Listen While You Run - Speed Work

Speed work isn't just for for those wanting to get faster – it's an essential ingredient for developing the physiological systems needed to complete 100 milers successfully and with less suffering.

In this episode Lee and Karmell discuss: 

• Understanding training zones by feel rather than relying on inaccurate watch data
• The science behind lactate production and its impact on sustainable running
• Why speed work builds mitochondrial density and improves running economy
• Speed work should constitute approximately 10% of total training volume
• Different types of speed workouts: speed repeats, cruise intervals, and speed repeat hills
• Execution guidance for each type of speed workout
• How to warm up properly and recover between hard efforts
• Learning your body's sustainable paces through controlled hard efforts
• Why speed work is especially important for avoiding the "death march" in 100 milers
• Advanced options for experienced runners looking for new challenges

Chapters

• 0:16 Introduction to Speed Work Discussion
• 3:19 Understanding Effort Zones by Feel
• 10:05 The Science of Lactate and Energy Systems
• 17:32 Why Speed Work Matters for Ultrarunners
• 22:54 Speed Repeats: Execution and Benefits
• 35:00 Cruise Intervals: How and When
• 49:37 Speed Repeat Hills: Technique and Purpose
• 1:01:38 Advanced Options and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Karmell: 0:16

Hello everybody and welcome to the Women's 100-Miler Project podcast, the Listen While you Run series. Today we are here to talk about everything speed work and I have deja vu because we recorded this episode once before, but we recorded it from an earbud across the room and the audible was unusable. But we are back and Leigh is here in our living room. Welcome to the living room, leigh.

Karmell: 0:45

Thanks for having me and we're going to talk about speed work again, but that's okay. I feel like we're wiser this time, like we've learned more since the last round of trying to do this episode.

Lee: 0:57

I've even read things since the last round of trying to do this episode.

Karmell: 1:01

So maybe it was all meant to be, it's all meant to be.

Karmell: 1:07

Such a lesbian thing to say Meant to be. So I think first let's start with, just before we get into the speed work weeds. I kind of want to do an overview of zones, but I'm not going to. I don't want to go into the thresholds of that. Exactly what I want to do is that I want to talk about zones and how they feel, because I think that that's way more important than what a watch says or what a textbook says about what your heart rate should be completely agree excellent two.

Lee: 1:44

I promise not to get distracted on why. It doesn't matter what your watch says. Your watch is inaccurate as heck. Without a chest strap, your max heart rate fluctuates quite a bit and so does the percent of it that you can maintain. So zones are always approximate, never fully accurate, even with all of the science. But without all of the science it is just real silly to be relying on what your watch said. It's just going to be ineffective. So instead we're going to talk about how they feel, which, for most people, is something that, as long as the person, there has been research done with people hooked up to a bunch of equipment and on treadmills after max heart rate testing, showing that even people with only moderate experience or even lighter amounts of running experience, once you explain the zones to them, are very good at guessing what zone they're in and also at targeting a zone on purpose. You can actually trust your own perception of yourself when you are paying attention and trying.

Lee: 2:42

For most of us, it's a matter of remembering what is the goal of this workout. What zone am I supposed to be in at this moment when people overdo their easy runs? They didn't start out going. I'm going to stay in zone two. I know for sure I'm in zone two. They didn't. They weren't thinking about it, they just went and ran what felt good without thinking about their zone. Okay, so zone one zone one is very easy, it's pretty easy. How easy? Well, if you're walking with your mom, then that's recovery zone and that's easier than zone one all right so you should be at least shuffling.

Lee: 3:17

But there are people for whom zone one might mean walking quickly. It's not a judgment for very beginning runners, for people coming back from injury. Sometimes zone one also happens at a fast walk. I can have zone two at a medium walk if I'm going up the side of a mountain at nine or 10,000 above sea level and it's steep. So it's going to be variable, but mostly it should feel very easy. Zone two it's moderate. It's still usually pretty easy. The more hours you have in training, the easier zone two feels to you so not just going by by easy.

Karmell: 3:53

But what does this mean in terms of, like, how you feel? Your heart rate is how you feel, breath wise, like how?

Lee: 4:01

you how?

Karmell: 4:01

you can hold a conversation, and so if I was, jogging on a treadmill in zone two.

Lee: 4:05

Other than the fact that the sound of my footfalls on the treadmill would interrupt this recording, I would be able to speak the way I'm speaking now. It'd be very hard to tell from my breathing. I could have a long distance phone conversation, my earbuds, and have it go on for an hour while I'm jogging in zone two on the treadmill the whole hour and it will not create any strain. If I go up to zone three, the person will be able to tell that I'm trying. I'll still be able to say full sentences, but they'll be able to tell that I'm taking a little bit more of a breath in between sentences or, in the case of a really long sentence, right in the middle.

Karmell: 4:38

So you a long sentence.

Lee: 4:41

Never, I barely talk, and so so if you, if you are a very beginning runner, then maybe zone two does actually get difficult after 40 minutes. But unless you're a very beginner which most of the people in this program probably aren't complete beginners zone two should be something you could sustain for a couple hours.

Karmell: 5:01

All right, and then so zone three. You started to say zone three a little bit. So zone three, I could talk, we could have a conversation, but it's going to be a little bit more broken is that kind of do you know how sometimes things feel a little hard.

Lee: 5:14

You can tell you're trying, but they're still fun. Yeah, like you don't feel like you're gonna fall over and die. You could keep doing it for 20 or 30 minutes, but you know it's fun hard.

Karmell: 5:25

That's zone three fun hard so zone three is like when I'm on the treadmill and I'm kind of staring at the clock waiting for that 30 minutes to be up and I let's see I have five more minutes and I'm like let's see how I said I said I said that's not fun I get it.

Karmell: 5:40

I said fun, I get it. Okay, but I could still talk, we can have a conversation. It's going to be a little bit broken, but it's not sustainable. It's not a pace that feels sustainable for like I could do it for like four hours or more.

Lee: 5:56

But you should be able to do it. For when you're a beginner, you know probably 10 to 20 minutes without any problem and when you are a good runner you should be able to do this 45 to 60 minutes. So most people can go for an easy run. When I say go run 30 to 40 minutes, they'll run in zone three because they can. But when it says easy run in a training program, even though you can run, so if you're fit and you can run in zone three for an hour, doing a 30 minute run in zone three is not hard. So you think, oh, it's easy run, that was pretty easy, it was fun.

Lee: 6:31

You know that you were pushing harder than just your easy conversation. You know that. And you really need lots of zone two easy aerobic. Now, zone three is also the only other thing you have to go into the weeds a little bit on zone three is that at the bottom of zone two, easy aerobic. Now, zone three is also. The only other thing you have to go into the weeds a little bit on zone three is that at the bottom of zone three you're fully aerobic and at the top of zone three you aren't. You're. You're getting over your aerobic threshold. You're not anaerobic fully, but you're starting to make lactate. You're starting to exceed your body's ability to keep up.

Karmell: 7:03

Okay, and then we're going to come back to some of these terms.

Lee: 7:07

Yeah, but so that's, that's a zone three. You cry, you start crossing over.

Karmell: 7:14

That makes me think of poltergeists. It does. Yeah, you start going to zone zone.

Lee: 7:20

zone three starts going from fun slightly hard to this is about to become horrific if I speed up any more at all. That's so it all happens.

Karmell: 7:32

I feel like we're talking about the F scale, with tornadoes right now.

Lee: 7:35

Yes.

Karmell: 7:36

This brings us to zone four.

Lee: 7:38

Zone four. This is hard and this is something where you can sustain it for a while, but not a very long while. So, like, 10 minutes is too long for zone four. Probably Very few people are going to sustain zone four truly for 10 full minutes. It's going to be more like seven or eight. A lot of people can only sustain zone four for 30 seconds to two minutes. Okay, 30 seconds to two minutes.

Karmell: 8:06

Okay, 30 seconds to two minutes.

Lee: 8:09

These are all guesstimates.

Karmell: 8:10

So I'm trying to. I'm probably not going to be talking to you while I'm in zone four.

Lee: 8:15

Not for most of it. No, no, obviously when you're doing an interval.

Karmell: 8:20

Like I think I've been in zone four before and been like last one.

Lee: 8:24

Yes, yes, that's fairly accurate.

Karmell: 8:28

That's. That's about the extent of conversations I think we usually have when I'm in zone four. Okay, so is there a zone five?

Lee: 8:37

There is, that's all out. Heart rate is irrelevant for zone five. You know, zone four, you're. You're over your lactate threshold, which is what makes it not sustainable. You, you are now just making lactate. Your body cannot keep up at all and so it just comes down. Well, there's, there's all kinds of physiologic reasons why some people can last longer than others at that level. But zone five is where your body has given up on its ability to do any kind of fat burning to. It can barely utilize oxygen and you're just building up lactate. So that's just full go.

Lee: 9:15

And generally, for max heart rate test, you have to ease up to zone five or you won't even be able to get there. Because once you hit zone five, if you start right now running at your full, full, fastest, you can go straight up the hill. You're going to die in eight to 15 seconds. That's not die, but you're going to stop because it's full anaerobic. If you're truly going all out, that's what happens and you won't hit your max heart rate. You won't come anywhere near it because that's not enough time to even spike your heart rate up. So that's what happens and you won't hit your max heart rate. You won't come anywhere near it, because that's not enough time to even spike your heart rate up. So truly, zone 5 just isn't even sustainable enough for that stuff to be relevant, all right.

Karmell: 9:50

So I think we have to open up this can of worms, because you said the word lactate like 10 times. I did, which we were going to do terms next. Anyway, let's start with lactate. What the heck is lactate?

Lee: 10:05

What? What does that have to do with the zones being sustainable? Okay, so sugar plus oxygen plus a bunch of chemicals in your body equals muscle contractions. You get ATP. They make muscle contractions happen.

Lee: 10:21

Now when the sugar breaks in half into two pyruvates. The pyruvates then go into the mitochondria out of the general muscle cell area and then they get turned into the ATP. But if the mitochondria can't keep up, the pyruvates just sit out there in the muscle cell. They're not stable. They turn into lactate. The lactate goes all about the muscle cells, it gets into your bloodstream and it causes you to be exhausted. We don't know why exactly what's going on in the body. There's some research that's happening, but pretty much the lactate happens as a buildup. Your system has backed up, it can no longer keep up, you can no longer make enough ATP and the lactate goes up and up. And it's because your body cannot keep up with the energy demands, which means that it's not sustainable. Right? If I'm asking for weight, for more of muscle contractions, then my body has the little molecules to make muscle contractions just won't happen.

Karmell: 11:23

Well, I'm getting a hand squeeze contraction visual that, unfortunately, the listeners cannot see. I can only describe it for you guys Leah's taking her hand like she's gently squeezing melons to check for their ripeness.

Lee: 11:39

Okay, this is a beautiful description, so it's really difficult. I'm trying to make this simple for people who have no science background. If you have a science background and you're finding this isn't a hundred percent accurate, okay, because because the pyruvate has to go through the citric acid cycle, there's 12 aerobic enzymes. How much of those enzymes you have inside of those mitochondria, how many separate setups of those, what the levels are, how many mitochondria you have? This stuff can all vary person to person and based on your workouts. On top of that, there are special proteins that put the lactate into the mitochondria. They put the pyruvate in. They move lactate into.

Lee: 12:17

The lactate can be turned into energy. It's not a waste product. You're not feeling bad because you have lactate buildup later on in the day. This is just not true. People say it. It's not true. You don't need to go get a massage. It clears right out of your bloodstream within minutes of you recovering your breath.

Lee: 12:37

How fast can it clear is also determined by whether or not you have trained your body correctly to be able to clear it. Have trained your body correctly to be able to clear it and one of the ways to help your body learn to clear it more quickly and use it as energy so that you do not sit around exhausted and unrecovered and unable to sustain your forward. Progress is to do various kinds of intervals, which is why we're having a talk about all the intervals. But so, just understanding that this buildup of lactate is just a symptom that your system can't keep up, and we're trying to put in place all the systems that help you keep up and help you correct, because even when you're going almost completely slow twitch, you're going to have spots. When you're going up a hill or you're bounding over a creek or just out of tiredness, you're starting to use more motor units and you therefore, are going to make some lactate. You're not going to want to during your ultra, but you're going to, and if your body cannot manage and clear that, well then you're going to slow down and you're going to feel like crap. You're going to feel tired more than you already do.

Lee: 13:39

So it's really, really important to get these systems as efficient as possible and as built up as possible. That's going to increase the speed. That's sustainable. So, even though you may feel, on your 30 second repeat, for example, like it's completely stupid because you're training for a hundred mile race and why try to run 30 seconds as fast as possible? The reason is building up these systems may be, then, the difference between you being able to hold a 16 minute mile pace and you being able to only hold an 18 minute mile pace, or even sometimes 18 and 22, and some of these differences are the difference between beating cutoffs by a few hours and dnfing your 100 mile. So this is important stuff. No matter how slow or fast you are, this is important stuff to do if you want to have an easier time getting your ultras finished.

Karmell: 14:26

Now, I wasn't really paying attention because I was thinking about how pyruvate sounds like something delicious you would order in a restaurant. Did you mention mitochondria?

Lee: 14:37

Mitochondria are fascinating and I could digress into this whole thing about genetics and how you inherit them from your mom, but you'll have to deep dive on your own. Carmel says I'm not allowed to get distracted like that on this podcast anymore. The mitochondria are little, totally dependent pseudo-organisms. They live inside your muscle cells and they contain a bunch of enzymes and they are what make the ATP. Atp is what allows muscle contractions to happen. It's a sexy, sexy molecule. Without it you can't contract your muscles at all. And the only way to make it you can burn all kinds of stuff, but ultimately all the stuff that burns has to get broken apart to make ATP.

Lee: 15:26

When you break a sugar in half into two pyruvates, you get a little tiny bit of ATP and you can do that without oxygen. But it's only a little tiny bit and you can do it very, very fast. But then those ATPs get used and the pyruvate's just sitting around and it turns into lactate and you get exhausted and start feeling like crap. So in order to not feel like crap and actually make tons of ATP, I think like you get like two from making the pyruvates and then you're like is it 36? I think 36 or 38.

Lee: 16:00

I'm not looking at the diagram, I don't have to know this daily but a whole mess of them, over 30 of them, from taking a pyruvate and breaking it apart with these enzymes inside of the mitochondria. You need oxygen for that. So once you start involving oxygen to break apart the pyruvate, you get just leaps and bounds more like so much more, and so you can go for so, so much longer. You can make so many more muscle contractions off just that one sugar molecule, if you just have the oxygen to put in and if you have enough aerobic enzymes.

Karmell: 16:33

And aerobic enzyme levels decline with age, and so let me just pause here, because this is important stuff, but it can also feel very in the weeds, especially to our people who aren't very science-y like me. That's what I'm here for. So I have the deepest respect for science, but I leave the science-ing to the science-y people, and so I'm not one to memorize all these terms or get completely fascinated with the mechanics necessarily. So I just wanted to kind of pause and say first off, that, bear with us, because the whole episode isn't going to be like this. We're going to dive into how this applies to the training plan. But I also just kind of want to pause and say what the key takeaway here and so what I'm hearing. It's actually good that I'm not science-y and you are, because I could kind of pause and look at this from the non-science-y point of view and see if I've got this right. From what you're explaining, from what you're saying, the key takeaway that I have is that everything that is happening physiologically as a result of doing speed work is making your system more efficient in a way that's going to make you better at running 100 miles, yeah, and less tired, less tired, so less easily fatigued, and so on and so forth and so on and so forth, and so I think we'll get into this more later.

Karmell: 18:10

But I think that speed work is uh, I think it's unfortunately one of the most skipped workouts on our training plan and I think there's two reasons for that. I think one. I think they're combined. I think one it's hard. It's a hard workout. I have a love-hate relationship with speed work. I usually feel very good after I do it, but it can be hard to make myself do it. I think the second thing is I think people think they don't need it if they're not trying to get faster. So I think we have a lot of people who say, oh, I'm like middle to back of the pack, I'm not trying to get faster. So I think we have a lot of people say, oh, I'm like middle to back of the pack, I'm not trying to get faster. I, you know, like, I'm happy with my speed, like, so I'm not going to do speed work. What do you?

Lee: 18:54

have to say to that. That's why, even though I call it speed work because it's what everyone calls it everywhere and it's the quickest way to communicate the type of workout that I'm talking about to another person, I think it's a terrible misnomer. What you're actually working on is your efficiency. It's true, speed work for sprinters does not look anything like our program at all, and and the type of distance we're doing. We're even doing a little bit of a modified versions of several of the workouts. But mostly this is not to make you guys a lot faster, this is to make your system more efficient and to have better endurance, because you might be able to death march out that period from mile 80 to a hundred or even 70 to a hundred, which, by the way, is still a lot of damn miles to be death marching. Or you might actually be snacking, feeling pretty good and pepily hiking through them.

Lee: 19:52

And if you really are just looking to go to races to just see how much you can possibly suffer, for heaven's sakes, there's 72-hour races. Just go to one and just keep going in circles till you collapse on the ground and you'll be able to maximize your suffering. There's even there's even a six day one. You just keep going in circles. You can maximize your suffering. It's possible.

Lee: 20:14

But if you really want to do trail hundreds and do them well and feel good about doing, there's still going to be suffering, you're going to find some. But if you really want to go out there and have a full experience and keep your body healthy despite the incredible challenge of it, then you need to do more well-rounded workouts. And if you are worried at all about cutoffs and the fact that the race just changed the cutoff by half an hour at this aid station, then you really need to be doing this, because this is, then, the difference between being able to finish some races and not and also, I mean, that sounds like this would help too with, uh, the not falling into the death march, right, like because you, you're, you're more fatigue resistant right.

Lee: 21:00

So I mean that's the main thing to me is, if I'm going to race where I'm not trying to win, I'm not trying to place, I don't think that I'll be that near the cutoffs either then what's my goal in running it? I want to go out there and enjoy the course. I know I might have some 3 am lie on the ground misery because it just happens. I know my stomach might turn on me for no good reason, but I do want to maximize my chances of being able to go out there and be at each aid station actually fairly cheerful and saying hi to people and not having to lie there and rest and spend a half hour trying to reboot myself and not have to be trying to find the will to just stagger on to the next one. I would like to actually feel pretty good about the race for the most part, and I've had plenty of hundreds where I felt pretty darn good about the whole race. Me too, me too.

Lee: 21:49

And it's a good feeling. It's really. I didn't run them super fast, but I also wasn't up against cutoffs and I also I mean I was sore for the next week and my legs were definitely tired at the end my feet got tender because it's a hundred miles, but I felt pretty good.

Karmell: 22:06

I, it's a hundred miles but I felt pretty good. I think there's this, this misconception that, um, the death march is inevitable, and I think that comes from a lot of like kind of ignorant people. They don't have the information um doing hundreds, and so for them, they're not doing this kind of training, they don't have all of these different pieces and ingredients, and so for them they might finish the hundred but for them death marching is inevitable. And I think, like our plan is kind of this like, when executed properly, it has it's like the secret sauce with like these important ingredients, and I think speed work is kind of one of the indispensable ingredients that that makes it work Okay.

Lee: 22:50

So now, though, there's also the temptation to go well, if speed work works, I'm just going to do three speed work workouts a week in one long run. Do not do this. Actually, running hard running at the top half of zone three and up into zone four is for 10% of your training hours per month. Sometimes there might be a week when you go a little over 10%, in a week when you go a little under, because Saturday workouts may vary. So you may do a Saturday workout that has hard hills, and if you really think about that, the running uphill part, you know a lot of your that's going to be hard running. And then you also have intervals that week, and if you're on a higher volume week of that, you may. You might cross the line to where it's more like 12 or 14% of your miles that week, but then the next week maybe you do endurance hills or you do back to back long runs.

Lee: 23:35

You do something in your month. It's about 10%. If you start doing more than about 10% of your total volume as really hard runs, hard intervals, and it means the hard part. So if I do, let's say I do two-minute repeats with two-minute rests, and I do six of them. That counts as 12 minutes, not 24. Because I only ran hard for 12 total minutes in six by two minutes, right. So I don't count the total workout time including warmup and warmdown. Just to clarify.

Karmell: 24:08

Yeah.

Lee: 24:08

So 10% fast hard running approximately. Average it out over your month. If you start exceeding that, you're going to lose the benefit. You don't just increase your injury risk lots, you also start to lose the benefit. The more you go over and the more consistently, the more benefit you'll lose. When you see an elite runner posting this higher volume of intervals, usually it's because they're also running 110 mile a week and they're training 16 miles a week or hours a week of running, so they can do more than us.

Karmell: 24:38

So, basically, this plan was designed with all of this in mind. You applied this to the Women's 100-Miler Project training plan. It's approximate, but yes, so if you're following the plan, then you shouldn't be over or under doing speed work. So that brings me to the next thing, touching to the types of speed work that we have on this training plan. Do you want to go into that or do you want me?

Lee: 25:04

to List for me everything that we have in our plan that you think should count.

Karmell: 25:08

Okay, speed repeats Over the hill. No, you said I'm not allowed to call them intervals.

Lee: 25:21

Speed work, speed repeats. Can you give me a specific example On Tuesday, the Tuesday workout, okay. So like two minutes fast, two minutes slow, minute and a half fast. Minute and a half, two minutes slow, yes, sometimes walking the rest, sometimes resting the rest, okay. So yes, those count Okay.

Karmell: 25:40

Which we have this whole thing because a textbook definition of an interval fits that. But Lee gets really particular about calling them repeats. But now I'm calling them repeats and she doesn't know what I'm talking about.

Lee: 25:52

No, I just wanted to make sure you didn't mean the speed house.

Karmell: 25:54

Okay, no, okay. So yes, the speed repeats like the two by two, one by one, whatever.

Lee: 26:00

So okay. So the difference is that in intervals the rest part is still active and in repeats the rest part is actually just rest. So if I run for one minute real hard and then I just stand around shaking my legs, that's a repeat and then I do it again, Whereas in an interval I would run for one minute pretty hard and then jog slowly for one minute to recover and then run hard again, In some cases fast walk or even just walk, because it's still active recovery. So that's why, on the one hand, there's the track way to put it, and people from a track or marathon background will be like you're using the terms interchangeably and they're not. And on the other hand, in the cases of runners who are in need of, who are just at different levels I hate calling it levels, I hate like be, like well, you're slower.

Lee: 26:48

I hate making it sound like a good or bad runner. I don't like that. But there are people for whom a regular walk pace is their active recovery and there are people for whom jogging at eight minute mile pace is active recovery, because their heart rate comes back down to 110 when they jog eight minute mile pace, which is just appalling. I can't believe how fast some people are. It's amazing.

Karmell: 27:12

All right. So beyond that, uh, cruise intervals, yes. So cruise intervals? I don't believe. I admit I have. It's been a while since I've looked at phase one of the training plan and I should refresh on that, but I don't believe we have cruise intervals in phase one. I believe they come in at phase two intervals in phase one.

Lee: 27:34

I believe they come in at phase two. Um, we don't cause. A lot of the folks are accomplishing close to their, are close to that on their Hills, cause their Hills long enough, it's taking them long enough to get up the Hill. Uh, if it's taking you four or five minutes to get up the Hill and then and then you're coming back down pretty quickly, a lot of the folks are almost accomplishing that kind of length and don't have the endurance to do two cruise intervals. Yet you need some strength and endurance to do them, otherwise they're counterproductive.

Karmell: 28:01

So you're using more hills to kind of build up that strength and endurance before you send them off on the alternating cruise intervals.

Lee: 28:08

So hard week is where they get introduced to cruise intervals, and I actually don't even I almost think I need to add on to the plan some more stuff at this point for people who have progressed to the point where they might be bored. That's what we've had. We've talked about other workouts on the page and we've written about them and we've covered it a little bit in some of our what to do with your workouts podcasts, but the plan doesn't officially have a whole block on cruise intervals.

Karmell: 28:34

Gotcha All right and then, um, so I would say the last one that I perceive to be uh, speed work. It would be speed repeat hills.

Lee: 28:44

Yeah, cause you get out of breath and you recover and you get out of breath again. Yeah.

Karmell: 28:49

So we'll go into each of these workouts and how to get the most benefit from each type. Okay, so let's start with with speed repeats. Um, speed repeats that's the only one on the plan um that has the option of Tuesday or Wednesday. Now we do have guidance out there, um, for what workouts to prioritize. We know some people have to switch things around, but it's the only one where the option is written into the training plan. Why is that?

Lee: 29:21

Two reasons. One life happens. There needs to be some flexibility, because it is so important that you get that workout in that if you're going to have to skip either Tuesday or Wednesday, I don't want you to just skip speed and do your easy run Wednesday Go well, I only skipped one day. I want you to skip Tuesday and put the speed over on Wednesday If you only have one of those days where you have time, because this is important to do. If you get three weeks out of every four having speed work, that's good.

Lee: 29:53

So the next reason is that the weekends are hard. We're asking you to, instead of doing a long run the way you do on a marathon plan, where there's a rest day and then a long run and then a very light short run the next day for recovery run, we're asking you to do a hard work on your legs, hard muscular work and have tired legs and then go do long run. We're suggesting this because, since you're not going to be elite and running 110 mile weeks or even 90 mile weeks, most of you it might only be doing 40 to 50 mile weeks. What you really need to get used to that you aren't going to get otherwise is managing tired legs. So Saturday you wreck your legs, sunday you run long.

Lee: 30:33

When you're new to that or even when you're experienced at it, as Carmel and I have discovered many times, this can leave you pretty dead. On Monday you go and you do a recovery walk or recovery jog or you don't, but sometimes you find that come Tuesday there's no way that your legs have enough bounce to actually run fast enough to even get your heart rate up repeatedly. So if I know I'm not even going to be able to be at the top of zone three, like I know I can run, but my legs are so heavy it's exhausting, I'm going to feel miserable but I'm not really going to be doing a high intensity workout, then at that point I will also try to move it to Wednesday if I can, and do you know, a 30 minute easy run or 40 minute very, very slow easy run on Tuesday and stretch my legs out and push the speed work to when I can do it productively. And that said, also when you're new you are going to sometimes go to do your speed work, run your first couple of repeats too fast and not be able to complete the workout or have last repeats that are just, you look at the times and you're like, oh, I slowed way down, that was awful.

Lee: 31:36

Or you can feel it. You can feel it. You're trying to bring that turnover up and you're trying to pump your arms faster to make your legs go and they just won't. And that's when you think about how you felt that morning and realize what it feels like to feel too tired. So this is a spot where you will and should mess up. If you are never making any mistakes, you are being way too cautious and you're not learning, and you do need to learn your body in order to be good at ultras.

Karmell: 32:03

Well, so that brings me to the next thing is execution. How, how do we do these, how do we do?

Lee: 32:10

these. The shorter the repeat, the higher the intensity. So at 30 seconds you're going for very nearly all out. The shorter the repeat and the higher the intensity, the more important it is to actually recover between. So at 30-second repeats you might actually take a minute of recovery. At one-minute repeats you might take a minute of recovery. At one minute repeats you might take a minute of recovery, or you might take a minute and a half. At two minute repeats, two minute recovery. But at three minute repeats you need to look at maybe only taking a two minute recovery.

Lee: 32:49

I'll sometimes do them with a three minute recovery and jog it. It's a little bit of a different workout and it's good to have variety. But if I do three minutes moderately hard and then three minutes pretty easy jog, I'm no longer doing high intensity. Truly, I'm actually doing a shorter cruise interval, which I know we're using a whole bunch of words, but I'm not fluctuating my heart rate as high up and as far down. So when we were talking about terms earlier and we were talking about how you need to get these pyruvates into the mitochondrias, there's these proteins that put them in there and if you want way more of those transporters.

Lee: 33:23

I know if you want more of these transporters that help you to get more muscle contractions efficiently, then you have to do a little tiny bit of high intensity, but not a lot. It doesn't take a lot. So, like I might do really shorter high intensity one time a month and then I'll do pretty good intensity a couple of times a month, you know, and then I'll do a couple of times a month of cruise intervals. Mine are not only on Tuesdays. I do one to two Saturdays a month. Instead of Hill I do cruise intervals and which we'll get to cruise.

Karmell: 34:00

Well, yes, that's on the plan later in the plan. So we'll come back to cruise intervals. I want to finish with speed work first, and this is something I think we're going to want to put more guidance out on from what we have in the is something I think we're going to want to put um more guidance out on from what we have in the plan. I think we're going to be making some changes to that. I know one thing that I had wrong is, um, basically, when I started, when I did um you know, my first year of a hundred miler training I just kept creeping it up. I kept um kind of creeping up the number of repeats I was doing and then also creeping up the length of time until I got to two minutes at 12. And to me, I thought that anything less than that would be, you know, going backwards, taking a step backwards, and I realized that that line of thinking was really wrong, and I think that's where we need to put out more, more guidance, so that everybody understands that, uh, what we do both do now is shake it up, and I mean this was like a light bulb moment for me um changing up the time and deciding to do something shorter by going from two minutes to, like a minute 15, I could touch speeds that I could never sustain for two minutes. And that's something that I think is important about the execution too is discussing how you want to be conducting yourself during that work portion of it. Right, you want to be at a speed that's you don't want to go all out to a point that's not sustainable for the length of time you have set, right? So it's like, if I have a minute 30 as my set time, I don't want to go out on a speed that I can't hold for a minute 30, right, I want to be a speed that I could just hold. Like it should hurt, it should be difficult to make it to that minute 30. Like I should be waiting for that timer to go. Like just desperate for that timer to go off by the end is how I feel sometimes, where it's like beep, beep, you know, but I want to be able to make it that long. And if I can't make it that long without slowing down substantially, then that means I started that work portion of the repeat too quickly. So, yeah, by doing, by playing around with sometimes doing longer ones and sometimes doing shorter ones, you're doing two things. You're you're playing with that speed over time, right? So when you're doing those shorter ones, you can get way more intense than you can for two minutes. But I also think it's incredibly valuable for learning your body and getting a feel of your own effort and what's sustainable. So not just at one speed, but getting to know your body so well that you can play with that time.

Karmell: 36:53

And you're going to screw this up. I screw it up all the time, I mean. I mean sometimes you again, sometimes you had a harder weekend and you don't realize it and you're out there. You might be more fatigued, maybe you didn't sleep well the night before too, like. So sometimes life is going to impact these as well. But sometimes I just completely misjudge and end up petering out. But that's part of this learning process and I think the more you do these and the more you play with them, it's one of the best exercises for pacing.

Lee: 37:26

Well, you know what else the good news is? The good news is there's been studies on is it better to do intervals mainly at zone four for the hard, or mainly in the top of zone three and do longer ones? And the conclusions were neither one is better. There should be a variety. So the good news is that as you play around and you screw up but when you screw up, usually what that just means is that you're doing some of your intervals. You may have intended to do zone four, but you're doing more in the top of zone three. It's only really, if you're messing up to where you're now doing them down in the bottom half of zone three, then you just should do an easy run. If you really can't, can't push much harder than that, you should just do an easy run.

Lee: 38:10

Although, honestly, when you're that tired, it all feels like zone four, even though your heart rate's not going up. You just feel miserable. But that's the thing you. You learn your body. You know when you just can't, you can't hit the paces you usually can, your legs feel like lead, You're getting out of breath at a speed that you shouldn't be, that out of breath that there's, you know when you actually just feel like crap and need to call it quits. Jog 15 more minutes really easy and go home.

Karmell: 38:36

Okay. So if I set out to do 12, but I'm on like number eight or nine and I'm certain I'm not getting to zone four anymore, you're saying I should just kind of turn it into just a jog from there, there's no point in continuing the repeats it into just a jog from there, there's no point in continuing the repeats.

Lee: 38:56

Right, a super easy jog. Yeah, I've stopped. I will stop as low as six repeats If I start to have a really bad sideways workout I rarely do, but I have stopped as low as six by two minutes. Six by two minutes still will get the results to some degree. You'll still get benefit, and if you start pushing these workouts to where you're staggering and off on form, you're going to hurt yourself. So if you don't do these at all, you don't get the benefits. If you do too much, too hard, too bad of form, you also won't get the benefits. So it's better to err on the side of stopping one repeat early than going over and getting hurt.

Karmell: 39:34

So to make sure we have the execution part out there, we are running no matter what that timer set for, whether it's one minute or two minutes. We're running as fast as we can sustain for our goal time.

Lee: 39:50

Yes, except that usually just shy of that, like try, try to err on the side of a little easier for your first two repeats. You know, ease your pace up. If you really are doing that on your first repeat. You're not going to do long sets of them, so none of them are going to be truly quite what you could. If I told you we're doing a two minute race, you would go faster. Gotcha, you're coming in just shy of that because your understanding are going to be repeated.

Lee: 40:15

Because you're trying to do maybe 10 or Now it turns out actually, the more beginner you are, the more you should actually probably just go as hard as you can Like.

Lee: 40:23

If you are a slower beginner runner, and by slower so we mean and I hate putting it into words because I don't want people to feel put down but the entire goal is to kind of feel out where your paces are and so as you, as you get older, it's harder to maintain leg turnover and it's harder to push hard.

Lee: 40:43

I know this, I'm 52. And but also so if you're, but at any age, if you're just a runner who doesn't have that higher speed and turnover, go ahead and push. So if you run, let's say your 10K time is 60 minutes or even 55 minutes or 65 minutes if that's about where you're at for a road 10K then you should probably be doing 30 second to minute and a half repeats and pushing them as hard as you can. Anything else for you is probably going to be a cruise interval, meaning that you're going to be slowing down enough that you're not. It's going to be more of an aerobic interval where you're doing a very slow shuffle recovery of like 13 minute mile shuffle recovery and nine minute mile pace when you're, when you're pushing it, or an eight and a half.

Karmell: 41:36

If so, at that point you really are just pushing as hard as you can now, um, okay, so that that covers, like, how that that work portion of the repeat. What about the rest portion of the repeat? Like, what's the purpose there? What should our intent be?

Lee: 41:53

You need to get your heart rate back down to very fully aerobic again, where it's easy to talk and breathe, where I couldn't even tell that you're putting forth work. For high intensity that usually means walking for almost everybody, or the intensity doesn't sustain. When I'm peaking out my fitness I can jog the recoveries usually on a pretty high intensity, but that jog is I could actually fast walk the pace that I'm jogging Like it looks like a jog but I can walk that fast. So that's like 14, 15 minute mile shuffle.

Karmell: 42:28

So like what zone are you? Are we talking like zone two, one? Okay, so you're trying to get down to like zone one here.

Lee: 42:36

Maybe maybe the bottom two like it's, it's, it's easy, because you're wanting to recover.

Karmell: 42:40

So, top of one, bottom of two, and so, basically, you have caught your breath fully again.

Lee: 42:46

Um, and I have, at times when I've really pushed these, I've like stood still for a little bit and that's allowed and that's that difference between, technically, an interval and repeat. But also the shorter the repeat, the more that's going to happen. So, like I have definitely done this and assigned it to people you run, you jog, always jog at least a 10 minute warmup before you do these. If you're at all injury prone or just human doing everyone, it's a good idea to do a couple short sets of high skips and a couple short sets of butt kicks. If you're gonna be doing anything on a trail, it's a good idea to maybe do some lateral skater jumps or just do some of those to get your tendon reflex happening, to get your muscles reacting right to going fast.

Lee: 43:32

Because if you are a faster person, so because there are people in the program who are able to run somewhere between a 310 and a 340 marathon, which is quicker, so they've usually at that point done some serious track workouts.

Lee: 43:45

They're used to these little track drills and they're running fast and can probably tell how much warmup they need in order to run 30 seconds all out. But if you're not a person that regularly does that or has done that in recent history, it's a super good idea to bounce around, do these high skips, get everything ready to move. Then you jog about 10 minutes. Then you do 30 seconds full go and then stand around and shake your legs for a minute and then do 30 seconds full go and then stand around and shake your legs for a minute and then do 30 seconds full go. That is good to do very, very occasionally, like that's a good once a month workout. It will. It will help with your overall economy of running. It will help with your leg turnover at any level. But again, that's like a do that once a month, it's not a do that every week.

Karmell: 44:34

And so let's see. We said warm up. Do we need a cool down for speed repeats? Does it matter?

Lee: 44:41

It's a real good idea to walk or jog your legs out at least 10 minutes after. Oh good, I'm horrible about that sometimes when I'm close to the car, like, ah, I jogged four minutes, I on good.

Karmell: 44:53

Yeah, I'm pretty bad about it.

Lee: 44:55

I've been. You know. What I've been doing after, though, is doing like a couple sets of lunges with my eyes closed and a couple sets of like the single leg deadlift motion just reaching towards my car no-transcript stuff or like hip hikes, if you feel like I'll get tight in one hip sometimes when I'm running these full out, and then so I'll do like hip hikes and some lateral skater jumps and the different exercises that I do anyway, some glute bridges, things like that to kind of get my hips to feel more, uh, in balance.

Karmell: 45:53

And uh, all right, let's move on to the next one. Um, cruise intervals, cruise intervals. How do we do those? So these are what's the difference?

Lee: 46:02

These are more of an endurance exercise, so you're not working on quite the same systems. Uh, I'm not even going to the weeds of the biochemistry again, but let's just say there's. You're more practicing, moderate hard. So this is where you run. Let's say, for five minutes you run a pace that you think you could sustain for four or five miles and then for five minutes you jog real slow and you alternate those two things. That would be a cruise interval. A cruise interval means that your recovery is not quite all the way down to zone one. Necessarily. You're recovering down into zone two, but not zone one.

Karmell: 46:44

So what are we running? At what zone?

Lee: 46:48

So, when we're running, You're going between two and high three you're not hitting any zone four. I've hit zone four on them, but only because I was on the last one or two and I was trying to hit a specific spot on the trail or something dumb like that.

Karmell: 47:06

So only in the last minute did that happen of the last one, it wouldn't have anything to do with you being competitive and running with boys, would it? I think that's probably like 99 if you can see her face right now, that's 99 and a half percent of it.

Lee: 47:22

And um, um, it's good for me, keeps me happy, keeps my brain working right, you know uh, so is it?

Karmell: 47:29

we're going like a, like a zone three here, and then what about zone for like the five minute slower portion?

Lee: 47:39

the, that would be two. Okay, so that's still easy talking, but it's not that super easy when you're doing two minute repeats.

Lee: 47:46

We're wanting to go more to a super easy yeah there are workouts that are perfectly fine, workouts that do, uh, cruise intervals for amounts of, for distances on a track that actually end up equating for a lot of faster runners to being two or three minute repeats. Uh, but we're not track runners and we're not marathon runners. So these help you to work on and you can do these anywhere from five to 10 minutes. I actually have been thinking about doing some. I've been doing 10 minutes, but I've been thinking about doing some shorter ones. I'm just afraid I'll kill myself on the trail.

Lee: 48:25

Uh, the hard week plan has them at five minutes. Going at least up to eight minutes as you progress as a runner is a really good idea. The hard week intervals has these as Wednesday and it only does it in order to do a really high volume week. It's just an easy way to do a high volume week without requiring a lot of thought. But if you start to get used to the plan and want to make your own variations on workouts and want to prepare yourself even more strongly for racing, then sometimes hills should be replaced by these cruise intervals on trail or even on road, and they're hard doing 10 by six or six, yeah, six by 10 minutes.

Lee: 49:02

So that's what I did Saturday is jog for 30 minutes on the trail, slow at like zone two, and then do 10 minutes of very high zone three and then five minutes of very slow shuffle, alternating for six reps and that hurt and was over 11 miles and uh. So that that's an alternate hills. But were had to try that workout when I hadn't been doing any hill repeats and hadn't built up to the right amount of strength. Then when I hit hills on the trail or muddy spots I wouldn't even have the leg strength and turnover running down the hills. I wouldn't have the turnover because I wouldn't have the practice, Cause when we do those speed hills you practice downhill. If you have not practiced downhill enough to be able to run down the hill, you're not going to be able to do your cruise intervals quite as well because you're going to slow down so much on downhills and we've moved them occasionally in winter to a better hill and you can always move your feet a lot faster to keep your heart rate up.

Karmell: 50:07

I'm sorry you went into speed repeat hills. Now you're saying those help with cruise intervals.

Lee: 50:12

Speed repeat hills are something that will build up the strength that you need in order for trail cruise intervals to be productive. Even on a bike path, cruise intervals are very tiring. It takes a lot of muscular strength to do 10 minutes in a row, pushing at your 5-mile effort or your 10 K effort pending, and then to just jog it off really lightly and then do it again. That's very hard workout. If you don't have enough leg strength, what happens is that your legs fatigue out so badly and your leg muscles hurt. You can't push because your leg muscles are exhausted. Gotcha.

Lee: 50:48

Those speed hills are building up a type of leg strength. By having to go up the hill hard and then rest and then come down the hill hard, you're building up strength to be able to do something like cruise intervals. So round one of the program you're just building strength and that's why there's so much strength training. Also, so much like that is to keep you healthy, to keep your hips level, to keep your knees, to make sure that you are in shape enough to do more hard running. Otherwise you're just going to hurt yourself. Doing the hard running. Hills are just a real efficient way to get there.

Karmell: 51:21

Gotcha. And so that leaves us to execution. On the last thing speed repeat hills. Now we do have guidance on how to do speed repeat hills. In our Listen While you Run podcast, the episode on hill repeats. But we could kind of just briefly touch on that, because I don't think in that guidance, I don't think we discuss it as it pertains to the zones and so on. So how is this one done differently or how is this one executed to make sure that we're getting the benefits of speed work here?

Lee: 51:58

The speed hill repeats are get a hill that you can run down in 30 to 60 seconds. If you don't have one, that's that short just pick a stopping point on the hill and stop somewhere near there.

Karmell: 52:15

And what are we going for?

Lee: 52:16

on like effort zone, we are going for move your feet as fast as you can. So we don't want you getting your heel out in front of you on landing with your toes pointed up at the sky, the way some runners will. We want you to try to land with your foot under you and bring it up behind you as fast as you can. So you're really really trying to focus on forcing your feet to come back up off the ground the instant they touch it and keep turning over. Keep your arms pumping, keep your feet turning over, right on the edge of the fastest you can make them turn over. That is not the same as covering ground as fast as possible. When you sprint, you're usually just trying to go faster, and there's more power. There's more running down the hill. You don't have to generate power For me to sprint faster. I have to generate power, my push off to push my weight. When I'm going down a hill, even a gentle hill, I don't have to generate as much power in order to keep my speed up. What I have to do is keep my feet moving faster.

Lee: 53:10

Those are two different skills and a lot of beginning trail runners are a lot of clumsy. Some of it's proprioception, which we're always discussing at the strength training which I post about, but some of it is that they simply cannot pick their foot back up off the ground very quickly. So when their foot starts to slide, it just lingers on the ground, giving it all the time in the world to slam into rocks and get stuck under roots and cause the face to hit the trail, which sucks. I've done it a lot, so that learning to pick your feet up very quickly will make you much more agile. It will make you safer when you are running and things are slick. When you are running and you are tired. Having better foot speed will make you safer. You can still face plant, but it will cut down the face plants and for grade.

Karmell: 53:55

I believe basically what we're going for here, the guidance we put out is you kind of want it as steep as you could get without having to put any brakes on right. If you feel out of control, if you feel like you're leaning back or breaking at all, if you feel like the grade is slowing you down in any way, then your hill's too steep for that right.

Lee: 54:17

If it's only slightly and you're not sure, you can pause every 20 seconds if you want to. You don't even have to make it to the bottom until you could move as fast as you can for 20 seconds, realize that you've completely lost focus, stop, regroup for a minute or even just half a minute and then do the next 20 seconds. That's allowed Because you can move your feet real fast if you're really focused on it.

Karmell: 54:39

And I'm going to say this typically ends up. Zone four Is that, would you agree, the going?

Lee: 54:45

down Going down For me absolutely, Sometimes scraping five possibly.

Karmell: 54:50

I feel like I've possibly scraped. I mean, I'm certainly not having any conversations For those of you who've never seen Carmel run down a hill.

Lee: 54:57

This is what you need to understand. Carmel is a completely insane person on downhills. New trail runners usually are a little hesitant. Zero, Zero, she will come flying down that hill. We were like there's no control.

Karmell: 55:11

No, zero fear, zero fear. I'm not sure that I've gotten my full downhill speed back since Hellbender, since you're in the dark right. Yeah. So for those of you who don't know, during Hellbender got to a technical downhill and I was just having a just very technical and it's nighttime, it's my headlamps on technical rocky and I'm just like having the time of my life.

Karmell: 55:36

I'm just flying down this thing, just like I feel like gravity doesn't exist. I am just going and like, right as I'm like, you know, I'm going rock to rock like right as I'm doing this, my headlamp goes out and I wiped out so freaking hard and I'm like, oh my God, am I okay? I managed to get my headlamp back on. I don't remember if I got it back on or if I had a spare headlamp. I don't even remember that part, but I remember once I got light again looking at my leg and there's just this like giant tennis ball sticking out of it, like what the hell Turns out. This was like a hematoma that was on my leg for months. So I got to learn all about hematomas. We named it Henrietta hematoma. My daughter drew faces on it, so we kept.

Karmell: 56:28

We kept faces on on Henrietta, but that was like a month's long just having this giant thing, like it was literally bigger than a tennis ball, it was so it felt so weird. So I don't know, I feel like I have some. I have some traumas. So I'm working on getting my downhill speed back, but, yes, I feel like previously I may have gotten into the zone five on the downhill, but we're at least going for four.

Lee: 56:57

We were allowed to do that hill farm in Village Hill and we were having Strava races yeah. Lee and I were competing Quarter mile hill. We were competing with other people who run that hill. We were mostly competing with each other, because you were no there were a couple young men who were also running on the hill, and they were they were, we were, we were strava competing. That's right.

Karmell: 57:17

There was like there, I think I like one guy ahead of you and then I was just like two seconds behind you and then I broke 60 seconds.

Lee: 57:25

Then the next week I got like the next week.

Karmell: 57:27

I got two seconds faster, but you also got two seconds faster.

Lee: 57:31

I think I did like a 59 or 60 second descent.

Karmell: 57:33

But yeah, they took that hill away from us, the farm people didn't want us there anymore. Now it's like trespassing. You believe it? I know.

Lee: 57:43

In the regular hill, repeat hill, you can't quite get that fast one. It's not steep enough.

Karmell: 57:46

So I mean at the point being I know we've went off on a side tangent here point being is that you really want to go as fast as you can down these and that should be getting you into at least zone four. Um, and then our new guidance.

Lee: 58:01

But you may have to work up to it. Work on foot speed above all else. If you're scared, shorten your steps and work as hard as you can on your foot speed and turnover. If it's a really short step with your feet right under you, as long as you're picking them up as fast as you can, you are getting good benefit. I know that not everybody. There are people who are simply not going to go balls out down the hill. They're just not going to do it.

Karmell: 58:24

And then so same with our new guidance, we stop at the bottom of the hill. Same thing here. We're trying to bring our heart rate back to zone one, low zone two, yeah low two. Low two. Then we're going as fast as we can. That is sustainable up the hill. What we mean by that is again you shouldn't be petering out, you shouldn't bolt up, run out of steam be walking the second half. You really want to try to have this balanced and even and work on learning what that feels like.

Karmell: 59:02

Again, you're going to mess this up. Sometimes we mess it up where you start too fast and you run out of steam halfway up the hill and then you know your pace for the second half of going up is way slower. You're going to mess that up, but keep working on making that as even as possible. I just can't emphasize enough that these exercises and learning your body at these different paces on this different terrain is going to mean everything during your 100 miler, so that you are going as quickly as you can when you need to, but not running out of steam. I think that I think that covers almost anything I can think of.

Lee: 59:44

There's one other thing oh, I've been thinking about adding to my. It will not be in our training plan officially. And if you are not comfortable running hills fast and if you do not do 30-second repeats ever, if you are not comfortable with fast, fast running or if you've recently done any serious tendon or ligament damage, don't do this. Find a hill Run for 8 to 15 seconds as hard as you possibly can after a warm-up up the hill, meaning that if you make it past 15 seconds, you weren't going as hard as you can. You should be crashing and burning between 8 and 15 seconds after you start and then walk down the hill. Make sure you're fully recovered of your breath and do it again and do like eight of them. This is an experiment I plan to do when I do Tuesday speed work. I would do it on a Thursday, just to separate out, just jog around for 10 to 20 minutes, then do a set of these, cause it's only going to be. I'm going to do a set of like six of them the first time. I do it, probably, and aim to do eight after that. So it's not a uh, it's not a true interval workout, even because I'm not going to max my heart rate out. It's, uh, just to develop a type of speed and power that can help running economy.

Lee: 1:01:04

If you are not experienced a trail, if you are not really comfortable with speed not experienced a trail if you are not really comfortable with speed, do the 30 second repeats, you know. Do do 10 or 12 by 30 second repeats to get your speed up. Work on your leg turnover. But if you are a person who is very comfortable on trails and you are bored and you want some extra spiciness to your week and you want some things to just help your power and economy a little bit, this could be a worth it thing to go and give a try.

Lee: 1:01:31

You can encounter it if you do a deep dive on different types of repeats and intervals, anaerobic versus anaerobic. You're going to encounter it and it really does have some benefits if you're able to do it safely. The reason it won't be in the program officially is because with no supervision it's a risky thing to do. You can see where, if you go uphill as fast as you possibly can to where you're crashing in 12 seconds of falling over on the ground because you really did your all out that. That is an amount of muscle contraction and speed that could injure you. So if you think you can do something like that safely and it sounds fun, go for it. If you don't don't do that, it's absolutely not necessary, but it just bears addressing.

Karmell: 1:02:13

Well, it seems like kind of a benchmark, for that would be how easy is it to do your strength training right, like so, if you do the strength exercises? If I tell you to get on the wobble board right now and do some single leg deadlifts, like I'm, it have you do one on one leg and one on the other leg, and you know, are there going to be any imbalances? Can you do it?

Lee: 1:02:32

holding a 20 pound dumbbell? Yeah, can you do a lateral skater jumps holding a 20 pound dumbbell. Can you close your eyes and do lunges without any wobble when you are doing your six minute mountain legs? If you're doing them onto something that comes up at least to the bottom of your kneecap and you can keep bouncing off the floor at the bottom of them for the whole minute and do at least 30 of them in a minute, then you're doing pretty good. But we digress, we digress. But people like to have spicy, fun ideas at the end. Well, there you go. There's some spice. Good to have new workout flavors and sensations.

Karmell: 1:03:12

I think that covers it, though. Everything's speedy, everything's speedy, all right. Thanks for listening everybody. Happy trails. Catch you on the next one.