book gives you all the tools and everything to even move from a beginner to a 10 k or a half marathon.

Yeah. I'm working on the half marathon book as we speak. The first forty I'm looking at the book right here. Is it 45 or 49? The first forty nine pages of the book of simple marathon training are going to be very similar to the first forty nine pages of simple half marathon training, which will then, in a couple years, be very similar to simple five ks and 10 ks training.

Does that make sense? I mean, there's some core principles I believe in, such as running by feel, such as doing the lunge matrix and the leg swings, doing the SAM work after your run, doing a weekly long run, doing, focusing on your aerobic system. So this goes back to these track workouts or hill workouts. You're not doing track workouts or hill workouts, you're doing things like a progression run, like we talked about. Doing strides in the middle of your run on your easy days.

So there's basically the book, I talk about eight ingredients. And then this is I'm glad you brought the stretching thing up because it's eight ingredients plus one. And the plus one is the rope stretching. Yeah, so those are principles that fit somebody running a five ks as much as they fit somebody running a marathon.

Awesome. And where else can people connect with you online, should they want to reach out or check out more of your work?

Yeah. I think my website, I mean, it's pretty easy to remember. It's CoachJJohnson and that's JAY, so CoachJJohnson.com. If you go to that site, then you can sign up for my newsletter And I put out my newsletter twice per week on Thursday and Sunday, and I feel like I put my best workout via my newsletter. I also host a podcast called the Run Faster Podcast.

So if you like listening to running podcasts, check out the Run Faster Podcast. I mean, Mark, I'm going through years on iTunes right now, looking at it, and you've definitely had some high powered guests. So I'm going have to work on my guest list.

You've got some good ones. I have to tell you now, the interview you did with Doctor. Trent Stellingwerf was a game changer for me because that totally changed my mindset and focused me more on fueling for my second marathon and it was a game changer. Felt so much better in my run and my time was much better as well.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. Well well, so so coach j johnson dot com, the Run Faster Podcast, and and folks, feel free to email me. The it's coachjjohnson@gmail.

And then also on on Instagram and Twitter, it's coachjjohnson. So I did a decent job of locking it all down to coachjjohnson's.

That's awesome. Well, Jay, thanks again for coming on to the show and we all appreciate your time and expertise and maybe you'll come back again once you get the half marathon and or at least your half marathon book done and we can chat some more.

Yeah, spring twenty seventeen, Mark. I would love to be on again and talk about the half marathon.

Awesome. Thanks again, Jay.

Okay. Thanks, Mark.

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