293. Ultra Runner of the Year Rankings, Unintentional Low Carb Studies, Health Update, Continuous Lactate Monitors, and Blood Tests!

Summary

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Some Work, All Play – Episode 293 Detailed Summary

Episode Title: Ultra Runner of the Year Rankings, Unintentional Low Carb Studies, Health Update, Continuous Lactate Monitors, and Blood Tests!
Release Date: January 13, 2026
Hosts: David Roche and Megan Roche

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Main Theme

This lively episode of Some Work, All Play is an enthusiastic exploration of resilience in sport and life, practical recovery advice, up-to-date sports science, and a celebration of community. David shares his journey to being ranked fourth in the Ultra Runner of the Year (UROY) standings, intertwining themes of perseverance through failure, embracing vulnerability, and the value of support systems. Megan adds science-backed perspective on injury recovery, optimal athlete nutrition, and the need to challenge mainstream (and often misguided) dietary narratives for endurance athletes. The duo navigates a hefty mix of humor, vulnerability, research, and current events in running.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. David’s UROY Ranking & Reflections on Failure

[00:08–06:59]

• Emotional Retrospective: David discusses the disbelief and gratitude at being ranked fourth UROY, especially after a devastating DNF (Did Not Finish) at Western States. He thanks Megan for her unwavering support and credits the podcast and listeners for helping him find purpose in telling “stories at the edge.”
• On Public Failure:
  • “Maybe the lesson is just failure is cool... It's so scary before it happens... after, you no longer give any fucks. And that's where your power really shines.” — David ([01:23])
• Humor in Adversity:
  • David and Megan riff about a particularly awkward race photo, using the humor as a springboard to talk honesty and vulnerability in sport:
  • “Little penis, big tears.” — Megan ([06:07])
• Resilience and Support:
  • Megan: “Seeing that made me realize I haven’t failed enough in my life because I haven’t dreamed big enough.”

2. Injury Update & Healing Plan

[07:00–15:13]

• David’s Injury: After months of running through pain, David finally got an MRI for his heel—revealing a high-grade tear of the plantar tendon. He candidly admits to stubbornly ignoring his own and Megan’s advice to seek medical evaluation sooner.
• Learning Process:
  • “If you don’t run through anything, you’re not gonna run... But how could I have known it was this? Probably the severe sharp pain that didn’t get better and... didn't listen to my own advice.” — David ([11:36])
• Emotional Whiplash: David grapples with the juxtaposition of athletic highs (UROY ranking) while wearing a boot.
• Megan’s Insight: “The nature of being an athlete is you have these highs, and then you have a low sometimes immediately following. That takes so much courage.”
• Outlook: David reframes the injury as “a new story” and potential for future breakthrough, emphasizing that setbacks are integral to growth.

3. Science-Backed Recovery Protocols

[15:13–18:50]

• Nutrition Focus: High-protein, collagen, omega-3s, turmeric, glutamine for tissue repair and inflammation.
• Training Tweaks: Use of heat suit biking (citing a 2021 study on heat adaptation), aiming to maintain heart rate stimulus without foot load.
• Re-assessment of Health Data: David’s HRV is unusually high, surprising Garmin metrics and spurring musings about adaptability in training.

4. Megan’s Post-Pericarditis Comeback & "Brick" Distraction Blocker

[21:57–24:49]

• Megan celebrates her own health milestone—returning to hard workouts post-pericarditis, and prepping for a YouTube feature.
• "Brick" Device Discussion: Megan describes her $50 purchase designed to lock her out of social media apps.
  • David jokes: “We have these amazing technologies at our fingertips and then we have a new technology that makes that technology worse.” ([23:12])
• Megan highlights how the brick has made her more present, especially as a parent.

5. Product Recommendations: Fueling on a Budget

[25:43–29:47]

• Listener Q: “What would you buy with a $200/month nutrition budget from The Feed?”
• Top Picks:
  • General health support (First Endurance Multi V)
  • Inexpensive whey protein (Feed Lab)
  • Science in Sport Beta Fuel gels for training
  • “Fun extras”: Beta Recovery, feed socks (Megan’s pick), currency (ergogenic aid), broccoli sprouts
• Insider Praise: Anecdotes about superior customer service at The Feed.

6. Research Deep-Dive: Female Athletes, Energy Intake, & Menstrual Health

[30:00–47:04]

• Study One:
  • 94% of 35 elite Spanish female trail runners had clinically low energy availability.
  • Menstrual dysfunction prevalent; differences in carb types (complex vs. simple) and protein intake noted.
  • Megan: “Satisfaction bombs”—big, satisfying, complex carb meals—are often missing from under-fueled athletes’ diets.
• Study Two:
  • 72 female endurance athletes often met carb needs on rest days, but under-ate on training days, especially as training load increased.
  • Barriers to carb intake: time constraints, diet culture, body image concerns.
• Protein Prioritization Paradox: The most under-fueled athletes sometimes consume the most protein, reflecting a misplaced “protein good, carbs bad” mentality ingrained by broader diet culture—even in athletic circles.
• David’s "Food Pyramid" Rant ([42:31–46:39]):
  • David attempts, with mixed success, to connect new US food pyramid recommendations with entrenched anti-carb, pro-protein approaches that undermine athletic health (“All athletes are subject to that programming... even if you don’t think you’re part of diet culture, you probably are.”).
  • Quote, Megan (deadpanning): “Are you going to stand by that think piece?”
  • Quote, David (laughing at self): “No, no, I back it up!”

7. Making Money from Book Copyright and AI ([50:02–53:25])

• The hosts discover they will each receive $3,000 due to their book, The Happy Runner, being used to train AI models (Anthropic class action settlement). David ponders investing in new gadgets, like lactate monitors.

8. Fun News & Community Highlights

[53:26–65:45]

• Burrito League:
  • Update on the “burrito league”—a grassroots, Strava-based running contest centered on burrito shops. Community-driven, now spread beyond Chipotle to local joints across North America.
• Road-to-Trail Crossovers:
  • Shelby Houlihan sets a blazing course record at the Santan Scramble 26K, signaling faster road/track runners moving into trail ultras.
  • Molly Seidel’s debut at Bandera 50K—impressive win and foreshadowing an exciting Black Canyon 100K.

9. Gadgets: Continuous Lactate Monitors ([56:30–63:45])

• Prediction: David previously predicted continuous lactate monitors would revolutionize training.
• Reality Check: Discussion of the new non-invasive CORY monitor, which uses sweat. Its validation charts, initially impressive, turn out to be based on... horses.
  • Megan (roasting): "You were like, send me this chart... I was like, David, it says equine. This is done in horses." ([58:31])
• Cautious Optimism: Current tech’s scatter too great for actionable athlete use, but potential for a breakthrough is there.

10. Q&A Highlights

• Dating Apps for Trail Runners: Discussion of exclusive dating app “Raya” and whether ultra runners are “cool enough” for invitation ([66:41–70:41]).
  • David: “If you pass the Wikipedia test, maybe you can get on there.”
• Sleep-Supported FKTs: Proposal for sleep-mandatory FKT (Fastest Known Time) categories, allowing for more sustainable, joyful efforts ([70:54–73:35]).
• Athlete Blood Testing: Recommendations for where to get athlete-focused panels (Quest, Athlete Blood Test, InsideTracker) and what to look for ([73:55–75:27]).
• Downhill Training for Flatlanders: Listener tip on using backwards walking on an elliptical to train quads for Grand Canyon descents ([75:27–79:53]).
• Perception of Soreness: Some athletes’ perception and genetic response to muscle breakdown discussed.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Maybe the lesson is just failure is cool... after it happens, you no longer give any fucks about anything. That’s where your power... shines.” — David ([01:23])
• “Little penis, big tears.” — Megan ([06:07])
• “Seeing that made me realize I haven’t failed enough in my life because I haven’t dreamed big enough.” — Megan ([05:42])
• “If you don’t run through anything, you’re not gonna run.” — David ([11:36])
• “The nature of being an athlete is you have these highs, and then you have a low sometimes immediately following. That takes so much courage.” — Megan ([11:44])
• “We have these amazing technologies at our fingertips and then we have a new technology that makes that technology worse.” — David ([23:12])
• “You know what? All the trail running women are just like, I want that. Big juicy pumps.” — Megan ([87:52])
• “Everything about that think piece didn’t really work, did it?” — David ([46:00])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• UROY Reflections & Failure: [00:08–06:59]
• Injury Update, MRI, and Recovery Talk: [07:00–15:13]
• Science-Based Recovery Plan: [15:13–18:50]
• Megan’s Brick Device Tangent: [21:57–24:49]
• Fueling on a Budget Listener Question: [25:43–29:47]
• Female Athlete Nutrition Studies & Food Pyramid Rant: [30:00–47:04]
• Injury Mindset & Heart Rate Variability: [17:14–18:50]
• Making Money from AI Training of Their Book: [50:02–53:25]
• Burrito League Community News: [53:26–56:25]
• Continuous Lactate Monitor Discussion: [56:30–63:45]
• Q&A: Dating Apps, Sleep-Supported FKTs, Blood Testing, Downhill Training: [66:41–79:53]
• Listener Corner – Relationships and Big Juicy Pumps: [86:28–89:08]

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Tone & Style

The episode radiates love, humor, and informed curiosity. Both hosts are open about personal vulnerability, blend real science with practical tips, and infuse every segment with silly, affectionate banter. Their language is casual, inclusive, occasionally profane, and deeply passionate about both running and fostering a healthy, happy athlete community.

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Closing

This episode is quintessential SWAP: heart-on-sleeve, science-driven, and full of camaraderie. Whether you're an elite, hobby jogger, or dealing with life's setbacks, David and Megan’s blend of actionable advice, self-deprecating humor, and encouragement to “cherish every mile” make it a must-listen.

Big juicy pumps, y’all!

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the Some Work All Play podcast. We are so happy to be with you today.

[B]

Happy Tuesday. It's Tuesday and I'm feeling so much stoke on this Tuesday.

[A]

You're feeling stoke?

[B]

What about coming from the fact that you were voted fourth in the Ultra Runner of the year voting? How cool is that? That is, like, mind blowing.

[A]

Thank you so much. It's shocking, super exciting because I don't know everybody that's followed the journey knows June of last year dnfing Western states in such a public manner. Like, if you had told me then that, that I would be fourth in the North American Ultra Runner rankings, which has been this system that's gone on forever, I would have said it's impossible. I wasn't even planning to do Leadville then. And you got me back on the horse and so, Megan, thank you for believing in me. Um, you know, I don't want to, like, act like it's, you know, be all, end all is these rankings, but it is like a validating thing to see.

[B]

Well, I randomly went back and watched the YouTube of Quadrock and Leadville and Western States and I was on the upper treadmill this week and I watched that Western States video and watched you walk back up through Forest Hill after dnfing and like, you know, know Cody zooming in on the wristband and taking that off and like, what all that meant. And it actually made me so emotional even before this fact of like, thinking about what a journey it's been for you. And I think if I whispered into your ear at Forest Hill, like, hey, David, it's going to be fourth Ultron of the year. You've been like, what the fuck? Like, how did this happen? How did we get here? And I just like, I'm so proud of like the lows and how you came back from those, but then also just this too.

[A]

Well, it's all you, it's all the listeners. So after the fact goes, got so many messages right, of people saying you just putting yourself out there is what meant a lot to us. And that made me excited to put myself out there again and again and again. And maybe the lesson is just failure is cool. Like, we all are going to do it a million times. And it's so scary before it happens, it's a little scary when it happens. And then after it happens, you no longer give any fucks about anything. And that's where your power really ends up shining through. And so, yeah, it's wild. Also, the other reflection I wanted to have, Megan, is you Know it's four, right? And so four plus four is eight. And you know what I did? I ate that year. I ate it.

[B]

Look at you and your Gen Z. I even know what that means. Actually, I was, like, planning on reviewing this podcast, and all I see in the roadmap is just a bunch of Gen Z turns.

[A]

I'm not supposed to say that.

[B]

I see Riz in there and Delulu, whatever that means.

[A]

Four plus four is. Listen, I was. Megan last week called me out for not knowing my Gen Z slang when I said I did. And the answer is I do. You're not supposed to tell them that. I wrote them all down.

[B]

Did you write these? That looks like a chatgpt font.

[A]

I slayed. My year was busing Megan. And honestly, it sucks that you don't think it was. Bet it's pretty good, right?

[B]

I don't know what any of that means. I love that. It's just like, I literally. It was hanging out in our roadmap, but maybe the picture was a little sus.

[A]

Oh, no, no. Don't talk about on here, Megan. No one really called attention to it. There's one comment. Why are we bringing it to the podcast?

[B]

Because it's hilarious. The first thing you were like, Megan. Well, we were waiting for this countdown.

[A]

So we talked about it on Patreon.

[B]

Especially, and we weren't sure kind of where you're gonna fall in this mix. And Hans Troyer was actually a surprise.

[A]

5.

[B]

Like, to me, I thought he was gonna be ranked fourth when he was five. I was like, damn, is David even in it? Like, Hans had such a great year.

[A]

I was assuming I was 11th or 12th, because I thought Hans way better than me. I thought. I mean, you know, still is, objectively, but yeah. So when it was appearing, like, I knew when it would be appearing. So I just logged onto Instagram, which I usually don't do in the mornings, and popped up in my screen. And something really popped up in my screen.

[B]

Yeah, it was popping up.

[A]

I mean, kind of.

[B]

We should put a potato over it. So the photo, it's. It's. It's. It's graphic, it's visual.

[A]

I don't understand why they chose that photo.

[B]

Oh, they probably chose that really specifically.

[A]

I don't. I mean, come on. Someone commented on it, so you can imagine we're referring to, like, the undercarriage situation. And someone commented on. I'm like, look, everyone knows shrinkage happens below 102 degrees Fahrenheit. And it was a photo of me danfing At Western state States, and it was like, 101. So there was shrinkage.

[B]

No, it was, like, 95, to be fair. So.

[A]

Even colder.

[B]

Even colder. Even colder.

[A]

But it is wonderful that, you know, when I have this moment of reflection, it is accompanied by a picture that, like, you cannot show children without, like, having to announce your presence to the neighbors when you move in.

[B]

It was kind of wild. I was like, you shouldn't run around a school looking like this. Exactly. I'm sure you have.

[A]

Okay, one final reflection. Thank you for bringing this up. It's just wild. Like, two years ago at 35 years old, start of, what, 20, 24. I don't think I'd ever received a vote even for top 10 in any of these rankings. And so, you know, it's shocking and, like, not to say the. The veracity of whether this should have been my ranking. I don't really care about that. It's more just the idea of, like, what happens when you keep showing up. And the only reason I've been able to keep showing up is you, Megan, and the people out there that love and support. Like, it's no coincidence that this podcast was, like, four years into the run when all of this stuff started happening. It's because it became about what stories can we tell? And sometimes the stories have been epic fucking failures, including one we're about to tell a little bit of in a minute or two. But, you know, that's what it takes to see what happens at the edge. And so let's go see what happens at the edge.

[B]

Well, it's kind of been wild to see this all play out. Like, I've seen, like, everything behind the scenes. Like, what it takes, your low moments. Like, we talked about this after Western States. There was a period after Western States where you ran with me on a Wednesday after your Western states, a hundred K. Because I was like, I don't want to leave you at home. Like, I was concerned about you. And I was like, I can't leave you alone. And to go from that point to rallying to Leadville to doing javelina, and it's just like, David, that's, like, the coolest thing. And I think I'm, like. I'm, like, choking up. I'm like, this is so easy.

[A]

I was expecting this.

[B]

I don't do this often.

[A]

Yeah, it's crazy.

[B]

And I think to me, like, seeing that, it's made me realize, like, I haven't failed enough in my life because I haven't put myself in that position to dream big. Enough. And I think so many people probably feel that way. And I think I probably feel that way most of all. Like just seeing it play out in the day to day and it's like that takes so much courage.

[A]

Yeah, I wasn't expecting that from my.

[B]

You eyes are a little misty.

[A]

My little penis picture.

[B]

Little penis, big tears. No, no. Your whole.

[A]

No, no. We gotta end it with that. We gotta end it with that. I had so much more sappy stuff to say, but it's time to get onto the episode. A quick roadmap here.

[B]

We're gonna start edit.

[A]

No, no, no.

[B]

I know. It is good.

[A]

No, no, no, no, no. That was. Anyone could see the photo.

[B]

Well, actually, based on the photo, we're like, yeah, you should have dropped out. Your body was in an existential crisis. That is not you, your physiology.

[A]

No, no, actually, to be fair, to be fair, I don't want any man to go see that photo and think that they're not enough. Because it was. Honestly, because Megan made a great point yesterday. And this is definitely getting a little bit too Zapruder film on this, where we're analyzing every little image. That's like the moon landing when people are doing it. Is that Megan's like, you can't really see where it starts and where it ends.

[B]

It's up to the imagination.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If you just assume it wraps around.

[B]

Then you never know what a dream. Every woman wants that something that wraps around.

[A]

Moving on. I love you so much. Okay, this is going to be a great episode. Clearly. Uh, we're going to start with a foot injury update and a healing plan. What we'd spend with $200 a month for nutrition. Two fascinating studies on energy intake in female athletes, Possibly a study on inflammation. News on the easiest way we ever made $3,000.

[B]

That was fun. Actually, we opened our mail, which we don't do all the time, but we're like, wait, what?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So spoiler alert. We'll get there soon.

[A]

There's a chance some of our listeners might make some money doing that too. Uh, the Burrito League Road Runners rocking the trails, lactate monitors, and a Q and A on possibly some number of things like dating, fkt, tracking blood tests, downhills, and more. Or we might be releasing a little bit of a Patreon episode from last week. At the very end of this, we'll see. We're operating on, I don't know, three or four hours of sleep right now.

[B]

Yeah, we had a sick kid in the middle of the night last night. We weren't going to talk about this because sometimes it's like you feel gross in the parenting trenches. Not just in the parenting trenches, but last night at 2am we realized Leah was sick. And before you, like, walked into the room, you're like, wait a second, let me get my bo.

[A]

Oh, good transition.

[B]

It's good transition. You came into Leo's room as he was getting sick with the feed trench coat on and a boot and just fully naked without zipping up his jacket. And it was like one of the best David Roach fit checks I think I've ever seen.

[A]

Leo's like, gada. Why does it wrap around, son? Okay, great. So why am I wearing a boot? First boot of my life. Answer is, I finally got the MRI that Megan's been telling me to get for two months. So to zoom back at the Javelina 100. Around halfway a little bit before, had sudden sharp pain in my heel. It was very bad after the race, took a while to come back. Eventually was able to work through it and had pain on every run, but it kind of resolved. I assumed it was plantar fasciitis. And when you're dealing with that, like, oh, this can be something else I run through and we'll be okay.

[B]

And by working through it, you mean doing 10 by 1 mile at threshold on the treadmill with one minute recovery.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm not saying I was smart.

[B]

In fact, looking back, I'm like, damn.

[A]

It's kind of impressive actually, in the moment. Reflection on the Patreon episode last. We might even release that at the end of this episode because it's very raw now. We've had time to process. It's mostly going to be joking, I assume now. And I was just an idiot at every step of the way. Like, I've gotten rewarded in my life for running through injuries. Like, if I have any superpowers and athlete, it's healing. It's just very, very lucky. My power is not VO2 max like the other guys. It's the ability to come back from things. And, you know, I clearly, based on the MRI that you made me get, if you look at the ligaments in my ankle and it's one of the most hilarious MRI reads I've ever seen. It's. They use the word partial thickness tear, I think 12 times or something. Like, it's wild.

[B]

Actually, the radiologist was probably just like, we're going to copy paste this statement and insert every ankle ligament in there. Doctor, do you have it?

[A]

Do I have it?

[B]

I'm like, you should pull this up and read it. It's so funny.

[A]

It is wild. But the point being, those are healed of tears of all of my ankle ligaments that I've run through over time. Like, I never took time off for this. In fact, it indicates I probably broke my ankle at some point because the PTFL itself is torn and came back without taking time off, so.

[B]

But you did, though, scream fucked the universe many, many, many times about ankle, like, you know, big ankle sprains. And it's kind of funny seeing that reflected and magnified on the MRI report is like each one of those findings was probably a screaming fuck to the universe.

[A]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

Big alter this year when you DNF due to angle, you know, for sure.

[A]

So, like, you know, been through a lot and I was like, oh, well, it'll get better. And I treated it like plantar fasciitis. And we talked about that on the podcast. We don't need to get into it. Long story short, just to not hide, the actual finding here is that I have a high grade tear of my plantar tendon, I guess. And so to make sure I said.

[B]

The right thing, you're like, I just said a lot of ligaments as a tendon.

[A]

Someone messaged us and said, stop saying the word plantar alone. Because it's not just the plantar that describes a region of the foot is like, okay, I will. And that's not a great finding to have. Um, it's not the worst. It's not ruptured. It got very close. It's hanging on by a thread. Uh, so I'm gonna boot for the first time in my life, and it's gonna be a longer reset and the season's gonna be pushed back a little bit. And so I'm hopeful, but I just kind of pissed at myself at the moment and just wishing I didn't keep going when I had the best coach in the world right here telling me, just chill out, man, get an mri, like, from the day after the race. And I just, just, you know, kept pushing, kept thinking that past behavior could predict future responses, and it just didn't.

[B]

Well, it's tricky. It's like being an athlete is so hard. This is what happens. And it's not like it happened acutely at javelina too. And yes, you did run on it for two months.

[A]

And I mean, it probably made it way worse.

[B]

Probably made it way worse. After I told you to get MRI like, a thousand times, I was like, what would it take for you to have actually gotten an MRI early?

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, nothing. You couldn't have done anything. You did everything right. Athletes are sometimes stubborn even when they know what they know, because, you know, if you don't run through anything, like, you're not gonna run. And so how could I have known it was this? Probably the severe sharp pain that didn't get better and didn't listen to my own advice. But we'll see.

[B]

It happens. And it's hard. But how are you feeling? Because I feel like you went from, you know, knowing that you're gonna be in this uroy, like the ultra runner of the year standings and seeing that fourth place pop up and watching it from the vantage point of wearing a boot which actually Leo has decked out on stickers. And it's pretty bedazzled, but like a high and a low mashed together so closely as an athlete, which I feel like is the nature of being an athlete, is you have these highs and then you don't know when it's going to happen, but you have a low sometimes immediately following it. How are you feeling with that?

[A]

Better. You know, I've had time to process. That's why Patreon was so raw. Now it's like, well, this is a new story. Right? Like, if I'm saying failure is cool or whatever, sometimes that's health. And this will be a new thing to hopefully come back from. Right. Like, historically, every single time I've had a breakthrough, it's preceded by some sort of setback. I don't know what that is about, my personality, what it says. Maybe it's a bad thing, but I hope this is going to be the same situation. And so I'm excited for a different future. And I wish I could run right now. I wish I could be a better parent, which I wasn't having to limp into Leah's room, not putting weight on my foot at 2am but that's the reality right now. And so many of our listeners go through health issues all the time, as do I. And so I want to share that openly while it's happening. And while the future doesn't necessarily look super bright in the moment, because that's part of the journey too.

[B]

Yeah. How does it make you feel about Western states? Because, you know, thinking about that golden ticket and like, it was such a powerful ending to the YouTube documentary to have you give that golden ticket away to Canyon, being like, I'm going to come back. I'm going to fight for another golden ticket to get back to Western states, a race that is now so Meaningful to you in terms of your history and coaching and, you know, shaping athletes lives by being there. And I think realistically, like, Black Canyon for sure, out canyons, potentially. But it feels a little close to launch that foot down the canyons. Like, how does that make you feel about the golden ticket and that decision?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, part of me just wonders what if not. Not with a golden ticket decision necessarily, and more just like, how life plays out overall. Um, I said after the race that maybe I'll never be back. And I kind of thought that was true. Right. Like. And so this just kind of confirms what I always suspected is that that was the Western states chapter closing for now. And I'll have other opportunities next year. And in the meantime, new goals. You know, whether that's Leadville again or other options, it's going to just be a new adventure. And so, yeah, go for it. Right. Like, I don't know. I was number four. You were without Western States last year, so maybe I can step it up again.

[B]

Your year basically started at Quadrock, which is in May, and I feel like we could get you back, you know, by May. And so it's kind of fun to think about shaping a season. Actually. After you went yesterday downstairs to do a heat suit in the pain cave on the bike, you came back up and you're like, what about bad water? You're like, I'm just in the heat suit trenches right now. Cause you know, you can't put out power on the bike through your foot. So you've been heat suiting, which is actually a great way to, like, get your heart rate up a little bit higher at lower power outputs and less stress. The foot. And you're like, bad water. It's going to be bad water.

[A]

Megan, do you want to make this a healing plan that might actually help other people?

[B]

Oh, I love that. Yeah.

[A]

Like, what we're doing to try to improve this process a lot, and mainly this is partially us, but any of the weird stuff is me.

[B]

You're like, sticking a foot in a lasagna pan is me. Yeah.

[A]

With the ice. I mean, ice. I'm probably not going to do much ice anymore.

[B]

Well, actually, I. My foot's been a little sore in the plantar as well. Nothing like what you've had. Just very mild stuff that I've been working through. And I stuck my ice and my foot in the lasagna pan and that shit's cold.

[A]

Yeah. And it works.

[B]

It works, it works, it works. But I was like, dude, you're tough. Yeah, it Burns.

[A]

Okay, so first thing is nutrition. High, high protein, taking collagen. In fact, I might be taking too much collagen because our chat GPT search last night is what is the toxic level of collagen in the human body? I think I'm okay just definitely exceeding the 15 grams per day recommendation. But collagen might help some tendon rebuilding, then omega 3s, turmeric, glutamine, which are all supporting both inflammation and muscle tissue rebuilding, so that could help. And then training wise, um, starting with heat suit biking as Megan talked about. So there was a 2021 study called Temperate performance and metabolic adaptations following endurance training performed under environmental heat stress. Very simply, it took seven men, 17 men in a three, three week intervention. It had one group do 18 degrees C biking. So like temperate conditions, one group do 33 degrees C biking and had them do similar training based on heart rate. So it was all equalized. And the group that trained in the hotter conditions came back with better power output at Z2. So maybe this is an opportunity to get a little bit of that benefit without having to put any power out.

[B]

And to me, the findings of the study, like I feel like we have a lot of heat studies right now, but seeing that improved power output in a 30 minute time trial from the group that was doing the lower output efforts at heat, it's makes me curious to see what kind of training benefits you're going to see from this. Because I feel like we've been like, you know, you've tried a lot of different things and I feel like, you know, you've tried volume, we tried intensity, we tried a lot of different stimuli. And I'm kind of curious to see how this period of time plus the rest and recovery and adaptation is going to stack up for, you know, thinking about May, June, July.

[A]

It's a fun science experiment to be fucked. Because when you do hit rock bottom in any sense, right? So western states was rock bottom. The accident last year was rock bottom. And when you do hit those, you question everything, you reevaluate things. Sometimes that's personality, just the basics of who you are as a human therapy. Those are all good things. But athletically it's a to just take a step back and think, how can we do things differently? And so the reset might be interesting from one end because, you know, I have all these metrics on hrv. My HRV is skyrocketing right now with the downtime from running, in fact so.

[B]

High that your Garmin is kind of concerned.

[A]

It's calling me Unbalanced like you.

[B]

Okay, bro, what you doing?

[A]

My Garmin needs to go to therapy. Do not put that on me. Garmin. Wait, what is Garmin doing? Garmin is. It's giving sus. It's giving sus.

[B]

You had to look that up. The pause there.

[A]

Actually, it's giving Dulu is what it's giving.

[B]

I don't even know what that means.

[A]

Delusional or something. And so that's an interesting thing. Maybe that'll be some long term adaptation that I needed anyway. And from a training perspective right now, because on the heat suit, I can do high cadence and put out almost no power and get my heart rate up a little bit. It's cool because in the past, the heat suit that I've done have been combined with hard training. Now it's combined with very easy training. Maybe I'll get some benefits that apply long term when I get back to running that are tough to predict, or maybe I'll fuck myself over again. And either way, we'll report back. So thanks for you all for being here and anybody who's been through an injury right there with you now. And I think I'll be a better coach and person because of it.

[B]

Well, this is a tricky one because you really do have to be patient. Like, we do not want this to rupture. And it's close. Like, this thing is hanging on by a thread. In terms of looking at the MRI report, how do you feel with that patience that you're staring down? Like, is that hard? I think sometimes it's when you're gathering data and gathering information on, like, what's going on with your body, whether it's like getting an MRI or getting answers, there's almost this like adrenaline fueled process. And then it becomes a little trickier a few days later as you, like, settle into the grind of PT and recovery and patients. And how does that feel?

[A]

So in the process of getting this MRI, I went back and looked at the two other MRIs I've had in Colorado. One in 2019 and one 2024, actually, before the accident. And the torn 2019 was on my hamstrings, but caught my hips in the MRI. And my hips are, you know, I was what, 30 years old then, are so bad. Like, so bad. If you showed my hips to a doctor without them knowing what the finding was, they would assume, oh, this athlete is not running because of hip degeneration and pain. And this is something genetic that runs in my family. And I'm kind of like those dogs that really I'm like a German shepherd is what I am. And then in looking at my knee MRI from 2014, like, there's evidence of a past partial ACL tear, probably from when I was in high school, and degenerative changes in the knee from those injuries. And my guess is if you MRI everything, now we have the ankle that looks similar. Like, this is the part of using your body. And so my reflection now is partially like, oh, this sucks. But I, you know, I. I want to be driving towards the future. The fact that I can heat suit bike is exciting to me, and, you know, life moves on and I need to show up as a coach and a human. But where I'm really excited is what gratitude. To just be able to do any miles in the future. Like, I don't know how much time I have. Like, I want to run till I'm 90, but it's definitely going to have to look different just based on these MRI findings. And that's a beautiful thing. Time's ticking and. And after the accident, time was ticking with, I need to go do these races. I need to go see what's possible. And now that those things have happened, like, I probably have peaked overall in the big scheme of things. Like, I doubt I'm going to do much more in the, like, any. I'm not going to exceed what I've done before.

[B]

Well, I disagree with that. But I feel like you thrive on that kind of mentality, and so I'll let you simmer in that.

[A]

But now it's like, well, I want to just be able to cherish every mile I have. Like, I'm running out of time in a different way. Not running out of time to do big things. I'm running out of time to enjoy the moments I have. And that's probably what mortality is. Feels like for every human. Right. And so I just want to be out there having fun again.

[B]

Yeah, I feel like a dose of gratitude is opening up an MRI and being like, whoa, I've run through this. I actually wonder if the radiologist googled you. He's like, what is this guy doing to his body? Why does an ankle look like this? And what is. How did this happen?

[A]

He needs a glow up right now.

[B]

It's like, I need to do an archeological dig on these findings.

[A]

Cap, Cap.

[B]

I have no. This is so hard. I don't even know how to tag that.

[A]

I'm just looking to the. I have all the definitions written down here. Okay, okay, let's move on. That's enough talk about me. Love you guys. Thanks for being here. Uh, about you this week, we gotta talk about something. What do you got?

[B]

Um, came back to my first workout post, pericarditis. So you going through this journey? We're kind of relying on your journey for YouTube. And now it's like, I gotta step up to the YouTube lands. And I'm actually excited for it. So did an uphill treadmill workout, 8 by 5 minutes this week and preparing it to be filmed on YouTube this week for a 12 by 5 minute uphill tremor workout. And excited for it.

[A]

You excited to be on camera?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, Yeah. I mean.

[A]

Okay. Okay.

[B]

I mean, I just didn't want my races to be on YouTube like that to me feels like this primal personal moment. But there's something about stepping into a pain cave and I'm like, sure. Like, I don't know, I feel like I'm very open at this point. And so whatever we put on YouTube I'm good with.

[A]

What do you think about me being down there for jokes the whole time?

[B]

Oh, I would love that.

[A]

It's gonna be fun.

[B]

That's gonna be fun. It's great.

[A]

I can't wait. One other thing I wanted to highlight about your life is you got maybe the dumbest product I've ever seen.

[B]

It was $50.

[A]

It doesn't matter how much it was. This is bad. It's called a brick. And it disables certain apps on your phone.

[B]

Yeah, it takes away. You can disable whatever apps you want on your phone. And it's kind of like one of those functions that limits social media use, which you can do internally on the phone. You can just say like, give me a 10 minute timer. But there's something about having the physical brick that is quite helpful. And you've been looking at this and you're like, this is the dumbest thing.

[A]

I'm like, if you're using this in a month, I will give you $1,000 back. So you will make a big return on investment. It's the funniest thing in the world to me that, you know, we have these amazing technologies at our fingertips and then we have a new technology that makes that technology worse.

[B]

We're going to pay $50 to make our phone dumber. That's exactly what I did. But it's been great and I love it.

[A]

It's you committing to just being so present all the time. It's beautiful. But it's also such a hilarious idea. Could you imagine pitching investors? I have something that makes it like it's 1950.

[B]

But there's something like an insane. I think there's like, 18,000 reviews on the app store of the brick product. A lot of people are paying $50 to make their phone dumber.

[A]

You know what's better than the brick product?

[B]

What?

[A]

An actual brick. You can just toss it on top of your phone.

[B]

Just tossing your phone into the river.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

I should have done that weeks ago.

[A]

I'll go to your house and do that for you for $49.

[B]

Okay. But to be real, we're not sponsored by this. Obviously, it has been game changing. I don'. Use Instagram or Strava. Those are, like, the only two apps I blocked. I don't even use it that much. But not having it and not being able to just, like, press it randomly when I'm parenting or when I wake up in the morning, it is so peaceful.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

My phone is bricked, like, 23 hours of the day. It's great.

[A]

Maybe you're convincing me.

[B]

Actually. Did you notice, though, my run was labeled as morning run for a long.

[A]

Time On Sunday, I didn't know.

[B]

Or Saturday, it was because my phone was bricked and I couldn't open my Strava, but my garment uploaded, so I was like, this is just gonna have to hang out on there.

[A]

Can you do an emergency unbrick or is it just.

[B]

They have five emergency unbricks throughout the.

[A]

Entire life of the product.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What?

[B]

I know. So I was like, I'm not going to burn my unbrick on a Strava title.

[A]

Okay. Okay. I'm rethinking my business for. I was saying $49 to throw your phone into a river. I think we need to match that feature. We need, like, $49 for. I will take your phone and hide it in your house, but you get five clues about where it is.

[B]

Actually, maybe this is what brick should do. You should pay to get more lives. It's like in a video game. You can, like, you know, re upload in app purchases. In app purchases for the brick to buy more. Emergency on bricks.

[A]

Brick, get at us. Yeah, no, you're the. You. The thing is, it's just you committing to being, like, the world's best mom like you already are. So I'm the one that needs a brick.

[B]

Well, sometimes when I'm playing with Ollie, who's one, he's just, like, eating a block. I'm like, I'll just like, Chuck Strava, see what my athletes are doing. But you know what? It's really nice to be right there while he's eating a block. Yeah, sure.

[A]

I'm going to be fully present for this houseplant slowly growing sentient.

[B]

Fully present for our house full of germs right now.

[A]

Oh, God. Okay, let's get on to the main part of the episode. The first thing to do is a promo for the feed which includes a really cool question. So go to the feed.com swap S W A P. If you go there, if you're a first time orderer, you get 40% off. So do a huge order so you get a huge benefit. And if you're a returning customer, $10 back for every hundred dollars spent. It's the best deal on the market. Kind of wild.

[B]

We're at the point where we're like putting all the random things into the feed to be like, what can we get in terms of our money back? Because we use so many different sporting products and most of them are on the feet. It's kind of crazy.

[A]

It's so wild. And so that brings us to a question. Happy New Year. Looking for advice on what to buy from the feed on a budget. I'm overwhelmed by all the different options. The new formulas look amazing, but I can't afford that right now. Between supplements, gels, protein and hydration, it gets expensive. If you only had $200 a month to spend, which is awesome, that's a great budget, what would you recommend? For context, I'm not a pro athlete trying to eke out 1% more. Just trying to consistently train 5 hours a week and build to 10 over the next few months. Thank you.

[B]

Where would you start? Yeah, I think I'd start at gels.

[A]

Mm. I would start with something that's general health support.

[B]

You think so?

[A]

I think so. Um, so I would go with First Endurance Multi V. The article came out that I wrote for the feed on First Endurance Multi V. That has some good jokes in there. That got some weird comments online.

[B]

Actually, the picture was great. It just said expensive P wins races for a picture of you at javelina. Actually, Expensive P gets second in races. They really should have modified that photo to be your like champagne at Leadville. Like, correction, this dude got second.

[A]

Oh, it's so true. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Expensive pee and a broken foot. Yeah. So I like First Endurance Multi V or some sort of like general purpose health support. And it really for me helps like immune system and how I feel. Second up would be the feed lab whey protein.

[B]

I agree with that.

[A]

Yeah, it's really inexpensive. I think that would probably go for both of us. Right. And Then a crap ton of gels.

[B]

Oh, so many gels. Beta fuel I think would be the best cost wise to like 40 gram gel is really nice and taste and ease of, of using.

[A]

And maybe though an Enervic caffeine gel true shipment, so an intervene caffeine Intervit caffeine gel shipment plus a science and sport beta fuel gel for your baseline calories. That combination is incredible and so that would likely get you up into the mid-1100s and that's probably enough. And if you're going to throw in one fun thing, one thing that is not needed, if you're just training, trying to get build a little bit, but you're like, oh, got to go for that elite athlete advantage. What are you looking for?

[B]

Beta recovery. I like that. To me I have it every day now. 70 every day. I know it's 70.

[A]

So good. Science and sport beta recovery post training, amazing.

[B]

It's 70 for 15 servings but it's dense like you know, has 380 calories and so you're getting good calories per dollar. But it's like to me, I seriously rely on that for my recovery.

[A]

I think if you're really cash strapped, the way you can make that work is. Oh true. The Feed Lab whey protein mixed with the Feed High carb mix. So the Feed High carb mix is by far the cheapest option on the market than anything else, even a homemade mixture. So if you're making homemade, go check out the Feed Lab High carb mix right now because it will make your life easier. Um, I think combining those would be a little bit better than beta recovery if you really just don't have it to spend.

[B]

Okay, you win.

[A]

Okay, but, but, but, but, but, but yeah, I think there's a couple options for that fun purchase on top.

[B]

Ooh, a fun purchase. I go, socks.

[A]

What the fuck?

[B]

The feed socks are the only socks I wear.

[A]

No, no, we do not do socks. We are not 80 year old grand people yet.

[B]

Actually my sister reached out to me, she works at the Feed and she's like, megan, we talked about your sock usage in a meeting. She's like, we saw them on Instagram.

[A]

And we see that David uses $2 socks from Amazon.com. okay. No, I would say a few different options. One is currency. We've talked about the science of that before. It can perhaps improve fat oxidation, makes stress go down, feel a little bit better. The other might be Gnomeo. So you know, an ergogenic performance aid taken before exercise. Broccoli sprouts Both of these are kind of natural options to get a little bit of an edge, feel a little bit better, and not break the bank at the same time.

[B]

Okay. Why would I get broccoli sprouts when I could have fluorescent socks? Okay. For $6 or $8.

[A]

Whatever.

[B]

They're cheap. Whatever they are.

[A]

Okay. And then final little thing here on the feed is someone wrote in with this really cool story that I just wanted to shut out. Oh, my God, the feed. So I went to use your feed.comswat./swap discount code and it wouldn't work. I emailed them. They pulled it up and says it's for only for new customers only. I'm all, but I am new. Sad face. Then they dug in. So I ordered something way back in 2018, and that's why I didn't even remember hearing of them back then. But they offered me the discount as a welcome back. When the two of you say how awesome the company is, it seems you are right. I turned down the discount, though. Happy to support a company with that service.

[B]

We get messages like that all the time.

[A]

It's incredible.

[B]

I think there was a message the other week that we didn't read about an athlete modeling customer service at their company based off of what the feed was doing and how they interacted with them.

[A]

And it's because they genuinely care, knowing the CEO. It's one of the rare times if we were running for a shoe company, which still no shoe sponsors, guys. No one. No one reached out.

[B]

Actually, that's a reflection. I think every male athlete besides you in the top 10 has a shoe sponsor.

[A]

Oh, I'm sure.

[B]

Is a boot company going to sponsor?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Seriously, why does no one want me? You ordered this boot on Amazon. How much was it?

[A]

4999.

[B]

It's pretty cheap.

[A]

Oh, my God. Cheaper than the brick.

[B]

You know I'm going to use the brick longer.

[A]

That's true. Well, hopefully. Oh, my God. Who knows? Um, but yeah, they're just great people there from the top down. And so go to the feed.com swap swap. And if they offer you a discount, even if it's extra, use it. Use it. Trust us. Use it. Okay, let's get on to these two studies that work in tandem. So we'll go through each of them a little bit quickly here. The first is called associations between Nutritional Intake, Body composition, Menstrual Health, and Performance in Elite Female Trail runners.

[B]

And this was done in 35 female athletes. And. And to me, the numbers were staggering and staggering. Staggering. And this was done on Spanish elite female trial runners. And I think that's relevant because I do think there's a slightly different culture behind fueling and how we talk about and how we support athletes with reds here in the US than we do internationally. And I've just kind of seen that anecdotally through athletes I coach or interactions I've had.

[A]

We've gotten messages about that from European listeners. And it's tough to know, right? Like we're not doing cross sectional studies on different places and regions. And my guess is it's not the US isn't in a monolith. There's different places where you'll get different cultures. But hopefully we've played a role in that over time and others that have led the way on it because we remember going to Europe for the world championships and hearing comments just openly about women's bodies. And yes, those comments are certainly happening other places and probably just beneath the surface a little bit or in direct messages. But hearing it said two people's faces essentially was shocking. And that was back in 2017.

[B]

And some of those comments I feel like are backed up in the findings that we see in the study. So in the study, 94% of those 35 female athletes had clinically low energy availability, which the to use to like define clinically low energy availability. They had them do food logs and they were looking for under 30kcal for kilogram of fat free mass per day was their definition. And there's a lot of different definitions to define that, but that's one that's used commonly in research.

[A]

Yeah, and food logs can sometimes underestimate or maybe they're overestimating. Who knows where the air bars lie.

[B]

Here from doing research too with female athletes, I feel like the most common trend is actually overestimating what you're eating in a food, whether that's like to make yourself feel good, to like feel like you're meeting the like standards or quota of a college team or for whatever reason. But that makes me wonder like would this even be a hundred percent? Who knows?

[A]

You know, who knows? But if there's a different cultural context.

[B]

Maybe that's actually true, maybe it's underestimated.

[A]

Maybe those biases change. In other words, the numbers are not saying this is a hundred percent accurate. But another wild finding here is that there were of the 35 female athletes, 14 were you Menoric and 14 were amenoric or oligomenoric.

[B]

And amenoric means absence of period. Oligomenaric means long cycles. To the point that hormones are probably disrupting cycles, um, and this can occur as a result of low energy availability.

[A]

Yeah. And so within that context, it wasn't just, okay, the athletes are low energy availability, thus they're losing their menstrual cycle. And that's a bad thing long term. The, the. They went specifically into what the context of those findings were. So the amenorrheic athletes consumed more simple carbohydrates, 21.8% versus 17.2%, which is 20. Pretty big change, but nothing crazy. And more protein, which is fascinating. And that was pretty significant. 2.5 grams per kilogram per day versus 1.7 more fiber and more lipids. Whereas human athletes consumed more complex carbohydrates by substantial margin. So 130 versus 180 grams per day and vitamins.

[B]

And to me, this actually kind of reminds me of the study that we talked about a while ago where we were looking at athletes with low energy availability and altered menstrual. Menstrual cycles and finding that those athletes are actually snacking more during the day. And I wonder if this is what we're seeing here as a result of the simple carbohydrates is athletes in this category of either of absent menstrual cycles likely are consuming foods that are less dense. We talk about satisfaction bombs on here all the time of just going and eating a meal that feels good and satisfying and big. And that usually aligns with complex carbohydrates and like vitamins when you think about that. And I wonder if, you know, these athletes that are struggling with their menstrual cycles are just afraid to eat those big meals, that that could be it.

[A]

Or you could just be looking at genetic context in this type of situation. Because if 94.3% of the athletes had clinically low energy availability, yet 14 of or yeah, so some 21 of 35 are amenorrheic. Like, you know, that's a pretty substantial number, but it's not all. And so there's some athletes that probably have genetic buffers built in that make it so that they're not going to lose their period. Essentially, it's not every single person in the study is the same intervention group. And so when you're talking about simple carbs or complex carbs or whatever, you're not actually seeing that that's the driver. You might just be seeing that that athlete happens to be lucky to have the right parents to be able to buffer this under fueling for a longer period of Time.

[B]

And that's why it's so tricky too. And I think it's also tricky too because body composition isn't always aligned with health of an athlete. It's like, you know, sometimes when athletes are actually like low energy availability, it alters body compos. And so I feel like, you know, that can impact mindset and you know, culture surrounding fueling. And it's just this, these conversations are.

[A]

So tough and a lot of times it's unintentional. Which brings us to the next study that is gonna be tied together here. It's called Unintentional under Fueling and protein Prioritization, a multi methods exploration of nutrition practices and behaviors in female endurance athletes.

[B]

And this study took 72 female endurance athletes and had them do four day food diaries. And plus they had a cohort of 20 athletes that were doing more extensive intersection interviews. And what they found was that these athletes for the most part were meeting their carb needs on rest days, but often undershooting their carb needs on training days.

[A]

Yeah, and that's really significant because you're seeing alignment with the other study. Um, so the deficits increased as training rose. The energy availability issues are happening because of the training stimulus most of the time. And to put specific numbers on it, the athletes took in 473 more calories for every 1,000 more calories burned. So that's obviously creating a really big deficit. And then a quote from the study, qualitative findings. So this comes from the interviews, identified barriers to carbohydrate intake, including time constraints, diet, culture influences and body image concerns.

[B]

And I think essentially this gets to the idea too that like this can be totally unintentional. I see this a lot in athletes that are busy. You know, I see it in moms, I see it in athletes that, you know, it's just like your day has become so wild and out of control that it's hard to like get in these things after training. And I think this is where fueling training matters a ton. Because if you think about like these deficits occurring during training, well, if you can feel high carb during training, you're already providing that buffer of a deficit. Like to me, for me, yesterday I went and did a three and a half hour ride and took in more than 300 grams of carbs in on that ride. And as I was coming back, I was, it was busy. I was like 1:30pm by the time I got back. And so my lunch and dinner and everything is kind of getting compressed there. But that High carb fueling gave me a buffer.

[A]

You did the double gel, didn't you?

[B]

I did do that. My hands are cold.

[A]

So was that 80 grams at once? 80 grams?

[B]

80 grams at once, yeah.

[A]

That's impressive.

[B]

I did it twice.

[A]

Oh, yeah?

[B]

Yeah. Well, it's like on the bike, you know, I was biking with, like, spring gloves. My hands were so cold and non functional that I was like, you know, it's gonna be really hard to fuel while I'm moving. So I stopped a few times and did the double chill.

[A]

So question for you. The protein prioritization in both studies is pretty fascinating. So the groups of athletes that seemed the least healthy, we're doing the most protein, which kind of is counterintuitive to me at baseline. Where do you think that's coming from?

[B]

It might be coming from, like, thinking that these practices are helpful for performance. Like, I feel like there's a lot of interesting research on protein, but I also feel like protein is less stigmatized than carbs. And it's easy to get in the form of bars or shakes or other things that probably feel like safe foods to some extent. And so that's kind of where I'm wondering if that's coming from.

[A]

Yeah. So, like, it could go toward the body image concerns comment, where if some athlete is thinking, all right, I get all this messaging from, quote, diet culture, but I, I want to broaden that out because, like, diet culture, I think gets a bad rap that you're thinking Instagram influencers. And as we're gonna talk about in a second, I think this goes far beyond that as it relates to endurance athletes. Um, but all that messaging is saying, oh, well, you do good protein and you keep your carbs pretty low, and you're just gonna get, like, whatever, jacked. That's the messaging to men. And I'm sure the male studies would look similar, though, without the menstrual cycle making everything much more tricky and important to think about every single day and every single moment. And so if you're doing that and you're thinking more about body image concerns, you might push the protein up at the expense of carbs. Is that.

[B]

That's my thought. Kind of feels like, to me, I always describe protein shakes. Kind of feel like a business proposition to me. I'm like, this is my business. I'm drinking this, I'm getting strong. I'm supporting my protein needs for the day. But I feel like oftentimes for athletes, mozzarella sticks and a grape soda don't always feel like a Business proposition in the same way, but in reality for female. Especially female athletes, but all athletes in general. It really is.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, I was thinking after my ride yesterday, it's like, you know, I had those carbs on the bike, came in, had beta recovery. Then I had an entire box of mozzarella sticks with marinara sauce. And it's like, it was easy to make. It was right there, but it's like, that doesn't necessarily feel like a business proposition proposition, but it really is.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm a really good husband because I got you eight boxes of mozzarella stick.

[B]

You really did. I loved on the podcast the other week, you're like, I do all our grocery shopping. And what does that look like? It looks like pressing a button on Amazon, where you're like, I'll take eight of these.

[A]

Well, I used to go to the grocery store all the time. I used to. Right, right. No, don't.

[B]

Don't call me out in California back in the day.

[A]

Oh, I did here, too, Megan. I used to have. Have very intimate relationships with a number of Trader Joe's cashiers.

[B]

I'd be worried. I mean, they'd get you an mri. Honestly, they'd have mri. Sway power.

[A]

We should probably give Leo maternity test just because I was having really close relationships with the Trader Joe's cashiers when he was conceived.

[B]

Now it's the Amazon drivers that come to our driveway. You're like, thank you. As you wave to them out the door. You're like, you're the fast.

[A]

You don't want to come anywhere near our house. It is a war zone.

[B]

Why did we order six things of Pedialyte?

[A]

Oh, no. Yeah. And I think these types of studies always are telling the same story, which is for female athletes, they almost always are underdoing carb intake and often total energy intake as well. Um, but when you do this on male athletes, you're seeing similar issues. It's just the endocrine system stakes aren't quite as high. Thus, sometimes the issues with it can be pushed back longer term. And so the message isn't just like, eat like an athlete all the time. Because we don't want to discount some of the messaging that comes from broader health conversations. Because, you know, if an athlete. If someone never trains, if sedentary, then you might start to get recommendations that are a little bit different. Right. That you don't need to have some large number of carbs per day to stay healthy. But for athletes, you absolutely need to. And I think one of the reasons rest Days work so well is partially because athletes are undershooting, fueling the rest of the time, and it's a chance for them to catch up. And so if you don't need to catch up all the time, you can just train more usually.

[B]

Yeah. It's kind of wild for me to think about that. Like, I did 14 and a half hours of training last week, which was a lot. And eating. Honestly, I love eating. Like, I actually genuinely enjoy eating. But at times I was like, this is a job. Like, it is amazing when you do that quantity of training, just how much your body needs and also how much easier it is to get it in from things like mozzarella sticks and grape soda or whatever. Like, the delicious thing is because it's just substra.

[A]

So can I end this conversation with David's Think piece?

[B]

Oh, God.

[A]

Which is. Okay, great.

[B]

Are you gonna go Gen Z on me?

[A]

You didn't say yes. Yeah.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay. Okay, that was. I. I'm gonna edit out the pause there. That was, like, eight seconds. So that people think it was just one.

[B]

It was not eight seconds.

[A]

Okay, so here's my I think piece to tie it all together is. Last week, a new food pyramid was released in the US So everybody has seen the food pyramid from back in the 90s when we were kids, and it's gotten lambasted for a number of different reasons. And they flip the food pyramid so that at the bottom of the food pyramid is, like, whole grains now, like, bread and stuff like that. And as you go up, it starts to get, like, more fitness. Bro y. You know, like, you're starting to see.

[B]

There'S just, like, meat and dairy hanging out up at the top.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. And, like, I get that, actually, like, if you look.

[B]

No, no, no.

[A]

The point being the food pyramid on its own, okay?

[B]

You can own this Think piece. This is not my think.

[A]

Well, the new food pyramid, as its flu now makes a lot of sense for some people.

[B]

No, I don't think so. I think you're. You're promoting, like, you know, dairy and meat and a lot of.

[A]

No, Megan, okay? David's Think piece is not supposed to have a bitch.

[B]

Well, I am your bitch. Permanently attached to your Think piece because you put a ring on it.

[A]

Yeah, I should have. Should have connected with the Trader Joe's cashier a little bit more. That guy would have been like, bro, I like your take on the food, bitch. But okay, where I was trying to.

[B]

I would have been like, look, in the meat aisle, there's some delicious hamburgers hanging out there.

[A]

Where I was trying to go with my brilliant thought that I understand is not 100% correct, but where I was trying to go with it is that this, this food pyramid is not just bad because it's coming from this administration. Like, there are parts of it that make some sense, even as it seems unnecessary because you just learned to distrust everything.

[B]

Okay, maybe there's like two parts of it that makes sense, but it's like you're staring at a sky and you're like, I see two stars up there amongst all of them.

[A]

Okay, just let me talk. You know what I've always said, men on podcasts do not have enough time to talk. After this podcast. Spent 20 minutes on my stupid to start. Yeah, this didn't really work. But my point being, all athletes are subject to that programming. And so when we say diet culture, I think sometimes it's easy to play off because athletes are like, oh, well, I'm not subject to diet culture because, you know, I'm just listening to nutrition recommendations from nutritionists and stuff. Stuff. And it's like, well, great. But if that nutritionist doesn't understand athletes, they might be giving you a filter that looks very similar to this upside down food pyramid. And that probably won't work for an athlete in almost all situations. And so what we call diet culture in these studies or things might be much more like a broad scale view and possibly even slight consensus on how sedentary people should approach nutrition. And that type of programming that can happen in the background leads people down rough paths unintentionally without realizing it. And so you don't have to be looking at like Instagram Reels or TikTok to get these types of messages. You might just be looking at government recommendations.

[B]

Well, the tricky thing is, like, this is how they present it in schools and how they present it, you know, it's like it forms the basis. And so, like, part of me is like, who listens to those things? Who looks at the pyramid? But, like, they actually are presented.

[A]

Sometimes everything percolates into broader society. Like, it's just the nature of how these conversations and thinking happens.

[B]

Well, I agree with that point. That the food pyramid inverted would be very difficult for athletes. And athletes in general are a different part of the population. And so when we think about, you know, recommendations across the board, it varies. I still disagree with your first part, though.

[A]

Everything about that think piece didn't really work, did it?

[B]

No. Are you gonna stand by that think piece?

[A]

No, no, I back it up.

[B]

You back it out.

[A]

I Was so excited because, oh, man, this study and this study are kind of saying similar things, but they tie together. And then the food pyramid dropped last week. I'm gonna tie it all together. Megan's gonna say, I'm so smart, she wants to marry me six more times.

[B]

I'm like, here's my ring actually stuck on my finger, so.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

You need, like, a saw to cut that thing off.

[A]

Yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't land that plane.

[B]

Yeah, no, you didn't. I'm not even gonna. Yes. And do. Do you agree with me, though?

[A]

I do. I do. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I tried, but it was.

[B]

But I like your point about athletes. Like, athletes should not be thinking about food, like, the general population. And for athletes, like, the food pyramid might look like pizza and burritos and, you know, delicious things and soda and drinks with calories, and you name it. And, like, just get the calories and the goodness on board to fuel your fire of the work you're doing.

[A]

Yeah. Your phrasing of satisfaction bombs basically summarizes both studies and the point I was trying to make make but didn't.

[B]

Boom.

[A]

Boom.

[B]

Are we gonna leave that in?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I'm okay with it. Why not?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, do you. You seem like you're, like, panicking right now. What is wrong with you?

[B]

No, no, I like it. You're like.

[A]

It's like, I made a bad point. I didn't, like, cause us to get canceled.

[B]

You're like, I'm gonna fail bigger as it comes to thinking failure is cool.

[A]

And I'm the coolest. Okay, I think we skipped the information article.

[B]

Yeah, we definitely skipped this after you pulled up this inflammation article, and I was like, I actually agree with a lot of this. And then we got to the point about, like. Like, gmo, and I was like, I don't know if I agree with this one. Yeah, yeah, it's a red flag.

[A]

The information article was making a lot of great points.

[B]

It's actually a great article. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. And then it always becomes a red flag when you're agreeing with a lot of points and they start to, like, go farther and farther off the deep end. And I'm like, oh, no, does this mean that I'm off the deep end?

[B]

We could take a consensus vote at this point.

[A]

That might be an interesting conversation for Patreon because it's overlaps with what I see in coaching as it relates to managing chronic inflammation as an athlete and ways to think about it, including some of the things we talked about and what we're doing with the foot, but maybe not for a science discussion after I already shat the bed.

[B]

Well, let's do. I actually do think we should talk about managing chronic inflammation because a lot of athletes face this. Like, you know, some. Yes, maybe like some amount of inflammation the body adapts to and responds to and gets stronger. But runaway chronic inflammation is negative as a long term adaptation point. And. And there's a lot of strategies to think about that.

[A]

So let's save it for Patreon.

[B]

Let's save for Patreon.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

No, but let's. I mean, we'll bring points of it to the podcast, but not. Not now, not after. Yeah, you almost just got us canceled.

[A]

Let's not have the chili after he put some rat poison in it. Let's start a new Crockpot. Okay, so go to patreon.com swap swp biggest thing that we have, there are so many training plans, including just last week, a new track based training plan came out that Megan suggested. It's six weeks. If you do these six weeks of training, you will get faster if you're able to stay healthy. It's a big if. But that plan is designed for athletes that want to take it to the next level. Um, but there's plans for every distance, including, like pro design plans that overlap with like what athletes are doing to run. You know, one hour half marathons. Really fun things going on there.

[B]

And it's really nice. Just have a bank of track workouts. Like, you know, if you find yourself like, you know, figuring out where to run and the track is the only place that's snow free, it's kind of nice to be able to go there and say like, like, okay, is there a reasonable workout on here that I might be able to plop into my training schedule too?

[A]

Yeah, it's all about the plopping.

[B]

Oh, yeah, that's exactly how we plan training.

[A]

It's all about the plopping. So go to patreon.com swapswp Also, 175 bonus episodes. There you get a very raw take on this injury. Right after we got the news last week. And just tons of fun.

[B]

Yeah. Actually when we were talking on Patreon last week on Friday, you're like, megan, save the real burns for the podcast episode. Like, don't burn me too hard. Yeah, you burned yourself though.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Put your own self under the fire. God, Megan, it's okay.

[A]

I deserve it. Okay, on to news. First thing. How do we make $3,000? Maybe I'm not exactly sure. How this works.

[B]

High five. I do think we need to do logistics to make the $3,000. Is it worth it?

[A]

Is it worth it to do, like, submit a PDF? The problem is you can't do an online form. You have to print something out.

[B]

We have to go to the mail, like the.

[A]

Yeah, I think you also have to go to a printer.

[B]

The mail we took to the post office.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What a nightmare. So we should definitely do that.

[A]

This is interesting. The anthropic settlement came out where they scraped a bunch of books, essentially. And so our book, the Happy Runner, that we wrote forever ago.

[B]

Don't buy it, buy it, whatever.

[A]

Just subscribe to our Patreon. You get more advanced stuff. But it was scraped by the AI models. So at baseline, it seems like the authors are all going to get $3000, which is pretty darn exciting.

[B]

Do we each get $3000 or is it $3000 for both of us?

[A]

I don't know, because then if a book had 40 co authors, they'd be getting bank 120k or whatever. No, I think it's just one of us. But you know who said being an author wouldn't pay off, right?

[B]

Should we do something with this money?

[A]

Should we do something with this money? Oh, yeah, yeah. Maybe, maybe. Maybe we can invest in lactate monitors that we're about to get to.

[B]

Oh, true. Or maybe not.

[A]

Maybe not. Yeah. What do you think?

[B]

Think maybe we should take a trip somewhere?

[A]

A trip?

[B]

Yeah, just take our vomiting children on a plane. That sounds great. Let's go international while we're at it.

[A]

With no sleep. But it's really interesting moment because again, these AI models are all scraping all of the data that exists everywhere. It's how systems work. And the scaling models for these AI systems are just bonkers if you haven't read or learned about how they work work, and how the scaling and the power laws are functioning. It truly boggles the mind that if you program enough information into them, they at a certain point gain a level of intelligence that does not make sense from the underlying, like, programmed data might indicate a lot about how our brains work and stuff. But I love thinking about the Happy Runner being what these things are trained on.

[B]

Like, what are we reading?

[A]

Can you imagine that?

[B]

Like, who are these people and their dog? Talking dog.

[A]

The first line is, every runner has the same finish line. Death. I was clearly in a boot or something like emotionally when I wrote that one line because I had to beg you to put it in. And I'm pretty proud of it.

[B]

Now, Well, I love your passion for AI and machine learning, and it's kind of what a time to be alive to see this all play out. But last night we were like, snuggling. And afterwards, you're just like, Megan, like, literally four seconds later, you're like, I have something to tell you about Claude quad. Do you remember that?

[A]

What I have to tell you about quad is Anthropic's model. And so Claude code is baller. It's insane. I was gonna say bunkers, and it turned into baller. I. That's very money.

[B]

Love me.

[A]

Very money love me. I'm sus right now. And yeah, it's in. It's just truly wild what's happening in the coding world right now.

[B]

Yeah, you're telling me all about it. You're like, let me tell you about this. I was like, whoa. Like, now is the time.

[A]

Some men turn over and fall asleep.

[B]

Other men tell you 15 minutes of random facts about Claude. I actually loved you so much in that moment. I just came to a history lesson. I'm sorry your dad facts were great. Those were hubby facts.

[A]

I'm just like a gen. Like a general blanket apology right now. I feel like something about this injury has made it so that my brain has too much space. Like, there's just too much empty behavior going there. I need to run to kill some brain.

[B]

You're like, I'm just gonna fill my brain with Claude everywhere and everywhere.

[A]

Okay, moving on. Number two, burrito league. So last year we talked about this. Strava and Chipotle had a challenge where the people that ran the most segments around Chipotle, so I think there's like a.02 mile stretch of road would get free Chipotle for a year. There were a lot of strings attached to that, but it led to the most epic challenge where Jamil Khoury and somebody else who's amazing but we weren't watching his YouTube videos, did a back and forth where they were running hundreds of miles on this segment. And that segment challenge was canceled for this year. And so Jamil and others stepped up to create a cross country burrito league where segments exist everywhere. And it is such a strange thing to do.

[B]

And there are burrito leagues popping up everywhere. There's some a lot in Canada, actually. Did you see that? Yeah. There's a whole Google Doc of burrito leagues. There's one in Boulder.

[A]

Whoa.

[B]

Really? One in Golden?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Colorado has a lot of brutal.

[A]

Maybe I could get one of those little, like, scooters for My foot, you know, and say I have to be able to use a scooter, otherwise it's discrimination.

[B]

Oh, you should. You should totally do that. Or one of the. They have like, the, like, peg things that you, like, put your leg on the peg crutches. The peg crutches? Yeah. You should do that.

[A]

Yeah. I refuse to crutch. How do you even crutch as a parent? I don't know.

[B]

I'll carry the kids.

[A]

Megan, that wouldn't. I would ruin your life.

[B]

No, I love their kids.

[A]

It'll lie.

[B]

It'll be fine.

[A]

If I can do heat suit biking, I can carry some kids.

[B]

Did you see me carry Leo past the room at like, 3? I'm just, like, fully out.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Megan did, like, the zombie walk with her hands fully extended.

[B]

Carrying a child covered in grossness.

[A]

Yeah, Life. But do you have any deep thoughts on the burrito league?

[B]

I think Chipotle and Strava missed out. Yeah.

[A]

I don't know, though. They're getting the free pub.

[B]

They're not getting the pub. I mean, now it's other, like, burrito companies sponsoring, like, local efforts.

[A]

Oh, wait, these aren't just Chipotle's.

[B]

I don't think any Chipotle is involved.

[A]

Oh, shit.

[B]

You can see, like, the sponsors, and a lot of times it's just random burrito places that are local.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

Yeah, dude, now we're shopping local. It's great.

[A]

Let's short Chipotle. I wish we'd gone to Chipotle last night so we had an excuse for what happened to our child.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Because it seems to overlap.

[B]

What did we have last night? Oh, spaghetti meatballs.

[A]

Spaghetti meatballs. Oh, Leo didn't have any.

[B]

Yeah. So he had toast.

[A]

Yeah, he had toast and fruit. You know what I always say, fruit's the problem.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Granted, fruit complex carbohydrate. We should definitely encourage it. So, yeah, Brutal league. Very cool. Be on the lookout there. I'm sure there are going to be challenges wherever you live, most likely. And so let's support a grassroots effort to just make running interesting and weird.

[B]

And if not, start one. Yeah, Yeah. I feel like it's a great way to meet other people, too, and just kind of fun.

[A]

M E A T.

[B]

You got the food pyramid.

[A]

Other people.

[B]

This is sponsored by the food pyramid.

[A]

Okay. Do you want to talk about the lactate monitors? I do.

[B]

Yeah. Okay.

[A]

So in our 2026 episode with science predictions, which I guess was last week, you put me on the spot and said, what do I think is the next big thing. And I said continuous lactate monitors because when we're able to continuously measure lactate, we can then use modern machine learning to figure out new ideas about training that go far beyond spot lactate checks or heart rate or RPE or anything else we've known before. And that training theory itself might change. And we got sent information on a new lactate monitor called the Cory lactate monitor. And we checked it out and wanted to look at it. And we haven't gotten these yet, we haven't been able to look at them and validate them or anything. But there were a couple concerning things that made me think maybe my prediction was jumping the gun.

[B]

And this is non invasive. So it's done through something that looks like a watch that's using a sensor to help track lactate through sweat. And you sent me this graph and this is where I wish we had a YouTube so we could pull up the graph.

[A]

Oh yes.

[B]

And the graph had a line which was their gold standard estimation of lactate, which was done via blood. And then they had the coreloctate readings that were scattered, scattered all around it. But when you zoomed in really closely, there was actually a decent amount of scatter on points. That's like, you know, if my lactate is 8 and you know blood based on the sensor and the blood reading is five, that's actually pretty significant in the grand scheme of things. Yeah.

[A]

So my big red flag is I looked at the term chart and the blood lactate went up to 40 and.

[B]

You sent it to me and I was like, why is blood lactate up to 40? Is this Killian?

[A]

Well, I was really skeptical at first because I was like, well, if you're making the blood lactate go so high. So for those that don't know 4 is, you're starting to exceed LT2. So lactate threshold 2. So you do see high numbers, but 40, like why are we putting this on a chart?

[B]

15 is quite high for human 20.

[A]

And you can get high. You can get high. But the point just being it's a weird thing to have on your chart, like to have outliers that to plot someone at 40.

[B]

I was like, what are they doing?

[A]

When I was like, oh, well, it makes sense, right? Because the farther out you plot, the more small variances at the low numbers you care about look like they're not a big deal. But I clicked.

[B]

You clicked.

[A]

That's true.

[B]

You were like, send me this chart. And you're like, look at this lactate monitor. And then 15 minutes later I was like, David, it says equine. This is done in horses. You sent me a chart from horses.

[A]

Like, go check the science out.

[B]

You're like, look at this cool active monitor. I was like, why the does it go to 40?

[A]

Okay, okay, give me credit. A lot of times people get fooled on the Internet by medical studies that are done in mice, right? Like there's even an entire social media account called in mice where they just highlight studies and say, in mice. I'm just the in horses guy.

[B]

You're gonna.

[A]

In horses. I'm always the guy in horses. Always, always the guy in horses.

[B]

And horses are Bijan sticks. Take your pick. The real ones. Know that one?

[A]

Yeah. So that is a little bit of red flag when your first chart is on equine athletes. Because there was a chart on human athletes as well, which was the second chart you had to click over. And it showed the scatter Megan talked about. And the scatter is okay, right? Like I think the r squared value was.082.

[B]

I think it was a little higher than that somewhere in the.08.

[A]

So that's not bad in the big scheme of things. We're getting closer. It's measuring something, right? Like if 80, whatever, 85%, let's say of the variance is explained by, you know, the, the measurement, then that could be interesting. I explained the R squared value bad there. You got what I was saying. It's something to do with variance.

[B]

Megan just was like, correct.

[A]

Go fuck yourself. We're not done with insulting David. But because of that, it's like, does that have any use in the real world yet? Probably not.

[B]

I don't think so. It reminds me a lot actually of what would happen if we plotted risk based heart rate on a scatter plot to correcting that. Like the, the, the gold standard line was test based heart rate straps. Um, and I think we'd see a pretty similar scatter. And it's the point that like when I have risk based readings on runs, I'm like, I'm not going to look at that. Like, this is somewhat instructive but really not useful enough for me to do anything with it.

[A]

Yeah, it ends up being a random scatter because you're never sure why it's wrong wrong and whether it's wrong in the same direction or by the same amount. Like if things were wrong in a like precise way, great. I think that's it. Precise versus accurate. Never quite figured that out. That's for my high schoolers out there. Um, and the Complication is my guess is the risk based heart rate is actually way higher. I think R squared for risk based heart rate is probably in the.095s. But even that we say is totally useless because if you're trying to chart, let's say you're zone two and you care at all about a threshold, your risk based heart rate will turn into a random number generator. Because all it really has to do is say, ah, well, this is somewhere between, I don't know, 140 and 170 and then the R squared will be solid. If it's, you know, your actual heart rate's 150 and it tells you 159. But that's not reasonable or useful whatsoever. And so I worry that lactate monitors might be a little bit in that vicinity right now, at least this one. Or it might just be the beginnings of a technological revolution and within a year this will be great.

[B]

Well, I think it is the beginning of launching something like. I think they're going to iterate on this technology and I'm excited to see where it goes. But for right now, it's like when we have measurements of being able to take blood lactate, whether it's from a finger or from an ear or even just have accurate heart rate values. To me it's like that is so much better to inform training as an athlete. But I am curious where this goes.

[A]

I think it's going to be game changing.

[B]

You're going to be all over those horse wearables.

[A]

Oh my God. I'm going to be so into horses. I need to learn a little bit more about horse training. It's one place I've kind of skipped out in my. I know that injure is an interesting horse fact. Have I ever said this? Bicarb, Sodium bicarb. Illegal in horse racing.

[B]

Oh, shoot.

[A]

That's how well it works. It kind of makes sense. Maybe it's because they have higher lactate levels.

[B]

That's true, actually. Actually my first thought when I'm looking at that chart was we should feed horses like Bicarb 95.

[A]

You the Alberto Sar horse racing.

[B]

Martin, better get on that.

[A]

No, I mean I, I think it's been used in horses forever at wildly high dosages and I can't imagine.

[B]

Can you imagine the horse just like shitting?

[A]

The thing is that's they have convenient excuses. If a human just sprays out their asshole in a running race, everyone's like, ah, something's wrong in there. If a horse does, it's like, that's A horse.

[B]

That's what it does.

[A]

Okay. But very serious reflection on lactate is that I think lactate monitoring has limited utility because it requires such controlled conditions. Um, if you're not using in controlled conditions, it's just not usually particularly useful. And that's why heart rate's effective. You get a continuous measure, you can correlate it, correspond it to lactate, get some idea of the fatigue processes that by taking a proxy variable that's more exact and continuous measurement, it's great. What if you could cut out that middleman and get continuous lactate? It would be so wild. But how. How exact does it need to be? Um, I don't know. Probably within a, like, a decimal point or two.

[B]

I think it needs to be pretty darn exact.

[A]

Yeah. And so I don't know if that's coming via sweat at this stage of development or maybe it is. And so if anybody's using these out there, let us know. And if Corey, if you want to talk to us or whatever or send us one, we'd love, love, love to try it and not. And, like, be open about it, because any attempt in this vicinity, like, we want this company to be wildly successful because if they're the ones that crack the code, they're probably also the ones that change the entire sport for us forever.

[B]

If you're a horse, reach out to. David wants to know. David's gonna give you some performance recommendations.

[A]

Raya for horses. We're gonna get to that in a second. Secretariat, just slide into my dm.

[B]

Secretariat is prime for Raya.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Prime for Ryan. All right, last piece of news here. Just two fun trail or road running stories. First, Shelby Houlahan did another trail race. She did the Santan Scramble 26K and rocked it.

[B]

Set a huge course record actually, going to her Strava. I think she got like 20 different QOMs on that course. 20 crowns and deserved. She ran so fast.

[A]

It's exciting to see what happens when a roadrunner track runner at the peak of their powers. So Shelby was coming off an amazing performance at the world championships in the 1500. Comes to trails. And so I hope Shelby keeps going because of all the reasons we talked about last week of, like, love and openness and compassion in this sport, but also as just an understanding of what the corresponding relationship actually is. Because our theory is always the faster the runner, usually the better the trail runner. And so Shelby keep going. Tell us.

[B]

I want her to step up to longer distances. I'm like, shelby Black Canyon 100K toss. You in. Let's see what happens. I think she'd do great.

[A]

And speaking of Black Canyon 100K, Molly Seidel set the course record at the Bandera 50K by substantial margin. She's going to Black Canyon in Olympic medalist in 2021. Wild to think about, like, what's going to happen in ultras for her. You know, who knows? I mean, that was an incredible performance. So I don't know, it's just a pretty bonkers time to be in the sport.

[B]

I'm excited to see Bandera has a lot of rocks too. Yeah, like ankle biter rocks. And to me, it's like her. It feels more natural for her to translate her talents to Black Canyon even than to Bandera and to do so well at Bandera. It's like, I'm excited to see what she does at Black Canyon.

[A]

It's going to be so, so cool. And just the Roadrunners coming over in the mix in general is just wildly exciting. So we'll keep you updated there. And now do you want to get to Q and A?

[B]

We did it. We're making it to Q and A. Yeah. Look at us.

[A]

We haven't gotten any texts about our kid yet.

[B]

This is great.

[A]

We have literally 90 minutes of childcare today because we couldn't bring anybody in, but we had. We have one option of. Basically, the sickness is in our little pod.

[B]

We don't want to infect people beyond our podcast. But, like, I've been waiting for this text message and we've made it 90 minutes without a sick child.

[A]

And dude has gone to town on like, some food today too.

[B]

Okay, so Leo was sick, like from like 2:00am to 5:00am at like 5:08am he's like, can we go for a bike ride together? What's up with this kid? Kids are so tough.

[A]

He's. He's your son.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, you're the toughest person I've ever met. And I feel like it's just your genetics. My genetics are still, like, curled up in a ball. Like, if I get whatever he has, it's gonna be the worst.

[B]

At 5:08am, he's like, let's go for a bike ride. Then at 5:20, he's like, Can I have some Fritos? That's my childhood and chocolate milk. I'm like, okay, okay.

[A]

Q and A time. Here it is. First one. Speaking of Raya, which we mentioned before, do you all think trail and ultra pros are on Raya? If you don't know, Raya is like Tinder or Hinge, but is referral only because it markets itself as a dating app for elites and millionaires, etc. Lots of celebrities, socialites, entertainers, pro athletes on there. I know for a fact that road running and track and field pros are on there, but I don't know if Trail and Ultra is considered chic enough yet to get a Raya referral and approval. Do you all think Trail and Ultra has become mainstream, sexy enough to be on Raya, or are we still too weird? This is a Gen Z cultural litmus test that I need the answered. Oh, my gosh. I am the perfect person to ask.

[B]

You've got this.

[A]

I didn't even know that was in here. Also, just a word of appreciation. I never would have done my first Ultra last year without you guys. And Now I've done two more with plans for a 100k this year and 100 mile their next next. You are amazing. Thanks so much for what you do.

[B]

Did you know what Raya was before answering this question?

[A]

Yes, I've heard talked about on podcasts. Oh. So, like, I listen to a lot of comedian podcasts and they talk about Raya all the time because it's a place where a lot of, like, the famous comedians are.

[B]

Okay, so break it down for me, Raya. They already did.

[A]

They already did.

[B]

It's like anything beyond that, it's like.

[A]

Invite only celeb, like, true celebrities, like, but then also whoever qualifies. I mean, I don't know who does qualify. Um, haven't seen. I don't know.

[B]

How do you qualify? I wonder what the process is to apply.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Like, do you apply?

[B]

I'm sure you have to apply. Yeah, I'm sure that you can't just like, be like, hey, I'm going to be on riot today. Everyone would be, what if we use.

[A]

My Yu Roy number four photo, a dating photo?

[B]

They'd be like, yeah, we want that guy.

[A]

I don't think so. Unfortunately, everything about that photo makes me look like the biggest scrub who has ever lived. Like, oh my God, what was I thinking with my fashion choices last year that were great.

[B]

You gotta be different.

[A]

Yeah. Uh, but, but, but moving on. Are Trail and Ultra pros on Raya? My answer is probably not. I haven't heard of it for one. But two, I just don't think the notoriety would be high enough for anybody. Um, but there might be a little bit of, like, a wrinkle that I was thinking about last night is that if you pass the Wikipedia test. So if you have a Wikipedia page as an athlete, not just a trailer roadrunner, but like, or whatever for any athlete, that might be an opportunity to get on there.

[B]

So, like, this is your bias. You're like, I got a sweet Wikipedia page, thus I'm gonna get on Raya.

[A]

I didn't think about that.

[B]

You have to admit your bias before presenting this think piece.

[A]

It sounds way worse now. I was just trying to think of some, like, litmus test. It's like the road and track people probably have Wikipedia pages who are on there, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so maybe that's kind of the very. The thing is like. Like to get approved or whatever, you have to have that online presence. And now I'm realizing because I got one last year after we complained about it on the podcast.

[B]

And you didn't present your bias.

[A]

Shit.

[B]

No, I do agree with you, actually, though, I do think that, like, not legitimizes someone, but, like, the purpose of that. Granted, the means of getting a Wikipedia page feels like it could be hacked.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, for sure, for sure, for sure. Like, you could create your own or.

[B]

Bias or whatever it is, or change your Wikipedia page or change other people's Wikipedia pages. Things that have happened.

[A]

We shouldn't venture into that. Yeah, but. No, no, but maybe to broaden this out is that I don't think trail and ultrarunning in any sense is like, a broad enough appeal yet to have that much of a reach into these types of spaces. And maybe it will in the future. And that's the really exciting thing about caring about this right now, is that I foresee, like, huge growth. And even though it feels big, if you're in it, it. It's not like, just based on podcast numbers. Like, we know our podcast is of a certain, like, level in the. In the world, and to know our podcast numbers aren't, like, that big in a raw sense compared to, like, pop culture podcasts, that there's a huge group of people out there that can find trail running. And that's why we always argue, keep troll running as loving and open and inclusive as possible. Like, yes, we care about competition, but the more we can accept everybody, the better, because this can hopefully be a place where everyone who feels like an outcast and weird can come and find love.

[B]

Do you know how I think we get trail runners on Raya?

[A]

What?

[B]

A Netflix documentary. I feel like if we put trailrunning on Netflix, the key players in that for sure would get on Raya.

[A]

Yeah, well, Unbreakable 2. Oh, true. That was Supposed to be done last.

[B]

Year it got canceled.

[A]

I think everybody basically didn't show up for dnf so I'm glad that didn't get made breakable. Breakable, exactly. Okay, next. Next question on FKT tracking. Now that FKT tracking is so rigorous and seemingly easy to monitor, let's popularize the sleep friendly FKT. You cannot run from 9pm to 5am People sacrifice sleep to earn an edge. But the sleep friendly format provides a level playing field. It's like rules for long haul truckers. Nobody needs to risk safety to get an edge in delivering goods because they are all required to take breaks after a certain number of hours driving. It might be soft but then it lets athletes sleep recovery and run with more joy the following day.

[B]

You know what, I like this one a lot. Yeah, it's just had a different category though. So you know how there's like supported, unsupported, whatever. We should just have sleep supported as an FKT.

[A]

I like that idea. 2 comments. One, long haul truckers based on the autonomous self driving might be kind of a scary economic future so.

[B]

Agreed. Yes.

[A]

You know maybe we need to have sleep rules for the AIs but two, I don't know. I think letting people run from 6pm to 9pm and this person saying you can't run from 9pm to 5am I'm like shorten that down more. You can only run from 7am to 9am that's what I'm saying. Like that's my shit.

[B]

The working man's fkt. Yeah. The dad fkt.

[A]

The dad FKT shit. That's where it's at.

[B]

Yeah, we're doing things at 2:30 in the morning. We're busy.

[A]

I mean I do like this idea. I think think Maybe having a 12 hour limit would be a little bit more open and inclusive for everybody. Just to make sure that it's healthy. A little bit less like epic and raw but maybe a little cooler.

[B]

Yeah, I do think it's tricky like to go for an fkt. That's a multi day fkt. You really have to like hack sleep in terms of like the littlest amount of sleep to get these competitive FKT segments. And it is kind of wild you know thinking about that like you know when you think about what goes into a performance context it really truly is nutrition training and sleep is right there too.

[A]

You're selecting probably again for genetic variants that allow people to buffer that.

[B]

Oh there's genetic variants in terms of.

[A]

Sleep for sure but most likely sleep elite.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Beyond the Sleep Elite, like which is a very small variant number. There's probably these weird like polymorphisms that we don't even recognize yet. Because how would you, like, how would you develop a control study to go find polygon up and so yeah, it's cool.

[B]

I had a cool athlete story. Michael Sage in New England did a project, kind of like an FKT project of pulling cards of gates that corresponded to different places within a park. But he did it over six days and it was a lot of accumulated like 130 miles or some, some astronomical amount of miles. But he did it while going to work and while like doing laundry and making dinner and all that. And it's like fits into this structure, which I think is cool.

[A]

Fun, personal challenges. That's where it's at. Okay, next question on blood testing. Hi David. I remember you guys talking about a blood testing service that was great for athletes at some point on the podcast. I can't seem to find the episode though. Do you have a recommendation for where I could get an athlete focused baseline test? I'm about to ramp up my training season and would like to stay on top of all the levels. I love you and Megan, keep up the great and hilarious work.

[B]

There's a few different places at this point. One, you could just go direct to Quest and you could order lab work for yourself. There depends a little bit on like state and where you live. But it's really easy to just be like, I want to get an iron panel or vitamin D or you know, they have women's health panels and things like that.

[A]

I think especially if you have a narrow focus, like you just want the iron panel. Going to Quest directly is a good.

[B]

Option, especially if you've had tests done before and you just want to remeasure it. I think athlete blood tests another great place where you can go and select things. And I like athlete blood tests more than Quest because they give you reference ranges that are valuable for athletes, not just the general population. Like how do I optimize this?

[A]

They have really good recommendations. You know what I'm going to do? What this is being recorded on Monday. I'm going to message them and see if we get a discount code.

[B]

Oh, in the public. This is not an ad.

[A]

We're not going to get anything for this. But if we can give you something else. So consider the code swap to try. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. I don't know if they'll want to do this, but athlete blood test I've used just. I Paid for it and I liked what I got back. It was helpful. But basically it's doing the same thing. Quest is it just gave me some peace of mind on some of the reference ranges that are a little different.

[B]

Inside tracker is great too. Sometimes a little bit more costly, depending upon like, what panel structure.

[A]

Yeah, they mostly do subscription models now. I'm not sure exactly.

[B]

Yeah, they've changed their, their modeling a lot. Um, so a very various number of places offer this, but you could also just go to your, you know, physician and say, hey, I'm looking for cbc, Ferritin, vitamin D. You know, male athletes, sometimes testosterone is helpful. So just it really depends on like what you're looking for. But I feel like, like, you know, cbc, ferritin, vitamin D, a good bare minimum.

[A]

Yeah. And as always, we'll help you out on Patreon if you have like numbers that you just aren't sure about so much. Uh, next one on downhills was listening to the Patreon pod this morning on my run and your conversation about how to train for downhill running came up. Last year I did the Grand Canyon rim to rim. During the training block, I listened to the Grand Canyon hiker dude. Oh, interesting. I took advice on backwards walking, but I did it on the elliptical with resistance. I only did about 1 mile backwards of elliptical per week. Since I had no long downhills where I live to run on, I think it did the trick. The day after I did the rim to rim, I had very little soreness and that's after six miles of downhill into the canyon, followed by 5,000ft of climbing out of the canyon. Anyway, just thought that I'd share since it might be useful for those who live in the flatlands as I do. Fingers crossed that David's foot heals quickly. This came in before our diagnosis and.

[B]

I think this came on the heels quite literally of us talking on Patreon about, you know, you trying to find exercises that could help you prepare you for eccentric muscle contractions of downhills without.

[A]

Running downhill because my foot hurt too much to do it.

[B]

Yeah. And so we were like walking our stroller and you were jumping around in all different directions and like trying to find loading patterns and didn't ultimately find one that, like, wouldn't place a ton of stress on your knee.

[A]

Yeah, probably wouldn't work though. I'm still going to find that, like, holy grail.

[B]

You showed me an exercise on Instagram. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Katarina M. Did a really interesting post about essentially doing jump. Like split squats.

[B]

Is it kind of for like single leg step up. Yeah, actually I could tell em jump. Split squats.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, it's like a split squat where you're jumping and absorbing and I'm like cool. But like I would also die so maybe not for me personally. And I wanna find something that's between cool and dead death. Like somewhere in that middle ground that's like a sweet spot.

[B]

I feel like you edge that a lot in life.

[A]

That's what edging is actually.

[B]

That's your primary sweet spot. Do you think you're going to try this thing on the elliptical?

[A]

No, I, I don't. I doubt this would necessarily work for most people because while backwards movement could be eccentric when it doesn't have some sort of impact function you're not doing like the actual loading that is significant. So the problem with eccentric contractions when you run is that the times body weight becomes so much greater. Thus like if you're offloading on the elliptical that certainly wouldn't do it for most and did it for this athlete which is really cool. So might be something worth experimenting with if you're in a flat place. But I would say I don't think it's gonna go the whole nine yards.

[B]

Or maybe this athlete's just a freak that absorbs downhill as well.

[A]

And there's a lot of people that do that.

[B]

Yeah, there's. I have athletes that like I, I'd be curious actually I would love a test and there have been, you know, tests that have looked at this is to look at the range of CK levels in athletes running fast ultras. And I do think there's a type of athlete that generates very little CK and very little amounts of muscle breakdown. So creatine kinase, marker of muscle breakdown in curious to kind of see that range and like maybe part of that is genetic or has form or biomechanics.

[A]

Limited perceptual elements of soreness which I also think is a thing that because especially with delayed onset soreness a lot of the like functional changes happen in the nerve axons like ends of nerves. And there's a weird study on this that kind of hasn't been followed up on. But it's not just muscle breakdown, right. It's also how the nerves respond. And I think for me personally my nerves are sensitive little bitches. I get so sore. You've seen that a million times. You don't get that sore. I don't think our muscle breakdown is fundamentally different. I would just guess like intuitively I don't know for sure. I think it's mostly that I'm just, like, super sensitive to it, and my understanding would probably be that that's genetic. I mean, I was able to do 10 by 1 mile with a torn plantar. Like, I don't think I'm like that. Not tough, though. Who knows?

[B]

In fact, I feel like you've been training for this foot injury a lot because you do often limp around when something hurts, you really limp on it, and I feel like it gave you the skills to really offload this foot.

[A]

I'm so ready. Just like a dog walks around and just doesn't put any weight on the paw. That's me right now.

[B]

We should do a CK challenge, though, and both run downhill and see do ranger trail and see who gets higher.

[A]

One of the tough things, see who's.

[B]

Perceptually, like, whose perception of soreness is higher and whose CK is higher.

[A]

One tough thing with this injury, it's gonna be the first time I've detrained since, like, 2013.

[B]

Yeah, it's a long time.

[A]

It's scary, you know, it's scary to have that happen at 37 and, like, you just don't know what you're gonna get when you come back. Right? And so when you're saying that, I'm like, I'm seeing my life flashback format is because I'm gonna be so sore running downhills for a really long time, and I was never the guy that comes back quickly, so. So health is hard.

[B]

It's hard. It's also part of the story, too. You know, you actually said it. We were playing with the kids this morning, and you're like, you know, like, I've kind of accepted detraining and, you know, accepted that process. And I think it's actually really. I think in some sense to you running on it for so long after javelina with pain, I wonder if that's easier to accept it inside. Like, it might have been hard coming off of javelina, definitely. And having that success and being so excited for another golden ticket race and then having this immediately, just, like, the slow burn of the pain, maybe that made it somewhat easier to accept.

[A]

Yeah, Yeah. I take two months to learn a lesson.

[B]

It's okay. You learned. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

It'd be so much better if I learned in two days.

[B]

Yeah, it would be okay next time. Good point.

[A]

Good point.

[B]

There's, like, I just want to give you a hug.

[A]

No, no. Megan, you literally started this episode by crying tears of joy at my, like, little bit of a.

[B]

Like, it's so cool.

[A]

My little My little hog photo.

[B]

I was hyped. I was hyped on it all weekend.

[A]

No, thank you. It means the world. I mean, and the reflection on Leadville, which is the only reason any of this happened, is I only did it because you couldn't sleep when you thought that I might have a 5% chance of doing it. And I'm glad we told that story on the podcast and then YouTube because, yeah, I mean, it means everything to me. And so, you know, we joke around a lot on here, but, like, you're my rock and the only reason anything's possible. So, you know, I know you feel that in the foot. Like you were asking me how I feel about the foot and it's like. Like, how do you feel about the foot?

[B]

Yeah. Oh, it's hard, you know, to see your partner go through this. It's like I. You're training, even just you're training on a day to day. I get so excited for it, same.

[A]

As I feel about you.

[B]

Unreasonably excited for it. And, you know, I was feeling it this weekend in terms of just being sad, like thinking about that. And I get so excited for your races. Like, for me, pacing you is so much better than my own racing. And so I was looking forward to Black Canyon. Looking forward. Your golden ticket. Looking forward to pacing you at Western States.

[A]

Maybe this is even better though, because now you can really focus whatever energy that was. Like, it's not. It's not zero. Right? You can focus on your own build ahead.

[B]

No, I feel like that fire just fires my own build. Okay. Yeah, it's. It's mutual. It's not like your fire takes away from my fire. Like it's additive fire. And I miss that right now. It's hard. And you know, I also, like, I miss training with you. Like, you know, we do a lot of. Well, you'll be able to bike soon. We'll do some epic bikes.

[A]

It'll be so fun.

[B]

It'll be so fun.

[A]

I'm gonna drag you for like some hundred miles.

[B]

Great.

[A]

You'll be wearing like 18 layers. Prepare yourself.

[B]

I'm excited.

[A]

All right, I think that's enough for now. What do you think? That was fun.

[B]

We did it.

[A]

We did it.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Yeah. Okay, if you want to hear a lot more questions, go to Patreon right now because there are so many bonus episodes. As always, if you cannot afford it, let us know. We'll get you in for free. And that is a place like, if you really want to dive into training theory. I'm a Little guilty because there's so many training theory things I want to talk about right now that we didn't get to on the podcast.

[B]

We've got a lot of podcasts ahead. We're saving it.

[A]

Saving it, Saving it. Like half marathons. The Houston Half Marathon was this week. Amanda Vestry, 10743. Ally 110 flat. Basically, Ally closed in a 458 mile. 458 full mile.

[B]

Yeah, that was. She closes like that all the time.

[A]

So cool.

[B]

Why do you. Okay, just real quick. Why do you think she does that? Like, clearly it's a combination mental and physical. Where does that come from?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's just the ultimate fatigue resistance test that she is so tough. Um, so for those that don't know Ali ostrander, the best YouTube channel, go follow it. It's such a inspiration. And she actually does know Gen Z slang. Um, but, you know, I, I, I think a lot of people might indicate that, oh, if an athlete closes that fast means they didn't go out hard enough. I actually disagree with an athlete like her. I think that her magic is that she actually does access a place that others cannot. And she just needs to be in a physiological context where she can get there. And if she is able to, her central governor, she's trained through workouts and just the type of person she is to be fundamentally different than anybody else's on the planet. And, and I mean that for a fact. Like at the US Cross Country Championships, she ran the fastest last kilometer by six seconds over everybody. That's bonkers. And she's done that at every race. She did that at the World Cross, basically, you know, or something very similar a couple years ago. It's, I just think it's a very special athlete and we all have our genetic outlier things. Like I said, mine is healing. I truly think that's true, and that's why I'm hopeful. I think she has like 18 of them. You have, you know, 18 of them. And like just finding what those are and leaning into them rather than shying away, I think is what it's all about.

[B]

It's actually fun to watch a race. Cause I'm like, just wait, she's coming. She's coming. Yeah.

[A]

So lots of training theory ahead on future episodes. But first, listener corner. And before we do that, hey, Give the podcast 5 stars. Click follow if you like it, tell one friend about it. Always helps in the new year. I hope the podcast is gives you some joy on your runs. We just Want to bring you a.

[B]

Little bit of laugh and check out Janji while you're at it. Oh yeah, yeah.

[A]

And also bring you a little laugh is what I just said. Very important. I love, love that phrasing. It's so good. And John G. Would love it too. So go to johnji.com swap or use code swap, something like that. You can just sign up for John G collective and get 15% off johnji.com swap.

[B]

Don't use our code swap. Yeah, just sign up for the Collective.

[A]

Okay. Just sign up for the collective. It's all the same. The best gear on the market. I got a new shipment in which I'm fortunately not going to run for with in a while but I'll be wearing all my heat suit bikes.

[B]

You're going to look so good in it. Yeah, I know. You're going to look a fly on the heat seat bike. Their jackets are great actually. You got the insulated jacket and I feel like that's going to keep you warm here ahead.

[A]

But my big recommendation, Atlas Pant it is the ideal winter gear and like shoulder season gear or if you're thinking about, oh, you know, I want to do a little bit of overdressed dress training. Again, we don't love heat suits anymore as like heavy duty clothes. But what it is is one pair of like pants that you can run in well and like a jacket that's warm. These pants are the perfect under layer, the perfect bottom layer for it.

[B]

You got a beanie too. I did that for the heat suit.

[A]

It's because I wanted like something that looked a little bit flier than anything I had. Every beanie I have is such a dad beanie.

[B]

You do not own a fly beanie at all until you got this one.

[A]

Yeah, they're all just like, like, like you know, single color, like soft.

[B]

I don't know, it's just not single color plus stains.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

They got a lot going on and.

[A]

John G. Just was like, you know what, we're going to be different and that's okay. And so that's a. I'm really excited for that purchase.

[B]

I've been loving the fleece tight and the long bra. I also love the pace short to the 5 inch pace short is what I race in and excited for some treadmill workouts in that. Yes.

[A]

Can't wait and can't wait for that treadmill video maybe.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, it's happening.

[A]

Oh, it's so exciting.

[B]

As long as we're healthy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I'm like, no one get Sick. I got a trip treadmill video for YouTube.

[A]

Well, that would be an interesting YouTube story. I was talking about doing a colonoscopy.

[B]

Basically do that. This is the prep. Okay.

[A]

On the listener corner. And this is a very quick one. That was a part of a larger question, but it just brought me so much joy. I just want to say you guys are a cornerstone in my relationship with my girlfriend. We get so excited for Tuesday gym sessions to listen separately to you and then come back to each other with big juicy pumps and discuss what we heard. Generally, one of our favorite activities.

[B]

Big juicy pumps.

[A]

Big juicy pumps.

[B]

Them and the horses.

[A]

Do you know what a pump is?

[B]

No.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Pump is like when your muscles are, like, pumped out.

[A]

Oh, yeah. You nailed it.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. You just crushed it so hard, I assumed it was something else. I didn't know.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, honestly, if you're looking for a better pump, this comes from the inflammation article we were going to discuss. One of the things they talked about that I personally like is L citrulline. So an amino acid that is found in watermelon. And there's a bunch of safer sport options. And if you take it, it's like a vasodilator. So it has negative impacts if you have low blood pressure or taking any medications like that. So be very careful. But bodybuilders take it, as far as I understand, to increase the size of their veins and stuff. And I've seen canisters of it that have the word pump on it.

[B]

It's a good branding.

[A]

And you know what? We need to create a company that's called.

[B]

Called what?

[A]

Big juicy Pumps.

[B]

Juicy pumps. I like it. Let's do it. You know what? All the trail winning, all the trail running women are just like, I want that.

[A]

You want big juicy pumps.

[B]

Let's put on Raya.

[A]

That could be a new shoe company.

[B]

That could be a new shop. I want pops up. Your. Your boot is a big juicy pump.

[A]

Big juicy pump.

[B]

You know what? We're gonna pump this up. It's gotta. It's actually for 49. This thing is a pump.

[A]

Before we end the podcast, I really need you to give, like, a commentary on the boot. How does it look right now?

[B]

I give it a 9 out of 10 boot.

[A]

9 out of 10 boot. It's. I'm currently wearing my dress pants under it.

[B]

Yeah, you wear your dress pants for everything, so that's not new.

[A]

Yeah, they got stains, a little hole in the bottom.

[B]

There's a lot going on here.

[A]

My gooch.

[B]

Yeah, it does not look like it fits very well around your calf. Yeah, I can put. I'm putting my entire fist all the way down to your Achilles, basically.

[A]

I think I've already atrophied.

[B]

Are you wearing that?

[A]

Well, it feels pretty good. I mean, I'm gonna do an Instagram reel. My joke Instagram reel later this week is going to be on the booth. I just did a nervous tick of pumping it.

[B]

Maybe you should put some MRI music to it.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

You know how you can. Like, the sounds in the MRI machine are rhythmic and everyone that's been in MRI machine is like, I know those sounds. We should just overlay that on that. Yeah.

[A]

Interestingly, when I went to the MRI machine, they didn't offer me music.

[B]

That's weird.

[A]

Yeah. So I just sat there in silence.

[B]

Well, they're like, he's going to choose Lonely Island. So.

[A]

If I get a follow up, I'm doing. I didn't even think about that. I was gonna do like Sublime Radio or something. Something like calming from my childhood, which, I mean, I. I wasn't a child back then because I'm Gen Z. But no, I was just sitting there, like, achieving transcendence.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, what is an MRI machine but a sushi glory hole. Can think about that the next time you're in there.

[A]

Okay, we've got to get back to listener point before we end this. So the listener and their girlfriend listen to the podcast, come back, talk about it.

[B]

That means a lot.

[A]

That's pretty fun.

[B]

We gotta do this together with Hank and John Green. So we love their writing and their YouTubes and we just realized they have a podcast called Dear Hank and John and we should listen to that together and the Kelsey brothers and then come back.

[A]

Yeah, Kelsey Brothers too. So, yeah, let's do it. Big juicy pumps. Did I talk too much about myself at the start of this episode?

[B]

No. What are you talking about? Did I make fun of you too much?

[A]

Oh, no, no. You were, you were. Oh, my God, I love that.

[B]

In fact, did I roast you too hard?

[A]

No, no, no, no.

[B]

I mean, you deserved it on the Think piece related to the food pyramid, but everything else, I don't know. I don't think I'm coming back around.

[A]

To my Think piece.

[B]

No. Yeah, People's cholesterol. It's going to be big juicy pumping.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

On a population level, it's concerning. Yeah.

[A]

Okay. New tagline for the podcast has to be Big juicy juicy pumps.

[B]

It really does.

[A]

Wait, somebody out there. Somebody out there. If you're on a dating app. Just briefly change. Just as an experiment. You're about me. To big juicy pumps. Let us know what happens.

[B]

I'm curious.

[A]

Please.

[B]

Science experiment.

[A]

Science experiment. This is more precise.

[B]

This is sexy science. Galactic monitors.

[A]

Okay. We love you all.

[B]

Woohoo.

[A]

Huzzah.