Just Keep Running with Evan Blakeney

Does too much sodium hurt carb absorption? Are runners overdoing electrolytes? I went looking for the research on how much sodium runners need per hour and whether stacking drink mixes, gels, and salt tabs is helping or hurting your fueling.   I was all set to record an episode telling you that too much salt could be wrecking your fueling. Then I went looking for the studies, and they didn't...

Do you actually need a 20 mile long run before your first marathon? Where did that number even come from, and what happens if you skip it on purpose?   I ran a 2:21 half marathon in March. On October 4th I’m running my first full marathon at the Maine Marathon, and I’m saying my goal out loud so I can’t quietly move it later: under 4 hours and 30 minutes. That’s about 30 minutes faster than what m...

Stefan Heisler is one of my best friends from college, and he is the reason I run at all. A year ago he sent me a text about how running fits nicely around work and kids. That text ended with me standing on a mountain in New Hampshire wondering what I had agreed to.   This episode is his story. Two miles off the couch, a triathlon leg he was terrified of, a half marathon he had to walk in, a 3:30...

Nita Sweeney started running at 49, and it started with sixty seconds of jogging in a hidden ravine with her dog. She was severely depressed, out of shape, and convinced her neighbors would laugh at her. She's now a marathoner, an ultra runner, and the author of Depression Hates a Moving Target. We go all the way back: an Ohio farm childhood, a father who measured everything, a law career tha...

Heads up before you listen: Fitz shares a specific calorie formula in this episode that's worked for a lot of her clients. It's a simplification — it doesn't account for height, age, sex, or how much you're training. If you're training for a distance event, talk to a sports dietitian before cutting calories. Under-fueling is genuinely common in endurance runners and it&apo...

PJ Glassey has spent almost 40 years testing what actually works in strength training, and it led him somewhere weird: racing up skyscraper stairwells. In this episode, the founder of XGYM breaks down fast twitch vs. slow twitch muscle fibers, the exact exercise protocol he used to increase a triathlete's stride power, why tower running might be the best cross-training a runner can do, and ho...

Jason Geroux — known online as The Maine Viking — has run dozens of ultramarathons including 19 100-milers, and this spring he ran 300 miles solo through the Arizona desert using his own house as an aid station. In this episode, recorded in person in Orono, Maine, Jason walks through how a torturous 2-mile honeymoon run turned into a decade of daily training, why 100 miles became his favorite dist...

Can one bad week of missed runs ruin your marathon training? I got sick partway through a training block — a chest cold, three nights of awful sleep, and a week where everything that could go wrong did — and in this solo episode I think out loud about what it actually costs. I'm building toward an October marathon with a goal of breaking 4:30, and right when my training was finally clicking,...

Zone 2 training is low-intensity, aerobic-base running — but the hardest part isn't the science, it's one simple question: how do you actually know when you're in Zone 2? Most runners rely on the heart rate zones their watch hands them. The problem is those zones are built on an estimate of your max heart rate that can be off by 40 beats per minute, which throws the whole calculatio...

Ice bath for runners — does cold water immersion actually help recovery, or is it just marketing hype? In this episode, I dig into the peer-reviewed research to find out and answer the questions every runner has but nobody seems to address.   For about 15 years, I thought I had ice baths figured out. Then in the span of a few months, I heard I might be doing them at the wrong time, for the wrong r...

13.1 miles. It’s not superhuman — millions of people do it every year. But for me, finishing my first half marathon was a genuinely big deal. And not because I crushed it. I didn’t. I finished well below the average time, my knee was a question mark the whole way, the weather was absolutely miserable, and I almost needed an emergency bathroom stop at mile nine.   In this episode, I’m breaking down...

What does it actually take to run 60 miles a week, lift heavy multiple times a week, and still show up for HYROX competitions — without falling apart?   Joe Mello figured it out the hard way. He grew up playing baseball in the Bay Area, hated running his whole life (it was literally used as punishment at practice), and then one November day in Austin decided to sign up for a marathon happening in...

Do you need a running watch to be a “real” runner? In this first episode of Just Keep Running, Evan Blakeney shares his honest experience buying a used Garmin Forerunner 955 Solar on eBay for $250 — what works, what doesn’t, and whether a watch is actually worth it for beginner and intermediate runners. Evan walks through his two running journeys: the first one in college with no watch, no Strava,...