Learn how to train in hot conditions and more with the expert help of Corinne Malcolm.

 

 

 

Full Transcript 

Rich Ryan: [00:00:00] Hello today, we have Corrine Malcolm, and Corrine is a professional ultra runner and coach. She has spent a lot of time in the research world as an environmental physiologists. So what that means is she knows a lot about what happens to us as athletes in terms of the environment. So what it’s like with heat.

[00:00:29]altitude and all of the surrounding elements that happen to us Corrine knows how to navigate it. And right now is a perfect time to, to have a discussion, whether it, because it’s the middle of summer and it’s hot. So we talk about that, how to acclimate to the heat and perform your best. With those, ah, ha we also talk about the best way to figure out your own personal hydration.

[00:00:53] We also do a deep dive on cramps toward the later end of the episode, which is really informative and super helpful. So I implore you to stick around, to learn about cramps and how you can. Figure out why they happen and potentially how to avoid them. So I really enjoyed this conversation. Current super smart was very helpful to share at a time, and I think you will enjoy it as well.

[00:01:17] So let’s find out

[00:01:23] and today we have a Korean Malcolm croon what’s going on? How are you today?

[00:01:26] Corrine Malcolm: [00:01:26] I am good. It’s a weird sunny day in San Francisco is our foggy season. So it’s pretty nice outside right now.

[00:01:34] Rich Ryan: [00:01:34] You guys were kind of flipped, right? Like it’s nice most of the time of the year, but in the summer, Not as nice.

[00:01:40] Corrine Malcolm: [00:01:40] So we call him Carl, Carl, the fog.

[00:01:43] He’s got a name. Really?

[00:01:45] Rich Ryan: [00:01:45] That’s our dog’s name is Carl.

[00:01:46] Corrine Malcolm: [00:01:46] That’s so awesome. It was more of the K

[00:01:49] Rich Ryan: [00:01:49] it’s with a C what about the fog?

[00:01:51] Corrine Malcolm: [00:01:51] This is Karl with a K, but yeah, so our summers are actually pretty cold in the city proper, but you can go 20 minutes in any direction and it can be 20 degrees warmer, which is.

[00:02:02] Pretty awesome. but we live in the fog bank. We live right by the ocean. so it’s really kind of rare actually to be mid July and have it be sunny out. Right.

[00:02:10] Rich Ryan: [00:02:10] And the sunshine will congrats. It’s a big day for that. well, cool. I’m really excited to kind of dive in and talk about some ultra training.

[00:02:17] We’re going to dive into the nuts and bolts of, things like heat, acclimatization and hydration. but first I have a couple of random questions. We call this the rapport round. Are you ready?

[00:02:26] Corrine Malcolm: [00:02:26] Yes.

[00:02:27] Rich Ryan: [00:02:27] So on your Instagram and on like your website, your, your self proclaimed, an ultimate cookie monster. I don’t know what that means in your context, but like, what’s your favorite kind of cookie?

[00:02:39] Corrine Malcolm: [00:02:39] My, Oh man, I’ve got lots of favorite cookies, I think traditionally like an oatmeal scotchy so an oatmeal cookie with butterscotch chips in it, like a taste of like childhood, You know, classic chocolate chip cookie can’t really go wrong. I’m not, I’m not a healthy cookie person now. I like, I’ve got a sweet tooth.

[00:02:57] I like dessert. I like them to be like real, real desserts.

[00:03:02] Rich Ryan: [00:03:02] Yeah. Like what would a healthy cookie, like, do you have an idea of like, there’s like those packaged ones, the protein cookies, or what would be considered even a healthy cookie? Cause like a healthy cookie. I’m like, if you’re, if you’re already there.

[00:03:14] Just do the real cookie.

[00:03:16] Corrine Malcolm: [00:03:16] Yeah. I like how the cookies are like really dry or they like, like one half muffin. Like they’ve had stuff added to them, like banana or zucchini. And so they’re no longer like a cookie. I like chewy crispy cookies, not like. Cakey cookies. So I’m a, maybe I’m a cookie snob, not a cookie monster.

[00:03:35] Rich Ryan: [00:03:35] Well, you’ve thought about it. You’ve clearly thought about it quite a bit. So I appreciate the details on that. My, my girlfriend, Amy, she likes cookies that are like dry and like, Like almost like short bready

[00:03:47] Corrine Malcolm: [00:03:47] type, I guess. Yeah. There’s a good shortbread like this and they’ve got enough butter in them.

[00:03:52] They definitely are. Are okay.

[00:03:54] Rich Ryan: [00:03:54] What you’re doing, but I disagree. I disagree with you both because I think you’re right. Like chocolate chip, just chewy. Chocolate chip cookie that’s. What else do you need?

[00:04:03] Corrine Malcolm: [00:04:03] It’s the sniffle, I will say. So I am a cookie monster in part, because, back in the day, when I left college to ski race, full time to do biathlon, so shooting and skiing, which we can dive into at any point.

[00:04:16]my coaches needed me to find an outlet besides training to deal with my life. Stress or anxiety or anger or whatever it was. And so I started baking and so I was living in an Olympic training center baking just so many chocolate chip cookies. And it was nice. Cause I lived with like the bobsled and luge athletes.

[00:04:35] And so I was just feeding the bobsledders. Cookies. Cause I couldn’t eat all of them. And so I feel like that’s like where the cookie love

[00:04:43] Rich Ryan: [00:04:43] you must’ve been the best roommate ever. And I kind of understand the outlet for baking, for cooking. To me, cooking is like stressful. Like if it seems like it’s really time and tense and like, I just get all out of sorts from it, but baking it’s like, okay, you can kinda take your time, just make sure everything’s measured and right.

[00:04:59] And just, it’s more soothing on my end, I think was that. Was that why you got into baking or did you just, were you just like, I just like cookies so I’m

[00:05:06] Corrine Malcolm: [00:05:06] in trouble? No, I think it was like, I needed something to do with that time. Like when I got anxious or something, or. Angry or sad. I like, instead of going for a run because I was already training a lot.

[00:05:17]they’re like, you can’t just go run whenever you have feelings, you have to do something else. So cookies were like, or baking anything. Really? I would just ask people like, Oh, what’s your favorite flavor or your favorite ingredient or something. And then I would make something based off of that. And so, and then cookies just became like a staple, of all that.

[00:05:35] And it is, it’s much more relaxing. I feel like then making like full meals or cooking. There’s definitely plans to it. You know, you can definitely make like mess up baked goods. So sometimes I won’t tell people what the final product is supposed to be, because if you’re just fails, all of a sudden it’s a crumble or there are ways to like, basically, cause it’s like butter and sugar and fruit whatever’s in there, but it’s.

[00:05:58] It doesn’t necessarily look, it doesn’t present always super well. So I think that’s like the flexibility. The thing is if you mess up, you can kind of, or baking. If you mess up, you can kind of rebrand it to be something different.

[00:06:10] Rich Ryan: [00:06:10] Cause I hear people say those things like, Oh, baking is much more precise, right?

[00:06:14] Like it needs to, you need to measure things out. And is it so that it does present a certain way? Or is it because of the taste?

[00:06:20] Corrine Malcolm: [00:06:20] I think it’s probably both, right. Like I think part of it is like there’s a science behind baking. Like you need a certain amount of oil to be absorbed by a certain amount of flour.

[00:06:31]and so I like gluten-free baking is actually really, really hard. I’ve done a little bit of it and it’s, it can be you can’t just like replace flour with gluten free flour because that gluten does stuff and the oil you’re adding to it, or the moisture that you’re adding to, it has to balance out with that.

[00:06:46] So I think it’s like part of it’s presentation part of its flavor. And then like the more complicated. You know, cookies are like safe. They’re pretty easy. They’re pretty hard to mess up unless you mess up like your tablespoon teaspoon, like salt ratio

[00:07:00] Rich Ryan: [00:07:00] that can happen.

[00:07:03] Corrine Malcolm: [00:07:03] It was, you know, it’s, it’s I think a safe, easy thing.

[00:07:06] So it’s kind of like, I can do them like mindlessly now. And it’s just kind of a nice way to like, Unwind in a way,

[00:07:13] Rich Ryan: [00:07:13] huh? That’s such an interesting way to kind of come about it. And I guess it makes sense that you can’t like your competitive outlet also being your stress reliever. I could see how I could get into some troubled territory.

[00:07:26] Corrine Malcolm: [00:07:26] Yeah. And I think, you know, I was, as a, as a skier is kind of like, like cycling a lot of ways where you’re training just a ton of hours every week. And so I couldn’t afford to continue to add, you know, Half an hour, hour long runs, whatever I like. Had feelings to get out. Yeah, I think on a, on a recreational level, on a, just like using exercise as a stress management tool, I mean, the science is there.

[00:07:52] It’s very, very positive. Just being outside has huge, huge, positive impacts on your health and wellbeing. but as a level athlete, trying to make an Olympic team. And you’re already training 20 to 30 hours a week. You can’t really add another couple of hours of activity without it needing to come out.

[00:08:10] Rich Ryan: [00:08:10] Yeah. You need to account for it somehow. And yeah, it just can’t happen that way. So cookies are as good of a way as I could imagine.

[00:08:18] Corrine Malcolm: [00:08:18] Yeah.

[00:08:22] Rich Ryan: [00:08:22] So I do want to talk about, biathlon, like tell us. A little bit about that and like, tell me why it’s really cool.

[00:08:29] Corrine Malcolm: [00:08:29] Okay. So biathlon is a sport where I think it gets really popular every four years when there’s a winter Olympics. because we see it on TV and we’re like, Oh, this is a really interesting thing.

[00:08:42]but it’s not a big sport in the U S in general, it’s much more popular in Europe. particularly in Eastern Europe. but Eastern and Western Europe. So biathlon is the combination of cross country skiing and shooting. So marksmanship, it kind of is akin to like rodeos sports or lumberjack sports, where it was developed as a way for.

[00:09:02]like militaries to compete against one another. And so winter, like winter mountain training I’m in Scandinavia and other countries would, you know, it became a competition outlet of combining cross country skiing or the physical fitness required to do an endurance sport with something that marksmanship, and it’s evolved a lot over the last.

[00:09:22] 20 years, 25 years. It’s probably longer now. It’s probably more like 40 it’s evolved a lot. It used to be, you know, shooting glass targets. and they used to only classic ski. Now we only, and classic skiing is like traditional. Skiing, it looks kind of like running, versus skate skiing, which is more like hockey skating.

[00:09:42] So kind of that lateral movement. so it’s evolved a lot, like now that the targets are electronic, I E you’re not hitting a paddle and having the paddle come up it’s it can be sense that it was hit and then it shows that it was hit. but it’s still shooting a real gun. So people now they cross country ski with a 22.

[00:10:00] So a fairly small caliber. rifle on their backs, which I think is why, when we see it every four years, we’re like, what

[00:10:08] Rich Ryan: [00:10:08] what’s, where are they going with that? Yeah.

[00:10:11] Corrine Malcolm: [00:10:11] So I think it’s, you know, it’s a really cool sport. It, people describe it akin to like running up a flight, you know, running up several flights of stairs and then trying to thread, a piece of string through the eye of a needle.

[00:10:23] Because you do your skiing really, really hard. And then you’re to come into a, a range, and hit targets that are the size of like a silver dollar when you’re lying down. It’s pretty small. the size of about a CD when you’re standing, at 50 yards. And so you are your heart, rate’s up, you come into the range and you’re expected to hit five targets with five bullets.

[00:10:48] Otherwise you’re penalized. So it’s like, it’s this really interesting in combination of this physical task with this mental and skill based task. Does that

[00:11:00] Rich Ryan: [00:11:00] end the competition with the shooting? Or what’s that time domain? Like, like how long are you skiing and then like, do you go into the shooting and then keep going?

[00:11:08] Or is it,

[00:11:10] Corrine Malcolm: [00:11:10] yeah, so it’s kind of anything about it.

[00:11:12] Rich Ryan: [00:11:12] I’m just like, yeah.

[00:11:15] Corrine Malcolm: [00:11:15] So, we have a number of different styles of racing. The shortest being what’s called a sprint, but it’s not like we would think like a hundred meters it’s, seven and a half K for women and 10 K for men. And those races only they’re called a sprint because they only have two shooting stages.

[00:11:30] So they’re always shooting stages are always preceded. And then you go and ski again afterwards. So in a sprint race, you would ski for women two and a half kilometers come in and shoot prone. So lying down, you leave ski another two and a half kilometers come into the same range. Shoot standing. And then you’d leave there and ski another two and a half kilometers to the finish.

[00:11:54] So they’re like set up in these big stadiums where like the stadium is set around the range. And then there are loops that leave the stadium, depending on the race course that are about two K to five K long is the longest loop. and generally speaking, most of the races, There’s a couple different varieties.

[00:12:11] One like one that is two stage and some that are forced edge. And generally speaking, the most common format is that you have to ski 150 meter penalty loop. As soon as you leave the range for every shot that you missed.

[00:12:24] Rich Ryan: [00:12:24] Oh, so it’s a physical penalty. It’s not the, it’s not cat at the end.

[00:12:27] Corrine Malcolm: [00:12:27] Yeah. Yeah. So there is one, there’s one style of race that is the longest of it.

[00:12:31] It’s. 20 K for men and 15 K for women and that race it’s for shooting stages again. and that race is it’s considered a shooter’s race because, for every shot you miss you get your assessed a one minute penalty. And so that’s a weird one where you don’t have a physical penalty. You have a, like a time added.

[00:12:50] So she’s

[00:12:51] Rich Ryan: [00:12:51] like, just because of the time of the event itself is already long.

[00:12:54] Corrine Malcolm: [00:12:54] I think it is actually, I think that race is actually the original format. was like the, like, that was the biathlon race before. And now there’s several different formats that you could race in any one weekend. I’m kind of akin to an OCR race where there’d be a sprint and an ultra and a beast, same thing here, there’d be a sprint race.

[00:13:11] And then maybe the next day there’s a pursuit race. So you start in the order you finished the day before and literally the first person to cross the line wins. And there’s a mass start event. There are relays, there’s all these different ways. So honestly, it’s got a lot of similarities to OCR where you’re assessed a physical penalty, you mess up.

[00:13:28] Right. And, You know, it’s either a cumulative time. If it’s an individual start race or the person who crosses the line first, if it’s a mass start, or chasing a pursuit style race. So it’s kind of cool in this bunch of options.

[00:13:42] Rich Ryan: [00:13:42] It’s like OCR has taken a page from that book and on several specs, like they do a race like that where it’s a trifecta weekend and I’ll have it be pursuit.

[00:13:50] So whoever finishes first, and of course we have the spear throw. Everybody’s seen the spirit though. That’s basically. Yeah, same kind of thing

[00:13:55] Corrine Malcolm: [00:13:55] all the times. And I think that’s like the obstacle that people mess up the most early. That’s what it seems like on my end. And, yeah. So imagine that, but having to do five sphere throws every stage they’re doing like doing 10 to 20 spirits, there’s a race and that’s what you’re being penalized on.

[00:14:11] Rich Ryan: [00:14:11] God, nobody knows he, I would do those races and be like, I’m out. I’m not never going to too many burpees. How did you get into this? Like where, where are these in.

[00:14:21] Corrine Malcolm: [00:14:21] Yeah. So they’re very, regionally based. I grew up in the Midwest. I grew up in Northern Wisconsin, but I didn’t do biathlon growing up there.

[00:14:28]the, there were a lot of junior ski racers out of Minnesota who did do biathlon because that is. One of the hubs. So they oftentimes use old Olympic venues like Lake Placid has a biathlon range on like at the ski trails there, salt Lake in soldier. Hollow has a path on range at the ski trails there.

[00:14:46] The one in Minnesota is up in grand Rapids, Minnesota. So there scattered all over the place. There’s one now in, in Wyoming, there’s a small one in Bozeman, Montana. There’s one in Tahoe. so there’s all these little ranges. There’s one in Jericho, Vermont. I’m on the national guard base there. So it’s kind of like it’s regionally based.

[00:15:04]Canmore. So another Olympic venue in Canada and Vancouver, up in Whistler. So a lot of times it’s, you’re using that infrastructure. That’s just been kind of left there and those are full 30 point ranges is like as a standard size, the ones in like Bozeman, and in Wyoming they’re growing. And that their goal is to have a 30 point range that they could host international races at those events.

[00:15:25] Are those venues, but generally speaking, those ranges are smaller and it might only be a five point range or a 10 point range. Cause it’s used more for training than it is for like big races. Hmm.

[00:15:35] Rich Ryan: [00:15:35] Interesting. And you found that after, like just after running or in school, like how did you,

[00:15:42] Corrine Malcolm: [00:15:42] so I want to broaden high school.

[00:15:44] I lived in Eastern Europe for a year and had kind of fallen in love with Nordic skiing right before I left for that trip. And they actually didn’t there wasn’t like a Nordic ski team where I was, I lived in Latvia, but there was a biathlon program. And so I just ski trained with them. I really had no desire to do biathlon at that point in time.

[00:16:03]and I really wanted to like prove myself skiing and then part way through college, I’d been qualifying for NCAA events, but in skiing, Each school can only bring three skiers, sensitivity championships. And our school would routinely, we have really strong women’s team and we would routinely qualify four or five athletes.

[00:16:23] And I, I was a freshman and a sophomore. And so oftentimes they’d go on seniority. and. I wasn’t getting to go to NCAAs. And that was really frustrating for me. Cause I saw skiing in college like this path and I like wanted to go to the Olympics and I, you know, I needed to ski, well collegiately, then I could go to a post-collegiate development program and then I can, you know, go to the world cup and the Olympics and, felt like I was stuck calling out and had gone to, we call it junior nationals that spring, even though as a college student, I was still a junior in the ski world.

[00:16:54]And got approached there. They’re like you’re skiing really fast. Have you ever shot a gun? And growing up in Wisconsin, I took Hunter safety when I was nine years old.

[00:17:05] Rich Ryan: [00:17:05] I have, yeah,

[00:17:06] Corrine Malcolm: [00:17:06] I have, I, you know, gone to boy scout camp with my brothers and, had shot a gun a little bit. And so. I was so disenfranchised skiing, collegiately, and didn’t feel like I was being a good student.

[00:17:18] Cause I like go kind of all in when I approach things that I, I dropped out of school. My, after my sophomore, the spring of my sophomore year of college, I dropped out of school and packed up all my belongings and moved to Northern Maine because there was a training group out there. And it was primarily who would be the junior national team for biathlon.

[00:17:38] So I moved out there having no real experience in the sport and made the difference. Well that year, podium over in Europe at European championships and was named to the senior national team. That spring. So instead of, or like the following spring, so six or eight months into doing biathlon, I had been named to the national team and I kind of thought of it, of like taking a year off from school and trying skiing.

[00:18:03] And it turned into me not going to back to school for that full Olympic cycle. Wow. Yeah. Nice pitch.

[00:18:10] Rich Ryan: [00:18:10] Yeah, for sure. And like taking that risk to go after it is a Testament itself and just completely uprooting and going. That’s a pretty intense move for a kid that age too. What’s going to make it happen.

[00:18:23] Corrine Malcolm: [00:18:23] I’m lucky I have super supportive parents. and they, you know, they were worried like, well, you know, when you drop out of school, it can be harder to go back and be at school always. But they kind of told me in a school always be there. And if it’s something that I wanted to pursue, that I could, and at that point in time too, I think there were a number of.

[00:18:40]skiers that had foregone college to ski for a couple of years that were kind of in the U S like the U S skiing flying. And I, I think I was kind of envious of them in a way too. And I think that just helped. I was like looking for forward movement, looking for progress. I’ve, I’m most, like, I feel like I’ve relaxed a little bit since then, but, Yeah, just like needed, needed to move forward in some way.

[00:19:03] And so that was kind of, I saw it as an opportunity to like, Next chapter next step, like next racing scene. And so now I just feel like I’m a connoisseur of obscure sports, but yeah, it was, it was a great move for me. Yeah. I learned a lot during that time, some really positive lessons, some less positive lessons.

[00:19:23]but it was a really, really good, decision for where I was. I was so much. Better at school when I ended up ultimately going back to school. Yeah.

[00:19:33] Rich Ryan: [00:19:33] You’ve definitely learned something. A lot of people and did something a lot of people wouldn’t have ever done. So you and you’re right. Giving yourself a context to kind of then come back into school and have a certain focus that might not have been there.

[00:19:44] I’m sure it was just beneficial instead of just going through the motions and getting through and then being done with school, like, okay. Like. I was just scared this whole time, not a student.

[00:19:51] Corrine Malcolm: [00:19:51] Wow. You know, we travel from Wednesday to Sunday, every single week with season, which was, you know, generally started over Christmas break and went through March.

[00:20:01] And so there’s a lot of school to miss as well.

[00:20:04] Rich Ryan: [00:20:04] Right. Totally. so cool. That’s awesome. glimpse into your background a little bit more about who you are now and like what you’re doing as like an athlete and a coach.

[00:20:12] Corrine Malcolm: [00:20:12] Yeah. So I ended up graduating from my undergrad and going to grad school up in Vancouver, British Columbia.

[00:20:19]I’m actually still in process of finishing my degree. didn’t have a great lab set up there, but was studying environmental physiology and, which I’m kind of obsessed about. And when I say environmental physiology, I mean, how people can thrive. Survive and thrive in really extreme conditions.

[00:20:36] Be it cold, the altitude, be it really hot in here. Yeah. I was fascinated by wild land firefighters and the impacts of working in those environments. And that’s kind of what steered me into that. And I got to combine kind of my love of. Athletics into that as well from a sports performance aspect. And so during my graduate program, I ended up, I started coaching.

[00:20:57] I came on with CTS under Jason Cooper, kind of as our ringleader, he will tell you he’s not okay, but he’s also, I asked him if we could call him or then later he’s like, quote unquote, our head coach. but I came on with a program like CTS because I needed, I was kind of scared. one part of my biathlon story that some people know.

[00:21:17] Now at this point is that I was super overtrained. I’m really, really sick. That’s that’s actually why I left that sport and went back. The school was because I just, I had to take a year and a half completely off essentially of activity. so when it came to starting coaching, my biggest hangup, I had all of his educational background.

[00:21:34] My undergraduate degree is in applied physiology, you know, but basically coaching. Right. And I had all this knowledge. But I was really scared to be a coach because I was so worried from my own personal experience. like, cause you bring what, you know, that I was going to hurt people. That I was going to work with athletes and I was going to somehow like, not listen to, or not read the cues or totally, totally.

[00:22:01] I don’t know, do something right. Crazy. And so I was so scared that I was going to hurt someone. So instead of going out on my own coaching with another group made a lot of sense because although I wasn’t going to get my handheld, I was going to get kind of continuing education. And have kind of a support network of other coaches that I was working not necessarily directly with, but alongside.

[00:22:22] And so, I started coaching with Jason. we’re now there’s 11 of us now just kind of crazy in the running side of things. but it was a, you know, they like allowed me to come into the coaching world and get my feet wet and learn kind of on, on the job. And that’s been really great. So I’ve been doing that for four years now.

[00:22:41]Which has been really, really rewarding and really, really fun. And it got, I get to combine kind of, and my love of running and competition and sport with my love of science and, and, I’m currently I coach a good stable of athletes there. 26 to. 68 years old, primarily in, ultra and trail of it.

[00:23:02] But people who are running shorter, people who are running up to I’ve got an athlete next year who will be doing a 350 mile race.

[00:23:10] Rich Ryan: [00:23:10] Got it. I didn’t even know that as a thing that could even exist.

[00:23:13] Corrine Malcolm: [00:23:13] Yeah. But the 200 plus categories the thing now. So, yeah, so racing, like everything in between, I’ve got brand new runners who have been running for a year and they’ve got a big race goal and I’ve got runners who are far more experienced than I am.

[00:23:26] I’m in the ultra world. Cause I’ve only been racing ultras since 2016. so I started coaching like right before. I started running ultras essentially, but I’d done more racing. So I was like familiar, but I hadn’t yet run Western state. It’s our Leadville or all these races that people are looking for coaching for.

[00:23:42]So I feel like I’m very fortunate to have super skilled athletes that I get to work with as well,

[00:23:49] Rich Ryan: [00:23:49] just because it wasn’t exactly ultra racing that you were doing. You were still training at. I got really high level and like taking on volume and knowing how that feels and knowing like the mental side of things.

[00:23:59] And I feel like that’s a lot of what people would need as opposed to just be like, okay, at Western States, this, this might happen. During the training process, this is what you can expect, and this is what the outcome might be. So I doesn’t necessarily seem like you need to be. A seasoned ultra athlete to, to get into it as much.

[00:24:18] Corrine Malcolm: [00:24:18] No. And I would say too, like, I always joked, I know I’ve got plenty of really good friends who don’t come from the same educational background as me, but our coaching and in part it’s because, you know, they’re an elite runner and they have a lot of experience. and I never, I always kind of cringed at being the elite athlete who used coaching to pay for my running.

[00:24:37] Right. Like, I didn’t want to be that person. And I joke that like, well, actually I became a coach because I was a poor grad student and like needed to pay rent. not because I needed it to pay for race expenses, but, I think that that experience is really valid as well. they’re definitely things that I’ve learned through doing these a hundred mile races that I would not have.

[00:24:57] I could, I understand the science and I understand the physiology, but there are certain experiences that I’ve had out there that I’m like, That will be valuable to someone else that I can. We have, you know, I can turn to AJW or Jason himself, and you know about a race that I haven’t done to pick their brain on it.

[00:25:14] If I’ve got an athlete doing something that I’m not personally familiar with.

[00:25:19] Rich Ryan: [00:25:19] Right. And it says to have that support system system there as well. And yeah, you learn as you go.

[00:25:28] Corrine Malcolm: [00:25:28] Yeah.

[00:25:29] Rich Ryan: [00:25:29] And yeah, in your experience and your education and environmental physiology, which is a term that I don’t think I knew was a thing, but it makes sense because I want to talk about like some of the heat training. and that’s kind of a common thing that we’re hearing this time of year, especially on the East coast where, where I’m at and it’s really hot, really humid.

[00:25:44]And it really takes a toll on us, in training. And it just makes everything seem worse and a little bit harder. So like what exactly is happening when it’s really hot, that makes it harder to train.

[00:25:57] Corrine Malcolm: [00:25:57] Yeah. So there are a number of factors, right? You’re when you heat up and this is the same, honestly, very similar to altitude as well.

[00:26:04] Your body is going undergoing a lot of stress. And to start off with too, like your, as humans, we’re super inefficient. Like we produce a lot of heat for doing very little work. So you’re going to have, so you have your normal, like, you know, if you go for a run in the winter too, you also get warm. so you’ve got the combination of you producing heat internally with all this external force of heat, essentially being applied to you.

[00:26:27] Be it, you know, directly from the sun through radiation. Bouncing off of the surfaces around you, air being really warm. So there’s all these different ways that heat is applied. And oftentimes they’re considered radiation, conduction, convection, all these ways that heat is transferred between objects, objects.

[00:26:45] Wow. That was almost not a word.

[00:26:48] Rich Ryan: [00:26:48] I wouldn’t believe that I’d be like, I guess that’s how that said.

[00:26:52] Corrine Malcolm: [00:26:52] So we’re inefficient to start. Plus you have these environmental factors that we can adapt to, hence heat, acclimation being a thing, but it takes some time and you can think of it as you know, you’re heating up.

[00:27:06] You’ve got this internal thermometer a sense essentially. And that’s why like, that’s why you shiver, right? You get, you get a certain, like your temperature drops, you shiver to warm back up. So the same goes for heat. So certain things right. Shut down, or you start to kind of like shunt blood other places.

[00:27:23] So same with the cold, right? That’s why your, your fingertips get cold or your toes get cold or your nose gets cold. You have vasoconstriction. Or your blood vessels, you know, kind of shrinking and nice to keep your core warm. So the opposite happens in hot environment. It’s where you’re shunting blood to your skin surface because it’s warm and it wants to push that.

[00:27:43] And I’m going to use a lot of hand gestures. No, one’s gonna be able to see, it, so instead of as a constriction, you have acid dilation and you’re sending blood. Away from your core to your skin surface, to try to, you know, basically have the heat, you know, move like to your skin surface and then like either, you know, sweat and then evaporation, but heat essentially is being transferred into the air.

[00:28:04] And as those temperatures become closer together, as it gets hotter and hotter out, it’s harder for things to move because there isn’t a gradient anymore. Right. A gradient or something, moving from areas of a high to low concentration. It’s hard for there. It’s hard when temperatures reach a certain level to offload heat very well, because it’s almost as if there’s nowhere for it to go.

[00:28:26] Right. And then there’s downstream. Yeah. Sex of that blood flow of, into your skin, right? Yes. It’s smart because it’s helping you dissipate heat. We love dissipating heat, but if you think about it, yeah. During a long race or even a shorter race, all of a sudden that blood flow. Isn’t going to your, like the tissues of your stomach and your small intestine anymore.

[00:28:47] And so it’s got really, it’s got a really fancy term called splanchnic hypoperfusion. but essentially what that means, hypoperfusion being a lack of. Perfusion. So a lack of blood flow, to those tissues that make up your small intestines in your stomach. And what that happens is that then all of a sudden, there’s, you know, oxygen deprivation at those tissues.

[00:29:10] You can, you can do some level of damage actually over a long period of time, but it also just makes it really hard for you to move liquids and solids. You know, through that system and have it be absorbed properly. And that’s where you can end up with like heat specific GI distress. You’re not allowing, there isn’t blood flow there.

[00:29:30] It’s really hard for things to move across that. that membrane, essentially that the membrane lining of your small intestine. So lots of things are happening. You’re, you know, everyone feels worse. Part of it’s because you’ve got to, you’ve got to acclimate, you’ve got to adapt. So you’re sweating, sweating more than usual.

[00:29:46] Your heart rates generally higher than it is normally is, all these little pieces that should end theory get better as you’re exposed to it. And that’s why when we get those hot, like those really, really hot days are those. Hotter spring days, I’m going to use air quotes and no one’s going to see them this hot spring days where all of a sudden it’s like that first warm day of the year.

[00:30:08] And like, you just feel like garbage and it’s part because your body does make adaptations in order for you to perform better or survive. Those conditions. And so the goal is in, like in a general sense, us just running us, continuing to run, in the buildup to summer training or a summer race, we should be getting that daily heat exposure.

[00:30:33] And that should be enough for you to naturally acclimate. We have assets on the other end of the spectrum who might live in a more temperate environment or a mild environment, honestly, San Francisco, most of the year falls into that category. So I’m going to do Badwater or Western States, or I’m going to go out East to a really hot, humid race, or to the South, like having time to heat acclimate in a non-natural setting.

[00:30:58] So not just by going out and doing my run every day. Becomes more important because that’ll help me perform better when I do arrive in that hot humid environment.

[00:31:07] Rich Ryan: [00:31:07] And what are the expectations when you are going through this, acclimation process? Is it. Like say for altitude training. I think people just think, Oh, I’ll go somewhere for two weeks and then it’ll be better.

[00:31:20] Is it the, kind of the same with, with heat or how, how long do people need to expose themselves to heat? to have it not be as awful as it is that first hot day.

[00:31:31] Corrine Malcolm: [00:31:31] Yeah. It’s very, very similar to altitude acclamation, generally speaking, most of the big changes, including like plasma. Plasma volume expansion.

[00:31:41] So like all the blood and stuff that’s in your body. your heart rate that allows your heart rate to come back down. so you don’t have your cardiac system, isn’t working as hard. sweat rates change a little bit. you generally sweat more because evaporative cooling is this. Funky trick humans have.

[00:31:57] So generally it’s it’s two weeks or so. and honestly, most of the adaptations generally take place in the first 10 days, even. So not that long, but you do need that daily exposure initially to make that happen. So if you want to preempt those warm days and you can do that by using what we would call like passive heating.

[00:32:16]so you’re like getting in a sauna, that kind of thing to stimulate. That heat exposure. otherwise when I’ve got athletes who are trans shunning to like a warmer, like the warmer season, as long as we don’t have a race coming up, and we’re just kind of naturally heat acclimate by going for our runs everyday intensity and stuff out of the program, because the quality of those workouts go down so much that it’s an, unless they can get up really early or run really late or whatever it is to kind of circumnavigate those, like.

[00:32:45] You know, those like Dane almost dangerous temperatures. it’s not worth them doing the really, really hard work. You’re not going to get like extra strong because you’re doing super hard work while it’s really hot while you’re not acclimated. So I’m always looking for the ways to, to make adaptations at the time, lowest cost to the athlete.

[00:33:04]while maintaining the highest quality training we can.

[00:33:09] Rich Ryan: [00:33:09] Yeah, cause that’s a tough one. Right? Cause if your, your race say is in, I’m just going to use Philadelphia’s example is in mid June. and like, it gets really hot in the first week of June or something like that. And you, or, or in mid may and you have these important, workouts to go after.

[00:33:25] Do you still think it’s better to use it as a chance to acclimate to the heat as opposed to just like. Trying to bust the door down. Cause I mean, I feel like that just makes sense to people’s like, Oh, I still need to do these workouts. I’m just going to put them in however I can. But then the workouts ended up pretty terrible typically.

[00:33:39] So will you see that? And just be like, alright, well we’re just going to scrap this and add. If you add volume or just kind of keep it all the same across,

[00:33:47] Corrine Malcolm: [00:33:47] I mean, it’s gotta be specific to their event, right? Like me just like bumping up volume to replace a workout. Doesn’t make a ton of sense. sometimes that means like we move a workout.

[00:33:55] Obviously there, there were things that happened before COVID that we might not get to do post COVID for awhile. And I think that’s really important to. Remember or take with a grain of salt here. maybe that means moving a workout inside. So they’re not going to get that exposure that day, but they’re going to go there early out of the heat, or they’re going to run on their treadmill with a fan or they’re on their bike trainer or something that’s different where they can get the quality workout in, and then they’re getting heat exposure on the other days at easier intensities.

[00:34:23]you’re right. I think that the double whammy of getting that big workout in. I mean, psychologically, there’s probably benefits of that, that heat exposure, but physiologically, it could be a recipe for disaster of just it being too like too much. Any stressors, the hard workout, the high, the high temperature.

[00:34:39] Are they gonna be able to recover in time to do their long, long workout? Are we going to sacrifice workouts down the road? Because we pushed them too far on that one workout. So it’s all these like kind of little decisions that we’ve got to. Piece together to that make the most sense for each individual.

[00:34:55] If I know an athlete has an early summer race, and we have access to something like a sauna, which obviously like now post COVID. That’s those little quiet a gym membership was so that I had a son, because I can do the rest of the stuff, you know, in our garage. Like you could preempt that by doing some passive heating earlier in the season, because you can maintain that heat acclimation.

[00:35:18]generally speaking by just having heat exposure, like once every three days after the initial adaptation, that’s why you don’t like lose your heat acclimation over the course of the summer. If you guys have a cold week or a cold couple days, because you’re still getting that heat, that heat exposure every so often, and you can kind of maintain it.

[00:35:38] It’s not going to, we would call it decay of like something like an annotation going away. It would be the decay rate of decay of something. And so that’s what we’re kind of watching out for. And so there’s like really specific events or races where we, like, we have a heat acclimation protocol that we’re going to put an athlete through dependent on where they live.

[00:35:56] My athletes in Texas don’t really need a heat acclimation protocol because they’re going to get hot in the spring and it’s gonna be plenty hot by the time they’re gonna have tons of heat exposure by the time their June race rolls around. but if you’re going to like Costa Rica and March or something, Maybe you didn’t have that heat exposure in February or January.

[00:36:11] So trying to find ways to tweak that. And so there are things you can use. So I keep referring to passive heating. And it’s just because this is like kind of the newer philosophy on, heat acclimation, like instead of using, the natural environment, if that doesn’t readily available or like super overdressing, which I think has some psychological benefits, but not necessarily like you lower the quality once again, how do we maintain, maintain the quality of the workout?

[00:36:38] The best way I’ve found to maintain the quality of someone’s workout while still doing heat acclimation at the same time is to use what we call a passive heat protocol. And that means that an athlete’s going to go in as basically as soon as they can post workout kind of within a 30 minute windows ideal.

[00:36:54]they’re going to go in and get in a sauna or get in a hot tub. we found that there’s some research that’s come out that, hot, like using a hot tub can be effective as well. and because you’ve already been warm, like I said earlier, we’re not super efficient humans. We produce heat while we’re running, even in more temperate environments.

[00:37:11]you’re going in already warm, so you don’t need to spend 90 minutes in the sauna. Or 90 minutes in the hot tub, you can do a much smaller dose and get out of there because you came in preheated. So we’ve maintained the quality of the workout by allowing you to do it. Not overdressed, I’m not in a crazy contraption.

[00:37:29]You know, maybe it’s even in temperate or mild or cool conditions. and then we’re taking that already warm bar because you heat up as you exercise and putting you in a hot environment for 30 minutes and you can kind of build into that. And that’s all you need to do. It’s a lot, it’s a lot easier than kind of the, okay, I’m going to run bike trainer in layers and layers and layers of clothing, or I’m going to go for a run and layers and layers, layers of clothing.

[00:37:53]and I like I’ve. Despite knowing all this, I still have personally, gone and done like a hike in layers and layers and layers of clothing, because there’s a psychological component, I think, to that of just like being uncomfortable and like setting. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I don’t think people, like, I think showing up every day is a good way to, to acquire toughness like running on the days that you don’t want to run is a great way to acquire toughness.

[00:38:20] But I do think there’s something psychological about being really warm and really uncomfortable and having to kind of sit in it, and stew in it a little bit. Like literally stewing it in a way. what, I think that there is a place for both, but generally speaking, there’s kind of this. we’re seeing it used in a lot of national governing bodies.

[00:38:38] So like it’s coming out of the Australian sports Institute and the Canadian sports Institute, of using this passive heat protocol. So sauna or hot water immersion post-exercise and yeah, they do it for sure. They didn’t do it generally for 10 days to two weeks. In a row and then you can maintain that adaptation.

[00:38:56] This is like super nitty gritty and kind of very nerdy, bring it, maintain that though, just by like doing a hot yoga session or getting in the sauna again. or the hot tub once every three days is going to help maintain that decay. Because once again, people are like, okay, I’ve got Kona or I’ve got this thing coming up, so I should do this, like the two weeks leading into the race.

[00:39:16] Right. And I’m like, Well, no, cause it’s really hard on the body that we try to space it out actually far enough for the race that it’s kind of ahead of the taper. so that you go into the race still feeling fresh.

[00:39:27] Rich Ryan: [00:39:27] So somewhere like six, six, eight weeks or so out. So you can give yourself a chance

[00:39:31] Corrine Malcolm: [00:39:31] to yeah.

[00:39:32] Five to six weeks out. Yeah. Maybe even four to six weeks out, depending on the person you can experiment with this. Right. And you can do, there’s no harm, no foul. Now in doing this in the middle of the year, they’re way away from all your racing, just to see how that protocol feels to you. Like why not do this for a week?

[00:39:49] Right? Do it for 10. Try to get seven, seven of 10 days in. in January when you don’t have a race coming up for awhile, that’ll allow you to feel like how stressful is it for you? What kind of recovery do you need from it? How did you feel the following week? The next week after that? Like there’s no harm in it doing and doing this again?

[00:40:07]it’s not like it’s a one and done thing. So I think that that’s kind of nice just to get used to that, that stimuli, the one caution I have right now, and I think COVID is going to make this really difficult for a lot of folks is that we yet to have, and I’m not, you know, I feel like infrared saunas are gonna come out, come after me after we have this podcast.

[00:40:27] But, there is yet, and I really want to do this research project. So come after me and give me money to do the research. Yeah. I’m in red bull hit me up, but. there’s no. Literature right now that supports infrared saunas. Like we do not understand physiologically if it elicits the same effect as a normal dry sauna.

[00:40:54] Rich Ryan: [00:40:54] Could you explain the difference between the two?

[00:40:57] Corrine Malcolm: [00:40:57] Yeah, I’m probably going to be wrong on this. So a dry song is like a traditional sauna. Right. This is what most gyms have. just like a heating apparatus just to make the room really, really hot. it’s just like a traditional Finnish sauna, which would have like a woodstove in it.

[00:41:13] So it’s normally like a wooden room it’s just really hot and it’s got a heating apparatus, but it’s just the air temperature itself has made really, really hot. And it’s called a dry sauna sometimes because it’s not a steam room. and generally speaking, it just kind of like the gold standard. For this type of stuff.

[00:41:27] Oh, that’s what a lot of gyms have, particularly older gyms. They’re going to have this like traditional dry sauna and they’re great. That’s like good dry heat. Steam rooms are really hard to sit in because of the humidity, nowhere for your sweat to evaporate into. So you feel really hot at lower temperatures, which is why the East coast in the summer is.

[00:41:47] So,

[00:41:48] Rich Ryan: [00:41:48] yeah,

[00:41:49] Corrine Malcolm: [00:41:49] because there’s nowhere for that sweat to evaporate into to help cool you down. So. That’s the difference between dry drought, a dry sauna and a steam room. you could just stay in a dry sauna longer and you can generally stay in at higher temperatures. an infrared sauna. They’re newer, you see them in a lot of health spas.

[00:42:05] They’re really, they’re very cheap. Like you could put one in there, like you could have one in your house, in your bathroom, in your basement. so I think they’re getting a lot of, a lot of play from a lot of folks right now because you can have them anywhere. And I think they made people feel good, but it uses, UV light.

[00:42:22] I should look this up. So I don’t totally botch this. Yeah. So an infrared sauna heats your body directly without warming the air around you. And it uses a light frequency to do that, which I don’t quite understand, but you see it a lot in health spas and like detox, you know, there’s a way to detox your body.

[00:42:42]You know, there’s some, I think there is some research with, in a clinical population using infrared sauna. and it’s infrared sauna because they use infrared rays or this light,

[00:42:55] Rich Ryan: [00:42:55] Which is not that warm.

[00:42:58] Corrine Malcolm: [00:42:58] Yeah. I, people can tolerate them for a super, super long time because essentially, they use infrared waves, which is like on the light spectrum to heat you without heating the air.

[00:43:10] So I’m not exactly sure how that’s going to elicit. The adaptations we’re looking for physiologically like a normal sauna would where you’re sitting in warm air. That being said, you can tolerate an infrared sauna for a really long time, because it’s not a hot environment. So. Someone will come after us and correct me on all this, which is totally fine.

[00:43:33] And I would love the research to come out on this so that we could look at blood. Cause what we need to do is do the biochemistry side of things. We needed to look at blood Val volume, sweat rates, like hemoglobin hematocrit, to see like, are we actually eliciting? Cause these things have been measured.

[00:43:48] In normal heat, acclimation studies using cha using heat chambers with activity happening in them, treadmills, bikes, that kind of thing. Using natural heat acclimation using overdressing and using traditional saunas and hot water immersion. We have biological markers from those studies that help us see kind of how the body acclimates to heat so that we’re more efficient in it.

[00:44:12] But there, none of those studies have been done, done using infrared saunas. And I think that I’m a super. Skeptical person. And I like to use the terminology that this falls into kind of the bio plausible realm, where in theory, this might work, but we don’t either understand that, edit that, eat all the etiology.

[00:44:35] So like what the mechanism is behind it. yet. Or if that actually helps. and placebos are real. I love a good Zebo effect. I mean, man, I mean, that makes you feel good. I’m going to, but I don’t understand the, the physiological mechanism of infrared saunas. And so that’s my biggest fear right now is that they are there.

[00:44:55] They are really popular. They’re used, they’re easy to install in your home. They’re super cheap. You know, this is a great marketing ad for them. but. We have no idea if it’s going to actually elicit heat acclimation. And so I would like that research to happen before I say yeah, of course. So I always encourage, I personally seek out and I always encourage my athletes to find a dry sauna that being said with our state of gym access in Jim’s opening, we’re going to have some availability issues there.

[00:45:23] Like, I don’t know when I will be back in a gym, I’m in a confined box full of other warm humans. So, we’re kind of. Well, it’s going to be interesting to see kind of what comes out of this. The other big thing that’ll be really cool in the next year is that with the, I mean, if the Olympics hadn’t been postponed, we’d have research coming out this fall, but there’s a ton of research going into the Tokyo games because they’re supposed to be the hottest on record.

[00:45:50] And so there’ll be so much new research that is not yet out, that will come out post Tokyo from the Canadian sport Institute from the Australia sport Institute, from Europe, from the U S and that’ll be really cool because it will be. On thermoregulation, it will be on cooling strategies. so I’m like waiting with bated breath for some like new cool clients.

[00:46:13] Totally.

[00:46:13] Rich Ryan: [00:46:13] And they’re probably going to apply it to their athletes and see how it goes in the game. So they can see the direct performance from them. That’d be really cool.

[00:46:21] Corrine Malcolm: [00:46:21] These are big in the games because it’s harder and ultra it’s harder and OCR to do that, but yeah. cooling strategies. Like how can you stay cool in a hot environment?

[00:46:29] Not just going, like, not just the acclimation park yeah. Into it. is a really interesting topic for a lot of folks. and that’s going to be. Covered intently with strategies from these games.

[00:46:40] Rich Ryan: [00:46:40] Totally cause that has to do more with the performance of the day. Right? Like we’re talking about how to prepare yourself for that day.

[00:46:46]and it sounds like every, if you get that two weeks and then every third day, or just being on top of it, if you don’t have a sauna overdressed or something like that, theoretically, you should be able to hold onto these, these, heat gains. but just real quick, you touched on humidity for like a second

[00:47:01] Corrine Malcolm: [00:47:01] and then ran away.

[00:47:03] Rich Ryan: [00:47:03] What can we do about the humidity? Is there anything there with it? Because it just does seem, it seems like you’re trapped in a steam room where it’s just all around you. Like it’s not going anywhere and you’re just sweating like crazy. so like what kind of recommendations would you have for people?

[00:47:17] Like, do you acclimate the same way or is it more about, in, in competition during training, like cooling strategies that will be better for humidity?

[00:47:26] Corrine Malcolm: [00:47:26] Yes. So unfortunately humidity is a thing that. Can’t like, there is some research looking at like, if you’re training for a hot dry environment versus a hot humid environment, like maybe that’s where you would utilize a steam room, just so that you’re bought this.

[00:47:40] I think, but I think those add advantages are likely psychological, non biological. the issue with humidity is that. One of the best ways for the human body to cool itself off is via evaporation, evaporation, being, sweat, evaporating off your skin, into the air and literally pulling heat with it. But that concentration gradient is important.

[00:48:01] Again, if the air is too humid, you have less and less evaporation because there’s already moisture in the air. So there’s nowhere for that sweat to go, right? So that’s like, that’s why humidity feels so terrible. And obviously the more humidity is the worst. We are at evaporating into it, just from like, you know, concentrations based side of science.

[00:48:24]that being said cooling strategies are probably more beneficial or more like specifically beneficial to think about. So that would be things like, pre-cooling would be including things like drinking, like an icy slurry before the race. or before your run, because that’s going to drop your core temperature a little bit.

[00:48:43] They actually don’t advise it doing for the most part during it, during exercise, because it could convince your body that it’s colder than it is. And like try Burt, blood flow a little bit that kind of like, you know, that seven 11 Slurpee or, that’s blurry like a water bottle with like crushed ice in it.

[00:49:03] Something that’s going to be really cold will help cool you down. generally speaking, that’s why we, like, we jumped, we dump cold water and ice on people. For two factors. One is because that is really a good way to cool down the court yourself down in general, if you’re in a dry environment that can also be like extra things to evaporate, but it’s still, it’s still, advantageous and a humid environment, put ice on yourself to put cold water on yourself, to, you know, to dunk dunk yourself in that Creek or that, you know, the water, whatever it might be, that is going to be helpful.

[00:49:35] We get double lucky in a hot dry environments because we can utilize that for evaporation as well, whereas in the humid. So I think though, because you can’t evaporate as much sweat in those environments falling more, maybe heavily or more being more reliant on cooling strategies during the event will probably make you feel better and probably help with that.

[00:49:56] You know, keeping your core body temperature a little bit lower for a little bit longer. so we pack ice on people. you’ll see it in cycling. For example, they make ice socks, which are nylon baggy. Like you can take nylons and you fill it with, with ice cubes and you tie it off, like anywhere from like, let’s say like a tennis ball to, I mean, I made really big ones for Western States that were like ice logs, but.

[00:50:22] You can put those in your, like in your shirt and your hydration, vest, whatever it is. And you’re going to hold that. if you’re a lady, you got a sports bra, getting ice down in those areas and having that be held on your skin is going to help keep you cooler as well. so that I think is a really practical technique.

[00:50:39]and then once again, afterwards to just kind of cooling yourself off as quickly as possible, cause your body, your core body temperature is going to be elevated. And that’s where people get into risk of like heat illness and heat stroke and that kind of thing.

[00:50:50] Rich Ryan: [00:50:50] Yeah. And with those, like during a race, that seems to be where, you know, people do get hurt.

[00:50:57] Right. Because they’re not really sure where, where those lines are or, or what it’s going to feel like. Like I’ve never had like heat stroke. I don’t know what it’s going to feel like right before I have it, have that, you know? So like what kind of things can you help, like prepare people for, from. Like a safety standpoint when it comes to that.

[00:51:16] Because I know even just training here, like right now, it feels kind of scary sometimes to go because you get those feelings. So what should people do when they need to like, listen to them, bodies that way? Is there anything specific that you. Can arm people with

[00:51:30] Corrine Malcolm: [00:51:30] the general became a really, a really good thing to cue into is if you stop sweating, that’s not a good sign.

[00:51:36] You’re in the humid environment. You should be sweating. If you stop sweating, that’s not a good sign. That’s generally a sign of dehydration and your thermoregulation being really out of whack. Oftentimes too. You’ll like you’ll stop sweating and then you’ll even get cold. You’ll feel cold, even bumps. that’s a sign.

[00:51:52] Yeah. You’ve kind of, you’re, you’ve gone too far. You need to ease way back. I would just say like, it’s hard in a race scenario to like moderate your intensity. but if you feel like all of a sudden you’re not sweating as much as you feel lightheaded. if you’re starting to actually get goosebumps or something like slowing down is important because that’s going to help you lower your core body temperature, because you’re going to stop producing as much heat.

[00:52:15]I urge, I’m kind of in the middle of the hydration camp when it comes to like, how many, like how much fluids you should ingest. And it’s definitely super individual, but I would say when you’re walking into this really hot humid environment, you know, I would probably carry a water bottle on me, even if I was going for a shorter run, just so that I’m like staying on top of things because I’m going to definitely be sweating more than I more than I consume anyway.

[00:52:37] But at least I’m not in a huge hole when I finished the run. Cause I’ve been taking a little bit of fluids, So that’s kind of like, that’s it. I think that’s really important. I’m not in the camp of like drinking the thirst and I’m not in the camp of like having to take an X number of fluids on the run.

[00:52:51]because I don’t think either one is a great strategy. there’s generally a range that people fall into. and we recommend, oftentimes that’s like, 16 to 42 ounces an hour, depending on the person which is like

[00:53:09] ask or several. and part of that’s going to be your sweat rate, will change a little bit when you heat acclimate. So you’re one of the things that happens when you heat acclimate is that your sweat quote, unquote becomes more dilute. And that’s not because you’re like all of a sudden a genius and you’re holding on to every single.

[00:53:25] You know, bit of electrolyte, but it’s just cause you’re sweating. You’re the concentration of your sweat goes down because you’re sweating more,

[00:53:32] Rich Ryan: [00:53:32] becomes less salty when you’re activated. Okay.

[00:53:35] Corrine Malcolm: [00:53:35] Becomes less salty when you’re acclimated. And they were like, Oh, it’s cause you’re retaining it. And it’s like, well, it’s not because you’re retaining it.

[00:53:40] It’s because you’re sweating more. You understanding more because your body thinks that that’s going to help cool you down. so oftentimes a couple of times a year you could go pee before you go for your run while yourself. After you pee, go for a run for an hour. Don’t drink or pee while on your run.

[00:53:57] For some people that’s a long time to not pee on a run, but do that. So P weigh yourself, go for a 60 minute run. Come back. Weigh yourself. That you know, like there’ll be like there’s pounds and this many pounds loss, you know, a certain amount of it to sweat. Obviously you’re, you’re losing fluids or other things like just breathing.

[00:54:18] Okay. But you can do that a couple of times a year and get a sense for like, if your sweat rate is changing, depending on it being humid, it being dry, being heat acclimated. Not being heat acclimated to kind of gauge where you personally are on that spectrum of how much, how much fluids you should be taking in every hour.

[00:54:36] And I would just say when we’re in like the dangerous time of the summer, where it’s hot and it’s, and it’s humid, I would just carry fluids on me anyway. Maybe you don’t need them. Maybe someone else needs them. like I’ve definitely been that desperate person out there, but being like water. So like, obviously.

[00:54:54] You know, we don’t want to be giving everyone our soft flasks right now in a pandemic, but I mean, having water on you, you can Dass it on yourself. If you know, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t recommend, you know, dumping Gatorade on yourself or anything, but, having that soft last, you can also use it to kind of, you know, Put water down your back or something to help you feel, feel a little bit cooler for a bit.

[00:55:15]but there’s a wide range of how much fluids you should take in. And that’s going to be super independent on how sweaty of a person you are, how hot it is, how humid it is and how long you’re going for. And I just recommend taking and fluids on the run because, you’re not gonna, the goal is not to replace all the fluids you’ve lost while you’re running.

[00:55:32] It would be impossible and it would not feel good. But if you’re taking in fluid and calories on your run, That’s less fluid in calories that you have to make up. Once you finish trying to keep athletes out of that hole of being super dehydrated for the rest of the day or being super, you know, under calorically and end up in like a energy deficiency situation.

[00:55:55]So that those are, I think are the prime reasons. you get dehydrated and you don’t regulate heat as well. So taking in a certain degree of fluids is really important because when you get dehydrated, your blood, like the amount, your blood volume decreases, because the, like some of the, obviously you’re not like sweating out platelets or something, but your blood is becoming more concentrated.

[00:56:21] And so. You’re not going to thermal regulate as well. So you’re allowed to be dehydrated to a certain extent. There’s all these original studies that said, you know, if you’re dehydrated by more than 3%, it’s a huge performance decrease. Well, we know that you can be a little bit more dehydrated than that without having a performance decrease, but the more dehydrated you get the law, it’s like this vicious cycle of like all of a sudden.

[00:56:44] And when you’re super dehydrated, you don’t Thermo like regulate well, and it’s just kind of this continuous cycle of like, Bad things. So that’s another reason why even on a shorter runs, take some hydration or going into the run. You like you hydrated so balanced, as opposed to super over hydrate or super under hydrated is kind of a good place to be.

[00:57:02] Cause you’re going to thermoregulate really well or better.

[00:57:06] Rich Ryan: [00:57:06] And that’s what makes, seems to make this hydration thing so tricky. And like, there’s not like a rule of thumb, like how there might be for carbohydrate intake, you know, it’s like, it’s like, ah, maybe in a, used to be like, don’t drink at all. And I was like, drink a ton.

[00:57:18] Now I was like, yeah, Drink sometimes.

[00:57:21] Corrine Malcolm: [00:57:21] Yeah.

[00:57:25] Great. There isn’t a one size fits all and that’s okay. And I think that’s part of what makes the science really cool is that it’s not black and white. It’s shades of gray and understanding what’s going to work for you is really important. And some of that’s experimentation. So right now all my athletes on their long runs, their, their comments post long run is not necessarily like.

[00:57:47] I, you know, at mile two I saw a coyote. It’s like, this is what, what I ate. And this is what I drank during this long run one. That’s good practice for races, but two, it’s just good to kind of see, like, okay, maybe you felt bad because of this. Or you drank this and, you drank this and your stomach was upset.

[00:58:03] So it allows you, I think, tracking that kind of stuff. although it could sound neurotic, Is a good way to understand what’s working for you. What’s not working for you and putting in the practice so that when you get to race day, do you know what you can tolerate? You know, you can’t tolerate and you know, kind of where you’re like happy, like happy places and all of that.

[00:58:22] Rich Ryan: [00:58:22] I know. And it’s, it’s just like, that’s just the answer, you know, like you have to figure it out on your own. And like, my least favorite thing is like navigating through, like, I dunno if somebody posts a comment saying like a Facebook group or on Reddit or something, like, what do you guys eat and drink for a long run?

[00:58:35] And then it’s. 50,000 comments and they’re all completely different and it doesn’t help at all. So if you ever

[00:58:42] Corrine Malcolm: [00:58:42] burritos,

[00:58:44] Rich Ryan: [00:58:44] I swear. I had pickled juice and I ran a PR. It’s like, Oh, that’s the thing

[00:58:49] Corrine Malcolm: [00:58:49] that we study. That’s my favorite cramping. So I L I like, this is a whole other nerdy nerdy realm, but yeah, no, it’s, it is so individual it’s really important to experiment.

[00:59:02] There is no, like, you know, Med MD or I don’t know, healthline.com something there’s no, there’s no one answer for anyone. And generally, like I write a column for, I run far called running on science and, we try our best to find information that’s really, really applicable, but it’s also really, you know, as factually accurate as possible without being super boring, right.

[00:59:29] And the truth is that we’re, we’re still learning. we’re in this realm of, you know, particularly on the running side of things, a lot of the research that we have is off of Ironman athletes is off of endurance. Cyclists is off of a much shorter distance running. And so we’re in this place where we’re still catching up on the research side.

[00:59:49] And honestly, actually this physiology is kind of this weird, Area science anyway, because the sample sizes are generally small and they’re general college age males. So it becomes a lot more difficult if you are not a college stage male, to know how applicable. The research is to you. And honestly, like we do have a lot of similarities across, across the sexes, across the ages, but there are things that are going to be different that we’re continually learning about.

[01:00:14] And so I always take research with a grain of salt, despite being really nerdy myself. I take any nutritional companies advice with a grain of salt despite being, or limiting myself because I mean, they’re all, you know, definitely a thing. And so. I think it’s really important to approach all these things with like a degree of skepticism and a degree of being willing to do the work, obviously like.

[01:00:43] You know, I don’t coach on an, a one I’m not, well, this worked for me. So this should work for you. I try to gather as much information as possible to give people options, but you are an N of one. And what works for you. Isn’t going to work for me, or isn’t going to work for your friend. And I think it’s important to take the time to experiment within those kinds of ranges that make the most sense.

[01:01:03] And maybe, maybe you’re you drink a little, maybe you drink a lot. Yeah, I think it’s important to be willing to experiment. And that’s why you do the training. It’s getting all that hard stuff out of the way. So the race day is so much smoother.

[01:01:14] Rich Ryan: [01:01:14] That’s, what’s like really hard about, the coaching arch of things.

[01:01:18] It’s like, you can give someone a recommendation that has worked for. Nine out of 10 people and that’s the 10th person didn’t work for it. And they just kind of feel like an idiot. They’re like, well, I’m sorry. I thought that that worked. Apparently it doesn’t for you.

[01:01:30]Corrine Malcolm: [01:01:30] claimers, lots of like

[01:01:32] Rich Ryan: [01:01:32] this may work.

[01:01:33] You might just want to try it. cool. You doing okay on time? Can we do a little bit?

[01:01:37] Corrine Malcolm: [01:01:37] Yeah, I’m fine. Dog is napping. She hasn’t, it hasn’t been disruptive. So we’re good.

[01:01:43] Rich Ryan: [01:01:43] You mentioned cramps really quickly. And I feel like that’s a reason why people are often asking questions to the masses and trying to figure out why they’re cramping.

[01:01:52] And that’s why things like pickle, juice come up and all these other things that, that. We want a pill that will literally make the cramps go away. so what do you know about cramping? Like what’s going on there? Cause it seems like it’s really convoluted and it’s hard to know where these are, like what the root is of, of the cramps.

[01:02:09] So, what’s your general philosophy on things like that?

[01:02:12] Corrine Malcolm: [01:02:12] Yeah. So, and we want to do, like, one of the important things to distinguish is we’re we’re like what we’re talking about is exercise associated muscle cramping. Your grandma who cramps in the middle of the night, because that is a different mechanism, which is like, has totally different properties going on.

[01:02:30]so this is like your, like your leg, your, your quad always cramps at mile 18 of the marathon, or, you know, your forearms always cramp it, this part of your OCR or whatever it might be. So we’re talking about like exertional cramping that’s associated with exercise,

[01:02:44] Rich Ryan: [01:02:44] that ruined your race,

[01:02:46] Corrine Malcolm: [01:02:46] your race. so we’ve all, I mean, Similar to food poisoning.

[01:02:51] There are those, there are people who have had food, food poisoning, and people who have yet to have food poisoning. Cramping, I think is the same thing. There are people who have experienced cramping and there are people who have not yet experienced cramping. It will likely happen to you. W old school philosophy actually has associated muscle cramping was that it was clearly a hydration thing.

[01:03:15] You clearly did not have enough electrolytes, maybe you’re hypo or hyper nitremia so higher, low blood sodium. And that is why you’re cramping. It’s an imbalance, and sodium. And so your muscles freak out. They can’t, you know, those potassium ion channels aren’t working. and you cramp. So that was the kind of like the original thought.

[01:03:37] But then there was this pickle juice study that was actually put on by, I think it was like group of physical therapists, no athletic trainers who like started seeing this and essentially they would give people pickle juice and they would stop cramping. And that was like, Hmm, really interesting, because I like, well, they gave him pickle juice because I thought it’s got a lot of salt in it.

[01:04:00] Right. This will be great. We’re just going to give them a bunch of salt. Well, your, your plasma, like your plasma plasma, sodium doesn’t change in 30 seconds or 60 seconds. you know, as you’re taking this orally, right? It’s not like an Ivy, a pickle juice. So what could possibly be happening that would stop or abate muscle cramps?

[01:04:21] In such a short period of time. So this guy, this whole like thing moving of like, what are other possible causes of these like cramping during your race or during your run. and so what we now understand is that it’s kind of like a perfect storm of things. So what was happening with the pickle juice?

[01:04:39] There are things called TRP channels. transient resistant potential channels spent a little while and maybe arrestee. But they are generally associated with temperature, so that they’ll be like TRP one, TRP V eight. so there are these channels that are associate with temperatures. Because they’re like, it’s a neural channel essentially.

[01:05:02] Well, you have some in your mouth and the, kind of the upper part of your throat or your oral fare next. and the pickle juice was engaging with that TRP channel. And it was basically, or like the theory behind it is that it kind of not short circuits, but it kind of like resets that neuro signal. because what’s happening is that you have, your muscle is saying contract contract contract, and the golgi tendon organs.

[01:05:29] Well, sorry, my puppy

[01:05:32] Rich Ryan: [01:05:32] bless you.

[01:05:33] Corrine Malcolm: [01:05:33] Bless you. So you have these TRP channels. you’ve got your muscle saying contract contract contract, and you’ve got these golgi tendon organs in your muscles that normally say, relax. But they’re being underpowered. So you’re getting the signal contract, contract contract.

[01:05:50] You’re not getting the relax signal. So you’re cramping, the muscles like tetanus. so you basically the TRP channel, you trigger it with a solution and, a solution being like a liquid source. All of a sudden the crap stops. And it’s because it’s almost, it’s reset that contraction, relaxation, relaxation pattern, and it abates the current cramping that does not mean it’s going to keep you from cramping.

[01:06:18] Again, this is a temporary fix to a bigger problem. the same thing. So that’s why, like, there’s been a bunch of companies, as soon as that. As soon as that paper came out, there are a bunch of patents taken out on online, like for this essentially to develop a TRP agonist or something that would engage with a TRP receptor.

[01:06:38]so basically a lot of these companies have like cayenne. they tell you it tastes terrible

[01:06:43] Rich Ryan: [01:06:43] company, right?

[01:06:44] Corrine Malcolm: [01:06:44] Yeah, well, the first patents taken out and theirs is based on like a cayenne. so like things that respond to these channels are like wasabi, cayenne, menthol, cinnamon, different things.

[01:06:56] So for whatever, for cramping, cayenne is a pretty effective one. So they’ve made Apple. So there’s a bunch of Apple cider vinegar ones as well, too, that do a very similar thing. They don’t taste great. You know, but so essentially they’re like, Whoa, we can reset this neuro thing. So what’s happening. That’s getting that.

[01:07:16] That’s putting you into that cramp prone state. And so, yes. Hydration status and nutritional status definitely or role, but they all, it also could be that you went really hard, harder than you’re used to going. It could be hot. So you’re exerting yourself at a higher intensity. there’s all these different factors.

[01:07:37] That are at play. So generally it’s actually like this neuro fatigue from a combination of all these factors that basically deactivates those golgi tendon organs. And so they’re not getting the relaxation signal to pair with the contraction signal, which is really cool because it’s not just your hydration status, all of a sudden that’s important.

[01:07:56]that’s why slowing down oftentimes can helps cramps because you’re not exerting that muscle as much. So, what I have found with these TRP agonists is that their claims of, cause it had some third party testing, people who are not actively involved in the company, I E like, they are not like they’re not paying for the study, which is good.

[01:08:16]cause those are conflicts of interest from that research. These TRP agonists can have a cramping episode stop, but they’re not going some of these companies that advertise that they can prophylactically. Keep you from cramping and there’s no evidence to that right now, but it will abate the cramp. If you are cramping, that’s like, that’s good.

[01:08:40]so yeah, so cramping’s this really weird situation where it’s a perfect storm of a lot of factors. Generally speaking, I see it not to like, not to generalize, but I see it in a lot of guys. In races, you know, halfway a little bit more than halfway through where they went out really hard. have you, if you have bilateral cramping or entire body cramps, that is definitely generally more in the, hypernatremia camp where you have a major electrolyte issue.

[01:09:12] But if you have that one quad cramping or the one calf cramping or your hamstring or your forearms, that is more likely a perfect storm of generally like muscular fatigue, maybe some hydration stuff, maybe some nutrition stuff, playing in. If you have entire body cramps, that are bilateral. So on both sides of your body, that is more indicative of.

[01:09:34] A major hydration issue, like a hot, like you need to go to the hospital, hydration issue, not a, I’m not a minor quad cramp, and minor quad. Current cramps can put you on the, for sure. I heard

[01:09:48] Rich Ryan: [01:09:48] one hurts bad, not

[01:09:50] Corrine Malcolm: [01:09:50] great, but that’s why also oftentimes if you stop and you stretch out that muscle. You can kind of like reengage the golgi tendon organ, and all of a sudden it’ll get the message to relax for 10 more minutes, and then it’s going to cramp again.

[01:10:04] Okay. So it’s kind of like, it gives you time to reassess what, what might be causing the cramp, and try to get back on track. But those, those TRP agonists, those that pickle juice, whatever it is, isn’t going to prophylactically, keep you from cramping. Again. You have to like do the other stuff like you need to eat.

[01:10:21] You need to drink, you need maybe slow down for a little bit so that you can cool off, Those things are, what’s going to keep you from cramping, 10 miles down the road. but stretching. Yeah. TRP agonist is gonna, what’s gonna like break you out of that cramp right then and there. that’s what kind of, why salt pills probably fall into that same category?

[01:10:38] It’s probably a TRP effect. not a prophylactic cramping effect. The other cool thing about TRP channels is we’re gonna see some more research on it. I think here soon. one of the TRP channels corresponds to, to menthol. So men, and it gives you a sensation of it cooling. So there are performance studies being done where people gargle or ingest a product that has a lot of menthol on it.

[01:11:04]to see if it, if the sensation of cooling performance, what I will say, like how cool is that? Like for one very cool too, though. That does not mean that you can stop doing it, things to keep yourself cool. So like there’s a double, like the double edged sword there, right? Like, yes, like this could be performance boosting because you feel cooler so psychologically you can like push her anymore, but that does still mean that you, I need to like be doing things to actively cool yourself off.

[01:11:34] If it’s a really short race, not as important, longer racing, you still need to be actively seeking. Like a way to cool yourself down because the menthol is not going to cool yourself down. It’s just going to make it, it’s going to give you the sensation of being cooler than you are.

[01:11:48] Rich Ryan: [01:11:48] Hmm. And it’s interesting.

[01:11:51] Cause to me, he’s like what I was thinking now, like cramping just kind of sounds like a, like the CD is skipping. So you have to like wipe it off a little bit. I’ll probably just keep skipping again, but if you could figure out ways to like wipe it down with a cloth, it’ll be better. CD skipping, not as big of an issue these days, but,

[01:12:07] Corrine Malcolm: [01:12:07] Analogy though.

[01:12:08] I think you’re, I feel like your audience probably can picture a CD’s giggling

[01:12:12] Rich Ryan: [01:12:12] maybe in like 10 years, I’ll have to come up with something new, but I think now it was still, it still works. Okay. and it sounds like we’re kind of right on the cusp of figuring out what there’s, it seems like there’s a lot of different, like types of these pathways to kind of really dial in.

[01:12:25] Is there anything exciting that you know of like that, or that you’re looking forward to coming out about cramping? Or what do you foresee that being, or is it going to kind of be. What, what I, what seems to kind of happen with all of this stuff? Like even how you just mentioned, the gargling of the menthol, it’s like, this is going to help, but not, but it’s going to help with everything else that you’re doing.

[01:12:45] And it’s something else that can be a benefit as opposed to being like the thing. That now you do where I think people just want to take that hot shot drink, and that be the thing.

[01:12:55] Corrine Malcolm: [01:12:55] It’s like a bandaid. It’s not the solution, but it’s a great bandaid. I will say what I think I’m most excited about.

[01:13:00] Honestly, just in all research in general right now is, the realization, the vocalization that we need to have female test subjects because we, although we are biologically similar, we’re also biologically very different. And so. There are, and it’s from like a researcher standpoint. I completely, and we understand why women have not been used in research studies as much as their male counterparts.

[01:13:25] Like it is the studies take twice as long. I’m like I’ve helped run studies that were on just female test subjects. And from like an apparel side, designing, designing jackets, but it’s. It takes twice as long because you have to hit in the same cycle. And if you can’t get people to come in during, you know, two times during this phase of their cycle, you have to wait till the next month.

[01:13:48] So it is yeah, very difficult, but that’s not a reason to not make it important. And so I think there are studies that will be even older studies that are going to be, be revisited to get a better understanding. If, if it, if women respond to the same way. And so I think that will be very interesting. And I do think there’s going to be some mechanism, mechanism, stuff that comes out of that, that we might then all of a sudden understand the material better.

[01:14:14] Anyway, as we revisit it with a different test pool. so I’m really excited about that. as a female athlete and as a, as a female athlete, who’s coaching, I think that’s a really important, and I don’t, I don’t, I don’t feel like we’ve been, it’s been intentional neglect. I understand the cost that goes into this research.

[01:14:34]but I do appreciate people like the NIH and it’s gotten better on the health side of things. It’s gotten way better. In health research, clinical research, women are more represented in these big health studies that impact them things like, chronic pain, like psychological things, depression, anxiety.

[01:14:52] Yeah. Women are much more represented now in those studies. And they used to be, which is good because those things affect women at larger rates than men in a diagnostic setting. However, with exercise physiology that we have not had that pressure, the NIH basically, wasn’t going to give grants. If you didn’t have gender equal studies, We haven’t had a bit, you know, there isn’t a big grant giver and exercise physiology.

[01:15:13] That’s made the same state. And so it’s on, it’s on, it’s on, you know, and I hate for it to be on young female academics, to be the ones who make it important, but it’s going to be on the researchers and the companies who maybe are helping fund the research to make that an important thing. So, although it’s not like a, we’re going to solve the mystery of cramping or we’re going to, you know, Salt, I don’t know, self something else.

[01:15:38] I think it’s important to, get a better understanding of physiology and gender by understanding female physiology more.

[01:15:47] Rich Ryan: [01:15:47] And that’s important. That’s ultimately gonna help more people like. Across the board, if we can make sure everything is, even though we understand what’s going on with everyone. Yeah.

[01:15:56]and that’s something that’s interesting that you bring up about yeah. Research and just things that I don’t think a lot of people do. Yeah. Understand, because you read these studies and you take it as, as facts or you read it, you don’t read the study. Most likely you read it from somewhere else or you catch information from somewhere else.

[01:16:11] You just think that it’s been edit and it’s this whole thing you don’t realize it’s on. College aged bros and has nothing else to do with like any hatred,

[01:16:21] Corrine Malcolm: [01:16:21] gender it’s bros to do anything. We’ll have I was in Vancouver, we did, we tested survival suits, so we would put. We’d put generally colleges, boys, and a Scottish men have you’re technical in survival foods that were designed for ships.

[01:16:39]and we put them in a co a pool full of really cold water. And we would do 24 and 48 hour long survival suit testing because they had to be cleared to be used on ships and. I don’t think we ever had a female test subject. Not for lack of trying, but just because you couldn’t pay them enough money to,

[01:16:55] Rich Ryan: [01:16:55] I’m doing better things with my

[01:16:57] Corrine Malcolm: [01:16:57] time.

[01:16:58] Yeah.

[01:17:02] Rich Ryan: [01:17:02] And it’s important, like you said, there’s the time element and what time increases the cost? I’m sure too, like, like everything it gets long-dated, it’s more cost associated with that. So, it is good to know things are going to go back and kind of figure out retroactively like how these work across genders.

[01:17:17] Cause I think that is that’s huge.

[01:17:19] Corrine Malcolm: [01:17:19] Yeah. And even ages too. I think it’s really important. miss out a lot of information on our older, on older athletic populations. and I think in particular for endurance and strength and conditioning studies, that’s going to become really important too, because you know, at a certain age you have, it hits women earlier than men, but you, you have like.

[01:17:39] Pretty dramatic muscle muscle loss. And there ha there has been some research, but I think that they deserve more research as a, as a going to be steadily aging athlete. I think we should all be like, fired up about that research happening, because hormone levels are different. Right? We’ve got post causal women.

[01:17:56] We’ve got men with lower testosterone levels. You know how like understanding how they respond or what the ideal strength and conditioning program is going to be for that population, I think is important and is valuable on like a general health level, but also on a performance level. And we don’t have a lot to go off of.

[01:18:12] Oftentimes when I’m working with, you know, a handful of athletes in their sixties and that’s, you know, the studies on 22 year old men is not going to be always applicable to these guys. Right. And

[01:18:25] Rich Ryan: [01:18:25] then it kind of goes back again. It’s like, well, I think this’ll work.

[01:18:30] Corrine Malcolm: [01:18:30] Thanks. His workload will work. And I think the biggest thing is for older athletes has just been understanding that you need more recovery time in between hard efforts and like this way.

[01:18:39] So I’ve moved away from like a traditional seven day block or, you know, with athletes like a traditional week and looked at their training and a 10 day window or a 14 day window as far as how I space activity. And I think that’s been. Really helpful as opposed to being like stuck in this, like, okay, with this one in seven days, we need a long run and we needed an intensity session.

[01:19:00] I mean, you know, I think it’s been nice to look at it outside of the traditional, like seven day.

[01:19:09] Rich Ryan: [01:19:09] Yeah. And the only reason it was a, it was like, that is because of the calendar, right? Like, because people were off on Sundays, they could run a little bit longer. And now maybe in this COVID world, people are our home a little bit more and they can play around with it.

[01:19:20] Some, yeah. There’s one guy who I coached the exact same things as well. I’m home now, so I can train really whenever. And we did that. We spaced it out quite a bit more. Been doing awesome. So now it’s time to kind of test that kind of stuff out for sure.

[01:19:31] Corrine Malcolm: [01:19:31] Yeah. We’ve been testing too. None of my athletes took big volume increases, but they all are sleeping more and spending more time with their families.

[01:19:38] And I think that’s been the biggest boon of cutting out those commutes. It’s not like, Oh, now I can train 15 hours a week. It’s like, Oh, now I can actually sleep eight hours a night and I will see huge performance gains adaptations from let it like the, like doing the little things as opposed to being like, Oh no, now I can do two long runs a week session.

[01:19:59] No, no. How about we sleep? And we like, you can like make sure you make family dinner now.

[01:20:05] Rich Ryan: [01:20:05] And then whenever there’s races, we’ll see how well you do when, whenever they come around. well, cool, great. I don’t want to take you all day. So, what are some of your goals coming up this year? Are you adjusting on the fly or what do you got?

[01:20:14] Are you preparing for something as if it’s going to happen or I don’t really know what’s going on.

[01:20:19] Corrine Malcolm: [01:20:19] Yeah. So all of my races for the entire 2020 calendar, I just had stuff planned through the end of August. like going over for like the big UT MB week, kind of the standard, you know, and end of a lot of us ultra runners seasons.

[01:20:34] So everything’s been canceled. I raced in February and then we’re supposed to race in March. We’re supposed to race in June, July, and August. And yeah. Nothing exists now. so like many of my athletes as well, we’ve shifted to like personal challenges. so F SKT style stuff. So I’ll be, making a go at the Tahoe room trail in not that long, actually, which just kind of scary, at the end of August, hopefully as long as we get the right weather window.

[01:21:02] So 170, 172 miles, I think, Chrissy mobile has the record, in just under 48 hours. And so that’s, that’s the goal is to run a very long distance. The longest I’ve ever run. I’ve never run more than like a hundred. And I want to say, and so this’ll be a big. A big jump up, you know, an lighter type of scenario that I haven’t that’d be for.

[01:21:26] So I’m really excited. I’ve got a lot of athletes who raised 200 mile races. so this is kind of my, my chance to experience, what I’ve been putting them through. So I’ve been, it’s been really fun cause I’ve gotten to do a lot of, a lot less like hard. Running workouts and a lot more like fast packing.

[01:21:42] So like an overnight fast packing trip, or maybe we cover 50 miles in two days or 50 miles in two days. And we go and just like do a lot of hiking and running essentially. What’s, you know, bigger packs and we’d normally run with, but smaller packs than you backpack with to cover a bunch of terrain. And that’s really fun.

[01:21:59] I get to be out in the mountains. And I’m not doing track workouts and there’s something nice about that right now,

[01:22:03] Rich Ryan: [01:22:03] right? Hello. How high up would that be? Like the whole time? Will you be like incredibly at an incredible elevation the entire time?

[01:22:11] Corrine Malcolm: [01:22:11] It’s not, it’s, it’s definitely much higher than I think I w I think we’re just about sea level here.

[01:22:17] I think it’s technically downhill at ocean beach, so I’m probably like 40 or something. Right. Well, let’s see. 64 feet. I’m at 64 feet above.

[01:22:26] Rich Ryan: [01:22:26] now as we speak,

[01:22:28] Corrine Malcolm: [01:22:28] now I go upstairs. I gain a little bit, but, So it will be higher than what I’m living at right now, but we’ve been going up to the mountains, on weekends or during the week, just to try to get in, get in a long run up there.

[01:22:39]and it is, it was kind of moderate high. I’ll spend a lot of time kind of in that like five to 7,000 foot range. The biggest thing is just going to be, it’s really hard on the lungs, cause you’re just like, you’re breathing in like dry, dusty air for a long time and that can, that can wreak havoc on you after awhile.

[01:22:54] So let’s see.

[01:22:57] Rich Ryan: [01:22:57] I well, cool. It sounds like a blast, like think right. That should be fun. And where can people find you on like social or internet or, your web?

[01:23:05] Corrine Malcolm: [01:23:05] Yeah. So I’m just, Corynn Malcolm, I’m just kind of a funky smell spelling, but we can, I’m sure you have fancy ways of linking that, but I have no fancy.

[01:23:13] It’s just my first and last name. there aren’t a lot of, I’m lucky there aren’t a lot of Koreans and there aren’t a lot of current Malcolm’s, but I’m on Twitter, Instagram. Facebook and my website is also www dot  dot com. So pretty easy to find me everywhere.

[01:23:31] Rich Ryan: [01:23:31] The coaching websites, CTS, right?

[01:23:33] Corrine Malcolm: [01:23:33] Yeah. Www dot  dot com.

[01:23:37] And you can contact us through that. there’s also a contact button through. My Instagram account, that emails to my coaching email address. So

[01:23:46] Rich Ryan: [01:23:46] awesome. Well, I appreciate you hanging out, dropping some awesome information and things would be really helpful for people, especially this time of year. And, when we’re able to train and race a little bit more, I think it’ll be very practical for them.

[01:23:56] So I’m gonna hit stop on this, but we’ll stay on the screen and it’ll be good to go. So just sign it off. Thanks for hanging out.

[01:24:02] Corrine Malcolm: [01:24:02] Thank you.