Deconstructing Eliud Kipchoge’s Marathon World Record And Consistent Controlled Training Patterns

If you want to learn from the best, you can’t get any better than Eliud Kipchoge.

In this episode, I deconstruct the marathon world record and training patterns of the greatest long-distance runner of all time, the greatest marathon runner of all time, and one of the greatest endurance athletes and humans of all time. I talk about how Eliud balances consistency and discipline with consciously trying to never exceed 80% of his capacity during training, because his goal is to save his energy for races instead.

As you’ll hear, Kipchoge rarely exceeds the MAF pace formulated by Dr. Phil Maffetone, who actually predicted that Kipchoge would become the greatest marathoner in history by training easier than other elite marathoners. Tune in to hear me break down how he trains, runs 110-120 miles a week with discipline and joy, and never gets sick or injured. There is a lot to gain from emulating Eliud’s sensible approach, especially when you consider that the cover of the book Primal Endurance says: “Slow down to go faster.” This episode will teach you how to actually do that.LINKS:

TIMESTAMPS:

Eluid Kipchoge broke the marathon record by running under two hours. [00:24]

Kipchoge’s training principles are unique. [02:14]

Marathon running has become so popular that it enables us ordinary runners to learn lessons about our own capacity. [05:39]

The doping problem is still out there, but efforts are being made to handle it. [09:50]

Kipchoge never goes over the edge of breakdown but he works hard and consistently. HJe doesn’t exceed his MAF heartrate. [12:53]

The state of organized running in America, especially for youth, is disastrous. The abuse of young runners must stop. [25:40]

Some interesting quotes from Kipchoge are below: [29:28]

Motivation plus discipline equals consistency. Learn to embrace this mindset of slow pace and relaxed training. [30:30]

QUOTES from Kipchoge:

“Only the disciplined ones in life are free.”
“If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and your passions.”
“It’s not about the legs, it’s about the heart and mind.”
“The best time to plant a tree was 25 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is today.”

LINKS:

TRANSCRIPT:

Brad (00:01):
Welcome to the Return of the Primal Endurance Podcast. This is your host, Brad Kearns, and we are going on a journey to a kinder, gentler, smarter, more fun, more effective way to train for ambitious endurance goals. Visit primal endurance.fit to join the community and enroll in our free video course.

Brad (00:24):
Hey, let’s learn from the best. How about Eliud Kipchoge, the greatest long distance runner of all time, the greatest marathon runner of all time, one of the greatest endurance athletes of all time, one of the most amazing humans of all time. He has broken the two-hour barrier for the 26.2 mile marathon. My recording was, uh, made when he just missed it with a two-hour and 25 second race. And then he went back into one of these orchestrated events that they set up for him with pacers, uh, on a race track. It wasn’t an official marathon race. Some marathon purist contend that this record should be, uh, asterisks because it’s not, uh, your typical running the marathon through the streets of New York or Boston or London, but what an achievement. And it is what it is. It’s one of the greatest performances that we’ve ever seen in endurance. I’m gonna rank it up there highly with Alex Honnold’s ascent of El Capitan as memorialized in the movie free solo. Uh, but this guy clicked along running 26 miles at a pace of four minutes, 34 seconds per mile. That’s two minutes and 50 seconds per kilometer, which is absolutely flying. And for perspective, uh, they have a treadmill set up at major Marathon. I saw some footage on social media where they had a treadmill going at that 4:34 pace, and people would jump on and get spit out the back right away. But even an accomplished runner couldn’t hang with that for more than a hundred meters. Um, 4:34 would win most track meets in high school for the mile race, and this guy did 26 of ’em in a row. His training principles are really interesting and unique and there’s so much to learn from him.

Brad (02:15):
Uh, the main takeaway being that he never really puts himself into distress in training unlike most contemporaries in endurance training, long distance running, uh, there’s a constant struggle with breakdown, burnout, illness, and injury from overdoing it. But he’s well under control at all of his workouts week in and week out. He’s like a machine. He works what could widely be considered to be very hard, but it’s within his boundaries and limits. So that’s the best takeaway that you can get from what Kipchoge does in training. And the guy is so quotable. So I encourage you to, uh, follow some links and read some of these really thoughtful quotes. He’s like a poet, a philosopher, and also the greatest runner of all time. And so that tees up this discussion of his training habits and analysis. And it was assisted by, uh, publication on the internet where they have published in detail, uh, his training protocols, his times, his workouts. And so everyone has learned tremendously in the last year since, um, he’s shared this information with everybody very generously. So let’s hear more about Eliud Kipchoge, the great Kenyan marathoner, two-time Olympic gold medalist, with an incredible resume highlighted by accomplishing the impossible. That 1:59 marathon.

Brad (03:35):
It’s the magical mythical two hour marathon barrier. Hey, maybe you’re not an elite athlete, maybe you’re a recreational competitor, but it’s wonderful to watch what’s happening at the very outer edge of human peak performance potential. And this amazing Kenyan marathoner by the name of Eliud Kipchoge is breaking records and approaching what was long believed to be impossible. And that is to run 26.2 miles in under two hours. Nike made a big deal about this and had this 1:59 project. There’s a great documentary on YouTube. They trained these top top runners and got the best scientists in the world involved. And they scientifically designed training schedule on the perfect race course where they ran around a racetrack, uh, had a bunch of pacers and made this attempt. And Kipchoge ran a two hour and 27 minutes. It wasn’t considered a world record because it didn’t happen in a real race with real competitors.

Brad (04:41):
We had pacers and a pace car. So Kipchoge went out there to a real race, the Berlin Marathon, in mid-September 2018 and threw down a two hour, one minute, 39 seconds. This equates to an average pace per mile of four minutes and 38 seconds. Even if you don’t know anything about long distance running and you head over to a high school track, 400 meters and time yourself running as fast as you can for one lap, a full sprint, most likely you will not break a minute 10. And this is what he ran for 26 consecutive miles. So then envision a human taking off at that pace that you can hardly sustain for not even a half a lap and running all the way downtown or all the way to the jetty and back, or whatever your reference point is for 26 miles. It’s absolutely superhuman.

Brad (05:39):
There’s the great article in the atlantic.com, uh, quote, even if you couldn’t care less about distance running or world records, Kipchoge’s accomplishment is worth pondering for what it says about human endurance and what the body is capable of in terms of cardiovascular strength and muscle efficiency. Indeed, one of the reasons Marathon running has become so popular is that it enables us ordinary runners to learn those lessons about our own endurance capacity, both physical and mental. Oh my gosh. So those of us that are into running and can fully appreciate what this guy’s doing, oh my gosh, I remember working so hard starting in high school, trying to get my mile time down in the track meets and throwing down a 4:38 1 day and celebrating that great achievement of breaking four 40 whatever. And to imagine a human going on at this pace for 26 miles is absolutely mind blowing.

Brad (06:37):
Have a wonderful listener to the show named Jack McGinnis, who wrote me a really thoughtful email, uh, sending me to the research articles that have been published about Kipchoge. So I thought I would do a whole show about this wonderful achievement of the leading runner on the planet. And certainly now you have to call him the greatest marathon runner of all time. I believe he’s won nine out of 10 marathons that he’s entered all major marathons, including the Olympic Gold medal in Rio down in 2016., at 5’6″. a hundred fifteen pound, dude. So if you’re a little kid listening and you were too small for football or basketball, congratulations, <laugh>, there’s a sport for you. It’s called running. It’s one of the most beautiful, simple, straightforward personal battles where if you work hard, you’ll get better. There’s no barriers, there’s no mean coaches or politics about the starting positions.

Brad (07:39):
And who gets to play second base, the coach’s son, blah, blah, blah, whatever. That’s what’s so nice is they turn on the stopwatch and whoever gets there first is the winner. Yes, you can improve if you work hard, but you have to do it right. And by and large, the running community, dating back to the running boom now 50 years ago or so has been doing it disastrously wrong, namely over training and plunging, immersing into chronic exercise patterns that not only lead to performance stalls, plateaus or regression, but also destroy your general health and everyday life. The rate of running injuries is so ridiculously high. There’s a great book by Dr. Kelly Starrett called Ready to Run, talking about how to get into this sport and sustain great performance without the injuries working on flexibility mobility, but mainly it comes down to training in a sensible matter, rather than directing this highly motivated, driven type A personality that’s attracted to running rather than applying those bullheaded personality characteristics into the complex challenge of endurance training.

Brad (08:55):
And Kipchoge is an incredible example of a guy who is healthy and balanced. He’s very wise and thoughtful. He offers up these incredible quotes where he’s gonna be going down in history, not just as the top runner, but is one of the most thoughtful philosophers of modern times, especially of athletic peak performance. He’s very well-read, he’s quoting the spiritual leaders of all times, and then he’s quoting Stephen Covey in the. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.This guy from rural Africa training his butt off all day long, but still has chance to expand his mind and body and have a wonderful perspective about sport. The article, uh, that’s gonna be in the show notes was written by this prominent coach and trainer named Steve Magnus really making a great name for himself as one of the leading slash coaches in the endurance running scene in the United States.

Brad (09:50):
Which is great because his name first surface, unfortunately in a controversial setting when he kind of did a whistleblower up at the hallowed quarters of the Nike running community in Portland, Oregon. And the great coach Alberto Salazar and Magnus didn’t like some of the stuff he saw relating to them towing that delicate borderline from legal drug use and supplementation over into the dark side of doping. And we know that doping continues to be a massive problem in the endurance community in all sports. Even many years post scandal when the lid was blown off of what we were seeing on television as basically a farce from the public point of view, thinking that these athletes were clean, when in fact everyone was doped up on incredibly enhancing drugs that transform performance from what you can do as a clean athlete.

Brad (10:48):
And were trying to clean up all these sports today. We’re certainly not there because, uh, doping positives come up all over the place, including, uh, recent Olympic games where the dramatic step was taken to ban the great nation of Russia from the Olympic Games because of the widespread systematic doping, uh, that was happening and exposed in that country. So we’re working on it and one can hope that the leading athletes of today are clean. But really, uh, when you come into context here, it doesn’t really matter. Cuz when you’re seeing the person winning the gold medal, you can guarantee that we’re competing on a level playing field. So if the top person is doping, I guarantee you that the second, third, fourth, fifth, seventh, 12th, 14th, and 21st athletes are also doping. Unfortunately, when Kipchoge is breaking these barriers, never before seen, I’m sure his name will always be in the mix with people wondering if the leading athletes are clean or not.

Brad (11:49):
And here’s me putting in a vote for believing that these athletes are doing everything they can to live an optimal lifestyle, training beautifully and not needing that performance enhancing element that has often been a shortcut for athletes who were not leading the clean life or getting enough sleep or training sensibly or eating the right foods. So the doping kind of covers up and washes away some of those lifestyle imperfections because the effect is so profound, and I’m believing that because these sports really are cleaning up and the penalties are so severe that the leading athletes of today are doing things like, uh, sleeping in an altitude tent and eating nutritious foods and getting all the right recovery and, uh, prevention, rehabilitation so they’re not breaking down, putting less stress on their joints, learning how to run with greater technique, better exercise physiology so we can guard against these overtraining patterns by identifying them before they rear their ugly head.

Brad (12:53):
All that great kind of stuff is where I’m hoping that the state of elite sports are today. But let’s get into the particulars of the analysis by Steve Magness on Kipchoge’s training method. The big takeaway point, Hey, if you have to go right now, if someone’s calling you at work into the meeting and this is all you listen to, you know what, there’s no secrets here. This guy works hard, he’s extremely consistent, but he never goes over that edge, that edge that all endurance athletes that I’ve met and coached and associated with, were always teetering right on that edge of breakdown, burnout, illness and injury. You know what I’m talking about? Raise your hand if you’ve been sick or injured in the last couple years as you progress toward these ambitious endurance goals. Most likely you had, and most likely it was strongly related to you overdoing it.

Brad (13:49):
Sorry, it wasn’t the preschool gathering where the cupcake party and someone else was sick. It was because your resistance was low because you overtrained. So here’s this guy at the very top of sport, never trashing his body. He reports that he never extends himself beyond 80% in training. 80%. That’s a ton left in the tank waiting for to to be unleashed on race day against his poor competitors. Her report that when this guy shows up on the starting line, they’re totally psyched out because they know they’re going to suffer royally because this guy pushes the pace and he’s like a machine. And you can just count on a blood bath out there when this guy’s on the starting line. The running community obsessed with weekly mileage will be interested to know that this guy puts in around 110 to 120 miles every week. No, he doesn’t have blocks or phases or down cycles and ramp up.

Brad (14:52):
He just hits the same volume every week, week in, week out, not even tapering before big races. That’s crazy stuff. But imagine never overextending yourself, never digging yourself a hole and never needing these down weeks where you can just keep humming along at a training pattern that’s comfortable and adaptable to you. So Jack is doing some editorializing here saying, if you allow me to do so, I would love to translate his training in terms of heart rate and the MAF concept of 180 minus your age. Because Kipchoge is not wearing a heart rate monitor and not reporting his heart rates during his workouts. The analysis is required when we’re talking about, uh, his training pace versus his marathon pace. For example, when he’s out there running a six minute per mile for 20 miles, that’s actually an easy workout because this is a guy who can run 4:38 pace for 26 miles in a race.

Brad (15:54):
Okay, so Jack says he trains at fairly fast paces, obviously, but it’s relative to his actual ability. His even his interval workouts are essentially what Dr. Maffeone has called in the past aerobic intervals. I’ll bet if he was wearing a heart rate monitor, his heart rate would hardly ever exceed MAF plus five beats. Hey, and Jack says <laugh>, let’s give this guy five beats for training consistently over the past decade and almost breaking bloody two hours in the marathon. Oh my goodness. So here’s Jack again. In the rare instance that he exceeds math, I would bet my life savings, he didn’t inform us what that is, but he’s making a strong bet that he still adheres to Phil’s seemingly counter advice to never exceed 90% of your max heart rate when doing anaerobic training. I would emphasize that almost no recreational athlete buys this maxim when they do finally make it through base training and start hitting it hard with the intense workouts.

Brad (16:55):
In other words, most of us listening when it’s time to go unleash, unleash the beast onto the track and do a speed workout, whether it’s quarters with the Tuesday night group or tempo run or intervals, almost all of us are jacking that heart rate above the 90% mark. Because remember most of us, let’s say between the ages of 20 and 50 or something our maximum heart rate is somewhere around 200, maybe one 90, whatever. So if you take 10% off that, if you have 90% as your ceiling, we’re talking about 17, 18, 20 heartbeats. So maxing out your hardest workouts at 173 or 180 or what have you, is dramatically different than hearing that thing beep and struggling to keep pace with the fast people in your pack and you’re going at 193 or 187. The breakdown and the recovery time required after you extend past 90% of Max’s heart rate is significant.

Brad (17:57):
I am extremely disappointed that I didn’t hear this advice during my triathlon career because I can imagine just leaving something in the tank on all 57 of those workouts, my hardest workouts that I ever did over my 10 year career. Oh yes. Remember, Andrew, when we did eight quarters in 62 to 64 with a short jog in between them and killed ourselves and thought, oh boy, now we’re ready for the next race. We had a wonderful workout. Or when I raced my late friend Don Weaver from the bottom of the canyon to the top and we broke 15 minutes hauling on this uphill trail, high fiving at the top, this stuff was all leaving it on the training ground rather than in applying it to the race as competitive athletes where we had strong competitive goals. So never exceeding 90% of your max heart rate when you’re going hard.

Brad (18:51):
And then that concept from Kipchoge, not to confuse you, but when he says he never extends himself beyond 80%, he’s giving that overall big picture perspective where he’s just going and humming along on workouts that sure they’re pretty difficult even to him, but he’s not killing himself. Back to Jack’s commentary. I’m confident in my assertions having put my true running geekery to the test and reading through and deciphering his log multiple times, he actually published his training log in its entirety on the internet. How cool is that? Oh my gosh. The only thing that he does that’s a bit counter to the primal endurance ideology is the fact that he has a quite a constant schedule. In other words, there’s none of this rest or things that we emphasize so strongly for the average person, he typically has four easy days per week. These are runs where he’s one to two minutes per mile slower than his marathon pace.

Brad (19:46):
So remember, if you’re a 4:38 guy for marathon for your longest race, uh, and he’s going six 30 s, consider that yourself. If you’re extrapolating and remember, we have to, uh, do the ratios here so it’s not like two minutes per mile slower for you. It might be three minutes per mile slower than your marathon pace that you train at frequently. Do you? Probably not, huh? Cause that’s way too slow and you don’t feel like you’re getting a workout. And there’s a quote from the article where on his easy day, uh, where is it? Oh quote, his recovery day seems to be when he goes out for a run just once that day. So instead of twice, most elite athletes run twice a day. So he is only doing one, one run per day covers an easy 18 to 20 K, that’s 10 to 12 miles.

Brad (20:39):
And some of these runs start out at an astonishing six minutes per kilometer pace. So here’s the number one athlete in the world running that’s hour long, 10 K pace, right? So what is that 12 minute miles? The guy starting out his runs at 12 minute miles, I’m sure he’s speeding up and probably eventually hitting 6:30 or something that’s still ridiculously easy to him. He’s just going out there getting a sweat breathing and serving to support his recovery. Just as we talked about, uh, with Joel Jameson on that great podcast where if you go in and do some specific protocol, get the blood flowing, get the oxygen going, get your body moving, but not stressing your body, that can actually help support and speed up recovery. Back to Jack’s analysis, the recovery runs are one to two minute per mile slower.

Brad (21:36):
And that would mean his heart rate is 20 to 30 beats the low maximum aerobic function, 180 minus age plus five. Okay? So the world’s number one is doing quite a lot of runs four days per week at 20 to 30 beats below MAF heart rate. But Brad, that would mean I’d be walking how ridiculous of a notion. No, it’s an actual training effect that you get at the low level aerobic exercise that will have a profound positive influence on your racing performance. So if it happens to be a brisk walk because you’re a two-hour half marathon person at this point or you’re a 12 hour Iron man person, so be it. Go out there, enjoy the training effect, realize what it feels like to train properly in the manner of the great elite athletes of the planet and don’t push yourself day in and day out bumping up that MAF heart rate maximum thinking you’re being a good boy or a good girl just because the watch is not beeping.

Brad (22:43):
Realize that Kipchoge is going four days a week at 20 to 30 beats below MAF. Back to the commentary. Then Kipchoge runs hard. And Jack puts this in quotes two to three times a week. But these runs are his follows. He does intervals on the track on Tuesday, but these are not gut busting intervals. It’s a high volume of intervals that are barely faster than his marathon pace with a pretty long recovery time. I would imagine he’s barely getting his heart rate over MAF as a result. Think about it, that’s thousands not at 5k race pace or faster, but at marathon pace with an equal recovery time. That’s an interval workout, but it’s easy, it’s not troubling or overly stressful for him. So he’s put in this time, he’s gotten better over time. He’s genetically gifted. He trains at high altitude in Kenya. He’s got a lot of things going for him that enable him to get down to the two-hour mark.

Brad (23:42):
But if you’re a person that’s trying to break the three-hour mark or trying to break the four-hour mark, just apply these insights to your relative example and will have great significant impact. And I report this, uh, often on the show and in the book Primal Endurance when I slowed down and that was the gateway to improving my performance on the professional triathlon circuit. On Thursday, Kipchoge does an uptempo log run with a pace that’s 30 seconds or more per mile, slower than marathon pace. Again, probably hardly ever exceeding maximum aerobic heart rate. On Saturday, his session epitomizes the concept of aerobic intervals. It’s a fartlek run where his short pickups get to faster than marathon pace. But again, this is the furthest thing in the world from the typical practice of runners doing fartlek where you shoot to run into oxygen debt and then ease up.

Brad (24:39):
No, he’s just kind of opening up his stride, getting up to maximum fat burning and then backing off, oh my gosh, uh, it’s almost too much to understand or to process that this guy is training in such a minimally stressful manner when comparison to the average Joe. Jack’s talking about his own experience trying desperately to walk on to the University of Georgia’s cross-country team. Back when they were a top 15 program in the country. I thought that I just needed to do more, more mileage, more workouts, more speed, and I finally realized that maybe running a 14:35 K was not in my genetic potential and I let the pressure release from that more, more, more mindset. Surprisingly within a few months of less total miles and less intensity, I got my eight K time. That’s the usual cross-country meet, uh, which is just about five miles.

Brad (25:40):
I got my eight K time down to 25:30. So this guy is running five minute miles over terrain, a fabulously fit runner. He also mentions his roommate who’s a sub-elite performer, uh, who’s just over four minutes in the mile. So a very, very accomplished young runner. Certainly not in the same categories Kipchoge, but Jack reports that his roommate’s workouts are faster than Kipchoge,. What’s up? More from Jack. I think that’s very telling that the general problem in American distance running as a whole is too many type A runners who obsess over their workouts and paces then fail to take care of the little things. And those little things would be a simple clean living lifestyle with good food, plenty of sleep, making the effort to develop yourself as a person rather than just have this narrow obsessive focus on running fast.

Brad (26:41):
And that comment, there was a blend between Jack and I exchanging emails, but we both agree that the state of organized running in America, especially for youth, is absolutely disastrous. If there’s any high school coaches listening or people that influence young runners, and I know there are because some of you write in that have transformed your program and taken it a little easy on the kids and seen them improve and seen less attrition rate when you don’t push them so hard and grind them like they’re little machines or little miniature Olympians when they’re just trying to go out there and have fun and have a social experience, kids actually improve when they have a good time and don’t drive themselves into exhaustion. That’s when they make it through this season cuz their parents insist that they do. You never quit, not in our family.

Brad (27:30):
They make it through one season and then they say, forget it, I’m gonna go to the beach and work at the lifeguard tower. So this attrition thing’s gotta stop. This abuse of young runners has gotta stop, slow them down, ensure that they have fun, ensure that there’s plenty of low stress workouts, knowing that this will develop them into top competitors because it allows the body to build, build, build their aerobic energy, producing enzymes and muscle fibers without the stress of high intensity or black hole training where you’re producing some waste products in the bloodstream and having to take time to recover after you’re producing stress hormones in the bloodstream and having to recover from that and rebalance and get back to baseline normal, healthy functioning, hoping that your immune system or your musculoskeletal system does not become compromised by the repeatedly overly stressful workouts.

Brad (28:27):
Okay, so college runners, college coaches, high school, wake up. Notice the tremendous example of Eliud Kipchoge, and try to model that. It works. <laugh> Simple as that. And back to Jack’s final comments. I think Kipchoge is gonna change the game. Yeah, for real. I mean, look at this. The guy’s training log is on the internet. He’s now telling the world straight up that he’s not busting his chops all the time. He’s living in nice, clean, simple life, working hard, but not killing himself. Huge difference. Also, Jack observed that this guy’s an amazing man as a whole. So I appreciate you letting me share my insights. Jack continues. I have helped five people reclaim their running lives and mine has been reclaimed as well. Thanks to reading Primal Endurance and also Maffetone’s work. I’m very passionate to spread the message and get fired up seeing these kind of results.

Brad (29:28):
Hopefully we can get many runners and endurance athletes to relax one of these days and then we’ll end up seeing breakthrough performances, PRs, longer careers, all that good stuff. Thank you you for listening. I hope you take inspiration from this show. Go Google this dude and see what he’s all about. Check out some of his interesting quotes. Okay, sure. How about some of them right now pulled from this wonderful New York Times profile published September 14th by Scott Cacciola titled Eluid Kipchoge is the greatest marathoner ever. Some wisdom from the man, only the disciplined ones in life are free. If you are undisciplined, you’re a slave to your moods and your passions. Woo, how about this one? It’s not about the legs, it’s about the heart and mind. Here’s another, the best time to plant a tree was 25 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is today.

Brad (30:30):
Love that <laugh>. He once wrote down a formula. Motivation plus discipline equals consistency. This is cool because I’ve given you enough background context to fully appreciate a quote like that and not distorted because it seems like we’re guilty today in the age of hyperconnectivity and social media of taking these rah rah isms and applying them to a dogged work ethic where you compromise your health and your balance in the name of being a badass. So this guy leads that balanced life. He’s very disciplined, but he doesn’t do stupid shit like most endurance athletes and most peak performers where they push themselves too hard and go over the edge of sensibility in the name of conquering the world and achieving their goals. Okay, so Kipchoge is a pretty chill guy even though he’s got his lifestyle dialed in with a lot of hard work, no shortcuts to success in the marathon, of course.

Brad (31:30):
But he says, when I run, I feel good. My mind feels good, I sleep in a free way, and I enjoy life. Compare and contrast to the nonsense that we see in mainstream sport with these misbehaving athletes and popoff coaches and controversy and drama and all this nonsense that honestly simply would not work for a marathon runner. You can get away with it with a dysfunctional organization and Shaq and Kobe, uh, having warring of the words in the locker room, but they still win the NBA title even though their egos are exploding outside of the boundaries of the court. This stuff is the real deal. You’re gonna be exposed if you have an imbalanced or distorted competitive intensity in real life when you’re out there on the race course. So here’s a guy that sleeps comfortably, sleeps soundly, feels free and enjoys his life, and that’s when he can turn on that motor and run like no human has ever run before. Very inspiring. Hit these links, learn more about this guy, and I hope it will carry over into your own approach to endurance training.

Brad (32:41):
Thanks for listening and don’t forget to check out Primal endurance.fit, the wonderful mastery course with hundreds of videos from dozens of the world’s leading experts in endurance training. A lot of them thankfully echoing this relaxed, casual, intuitive approach to endurance training. It’s really time for a transformation from the dated, destructive, no pain, no gain mentality, the chronic exercise patterns into something that’s free and fun and of course disciplined. And of course, there’s the hard work and they struggle that gives meaning and richness to life, as Dr. Roger Banister said, but not struggling in a stupid way, like struggling to maintain your workout pattern when you have a sore throat or running your tight painful shin over and over until it turns into a stress fracture.

Brad (33:47):
This is the type of struggling that we have to get rid of and we have to embrace this evolved mindset. So many experts that I talked to in the course, the Olympic gold medalist, Simon Whitfield, the Great Ironman champion, Tim DeBoom sitting down for lengthy interviews that they’ve never spoken about this before. It’s the only place you can find this kind of content. So go around there, browse. There’s a series of seven free videos to really see what you’re about to invest in with this course, but it will change your life and it will change your approach to endurance training. Remembering the great commentary from Simon Whitfield sitting on the rocks overlooking the coastline in Victoria, British Columbia, reflecting back on his career as an Olympic gold medalist, an Olympic silver medalist, and all the stuff that he did wrong that he regrets and the things that really worked for him and that free spirit that he had when he was a 25 year old nobody and came outta nowhere with an incredible sprint finish in Sydney, Australia to win the first ever gold medal in triathlon. Don’t you want to hear more about that? It’s all there in the course. It’s like magic. So sign up for it right now. And because I’m so excited, I’m giving you this top secret 20% discount on your enrollment fee when you visit Primalendurance.fit. Brad 20 b r a d 20. That’s it. Sh thank you. Go check it out.

Brad (35:12):
I hope you enjoy this episode and encourage you to check out the Primal Endurance Mastery course at primalendurance.fit. This is the ultimate online educational experience where you can learn from the world’s great coaches and trainers, diet, peak performance and recovery experts, as well as lengthy one-on-one interviews from several of the greatest endurance athletes of all time, not published anywhere else. It’s a major educational experience with hundreds of videos, but you can get free access to a mini course with an ebook summary of the Primal Endurance approach and nine step-by-step videos on how to become a primal endurance athlete. This mini-course will help you develop a strong, basic understanding of this all-encompassing approach to endurance training that includes primal aligned eating to escape carbohydrate dependency and enhanced fat metabolism, building an aerobic base with comfortably paced workouts, strategically introducing high intensity strength and sprint workouts, emphasizing rest, recovery, and annual periodization. And finally, cultivating an intuitive approach to training. Instead of the usual robotic approach of fixed weekly workout schedules, just head over to Primal endurance.fit and learn all about the course and how we can help you go faster and preserve your health while you’re at it.

Primal Endurance Podcast

Leave a Reply Cancel Reply