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Expand your running knowledge, identify running misconceptions and become a faster, healthier, SMARTER runner. Let Brodie Sharpe become your new running guide as he teaches you powerful injury insights from his many years as a physiotherapist while also interviewing the best running gurus in the world. This is ideal for injured runners & runners looking for injury prevention and elevated performance. So, take full advantage by starting at season 1 where Brodie teaches you THE TOP PRINCIPLES TO OVERCOME ANY RUNNING INJURY and letβs begin your run smarter journey.
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On today's rerun, we have the Masters Running Masterclass with Claire Butholik. Welcome to the only podcast delivering and deciphering the latest running research to help you run smarter. My name is Brody. I'm an online physiotherapist treating runners all over the world, but I'm also an advert runner who just like you have been through vicious injury cycles and when searching for answers, struggled to decipher between common myths and real evidence-based guidance. But this podcast is changing that. So join me as a run smarter scholar and raise your running IQ so we can break through the injury cycles and achieve running feats you never thought possible. Hey, I'm Bartholick. Welcome to the Run Smarter podcast. Thanks for having me, Brody. Glad to be here. It is absolutely my pleasure. The Run to the Top podcast was by far the very first running podcast that I started listening to. So this is a big treat to have you on. It back in the days when you weren't the host, but ah the podcast has continued to thrive ever since. And so for those who aren't familiar with you, do you mind just giving a brief introduction and how, I guess, with your running experience, how that's been going? Yeah, sure. So yeah, as you said, I am the host of the Run to the Top podcast. I've been the host for almost two years. So it'll be two years in February. And um how that all happened was I was just a uh normal, everyday runner. I ran a little bit as a kid. I was on the track team in high school. I ran exactly one meet. and got last place. And so I quit. And then didn't run after that until my 20s when I went through a breakup with a boyfriend. And so I was like, I'm just going to run away my anger. And I ran a half marathon. And then we got back together and I stopped running. um But then I really didn't do anything else. I was always sort of active, but never a real, never super, super into fitness. And then in my mid-30s, I um noticed that my 20th high school reunion was coming up. And so I wanted to get in shape. And I knew running was probably a good way to do it. So for about a year, I went out and ran and hated every second of it. I really did. just, you know, my husband at the time would be like, have fun on your run. And I would just say almost every time. How can you have fun running? I hate running. Running is not fun. Running is hard. Running is painful. And then the reunion came and went. And I thought I looked great, by the way. And I continued running. Something in me was just like, well, I'm going to keep this up. So I trained for a half marathon. the same one that I ran in my 20s. And I beat my time, which was great. And then I decided, well, I'm just going to run a marathon. I had a friend online who was running the Boston Marathon. So I was like, oh, cool. She's running Boston. I'll run Boston too. And then learned that you can't just go run Boston. You actually have to run a marathon first. And it actually has to be a fast marathon. So I was like, well, I'll just go ahead and train for a race. I didn't make um Boston my first try, but I did on my second. And just got the bug and fell head over heels with running. And not just running, but the whole um science of it. Just fell down the rabbit hole, loved everything about it, was educating myself on how to be a better runner, how to be a better marathoner, nutrition, all of that stuff. Every little detail, I just ate it up with a spoon. Absolutely loved it. And along the way, I got some help from Runners Connect. I hired them to coach me. And um somewhere along the line, they um were pleased enough with me that they hired me as a coach. I became a coach, learned. I'd already been training with them for a while, so I knew all their philosophy and everything like that. But they trained me along the way, ended up. coaching hundreds of people through their program. um at one point, they're just like, hey, we have an opening for the show. Do you want to take it over? So that is the history for the most part. Wow. That's really cool. And a lot of people can resonate with finding, running, and finding a passion in running late in life as well, and having your past experience of like, guess your initial experience with running being not the best, having that one meet and coming last. But I'm glad that you've turned things around and found a huge passion and turned into a career. It's turned into like the, what, what it's helping hundreds of runners, thousands of runners, like how much, how many downloads has the podcast got and what's the size of it at the moment? Well, we uh just celebrated over 6 million downloads. So that's just uh a crazy, crazy number. Not all of them are mine. I've just been the host for, like I said, almost two years. But we have grown the podcast. uh it's a treat to share my knowledge with so many people. And not just my knowledge, but it's great to have. um Guests come on who are experts in their field, who are athletes, who have something to teach. m There's uh so much I'm still learning about the process. um So it's just the podcast and through my coaching, coach. um I don't coach so much with Runners Connect anymore. I have my own coaching practice, which is the Planted Runner. And so I coach individually there. But it's really great to be able to have a wider reach and to be able to share just all sorts of running knowledge and with, with more and more people. Yeah. As we were seeing up this interview, you did mention that you had two big passions. was like the, the planted runner, the, you know, the vegetarian kind of style with performance and for runners and to help runners. And then it was the working with masters athletes, working with masters runners. And I asked the patrons, I gave them a poll and saw which one would be the most popular and masters, the topic of masters running came out on top. How did that passion start with you? What is it about the master's population that gives you such passion and such interest? Well, mean, first of all, that's who I am. I'm 45 years old. that's a master's runner. Is anybody over 40? So that's me. I can relate to it. I started training later in life in my late 30s. And I went from my first marathon was 4.02, which is really respectable time. And my last marathon was 2.58. And I did that at 42 years old. I am a master's runner. I've gotten awards for being a master runner. So me personally, that's my story. And to be able to share that with others and to be able to help people who are going through a similar journey and just being able to say, hey, you can do this too, is so rewarding. mean, helping others is more rewarding than I ever felt in my own running. I get to share all this stuff and help people achieve their dreams. And I don't have to run so fast anymore. Yeah. Well, congratulations. Like a sub three hour marathon is like you just setting an example as well, as well as like learning it all on your own. Like you said, when you first started running and you caught the bug, you want to delve into the research and delve into the knowledge and even just doing it into your forties. It's It's an incredible story. It's setting a really nice example for all the runners that you work with as well. As you work with this particular population, are there some common mistakes that you often see masters runners making? Are there something to do with their performance or something to do with race day or something to do with their training? What do you commonly see that you think may need to change? I think there's two things that are kind of opposite sides of the spectrum. So there are masters runners who, especially the ones who have been running a long time or who are athletes from a different sport, um they think that they can train that they're still 25 years old. And you really can't. em You can get away with it for a little while, but it's not sustainable to run. I don't know, 100 miles a week and run speed work, you know, three, four times a week or all the things that you can get away with when you're 25 years old. So that is the first thing is you do have to train differently. But then on the opposite side of the spectrum, we can really train pretty darn hard. You know, there are people who sell themselves short as they get older. They say, oh, you know, I'm getting older. I really need to take it easy or. Oh, I had this injury once. I better not train because I'm afraid of getting injured again. so I think that a lot of people, and to be honest, I do tend to see it more in women than in men, but not always, who just sell themselves short and think, oh, well, I wasn't an athlete before. What do I think I'm doing here? And I'm going to take it really conservative. And they don't end up seeing their potential with that attitude. So I think those are the two pitfalls that I sometimes see. I see like a story as well where a runner might run in their 20s and then they have a break. They become a parent or something or their career drives them to do other things. And then they get back into it into their late 30s, early 40s. And they just like, used to run at this speed. used to run this frequency. used to run this duration. That's what I want to get back to. And like you said, it's, it's, we, we kind of, we can't battle like the physiology as you get told. You may not be able to bounce back. may not be able to have the same properties, the same like muscle propulsion, but as well, think that. common term is just being realistic. You can either be realistic with your expectations, whether you're underselling yourself, like you said, or whether you're trying to get back and fight physiology and get back to your younger self. I think understanding what is possible is a really good key as well. there any like, apart from not training the same way as you did in your 20s, are there any other like misconceptions that you might see within this population? Well, think that the thing is, if you trained properly in your 20s, then you probably did reach your peak. It depends on what distance is, but endurance runners are going to probably peak sometime in their mid 30s. But if you just kind of trained haphazardly in your 20s and didn't have a really smart training plan, then there's no reason that you can't. beat those times in your 40s and sometimes in your 50s. It gets harder after that for sure. But there are lots of ways that you can improve time. But I would warn people, I would caution people about trying to compare yourself to any other runner, first of all, but then also your former self. You're not the same person you are in your 20s. When you're in your 40s, You probably have a high stress job. You might have kids. You might have a spouse. You have a lot more going on in your life than you did when you were 20s, in your 20s. You have, you know, all stress affects your running. You know, your body doesn't know if you're stressed out from work or you're stressed out from running or if you're, you know, being chased by a saber-toothed tiger. Your body treats it all the same. And so in your 20s, you might not have the same level of stress. on the outside. then, you know, in your 40s, really have to, 40s and up, you really have to kind of manage a few more things. As you start to get older, maybe in your 60s, if you're retired, the kids have gone away, all of that stuff, you might find that this is your prime. You really can take care of yourself. You really can spend time recovering and eating properly and running along on a Tuesday or whatever it is. You know, once those responsibilities kind of die down, I think it's a prime time to really reach your athletic peak, especially if you didn't do that when you were younger. There's a study that I often refer back to, and it was this longitudinal study where they got a whole bunch of runners. They looked at their VO2 max and like their performance indicators, and then they followed them for a very long period of time. They followed them for around about, I think, 15 or 20 years or something. and measured their VO2 max along the way. And every five years, every decade, you can just see a very steady decline in their VO2 max. And the ones who really maintained a high level of training, their VO2 still declined, but at uh a lot slower rate than those who became sedentary or those who dropped their training volumes. They declined uh a lot faster. And so when you're saying that runners, their performance tend to peak around mid thirties, it's probably those runners who really have trained to their full potential. that's how many people would you say have really work hard to their VO2 max when they, if they are working hard, their VO2 max, they're going to expect a decline, but how many recreational runners are truly doing that? And so I really liked that message where training And maybe strength training, maybe adding in components within their race preparations can definitely excel them beyond what they did in their twenties and in their thirties, because they may got nowhere near their actual potential. And therefore you can probably just try and reach your potential and reach those personal bests. Absolutely, absolutely. And I would say that VO2 max is one data point. It doesn't always tell you how fast you're actually going to run on race day. There's a lot of things that you're going to be able to do later in life that you're not going to be able to do in your 20s. Long endurance, for example. The people who are winning long ultras aren't 20 years old. They are 30s, even 40s are still killing it out there. I mean, maybe that'll change in the future when more people, you when there's more money in ultras, maybe the young guns will come out a little bit, you know, in more full force. But, you know, there's still lots of things that you can do. Like the decline doesn't really start to hinder what you can do for a very, very long time. I mean, yeah, you might dip a little bit, but, um you know, there's, there's, you know, we can talk about all sorts of things that you can do that are not. relying on pure speed. If your goal is, want to run the absolute fastest I've ever run in my entire life, well, that's going to happen once in your life. Whether you're 20, 30, 80, that's going to happen one time. And then what do you do with the rest of your life? What do you do when you're going up to that? What do you do when you're going down to that? So there's got to be more than just, I really want to peak because Be careful about that because once you peak then what's left? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And how often do you hear people getting their marathon personal best in their 40s and in their 50s? Like you see it all the time and it's extremely inspirational. And if you venture into ultras, like I guess marathons as well, but the longer distance we're talking shorter speeds um and just longer, longer distances. We're not really needing to tap into your maximal performance, your VO2 max will reach any of those higher intensities. But what it does include and what becomes more relevant is like your mindset, like your mental resiliency, like your experiences and which like the older, the older you get, the more that really solidifies the more you can enhance those properties. Like if you have a lot of experience, then that's a lot to jump on. There's a lot to be backed up by that. the... Before we started recording, I did mention that this topic in particular was extremely popular and I had a lot of patrons submit questions to ask you. So I thought we'd go through those. Reese was the first one and he asks, for younger runners, are there any key tips to help with running longevity? And he said that, for example, you hear a lot of people who run a lot in their younger years and then they just get burnt out or they get bored of it or they just fall away from running or maybe lack of passion or something like that. Are there any tips that you might have for younger runners who aren't masters runners just yet that can still, I guess, maintain that running longevity? Yeah. Yeah. If we're talking about like physical burnout, you know, the first thing I would say is slow down. slow down your easy runs and save the speed for, you know, speed days. You know, it's very common to hear an 80-20 style of training. So 80 % of your runs should be very easy and gentle. You should be able to chat the whole time or sing along to your music. I mean, you should have very, very easy runs on your easy days and then save the speed for about 20 % of the time. So... And don't increase your mileage too much. Don't do all the things that increase your injury risk. So there's lots of things you can do from a physical point of view to stay healthy. um But from a mental point of view, if you're talking about burnout and passion and all that stuff, that is a little trickier. So I would say the first thing to do is really take a minute and examine your why. Like, why are you running? If you're running for the external validation of getting a fast time, ah there's nothing wrong with that, first of all. I certainly did that. I wanted to be a fast girl. I wanted to have that fast time. So there is nothing wrong with that. But there has to be something more than that. So maybe run because it's the only time a day where you can be alone. Or maybe run because it gives you peace and mental clarity. Or maybe you run because you love getting out in the woods and you love climbing mountains and you love being out in nature. Or whatever it is, figure out why you are doing it. I would also say be careful of over racing. People who race a lot, they're always testing their fitness. They're always trying to see if they can go faster and faster and faster. And if you're constantly testing your fitness, you can't build your fitness. Because when you test your fitness, you're actually breaking it down. So if you're constantly doing that and you're like, I've plateaued. I don't know why I'm doing this. I'm not getting faster. Well, if you're building a house and you're constantly hitting it with a hammer to see if it's strong, you're not going to build a great house. You're going to be breaking down the house. So you be careful with over racing. But on the other hand, if you race because you love the party, You know, you love the social aspects. You love, you know, getting all your friends together and high-fiving and taking selfies. If racing is your social outlet, race all the time. Go for it. You know, have fun. Do it as much as you want. Don't expect your times to get faster if you're racing every weekend. That's not really going to happen for, you know, sustainably for a long time. But if you love racing, don't let anybody tell you not to do it. Do it. Have fun. Have a great time, but make sure you're doing it for the right reasons. If you enjoy something, do it. That will feed your passion. But if you aren't feeling the passion, you know what? Switch things up. See what you can do to get your passion back if that's what you want. Maybe if you have always raced marathons, try the 10K. Or try a 15K. You'll definitely get a PR because there are hardly any 15K races out there. Try training for the mile. The mile is uh a beast. That's the absolute worst thing. No, I'm joking. It's not the worst. It's actually cool. But switch up your distances. Try an ultra. Do things to mix it up so that you're not always gunning for the same things over and over and over again because that gets boring. But if you try all that and you really don't have a passion for it, then like don't force it. Like maybe switch sports, maybe try something else to keep you active. know, running is absolutely amazing, but like you don't, it'll be there when you come back. I love those answers. I think first of all, going back to the running slow, I interviewed my sister a couple of months ago because she had a profound benefit in her running because she found herself constantly training too, too hard, going out too fast. And she just assumed that's what running was. And it took her a long time, more than a couple of years to find out how to actually run slow. And straight away, once she ran slow, she instantly found like an enjoyment for running. And she was looking forward to putting on her shoes and getting out there and just having a really low intense, just out in nature, out in with some sunshine. session and her faster time started becoming faster. Her easy sessions started to become more enjoyable and not only increasing your, in her case, increasing performance and enjoying the process. That combination is going to like allow a better longevity compared to what she was previously. Just not really enjoying it, just doing it for the fitness and just grinding herself every time. And since that episode came out, I've got a lot of feedback from a lot of listeners saying that really struck a chord with me and I'm now running slow and I'm actually starting to enjoy it a lot more. And so I'm so happy that you said that and some, a bit of a recap with the passion side of things and finding your why. A lot of people don't really dig deep enough. They think, yeah, I just want to prove to myself. I just want to get fit. Um, I do enjoy running. So I guess that's my why, but they don't really dig deep enough to find something that's a real passion, a real like internal drive. And if they do find that why, sometimes it's reminding yourself as well, because often people don't revisit that why enough, especially when, you know, it's raining outside, or if you've got this marathon prep, where you've got these long runs, and you sort of maybe it's not the best thing you're looking forward to, sometimes that why needs to be like rejigged in your mind every now and then. Great answers. I'm very, very happy with those. Jill asks as well from the patrons, how should we adjust our goals as we get older? She said that I would love to get faster, but it gets harder each birthday. So what advice do you have for Jill? OK, so there's a couple of things that you have to take into consideration. If you are truly getting slower, so you've been running for, I would say, 10 years or more, properly training, then you might be getting slower. If you have been running for five years or less, I would say that you still haven't reached your potential. So take a look at your training, what you've been doing, get some help from a coach if you need to. but you might not be getting slower. So it might be just that you have to um tweak your training. um If you have been running for a very long time, you have been doing all the good things that we always talk about, then you might want to adjust your goals. So the first thing I would say is, like I had just said before, pick a new race, pick a new distance. If you're always doing the same race over and over and over and over and over again, you know, you're Isn't that the definition of going crazy? Expecting different results doing the same thing. Try something new um and see what you can do there. um if you're a marathoner, try training for a 5K. 5K training is very different than marathon training, but it will support faster marathon times if you're working on that high end speed. Switch up your goals, switch up your distances, and then go back to the distance that you love and see if you've um made any kind of improvements. there's other things that you can look at in your training. Are you recovering enough? um I'm sure we're going to talk about this a little bit more detailed. When you're older, you have to recover a little bit longer. um Your warm-up might take a little bit longer for your muscles to get completely warm. So you have to tweak your training a little bit in order to make sure that you're absorbing all the hard work that you do. And the way to do that is by getting in proper recovery and proper sleep. We're on the same wavelength here because we do have Olivia's question here around recovery. And I thought, as you were answering that question, I'm like, I'll ask Olivia's question next because that's going to tie in really well. And so we're on the same wavelength there. So Olivia asks, Do older runners need more time to recover from long runs? How do we manage to recover from long runs if we're trying to increase our mileage and also fit in strength and all those other added benefits? How do we fit in that recovery? Well, first of all, do we need longer times to recover? There's a bell curve for everything. So there are going to be some masters runners that that recover just as well as younger runners. But in general, yes, masters runners need more recovery time. But that doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice, necessarily, your mileage or your speed work. But you might want to shift your training a little bit. for example, there's a couple of ways to do this. Most people train on a seven day schedule. So for like a, I don't know, a 30 year old. What we would see would be like a track day on Tuesday. We'd see a tempo run on Thursday. A long run would be on Saturday or Sunday, and then there would be easy runs mixed in or a rest day mixed in. As you get older, that Tuesday-Thursday combo starts to get really hard to recover from. You might notice that um you're not as sharp at your track session on Tuesday. You might notice the Thursday tempo is just way too demanding. You're not hitting your times anymore. and then the long run feels harder. And it's not because any of those workouts are necessarily too hard on their own. What it means is you haven't recovered properly or long enough between your other workouts. So what you can do instead of doing the traditional seven day schedule, if your life schedule allows it, is you can switch to a 10 day schedule, for example. So if you have the flexibility in your lifestyle to run long on a Tuesday, you can spread out the schedule that I just described with a couple of either extra days of rest or easy run days in between those three key workouts. um If that is not possible, um I recommend to a lot of my masters runners to drop. one of those speed sessions. if you have to, if the seven day work week or seven day running schedule is really what works best for you, go ahead and keep it, but drop one of those sessions. So maybe you would do a track session every other Tuesday and maybe you would do a steady or a tempo run every other Thursday and keep the rest of them the same. So that's a way to still get all of that good stimulation from those different kinds of runs, but you're just not doing as much in such a concentrated time as you would if when you're younger. So, and with the strength training, I'm glad you brought that up because you absolutely have to strength train as a older runner. All runners should strength train. I mean, let's get that out there, but older runners especially. We start to lose muscle mass at about 30 years old, so unless we lift up heavy things, we're not going to continue to keep our same muscle mass. Running is catabolic. That means it burns muscle as we run, unless we eat enough and lift some weights. So we absolutely have to strength train. It's probably more important than running. I hate to say that, but it is really important that we strength train as we get older. um So how you fit that into your schedule is the easy way to remember it is hard days hard, easy days easy. So on your hardest days, whether that's speed or long, that's when you should be doing your strength training so that the days you're not running hard, you can truly recover, you can truly have a rest day. Now, I get a lot of pushback sometimes on this. You know, if somebody is like, I just ran 16 miles and you're asking me to lift weights for 30 minutes, I'm not going to do it. Okay, if you're not gonna do it, there's a couple of options there. You can either spread out your strength training all over the week and maybe just do 10 minutes a day every single day, or you can do your strength training the following morning after your long run. So yes, you do get a little break, you're gonna be halfway recovered, go ahead and do your strength training the following morning, but then make sure you're not going out and running right away, you're getting a break. Maybe that is your rest day. so the, the recovery time doesn't have to be a calendar day. It can be 24 hours. can be 48 hours. It doesn't have to be, you know, the exact same day, but the whole point is that you're stacking your hard efforts as close together as possible so that you can stretch out your recovery as much as possible. Well done. Very comprehensive answer and a lot of different takeaways. like how you're answering these questions for like different runners as well. And you're saying that like, it depends on the response. How about absolute rest days? If someone's training for a marathon and they're even just throughout the marathon for the like four months prep prior to that, do you recommend rest days? If so, how many? Okay. So an absolute rest day in my mind, when I hear that is zero exercise and lying on the couch eating potato chips, right? So I don't recommend absolute rest days, lying on the couch days, unless you're truly, truly fatigued, you're overtrained, or you're injured. And even if you're injured, that's still, there's some caveats there. So instead, but I do believe in non-running days. So we can call a non-running day a rest day, but what you should be doing instead is staying lightly active. So that could either be cross-training. So maybe you hop on your bike, maybe you go for a swim, or it could be walking. So I don't even consider walking uh cross-training. I think it's something that humans are meant to do and that we should do every single day of our lives, even if we run. Walking is the best way to recover from a run because you're still moving. You're still almost doing the running motion. It is slightly different, but you are getting the blood flow, which is oxygen and nutrients to the same muscles that you use while running. So a complete rest day should be rare. Take it if you need it for sure. um But I would prefer that you still stay lightly active. Well done. think in that scenario you were describing earlier when you had the, I think it was a track day Thursday or you had the Tuesday, Thursday kind of harder sessions that someone might be getting a bit under recovered or a bit sore from, as well as maybe modifying their week with those strategies you suggested. You might also look into other making sure your recovery itself is optimized because someone might be feeling a little bit sore, a little bit stiff, but they're only sleeping six hours per night or they're constantly stressed with work and family. And they might find that they can keep their strategy or their weekly routine the same, but just sleep a little bit longer if they have that luxury or find other strategies to unwind or... take some breathing exercises, meditate, float tanks, all those sort of things that just unwind the body and start enhancing or optimizing their recovery. So it might be something that they look into and if they find their nutrition, hydration, recovery strategies are, I guess optimized to the best of their ability and they're still feeling stiff, sore, under recovered, then maybe it requires that modification in weekly routine. Would you agree with that? Absolutely, absolutely. I think if you're serious about your running, you need to be equally, if not more so, serious about your sleep. So I know if you have kids or if you have a busy job, when you put the kids to bed, you might want to relax with TV or you might want to catch up with your spouse or you might want to stay awake for those couple of hours or more than a couple of hours. You might want to watch Netflix, whatever it is. There's a lot of temptations late at night that keep you up at night. But what it is doing is it's compromising all sorts of things for your health, number one. And it's absolutely compromising your running. So having a routine where you can be in bed earlier is so, important. And especially if you're one of those runners that wakes up at 5 in the morning to go run. If you're waking up at five in the morning, you need to be in bed eight hours before that, you know? And if you have kids, then they need to be in bed or at least they need to be bed, you know, nine hours before that at least. So, you know, what I do with my kids is I tell them that they need to be in their rooms at eight o'clock at night and they don't need to be asleep, but mom time is over, you know, at eight o'clock at night. So they need to. Do whatever they want in their rooms. don't care whether they go to sleep or not. It's their business, but I'm done because I'm in bed at nine o'clock. Yeah. Good. Good parenting tips there as well. Aaron asks, how should our total weekly mileage be modified for masters runners, um, during so big training blocks? And she is the example of like preparing for a marathon. might be similar advice to what you said prior in this this interview, but anything you want to add on for that question? Yeah, so mileage recommendations have more to do with your running experience and fitness than they do have about your age. So if you are a brand new runner and you're 20 years old, you should not be running 60, 70 miles a week. If you are a very experienced masters runner, you might be able to handle that mileage or even more. So it's not about how old you are. There's not a correlation between your age and the number of miles you run. But of course, as you get older, each mile will affect you more, especially if you run them faster. You can handle a lot more miles if you run them slower. and you're adapted to it. So it's really more about how adapted you are to the mileage that you have than your age. So it's more about experience. Have your legs toughened up for the miles. Running is a high impact activity and you just need to take time to let the impact really toughen up your legs to be able to handle it. I'm not going to be able to give an answer. You should run 30 miles a week. You should run 70 miles a week or somewhere in between um because it's so dependent on the person. But I will say, if you find that you can't run the miles that you think you're supposed to or that you want to because you're either getting really fatigued or you're getting injured or you find that after a certain amount of miles that you're breaking down and you need to run fewer miles, there are ways that you can keep up your aerobic fitness, you know, through cross training in other sports that aren't as high impact, you know. So if you have access to a pool, then, you know, you can do aqua jogging, which is the most specific thing you can do that that mimics running. But if you can't do that, Other, you know, other sports might be a great choice for you to keep up the aerobic activity. So it's not going to be exactly like running, but if you want to be good at endurance sports, your aerobic capacity is 90 % of it, at least. think it might be a similar answer to John's question who said, um, should we, how should we increase our mileage if we have no race in mind? for these masters runners, when they're preparing for a marathon, then that's done and they have to, and they're training for six months without any preparations in mind or any goals in mind. Should we still stick to the same intensity distribution? Should we still do that 80-20 kind of ratio? Should we still be running the same kind of mileage? What would your advice be for that? Well, if you're in between marathon blocks, no, you should not be running the same amount of mileage that you were running to prepare you for a marathon. That's probably too much. So if it's just about how do you increase mileage, how do you go from x to x plus whatever it is, um the key is to do it slowly. So um I think the first place to start is frequency. So there's three levers, basically, in running that you can change. So it's the frequency, which is the number of days you run. the intensity, is how fast you run, and the distance, which is how long you run. So there's three things that you can work on. And I think the best place to start is frequency. So whatever you're running now, take that mileage. And if you have a rest day, divide it over one more day. And spread out your running just a little bit more. So that means you're shortening what you normally run, but you're adding a day. Shorter, more frequent runs. stimulate the body a little bit um more and they are less taxing on the body than fewer longer runs. So I would say start there. Still make sure you're recovering. Still make sure you have rest days or lightly active rest days. So if you get to the point where you really can't change your frequency, then I would say start adding mileage. um And that could be one mile at a time. Maybe it's one mile on your long run, but you keep the other days the same. Maybe it's one mile on your easy run. But whatever you do, do it very slowly and hang out there for a while, a couple weeks before you change another one of the levers. You really need to get used to it. You should get to the point where you're always feeling good. Maybe you're even feeling a little bored, but it should never be like, oh I don't know if I should increase my mileage. If you don't know that you should increase your mileage, you probably shouldn't. Just really just stay in the cozy zone for a while and then change one little thing, little by little by little, until you get to the point where you're like, okay, I'm at my happy place. And then you know and another thing you can do I mean I know you you asked about increasing mileage But some things that you can do in between marathon training blocks is Switch to a shorter race so switch to 5k training for a while You won't have to increase your mileage quite as much as you would training for a marathon But you can work on your intensity so that's that's when you pull that intensity lever and you know you're not running as many miles weekly, but the fast runs are a little bit faster. So what that does is it works on your higher end, your top end speed. And then when you get ready to go back to base training or back to marathon training, you're starting at a slightly higher speed level. So you're much more prepared to add the demands of marathon training and longer mileage. You speak my language. think, when it comes to frequency, first of all, uh Episode two of the podcast is titled frequency is the key and explains that exactly. Like you want to divide your total weekly mileage into more days because you're hitting your adaptation zone more often throughout the week. And therefore you adapt quicker or more efficiently to becoming a runner. And I'm all about changing one variable at a time, seeing how it goes to street it like a little experiment because as runners or just people in general where. The go-getters tend to change a whole bunch of things very frequently, change too many variables at once. And then they're so confused if they're feeling good, they don't know what it is that makes them feel so good or if they're feeling quite tired or sore, they're not sure what it is either because they're constantly changing too many things. And I like how you highlight the patience side of things as well, because you do need to change one thing, but then... keep it consistent for a couple of weeks just to see if that has an effect or not. You can't expect to change something and then within a week expect to notice a difference and then quickly swap to another thing because you say that's not working. especially when it comes to weekly routines, if you're say removing a rest day and reducing your overall weekly mileage or maintaining a mileage but spreading it out over more days, that takes time to figure it out. It takes time to... attention to the body, listen to the body and see if that's actually working for you. So love those lessons. Lastly, we have Jillian who asks, I love this question for most running master's advice is tailored for people around 45 years old ish, but what about for those who are into their sixties, any advice on training or stuff that they should be focusing on around this sort of age bracket? Yeah, mean, certainly everything that we have talked about today actually can apply to people in their 60s. I train people in their 60s who are crushing it out there, you know, but it's all about really paying attention to your fatigue levels, to, you know, if you're feeling niggles, if you're feeling like, you know, oh, I'm not hitting my times that I'm supposed to. When you start to see things that are red flags, that tell you that, hmm, something's wrong, we need to adjust. um So one of my favorite things, we talked about how I like walking on rest days. I like walking even in your runs. And it doesn't matter how old you are. um That is a great way to add an aerobic activity. and take out the intensity of any kind of run. if you have, let's say you have five miles on your schedule, you might decide I'm gonna walk one minute every five minutes or something like that. And that's a way that you can get your run in in a lower intensity, less stress on the body, and you can still do whatever mileage that you wanted to do. Because, know, some people, yes, it is a skill, learning how to run slowly, but some people get to the point where they're like, I'm not even running, I'm shuffling, I have both feet on the ground the whole time. You know, if that's the case for you, put a walk break in there and let your ego just go. I know you're on a run and walking is cheating. It's totally not. Walking is awesome. Embrace the walk, embrace the jog. Those are all like really important parts of running well. So the other thing, as we get older, in your 60s, for women you're already past menopause, but you should be at the age where hopefully things in your life might be slowing down a little bit. And the kids are hopefully gone. We hope they're gone by then, right? um And you know, so hopefully you have more time to really dedicate some time to self-care. So it's not just your running. It's all the other things we talked about. It's making sure you stay strong, making sure you get your sleep, making sure that you're eating whole foods. You're giving the body what it needs. So you have a lot more time, hopefully, to pay attention to all the important things that you can. And really treat your body well. So it's not just about the run. It's about the rest. It's about the sleep. It's about the food. It's about all those things. yeah, can you get away with trashing your body a lot more when you're 30 years old? 100%. But all the advice that I give to masters runners, if all the people at 30 years old took this advice, they'd probably be happier, healthier runners too. I started implementing walk runs. ah when I was managing injuries and that was a good way for my body to kind of bounce back and it was a good way to rehab myself. But I found a love for it as well. think it took a while for me to actually enjoy it when I'm not injured. But now these days it's so nice just to, even if you just have a couple of minutes walk in between like a couple of times in your long run, you just get this rejuvenation. The body just has this little mini break. that fatigue just doesn't slowly build up like you're expecting. It's just a good way to quickly recover. So I'd say like, if you haven't tried it before, don't like, I'd say try it and assess it yourself before you actually make the judgment, whether it's good or not for you or whether it's cheating or not, because uh I've found a lot of runners that I talked to that just... have found a real passion for it late in life. They haven't tried the walk runs before, and then all of a sudden they're trying it and absolutely loving it. So just give it a try without being too harshly criticizing others. Yeah, the king of the walk run is Jeff Galloway, super famous coach and Olympian. And he ran a 2'16 marathon using RunWalk. So if you doubt that the RunWalk can be helpful, just look up Jeff Galloway and you'll be convinced. Perfect. As we wrap up, are there any other final takeaways, maybe some messages that we haven't necessarily covered or maybe something you want to reiterate or highlight that we've already discussed? Well, on the topic of Masters running, the first thing I would say is just don't sell yourself short. This is the time to really find out what you can do. It's going to be different than what it would be in your 20s, but everything in your life is different, I hope. A great way to kind of, if you are one of the speedsters who does like to see improvement through times, the greatest way to do that is to look up age-graded times. So age grading is where they, you know, there's an algorithm that takes all the data points of the fastest runners in the world at all sorts of ages. And, you know, you can enter your time for whatever race distance. and you can find out where you rank on that spectrum. you might be surprised at how fast you are at 60. You might be like an Olympian level at 60. It can be a real treat to look up some of those times. And that's a way to level the playing field. It's a way to compare yourself to somebody much, much younger and say, I might be 70 years old, but. you know, I ran this 10K in whatever time and it's as good as an Olympic athlete, which is pretty fun. um You know, and that's why we have uh age groups. So you can look for age group awards. There's all sorts of things that you can do. um I have one athlete who she mentally erases all her PRs from the past decade. So every time she goes into a new decade, She mentally forgets about everything she's ever done and she says, and every race is a new PR. So she'll say, this is my PR, this is my PR, even though it's not her lifetime PR, but it's her decade PR. You know, there's lots of ways that we can get satisfaction, enjoyment, love out of running. And even if you are super concerned about pace, know, believe me, I love running for pace. I get it. But you have to use just a different measuring stick. And you can still find all the value and all the joy that anybody can find in running at any age. That's awesome. Yeah. So many different ways to refocus things, reevaluate things. I just love it. The Run to the Top podcast by Runners Connect, highly recommend people go check it out. I listened to the one on strides, which was um a couple of weeks ago, absolutely love that. So I highly recommend people, cause I don't think I've covered it on the podcast before. So go check that one out as well as one of my personal faves. But can you just go into your Instagram and like the planted runner? Cause I know you have a website about that and it's a big aspect to do with your running career and your coaching. Do you want to just explain that a bit and where people can find out more? Absolutely. So I am the planted runner on Instagram and my website is theplantedrunner.com. I coach athletes of all ages, not just masters runners, but typically anywhere from 30 years old and up. um And so I do individual coaching there, private coaching, personal coaching, that kind of thing. So you can find me there. And I also have a bonus for your listeners Brody. So I have a free ultimate nutrition guide for runners and you can get that at theplantedrunner.com slash join. So J-O-I-N. And um I am the planted runner because I eat nothing but plants, but you don't have to be vegan or vegetarian to join me. I'm very open to all of that. But I do believe that adding more plants into your diet is good for you and good for your running. I want to thank you for coming on, Claire. I think the advice was absolutely sound. applies to so many different runners of different experiences, different intensities, different goals that they have. So this was a wealth of knowledge. really want to thank you for coming on. pleasure, Brody. Thanks so much for having me. If you are looking for more resources to run smarter, or you'd like to jump on a free 20 minute injury chat with me, then click on the resources link in the show notes. There you'll find a link to schedule a call plus free resources like my very popular injury prevention five day course. You'll also find the Run Smarter book and ways you can access my ever-growing treasure trove of running research papers. Thanks once again for joining me and well done on prioritising your running wisdom.