The Running Public

The last time we chatted with Mark he was building towards his 2021 season. Since then, he’s found his calling in Ultras, won a world championship, and lost a full championship season to illness. Let’s dive in!

What are some “mandatory” supplements for runners? Should I trust my HR zones when I’m out of shape? How should we gauge improvement? How do I keep my body hair from chafing? Plus, more!

What is your current Stage of Training? Is it time to repeat what you’ve done or is time to change things? Are you more of a fast twitch or slow twitch athlete? What does it matter? Should you keep doing what you like doing most? Why is my training plan working better for others? All of these are super important questions to be able to answer as a runner, so let’s dig in!

We break down Kirk’s awesome weekend of racing and talk about his takeaways from the first Spartan event of 2023 (how the course looked, what the obstacles were like, penalty loop setups, rumors for the season, etc). 

DJ joins us today to discuss his wild journey from bowling to power lifting to health nightmare to world champion. 

The classic form of interval training uses standing, walking, or slow jogging as the rest period following a hard/fast interval. There is an alternative means of conducting your “rest” during an interval workout and that is what we explore today!

Our last episode was aimed towards the athlete who realizes they will never be “fast”. One of our listeners who fit that description realized that we totally missed the mark with other direction we took things. Today, she joins us for an unscripted conversation about what it really means to her. This was one of our best chats. Enjoy!

As much as we like to talk about optimizing race performances, there is a whole sect of the population who will never be considered fast and who don’t really have any desire to be fast. That’s not why they run. So how do you approach running if your goal doesn’t have anything to do with speed?

This is NOT an informative Q&A. This will give no amount of running knowledge. It is probably our most ridiculous episode to date, or at least our most random. But, the questions all came from listeners so we can’t be held responsible!

We both started as track/cross country coaches. Then we found OCR and trail running. How has that impacted and changed our philosophy and understanding of run coaching?

What better way to begin our New Year’s push towards improving ourselves than to listen to a man who quit training, lost his love for the sport, lost his fitness, and then began the long road back to an eventual world championship. 

Last episode was about theory. Today is about action. We walk through how to put it all into action.

As the new year approaches, people everywhere scramble to refocus their lives. Far too often, they concentrate on flashy goals while failing to acknowledge the root causes of past failings. Let’s all avoid that this year!  We also clean out the few remaining listener questions from 2022!

AKA, why running is just like marriage. People expect linear progression, which isn’t possible. Here is how it REALLY works!

As we come to the end of a fantastic 2022, we’re taking the opportunity to answer as many of your questions as possible! You all sent some pretty great ones this time around!

Possibly the best current example of a hybrid athlete, Katie went from a CrossFitter who didn’t run to world champion in the 24 hour World’s Toughest Mudder in just three years. Today she breaks down exactly how and why she trains the way she does does!

You can be successful runner using a low volume, medium volume, or high volume approach. So, why do so many coaches and athletes believe that higher volume training is superior? 

Kris just completed one of the most outrageous years of racing, both in terms of how many races she ran and how many different types of races she excelled in. We gave up trying to guess how she pulls it off and just decided to ask her.

The weight room is, historically, the distance runner’s nemesis. You might not feel welcome. You probably don’t know where to begin. You might not know why runners should even lift. This episode is designed to educate you and put you at ease! 

Ian is an Ultra runner and also the man behind the social media accounts of some of your favorite OCR and running podcasts. Plus, he has a pretty amazing story himself!

Recently, Parker Valby took 2nd place at NCAA cross country championships despite only running (allegedly) 3 times per week. That got our little brains thinking about the non traditional approaches to becoming a better runner!

The sport of running is in a historically great place, and we’ll take the next 90 minutes to tell you exactly why!

The title says it all! Be the best gift giver this year!

Chad has a wild story that takes him from broke and fighting addiction to finding sport and becoming an Age Group champ. Enjoy this one!

It’s been two years since we released our “Get to Know Your Hosts” and we have new listeners who don’t know us as well as the OG listeners do. Since Brakken is out sick, we’re rereleasing those two episodes as one double feature episode today. Brakken is part 1; Kirk is part 2. Enjoy, and we’ll be back to our regular scheduled programming on Friday!