322. Why Exercise Physiology Wisdom Can Be Wrong, Doping in Ultrarunning, Bicarb in Long Races, and AI Controversy!

Summary

Podcast Summary: Some Work, All Play

Hosts: David Roche & Megan Roche
Episode 322: Why Exercise Physiology Wisdom Can Be Wrong, Doping in Ultrarunning, Bicarb in Long Races, and AI Controversy!
Date: August 4, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into several science-centric and heartfelt topics at the intersection of running, exercise physiology, and modern culture. From Megan's vulnerable return to racing post-heart issues to the efficacy (and myths) behind cold water immersion, creative supplement use in races, doping discourse in ultrarunning, and even a social media storm over AI-authored content, the Roches tackle a wide array—with their trademark enthusiasm, humor, and scientific rigor. The episode blends personal narrative, academic breakdowns, and hot takes, making it a rich and engaging listen for athletes and curious minds alike.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Megan’s Return to Racing and Navigating a DNF (Did Not Finish)

• [00:47–09:33]
  Megan recaps her return to racing at the Aspen Backcountry Half Marathon after a challenging period with heart health. She describes leading early, then having a sudden physical crash, prompting her to DNF for the first time in nearly a decade.
• The experience is laced with anxiety, vulnerability, and unexpected kindness from fellow runners (many of whom are podcast listeners).
• David and Megan discuss the personal and athletic lessons learned about compassion, self-kindness, and the real purpose of racing: "The whole point of racing is to learn, not to succeed. And you succeeded in learning." (David, [03:03])
• Memorable Quote:
  "Sometimes the shame just needs to manifest outwardly. But as always, don't feel ashamed..." (David, [06:52])
• Reflection: Megan emphasizes redefining success and embracing the messy process of self-acceptance and growth. "I might actually need a cascade of DNFs to do this safely and to listen to my body." (Megan, [08:25])

2. Creatine, Bicarb, and the Science of Supplementation

• [12:06–19:10]
  David shares the ongoing results of his creatine experiment (noting a striking drop in resting heart rate and improved bike power). The duo discusses the growing ubiquity of creatine and questions its role for pro runners.
• Megan, reeling from her DNF, questions everything—especially the role of sodium bicarbonate (bicarb) in endurance events.
• Bicarb Study Deep Dive:
  • Study discussed: Effects of sodium bicarbonate supplementation on sprint performance and endurance cycling ([15:36]).
  • Protocol: Bolus before the event, re-dosing during, with a significant improvement in final sprint power output.
  • Key Takeaway:
    Lower-dose, redosed bicarb protocols are efficacious and increasingly common not just in cycling, but now in running (David mentions rumors of elite ultrarunners leveraging this at Western States, [18:34]).
  • Practicality: Runners should experiment with bicarb in training to balance performance gain and GI side effects.
• Humorous Aside:
  On bicarb dosing: "I fucking do boluses all the time." (David, [16:15])

3. Exercise Physiology: Cold Water Immersion – Challenging the Dogma

• [19:10–26:45]
  • Study discussed: Effects of cold water immersion vs. active recovery after strength training.
  • Contradicts the prevailing wisdom that ice baths impair adaptation; instead, no meaningful negative effect was found in recovery or adaptation, and in some metrics cold water immersion improved muscle oxygen delivery.
  • The hosts praise the authors’ willingness to publish results “contrary to our hypothesis” ([22:36]), highlighting the complexity of human adaptation.
  • David’s Perspective:
    Real-world athlete behavior has long “contradicted” exercise physiology dogma (e.g., Olympic Trials athletes using ice baths for between-heat recovery), reinforcing the need to maintain an open mind in sports science.
  • Caution:
    Megan notes that overusing ice baths could potentially blunt heat adaptation (though this was not directly measured in the study).

4. Hot Topics: Doping in Ultrarunning, AI Controversy, and Tour de France Femmes

• [28:55–47:00]

  a. Doping in Ultrarunning

  • Simple conclusions:
    • Trail running is governed by established anti-doping codes (WADA/USADA).
    • Gray areas are generally not gray; the rulebook, education, and calling official resources can clarify almost all issues.
    • Online discourse is increasingly mean and polarizing, often unnecessarily.
    • Notable Exchange:
      David: "There's an entire rulebook...these questions have been asked and there is a rulebook." ([29:26])
  • Actionable Advice:
    Always consult Global DRO and call USADA for clarity.

  b. AI Writing & The Hank Green Controversy

  • [33:16–40:48]
  • A prominent YouTuber/podcaster was accused of using AI to write scripts, leading to a wave of online outrage and introspection about the ethics of AI in creative work.
  • David’s Take:
    • Apologies in the age of social media often make things worse, as nuance gets lost and pile-ons are rewarded by social algorithms.
    • Drawing the line between “AI research tool” and “AI creative voice” is key.
    • Meta Reflection:
      "If you let [AI] creep into your writing...you're going to be ushered into a world that you don't want to be in..." (David, [37:26])
    • The pervasiveness and future detectability of AI-generated work is discussed—"Don't take the shortcuts..." (David, [39:33])

  c. Tour de France Femmes & The Science of “Boob Maxing”

  • [41:45–47:12]
  • Quick recap of the early Tour de France Femmes stages and dominant sprinter Lorena Luibe.
  • Introduction to “boob maxing”—a tongue-in-cheek look at torso/chest shape affecting cycling aerodynamics; discussed as a legitimate, if hilarious, marginal gain space.
  • “It becomes a fairing... that's one reason cyclists put their hands close together. The empty space is aerodynamically inefficient." (David, [44:12])
  • Hosts debate the (im)practicality and ethics of trying to regulate body shape for advantage, paralleling other sports controversies (e.g., ski jumping).

5. Low Energy Availability, Carbohydrates, and Study Reviews

• [49:01–56:22]
  • Two new studies are broken down on how different macronutrient makeups within caloric restriction affect hormonal and performance outcomes.
  • Headline findings:
    • High-carbohydrate intake within a low-energy diet helps mitigate (attenuate) the hormonal disruptions typically seen in low energy availability (LEA), such as lower IGF-1, reduced insulin.
    • Pushing protein high and carbs low (the influencer-diet approach) does NOT protect against these negative effects; in fact, subjective well-being and performance suffer even more.
    • "I died in all the tests, but I died the most after the low energy availability diet." (Study participant, [54:31])
    • Key advice: Don't skimp on carbs! LEA is always risky, but lower carbs is especially detrimental for athletes.

6. Listener Q&A

• [57:14–70:37]

  • Psychological Barriers in Return from Injury

    • How to trust one’s body again after injury, especially when pain and trauma are intertwined. Megan relates with her heart, David with his long-term foot issue.
    • Self-compassion, gradual exposure, talking about fears—all highlighted as key approaches.

  • Hot Yoga for Heat Adaptation & Strength

    • There is science showing hot yoga can promote blood volume expansion, similar to other forms of heat training. Megan and David plan to try a session together!

  • Peeing in Races, Opening Gels, Nose Hair Science

    • Practical tips and laugh-out-loud moments about urination strategies, the best way to tear gels, and a debate about whether nose hairs actually help performance thanks to listener input.

  • Immortality Poll

    • Another humorous philosophical tangent: Would people really choose immortality if given the chance? Overwhelming listener feedback sides with Megan’s skepticism.

  • Ferritin & Iron Deficiency

    • Nuanced answer: If high-dose iron supplementation isn’t moving the needle, consider low energy availability, GI issues, bleeding, celiac, and finally genetics.

7. Community Love & Listener Shoutouts

• [82:56–87:28]
  • Heartfelt listener messages thank Megan and David for being honest, vulnerable, and supportive—especially through hard times.
  • Community members are encouraged to connect, follow, and uplift each other (e.g., "road to Leadville" on Instagram).
  • “Sometimes a podcast is just a podcast, and sometimes you stumble across one on exactly the day you need that particular kind of company. Today was the latter for me.” (Listener, [85:04])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On DNFing:
  "True toughness is actually stopping at mile five...and walking through the forest as opposed to just trying to push on." (Megan, [61:40])

• On Cold Water Immersion
  “If you see contrasting information in the real world...and then you're getting lectured that that's not a thing...the answer probably lies in the exercise physiology just making conclusions that it's not ready to make yet.” (David, [22:48])

• On Dopamine, AI, and Creation:
  "The level of dopamine I've been getting from interacting with LLMs and...doing more and more is not healthy...careless and has disconnected me from where people are on this." (Hank Green, quoted by Megan, [36:56])

• On Carbs as Evolutionary Signal:
  “Low carb has been connected to so many different things now...It's wild how much our body just needs carbs.” (Megan, [52:04])

• On Sports Community:
  "The memory of meeting you two would save me from a Dementor...People always say, don't meet your heroes, but there should be a giant asterisk that says—except for David and Megan Roche." (Listener Kate, [83:18])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:47–09:33: Megan’s race, heart issues, and lessons from DNF
• 12:06–19:10: Creatine effects, bicarb for endurance, key study
• 19:10–26:45: Cold water immersion, exercise physiology wisdom challenged
• 28:55–33:16: Doping in ultrarunning: rulebooks vs. online drama
• 33:16–40:48: AI apology culture, Hank Green controversy explained
• 41:45–47:12: Tour de France Femmes, dominance, and “boob maxing”
• 49:01–56:22: Carbs, LEA, protein—detailed breakdown of two new studies
• 57:14–70:37: Listener Q&A (mental health, hot yoga, practical tips)
• 82:56–87:28: Listener community, gratitude, and connection

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Tone & Style

• Warm, playful, and witty—frequent asides and jokes ("sand in the vagina/gonads” running gag).
• Deeply empathetic and vulnerable when discussing setbacks, DNFs, injury, and the athlete’s psychological journey.
• Passionately scientific—methodological details matter, and nuance is emphasized in interpreting research (“science moves slower than Instagram hot takes!”).
• Occasional irreverence and self-deprecating humor, making complex science accessible and human.

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Final Thoughts

This episode is a signature blend of heart, science, practical wisdom, and laughter—inviting listeners to embrace the messiness of athletic (and human) journey. The Roches model how to be both rigorous and forgiving, data-driven and deeply human—making this a must-listen for athletes, science nerds, and anyone seeking community through adversity.

Transcript

[A]

Woohoo.

[B]

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

[A]

Happy Tuesday. It's Tuesday and we are rallying on this fine Tuesday.

[B]

Are we rallying the horses right now?

[A]

We are rallying the horses, actually. Maybe I'm just rallying the horses over here. You don't have to rally. You're just crushing it.

[B]

Oh, Megan, I totally have to rally. I'm getting an MRI after this podcast fair.

[A]

Yeah, we need to garner all of the horses and send them to the mri.

[B]

Can you give me an A? Give me an A. Give me an A, Megan, come on. Perfect. I need that too.

[A]

I wouldn't give that to you unless you're heading into an mri. That's true.

[B]

It's true. It's actually not for my plantar. It's for the side of my foot around my fifth mat. And also I want to get a quick check in on the plantar, but the planter itself is feeling incredible, so I'm hopeful there. But the horses are specifically being rallied because of your weekend experience.

[A]

Oh, man. I was so excited to line up for my first race back, coming off this heart journey at Aspen backcountry half marathon, which is like the chillest, most beautiful, just like good vibes kind of race. And I was like, I'm feeling it. This is going to be great. And I got out there and, you know, I did not have it.

[B]

You did not have it?

[A]

Actually, I did have it. Yeah. I was feeling myself. I was like through mile four. I was smiling, I was feeling good. And then all of a sudden, and this is like where it got a little bit scary. It was like all the blood felt like it left my body at once and I had that just like, oh, shit feeling in my brain. Like, what is happening right now?

[B]

Yeah, it is so scary. But before we get to the serious details, I want to say is like, sometimes when you're in bed, there's no prelude to shitting it. Sometimes you just shit the bed all of a sudden. There's no fart before it.

[A]

It just happens. But that's the most concerning. You're like, there should be a prelude.

[B]

Yeah, I know if you had like some indigestion before it, it'd be a little bit more comforting. So you get out there and you know the, the hard part is you're coming back from this long term heart issue that's incredibly traumatic to return to racing. You've talked to, you know, a therapist about it. You've really worked on that. But at the same time it is still in your body. And we, we know that, right? Like this isn't just as simple as you take a medication, you inject yourself weekly with romanocept and you're cured forever. It's so much more complicated and there's no precedent for someone racing off this medication that we're aware of.

[A]

You know what, I felt that like I was actually fairly anxious and scared about this heading into the race and I think some of that is warranted. It's like this is a human thing. Like, you know, I've had so many heart issues associated with racing that it makes sense that the next race I do, especially coming off like being in the hospital on a cardiac cath and everything is going to feel a little traumatic definitely. But I feel like it also, I think there was just some inklings of being uncertain about my heart in its current state. That made it a little bit more anxiety provoking as well. And it was scary to stand on the starting line but somehow like, and this is the cool thing, I worked through it. Yeah.

[B]

Hell yeah.

[A]

I got there. I like had a good sleep the night before I showed up to the starting line, I was so excited. The boys were there. I gave them a kiss in the stroller and just like felt like myself at the starting line. I was like, it's time to go. Like, I didn't actually think about my heart until I really thought about my heart, but I was excited. And I think like, that's part, like, that's of it. Part, part of a win, of the experience is like working through some of that anxiety and putting myself back out there.

[B]

And vulnerability is the whole point. And you know, tough experiences teach us so much. And I think the whole point of racing is to learn not to succeed. And you succeeded in learning, that is for sure. So you're out there and you know, you feel all the blood leave your body. Feels very similar to some of your past experiences.

[A]

Well, it was wild. I was leading the race and I think by, I don't know by how much, but there was no run around me in sight and I was feeling so good and then it hit me like a ton of bricks. And in that moment, and I've had two kind of similar experiences in training where the lights have gone out at sustained tempo efforts. And I was like, in training you're like, ah, it's altitude. There's another experience.

[B]

I was like, or it's in your head.

[A]

It's in my head. I'm holding onto David's wheel and I realized as this happened, I was like, this feels. And maybe it's not. Like, maybe I just have, like, four pounds of sand in my vagina. I'm like, that's an incredibly sexist term.

[B]

I was going to say the hard part here for our listeners is that's. I've been saying that about myself, Megan. My vagina is just full of sand right now.

[A]

And you know what? Maybe I just had 64 pounds of sand in there. Sand in my gonads is a better saying. But I think, like, you know, I think back to that, and to have it happen so suddenly, it's like, I made the right call.

[B]

Oh, yeah. And you've promised your entire support system that you wouldn't push through this anymore, that you would. If you had these feelings ever, you would stop. And, you know, that led to a long walk in the woods. Beautiful woods.

[A]

Oh, it was so beautiful out there. And I went from leading the race to being in about 120th place. And I got passed by so many kind and amazing people, like 90% of whom were podcast listeners. Yeah. I got so many huzzahs and woohoos, people offered to run with me. And I was like, nuh, I'm not running right now. And people were just so kind and amazing out there. And it's a reflection of, like, you know, this community is amazing.

[B]

Yeah. And I'm just so proud of you, you know, putting yourself on the start line you didn't have to do, and putting yourself out there in a way that, like, yes, it doesn't matter. But also, I know how much it sucks. Right? Like, I've been through DNFs, very publicly.

[A]

Okay. It's been a minute, like, a really hot minute since I've DNF'd a race. And I kind of forgot about that feeling. Like I. It was the right call to dnf. And I look back on that, and I have a lot of just, like, compassion and grace for myself, but at the same time, it sucks shit. Yeah. Like, it is not a fun feeling. And I walked to just, like, the most remote chill aid station in the middle of the woods, and I cannot imagine I thought of you out there, like, walking through Forest Hill and how hard that must be. And I just, like, my heart went out to you.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, your dnf, that's pretty cool. I mean, heart issues, that's like a. It's a solid DNF. But, dude, DNFing, when like 100,000 people just, like, have their entire view of you, like, Focused on that as an athlete, it's a little bit built different.

[A]

It's hard.

[B]

But for you, it's harder because you just don't know where this is going to go in the future.

[A]

And I think I was really upset about it on Saturday, actually. I spent a lot of time crying, just, like, walking down the streets of Aspen, which are interesting enough as they are.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

As that person that's just, like, pushing, like, a double jogger stroller and just crying my eyes out. And I feel a lot better about it now, though. It's like there's. I mean, I'm glad I tried. I got a data point, and I want to try again, like, and get more data points. And hopefully this is not like, an arrhythmia or something. Like, my heart is unable to put out effort at, like, max capacity. And I'll try to find that out and see what happens.

[B]

And we'll get tests, you know, we'll get all the tests done and everything. But, you know, you learned some things. You didn't cause significant damage. You know, like, there's no of the. None of that lingering pain you've had in the past.

[A]

Actually, I feel great now.

[B]

Yeah, we'll see. That being said, I have seen you this morning just looking off into the distant future, like, looking off up into the left, and I'm like, oh, shit. I don't know what's going on in that brain, but maybe we can talk about it on the podcast.

[A]

You know how there's some, like, background programming that happens sometimes? I feel like with a dnf, it's like that just kind of exists in there. And so I'll just be working, and then for 30 seconds, I'll just be like, oh, man.

[B]

I mean, you remember after Western States last year, I'd be on our Lazy Boy, and occasionally I'd just go, oh,

[A]

yeah, that's exactly how I feel.

[B]

It's like sometimes the shame just needs to manifest outwardly. But as always, don't feel ashamed to Megan and to anybody else. Like, the whole point is to put yourself in positions where you're forced to learn, and you learned a lot out there. And hopefully this leads to beautiful places. And I think it will. Right. Like, I texted you after the fact that, like, I still think you're going to podium Western States.

[A]

Actually, I was downstairs. It's funny because I went from dnfing to, like, being back with the kids in eight and a half minutes. It's just like, there's. Our life has, like, no stop points. But in that eight and a half minute reprieve, you sent me that text and it was just like, megan, I fucking love you so much. And then you said something about just like, you know, believing. And it helped a lot.

[B]

Yeah, but I mean, we just don't know. So I'm just incredibly inspired by you having the courage to be that person that's like, we're gonna see what happens here. And also the courage to stop that

[A]

person who DNFs a 15 mile race.

[B]

I mean, to be fair, you kind of decided to DNF at mile four.

[A]

It was a long ways, you know, actually think it was mile five, but.

[B]

Mile five, yeah, exactly. But the idea just being, you know, that's the most beautiful thing you can do while uplifting your health like you did. And to me, you showed that you can do this and put your health first at the same time. And we'll figure it out. Even if it's not linear, even if it's not western states or whatever, we will figure it out. And it's going to be such a fun process to see where it is. We're just going to have to turn down your fire a little bit, otherwise you're going to burn yourself up from the inside out. Because this might be some DNFs in the future. Some valid valiant DNFs in the future.

[A]

Well, I've actually thought about that. I had the thought process. It's been, I don't know, like nine, ten years since I've DNF'd a race. And I was like, I hope this doesn't cause a cascade of DNFs. But the thing is, it's actually, that's not really the point. Like when I'm have this heart condition, I might actually like to do this at all. I might actually need a cascade of DNFs to do this safely and to like listen to my body. But I think the, the point is that I should actually learn to be kind to myself in that process and to be like, you know, this is like my reality and a side effect of raising is that it just might have to happen. And I think it's going to make me grow a lot more to be

[B]

okay with that and independent of heart issues. Maybe whole point is to learn to be kinder to ourselves. Maybe that's why athletics is beautiful and forces us to make decisions that we wouldn't have to otherwise, you know, and self acceptance is the whole goal.

[A]

And it is interesting. Like life marches on. Like, you know, I still have. I'm like sitting at my computer sometimes having that like background brain moment where it's just like, ah, what just happened? But for the most part, it's like, we're recording our podcast today. Kids are still having temper tantrums. We're still going about our routine and it's like, not that much has actually changed. And in some ways, like hitting rock bottom. You're just like, well, we're here. We're just going to keep moving on.

[B]

Nowhere to go but up. What happens after you shit the bed? You clean the bed and get back in. Okay, we have the best episode for you today. A quick roadmap. We're going to start with a study on bicarb in longer races that comes from cycling. New information challenging the conventional wisdom on cold water immersion, which I think is just really cool from a scientific perspective and a group think perspective. And I think it's kind of the type of data that will push everybody

[A]

intellectually and classic me, I think it's cool from a methodology, methodological standpoint because this study was so cool.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

They looked at short term markers and long term markers over three months and I'm like, what's sexier than short term and long term data?

[B]

And parallel study design.

[A]

Oh, yeah, that sounds like a euphemism. Parallel study design sounds like parallel play in that shitty ass bed.

[B]

You're figuring out things that I didn't even realize existed. Then a lot of hot topics, including an AI controversy involving Hank Green, who we love doping and ultra running and the Tour de France femmes. Then two coal studies on low energy availability and how variable carb intake within low energy availability influences outcomes. And then questions on the return to run hot yoga. Follow up on nose hair from a professional athlete who has deep thoughts on it, strength training, immortality, ferritin and more.

[A]

Okay, that was a lot. I feel like we're at about 50% of this, but I feel like you specifically want to get to hot yoga.

[B]

Oh, I do want to get to hot yoga. Yeah. A listener sent in a question this morning and I immediately looked into hot yoga classes because that actually sounds like something that could be the next step in strength to bring me to the next level. Unless I'm in a boot for a fifth metatarsal stress fracture tomorrow.

[A]

So I believe, I think it'll be good.

[B]

You believe?

[A]

I think I'll be going to hot yoga with some good toes.

[B]

No, no, I totally think there's sand in my foot vagina right now. That's what I think. And now you can't take it out because I did a callback. Okay, before we get there, a quick promo for the feed. Go to thefeed.com swap swap. Your first order, 40% off. So really stock up and then $10 back for every $100 spent. It is the best deal on the market. And the first thing I wanted to talk about is week two of my creatine experiment. So I'm keeping the creatine going. The foot is feeling amazing. Like, the plantar fascia is feeling great. I don't think that's necessarily connected. I think that's probably focused shockwave. But overall, the weirdest thing has happened. My stress levels have dropped immensely, and my resting heart rate has yet to be over 36, which has truly never happened. At this point, we are in fully unprecedented waters, even with last Tuesday, I did a indoor bike race on Zwift that was just a massive stress score. And then the next day, my resting heart rate was 36. I even had a 35 in there. So, yeah, creatine's doing some very interesting things to my body. Now that we're here at week two,

[A]

you're also mixing it with Matcha. So you made a Matcha creatine drink this morning. And I was like, that's some interesting synergy going on over there.

[B]

Fucking flying right now. My cognitive benefits are great. So I'm using the Feed Lab creatine, which is the least expensive, and it used the Crea pure mixture, which I think is the one to use. So if you're interested in this, especially for aging athletes, I think give it a try. I'm not exactly sure where I'm at yet. My bike power has skyrocketed. I haven't weighed myself, so it's really tough to know if there's implications there.

[A]

You don't even know your weight baseline, so it would be irrelevant.

[B]

It would be irrelevant. So I understand, like, you know where it's hard to gain data from this, but I do think that if you're looking for something to improve your strength, it's pretty clear from the data that creatine works whether pro athletes that are competing at the top level of running take should take it. I still don't think so.

[A]

Okay. My feed shout out this week is bicarb.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

It's funny how once you DNF a race, you kind of start to rethink everything. And I was rethinking bicarb actually in a different direction than I was expecting. I was like, maybe If I had 4,000 doses of bicarb. I wouldn't feel like I got hit by a ton of bricks at mile four.

[B]

Bicarb 400 would be an interesting experiment.

[A]

It's how you get around all heart issues. You just can't produce your. Your body is like lactate. What is.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. Just mix it up on yourself. Um, yeah. So at the feed, there's tons of different bicarb options. Um, this stuff is pushing everything forward. This has gained full traction in cycling long before running and now running, it is everywhere. So you're seeing almost full adoption. So we use the Morton bicarb, which is on the more expensive side. There's much le less expensive options out there now and I think it's worth a try at lower doses for just about everybody. It seems to make a massive difference.

[A]

And it's so nice just heading into a race being like, I have bicarb on board. And it, it feels like. I don't know, I feel like it just takes the edge off racing in a delightful way.

[B]

Oh, well, this lets me talk.

[A]

Until you go six feet over the edge. That's what I did.

[B]

You're going six feet over the edge.

[A]

I went.

[B]

I mean, the song says you're six feet from the edge and you're thinking your song says you're six feet over the edge. That's really bad.

[A]

I'm really. I mean, it might have been 25ft

[B]

over the edge, but this lets me talk about the bike race I did last week. My Strava tit for that was in Bicarb We Trust, because I hadn't used bicarb for one of these indoor virtual races yet. And the amount that my ability to put out power increased was just massive. I set my 1 hour power PR within the context of just up and down effort. And it felt so easy. My average heart rate was just 1:53 for the entire day. And some of that is whatever is happening with my heart and creatine, like it's causing some heart rate reduction. But some of that is just. I think bicarb makes racing so much more fun.

[A]

Were you inspired by the Tour because you got in a breakaway in the Zwift race and then you broke away from the breakaway and I'm like, shit, man.

[B]

I was. Because it was on the Monmort, which it was the final stage of the men's Tour de France. The Tour de France men.

[A]

I always want to specify that now

[B]

that we have the Tour de France femmes and it's where Tare and Matthew van der Poel broke away, climbs much harder than it looks on tv. And so, yeah, I both times I was like, all right, I need to be a little bit more like Matthew van der Poel up this. So it was really fun. And, you know, if my foot ends up being something serious, I'm very excited that I can just become an eraser for a little bit.

[A]

It is fun to have Zwift as one of those options of like, it's just so fun to go downstairs and grind.

[B]

Yeah. Especially when you have bicarb. So go to the feed.com swapswap now let's do a very quick hitter on bicarb. You promised me it would be no more than three minutes.

[A]

Okay, look at the clock right now. Okay.

[B]

We don't need to actually time it.

[A]

It's 9:25.

[B]

This is like the scale conversation. We don't need to know our weight, but let's keep it on the shorter end. Uh, it's called sodium bicarbonate. Improves sprint performance and endurance cycling. It's a little bit an older study, it's five years ago, 2021. Uh, but it's still one of the only studies on bicarb and longer distance. So I think it's interesting from a mechanistic perspective. It took 11 trained male cyclists and had them either do 300 milligrams per kilogram of bicarb or a placebo of just sodium. So that's good that we always asked do a placebo sodium on this.

[A]

And I liked how they did the bicarb because they did a bolus at the start, like two hours before.

[B]

You gotta do a bolus at the start.

[A]

I've called bicarbo bolus before, but it actually feels very appropriate.

[B]

I fucking do boluses all the time.

[A]

You're just straight swallowing that bolus. Yeah, that.

[B]

I've always wondered what my first tattoo is going to be and now I know it. Straight swallowing the bolus or honestly, like any.

[A]

Any in the name of performance.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

They also redose during the effort at 150 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. But they were doing that in 50 milligram chunks across the three hours. And that's kind of an interesting way to use bicarb. Yeah.

[B]

So a half bolus total.

[A]

Yeah. A third bolus, a sixth of a bolus. Actually, you know, I might have to

[B]

teach you your bolus fractions at some point.

[A]

I mean, if we're talking 150. Yeah.

[B]

And then they did a three hour protocol that simulated a race so it involved going up to 90% of threshold down to 60% of threshold and alternating that every five minutes. Basically sounds like a really good workout. And at the end of three hours, they did a 90 second fatigue resistance test. This somewhat mimics how races would unfold. And as we always talk about fatigue resistance or durability probably is stable across various lengths. So like, if you're good at fatigue resistance at three hours, you're probably going to be good at it at 15 hours. I think that there's a lot more parallel there than people sometimes realize.

[A]

Okay, what do you think about the redose in this situation? So obviously we have enough data and enough anecdotal data to know that like athletes are using bicarb and using it. Well, we don't have a ton of data on athletes redosing it during races and obviously during running events. Like there's, that carries more of a GI side effect risk. But do you think we're going to start seeing athletes do that?

[B]

Well, we've seen it in cycling already. And the reason that this study is so cool is one, it shows the result in the 90 second power at the end of the test improved by 3%. And this is very high power. So you're getting a statistically significant result. You'd assume 541 watts to 524 in the non dose group, the placebo group. Um, so I think because we're seeing it in cycling and you have these types of studies and they're pretty low dose, you're probably wondering like, will this be in running? I think it probably should. You know, I, I haven't personally done it and I haven't had athletes do it because I'm scared of it. But this type of protocol seems like one you could try in training to see if it works for you. And if it works for you, then do it all the time. Like, we heard rumors from western states about one of the very top finishers redosing bicarb multiple times during the race to great success, who we don't coach and we're not involved with in any way. And that seems like we might be seeing this study put into practice.

[A]

Okay. Lactate gels are making me feel a little bit better about redosing bicarb because we did our trial of lactate gels and honestly it just felt like such a stomach brick that I was like, I would rather swallow a bolus than swallow this lactate gel. And so if it's, you know, if, if it's either option, I think I'd Rather go bicarb.

[B]

Yeah. I think the question becomes, how does the sodium intake start to change other elements of your race approach? And the answer is just, you experiment with this in training. And I think once we start seeing more data from that, we're gonna learn a lot. So there's our quick hitter on bicarb in racing.

[A]

That was kind of a medium hitter.

[B]

Medium. I think it was about three minutes.

[A]

Pretty. I. Actually, you're right. I think so. Yeah.

[B]

Come on, Megan. We lose track of time on here, but I think we did pretty darn good. Okay, next study, super fun here on cold water immersion called the effects of cold water immersion versus active recovery on oxidative stress, redox, gene expression and mitochondrial adaptations after strength training. I think this one should cause a huge stir in exercise physiology, not necessarily because of the results, but because it shows that the way people talk and think about these issues essentially undercuts the actual complexity of these systems.

[A]

And I feel like ice baths have been taking just a major dig across, like, how it's talked about popularly and also sometimes within, like, the scientific literature as well.

[B]

Yeah. That is the part that really irks me, grinds my gears, is that for the last maybe five, 10 years, whenever ice baths are talked about, everyone that's an exercise physiologist will be like, but that decreases adaptation rate. And there are some studies that point toward maybe some signals of that. A lot of it is an intuitive understanding of exercise physiology where inflammation is, quote, a good thing to enhance adaptation rate and things like that. But every single time that we talked about this. Right. That doesn't make sense. Because if you're saying that, look, in the real world, and when I was at the Olympic trials in 2024, on the infield of the athlete warmup area, where they got the coaches back there, so many of the athletes between heats were getting in ice baths, and you would not see that unless there was some potential benefit. And so if we're seeing that in the real world and it contrasts with the exercise physiologists are saying, maybe the exercise physiologists are missing something rather than the athletes.

[A]

Well, I found it fascinating that these exercise physiologists actually had the hypothesis that this. This, like, ice bath protocol was actually gonna cause negative, like, response pathways and adaptation pathways. And I thought that was really curious, and I thought it was also awesome that they hypothesis and then publish something in the contrary, because that's important to scientific understanding.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. And the hard part is you can never know for sure. We're still in an uncertain area. We're going to keep our nuanced view. Um, but just very simply, the study took a crossover design. In the first arm of nine men doing two conditions after strength training. One involved 10 minutes of cold water immersion, the other involved 10 minutes of active recovery. The parallel design was 21 men doing two conditions after those two conditions after strength two times per week for three months. So a longer term intervention as well. And those two combined to allow us to develop some conclusions from the data.

[A]

And I like how what they were looking at was both acute molecular responses, which is important when you think about like, you know, deriving some of these hypotheses, but then also the chronic physiological adaptations to the resistance training that were happening in both groups. And when you compare and think about both the acute and chronic, I think it adds a lot to this whole picture.

[B]

Absolutely. So here's a quote from the study. Cold water immersion does not attenuate exercise induced oxidative stress responses, redox related gene expression or mitochondrial enzyme adaptations compared with active recovery. Instead, cold water immersion improves muscle oxygen delivery and utilization during exercise, indicating enhanced oxidative capacity. These findings show that post exercise cooling does not impair key adaptive pathways and might in some contexts support muscle metabolic function. So that's a big mouthful of what you'd kind of expect where you can't drive massive conclusions from this sort of intervention, but it at least doesn't cause the long term chronic issues you might expect if you've just been immersed in the exercise physiology world for a while

[A]

and then they had a very similar mouthful of a paragraph that were also preceded by the words contrary to our hypothesis. And I just, I think that's like really curious here that they were like, okay, we're gonna, we expect to see this and we actually saw something totally different.

[B]

Yeah. And just zooming out, it points out that if you see contrasting information in the real world, like what athletes are doing, whether it's at the top level or just to feel good, and then you're getting lectured that that's not a thing that exists, the answer probably lies in the exercise physiology just making conclusions that it's not ready to make yet and that we might never be able to make. Because the whole point here is that even the things we were measuring in this study are summarizing 1000 variables. So if you're trying to summarize 1000 variables, the system is just way more chaotic than that. I mean, I think every doctor would understand this and sometimes exercise physiologists view things a little bit too myopically. And you know, we deal with this all the time. We're like, we just talked about bicarb. The number of times I've been lectured about bicarb online or Gnomeo or any of this stuff that gets full adoption. And then an exercise physiologist will be like, oh, but is that really the case? And then they'll try to dunk on me on Instagram and like tag me in their post for clout or whatever. I'm like, guys, I'm not trying to cause a to fight here. I'm not trying to disagree with you. I'm just trying to say the real world is the place where we've learned those 1,000 pathways about exercise physiology that we really have trouble isolating in a lab.

[A]

Well, it is curious to see how that trajectory has gone is I feel like it started with bicarb and now that bicarb is basically universally adopted, we're going to Gnomeo and that's the new thing. And now that Gnomeo is kind of universally adopted, it's going on to lactate gels, which we're still very much up in the air on. But it's like that trend, like, to me, it's fascinating.

[B]

People are still stuck on Know Me Omega. Yeah, no one, no one has now been two different times where like influencer slash athletes. So one was like exercise physiology influencer, but actual exercise physiologist, and then another was an athlete have tagged me and things on Gnomeo. I'm like, guys, I'm not sponsored by Gnomeo. The feed. The number of Gnomeos that the feed sells does not influence my life whatsoever. I'm literally just telling you what's happening and maybe it's all wrong, right? Like, maybe we'll figure out in the future that some of these like real world behaviors are wrong. But usually what we find out is that if exercise physiology says it's wrong, it's the exercise physiology that's wrong in the first place.

[A]

I do think there's nuance though, as we get back to ice baths, because I have seen this myself and I've seen this in other athletes, is that I do think that chronic use of like cold water immersion can actually make it more challenging to be heat adapted. And that's something that they're not measuring in the study.

[B]

And I think that blood volume responses are not like we're not aware of what exactly would happen there. So yeah, cold water might cause blood volume issues that make heat so much more difficult for all we know. Um, and that could also reduce performance long term. Maybe that has red blood cell impacts. Um, so it's tough to know where.

[A]

Like, how are you counseling athletes on cold water immersion? Like, say an athlete comes to you and they're like, david, I love my ice baths. What do you say? And how do you factor that into an athlete that's, like, also preparing for a hot race?

[B]

If you feel good, great. I think the feeling good element is the one that determines a lot of what's actually happening on the molecular level. So you feel great after cold water immersion, right? Like, I feel terrible. I hate it. It's just the worst thing for me. My guess is that is tying back to these underlying systems, and that's why it's sometimes unsatisfactory.

[A]

Or that you just have 64 pounds of sand in your big toe and you're like, I don't want to put this in the water.

[B]

I mean, that's partially it, but I feel like the sand in my vagina comes. Comes from, like, some sort of physiological signal.

[A]

The sand in your gonads?

[B]

No, man, I'm allowed to say that

[A]

it's a sexist thing.

[B]

I'm allowed to reclaim. Why is it sexist?

[A]

I mean, because you're talking about, like, the sand in the vagina is a symbol of, like, you know, being wishy washy or, like, not being tough. And so the sand better go in the gonads.

[B]

Don't put words in my mouth. I never said any of those things. It's open to context clues, man.

[A]

It's implied.

[B]

I can tell you to try to get me to take that out, but you can't now. Too many callbacks. Um, yeah, so I think if it makes an athlete feel good, fine. I think contrast, like, with heat and cold clearly works because you've seen that in, like, northern European cultures pretty persistently over time, so.

[A]

But does that. Does that actually work for heat training, though? You know, we don't know.

[B]

We don't know. And I think the answer has to be, we're satisfied with the we don't know sometimes. And I think that is especially true in ice baths. Because this study, it's not like it says ice baths are good. It just says, hey, guess what? We still don't know. Even if you might be lectured online about this topic. Okay, next up, we're gonna get to Hot Topics. But before that, quick promo for patreon. Go to patreon.com swap swap. We have basically unlimited training plans there for every single distance. Um, if you haven't seen it in a while. There's now like 40 of them. Uh, it's not just what like is on our website because we don't keep that updated actually.

[A]

In fact, sometimes I'm worried. I'm like, how is someone going to come there and choose? There's so many. It's like, how do you actually decide which one you're going to dive into?

[B]

Well, you can send me a message on Patreon to get that information. Bonus episodes, we're up to 202. We'll do your heart rate zones at the $10 a month tier. There's also training articles on every different topic. And here's a message from a listener. Hi, I just wanted to write in and say how much I'm loving the aging athlete plan, which is relatively new one I have found it has given me a whole new lease of life. I think previously I was painfully driving my body through five to six runs a week and starting not to even enjoy it. I have been mainly doing my cross training on the elliptical, but also on the uphill treadmill hiking at 8 to 10%. I found the long cross training quite mentally tough to start with, but now I look forward to locking myself in to for 60 to 120 minutes. The other big bonus I noted was in a recent fell race when I found myself running uphill way more than I normally would. Almost as if having an out of body experience that the legs went into autopilot. And I credit this to the uphill treadmill runs that are sprinkled in the plan. So yay for me.

[A]

That is so exciting. I feel like we're seeing athletes enjoy cross training a lot more than the. That's just like we have better entertainment like Netflix exists. Think back to college. And we're just watching like actually this was pretty great watching the Food Network in the gym and I think like the entertainment options have leveled up like Zwift and even just the style of cross training has leveled up and it's become so much more fun.

[B]

Yeah, the Food Network on mute might not be the most entertaining option. I do remember that was in the gym a lot.

[A]

Yeah, all the TVs were on mute, which makes sense obviously. But it's like that was your like prime form of entertainment.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I agree. And so go to patreon. Patreon.com swap. Swap. Now let's get on to Hot Topics. This is a really exciting one. We have a lot of interesting things to chat about here.

[A]

Which one are you going to start with first, it's a grab bag.

[B]

Which one do you think?

[A]

I think let's start with doping and ultra running.

[B]

First doping and ultra running. I don't have much to say there basically, just to flag that this is a conversation that is now being had, like, back and forth with people, like screaming at each other.

[A]

Oh, it's like the front facing camera on, like, different diagrams. It is a lot.

[B]

Yeah, it's a lot. And I think it's getting way too complicated where people are just really overthinking this a ton. Asking ethical questions that have been answered before.

[A]

Well, the ethical answer is just there is an entire rulebook.

[B]

There's an entire rulebook.

[A]

Trail running follows WADA and usada, and everyone should follow WADA and usada. And you can look up medications on global dro. And it tells you exactly what you can take in competition, what you can take out of competition, like, you know, what you might need a TUE for. And it is so helpful.

[B]

And I think that this is a temptation that we all face when we enter new areas or have new things opened up to us that we're like, oh, I'm going to think about this from first principles. And the point being, everyone has thought about first principles for a long time on this topic. In fact, we were listening to the Hard Fork podcast yesterday, and there was someone that used to work at Google who essentially was talking about their experience in the corporate culture and how they organized a walkout in 2018. And then after that was, we're trying to do some community, or not community, but work organizing, labor organizing. And they tried to think of it from first principles and then realized that people have been doing this for centuries. And similarly with doping, it's like these questions have been asked and there is a rulebook. And so, yes, there might need to be more education of people where they understand that these things exist. But once we have that, you follow the rules and the rules are there for a reason. And I think so many of the questions happen because people are like, oh, but think about this ethical question. And it's like, dude, I promise, the reason the rulebook exists is it has already had those ethical questions.

[A]

And the rulebook is good. Like, it is a code that also all other sports follow too. It's not like this is just unique to ultrarunning. And we're asking very specific ethical questions. Like, this applies to all sports and yes, sometimes in different ways, but the rulebook very thoroughly dictates that out. The other thing, you can just pick up the phone and Call usada. And they are very nice. I've done this for athletes before. When there is some question that like, you know, maybe is a little bit tricky to figure out in the rulebook, just call usada and I think, like, they're happy to answer your questions. And so it's just, it's. I don't know, it's. It's wild that we find ourselves in this position of talking about these gray areas that are not gray areas.

[B]

Is it okay that I text them Is it okay that I text them you up? Is it okay that I text them you up? Eggplant emoji.

[A]

Yeah. I wonder how USADA would respond to that. I'm sure someone at USADA is like, hell, yeah.

[B]

Yeah, someone might be. So very simple discussion there. Because I think some of what we're seeing, if you're paying attention to this, we don't want to name specific names is people just.

[A]

Why is that? I feel like we've named specific names before.

[B]

Yeah, because this is more of. I don't want to cause anyone grief on this topic.

[A]

And, you know, is that because you like this person?

[B]

Yeah, I like this person that that is on that is maybe making it more complicated than it should be. And I kind of resent the way that people that are on our side on this are presenting their thing as this holier than thou. It's like we can have this discussion without being mean. And I think just, why are people so mean online? I don't get it.

[A]

People are mean about everything.

[B]

It's like there's no. It doesn't help anybody. And I get where the algorithms kind of point towards that content and that hurts everybody.

[A]

Well, the like button does. You know, you go to a post about something, the Food Network, like being on mute or something, there's surely a comment that is very mean that has like 250 likes and everything else has zero. And that's what gets. Gets displayed and like populated forward.

[B]

It's not though. It's not the like button. So much more complicated why it's so scary. These algorithmic things cause the just dissemination of ideas that basically make you stay on them longer. So sometimes you click them, but sometimes it's just your eyes stay there for a second longer. And that brings us to point two, where my algorithms have personally been taken over by this story about Hank Green and his use of AI and the apology he issued. And it. I haven't liked anything, right? Like, I'm not engaging with this stuff. I might click sometimes to see comments. And as A result, though, it's my entire feed, and it makes me feel like this story is some massive one. And I assume 99.9% of our listeners have never heard of what we're about to talk about.

[A]

It's kind of wild that your algorithm is feeding you that. Meanwhile, I'm getting videos and, like, stories of children drowning. I think it, like, it's like, feeding into my subconscious of, like, I should schedule Leo swim lessons. And it's like feeding me all these stories of children in creeks and ponds and various places. I'm like, I don't want to see this.

[B]

Yeah. You have a bridge to Terabithia.

[A]

We have a bridge to Terabithia in our backyard. Have you thought about that? We have this open space in our backyard that has literally the bridge to Terabithia situation. And I cannot. Like, it is stuck in my brain.

[B]

Literally. Literally.

[A]

Literally. The setup is ripe.

[B]

That's true. Actually. Try to do something about that. Yeah, no, I mean. So to bring you to the new story here on hankering and AI, so some of his listeners and followers, he's a YouTuber and a podcaster and a writer. I love the way he thinks about the world. He's so empathetic and caring and kind, and I have a parasocial relationship with him like you wouldn't believe. And he was accused of using AI to develop a lot of his arguments, maybe even write some of his scripts. And he responded by doing this. This long apology, essentially to acknowledge that he had been using AI to research and that he'll stop doing that at the level it was and that he was under pressure to create and all of this. And then what followed was not like, okay, we CEO, we get it. It was instead a jump on a pile on, like, you wouldn't believe. And it just seems so counterproductive and weird to me that AI, which is this ubiquitous thing that is causing breakthroughs in every field, is being treated by some worlds as, like, almost like a totally taboo subject.

[A]

Well, I think it would be, like, to me, it would be problematic if he was actually using AI to write his scripts and then presenting those on YouTube. Like, if you watch his YouTubes, they are very scripted and very edited to the point that, like, you know, you watch for three seconds, and it's like a cut to his face in a different direction and then a cut back in. I think, like, if AI were actually involved in writing the scripts, I think for me, personally, like, ethically, that's a problem. But he didn't admit to that he admitted to using it for research, which to me is a little bit more valid. But I wonder, like, do you think there was, like, a lack of, like, you know, admission to something deeper?

[B]

Well, some of the arguments online are that you wouldn't write this apology unless you were guilty of something more. Which is one of my biggest issues with the whole topic. It's that apologizing for something, it cannot be viewed as an admission of guilt on everything, which is what it is, especially on, you know, maybe our side of a lot of political discussions. Because if that happens, everyone is incentivized to just be the worst versions of themselves. Sneaky parent or what is it? Strict parents create sneaky kids. And I think that it really becomes a problem. And we're seeing that here so bad. So one of the examples is that he said in his video, I appreciate the pushback, as if he's addressing the person watching his video, even though, you know, it's just him talking. And that's something we do all the time.

[A]

I was gonna say, like, I watched that video. So someone put it on Reddit and was like, here is. It was a 15 to 20 second clip of Hank talking, and there was no part. Maybe I don't actually engage with AI enough to be like, this sounds like AI language. But to me, I was like, it just sounds like he's talking.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, it totally is just talking. And it is very valid to speak that way. It's something that he does all the time. And the broader point here, actually, which

[A]

brings back, and we were talking about a comment this morning, is someone was like, you know, is Hank using AI or was AI trained on Hank? Maybe AI is just trained on his brilliant writing, for sure.

[B]

And, you know, the hard part is he admitted that he needs to totally rethink the way he's doing this, that he has some addiction to it and other things.

[A]

Actually, can I read this quote about the addiction? Just because I thought it was one, well written, but two, I think probably a lot of creators and people probably fall into this addictive category. And I appreciate how he wrote about it. He said, but making more things does not make me make better things. It does not make the big thing that we've been doing for 20 years better. I know that I can manage myself more effectively, but mostly I need to come to terms with the fact that the level of dopamine I've been getting from interacting with LLMs and with doing more and more and more and more is not healthy for me or good for the World. It is careless and has disconnected me from where people are on this.

[B]

Yeah. But I also think from where people are on this is doing a lot of work where he's focused a little bit too myopically on the very loud people on the Internet. Which brings us back to the algorithmic idea and all of this. It's that, man, when AI comes up, like, people that have listened to this podcast know, we have a nuanced feeling about this, that we're like, you need to keep it out of your creative work. And this shows why. Like, I have talked about this for a very long time. It is the apocalypse for creativity. Not because it's not a great tool and it can be used as a tool. You can ask it questions and things like that, but as soon as you let it creep into your writing, into your voice, into your way of thinking, you are going to be ushered into a world that you don't want to be in, that will not be productive for you. But on the flip side, there are people that are saying any use of this is bad. And it's like, great. But you cannot say that on a social media app, for example, that is bad for the world and uses AI. And that AI is everywhere in our lives. And there's so much of a dismissal of it that says this is just next word prediction system, and it doesn't understand what it's talking about and all that. And it's like, trust me, if you talk to people in this world, that is a total misunderstanding of where the tech's at and where it's going. I mean, just this week, OpenAI announced their Astra program, solved 10 open math problems that are much more advanced than some of the ones we talked about last week. Like, this is going in a direction where it is kind of ubiquitous. It is something that we have to get comfortable with and separating. Okay, when is this becoming something that, like, affects the creative process versus when is this someone just using a tool is important. Like, you need to have a nuanced view of this.

[A]

But I also think that as AI gets better and better, our ability to detect AI in creative voices is going to get better and better too. Which is why just don't use it now, because in five years, everything that you've done, if it's all AI generated, that's the world's probably going to know. In fact, we listened to a podcast talking about on hard work, talking about how substack is now integrating a feature that they're planning to roll out ahead where you can determine what percentage of the writing is done by AI? And, like, you know, it's. I think we're evolving more and more in that direction across all creative outlets.

[B]

Yeah, don't take the shortcuts with using AI to create. You can, I think, use it for research or whatever. I personally don't love it for that because I find that the way it compiles things doesn't work for my personal workflow. But I could see why people would. I'm actually now, especially with this thing happening, I have one of those moments where I'm so happy that I haven't yet used it very much, actually.

[A]

There's times that I feel like I've been a slow AI adopter and I'm like, what could I be more efficient on? And now I'm like, huzzah, huzzah, huzzah.

[B]

And how much of this for me is just a parasocial relationship where I really like this guy. His podcast, Dear Hank and John, one of my favorites, and everybody should listen to it.

[A]

And they have such brilliant voices on the podcast, which actually makes me sad that if he, in fact, was using AI to write his scripts, his voice is so brilliant that he'd be better without. I mean, yes, maybe he'd be a little less time efficient, but I think his videos would be perhaps even better with just his authentic voice.

[B]

Yeah, but the question is, would I defend him for anything because of that parasocial relationship, which to me is a real one? I think he's done so much positive for the world, and so perhaps I need to check my own biases there.

[A]

So you definitely want a parallel design with Hank.

[B]

Yeah, but you know what? I am not going to apologize for my biases, because if I apologize for my biases, then people online are going to say terrible things about me.

[A]

Well, that's the tricky part is, like, apologizing is amazing, and I'm the kind of person that maybe, like, over apologizes for things, but you have to be careful if you do it. If you have a big following and you do it, like, online, it can get construed the wrong way.

[B]

Well, I truly think the lesson from modern social media is, unfortunately, don't do the old corporate communication style of apologizing, letting something blow over. Literally, just do the letting it blow over part. Because as soon as you do that, like, it gets worse. And that's contrary to how I view things too. But every time I see some situation like this, I'm like, you made it way worse by acknowledging it. And maybe he'll Leverage this into content.

[A]

He probably feels better about it himself, though. And that's the most important thing. Like, you know, I say in my book, make the apology, throw your phone in the river, come back in two months and move on with it.

[B]

Okay, maybe, maybe.

[A]

Or it's about personal integrity.

[B]

You can just not apologize and become president.

[A]

A well validated pathway, apparently.

[B]

Okay, next up, let's talk about the Tour de France Femmes. How about that? So first few stages are down. Nothing crazy interesting has happened yet. Lorena Luibe has won stages one and two. She. She's such a dominating sprinter that it is quite bonkers. She's like the Tati Pagacha on mountain stages of sprinting, which you rarely see of someone that much better than everybody else. I think she won by eight bike lengths yesterday. And she can get over the climbs that lead into some of these finishes. So I feel like in sprint stages, it is just honestly not that interesting from a results perspective because she is so dominant.

[A]

I like. I kind of like watching dominant athletes. It was fun to watch her finish and across the finish, just from the regular angle. And then they showed the aerial angle and you're like, she is a million years ahead of everyone. And it was within. I mean, it's not like she sprinted, you know, 2K from the finish line. She made that separation in bike lanes fast.

[B]

Yeah. And so you gotta be interesting tactically to get away from her. I don't know exactly how you would do it. The first thing is you would never help her team, which the other women's teams are. The other is that the other teams need to team up and just launch flyers off the front to challenge that team. And that almost worked with a breakaway of our single rider getting away. But. But when this type of rider is in the field, everybody needs to just get weird. And I don't understand exactly why that's not happening. I think it might be a little bit of like, group think coming in. And I think it's gotta. It's gotta stop. We can't have Lorena. We in every stage, maybe they like

[A]

her and they're like, cool, uplift her. She's a strong woman supporting other strong women. But she also had an issue. So in one of her last races where she was dominant again, her bike came in at a lighter weight than UCI standards, the Giro, the width, and she got disqualified. And I cannot imagine, like, you know, here I am crying about the ass in backcountry marathon where I just like, walked my way down the road instead of finishing and she freaking won a giro siege and then was disqualified for a bike. And it's like, can you imagine how heartbreaking that is?

[B]

And then the final thing on the Tour de France, femmes you have to talk about.

[A]

Okay, this was the first thing in the all. And I'm like, we need to talk about the entire femmes first is the concept of boob maxing.

[B]

Boob maxing.

[A]

And the scientific theory on boob maxing is that if you have more of a chest shape and they describe this as like, quote, optimal shape, it actually impacts the aerodynamic drag. And we're talking like significant percentage points. Like, there was an article written about this that if you really designed it, you could get 3.6%, which is on the order of bicarb and super shoes and some of these other things. And so when you think about that applied to top level female cycling, you're like, what's happening here?

[B]

Yeah, it is really interesting because it becomes a fairing. So fairing is something in aerodynamics that shuttles air, essentially. And so you can imagine that the empty space is aerodynamically inefficient. That's one reason that, you know, these cyclists, when they're in the aero position, put their hands close together. And nowadays their hands aren't low. So if you looked at aero bikes back in 2005, 2010, their hands were like at a 90 degree angle from their body, creating a big empty space.

[A]

Actually, it's kind of depressing when you say empty space. Like from a personal anecdote perspective, I'm like, I got empty space. I'm not boom. Maxing on empty space. In.

[B]

I mean, no, it's, it's beautiful.

[A]

I uplift your empty space.

[B]

They say about jazz, it's the notes you don't play.

[A]

Yeah,

[B]

it's the, it's the space you don't have. But also, you're perfect in every single way. I love you so much, as is

[A]

everyone else out there, no matter. No matter what boob maxing level you're at.

[B]

So you think about the difficulty of moderating this. It's very reminiscent of the ski jumping controversy where some people were accused of, maybe they're going to try to, you know, juice their underpants, essentially. But that's a much smaller fairing in the big scheme of things than you could get from an aerodynamic perspective in your chest. Like, triathletes will sometimes use water bottles to create these types of fairings.

[A]

Actually, if you're carrying a lot of water, as is sometimes done in, like long gravel races, it's so much more effective to put it in like your, the middle of your body as opposed to like putting it on the back. Um, and it's, it's kind of interesting to see at riders use that.

[B]

Yeah. And you can use, use ice to do this. And they have rules against how you use all of these to create fairings. But it's very difficult to establish a rule that like your chest is going to be regulated to be within a certain percentage of your actual chest. You could just go down there wearing like, you know, a pillow essentially.

[A]

Oh, that's. I mean, you have. I'm pulling out the pads right now in my sports ball. You could just put 65 of these things in there and see what happens.

[B]

65 breast pads and 64 pounds of sand in my vagina.

[A]

Well, what is sport coming to?

[B]

Yeah, and it points out how hard it is to regulate this because you could think of how you do measurements and then do post like validation and stuff.

[A]

Actually it's like a biological passport, but like a boob passport. But a lot of that varies by the menstrual cycle. By like, you know, you can change a whole cup size. You know, it's crazy.

[B]

And the answer has to end up being that it's a trust system. Trust based system. But when you're doing a trust based system on 3.6%. 3.6% in a sport with, with it starts to be hundreds of thousands of dollars in it, you can see how it creates kind of perverse incentives. And I do not envy this one. Whereas with the doping and ultra running conversation, I'm like, look, follow the rules. The rules will guide us. They have developed over decades. We get it with this. I'm like, I do not know what you should do in this situation other than just say, look, guys, stay within the lines. We trust you and go from there.

[A]

Stay within the empty space. Actually, it makes me kind of uncomfortable to talk about this because, like, there's so many amazing stories from the Tour de France, but to be fair, we talked about penile implants and ski jumpers and so we're just bringing it all to the light.

[B]

And we didn't talk about actual ski jumping at all.

[A]

No, no, we're not interested in ski jumping.

[B]

No, no, I'm just interested in their dicks. Okay, let's get on to the one she'll say. Actually, one more thing on the fun things we skipped a bunch. There is Leo just discovered Cinnamon Toast Crunch. And this is where nature versus nurture becomes a really complicated discussion. Because when I was a kid, it. Cinnamon Toast Crunch was everything to me. If I could have it in the house, which was very rare, I would go through an entire box and it would be the most orgasmic experience an 8 year old could ever have. And he just had it this weekend for the first time. And now he won't stop saying, give me my favorite cereal. And we've given him a lot of things. We've given him a lot of tasty things. And this is the first one that has fully hijacked his brain. So I wonder if this is the same genetics I have.

[A]

I was gonna say I thought it was my genetics because I was the one that first gave him. He's like, can I have that cereal, Mom? And I was like, here's one. And he's like, what is this?

[B]

What is this?

[A]

It's so good.

[B]

Were you like that as a kid?

[A]

I was. I love. Yeah. I'm a cereal fiend. And I feel like Cinnamon Toast Crunch is up there.

[B]

Maybe this is an every person thing. So you're saying it's up there? You're not saying it's head and shoulders above everything else?

[A]

You know, I'm still a sucker for Lucky Charms.

[B]

Okay, Megan, that's bullshit. This isn't a nature. Nature versus nurture anymore. Now you're just saying it's a good cereal. I'm saying this is heroin.

[A]

You're saying it's the very best cereal of all time.

[B]

It's the pinnacle of human chemistry. And like, how we have. In fact, I think the entire universe was designed by a higher power for the creation of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. And it's all downhill from here.

[A]

Okay, Mary. Kill Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Lucky Charms. Peanut Butter Panda Puffs.

[B]

Oh, I kill Lucky Charms.

[A]

Damn.

[B]

The texture of it's just weird.

[A]

Yeah, I think I'd fuck them.

[B]

Who would you kill?

[A]

Probably Peanut Butter Panda Puffs.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

And I would marry the Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

[B]

Okay. I feel very, very unmoored right now. Peanut Butter Panda Puffs. That's my. That's my go to. That's my forever babe.

[A]

Yeah, I definitely fuck Cinnamon cancer, obviously.

[B]

And like, that is the right answer because I still cannot really have it in the house. Which, you know, obviously.

[A]

Why did you get it? Was it for my race?

[B]

Yeah. I was thinking that this might be something Megan really enjoys to just help her.

[A]

I'm crying in a bowl of cereal.

[B]

I mean, I wasn't expecting that.

[A]

Neither was I. Okay.

[B]

Onto these studies. Very cool. Because they have similar designs in some ways. The first one Is called increased carbohydrate availability partially attenuates endocrine suppression in responses to low energy availability. It took 16 recreational active adults, which included nine women, and they included two four day conditions. So everyone had four day conditions. One with low energy availability, with low carb. So all the your daily intake is the same, but there was only 1.5 grams per kilogram of carbohydrates. So you're getting more protein and fat. The other was low energy availability with more normal carb. Here, 4 grams per kilogram of carbohydrate.

[A]

And what they found was that in the high carbohydrate group, there are significant attenuations in the decline in IGF1, which is a marker of low energy availability. And there was also reductions in fasting insulin that was attenuated by about the same magnitude as IGF1. And so we're seeing less impact on the hormonal system overall when even if there is low energy availability, it's done in conjunction with high carb.

[B]

Okay, I gotta say something.

[A]

What?

[B]

I don't like the word attenuated.

[A]

Why?

[B]

Because I think whenever you say it or write it or whatever, people are left thinking for six seconds, what does attenuated mean?

[A]

Did you just not learn it in SAT prep class?

[B]

No, I mean, I know I from context clues. I don't know if I can define it. Like, I feel like I'm a pretty smart guy and I think using attenuated so much, especially in a title, you just shouldn't do it. It's the type of word that everybody has to think about for a second. It just doesn't come naturally.

[A]

I think, okay, this is probably not AI this was actually a fantastically written and well executed study. But some of it also screams like chatgpt just wants to sound a little smart.

[B]

Yeah. Um, and then maybe another fun wrinkle here is that both of the groups showed similar changes towards fat oxidation. So going low carb didn't improve fat oxidation relative to like moderate carb, still with low energy availability. So the idea here is that low energy availability, we will constantly say is not good. I mean, there are certain situations where athletes are in a health context where they are, you know, there's a body composition issues and they go with a doctor that needs to work on this. Um, but even in that context, having more carbs is probably better because that will prevent some of the hormonal damage. And I think sometimes the messaging out there set says, hey, just go low carb. Like that's the answer, and what we're seeing more and more from studies is even if total energy is kept steady, low carb is what is causing the health issues in a more substantial way.

[A]

Low carb has been connected to so many different things now, including low energy availability, including over training syndrome, including bone health, so many different menstrual, menstrual health. And it's wild how much our body just needs carbs.

[B]

Yeah, carbs are the evolutionary signal, it seems. And this gets back to the study that is my all time favorite on this subject, which looks at within day energy deficits. So you're looking at like carb deficits on short term windows. And even if your daily carbs are fine, if your short term carbs when you're training hard, so this involves training hard, but if they are low, you're gonna see more disturbance of hormones and higher cortisol, lower testosterone in men and women, and increased menstrual cycle disturbance. And that kind of is the same pathway that we're seeing here. But not, not right on point.

[A]

Actually. One of the limitations of the study was that it does not specifically specify the timeframe of consuming carbs. And so some athletes in the study might have been in higher within day energy deficits based off of how they structured their daily intake. And so that matters too.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. Next study, very similar design here called the influence of short term severe low energy availability with varying protein content on substrate metabolism, high intensity exercise performance and subjective responses in young adults. It took 19 participants, nine females and 10 males. Both had good female representation. Um, and it took three conditions, each of which were five days. On day one, they did resting metabolic rate, substrate metabolism during a 45 minute cycling test, and peak power output. Um, and then on days two to five, here are the three conditions. Adequate energy availability, which is good. Uh, two, low energy availability reduced proportionally, so everything drops at the same rate. And then three, low energy availability was protein matched to adequate energy availability. Thus in condition three, you have to have lower carbs, protein's higher, you're getting more of your calories from protein, carbs have to drop. This is the traditional way that people might be told, you know, by influencers or whatever, if they're trying to lose weight, to do it this way, to like keep your protein high, drop your carbs real low. And I think this study has very similar findings to the last one.

[A]

And they followed up with performance results and measurements. And what they found was that the performance was reduced in the group that had the low energy availability with protein. So Thus getting in fewer of that carbs. And that was the most dramatic decrease in performance. And then they also found that the low energy availability group had a change to fat oxidation during exercise, but interestingly, not during rest.

[B]

Yeah. And the low energy availability groups both had the increased fat oxidation. So it wasn't a carb mediated signal overall, it was the low energy availability mediated signal, which again, points against a lot of the low carb arguments. Um, and then maybe the biggest one here is in this study, they looked at subjective experience and people fucking hated it. It was terrible, actually.

[A]

They hated both conditions.

[B]

I love.

[A]

This was a quote from one of the participants. I died in all the tests, but I died the most after the low energy availability diet, which is a great summary of exercising. I get that.

[B]

Yeah. So just a vote for carbs. I mean, you know, this isn't talking about low energy availability specifically. I think this goes more to the broader point that once carbs start dropping, the physiological impacts start very rapidly. And that doesn't mean that you need to have high carb all the time that you, you're carb maxing. It just means that if you drop carbs super low, you're probably gonna see negative implications to that. And it doesn't just go to things like insulin and hormonal status. It probably goes straight to how your brain functions and how you're able to move through the day, the type of parent you're able to be. So we are all living in a world where we have internalized messages about

[A]

carbs, and we're seeing that as athletes, like, as athletes are reporting their subjective experiences. In this study, they were talking about in the low energy availability group experiencing a lot of hunger, fatigue, weakness and frustration. And actually, interestingly, we were seeing that as more pronounced in male athletes. Oh, yeah? Yeah.

[B]

I wonder why. I. Why do you think that is?

[A]

Some of it was the female athletes were reporting more of that, actually in the group that was having adequate calorie intake. And so there was a little bit less wiggle room there, whereas the males were feeling better at baseline there.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

Yeah. Some of it's like a ceiling effect.

[B]

If we're really zooming out to total speculation of societal impacts and how that could play a role. Perhaps the women have been relatively indoctrinated on this idea at some end that, like dropping a little bit lower is like maybe the type of thing that is a reward function almost from terrible societal messages from, like Cosmopolitan magazine. So there's a little bit less of that negative effect than men might get who don't get quite as much of that societal messaging, but still get some of it.

[A]

Agree. Or it's a small study and there's a ceiling effect. Or it's the cosmopolitan skeleton effect. I like that one.

[B]

It was pretty cool though.

[A]

That's pretty cool. I actually. I really like that.

[B]

And no AI involved. Straight from the old noggin over here. Getting older every day. Okay, you want to get on the Q and A?

[A]

Let's do it.

[B]

Okay, before we get there, do we want to talk about. How about quick promo for Wahoo treadmills? The Wahoo kicker run the best treadmill on the market. Use code swap at checkout. You can just go to our show notes, click there and you get like a 500 fan, 400 fan. That will keep sweat off the treadmill, which is is so key. Like basically no matter what, if you have a treadmill, get a super advanced fan. It is key.

[A]

And get some mechanism of keeping sweat off the treadmill. Like I feel like I always have a towel on there and it really helps to avoid sliding. But the treadmill workouts are just so fun. I'm hoping I can get back here so I can get back to an uphill tremor workout because I love those.

[B]

And the kicker run just makes running so much more joyful. So go check it out. Okay, let's get on to question and answer. The first one is a little bit serious, so then it'll get more jokey after that.

[A]

That.

[B]

Hi, I would like to ask you a question. Shocking. I know about the return to run plan on Patreon. I am currently on week six after a calcaneal stress fracture took me out for quite some time. Well, I have been loving the plan and everything is going splendidly, but I am extremely scared when running downhill. I want to run hills and the long run is on trails where I stated in the plan. 150ft per mile of elevation gain. Welp, that was a long intro. The main point is how to trust your body again and doing the thing you love the most. The pain started while I was running downhill which caused some kind of association in my brain that connects it to the calcaneal fracture. Should I just wait until the fear goes away or should I face my fears if there is no pain? Haha. Thank you both for reading my poorly constructed question and weird creation and for spreading positivity in our lives.

[A]

Well, to start, I love any weird creation that is that comes from the brain. It is not AI generated. So thank you.

[B]

Yeah, thank you. And it was perfect in every Single way. The weirder, the better.

[A]

We uplift your articulation of this. But also like, man, this is a hard feeling. Like, you know, I've had this fear as it relates to my heart, and sometimes it just is really hard. And yeah, I think you have to process that and talk about it. Like, you know, talk openly about it. Send us this message like you did. That's like a great first step. Talk to a therapist, talk to a loved one, talk to a friend. And then I think, you know, as long as it feels safe and things are healed up, just gradually get yourself back out there and go for it. Yeah.

[B]

And eventually these feelings will be a distant memory. It's so hard. But when you're in it, it. It can feel like you're always going to be in it and you will get better. The body has a miraculous way to heal, and it gets really complicated when you start talking about heart or whatever, because we don't know it's going to get better. And so as you're addressing this, all we can do, one, talk about it. Two, be open about everything you feel. And three, like, understand that the ups and downs can't be judged. It's just how the human body adapts to things. And. And there's no right answer other than it sucks. Talk about it and move forward with the knowledge that you're doing it the right way, whatever that means for your specific injury or health context.

[A]

And I think in this health context too, if it is a calcaneus, like, you know, you're coming back from a calcaneal stress fracture that has a higher composition of trabecular bone. And sometimes those stress fractures. Not all the time. Sometimes those stress fractures can be a byproduct of low energy availability. And so I think, give yourself the, like, the trust that you're. You're putting a ton of carbs into your body and maybe get a dexo scan and like, kind of go down this pathway, if you haven't already, of investigating that. And I think that will just let you know that you're doing everything for your health and making sure that this is not a, like something that's going to repeat in the future.

[B]

I'm going to shirt talk about it. The more you do that, the more power you'll gain over these types of thoughts. And just know we're here in decaying meat sacks, every single one of us. And everybody is having thoughts like this basically all the time. And if you're not, you're going to be having them soon. And I think it's kind of the magic. Magic of being an athlete, and it's the magic of learning about yourself.

[A]

That was a reflection I had is like, you know, I'm 36, and I feel like in some ways, my. My heart is a decaying meat sack, but, like, it would be eventually, and I would face this process with aging eventually. You know, maybe it might even be like, you know, Beth McKenzie, at 46, just ran a 237 marathon. Yeah, maybe that would be 10 years down the road from now, but it's still something that, like, this is preparing myself to think about that process.

[B]

Absolutely. And, I mean, for me, the foot has been in so long. I had never really dealt with a very serious injury before, and now we're coming up on 10 months, you know, um, and depending on what the MRI shows, it could end up being a full year of dealing with this. And I had the realization, finally, this weekend, partially motivated by your race, actually, that I need to currently take a different mindset to how I'm approaching this. Like, it's already this long. I need to take a, as I'm calling it in my own head, a retirement mindset. Like, obviously, that's not the way I actually feel, but if I keep trying to push, my body has told me now for 10 months that it's not working, and I need to just reevaluate that, take a step back and not be like, oh, this pain is going to clear up, or, it's okay that I feel this. I am motivated by the Rafa documentary on Netflix, where he's out there at 37 in this documentary, and he's practicing so hard, and he's clearly in pain. You know, he's limping around, and he comes back to his team, and sometimes he's like, oh, that was a great practice. But it's like, if you're watching that at, you can tell that he's in pain, and I want to make sure that I'm not in pain. And then going back to my team, being like, things are great. I want to try to get better. Which for me means being like, how do I actually approach this for the long term? And so hopefully, I can live by that and just take a step back.

[A]

And I think that's true toughness. Like, for me, true toughness is actually stopping at mile five of a race and walking through the forest as opposed to just trying to push on. And I think, like, yeah, there's times in which, like, sometimes as athletes, like, we need tough love, but a lot of times it's actually just like true love. And that is a version of toughness. And I think, like, you know, a lot of athletes fall into that category and I want to. I think like this whole process for me is making me better at giving that to myself.

[B]

You're doing so great, and the amount that you're able to give yourself a little more love will be so good. And as you stare off into the distance, hopefully that feeling goes away a bit.

[A]

To the abyss. To the abyss. That's what I'm looking at when I'm on my computer and doing some 30 second stares.

[B]

Oh, my goodness. Okay, next one. I hate you. Um, I'm coming off on a recent injury, and while injured, I discovered Pilates and also resumed hot yoga. Have you tried hot yoga? Seems great for heat training as well as restorative stretching. I do 90 minutes Bikram at 105 degrees, which kicks my ass even though I'm a seasoned athlete. Have you considered hot yoga for heat training?

[A]

I feel like this question lit David's brain on fire.

[B]

Yeah, well, there are studies on hot yoga for heat training that shows a similar blood volume response that you would get from any type of heat, whether it's active or passive. Those studies are largely done on a specific field hockey team, interestingly.

[A]

Oh, I didn't realize that my love language put me in that study.

[B]

I love that scientific wrinkle. And after this listener sent the message, I'm like, I haven't done hot yoga. That isn't. Like, I did Core Power once with Megan's mom and it was the worst mistake of my life.

[A]

Yeah, you came out with a hamstring

[B]

injury and just Megan's mom is like the strongest person on earth.

[A]

My mom does like handstands and stuff. And I'm over there, I'm. I'm like, I can't even touch my toes. Yeah.

[B]

And I was trying to impress her. Oh, my God. That was a mistake. Still sore from that one. But I think hot yoga does have a place and it might. The reason that I checked it out is one, I do like the heat, but two, I love yoga. I think yoga is a fantastic thing. It really helped me. My senior year in college, I started doing a yoga class for physical education credit, which is hilarious. And the teacher was so woo woo. And I fell for every little bit of it, like the breathing, the meditation.

[A]

And you were still doing that breathing and meditation when we met to the point that this was like how you fell asleep at night and then it was it me that made you gradually Fall away from that in time.

[B]

Yeah. I mean there's a certain point where like half of you really buys in and then half of you is like, David, this is bullshit.

[A]

Yeah, I feel that. I actually think it really matters.

[B]

It matters. Yeah. No, breathing exercises I think are really good for the nervous system.

[A]

I think the hard part was that 20 year old me didn't think it mattered. And I think in part you were like, oh, this is not sexy to Megan.

[B]

Well, and then life got busy and I wasn't even able to prioritize it. But I do think yoga really helped my body. That was also around when I started to athletically become much more of an endurance athlete. Just feel more at home in my body. Also got a lot more control over some of my anxiety and the ability to do breathing exercises really helped. And so maybe yoga is the way to regain some of the trust in my body long term. And maybe it's hot yoga and maybe. I looked up classes at Yoga Pod here in Boulder for tomorrow at 3:30.

[A]

Is that going to be a day date? Should we do that together? Would you do it with me? I would love to do that. That would be so fun. I'm terrible. Like, okay, but here's the question. Do you think yoga is good? Like I feel like we might benefit from yoga because we are terrible at yoga. That's we're not getting the super deep stretching. Like, do you think that like to be, to excel at yoga, do you think that like occurs in parallel to high performance?

[B]

Yeah, I think if you're super duper flexible, let's say it reaches a point where it becomes very negative for muscle tension and output. The key is to be a passionate terrible yogi.

[A]

Yeah. So that like you can't actually do the deep holds in such a deep way that you're limiting your muscle tension.

[B]

Well, what I'm thinking is we stay at the back of the class, we

[A]

sweat our asses off, we make a lot of jokes.

[B]

Make a lot of jokes. Well, they'll have to be internal because we don't want to disturb other people's experiences. But then we can come back to the podcast.

[A]

Oh, we can do hand gestures, Megan.

[B]

Just pantomime sand going into a hole. Okay, uh, next one on peeing. I ran my first road marathon last year where I really wanted to push myself and get a good time. About an hour in, I had to pee, which caused me to stop and go off course to do so. Do you have any hydration recommendations or other ideas to prepare for a three to four Hour race to avoid stopping.

[A]

This is a tricky one. I do think hydration is important. I think pee right before the starting line. Maybe use a side short modality to do so.

[B]

This was a male listener, but go for it.

[A]

Figure out a side short modality. David, this is your job.

[B]

Sometimes it's just the short modality.

[A]

What's that?

[B]

Just peeing on yourself?

[A]

Yeah, that's gonna say, just be yourself.

[B]

No, I mean, I don't think that that's the cause here.

[A]

Yes, it's actually hard to. I have not quite mastered running and peeing myself at the same time.

[B]

Very few people have, which is probably

[A]

a good thing for my pelvic floor. Sometimes that happens involuntarily, like postpartum.

[B]

But whenever anyone says that they pee while they run, I'm like, I call bullshit on that. Unless you release a tutorial video, I don't know if that's actually possible. I mean, even in the Tour de France, they stop their bikes to pee. Like they're peeing off the camera.

[A]

They don't show that to us anymore.

[B]

No one's peeing while they're just on the bike. Like, that's not a thing that happens even there. So I don't think that that's true. But with this, I think there's a very simple answer, which is warm up. I talked to this athlete, and after I gave them that, they didn't warm up before this race, go on a 10 to 15 minute jog. Do that, you know, 30 or 45 minutes before. You should do that before every event because it's to activate the aerobic system, but it also activates some of the, you know, chemical pathways that make it less likely for you to have to pee subsequently. So you'll do that warmup, hold your pee the entire warmup, and then right at the end of the warmup or after that, let out like a big one. Like, you know, break the seal. Like in drinking, they call it breaking the seal. Right? Like, if you pee once, you're gonna have to pee a million times. Um, and similarly, same processes apply here. This is another of David's potty training corner.

[A]

We're having, like, segments like this every

[B]

podcast I got tagged on Instagram of someone that said, I'm 60 years old, old. I thought it was in my prostate. And now I know it's not. My life has changed forever. So it's. It's doing things with the peeing at night examples. But so for this, do that 10 to 15 minute warmup. Everybody should be doing that, you know, pee after, take a gel after, do your pre cooling so you cool yourself back off. Like, you always want to be cool at the start line, and that will most likely prevent you from peeing in these short events that are high intensity and then longer events. You're going to have to pee a lot.

[A]

I was going to say ultra is like, you're just going to have to pee and just make it quick. Like, don't get, don't be hard on yourself and just, just make it happen.

[B]

Yeah, you probably shouldn't be hard in an alter. Next question.

[A]

We had so much fun at Leadville. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. Definitely not hard, though. Am I being a weak ass bitch or the science and sport Electrolyte beta fuels. Really hard to tear open.

[A]

Part of me wants to be like, you weak ass bitch. But they're really hard to tear open.

[B]

And sometimes this just happens. Whenever I open a gel, sometimes I just like, can't get it. Like, my hands don't do it sometimes.

[A]

I, I always use my, my, my teeth to do it.

[B]

Oh, you shouldn't be using your teeth.

[A]

I do it. I mean, I've never opened a gel with my hand.

[B]

You shouldn't be saying I always use my teeth on the podcast.

[A]

I do with gels. Okay. I literally have never used my hands with a gel.

[B]

Okay. I was trying to make a joke.

[A]

I know, I know. Okay. Like right to the science.

[B]

Right to the science.

[A]

Too many of those jokes.

[B]

Yeah, too many.

[A]

Well, I mean, not too many. Maybe it's just the right amount.

[B]

Just the right amount. We always say to, like, bring it out and talk about different things, what we're doing here. Yeah, I think it's important when you open gels, you know, you do it with your mouth. Mouth. When you tear them open, always tear down at an angle. So I think sometimes when people tear open, you're tearing sideways, and if you tear sideways, sometimes you're not actually getting the full tear. You're getting a partial tear. And so when you push out the gel, it like just squirts out very slowly. So if you tear down at a diagonal, like toward the bottom of the gel, you usually are able to tear the shoulder off. And then it's so much easier to squeeze it all out.

[A]

No one has ever told me this, this. Oh, cool, David. This is revolutionary. Megan.

[B]

I think about everything.

[A]

You really do, and I'm like, God damn, we need a David's teeth corner.

[B]

Well, here's David's nose hair corrections corner. Uh, this one comes in from a professional cyclist and I like to do my homework on people. So I've been listening to a few of your podcasts. The debate about nasal hairs. I must chime in here because I do not know what the data says on this, but from a medical standpoint, the nose hairs actually serve a purpose of filtering dust and allergens and also warming air, et cetera. So you might want to research that as a rebuttal to the nasal hair removal crowd. For off road racers, keeping the nasal hair may actually help prevent reactive mucosal edema to the climate changes and particles of dust, especially for cyclists. Not sure how much gets kicked up in trail running. Fun thought for you to consider.

[A]

I agree with this a hundred percent. I think I actually almost brought this up, or brought this up in a different podcast episode related to nasal hair. But nasal hair is pretty important.

[B]

Yeah, I hate to say it to this person, this new podcast listener, this professional athlete, but I think you're wrong.

[A]

You think they're a little bitch.

[B]

I think you can take your nose hair science and shove it. No, I mean, I don't actually trim my nose hairs, but just the idea of it is making me very excited to race again. Because the day before my race I'm going to trim my nose hairs and yeah, there's going to be a lot of dust up there, but honestly, how much work is it actually doing at filtering dust? If there's enough of it, it's getting in there anyway.

[A]

It feels like how you shave your legs and all the other parts of your body.

[B]

Exactly. It's going to be so good. I'm going to be liberated.

[A]

Are you gonna leave it on the bathroom floor?

[B]

The nose hair? Yeah, I mean, I might just leave it under your pillow.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

For the nose hair fairy. Okay, next one here on the immortality discussion we had last week for a refresher. Megan said she would not favor immortality.

[A]

Of course.

[B]

And I was like, of course I would favor it. And I can't imagine anyone not favoring it.

[A]

Did you get so many messages?

[B]

I got so many messages supporting Megan and I knew in the moment, it felt so obvious to me that anyone should select the immortality option that I knew I was wrong. Because whenever I am that certain that I am right, I'm like, oh, I'm actually wrong on this topic.

[A]

Actually, my brain went to the exact place of where this person is talking about, of fantasy books. I'm like, david, this is a topic of so many fantasy books. And everyone that is immortal in those fantasy books gets fucked and fucked up. Okay, okay.

[B]

Well, my Rebuttal to that is, can we just have a fantasy book where everyone's just kind of chill and cool?

[A]

You should write it. Yeah. You were writing a fantasy book at one. Point. Point.

[B]

That's true. And I stopped. Yeah. Fantasy. Fantasy is hard. Immortality versus mortality. Tell me you don't read fairy smut without telling me you don't read fairy smut.

[A]

I actually tried to read fairy smut when I was breastfeeding. So I was like, I was listening to it on audiobook at night, in the middle of the night when I was breastfeeding, and it was hard.

[B]

Too much teeth.

[A]

Too much teeth.

[B]

The premise when immortal beings are involved is always that they lose touch with reality and stop holding life sacred and become cruel and violent. Like team mortality here. But also, if the argument is that everyone is immortal, then absolutely no thanks. There are other dystopian novels about that, but I would take an extra three years in my mid-30s where I don't age biologically 1 million percent. Okay. And just back to this. The reason that books have that narrative is because people are scared of death and they're trying to make people more comfortable with death. If immortality was actually an option, everybody in their mother would be pressing the immortality button. I promise you.

[A]

Okay, give me a percent prediction question. What percent of people, if given immortality option, would choose it?

[B]

This gets back to the red button, blue button.

[A]

I know. I was actually. I was just thinking about that where

[B]

people say different things when it's not actually an option. If it was actually an option and the choice was death or immortality, I bet it would be 99% pressing the immortality option.

[A]

Do you think? What me? What are the stipulations? Like, do you expect.

[B]

Megan, stop doing that. Just keep it simple.

[A]

You need to think through this.

[B]

Keep it simple. The answer can just be in this context, people would choose to live forever.

[A]

Actually, I do like the idea of a button. Of, like, this is my public response versus this is my private response. I think there would be a disconnect there.

[B]

But even then, it doesn't matter because it's not a real question. If something is hypothetical, people give the answer that seems most socially validating.

[A]

Okay, that is fair. But I think the percentage is a lot lower than you think.

[B]

Okay. I mean, it gets back to the AI discussion, actually, where, you know, you see these Hank Green threads where he's just being dunked on over and over and over again.

[A]

Oh, it's. What percentage of people are using AI in massive ways in their lives that are dunking on them A large percent.

[B]

Yeah, a large percent. And if they knew what it could do for them, they would be using it, you know? And I think that this just points out that, once again, I am right, but I'm only right behind closed doors, and I'm only right in a world where this actually exists. That's my true answer.

[A]

What do you think my answer is? I want to get back to reading fairy smut. Okay. I want to be moral and reading fairy smut.

[B]

Okay. Next one on Ferritin. Um, this was discussed on the Patreon bonus episode that I did solo last week before Megan's race.

[A]

Ooh. I'm curious to hear your answer.

[B]

You also left the listeners hanging a little bit with your race.

[A]

Oh. I mean, it's on Strava.

[B]

Yeah, it was on Strava, but how many people are on Strava?

[A]

I don't need to make, like, a melodramatic Instagram post about my dnf. I already have enough melodramatic posts about my heart.

[B]

I understand where that's coming from.

[A]

I mean, maybe I will actually. I mean, a few days, I'll be like, that's actually, you know, in some ways, like, I. I had it on Private on Strava for a minute. Cause I was like, I just don't want to deal with this. And then I made it public because, like. And in some ways, actually, it helped my healing process of, like, this is my journey. I own it. But, like, in this moment, I just don't want to write about it.

[B]

I totally get that. But sharing it in that context probably did make you feel a little better, right?

[A]

It actually did made me feel a lot better. And people are so kind and supportive and understanding and, like, you know, that. That helps in this process, too.

[B]

And everybody gets it. You know, everybody's a meat sack and decaying rapidly, and everybody thinks about it. That's an athlete, right? Like, we've all been there in different ways. And, yeah, it's not hard for most of us, but. But if anyone could imagine what that's like, they're right there with you.

[A]

You know, I've done. I've DNF'd. I haven't DNF'd very much in my life, but I've done it before, and it feels just as bad whether it's a heart, which is like, you know, that is a very salient reason to do it. And it's, like, right on my brain versus just, like, some other random reason that you don't know in the moment. And it's hard either way.

[B]

The Moabtro marathon.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

That was a DNF from. I hate this.

[A]

This is. I hate running on Sliprock.

[B]

Yes. Slickrock is the worst.

[A]

Immediately obvious. I also kept going. You know, they mark Slickrock with these little, like, triangles, and I, like, for whatever reason, could not follow the triangles. And I was off course so many different times, and I was like, gone, done.

[B]

We DNF together for the same reason.

[A]

You know, You DNF that race twice. I did. And then you're like, oh, man, I

[B]

got no problem with DNFing. I. It's my man.

[A]

You DNF once, and then you're like, megan, hey, this would be a great race for us to go to. And then you DNFed again. And then I DNF'd. We've DNF'd that race three for three times.

[B]

See, the only lesson I should have been kept in my running career is that DNF all the time. It's fine, because as soon as I stop doing that at javelina, I'm injured now for 10 months.

[A]

Well, that's the hard part is, like, I was going back to quad dipsy when I felt my heart at mile 17, and I just ran through it. And then I didn't race again for eight months. And it's. I think I'm going to have to do a lot of, like, mental work to think about that. To think about, like, you know, I don't want to stand on the starting line of a race and be like, this race itself could be my last one for eight months. Yeah.

[B]

Other tattoo idea. DNFs are cool. I might. I might get that one as my first one.

[A]

Maybe sexy.

[B]

I mean, everyone sexy.

[A]

Sexy or cool, maybe attenuate DNFs.

[B]

I don't know exactly. Okay, next one. Hi. Wonderful. Folks. I've heard you say on the pot a few times that the probability of low energy availability over low ferritin is equal to 80% plus. In other words, low energy availability is a primary cause of lower iron levels. Um, that's much more complicated than they're saying. As we'll get to in a second. I had a Ferritin of 11 in December of 2025, which has been soaring beautifully upwards since then. Taking Hemoplex, is your claim that the fact that I had low ferritin and needed the hemoplex is very correlated with low energy availability? Or is the claim that this only applies to folks who are whom the supplements aren't making ferritin? Budge, I think we can end there. So what do you say to that?

[A]

This is an outstanding question is the first thing I say. And I think my clarification is absolutely, I think it's, you know, in runners there's a lot of different causes of low ferritin levels, low iron stores, and a lot of that being like foot strike hemolysis and you know, thinking about losing iron in sweat stores and for female athletes, the menstrual cycle. And I think like many, many, many runners need like iron supplements to be within that optimized range. But I think if the iron supplements aren't budging, it, that to me is often a sign that there might be some low energy availability.

[B]

Yeah. And those percentages vary a lot, like we're not gonna put a specific number on it. So this only applies like the low energy availability theorem of, of iron only if you are taking a high dose iron supplement and it's still not budging. And then we have a bunch of things that could go into the differential here. So one is long term low energy availability or other nutritional deficits. The other is genetics. Like some people just really struggle with this and those genetic causes are weakly understood. And in that case, like it has nothing to do with this. You still want to make sure it's not energy validity. The other involves GI distress.

[A]

That's where I was going.

[B]

Yeah, so if an athlete has GI issues that can cause issues or bleeding from other sources, you know, so blood loss in other contexts. So lack of absorption or blood loss. So it's not that low energy availability causes it 80% of the time or whatever. It's that if you're taking a high dose iron supplement, it's not budging, make sure it's not low energy availability, make sure it's not some GI issue or other explanation like that. And then finally, if it still is not budging, just a genetic cause, which happens all the time. And like, like we were talking about with the cold water immersion, you can't really understand where it's coming from. It's probably 1,000 errors, you know, arrow bars pointing in that direction. And at that point, you know, iron infusions are your friend. You know, trying bigger interventions with your nutritional approach with, you know, iron approaches are your friend and you know, getting other sorts of medical help.

[A]

And another area that we haven't actually talked about that much is celiac disease. We see a lot of low iron availability, low iron associated with celiac disease. And I think that's a case where just like, like, you know, Advocating your for yourself if you have celiac disease, Making sure that you're getting your iron levels tested a lot and just being aware of that.

[B]

Awesome. Okay, let's get onto the listener corner. Before that, anything to talk about.

[A]

Janji.

[B]

Janji.

[A]

Have you seen the new Janji colorways?

[B]

I have not.

[A]

They released new Janji gear. I went to the website this morning and I was like, oh, hell yeah.

[B]

Well, go to john g.com swap swap. And what colors are you going to see?

[A]

I'm going to pull up this color.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

This is like my favorite crown color ever.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay, so we're going to women. We're going to new arrival. And it's the Ascend bra, which is a great high impact bra. Like I wore it when I was breastfeeding. Check out how beautiful that color is. It's called surf.

[B]

Surf? Yeah, like aquamarine.

[A]

Aquamarine? Yeah, it's got an aquamarine vibe to it.

[B]

I like how the names of these colors are all like the attenuate of like word choices.

[A]

What do you think this light blue ascend bra color is called?

[B]

Which one?

[A]

This one.

[B]

It's like click on it.

[A]

Well, you have to tell me, what do you think is called?

[B]

Oh, well, I'm not gonna look. I can't see that. What it's called. I can only see the. Okay, so I have to think of what Janji is calling this.

[A]

Yes. What color is Janji calling this?

[B]

I think so. I wanna. I'm going more towards like a sky theme here.

[A]

Ooh.

[B]

Okay, so I just wanna say sky.

[A]

Yes. You're close. It's cosmic. Cosmic.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was there. I think we were going somewhere in the sky on this one.

[A]

Okay, last one. What color is this one?

[B]

Ooh, this is like a purple ish one. So here I'm thinking like we're kind of looking like, like Jules Emerald. So I want to say jewel.

[A]

Okay. Andromeda.

[B]

Andromeda.

[A]

Andromeda.

[B]

Oh, no, Megan.

[A]

Oh no.

[B]

Oh no, Megan. You don't know about the stars, man,

[A]

I told you we're getting back to astronomy. I am bonked. I don't know about black holes. I don't know about Andromeda.

[B]

Oh, yeah, Megan.

[A]

Is that how you pronounce it?

[B]

Andromeda?

[A]

Yeah, in my brain it is. Liter always been Andromeda. John G's like, girl, we're not reassigning you.

[B]

Andromeda. Yeah, I was pretty far off on my guest there, but that's a good one, so.

[A]

Well, you were closer than I was in Pronunciation. So there's a win.

[B]

That just shows that you've read it. You've read so much about astronomy, you just haven't said it.

[A]

I mean, I probably have seen it in the videos you watch at night that I fall asleep to.

[B]

Well, guess what? We have a listener who is a black hole physicist.

[A]

What?

[B]

Who messaged and said those discussions were his favorite ever. But also very kind things. Things. And.

[A]

And then he was like, Megan is like, does not know anything about black holes.

[B]

No, no. He said that he also talks to his wife about these things when she needs to go to sleep. But his role in black hole physics was related to holographic principle. So last night when you came into the room, you probably saw me watching a show on the holographic principle because I wanted to learn about what he was discussing. And even after watching, like, six different videos. Videos. I don't really understand it. It's very cool that one of our listeners is working on something that I wrote to him this morning. I'm curious to see what he writes back. It seems like one of the rare things that can't be reasoned by analogy for peanut brains like mine. Whereas like most astronomy, if you look at any of Einstein's equations, it's all reasoned into like, oh, check out this train moving in this direction. Obviously, it doesn't work like that. Exactly. It's just a way for us to visualize things and. And good science communicators think of those analogies. But for the holographic principle, all of the analogies, they just don't even try. They're like, this only works in ways that are incomprehensible to your puny little brain. And our listener has a big old brain.

[A]

Okay, well, we should give it to. Who's the astronomy guy that you watch on YouTube?

[B]

The PBS spacetime guy.

[A]

Yeah, the PBS spacetime guy. Okay. He has a way of communicating with his eyes. It is like he is like fucking the stars with his eyes as he talks. It is very. The way he communicates with his eyes needs to be like a PhD topic. And I feel like he could communicate this. He could do it.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah, I like it. You know what we should do next?

[A]

What?

[B]

We should get Hank Green to ask AI to make an analogy.

[A]

Yeah, we should.

[B]

I'm just kidding. I love Hank Green, and I will never have anyone take him away from me. If he doesn't, if he stops creating, I'm going to be so sad. I love him so much. Okay, so go to john g.com swap

[A]

so many new Colorways also, they have them in the tights, too. I love them all.

[B]

Okay, good or out line? All right, on to listener corner. We have two here. I'll read both, I think. First, I just wanted to say that the memory of meeting you two would save me from a dementor. I think it's Harry Potter reference. Truly, people always say, don't meet your heroes, but there should be a giant asterisk that says, except for David and Megan Roach, you both are every bit as kind, uplifting, and genuine as you seem online. And the positivity you put into the world has such a meaningful impact on my life.

[A]

That means so much.

[B]

This was Kate.

[A]

Oh, my gosh. Kate was at the race this weekend at mile two holding a big we are so back sign. And I was like, yeah, it was so fun to see her. It was amazing.

[B]

Yeah, you didn't get to connect after the race.

[A]

I know. Sorry, Kate. I was in the. In the woods crying, so it seems like a reasonable excuse.

[B]

Consider this our apology. Maybe. Maybe you take it back now. But she's the coolest and she has the Road to Leadville Instagram account. So everybody, let's go give it a follow.

[A]

No way.

[B]

Let's give Kate the bump. So on my favorite podcast, which is the Lonely island and Seth Meyers podcast, they call it the Quump Bump when they mention something and it gets a bump. So now we want to give the road underscore 2_ Leadville a bump. And I'll put it in the show notes, too. Let's give Kate some follows. She's going to be doing Leadville in

[A]

2027, and she got that from. We talked about this from a draw here at Lifetime Fitness when we were doing an event, and it just like meeting her and seeing her energy was so fun.

[B]

Yeah, she's the best. And, you know, I can't wait to see what she does with that account

[A]

and how also, it meant so much she was at the race. The sign, it was just like. It was incredible. And I just want to thank her so much.

[B]

So she meant might hate that we're promoting this. I don't think she will. Let's actually give. If you're listening right now, you're going to love Kate. We promise. We know Kate now, and she's the best.

[A]

Can I do it right now?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. You got to follow.

[A]

I got to follow.

[B]

Yeah. Road to Leadville. And you can also find out what the exact Leadville. There you go.

[A]

Boom.

[B]

Road Underscore to underscore Leadville. And she's.

[A]

Oh, this looks like fun content.

[B]

Yeah. And they are very fun. They're like fun reels so far. But also she can do whatever she wants with it. We just want to see her.

[A]

Her.

[B]

Let her freak flag fly. So road underscore two, underscore Lego and then one more here. Hi, David and Megan. Today was my very first time listening to the Summer Allplay podcast and I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciated you both. It's been a really emotionally taxing couple of days in my world and I headed out this morning for the second of my back to back runs feeling pretty mentally and physically drained. I honestly wasn't even sure I had the capacity to listen to people talk today, but apparently the universe knew exactly what I needed. You two were perfect combination. I could zone in and out when my brain needed to, but somehow you kept pulling me back in. I smiled, I learned things. I even caught myself giggling a couple times, which felt particularly good today. There was science and good information without it ever feeling heavy and just the right amount of sass and grit. I ended up getting all 10 miles done, six running in the last four walking, because Texas summer eventually won that argument and you guys were along for all of it. So thank you. Sometimes a podcast is just a podcast and sometimes you stumble across one on exactly the day you need that particular kind of company. Today was the latter for me. I have big goals that require a lot of long runs, time on feet and back to back training miles ahead of me. And I'm really looking forward to spending more time with you two. Hashtag smoked gist on parachute cheese crackers. Yeah, we don't need to explain that one. Yeah, I think what did involve parmesan.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, right.

[B]

We don't need to explain that.

[A]

Oh, it's Parmesan. Cheez its. I think.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah, There's a lot going on there. So this is really cool. I wonder how they found the podcast.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[B]

Do you have any idea? I don't even know how you find podcasts. I. Unless word of mouth.

[A]

What always means a lot, like to think about people actually spending part of their long run with us. I'm like, thank you.

[B]

Yeah. If you're out there, share with one person that might like the podcast to give it a try. I feel like it's always interesting and if you're a runner, you know, you need to listen to something while you run. I mean, God, I hope everybody just runs without music or anything on their ears.

[A]

I'm like they're just raw dogging it. I'm like, why are you doing that?

[B]

What? How do you do that? What's going on? In fact, that's my challenge. That's my hot take. Like, if you're one of those people and it's like, I don't do this, please wear headphones and go listen to a bangin playlist. Listen to one of our swap playlists that are on Spotify. It's worth it. You're going to run so much faster and feel better.

[A]

I've had so many transcendent moments. Just when like a good song comes on, you're like, I'm here for it. I'm here for the beat drop. It's fun. Yeah.

[B]

And being that for someone is just wildly cool. So thank you for letting us into your ears and to be a part of your lives. It's just the most fun thing. And like, when we have low points in our own athletic journey, like I always come back to, we have the coolest opportunity in the world to just chat with people that care about us. Like Kate. You know, like, Kate had been a podcast listener for a while. We met her and we're like, oh, we're best friends. And like, that's how it would be. That's how I hope it would be with me and Hank Green, honestly. And I have a feeling it wouldn't be, but that's how I hope it.

[A]

I feel like it would be. You gotta believe.

[B]

I've gotta believe.

[A]

You gotta believe in it. Yeah.

[B]

Okay, well, you're attenuating my lack of self worth. We love you all.

[A]

Woohoo. Smoke gist. Oh, no.