Find out how you should change your training now that Spartan Races have been canceled.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Full Transcript

 

Rich Ryan: [00:00:00] All right. We’re back again. Josh Reed. Nice sitting down, talking about raining and today. It is official that Spartan race canceled the season. So there’s no more races is to train for, for those of us who are Spartan racers, but we encourage you to continue to train, to continue to make progress or Josh.

[00:00:23] And I would give you some routes to take that can help you become a better athlete and where you can do with your, your current progress and how to continue to build on that with different volume and different intensity. So really it’s just kind of a roadmap on what you should do now that there are no races.

[00:00:37] And this is a strange time because. Usually you build up for a race, then you race, then you rest and then, and you start again. So give you some ideas of what you can do to continue that progress. So we talk about what you can do for, the runner who has some experience and obstacle course racing, the beginner obstacle course racer, and a couple places in between.

[00:00:57] If you were more frequent on the mountains, if you’re more prone to be on the roads and different routes you can take, to continue to improve on your fitness. Cool. So a lot of good stuff. Just hope to give you a, a, some good takeaways so that you can keep it rolling. All right. Here’s my guy, Josh Reed.

[00:01:21] Okay, we’re on what’s up Josh?

[00:01:23] Josh Ried: [00:01:23] Hey bud.

[00:01:25] Rich Ryan: [00:01:25] How the heck are ya?

[00:01:26] Josh Ried: [00:01:26] I, I’m well, man, I’m rested up for some reason. Like the past two nights I’ve slept so freaking good. Didn’t wake up once. Maybe I’m just drinking as much water before that. So I don’t have to like get up in the middle of the night, you know?

[00:01:37] Rich Ryan: [00:01:37] We talked about that before.

[00:01:38] Like, I definitely have a hard cutoff time on that. Cause I don’t want to get up and run to the bathroom that those disturbed man don’t go back to sleep right away.

[00:01:46] Josh Ried: [00:01:46] Do get up and start running. I just wake up like a half wake up and you’re like in denial, I don’t really need to go.

[00:01:56] Rich Ryan: [00:01:56] Is it better to like, just.

[00:01:59] Like come to the realization, just get up right away. Or do you try to fight it?

[00:02:02] Josh Ried: [00:02:02] It’s better fight it.

[00:02:05] Rich Ryan: [00:02:05] I definitely fight it. I’m like, no, I’m fine. Shut up. Then you fall asleep that signal down,

[00:02:09] Josh Ried: [00:02:09] even though you like dream about it.

[00:02:13] Rich Ryan: [00:02:13] Just keep peeing the bed still in the bed. yeah, dude. So did you see the in season got canceled?

[00:02:20] Josh Ried: [00:02:20] The entire 2020 season is cancel now, is that just for the U S because I feel like I saw someone post, maybe it was Sam heavier. He posted something about Canada or is it just flat out? Every event in the world is canceled.

[00:02:33] Rich Ryan: [00:02:33] I don’t think every event in the world, I’m not sure about the Canadian series. I think the other places that have contain this thing might be able to do events.

[00:02:40]Canada’s being pretty strict, I think so. I wouldn’t imagine they would allow, If that is happening there.

[00:02:47] Josh Ried: [00:02:47] Let us go up there. You won’t go.

[00:02:49] Rich Ryan: [00:02:49] No, no, no, we definitely can’t go. yeah. So there’s no Spartan racing for anybody here in the, in the States this year. If you live in the States, you’re probably not going to be, getting your free beer ticket.

[00:02:58] You’re finished your shirt, at a race. That’s probably not something that’s going to be happening.

[00:03:04] Josh Ried: [00:03:04] We get to look forward to perhaps new tee shirt design.

[00:03:08] Rich Ryan: [00:03:08] Yeah. What do you think? I thought about that? Cause I, I have one, you have one too from Greek peak, right? Yeah. So are those like going to be a collectors additions?

[00:03:15] Like the one race to like, like there’s probably gonna be five or six races that happened and only a select amount of people have the 2020 version. Does he have the year

[00:03:24] Josh Ried: [00:03:24] posted on the shirt?

[00:03:25] Rich Ryan: [00:03:25] No, you’re just going to have to know. You want to be like, huh? That’s an old one

[00:03:30] Josh Ried: [00:03:30] and move on their part. Like, okay, sweet.

[00:03:31] We can recycle these the next year sometime. Sometimes

[00:03:34] Rich Ryan: [00:03:34] I’ll see other, I would imagine they should. Sometimes I see. People wearing like older, like Spartan shirts. And I’m like, I’m like, Oh, I should have a conversation with that person. I was like, Oh, what’s up is you do Spartan races? Then I see. It’s like from like 2014 and I’m like, they did a Spartan race, but they don’t do Spartan races.

[00:03:51] Yeah. Yeah. They don’t do them.

[00:03:53] Josh Ried: [00:03:53] And gray shirt like, Whoa.

[00:03:56] Rich Ryan: [00:03:56] Yeah. It’s like the black face. It’s just all black, logos. And there’s like some, like there’s one that has like a cool design on the shoulder that was before my time. But even then even like, from when I started, I’m like looking at them like, eh, and I always know which race they did well, based on the colors, like, Oh, you did Palmerton.

[00:04:12] Oh, sweet. You did Vernon. Nice man. That’s no joke.

[00:04:16] Josh Ried: [00:04:16] What’s your, like, what’s your favorite of the years that you have been doing Spartan? What year do you think it was? Like your favorite t-shirt design?

[00:04:23] Rich Ryan: [00:04:23] Oh, man. I don’t know. Last year’s was kind of cool.

[00:04:26] Josh Ried: [00:04:26] That was the vertical, right? Yeah. I

[00:04:29] Rich Ryan: [00:04:29] like that. I thought that was fun.

[00:04:30] And they did some like different stuff. Like it was nice. This Tahoe one had the one that said world championship on it. I thought that was cool. Quite held onto that one. And my, my, the ultra I did the ultra shirts are cool. Like the coloring is cool and they’re, and they’re unique, right? Like. You don’t see them that often.

[00:04:43] So I held on to that one too, but the rest I just ditch. Yeah. I’m thinking about getting rid of this one. Cause I just don’t, it doesn’t fit that well, but it might be a collector’s edition.

[00:04:55] Josh Ried: [00:04:55] Yeah. My, my Greek peak long sleeve. Cause they did the launch. They, since it’s cold out, it’s a weird fit. It’s like a bell bottom,

[00:05:02] Rich Ryan: [00:05:02] isn’t it?

[00:05:02] Yeah. Those are the Greek peak. One’s cool because it’s a little bit different. But also, did you see, we talked about this for like a minute, but when you think about, Joe dissent as quote unquote announcement on ORM,

[00:05:14] Josh Ried: [00:05:14] Oh, the, the a hundred thousand dollar like rodeo at his, at his farm in August, all the pros, I probably not going to happen.

[00:05:24] But something he’s. So he just did this quiet a little while ago, the 24 hour event. and then, you know, he has like this little kid camps going on and when they listen to the Rogan podcast with them heard about that, I was pretty funny, but, but cool. I can dig it. but yeah, I think he he’s, I think he’ll do something he’ll pull off something there.

[00:05:42] I just wonder what magnitude I think that it, it would, it has to be pretty simple for Joe himself to handle it, you know, or else he’s going to have to bring in other people to actually. Structure it and do, and like deal with things logistically of having, you know, like the whole protein. They’re not going to have the whole protein there.

[00:05:58] You can reach out and like put your feelers out. It’s like, who wants to come compete? And I mean, if you don’t have, it ends up being 20 people, I’m like, well, you’re not going to throw a hundred grand across 2020 people and so necessary, you know,

[00:06:10] Rich Ryan: [00:06:10] be great. That’d be awesome. It would be awesome

[00:06:12] Josh Ried: [00:06:12] for sure.

[00:06:13] Everyone’s going to, everyone’s a winner.

[00:06:14] Rich Ryan: [00:06:14] Right. And that was something that, MAPI Davis challenged him on is like, is this a real hundred thousand dollars? Or is it like the million dollars you put out there for the ultra? It’s like, Hey, we’re going to offer this a million dollars up, but the only catch is it’s impossible.

[00:06:27] So you’re not going to earn it. I like it. That was, and he’s like, no, no, obviously do it. But I think he, I don’t think he under he from, you know, this is all speculation. I don’t know anything about them. I don’t know anything about his mindset. but

[00:06:40] Josh Ried: [00:06:40] yeah, you speak with more conviction than that. Pretend like, you know,

[00:06:43] Rich Ryan: [00:06:43] After I spoke with him, I don’t think he understands what the sport of obstacle course racing is.

[00:06:49] I think he knows what the challenge is. And I think he has this idea of what it’s like for like the mentality and what he wants to people to kind of like get out of themselves. But I don’t think he knows what it’s like to train the way that we train. And I don’t think he knows what’s like how to put an event on for athletes like us.

[00:07:08]

[00:07:08] Josh Ried: [00:07:08] Yeah. I was a, I was proud of Matt. He, he said, Joe, Joe said, we’ll do this event. This event, this event, like end with the death race. And Matt said, do it, no, these are like real athletes. They don’t just want to like lift rocks for you and build, build something in your backyard. Like they want a real race that they train for a specific thing, not to just like, get tossed around and beat up.

[00:07:26] So, so yeah, recognizing like what these athletes are doing and how they actually work out there

[00:07:32] Rich Ryan: [00:07:32] and like he’ll meet his team to do that. And his team was, is probably going to be like, How are we supposed to do as experts by August? August is like, now it’s July 30th. Like there’s no way he’s going to get something up by, by August.

[00:07:44] And like, and so I’m sure. Yeah, like his team had a freaking heart attack cause like, Oh my God. What? But like, thinking about it, like in terms of an event, I would imagine you like, you know, he would get a Yancey in on it, right? Like that’s his boy, like Nancy would come in and he would kind of program things and maybe they, they work with the teams like Garfield or, Oh crap.

[00:08:04] I forgot the other guy, trail master Hammond, and to kind of like design some stuff out there that would be something appropriate. Yeah. Everybody out there. and that would be. It’s something that I could kind of envision, but like Josh, in your mind, if there was a five, he mentioned five days, but again, he was just talking.

[00:08:21]but like if there was a combined like competition spread over several days, like what would you want to see there?

[00:08:27] Josh Ried: [00:08:27] Yeah. Yeah. I saw it as kind of like combine as well. But what would I want to see there? I mean, if they’re smart, they’ll pre they’ll do like a proper progression. That means you’re gonna have to go five days.

[00:08:36] Like the CrossFit games probably want to test different systems. Maybe do like some, some shorter stuff. Like if someone’s more obstacle specific, you know, like a short course of obstacle course race. And then like later on the day or the next, you know, like a straight up sprint and then, you know, maybe do something easy the next day.

[00:08:52] Or it’s hard to say, I mean, five days in a row of actual competition. That’s pretty, that’s pretty rough. I mean, especially if you have a lot of high performers who want to win every, everything, it’s

[00:09:04] Rich Ryan: [00:09:04] going to be a ticket to that point. Yeah. But the cool

[00:09:06] Josh Ried: [00:09:06] would be is the strategy that would come into play.

[00:09:09] Rich Ryan: [00:09:09] It’s like,

[00:09:10] Josh Ried: [00:09:10] if you, if you know the events, so if you didn’t know the events, that’s one thing that’s difficult. You probably got to go balls to the wall for the whole thing and hope that you hit your spot. But if you know the events, you can look at it and think, okay, this is the event that I’m really going to make my move in.

[00:09:20] This is the one where I know I can kind of like Slack off or whatever. But

[00:09:25] Rich Ryan: [00:09:25] yeah, I thought about that too, is like, is that the best way to go about it? Like if you know, you won’t do well on it, then do you just toss it in and then do an, a, just save it for something else? Cause you get the CrossFit games.

[00:09:33] It kind of has to do that where they put themselves in position to not get buried. And events that they know they can like potentially win or like, but they’ll take eight because they know that they can be there. And then that’s fine. More there’s other events that are like the swim events where people, and they just can’t really do it.

[00:09:49] And they come in like 40th and it ruins the CrossFit games. But like, yeah, that’s how, that’s kind of how I was thinking about it as well. But for the first time, I can’t imagine. But what events specifically, Josh, would you want for yourself?

[00:10:02] Josh Ried: [00:10:02] Like short course would be just up and down his mountain, which I think he said is like two or three miles with a little over a thousand feet of gain.

[00:10:09] That’s that’s a bath, that’s a lactic Lachie bath. That’d be fun. Some short like that. just do like, I think some DECA fits stuff would be pretty, pretty cool. just cause I haven’t done it. I mean, from what I’ve seen, a lot of the deck fit stuff. I don’t even know if I want to say it looks like not super hard.

[00:10:26] Everything’s hard when you go go hard. Right. It’s not heavy,

[00:10:30] Rich Ryan: [00:10:30] but like it’s not complicated. It’s not

[00:10:33] Josh Ried: [00:10:33] the thing is to do it, like go through and through high-octane

[00:10:37] Rich Ryan: [00:10:37] so it makes it harder to me. It becomes hard. Yeah.

[00:10:40] Josh Ried: [00:10:40] Yeah. I enjoyed high rocks a little more because the actual, like the sled was just straight up heavy.

[00:10:45] And you’re just grinding an outfit in there. So that kind of stuff I like, but I’d like to see a little bit of the deck itself. So sprint up and down the mountain, a little bit of DECA, some, some traditional Spartan stuff, but maybe with like some of, from what I’ve heard, people would probably call it the quote unquote old school obstacles.

[00:11:00] Once they’re actually hard and dangerous. I mean, you know, like triple sandbag, a giant

[00:11:06] Rich Ryan: [00:11:06] like,

[00:11:07] Josh Ried: [00:11:07] like 40 foot tall cargo net. That’s just like looped to some trees. I want to see some, some like Rocky Balboa. Crazy old timer, you know, farm some real farm stuff.

[00:11:16] Rich Ryan: [00:11:16] That’d be cool. Yeah. I was thinking there’d be like, maybe like a lift, like have it be like.

[00:11:22] Max like to rep deadlift event. That should be one. And then there should just be something that is out power. I’ll put like a flat mile or flat 5k and it should like culminate like a beast distance. So like a half marathon trail up and down the mountain. And then they did that. Like the, I forget what they were calling it.

[00:11:40] It was just, it was just like back-to-back obstacles. They were doing that for a couple of years. Remember that, like they would do it on a different time where we’d just be super short and you’d just run through the obstacles. Essentially. There’s like 13 minutes long. During, when they were doing that, I forget what they called it.

[00:11:52] It was like, when it was like, when TMX came out, Spartan kind of rolled out this, event that you could do before or after their big events. And it was just like obstacle specialists. It was just like, you would just go through the obstacles really quick. I like that. Yeah. So I can see that maybe like a, maybe something like a double stamp, like that thing they did at Tahoe where it was a sandbag carry ladder, kind of like you carried something out, dropped it, ran back, carried something back out, dropped it, ran it back.

[00:12:18]Yeah, but I would want to see some running, but I’m sure it’s, I’m sure it is going to be like, put on all this weird stuff. And then, and then just like crawl around and

[00:12:30] Josh Ried: [00:12:30] crawl through the mud and run a run for 13 hours at the heat of day.

[00:12:35] Rich Ryan: [00:12:35] Yeah, exactly. so hopefully he brings in other people to help with the programming part because, if this happens and you know, we were talking.

[00:12:43] I had a group chat the other day and I was expressing some, I was being very pessimistic because Spartan has tendency to roll things out and make it a big deal. And then when it. Comes time to, and then they, they just don’t really come to fruition. Like last year they said, there’s going to be a stadium, world championship.

[00:12:59] And then they just didn’t say anything about it ever again, after that. And then they said there was going to be a team world championship, and then it just like, didn’t really say anything about it. And even like the Umbraco well challenge, right? Like that was online. And we got involved with that. It was cool.

[00:13:11] Like the leaderboard was terrible. We had no idea what was going on. We didn’t know what was, what, like. How in, it has made any sense and it just didn’t and they just were like, Hmm. Onto the next thing. and I think there’s, I’m guessing that’s what this is going to be. but when the races first got canceled, I almost had a, a sigh of relief.

[00:13:29] I was expecting that. but I was still kind of hedging on my training, like how. How do I stay short for this? How do I prepare for my next race? But like with the expectation that it might not happen, and how to progress my fitness in an inappropriate way that might not be race specific. but now when he rolled this thing out, it’s like, it’s like, that’s all over again.

[00:13:50]so I’m not really sure if I’m going to change any of my plans in terms of my training to hope this thing happens.

[00:13:58] Josh Ried: [00:13:58] Yeah. if it’s only, you know, two, three weeks away, It’s like, yeah. Don’t I wouldn’t really change anything at this point. Yeah.

[00:14:05] Rich Ryan: [00:14:05] At this point you can’t, and, and that, and that’s kind of on our end for, you know, the quote unquote pros that are gonna, that could potentially go in there.

[00:14:12] I don’t know what he’s gonna, I do about like hoop and calmer or what that, what that looks or what that feels like. but for, for most of us, We’re not going to be racing, right? There’s not any races in an obstacle course racing happening sport in specifically in pretty much all, most of the other brands are kind of following suit and just there hadn’t let, expectations of anything happen.

[00:14:31] I know Savage got canceled and Pennsylvania at least, and I’m imagining it will get canceled in Maryland. And. and any other place where they, may be able to do it. So it just kind of poses the questions like, okay, what, what do we do now? right. And so that’s something we, once I went out, I was like some different options of what we’re going to do and what we think you guys should do as well.

[00:14:51] Just so that, You can have kind of an idea and you can keep getting some gains physically, because this is unprecedented. And we talked about like all fair, but you get to a point, the race season kind of dictates how you train. Like you kind of build up and then you taper down and then you race hard.

[00:15:08] You put it all that effort and then you take some recovery time. Typically that’s how it works. But without any big, a race, Where do you go when the season is kind of over, because now all of a sudden it’s over. but you didn’t have that big prep or that big pay off it, we would typically have. so Josh had been doing some pretty cool stuff, in terms of getting some MKTs that says no times.

[00:15:28] So I knew after just the last time you did, you were kind of like, okay, now I need to hunker down a little bit and kind of get back on to some speed stuff and, and working, some OCR stuff. so where, what are you going to do? At this point.

[00:15:42] Josh Ried: [00:15:42] Yeah. I, there were a couple things that I wanted to do. And honestly, like you said, I mean, there’s a little bit of relief kind of that came with knowing that the racer canceled.

[00:15:51] Cause we just, we really just wanted to know. I mean, it’s a, yeah, it’s difficult to keep getting tossed around. It’s like, Oh, okay. Are we going to keep building, do we, do we kind of slow down a little bit here or what? So it’s. It’s a little bit relieving and allows me to focus on one more big event for me this year that I wanted to work towards, because I think it’s great that everyone to have goals, whether that goal is in the near future or it’s in 2021 for the next sparring season.

[00:16:17] But for me, I have one more thing I’m going to work towards. There is a 90 mile trail that goes to the Catskills and it would end up being the longest event that I’ve ever done. And I just love the gas skills and it traverses the entire length of itself. That’s that’s something that I want to do. I’m looking to do that towards the end of September or early October.

[00:16:38] So I’ll continue to build ultimately, I mean, I’m going to be moving an average of about four miles an hour for this thing, you know, so it’s really just going to be pretty much easy time on feet, which for the most part really aligns with. I feel like what a lot of us, mm. I ended up falling into, which is kind of slowing down with intensity and.

[00:16:58]and kind of working on just, just building some easy stuff and kind of letting the systems kind of cool off, not overtax anything, and just keep the body moving and, and build back towards this 2021.

[00:17:12] Rich Ryan: [00:17:12] And that’s also, but that’s also specific to the race that you’re doing. Like you’re not going to keep.

[00:17:17] You’re not gonna start hammering intensity, just cause you won’t be able to handle as much volume and volume is what you’re going to need to do a 90 mile trail. Right. So you’re, you’re, you’re still planning on changing things. Right. And moving it directed toward something specific then. Right.

[00:17:33] Josh Ried: [00:17:33] Right, right.

[00:17:33] Instead of building doing more like flat speed work, which is what I was gonna end up trying to do more of for West Virginia. and like more vulnerable stuff because I wanted to go to Tahoe and Tahoe is quite runnable. yeah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna start focusing on. On the mountain stuff, which is really just technical spending a lot of time on feed there.

[00:17:49] So yeah, I still have an event that I am planning for and I am going to be training specifically for that event. And then once that event passes, I’m going to end up probably taking just like, I’ll probably do nothing for a week, just a week. I’ll be pretty beat up from doing 90 miles. And then I’m going to be back to a two.

[00:18:07] Yeah. Really focused, structured building over the course of the next five, six months.

[00:18:13] Rich Ryan: [00:18:13] And does that mean? like, so say, so you are still kind of building up, right. And you are going to give yourself that big event in which that. It’s going to take a lot out of you and you’re going to need some, some rest time after that.

[00:18:25] Right.

[00:18:26] Josh Ried: [00:18:26] So we kind of just talked just on this Blake, before we really started the podcast, we were talking about like the different, where, how people are at different places, depending on how long they’ve been doing the sport, where they are at, in their physicality right now in their fitness. And a for, for me, I still feel pretty.

[00:18:41] I feel, I feel pretty young and I feel like I’ve built quite conservatively and just kind of looking at my history, looking at my, you know, my, my training logs and. And how my body feels now, how my body felt then, and just kind of following trends. I feel really good in continuing to build perhaps at a slightly greater rate than someone who’s been doing this sort of thing for 10 years and is already at the, at the point where they’re doing a lot.

[00:19:05] And then pulling, pulling back a little bit is like still a lot.

[00:19:08] Rich Ryan: [00:19:08] Right, right. And that makes sense too, to continue to build on what you have done. Right. and that, that makes sense to me, and having that plan to kind of build out because it is a weird time and, and having that event happen in September is actually.

[00:19:21] Fairly specific to what could have happened. during the season, let’s say if Tahoe was your goal race, then it kind of puts you in a good position to rebuild for, you know, your next race that would be in February or, or, or January whenever, whenever you’re, you’re ready to race again. Yeah. And that’s something that I think is important to know, and I’m going to kind of go the same route, like if you can.

[00:19:42] And the one thing that for me, I’m not going to do it. Or think about doing any events that could potential potentially be canceled. I’m also not gonna do any virtual races just going to do like my own thing. Like just something that I know is going to happen. That’s on the calendar. I can circle it.

[00:19:56] Like this is what is going to happen on this day, no matter what. So, for me, I’m thinking. Oh, my I’ve actually bumped my volume up. So I was actually thinking about just kind of doing a marathon and just like doing it on my own and just like going out. And if I can find people to do it with me, or if I know of, if I know somebody who’s having an event that’s super small and they are like, we’re going to do this no matter what.

[00:20:19]then I will focus toward that, but I’m thinking toward October ish and trying to build up those miles and train specifically for something like that. So, so what’s

[00:20:28] Josh Ried: [00:20:28] your main motivation behind. Doing that by, by continuing to go by putting a goal in front of you and something that’s hard and it is going to be taxing.

[00:20:37]why that instead of say pulling back or, you know, just saying no to any serious quote, unquote serious events, because a marathon you want to get a good time doing that. You’re going to race

[00:20:47] Rich Ryan: [00:20:47] that. I’m definitely gonna raise that and I’m, and I’m going to. Put it all out there. I don’t want to be like wrecked after, you know, and that’s kind of the, that’s kind of the thing it’s like, I’ve never, I haven’t put anything afford.

[00:20:56] Anything of the season have trained really hard and I haven’t had that big build and that taper too, to see how it’s going to present itself on race day. And that’s more or less why I want to do this as to experiment and to figure out how I respond to different types of training. And in terms of marathon training, I’ve never done marathon training where I’m going to be running up like.

[00:21:15] 90 a hundred mile per a hundred mile weeks. and then doing different things that are going to keep me OCR sharp, just like some uphill sprints, some downhill sprints. And that is going to kind of be my basis of OCR training and then everything else is gonna be based around big aerobic efforts. you know, like marathon specific type racing, like thousands at like half marathon pace, like not pushing the gears all the way down.

[00:21:35]but. Building out so I can sustain for a longer period of time. And this is something that I wouldn’t foresee myself necessarily doing. If I was preparing for something like Tahoe, even though the time domain is going to be almost the same, I’m sure my mileage would be different. I’ll be doing more OCR specific things, like carry workouts or, just making sure I’m doing more like compromised running or whatever that is.

[00:21:56]whereas I think that I could make some really significant fitness gains with just training. With big efforts. and so it’s a way to experiment more or less because like, if I’m not going to have any chance to test anything out on an obstacle course race, and like there is the FKC kind of thing available to me a little bit.

[00:22:15]but still the context around it, it wouldn’t make a ton of sense to me. Like it would be cool things to knock off, but it’s not anything that I know, what would. Like what would have worked. So it was just a way to really kind of test out some different types of training and to build up and see what, how

[00:22:30] Josh Ried: [00:22:30] that makes a lot of sense.

[00:22:31] It’s like, you’ve put, you’ve put in a certain amount of work thus far the season, and you want to see a payout from that.

[00:22:37] Rich Ryan: [00:22:37] And it’s like, yeah, like I want to see if it is working and how I respond to that. And that’s something that I would employ other people to do. Like if they have never done things like quarters on the track, like now time to try that, to put some sort of phase in where you’re working more high intensity, or if you haven’t ever run six days a week, like now is the time to kind of put that in.

[00:22:55] So when the season comes back around, you know, what has worked instead of just like wiping the board clean and then starting where you had started this year and then building back up because. Well, this is like an unprecedented time without having a race to, to see how you responded to training. So you really need to figure out what’s gonna work or what has worked so that you know what to do next season, because that’s typically why we have these big periods of progression so that we can try stuff and then see what worked and then, and try more and then try something else and see what works.

[00:23:22] So having something there that’s different Annabelle I think will be, is, is really crucial for. For, for everyone who’s in the same boat, which is pretty much everyone in obstacle course racing. and one thing that I want to steer people away from is taking downtime right now. so like you and I, both our plans are to build up and then, hit an event as hard as possible, and then be at the point where we need rest.

[00:23:46]if you did not get into those peak weeks of training, then you probably don’t need. To take some time down. you might want to, just because you liked it on time, but it’s probably not necessary at this point because you didn’t put yourself in a position where you’re like overreaching or like kind of towing that line of over-training or pushing yourself so hard during the race.

[00:24:06] It like mentally you’re left. Exhausted and you need that refresh. So it really wants to keep people training and going at this point. So just where do you think people should do if they don’t have necessarily an event right now? so, you know, we kind of have something specifically that we can kind of train out, so it makes it a little bit easier in terms of clarity is like, well, what to do?

[00:24:24] What would you tell people to do like right now? Like where should they focus?

[00:24:29] Josh Ried: [00:24:29] Well, I think time trials are great. If you, if you have some time trials or let’s say a goal, I think like a fast 5k is a pretty popular one. You know, and I feel like that’s also probably pretty specific for most people’s fitness, whether they were training for a deco for stadium, for a super, you know, the sprint sparring.

[00:24:46] So things like that hit trying to hit some benchmarks or finding like something around you that excites you, whether that’s like a mountain. I like going the MKT route because there are, it’s pretty much Strava with a little more, well,

[00:24:59] Rich Ryan: [00:24:59] a little more,

[00:25:01] Josh Ried: [00:25:01] a little more. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good way to put it.

[00:25:02]but yeah, you it’s, you get to compete against other people. You get to kind of see how your training has. It’s helped you out. I definitely recommend working towards something. You know, I have some athletes that are, they’re going for some time trials. We’re pretending that a few weeks from now there’s going to be a big race.

[00:25:15] And that big race is just them doing a little time travel event, mile 5k, 10 K, like I just said, climbing a mountain nearby that they climb before. And this time they’re going to really go after it. And then, and then after that, we’ll be like, Hey, okay, that went really well. Or it went pretty good or whatever.

[00:25:31] And from that we can infer from the training. Okay. Things seem to work pretty well or, okay. Let’s try changing things up from there.

[00:25:40] Rich Ryan: [00:25:40] And in terms of the training itself, I feel like then you kind of need to pick a route, right? Like you either can hunker down and focus on some race specific intensity. If you’re going to go after something like a five K or you can kind of build volume, And building volume right now in a sustainable way.

[00:25:59]and kind of sprinkling in some intensity, just, yeah, you can kind of build up to a point where maybe you’ve never been before or again, take those risks a little bit. Like if you don’t have anything on the table and maybe having a weekly mileage goal could be a thing for people and just seeing how they respond to do it.

[00:26:15] If they’ve consistently run 40 miles a week, let’s see how you feel. If you run five mile, a 50 miles a week for. A month and then see how you feel and maybe 55 or 56 or 60 for a month. See how you feel out of those. Like your overall speed. Probably won’t get that much better. You’re focusing on volume. but you can see how your body responds.

[00:26:35] You can see how your endurance handles that you can see how you recover from those things. so I definitely think. Bill. This is also an appropriate time to build, build volume. And what about volume in the past and how to kind of build things up in your quote unquote base phase. And that’s not necessarily what I’m talking about right now.

[00:26:52] And there’s like, Having and like what you mentioned in terms of being able to build off of what you had after you do this big, long trail race. Like, I think that that’s the way we need to approach it and not again, wiping the board, wiping the slate clean and just starting over from where we were. so building up your volume is right now, I think is a really interesting routes and.

[00:27:19] When people, and also it’s kind of risky to build volume. Like when people get hurt, it’s typically when they increase their volume in a short amount of time and not necessarily maintaining the vine people don’t, as people won’t get hurt, they’ve run 70 miles a week and then they just maintain 70 miles a week.

[00:27:37] Once they’re there, they’re kind of there. unless I do something crazy with too much intensity and, and that at 70, but that’s a whole different thing. So like, Now’s the time to kind of build up because there is nothing there. And you can, you can take time back if, if, if like little injury things start to come up and then if you get to a place you can kind of maintain it.

[00:27:57] You can take a quick downtime where of like, Where it’s one to two weeks of rest and recovery, and then you can get back to where those, those base miles were and that volume that you’ve built over time and that you don’t have to start from scratch. cause I feel like that it happens a lot. Like people will kind of build up and be at 35, 40 miles per week.

[00:28:16] Starting from very low and then they get through the season and then they just do exactly what they did the previous year and just kind of rebuild to where they were as opposing to, as opposed to continuing to build. so do you think on, on the, the, the volume route?

[00:28:30] Josh Ried: [00:28:30] Well, I like you were intentional in saying this or not, but you said, you know, do like 50 miles for a month and then 55 for a month.

[00:28:37]which is. So that’s a smooth gain. You know, you’re not doing this. Isn’t the time to like ramp up, ramp up, ramp up, you know, like smoothly increasing volume, not rushing it, giving yourself ample time to adapt and see how these things feel. Because more than anything, I mean, this is a point in time where you’re not, you’re not trying to rush to get all this fitness in before you get to the starting line.

[00:28:59] This is just about like, like slowly being consistent. And building things up slowly and consistently I’ll say that word one more time consistently. You know, this there’s going to be a pretty good sized stretch going. I mean, well, it’s going to be a good stretch going into 2021 before we really see it racist, but everyone knows that time really flies by.

[00:29:20] Like the weeks cruise by and you either will have been putting in work or they will have not have, and it’s going to be night and day when, when the Gates open up again, I am dude. I’m so excited to see all the athletes out there. It’s going to be, there’s going to be a huge see in the field, man. I think that there’s, some people are going to be, their fitness is going to be the best that it has literally ever been.

[00:29:40] And I think that there are other people who will have either diminished or, or stayed the same. No. So there’s going to be a few different groups and I’m really excited to see who falls into each of those groups.

[00:29:51] Rich Ryan: [00:29:51] Yeah, totally. And this is also time to test out where your mindset is because that ends up being how you’re approaching this and what your level of seriousness is as an athlete.

[00:30:03] And. If you are the one who wants to continue to push things forward, you’ll be on the, on the right side of that fitness fence when it comes time for those Gates to open again and doing that is by, and you can really commit to yourself by like adding frequency, adding volume, and kind of adopting a lifestyle of endurance training if you haven’t quite gotten there yet.

[00:30:25] And now is a perfect time to do that. And that is an end, having that slower approach and being able to maintain things for awhile. that’s kind of the deal, right? Like if you want to build up the 50 miles and just go back to your 30 miles the next week, just to say you did it like that one 50 mile a week, isn’t, isn’t going to do much for you and that one 50 mile a week that you do, it’s going to suck.

[00:30:45] It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be outside of your comfort zone because you haven’t been there before. And then you have to keep doing it and it will get progressively easier. It will become part of the normal become part of who you are as an athlete, which is what I mean by that kind of adopting that endurance lifestyle is like, Running this first volume is first read at this point, then there will be other things that we can add in later.

[00:31:06]and I think that that’s where people do try to cram things in really hard when it comes to the season, because like, Oh my God, I need to get faster. Like, how do I get faster now? And they’ve been doing all this other stuff, trying to prepare for obstacle course races, where right now you can just kind of run a little bit more and then see how it fits into your schedule and prioritize, prioritize those things.

[00:31:25]and that’s. I want this to, I looked at this one study earlier today and it was talking about volume versus intensity. And so like, and there’s like this there’s two camps, right? The volume first intensity canceled, how you improve your performance and the study. It was like, it was a German study. It took people and put them in like what would be like crash training.

[00:31:46] So like four weeks of hard training and they jumped the mileage from like 65 to 75. So like 90 to one Oh five and they found a bunch of their

[00:31:54] Josh Ried: [00:31:54] markers or miles.

[00:31:56] Rich Ryan: [00:31:56] So they put, like, they put a ton of miles on these people in like four weeks and their fitness markers went down and then they, a year later they took the same athletes and did that same type of training with intensity and just did like.

[00:32:08] 400, like two by 400 and worked it up to like 10 bucks, 400. And the, and the results were that the intensity group did much better. I’ll 50 miles a week and just short bouts of intensity. And like, that makes sense. But like eventually you’re going to need to kind of build on the intensity through the training of volume.

[00:32:29] So there,

[00:32:30] Josh Ried: [00:32:30] right

[00:32:31] Rich Ryan: [00:32:31] in four weeks.

[00:32:32] Josh Ried: [00:32:32] Yeah. So, I mean like the, the. Like the metabolic adaptations for like being able to buffer lactate and stuff. Like all of that happens so much quicker than like, or the aerobic adaptations.

[00:32:42] Rich Ryan: [00:32:42] Right. And that’s how you get faster for race day is by doing speed work. But by being able to handle the speed work, you need to do a little bit more mileage.

[00:32:50] And so I think there is a place where you need to do where you have to do both things. And as you’re building up your volume, I don’t think it is. 100% necessary to drop all intensity out. but I mentioned this to hear what your kind of approach would be like when you start to build back things up, how, how will you handle volume versus intensity in terms of like maybe your base building phase

[00:33:11] Josh Ried: [00:33:11] as I started to build things back up.

[00:33:12] So coming into all like the end of September, October, whenever the weather looks nice and I, as tests go after this thing, I’ll take a little bit of rest and then I’ll start to get into I’ll probably just do like purely easy stuff. And work on running drills, honestly. I really think I’m increasingly drifting towards doing more running drills.

[00:33:29] Cause running is a skill and it’s, I feel like it’s easy to fall into a place of complacency where like you just run all the time and based on your frequency, you think you’re getting a lot better and no doubt about it. Frequency is practicing and you’re going to get much better at running by running frequently.

[00:33:46] But the running drills, I, I, I really think are going to add a lot. And, and I’ll probably, I’ll probably add in some intensity pretty soon, not a whole lot of it, just little bouts. I really enjoy throwing in, you know, not just the Striders, like those short little things, but getting more into like, like.

[00:34:04] 32nd sprints, 62nd sprints. I really enjoy like two minutes on two minutes off. And really only, only accumulating maybe 10% of that entire run at an intensity that’s above, you know, well, my aerobic, you know, my, my math, my actual aerobic function. And, and that that’ll be go on for a pretty good while.

[00:34:21] And then coming into December, you know, maybe after, after afterwards, after like three months, then I’m probably going to start hammering honestly.

[00:34:31] Rich Ryan: [00:34:31] Nice. Yeah. And I think that’s a, that’s appropriate. Like if you want to do, take some time to ease back into that volume, I think that’s, I think that’s fine.

[00:34:37] But I do think that, yeah, having some sort of intensity in there that won’t interfere with the volume because it’s not mutually exclusive. Right? Like there’s, even when you’re doing speed work, you’re not doing speed work every day. Like you just can’t or you want to make any sense, like you need to, to split things up to give yourself time to recover.

[00:34:53] I feel like that should be the same when you’re building volume. Like it doesn’t need to be volume. Every single day. And you had a, an and in terms of maintain those gains that you’ve had, I think that you had a couple of good examples of that. I think 30 seconds on, like minute off, like, like by eight or 10 is great.

[00:35:07] Like in the middle of your run, same with like minutes, like eight minutes, eight minutes, like at like a threshold or like 10 K pace or something like that, then a minute easy is a good way to kind of mix those things and, and even doing something like, Short Hill sprints, I think would be a really cool way to kind of work that in as well.

[00:35:25] Josh Ried: [00:35:25] No doubt about it. Yeah. Hill sprints are pretty much a or some sort of sprinting. It is pretty much occurs throughout the year, whether it’s in the form of like Striders and accelerations or like all out sprints, you know, up the Hill bounds. Those, those will always be in there for sure. Short duration, but that stuff that’s kind of.

[00:35:43] That goes right along with doing some of these other kind of fundamental quality works, like, like say the deadlifts, you know, it’s something that it’s more along the lines of strength and building power that I almost don’t even consider it running, like doing bounds. Like this is an accessory strength, exercise, power exercise, you know, that I do next to my running.

[00:36:05] Rich Ryan: [00:36:05] It should be something completely separate almost that is just very run specific, doing the bounds, but it’s just not. It’s not part of your run. Right? It’s like its own thing.

[00:36:16] Josh Ried: [00:36:16] It feels like its own thing for sure. yeah. Yeah. and you know, it’s when it comes to keeping intensity. In your week in your routine.

[00:36:24] I mean, I think you had on Curran, Malcolm, and she, she was talking about, you know, like, I believe you, like you were going to sauna, you have a, you have a certain amount of time of those adaptations stick around. So say you get, say the summer’s here, right? We’re sweating like crazy. We’re getting those heat adaptations, blood volumes increasing as the weather gets colder and we don’t raise our body temperature quite so much our blood volume and the subsequent adaptations, they increase red blood cell count the little kind of decrease, but you can keep those around by just going to the sauna.

[00:36:55] I think it’s like once every three days.

[00:36:58] Rich Ryan: [00:36:58] No, that’s what she said.

[00:36:59] Josh Ried: [00:36:59] Yeah. And some of these metabolic adaptations are no different. I mean, when you, if you stimulate the production of lactate and your body does be. Deal with it and buffer it. It’s going to kind of remember that for a little while. I don’t know what the exact timeframe is.

[00:37:12] I know those adaptations can happen in as short as like 70 to 72 hours or two a week. And I would imagine that they would at least stick around for, or as long. So doing something like, say. you know, 30 to 60 seconds of intensity enough where you start to feel a little bit of heaviness in the legs.

[00:37:30] That’s, you know, doing that a few times a week, I think that’s, that’s going to keep those adaptations around and keep them on deck, which is ultimately gonna probably make you feel a bit better when you’re doing your longer, easier runs.

[00:37:41] Rich Ryan: [00:37:41] Totally. And that could be part of these easier runs too. It doesn’t have to be, it doesn’t have to be a warm up.

[00:37:47] To 30 seconds of 30 thirties and then call down and it could be like, you could do a mile or two and then do the 30 thirties and then do seven more miles. You know, like,

[00:37:58] Josh Ried: [00:37:58] I don’t know how you structure them into your, your training. I used to do most of my. Like my quote, unquote quality stuff towards the end of the run.

[00:38:06] And now I’ve really enjoyed doing it in the middle. And the reason for that is one, I get a couple of miles of kind of warming up. Not as, it’s not a specific warmup, I’m just, just running, you know, and then I’m good. Then I just go right into whatever 30, 30, 66, the two, two, two is. I love all of those. and then for the next portion of the run, cause I’m only gonna do maybe 10 reps max, of any of those.

[00:38:26] And then for the next two miles or three miles, I have like this lightness to my legs. They’re just used to going so fast. And now once everything gets cycled out, it’s like, Whoa, you get to feel that before and after.

[00:38:35] Rich Ryan: [00:38:35] Yeah, totally. Yeah. What time of year or what? The training, when I’m training for like, if I was doing, Yeah.

[00:38:41] Training for DECA fit Highrock stadium. I would do. I guess it’s something different then that’s a whole different thing. I would use it if it’s a yeah. Cause it depends. I’m getting more into like racist specificity. but yeah, I guess it doesn’t really matter if you’re keeping it for like, as far as maintenance is concerned.

[00:38:58]it wouldn’t really matter. Beginning or end, I’ll probably put it more like in the middle as well, just because for that reason, just to break it up, and not to make it feel like I have this thing looming over, over my head. but I was about to go down a whole different route, but we won’t. and that’s another thing that also that I think is another good way to put in intensity is to add in.

[00:39:16] Like progression runs and as a way to not crush yourself with longer tempos and with like threshold intervals. So that’d be like ending your run a little bit faster or doing cut down runs where your miles get increasingly faster over the last, you know, three, four, five miles of your run. a good way to kind of get you into that.

[00:39:35] Like tempo or threshold pacing without needing to do a five miles at that threshold pace. And you’ll be able to recover much quicker, to be able to keep those volume gains going on. So I think that right there, kind of what we outlined, just having two days a week, where one is, you know, 30 seconds on 30 seconds off by 10 or.

[00:39:53] Six by one minute on one minute off and like jogging in between. And then one, one run that is like some sort of progression or a cut down run. I think it was a really good way to continue to add volume without completely neglecting your speed because that’s something that like, you just shouldn’t do.

[00:40:09] You’re a different runner after you’ve been the speed broker, a different runner you’ve created adaptations. You want to keep those adaptations building. So the next time around that you’re, you’re. Building on a stronger, better foundation. what else would you think, what would work in that room, in that realm?

[00:40:24] Josh Ried: [00:40:24] In the realm of

[00:40:26] Rich Ryan: [00:40:26] just like how to do a week of training? I think that, that we kind of nailed it on that. Or is there anything else that you would kind of add in like you’re, if you’re continuing to like work on putting in more, more volume,

[00:40:36] Josh Ried: [00:40:36] I guess, I’ll just, I’ll just kind of like further Vivify the whole picture.

[00:40:40] And that is because what I’m hearing from you is be, be consistent. Hold up your volume smoothly. There’s no need to rush right now. The most important things to be consistent. Don’t fall off the back of the wagon, stick on and just gently pick up the speed over, over the course of the next several months, a work on, on fundamental skills.

[00:41:00] You don’t have to worry about doing. Super high burner workouts that leave you, you know, super exhausted. Cause that’s going to probably mess with your ability to stay consistent. So it’s not necessarily easing off overall. It’s just kind of changing the way you’re putting your energy out there. You know, maybe you were working towards a specific event lately and you were doing, you know, eight hours of work a week.

[00:41:22] And a lot of that was a lot of intensity. We’ll just back off the intensity, just a little bit, trickle it in here and there. And just start upping the hours that you were putting in.

[00:41:30] Rich Ryan: [00:41:30] Absolutely. So, yeah, just making sure that, that she doesn’t interfere with the volume and build that vibe. And we talked about frequent, I think the last episode, and that is something that is huge to add.

[00:41:40] They have running just a couple miles, just, just add some and adopt that lifestyle a little bit more so that you’re prepared to, to handle more volume and more intensity when, when the time comes. so one of the things I want to kind of do is kind of break get out into like specific runners or specific, athletes that and give them more general recommendations.

[00:41:59]and that could be someone who’s more new and like a veteran athlete, someone who’s coming from a background of like functional fitness who can handle the obstacles a little bit more of a struggle in other places. And people might who are coming from more of like an endurance background. beautiful.

[00:42:13] So I want to start with just like the veteran OCR athlete and. How I would define that. it’s like the sport is so new, so you don’t need to be doing it that long for me to consider you as a veteran in this sports, I would say two to three years, maybe 10 total races. What do you think about a veteran?

[00:42:30] Well, where does that line up for you?

[00:42:32] Josh Ried: [00:42:32] You know, I’m, I’m wondering how much of a difference I’m placing between the veterans and the, the elite of the elite. because I’m thinking of, you know, top five on the men and women’s side, and I’m thinking about the types of things that they’re going to, they’re going to be doing because

[00:42:47] Rich Ryan: [00:42:47] they’re.

[00:42:49] I would say more just like the person who has done a lot of these races, like it could be age group athletes, competitive age group athletes, or, or anybody who’s in like the elite field. people who’ve done it. And if we’re committed to it, who are, this is like their full time deal. They’re there, they have OCR something in their Instagram handle that as a, an OCR veteran.

[00:43:11] Josh Ried: [00:43:11] I appreciate you people,

[00:43:12] Rich Ryan: [00:43:12] all the same thing with the bumper stickers. I want to give him a shout, look at, see what the T shirt and be like, Like while I’m driving past expunge should have like a hand signal. we’ll the center probably has one. so, and that’s kind of the deal, like someone who, this is their thing, you know, they are an OCR, they would call themselves an OCR athlete.

[00:43:31]and I think probably about two and a half, two years, three years would I think someone would kind of, Come to the terms that like, okay, I’m doing OCR specifically. And that’s why I exercise now. That’s why I train. And, and someone who has this, I think has it, it has things figured out in terms of what they’re.

[00:43:48] Good at and what they’re not so great at. So they might not need specific skill training as much. they understand that grip is important and they’ve worked on that. they probably have all the required strength to do all the obstacles. Maybe not under complete duress. They might miss them at times.

[00:44:02]but no, That they are strong enough already, and know kind of what’s coming and then like, can do them all, but maybe just filter from here to here or there,

[00:44:13] Josh Ried: [00:44:13] like those veterans, they have a greater history to pull from, you know, they can, that’s the group that gets to go back into that beautiful training log that I hope that they’ve, they’ve created over the years and they can really see how things have worked.

[00:44:24] See the ebbs and flows and their performances or their training. And. Dial it in further, they have all that history and they get to follow that to use.

[00:44:32] Rich Ryan: [00:44:32] And I think, I think there are things that they might be able to go without. And also just try to maintain things because over the course of a couple years, you’re like, okay, I need to get better at beater.

[00:44:41] I need, so I need to work on my bent arm strength, just whatever. and then they’ve worked on that and they can do that. And it’s like, okay, I need to flip the tire. And they worked on the deadlifts are strong enough. Now they can do devils the bucket carries no problem. Like they don’t have anything that’s going to like.

[00:44:53] That they actually can’t do. so I would argue that they might not even need to do like the compromised running as much in this, in this phase. Like kind of when they’re. Working on total fitness or even need to be in the gym that much. I think these people need to really, take the running up yeah.

[00:45:10] To the next level. And I, I mean, I would preach that, but that is something that is going to move the needle the most for them. And I think just working on their all out. Fitness would be the best time spent because it kinda know how to do everything. They don’t need to spend time learning how to, transitions as much.

[00:45:28] They can do that in a sharpening phase. And they’re in their buildup. That’s leading into a race where they can do some compromised running or do some. You know, something that’s race, the course specific. I think like getting on some technical stuff or doing a deadlift phase to make their backs strong enough so they can flip the tire or pick up the bucket or whatever.

[00:45:47]so I think they’re best friends. I’m just like straight up running. What do you think?

[00:45:53] Josh Ried: [00:45:53] Yeah, totally agree. I mean, ultimately this sport is mostly running, you know, and back to the fundamental stuff again, it’s like, if you can, you can lift some things off the ground. If you can hold your body from a bar.

[00:46:06] That you’re going to be in a pretty good place going into the next season. Again, you can do that sharpening stuff later on moving into, moving into like the race season and you know, maybe that’s one month, two month, three month out. As far as, you already know my stance on compromise running, it’s more of a confidence thing.

[00:46:22] Then more than the actual skill. Cause I think that I personally believe that if you work on the two skills separately, they’re going to get really good at it. Say carrying a bucket or doing grip switches on a bar, which is going to translate to move with your monkey bars, a twister, and then running really good at running.

[00:46:36] And then when it comes time to meshing together, you know how to do them. Individually, but if you’re unsure, if you want the confidence builder, then I obviously highly recommend doing some compromised running drills where you go between both of those things. But I don’t think it’s totally necessary.

[00:46:50] Rich Ryan: [00:46:50] You’re on a time crunch, you know, if you are just like, ah, I don’t have time to work on everything then compromise running is kind of cool. Cause like I’m gonna do my strength work while I do my running work and it’s gonna kind of be race specific. But if you had the time to work on both of those things, like compromise, running, like.

[00:47:06] Yeah, it’s more confidence and like brace, re specific sharpening stuff.

[00:47:10] Josh Ried: [00:47:10] I hear you. And it is also, it is also kind of fun. So as far as like motivation goes, I mean, sometimes I’ll do like some swings to go run 200 meters, this little loop around my driveway, come back and do something else. Run 200 meters from do it’s all super easy.

[00:47:22] The run is like I’m running nine minute pace. Just take little steps, just nice little staff, just again, some easy aerobic stuff between the list. It’s like, it’s my recovery. That makes time go by better. So yeah, that, that is very time efficient for sure. When it comes to like hammering hammering, then it gets difficult to do either movement.

[00:47:38] Rich Ryan: [00:47:38] Well, you know, I think, yeah. Yeah. And then I think there are kind of two different routes to kind of take this. And if someone was like a really efficient, road runner or they came from a running background, would you. Recommend that they get on the trails more often at this time, or would you kind of push that back and let them work back on the roads or take this time to improve this skill that they need to be on the trails?

[00:48:08] Josh Ried: [00:48:08] I would, I would tap into areas where you need to build on for sure. especially for obstacle course racing, consider the majority of the races are on very terrain, whether it’s a stadium and you have to make sharp turns and go up a downstairs. or yeah, you’re out on the trail. So I think it would definitely behoove someone to, to get out on that specific train and start getting the reps in and getting the body really familiar with that.

[00:48:30]and like, likewise again, with some of those other things, I mean, deadlifting, you know, you go out and start doing your delis right now. You’re gonna be pretty sore, but as the weeks go on, you’re gonna get less and less. So you’re biasing that adapt to that. So it’s good to kind of get that, that particular movement flowing, get it going so that you know how to do it.

[00:48:44] Well, it’s not beating you up anymore. Let’s get some, maybe get some of those things. Not necessarily. Although I’d say out of the way, cause you want to keep doing them, but yeah, this is a great time to. Work on those things that might not make you feel super fantastic. You know, maybe you don’t want to, the dentist we’d be really sore or running lots of volume, especially on the trails, leaves you a little bit sore.

[00:49:06] It’s like, Hey, we don’t have a race that you need to be 100% for right now. So, so don’t, don’t be like, Oh, I’m going to take this week easy. And then there’s cause there’s a race. And then. And then guess what your next race would have been maybe two weeks after that. So you never, you’re never really putting in strong works.

[00:49:22] Like once the race season is happening, you’re, it’s difficult for a lot of people to get in good structured training between between races and that’s, that’s the beauty of what’s really happening right now. I mean, think about how many elites are like praying to the race gods that they get this, this, like almost, almost use the word appropriate season, where they did like an eraser too.

[00:49:40] And now they get to actually focus on themselves and build for, you know, nine. Months to a year,

[00:49:46] Rich Ryan: [00:49:46] whereas

[00:49:47] Josh Ried: [00:49:47] yeah. Whereas in the past they had maybe four months to kind of get their shit together. And then they had, they had an eight, nine, 10 month racing season

[00:49:56] Rich Ryan: [00:49:56] crazy where like, you can’t necessarily build, you always have to be sort of sharp.

[00:49:59] You always have to be ready for the next race. and yeah, and, and. For me that I brought up a good point. Yeah. On things that I’m specifically going, do you, like I’ve been on the trails a bit more, doing a little bit more time. They’re getting ready for, some of these races just working on some, some fast stuff on trail.

[00:50:14] So I’m going to use those things kind of like as maintenance, like kind of how we talked about our maintenance, Speed work while building volume, I’m going to use my maintenance work is going to be on the trails. So like instead of doing, eight by one minute on the roads, I’m going to do that on Hills and trails.

[00:50:30] Like just something that is something that is going to keep me sharp on the skill of things. without. Killing me and something that isn’t going to be too long, or we’re going to put too much weight on needing to be on the trails. but somebody that’s going to believe me, not a huge gap when it’s time to start to, to sharpen again.

[00:50:45] And I like what you said about the deadlifts. That’s probably something that I should do as well is, is kind of get back in there and work on the maintenance of strength. Cause, cause strength. Those main, those main, those gains maintained for a long time, like real long, not like the, like we talked about like the anaerobic gains and those are, those are kind of fleeting.

[00:51:02] Those will kind of leave you. but strength gains, they last for forever. So like, if you even, you just do it a little bit, like, so that’s why, if you’re already this kind of veteran, OCR athlete, I don’t think you need to do a full on strength cycle. I don’t think it’s going to serve you that well. unless you are struggling.

[00:51:19] To flip the tire or something. So I don’t, I don’t necessarily think that you need to be in the gym like three times a week, even, I think maybe two times a week, even for like 30 or 40 minutes, 30 minutes I think is going to be plenty. and how about someone like you, like who is on the mountains a lot?

[00:51:36] Like how would, how would you kind of approach this period? Would you state you, would you stay there? Would you get on the roads at all? What do you think for someone who has more like that trail and mountain background?

[00:51:47] Josh Ried: [00:51:47] So I’m going to be incorporating more roads, no doubt about it. all, it will be mostly mountains going in too Blake and September early October, but I, I have recognized that I need to work on my running economy and I do want to get in more running on the roads, or I should say, continue to do more running on the roads and, and really build on that.

[00:52:07] And that sort of nontechnical speed and I’ll continue to build on that, especially once, pretty much, pretty much our plan telling you all my secrets. All right. I’m going to do mostly a mountain stuff going into September. And then once this event that I’m looking towards, once that’s over, I’ll probably pick up mostly doing some flat running, build up that particular non technical skill.

[00:52:30] And then I’ll start to I’ll carry that back into the mountains. Yeah. in like in January and February, and then they’ll start, I’ll start building up back in the mountains as they get ready for the actual season.

[00:52:41] Rich Ryan: [00:52:41] Yeah. Bring a new engine in there, you know, create, create something new and get out there and test it out on those trails.

[00:52:47] Josh Ried: [00:52:47] So I’m almost excited for, for winter again, one, because it’s really hot. And I feel like we as humans, we do that like, Oh, it’s summertime. I want winter. And then winter times around, I was like, Oh, it’s so cold. I want summer. Blah, blah, blah. But winter is pretty awesome in the mountains because once some trails get packed down by snowshoes, it becomes like they were once really technical and underneath the two feet of snow, three feet of snow, there’s a bunch of technical rocks.

[00:53:07] Right. But now it’s just like a glossy trail that you can bomb.

[00:53:11] Rich Ryan: [00:53:11] So it’s

[00:53:12] Josh Ried: [00:53:12] do the winter. Yeah. The winter trails appears super fun.

[00:53:15] Rich Ryan: [00:53:15] Nice. Yeah. I wouldn’t even consider that cause they wouldn’t, there’s no notion right here. They’re just become muddy and they would just pee. Way worse. yeah, nobody would ever go on them.

[00:53:23] So that, I think that that’s a great way to kind of approach that. And that’s something that, yeah, I think that will really help them a mountain in trail runner. It’s just cause they’re road adverse, you know, that’s like, they just don’t want to running faster. Is harder and it’s just like, well, my races are on the trail.

[00:53:40] So I’m doing race specific things, but you’re not preparing for a race right now. So get on the roads a little bit more and get a little uncomfortable with that. And you can amass a little bit more. No I’m square miles. Not necessarily time, not necessarily volume, more miles, more fast miles, doing things to sharpen up your speed.

[00:53:55]I think that would be a good way to, really go back into the trails with. With the new engine and just seeing how that, how that translates.

[00:54:03] Josh Ried: [00:54:03] Totally. Yeah. To put that in easier terms for everyone to understand. I mean, what I’m doing is I am mostly building my engine while working on weaknesses.

[00:54:11] Rich Ryan: [00:54:11] Hmm.

[00:54:12] Perfect. And what about like a, a newer OCR athlete, someone who is ready to commit to, to the process, but might have a hard time with some of the obstacles, and might not have all the skills required to do well in a race now. or someone who might only is pretty new to running who is coming from.

[00:54:35] Maybe the CrossFit gym or coming at like the regular gym, like a regular strength athlete, or who’s just like straight up new and wants to, wants to take their like, or play like soccer or something. And now it’s coming over to a OCR. Like what do you, where do you think they should spend this time?

[00:54:51] Josh Ried: [00:54:51] If it’s a younger person without a lot of miles on their chassis and they’re, and they’re healthy and they’re, they’re ready to rock.

[00:54:57] I would say, I would say kind of a couple of little bit more, I mean, definitely build up volume in a smart, healthy manner, but I think I would be quicker to add in some of the other things, especially obstacle course race specific things, because they don’t have. Like the veterans, they don’t have the background, the history, the skillset really builds up yet.

[00:55:19] So, and if they are able to handle the volume and they’re, like I said, they’re healthy. I think that they could get away with doing it a little bit more just because they’re starting out.

[00:55:28] Rich Ryan: [00:55:28] Totally. And I think that, that, that makes sense. I think this is, might be where it’s appropriate to just do like a straight up base phase.

[00:55:34] How I just kind of where it is just miles. You know, and not necessarily working, worrying about anything that is, they always spoke about before, like maintaining any of those, gains that they’ve had. Cause they necessarily, they might not necessarily ever achieve any type of speed gains because they’re just new into this and maybe they were having fun.

[00:55:51] And so maybe like that 12 week based phase that we talk about sometimes where they’re just running miles, to kind of build themselves up. and then what did you have in mind in terms of like doing some of that other stuff? Like, like, Like, are you talking about doing burpees and stuff or what, what were you thinking?

[00:56:04] Yeah.

[00:56:04] Josh Ried: [00:56:04] I mean, start out doing the fundamental stuff, make sure you got like your dead lift, your pull ups. Yeah. And, and you’re running a bunch, but sooner than perhaps you are. I, you know, I would probably after just a, a couple months or a few months start to add in a good amount of intensity, more obstacle, race, specific stuff.

[00:56:24] Right. Whereas perhaps you and I, we already. We’ll stick to more of the fundamentals and build on our fundamentals a little more, but we’re also a little bit further along in the game, right? I mean, it’s, it’s you get those classic newbie gains and as you get more towards the peak of your potential, the more difficult and more time it takes to squeeze out those extra few percent while this person early on, they’re not really trying to squeeze out those extra few percent yet.

[00:56:51] And, and it’s in that range where I think burnout becomes a little bit more. Likely dangerous over-training because you already have so many miles under your belt and you’re really working hard to squeeze it the last few percent. So this person who is just starting out, you’re going to get those newbie gains.

[00:57:06] Yod you know, you don’t, you can work hard, but you’re not going to have to absolutely kill yourself to get a lot of gains. so. Do a bunch of work and, and yeah, follow a good progression. Whether you, you know, there’s something you find from a coach or through literature that you you’ve picked up, it’s just, do things, do things smart.

[00:57:22] Do you think smart?

[00:57:24] Rich Ryan: [00:57:24] Yeah. Cause you can get. Pretty good at a lot of the things pretty quick. by just, just making yourself a little bit more familiar with them, and it’s funny how you kind of put it like that. The more advanced obstacles of course research should folk can focus more on the fundamentals because they need to sharp twist skills.

[00:57:41] It does sound twisted. Whereas like the earlier the earlier newer person can kind of work on just like the more specific parts and just blending it all together. And like, it would probably help them. Just as much so before so that they understand where their weaknesses are and what they need to work on as they become a little bit more advanced.

[00:57:58] And then, and I got, like I mentioned before, like building volume is where people get hurt. so I think that people. This is a really good place for newbies to work on things like drills, like you had mentioned before Josh and like having those things ingrained in them. so what kind of drills would you have people kind of run through when it comes to like running specific drills or having someone like learn the

[00:58:21] Josh Ried: [00:58:21] skill, run through,

[00:58:24] Rich Ryan: [00:58:24] run through them skills?

[00:58:26] Josh Ried: [00:58:26] I like that. I think jump rope running is great because it’s going to help you work on really good foot placement. Right and coordination. So I think that those things are really important. That’s pretty, it’s pretty simple. I’m a pretty good fan of cadence work. I also like, like, like single leg, like single leg hopping drills.

[00:58:41] Right. So it helps again, it’s like foot placement. Foot’s right underneath you, the action of your, like your knee and your hip. So not really, not really super technical stuff. I mean, you can get into. You can get like side the side hops. And again, it’s really just working on coordination, keeping your foot underneath your center of mass and getting used to that feeling because I think that one of the more.

[00:59:05] Common things when it comes to running and properly is your foot just doesn’t really land on your center of mass. And that’s where like injuries, injuries, you start to happen. Like whether it’s your, the angle of your tibia is improper, you know, your, the way your foot hits the ground and you’re just not gliding smoothly forward.

[00:59:20] So ultimately I think if you can get a good foot strike and you can keep that foot run underneath you, you’re going to have healthier landing and ultimately like a healthier running career. So really just those things to keep it pretty simple. And then, If I can get a visual on them, I’ll take a look and see what their legs are actually doing.

[00:59:37] It’s it’s. Kind of difficult to like tell people what to do because they need to see it. So like getting a videotape or, or being treadmill next to a mirror, ultimately like I think videotaping or getting someone to videotape you is the best way. And there was lots of awesome videos online that can help you out with this, but yeah, running, you know, just kind of being more so intentional.

[00:59:58] With how you are running as far as how your foot leaves the ground, what’s your arms are doing your posture. So just checking in on all of those things and ultimately that the drill is within tuning in to those things that are happening with your body.

[01:00:13] Rich Ryan: [01:00:13] Yeah. And I, I think that you’re right on, when you’re talking about the cadence work, I found that that’s just the easiest thing and it’s like the best way to get feedback, right?

[01:00:20] Like, is. Having like a metronome or some music that’s playing at 180 beats per minute at a metronome, you can set it to 90 and just focus on one foot because you’re getting exact feedback where if you’re just kind of like out trying to practice your cadence a little bit quicker, you don’t really know if you’re doing it right.

[01:00:35] You don’t know until like the runs over. I think you can set on garment. I think there is a cadence option that you can see how that’s going. So that’s a way to kind of get some feedback, but then you’d have to constantly look at it. yeah. Whereas, if you have something there beeping or, or, or just letting you know when you’re off that like specific cadence where you’d want to be, it’s a little bit quicker.

[01:00:57]I think that’s really helpful and jumping, jumping rope, or just even running in place or running, doing really short or like running and like leaning up against the wall and like having your cadence, kind of be underneath you is a good way to like, there’s a bunch of things when it comes to running form that kind of all need to work together.

[01:01:12] But if you’re not, if you don’t have the cadence rate, Like everything is else will won’t work as well either. So I think cadence is actually the best place to start with that.

[01:01:21] Josh Ried: [01:01:21] and I highly recommend a jump rope because the cool thing about the jump rope is you kind of enact the pose method where you aren’t, you it’s a really subtle heel lifts towards the button.

[01:01:31] You’ll kind of like drive with the knee. Whereas when we run a lot of us get a little. Ham. And, I used to be very guilty of this. I was very hamstring dominant and I would kind of sweep my leg back and really use my hamstring to, to push, to, to pull my foot behind me and lifted. Whereas I wasn’t really using my glues in my quads as much.

[01:01:50] And then just driving with my knees. So when your light comes forward, you can, you can like. If you watch someone do it, you might look like they’re actually using their hamstring to curl their heel up towards their butt, but really more that more. So what they’re doing is when they push off, they’re just like lifting their knee forward.

[01:02:06] And depending on how fast their legs are turning over and how fast they’re running, that he’ll just lift up naturally. But the hamstrings, like actually in a pretty relaxed position. So I think that, I think that jump rope running, whether it’s in place or moving forward at a, like a slow speed really helps foster that sort of, that motion, that habit.

[01:02:22] Rich Ryan: [01:02:22] Yeah, it’s interesting. Cause it’s like, like your hamstring, like you are pulling it a little bit, but it is all kind of working together. And so it should be relaxed and also your hip flexors should really kind of stay much more relaxed. Like it shouldn’t have this big, crazy, the activation, like you’re like when you’re doing like high knees or something, it’s just like a subtle lift of, of that nature to kind of have it pointed towards the ground.

[01:02:42] And you work on that with, with the jump rope, for sure. I think that’s a great call and yeah. And being able to work on that, the proprioception of things like where, how you’re landing. And then like, thinking about activating your glutes and like where, where are your foot in? What’s actually happening with your foot and knee and ankle?

[01:02:57]it’s hard to do that on the run mostly because, most of us aren’t that aren’t skilled enough to run in a footwear that is going to feel good. And you’re going to be able to feel that. So with drills, maybe even like barefoot and like feeling it like a lot of them. Single leg stuff so that you are able to learn where your body is and where you’re like, how to control it, is definitely a skill that we’ve lost.

[01:03:19] We’ve we very much have lost. So those type of drills, I think it would be important in that respect.

[01:03:24] Josh Ried: [01:03:24] Don’t jump rope barefoot though. Have you ever jumped rope to barefoot?

[01:03:28] Rich Ryan: [01:03:28] I imagine that would suck if you hit the

[01:03:29] Josh Ried: [01:03:29] robots, robots are.

[01:03:33] Rich Ryan: [01:03:33] No,

[01:03:33] Josh Ried: [01:03:33] don’t do that idea. Don’t recommend it.

[01:03:35] Rich Ryan: [01:03:35] Definitely don’t do that. so yeah, I think drills is a great place for that type of beginner.

[01:03:40] Who’s just kind of getting into this just so that they lay a good foundation down. or if you’ve never done drills, like if you’re running, if you’ve been running for a long time and you’ve just never done drills, I think that you should try them just to see how that can improve your efficiency and your, and your proprioception.

[01:03:56] Cause it’s like, you don’t know. What you can’t feel. And I think that’s what a lot of runners end up happening, or what happens to them is that they just forget how it should feel and how to activate certain things. And just going through these drills and like, Like really focusing on them or focusing on your cadence items.

[01:04:13] To me, if I fall asleep on my cadence, it will slow down a little bit. so I need to be kind of present with that a couple of times during my run, and check and make sure everything checks out after. but having, having those types of things to check in on and having developing those skills, I think is important.

[01:04:28]Josh Ried: [01:04:28] like you just said, right? You, you can’t act on what you like, you can’t feel as like, we don’t. You don’t know what you can’t feel. And we don’t, we don’t know. We don’t know. So I can’t recommend more to, for everyone to give, take the time for themselves to like study some running, watch, watch the YouTube videos.

[01:04:46] Like I said, there’s, there’s a lot of good ones out there, you know, a videotape yourself, get into that. And so you can make the connection between how things feel and how they look.

[01:04:57] Rich Ryan: [01:04:57] Totally. yeah, so that’d be a good spot. And one thing I do want to, just, I think across the board, I think is something that we should all do is to stay sharp on, is his carries, I think carries, I think people can get taken away, can go overboard on caries.

[01:05:11] And I think that, but I think those are gains that should be maintained pain throughout so that you’re not starting from scratch. You don’t do too much carrier work. Do you.

[01:05:20] Josh Ried: [01:05:20] I don’t. I mean, when I was work doing tree work, I was pretty much dead lifting and doing front carriers all the time. So that kind of stuck, that’s kind of stuck with me.

[01:05:29] So it wasn’t really as necessary for me just based on my line of work. however, as far as moving forward and not really being in that line of work anymore, I really enjoy just utilization of the kettlebell offer a couple of reasons. One, you know, goblet, squat, right. You’re holding that in that. So you get some awesome.

[01:05:43]so you’re, you’re actually involved in that, but I mean, with the, with the swings. The way that you’re working your grip and the amount that you, you know, get your posterior chain going. I think that that’s going to translate super duper well to carrying something around.

[01:05:59] Rich Ryan: [01:05:59] Yeah. So doing some sort of kettlebell work, I think would really be helpful for the caries.

[01:06:03] I think I’m going to keep a carry workout in there, like once a month, just because it’s going to be whatever I’m basing it around. So it would be. So if I’m focused on a marathon, it would be part of my marathon workout, but like after some intervals I would pay a sandbag and run with it for a little bit.

[01:06:19] Yeah, that’d be it. I did one the other day. It was, it was three by two mile descending page, and then I would just carry it and then it would be a quarter mile sandbag carry after the two mile. Just to work on different levels of fatigue and how that feels and how it feels later in a workout as opposed to beginning of workout.

[01:06:39] And then where I net needs to kind of be sharpened up, down the road.

[01:06:42] Josh Ried: [01:06:42] so also good. That’s good. Like mental toughness work is good. Grip work like the bags uncomfortable on ya. You’re like already dying after the word gal. That’s good. That’s good. Mental toughness. Shit.

[01:06:51] Rich Ryan: [01:06:51] That’s good to hear. You can always, you can always go a little bit faster with the bag and you kind of choose to go slower.

[01:06:57] Josh Ried: [01:06:57] That’s a funny truth.

[01:06:59] Rich Ryan: [01:06:59] It really is like how I was running with the bag. After that first two miles at the slowest pace that I had run was running and based on the last few miles at the faster pace, like. My carrier was so much worse just based on fatigue and because I just didn’t fucking want to, I wanted it to be over.

[01:07:15]but yeah, so doing stuff like that, adding it into the, the specific work that you’re doing, even if you’re doing, if you’re doing like Hill sprints, then just do some short carry after. but make the focus of the, the carry workout, the actual. Aerobic or anaerobic benefit that you want to get out of it, but then just pick up the, pick up the bucket or the bag and just

[01:07:37] Josh Ried: [01:07:37] do it right after the opposite bucket.

[01:07:40] Rich Ryan: [01:07:40] Yeah. To me, anything crazy doesn’t have any, any, anything, specific, but I would just do it just to stay sharp because when you think about it, I mean like your carries, it’s like the second longest thing that you’re doing out there, aside from running, right? Like that’s where you can lose the most ground.

[01:07:55] If your, if your carries are bad, All right. Cool. So that kind of wraps it up as far as like what some things you could do in terms of training. I mean, there’s endless amounts of directions. You can take this, these next couple weeks. We really employ, just keep training, keep working to get better. it’s not the time for downtime you’re you probably were not preparing for your peak race.

[01:08:16] And if you were like, you didn’t get a chance to taper and then do it, maybe just bring things back down to the maintenance volume that you were, and then reassess after. Two or three weeks of that, if you want to build up that volume or where you want to take it. any last notes?

[01:08:30] Josh Ried: [01:08:30] Nah, man. Rich dude, that’s it, man.

[01:08:32] We get to relish in this, in this opportunity to have uninterrupted building on uninterrupted training.

[01:08:40] Rich Ryan: [01:08:40] It’s going to be awesome. It’s really awesome. And that’s the thing. When I’m out there killing myself. I’m like, what the fuck? Why am I doing this? I’m like, Oh, it’s just way cooler. It’s just much cooler to be out here and be fit than to not be fit now being not fit sucks, being fit.

[01:08:55] It’s cool,

[01:08:56] Josh Ried: [01:08:56] dude. That’s actually, I liked the, I liked where you put it being fit is cool. Yeah. I mean, right now, man, I’ve been having conversations with people who are having difficulty finding motivation, you know, for a multitude of reasons, but it’s like anyone that’s listening, that’s out there.

[01:09:10] Getting after it’s still like you’re being a model for everyone else.

[01:09:14] Rich Ryan: [01:09:14] Totally. Yeah. Like, and then, like we’ve mentioned before, it’s like, who’s going to, like, what’s going to separate the people who are going to come into this next year. and what’s, and what’s going to keep the people behind and, and really like the race.

[01:09:27] It’s only just a vehicle to push yourself as hard as you can. And at the, at the core of this thing, why we’re racing, why we’re training to do that, to find out what kind of potential we have and to find out. What we can do when we put our efforts 100% behind them. Yeah. And it doesn’t change anything because there’s not a race.

[01:09:46] Like we’re still in it for that purpose to better ourselves and to become better examples for the people around us. And like that shouldn’t be squandered because we don’t get a metal after it. Like we’re still out here doing. Everything we can just to make ourselves better and to push ourselves as much as possible.

[01:10:04] Josh Ried: [01:10:04] Sure. I think it was a, I believe it was Socrates, at least as far as Plato says, he says something along the lines of what a shame it is for a man to not fully understand and express and feel the capabilities of his body, you know, or her. Right. But ultimately it’s like, We’re we’re a human, we have this body thing.

[01:10:22] This physical planet is like, what the hell? But that was the point of it. Right. See what it can do. See where it can take you to the top of a mountain. Is there this rarefied air? You know, it’s, it’s, it’s fun to do this stuff to take yourself to these. Ultimately unique places. If you look at the, the, the grand picture of the condition of a lot of people on the planet, one, we have a lot of freedom to do things here and, and to with, well, within that freedom, we can express our body and get to get ourselves fit and healthy.

[01:10:51] So we can go to these places Nietzsche said, right. And who climbed the highest mountain? Last of all, tragedy is real and imaginary. So it’s like through this, through this discipline and through working with ourselves, whether it’s a metaphorical mountain or a real mountain, it’s like, okay, Everything else is just more manageable.

[01:11:05] So if you’re feeling like down about what’s going on in the world right now, this is, this is how you can take control of your life

[01:11:12] Rich Ryan: [01:11:12] being

[01:11:12] Josh Ried: [01:11:12] 100% work, sustainable and fit.

[01:11:17] Rich Ryan: [01:11:17] And that’s like, ultimately what we’re doing, you feel like you’re listening to this and you’re, you’re invested in your training a little bit.

[01:11:24] Like you want to feel that, and there’s no reason for you to not. So I think that that. That by itself and having that reminder, should be enough to continue to train and to continue to, to push things forward.

[01:11:39] Josh Ried: [01:11:39] All right. I think this is where you should do the outro with the James Brown song. I feel good.

[01:11:44] Rich Ryan: [01:11:44] Should we do that?

[01:11:45] Josh Ried: [01:11:45] We should do that.

[01:11:45] Rich Ryan: [01:11:45] I’ll see if I can get that, those, the rights to that music. So. We might need to start, start a Patrion to get the music for that and have it for like several years. But you just what’d you do, you just did it another pretty cool MKT F Katie’s every freaking day.

[01:12:06] Josh Ried: [01:12:06] Pretty freaking hot dude.

[01:12:07] It was literally the hottest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I’ve never felt so. Hot hot. Yeah. So me and, Steve or Steve and I, we went out to Connecticut. We started at like the New York, Connecticut border and ran the Appalachian trail to the Massachusetts Connecticut border. So we try to set the fastest time for that Connecticut section of the Appalachian trail, which we did successfully.

[01:12:32] We shaved off like 52 men or something like that. do it, it was, I mean, it was awesome, but it’s one of the, it’s one of those weird things. I mean, you know, It sucks. Like the day started out, you could feel the heat, the sweat is moving your body. Cause it’s 98% humidity with no wind. You’re like, wow, this is, this is going to be rough.

[01:12:47] You know, it’s like 20 miles and 30 miles. And you’re like, Holy shit. I’m not even half, you know, halfway there. And it it’s, it’s cool to see where, where the head goes and all the things that, that come to mind. The 20, I was trying to, justify. Why people do ultras. Right? Cause it seems like a ridiculous, unhealthy thing to do it.

[01:13:08] Like beats the body, everyone up. Well, I, what I paralleled it to was people who go to say like Costa Rica or Peru or something to do say a, Iowasca ceremony, right? It’s like this big thing, they go out there to get this crazy experience, like, bring on, bring on these feelings and dive into these places that buy at them.

[01:13:29] And God before I’m like, yo, you can go run for 10 hours and get something. Not the same, but pretty similar. I mean, you go to some new places, the thoughts come in, you experience new emotions and knowledge. So it was a, I really appreciate the experience, every time, even when it’s really painful, it’s, Kind of, like I just said, you know, you climb the highest mountains.

[01:13:50] You’ll have all tragedies, really imaginary. It’s like after running for 10 hours, like all that suffering, all that voluntary suffering, like, man, nothing’s really bothersome.

[01:14:00] Rich Ryan: [01:14:00] Well, we’re all good. Here. You came out a different person. That’s pretty cool.

[01:14:04] Josh Ried: [01:14:04] A more chafed and sore person.

[01:14:07] Rich Ryan: [01:14:07] Dude, I wore my vest for the first time this weekend and I did a two hour run and I was chafed as fuck.

[01:14:13] I have like I’m bleeding on my chest. Is there a secret behind this?

[01:14:17] Josh Ried: [01:14:17] Steve brought nipple bandaids and I was all about that, man. I’ve put on nipple bed is that was super clutch. Like

[01:14:24] Rich Ryan: [01:14:24] the shirt had a proper

[01:14:26] Josh Ried: [01:14:26] texture. Pearl Izumi it’s actually like a duathlon shirt. So it has like the little bike pockets in the back that I had fruit snacks in back there.

[01:14:34] It was nice. Yup.

[01:14:36] Rich Ryan: [01:14:36] Were you worried? Cause it was so hot. We were like, Oh, people die sometimes in the heat.

[01:14:40] Josh Ried: [01:14:40] I knew for sure we weren’t going to die, but at mile maybe 20 to 25, I realized like, Hey dude, my feeling in unique ways, but based on what I’ve read and like the research, I know that this is the heat.

[01:14:53] My head was was. Like pumping. Like my heartbeat was really heavy in my head and my head huddled a lot of pressure in it and I wasn’t really sweating and it just is weird. Like, it wasn’t really high. It

[01:15:05] was,

[01:15:05] Rich Ryan: [01:15:05] it was strange. And the,

[01:15:07] Josh Ried: [01:15:07] the, the amount of heat I was feeling in my body and my, my thoughts were getting jumbled.

[01:15:12] Like, we’d go to, we get somewhere and I’d go to speak and be like, the words came out pretty all right. But like, they weren’t really good. They weren’t really clear. I was like, And so, yeah, I was just hot.

[01:15:22] Rich Ryan: [01:15:22] It was hot out there. So it seems like it was really hot. I’m glad you got it. Done. Another MKT and. You successfully defended an MKT against Aaron Newell, which is pretty cool.

[01:15:34] Josh Ried: [01:15:34] This is true.

[01:15:35] Rich Ryan: [01:15:35] This is when I saw him coming from devil’s path. I felt free. I was like, Oh man, Aaron’s gonna try and knock them all out wall while he’s out here.

[01:15:41] Josh Ried: [01:15:41] I am. I’m so excited him and I talked and we both said like the same thing, which is that. There, we want a reason to do like trails around us again, but we already have the speed record on them.

[01:15:53] So we won’t. So like he has a great range. He has a bunch of trails up in the Adirondacks that he’s got and he just like wanted to go tackle something that they didn’t have yet. I was like, well, hell yeah, man, like, come, come do delis path, beat that. That’s and give me a reason to go back. So I’m really excited for them to, to tackle it again and bring it down.

[01:16:12] Rich Ryan: [01:16:12] Yeah, totally, man. Well, congrats on hanging on to it, even though you would have gone back and tried to do it again. I guess that’s kind of the game, right? That’s the game,

[01:16:19] Josh Ried: [01:16:19] man. I love this guy. We’ll go back and I’ll, I’ll crush it again, dude. It’s just a, it keeps the fire burning.

[01:16:26] Rich Ryan: [01:16:26] Totally, on my sleep,

[01:16:28] Josh Ried: [01:16:28] you can go for that thing in your, on your neighborhood, that 22 mile or whatever,

[01:16:31] Rich Ryan: [01:16:31] maybe.

[01:16:32] I mean, I said, I, that I said it was like 900 feet. It’s like, it’s like 2000 feet over 22 miles. I’m like that. So it’s still not a ton, but it’s like Rocky, if I like, my miles are up right now, like I’m, I’m on track for a hundred miles this week. So that is where I’m going to try to be for a couple of weeks.

[01:16:51] Like, like we’ve mentioned before, it’s like, I’m gonna build. And then I’m gonna keep it. And so right now it’s uncomfortable right now. It sucks leaks. I’m like, fuck another run. That needs to be like 12 miles. Another run needs to be at this point was like trying to keep track. Like there’s no room for error right now.

[01:17:07] That’s annoying, but next week it will be better because I’ll be into it a little bit more. but I figure like, yeah, if I’m marathon training doing a hundred miles a week, like I should have the volume, but again, it’s just a matter of staying sharp on those trails. So I’m going to share a little bit,

[01:17:22] Josh Ried: [01:17:22] what’s your goal?

[01:17:22] Do you have like your core set? Do you know what your goal time is

[01:17:25] Rich Ryan: [01:17:25] for the marathon? So, yeah, I was talking to Mark IDET about it and he said he. No, somebody that might be putting together like an official race, it’s gonna be super small. so like it kind of counts. It’ll be on athletes. We can count on it happening.

[01:17:38]And I don’t know, man, my, my peers two 42, which isn’t great. And it was a couple years ago and it was a really short buildup. I’m happy with it. It’s I’ve only done two. but I think I could run under two 30. so something in that round, like, like if I could hold to like five 30 fives, I think that’s a two.

[01:18:01]24 or something like that, which should be at the very, very, like far out like, dude.

[01:18:08] Josh Ried: [01:18:08] That’s cool. What’s your half PR

[01:18:11] Rich Ryan: [01:18:11] I don’t really have a half PR. I’ve never raised a half. but like a coup like from where my like five can, where my 10 mile was. Like, that’s kind of how that projects out and that’s why I just need to get volume.

[01:18:22] That’s why I needed to get more race specific. I need to work at running under fatigue. Like most of my speed work is going to be done. at the back end of runs, you know, like my warmup, my warmups are gonna be 12 miles and then I’m going to start doing speed work stuff, you know, just to get ready for that type of specific stuff.

[01:18:37] So

[01:18:38] Josh Ried: [01:18:38] that’s fun. That’s cool. We want to have him. I’m excited for that.

[01:18:41] Rich Ryan: [01:18:41] Yeah. It’s something now. And I’m excited for it too, just to feel, how shitty my legs feel every day and just. Continue to make them feel shitty until they don’t.

[01:18:52] Josh Ried: [01:18:52] Stay in touch with yourself.

[01:18:53] Rich Ryan: [01:18:53] Yes. cool. Well, we appreciate you guys for listening.

[01:18:56] If you appreciate us for talking, we’d love for you to drop us a review. five stars would be great if you feel like it’s worth five stars. That would be awesome. that’s where I is all around. but cool. We’ll just work in the people’s find. Yeah. I am located

[01:19:11] Josh Ried: [01:19:11] through the internet on the Instagram, J a underscore SHQ a underscore R I E D pieces.