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The Relaxed Running podcast is a behind the scenes conversation with the best athletes, coaches and professionals in the world of distance running. From training, hydration and nutrition to racing and recovering, we learn from the best in the world.
Relaxed conversations which are packed with actionable takeaways to help you take your running performance up a notch. Save yourself years of guess work and learn from the people who are doing it at the highest level.
Tyson (00:01.078)
recording. Yeah, good. I've always got to make sure that's recording as well. A while ago, I, um, I dunno, he actually, the story went a little bit sour, but, uh, what's his name? A New Zealand marathon runner. He recently, I'll edit this part out, but he recently got done for, for EPO. I had a podcast with him about three years ago, and it was such an amazing conversation about him moving to Kenya at the age of 17 to train with Kenyan athletes.
And it was one of those interviews where halfway through I was like, I can't believe I get to do this. Like, this is amazing. This conversation. And then I went to just stop the recording at the end and it's, uh, it said, because it was on zoom, it was like recording started and I was like, Oh, you're kidding. And I tried to reach out to him a couple of times after that. And, uh, I didn't hear too much. So anyway, here we are.
Alex Hutchinson (00:48.254)
Yeah, yeah, I've had a few interviews where I forget I didn't record and it's yeah, it's not cool. It's it happens. We're all human but
Tyson (00:54.49)
So horrible. But man, thanks. Um, thanks so much for coming on. I've really been looking forward to this conversation since I read your book, probably for the first time two years ago now. And since then, especially in the last couple of weeks, I've been spending some time just getting ready to chat to you and gone over a number of the, um, conversations that I've heard you have and a number of the talks that I've seen you talk and it's
It sort of constantly amazes me this conversation around endurance. So a little bit of context, our audience is predominantly distance runners, like a lot of relatively new marathon runners, but a lot of relatively new runners in general who are just trying to run their first 10 K. So the subject of endurance is obviously a central theme here. And in some way or another, I feel like we're always dancing around the subject, but the conversation always revolves or 90% of the time seems to revolve around
the training that we're doing, or our mental capacity, or our mental strength, or some element of that. And so I thought perhaps as a way of just kicking the conversation off, an interesting place to start might be just to hear your thoughts on what you think we've got so wrong, or what you think are the main misconceptions around the subject of endurance. Because I think since putting your book down, one thing I learned is it's pretty good news, our misconceptions, when we actually expand out and see how much potential we have to improve.
Not just in running, but any sort of endeavor that requires it.
Alex Hutchinson (02:23.734)
Yeah, I mean, I guess the biggest misconception depends on who you're talking to. So different people have different ideas. But I think, broadly speaking, certainly, OK, speaking personally, when I started running and got into it, my sense was that endurance was this very measurable, specific, physical thing that.
to just like a car can drive at a certain speed and you can understand why it can drive at that speed and for how long it can drive at that speed by understanding, I don't know, the carburetor and whatever. I'm not a car guy, but it's all mechanical. You can write down the equations that will tell you how fast this car can go and for how long. I assume the same was true for humans. I knew I learned a little bit about VO2 max and lactate threshold and stuff. There are in fact equations that tell you.
If you know your VO2 max and your lactate threshold and your running economy, you can plug that into an equation that will tell you in theory how fast you can run a marathon, for example. But so to answer your question, what's the biggest misconception? It's that those equations work. It's that, and they do work to an extent, but there's always variability. It's never quite the way the equations predict. And there's a lot of...
different reasons for that, but the one that I've been most interested in is that the brain plays a role in defining our limits, that it's not just something we can write down, that it's not just that we don't have the right numbers for the equation, but it's that the equations don't tell the whole story.
Tyson (04:06.29)
Yeah, it's, I guess the blessing and the curse of living in a pretty scientific, like that foundation of science, especially in sport at the moment, it seems to be making a real run. I think you, pardon the pun, I think I've noticed in myself with those same things, it comes up in conversation a lot here that so much of your performance is dictated purely by the numbers that you plugged in, but I read a book recently called, it's either out of thin air or into thin air.
And it's one's about Mount Everest and one's about an Ethiopian distance running community. So I don't know which they both are really good. Uh, and it was, it was so interesting because we've, you were in mind, I was listening to what these Ethiopian athletes were saying when it came to their own running performance and one of the standout features that I'd never encountered here in, especially Australia, but I guess the, um, you know, like America doesn't really matter. Is this, it's almost a spiritual component to the running.
Alex Hutchinson (04:37.53)
And they're both really good.
Tyson (05:02.678)
that they're taking with them. And when I say spiritual component, it wasn't uncommon for these guys to buy into this idea that, okay, if you put in the work and that work is consistent, you've done it over time, you've done the right work, then I think they were referring to God or some spirit that steps in and pretty much takes you to a level of performance that's not gonna be achieved by any scientific mathematical equation.
that you're going to be able to tie together. And I thought, well, it's, it's so interesting because a number of these guys were speaking about the idea of dropping from a two 10 marathon to a two four marathon over the course of one race. And I mean, if you brought up an idea like that in any conversation here in Australia, people would laugh at you and they go, Hey, how about you just aim for a two Oh nine first. And so this idea of what's capable, you know, within their own human potential, their own genetic potential. It seems like a completely different conversation to
some one that I've heard in so many fields here. So I don't know if you've heard much about that, but like it's a bit of a pivot at the start of the conversation to talk about this idea of endurance because it really is just not a one size fits all equation.
Alex Hutchinson (06:13.802)
Yeah, I think, first of all, I'll say, look, Into Thin Air was the first one, Out of Thin Air was the Ethiopian one by Michael Crowley, great book. I highly recommend it to listeners out there. It just really gives a different, as you say, a different insight into different ways of thinking about endurance. And it's, you know, as I'm in Canada, you're in Australia, but we both have some
pretty good runners, but nothing like the Ethiopians. We should want to learn from how the Ethiopians think about endurance and how Kenyan runners think about endurance, and especially the ways in which their perspective is different from the dominant ones here, that they don't all have GPS watches and some of the things that we take for granted here. But coming to this idea of just this belief that there's something else.
dictating endurance. I guess what it makes me think of is the other sort of, I think, thing that motivated my interest in the mind's role is the difference between practice or the difference between training and racing.
Alex Hutchinson (07:26.062)
If you've been running for a long time, you have a pretty good idea of what you can do in practice. And you know that it's not the same as what you can do in racing. Like, let's say you want to run a 10k at, let's say, three minutes. Just make the numbers easy. You want to run three minutes per kilometer for 10 kilometers. If you go to do a workout a few weeks before your race and you try and do just eight instead of 10, and you take two minutes rest between each one,
you may well struggle to run those three minute kilometers. And how could I possibly do this with no rest and for more, and yet it happens over and over. Pretty much everybody can run faster in a race than they can in a workout, no matter how motivated they are in the workout. And so again, to me, that's just sort of this smoking gun. And I don't personally attribute this to God or anything. I just attribute it to the way my brain works.
that and that it's not just about how fast my heart can beat and how much blood can be pumped to my muscles or whatever, but that there's something that enables us to be willing to push harder in certain situations like racing.
Tyson (08:43.354)
Yeah, it's such, I mean, I can relate to that firsthand. I think anyone who's done a difficult session a couple of weeks before a race is going to be well and truly aware of what it is that you're talking about. But I mean, as an umbrella term, endurance is fairly well understood. I think when you say it, people think they know what it is that we're talking about. And as you said, at the start of the conversation, I guess it depends on the context that we're referring to the word endurance as to what specifically it means. But for a bloke who sets out to write a book about it, like where do you even decide to start?
Alex, let me edit this part out. The sun's just decided to poke its head from behind the clouds and it's really throwing my light. I can't even see my face.
Tyson (09:25.55)
There we go, that's a bit better. Sorry, I was just trying to ask. So yeah, as an outset, whenever you bring up the conversation of endurance, especially in the distance running scene, I think a lot of people go, okay, well, it's your ability to run for a longer period of time, perhaps without getting tired or perhaps, you know, pushing through that tiredness. But for yourself, when you set out and once anyone's read your book, you start to realise that it takes many different twists and turns along the way. So I guess my question or my curiosity is,
When you decide to study the subject of endurance, where does that study begin? Because there are so many different twists and turns and sort of rabbit holes that it turns out you can go down when you're trying to understand the subject.
Alex Hutchinson (10:06.886)
Yeah, I mean, you would think that when you write a book about endurance, you start with a definition of endurance, right? I didn't come up with a definition of endurance until I was basically done writing my book because it was, I mean, my concept of what I was writing about kept changing over the time. And you know, look, so I come from a running background. I was interested in running. And so like you said, for me, what's endurance? Well, it's...
how well you can run at 5K versus how well you can run at 800 meters or something. If you're good at 800 meters, you have speed. If you're good at 5K or 10K, you have endurance. And so, or it's like, how well can you sustain a given pace for a long period of time? That's actually, that's not really a definition, right? That's just sort of a, I mean, does a 200 meter sprinter have greater endurance than a 100 meter sprinter? I mean, maybe, but we wouldn't call it 200 meter.
sprinting ability, in fact, definitely, like it's true. I mean, even in the 100 meters, the sprinters, you know, Usain Bolt is slowing down or was during his career, was slowing down in the last 30 to 40 meters of his race. He reached peak speed at about 60 meters. He can't hold that though. He needs endurance. And in fact, one of Usain Bolt's distinguishing characteristics was that he had better endurance than the other 100 meter sprinters. And so he would
he would open up his biggest gap in the last 20 meters of the race. So what is endurance? The definition that I ended up using in the book was that it's the struggle to continue against a mounting desire to stop. And that's a definition that I took from a scientist named Samuel Marcora from his work that looks at endurance not as some function of oxygen or heart rate or anything like that, but as a function of perceived effort.
the subjective quantity of how hard you're pushing, and that endurance is the ability to continue pushing even though your perceived effort is high, and so even though you have a desire to stop. And that is pretty much the definition of, or not the definition of, but it's the central experience of running long distances. It's the attempt to keep yourself at a pace that your mind really doesn't want to maintain because it's uncomfortable. But it's also something much more general.
Alex Hutchinson (12:27.174)
You have to have endurance to study for an exam late into the night when you're tired and bored and frustrated. I guess what's interesting is if you start with the definition of endurance that is focused on like VO2 max or whatever, then that has nothing to do with these other situations in life that might require endurance. But if you start with a definition that's focused on your perception of effort, that what really matters is how hard something feels.
then that is generalizable to other areas of life. And so scientists like Samuele Marcora would actually say, it's not just an analogy, it really is the same thing. You're using your brain, the sort of self-control in your brain to try and override the desire to stop doing whatever it is you're doing, whether it's running a race or studying for an exam or anything like that.
Tyson (13:19.462)
Yeah. So this is what I feel like at the start of the conversation I said is the surface level of what endurance level is, what endurance is. I feel what you just said there is fairly well understood, maybe not those words of, okay, what we're trying to achieve, like just to be able to maintain this particular effort for as long a period as we can. But I think what I took away from your book and what I found so hopeful, so...
What do you say, like left me with the most potential to change or improve is just how many different ways you can approach developing that. And so I guess this is a question that you get a whole heap, but I'd be so curious to know having written the book now, like what are a number of the standout factors that a relatively new runner or for that matter, a relatively experienced runner who's trying to maintain their performance over a marathon might look at outside of just.
training more and doing that for as long as possible. Like we've touched on the mind, obviously, I'd love to hear more about that. But are there a handful of things that you find yourself sort of repeating when you're asked that question?
Alex Hutchinson (14:27.73)
Yeah, I mean, so a couple of things to say. First of all, so I wrote a lot about the role of the mind, and I'll come back to this in a sec, that actually the mind makes a big difference, that it's not. So the first thing to understand is when you feel like you're tired and you need to slow down, this is not a command from your body that, like if your legs feel tired, it doesn't mean that they're about to fall off. And everyone are under, you know,
learns this more and more as time goes on. When you first start training, the feelings that you experience, if you're just say you're going from a couch to 5K and learning to run your first 5K, when you go running and you feel you're short of breath, you can't get enough oxygen and your legs are burning, it feels like you're dying, right? And you interpret this as a real alarm signal. And over time you realize that, no, that's okay. I'm not actually dying. It's just, that's just a signal that I'm...
pushing hard and I can continue pushing and continue running even though I'm breathing hard and even though my legs are burning. So you learn to negotiate that difference between what's a warning sign and what's an alarm. But
I guess coming back to my point, I was starting to wander off my point, which is that even though I think the mind is really important, the first thing to understand is that the body still sets the parameters, right? So you want to know how to run a marathon, go out and run 35K on Sundays and do some long tempo workouts and like all the things that have been in the books since long before Rob DiCastello was running back in the early 80s or whatever.
Tyson (16:07.63)
the
Alex Hutchinson (16:11.486)
the old wisdom or whatever still applies. But what we can then add and what I, so what can I say that's maybe different or new? Well, there's nothing new under the sun in some ways. You know, coaches, even we talk about the mind and coaches have been talking about the mind for decades or for centuries even. But what was interesting to me is there's a temptation to interpret
physical signals as, coming back to this point, as commands. And so the knowledge that actually, the desire to slow down doesn't mean I have to slow down. It's gonna be hard to overcome that desire, but it's possible to. That's powerful knowledge in and of itself, because it gives you permission to keep pushing even when you're tired. And so then how do we learn to keep pushing? Probably the number one thing that I took away from my book is the importance of
Your internal monologue so important importance of your self-talk. What are you telling yourself? Are you telling yourself? This is so hard Why am I doing this? I you know, I should just give up now Are you telling yourself it's hard, but I knew it was gonna be hard and this is what I've trained for I can keep pushing and so there's a whole body of sports psychology that looks at how to help people Work on their internal monologue. And so the and the idea is it's not
You know, this is something that when I was an athlete in university, we had a sports psychologist telling us all these things back in the 1990s. And none of us really believed it or took it seriously because it sounds very new agey and just stuff that I'm not super receptive to. But more recently, there's been research that tries to put this on a more scientific footing and going back to this idea that I was talking about before, this idea of what matters is your subjective effort. How hard does it do? Does it...
feel to you. That's what's going to determine whether you keep going. And so if you're telling yourself, this is super hard, this sucks, effectively what you're doing is you're making your subjective perception of effort worse. You're making it feel harder and so you're more likely to slow down. Whereas if you're encouraging yourself, you're thinking instead of thinking that this is like eight out of 10 effort, if you keep telling yourself, yeah, this is okay, I'm fine. This is what I expected. Maybe it feels like a 7.5 out of 10.
Alex Hutchinson (18:34.698)
And so maybe you're willing to keep going at that pace for a little longer. So to me, that's the, I would say the big takeaway is that, is not that there's like magic devices that can alter your endurance or anything, but that these sorts of sports psychology techniques really do have a scientific grounding.
Tyson (18:53.798)
Yeah, I can't remember the race that it was, but I watched a race with Lopez Lamong over in the States from a couple of years ago. And I remember it was a 5k race. And I remember with two laps to go, he absolutely unleashed and he ran about a 58 second, second last lap. And I remember hearing the commentary just going, this is unbelievable. Like we knew he was in good form, but this is crazy.
You could tell the rest of the field was psyched out because no one went anywhere near him. They were 50 meters or 40 meters off the back of where he exploded to, um, with two laps to go. But the problem was with 50 meters to go of his second last lap, he started celebrating. And all of a sudden everyone in the stadium recognized what had happened. He misjudged how far left he had to go in the race.
But what was crazy was once he finished celebrating and once he stopped and walked, surely, I know he's fit, I know he's talented, he's one of the best 5K runners you guys have, or Americans, sorry, have produced. He got going again, and I can't remember what his final lap was, but I think it was relatively close to the 60 second mark still. And I mean, any athlete who's closing the last two laps in 1.58, especially when you're by yourself, having misjudged that last lap is.
is doing something very good, but there's no shortage of examples like that. In fact, I think I heard one of your sort of breakthrough moments in your own running career was something relatively similar. At college, I'd heard you speak about a breakthrough race where I can't remember the details of it, so feel free to fill me in, but it was essentially a breakthrough moment for you.
Alex Hutchinson (20:32.902)
Yeah, yeah. First of all, I watched that race with Lopez Lamonga too. I think he ended up running 13.07 or something like that. It was unbelievable. And this idea of the finishing sprint, I mean, that's a smoking gun for the fact that we're not limited by what's going on in our bodies, but we're mentally... Because it feels, with three laps to go in a 5k or whatever, you feel like you're going as hard as you can. You're not saving anything. You're like...
this is it, this is all, I'm dying. And then you hear that bell going for one lap to go, ideally at the correct time. And all of a sudden you've got tons of energy. It's like, how can I have more energy now than I did two minutes ago? And it's because your mind, your perception of how far you have to go has changed. So I think that's a really powerful, and I will say in the 5K, I had a problem where I...
I would always slow down in the fourth K and then speed up at the end of the race. And I'd always say, what a waste. Why don't I push harder earlier? So I'd always try to convince myself, I'm just going to pretend I'm running 4K today. I'm going to sprint. I'm going to push, see how fast I can run for 4K. And then even if I have to stumble through the last K, I don't care. I just want to push hard. And it never worked. It's very hard to override that template in your mind. I always knew that I was actually running 5K. Just briefly.
The breakthrough story that for me was, as in university, I was a 1500 meter runner trying to break four minutes at the time. For like three years, I'd been stuck at 401, 402. The race where I finally broke through, what happened was basically the timekeeper was giving the wrong times. I think the timekeeper had probably missed the start. So the splits he was calling out were completely bogus. They were about three seconds off. And so I had the impression that I was running this amazing race.
and it was feeling easy. And so I came through the first 457 seconds or something like that, which is way, way too fast. And I didn't actually come through that fast, but I didn't know what was happening. All I knew was like, man, I'm hitting these crazy splits and I feel actually quite good. And then I got far enough into the race that the splits no longer made any sense to me. I couldn't even pay attention to them anymore because they were too far off from what I was familiar with. And so then I stopped listening to the splits and I just ran and I ended up.
Alex Hutchinson (22:50.518)
It turned out the splits were wrong, but by then I was already feeling like I was such a superhero that I actually broke my personal best by nine seconds. This was after I'd been running for like four years at that point and I'd been stuck within a couple of seconds for a few years. So it was a huge breakthrough because I stopped, basically because the splits were wrong, so I stopped being shackled by them. Which was, it was a really...
And it was like a step change in my performance and I didn't go back to the old performance after that. But I wasn't able to harness that for future breakthroughs. I needed someone else, I needed another bad timekeeper to get me to the next level.
Tyson (23:21.931)
Yeah.
Tyson (23:29.408)
You can't just ask someone to call that splits four seconds faster and just believe it after that point. It has to be a pure mistake.
Alex Hutchinson (23:35.383)
Well, yeah, this deception thing is interesting. Amby Burfoot was one of my sort of mentors as a journalist. He was the 1968 Boston Marathon champion, then he was the editor of Runners World for a long time. And he has often said, the best running workout you can possibly do is five times a mile with two minutes break, as hard as you can. And then when you finish the fifth one and you're lying there in the grass gasping for air.
your coach comes over to you and says, okay, one more at the same pace. And you say, it's impossible, I've got no more. And he says, try anyway. And you go and you get up and you do it. And you find that maybe you're a few seconds slower, but you can basically do it. And you're like, what the heck? I didn't think I had it. I thought I'd given everything. And then you discover that actually there was still more in the tank. And once you do that, you realize that teaches you once and for all that you have more in the tank. Now the problem is, as Ambi acknowledges,
You have to have a pretty good relationship with your coach in order to be willing to be deceived like that. And then once he's done it once, you never trust him again. So every time he gives you a workout, you're like, okay, is this really 10 by whatever or are you going to make me do 11 afterwards? And so it's this great weapon, but it's very hard to wield in a systematic way because once you use it, then the trust that enables it is gone.
Tyson (24:56.574)
It's so true. I do a lot of online Pilates with a girl called move with Nicole. And it's funny, she's got a class where she does that. She'll get you to do like a certain pulse at the top of a really difficult activity, she goes, we're just going to do 10 and then at 10 she goes, tricked you, we're doing 10 more. And for me at the start, I was like, you got me good, but the problem is it's a recorded video that I do on a weekly basis. So now I'm always fairly cautious on that first 10 because I know what's coming.
But yeah, another example that comes to mind just to, it's amazing how many of these exist when you start digging a friend of mine in high school said, he used to struggle with a breath holding activity. And he was referring to when he was in like grade six or seven, he was a swimmer and his coach used to get them to hold the edge of the pool and kick their feet just quite lightly and keep their face under the water for a minute. And he said, he always struggled to do it. And his coach, I don't know what the reward was, but essentially he said, if you do it today, there's gonna be a reward, make sure.
Anyway, so the coach got him same activity, face in water, kicking as he always would. And he said, and I'll put my hand in the water at 30 seconds just to let you know where you're at. And I know you probably know where this is going, but the coach, Andy, it was my friend's name. He said he got to 30 seconds and he's like, okay, it's hard, but we're there now. But what he didn't realize was his coach had put his hand in the water at 45 seconds. And he said he ended up.
being absolutely gassed, but when he came up, the coach showed him the stopwatch and he'd been in there for a minute and a half and he'd smashed his best time by about, you know, 40 seconds or whatever it was, just a mind blowing breakthrough when it came to the fact he was just trying to break a minute. And from that point, I always, I haven't been a necessarily a competitive runner. So much for the last 10 years, but I remember at the time it was a really, um, sort of breakthrough example for me, for the reasons that we're speaking about, because there always does seem to be some level of
Um, energy, which when we're forced to produce, we can, but this subject of around the role of psychology, I've had a number of sports psychologists on the show and I always enjoy the conversation and I, I think one of the things I enjoy so much about sports psychology is like psychology is something that we get an opportunity to practice obviously every moment of every day, like I've got two kids here and at 3 AM almost every morning, I get a chance to practice my own psychology and just not lose my.
Tyson (27:14.75)
lose my mind at my three year old boy who's calling out again because he needs something. But just this opportunity to reframe a situation as you've touched on I think is really powerful, but something that like running and like a gym membership really does require a lot of practice because I often fall into, despite the fact I know this and how effective it is, like when I'm stressed or when I'm busy or you know when I'm tired, I'll often fall back into those same poor thinking routines where I'm like, oh okay like this
I guess perception is reality. I think Alex Hormozi said that in his audio book the other day. And I thought, that really sort of strikes a chord with me. I thought that makes sense. But I guess it's the truth. And so with that, like, I know you're not a sports psychologist necessarily, but is there anything that you've been practicing in order to try and sort of implement that in your own life in whichever way you're trying to express yourself?
Alex Hutchinson (28:04.21)
Thank you.
Yeah, I mean, I have to admit, I spent all this time writing this book and then I've interviewed a ton of sports psychologists and it's like, now I know all this stuff. Oh wait, it only works if I actually do it, if I actually implement it. And so there's a gap between knowing and doing. I'm definitely a lot more conscious of my...
my internal monologue and I really work on what I'm telling myself, both in the running context and then the like 3 a.m. kids context, which I experience too. But I'd be lying if I said that I've mastered it or that it's second nature to me. I still get annoyed at my kids and I still get tired when I'm running and one of the sort of the visual.
cues in running is that there's been a little bit of research on is like facial expression. That if you're tired or frustrated, you get the face of pain, the grimace on, and that this actually creates a kind of feedback loop that if you have a frown or a stress or a grimace on, that that's kind of actually a signal that's telling your brain that you're trying hard and that things are
Alex Hutchinson (29:30.53)
that can relax your body, that can actually serve as a sort of somatic cue to your brain that, oh, we're fine. Things are okay. And this is, of course, this is nothing new. There was a famous sprint coach in the 60s named Bud Winter who wrote a book called Relax and Win and he was one of the guys who pioneered this idea that you should be able to see your bottom lip bouncing up and down and your cheeks sort of flapping as you do strides because that'll show that your face is relaxed and if your face is relaxed, the rest of your body is relaxed.
And so, and there've been, you know, Elliot Kipchoge, the marathon former world record holder, he's sort of famous for smiling during his races, like deliberate, you know, every mile or so, he'll get a big, especially in the second half, he'll deliberately smile and he tells people, it's like, yeah, I'm just trying to show the body that this is okay and working through difficult patches. And so, you know, I've...
started to pay attention to this when I run and I find it, I can't make it seem natural and sincere to actually smile when I run. It just doesn't work for me. But even just noticing when my face is tense and I'm grimacing and then I can be running along and then think, okay, I can relax my face. That doesn't change how fast I'm running and all of a sudden things feel more relaxed. It's something, it's kind of like Sisyphus. Just knowing that doesn't mean that it happens automatically. I have to keep catching myself and...
saying, okay, just relax your face this time. And I find it helps in some ways.
Tyson (31:05.95)
Yeah. I mean, there's so many examples that come to mind. I, one of my old training partners, his name's Dua Yoa, a Sudanese runner here in Australia. He got to a level where he was running really well. He was a really cheeky guy. He was very funny. Um, but he was just at a different level to where I was at the end of his career. And we'll do sessions together and I'll get to the end of the session. And, um, yeah, I'd be completely gassed and he'd be walking around. And I used to, I used to always laugh, but it was, I think he was half serious when he said it, so I would always say, I go do it like, how do you do this so easily?
is like, oh, it's because I'm black. And I was like, what are you doing? That's such a wild comment. But he said it with tongue in cheek, but almost full sincerity. And I didn't really think that much of it. And then I read Adairanand Finn's book, Running with the Kenyans. And what was so interesting about reading Running with the Kenyans in regard to their mindset around the people that they're training with and the level of performance they believe they're capable of getting to.
is they see themselves, particularly people who are raised in certain parts of Kenya, as like strong athletes. And more than that, not just strong athletes, but strong people. And they see other Kenyans from the same village or the same town or whatever who have gone on to achieve these incredible things. And they almost have this underlying belief that they are literally a little bit or a lot more capable of producing these times than what we in the West are.
so many of the white athletes are for a whole variety of reasons. But one thing that stood out to me was they don't necessarily just credit the idea of altitude. I guess this was what the study of the book was. I'm not sure if you've read it, but he went over there with the idea of going, okay, like why is it the Kenyans are so good? He's like, is it genes? Is it altitude? Is it diet? Is it training? Is it like all of the above? And maybe it is all of the above to some degree.
Alex Hutchinson (32:46.665)
and yeah
Tyson (32:58.858)
But the other thing is just the psychology of who they are in the context of other athletes. And so doers comment to me, I go, oh, they seem to have a little bit of, oh, I'm a Kenyan, of course I can run this fast. And one of the interesting questions that Adairan asked at the end of it was like, are we going into our races believing that we are actually in superior to these athletes, which is actually playing sort of the reverse role in our own performance. So we're lining up against a Kenyan or any East African and going, well, they're in a different class to us. I'm not going to be able to keep up with them. And as a result.
we sort of live to the standard that we sort of put on ourselves.
Alex Hutchinson (33:32.422)
Yeah, I mean, I think that's true in a lot of cases for sure, on both sides. I think both in Kenya and Ethiopia, there's a well-justified belief that they can be fast runners because yeah, my cousin and my uncle and my aunt and all these people, they've all gone to the Olympics. Why wouldn't I go to the Olympics? Six people on my street have gone to the Olympics. Of course, I'm going to the Olympics. And you know...
I've trained with a few different canyon runners and one thing they tended to have in common was that they all were like, yeah, maybe tomorrow I'll run 61 for the half marathon. I'm like, yeah, but you're running 68 right now. It's like, yeah, I just need to get the training right. Just need to get stuff. They had strong belief and I've raced against canyons, a lot of canyons over the years. First of all, I can say that I was always intimidated. I was always like, oh God. I've been doing road races with...
prize money that goes three deep. And I would spend the entire half hour before the race, like looking around, like how many Kenyans are going to show up. Okay, there's two Kenyans. I'm still in the money. Oh no, a third Kenyan showed up right there. It would always be like two minutes before the start line from behind a tree, a third Kenyan runner would show up and I'd be like, damn it, I'm screwed. I'd be mentally defeated before the gun even started. But then the thing with a lot of the, and obviously we need to be a little careful generalizing because
Kenyans are human beings and they're diverse in, you know, every Kenyan is different. But the Kenyans I raced against on a whole tended to be very aggressive racers because they had huge strong self-belief. It's like, so if there were runners who I'd be racing against who had similar best times to me, they would go out so hard. They would always go out with the leaders of any race. And I would think...
What are those fools doing there? You know, they're going to, they're going out way faster than that. I'm going to be smart. I'm just going to run a nice steady, even pace. And some of those guys would then basically blow up because they went out too fast on any given day, but some of them wouldn't, some of them would have a great day, they'd put themselves in a position to go out way harder. And so I would come in like eighth place or whatever. And I think, yeah, I'm pretty good. I beat the guys in ninth, 10th and 11th, 12th, who all went out too fast, but I was losing to the guys in seven, six, fifth and fourth.
Alex Hutchinson (35:55.278)
who maybe weren't any better than me, but were a little braver than me and willing to risk going out hard. So anyway, all of which is a long winded to say, I think mindset absolutely makes a huge difference. And I think it's all sort of connected to these ideas of what you believe you're capable of. And that it's not just then what you're then capable of on the day, but it also affects how hard you're willing to train what you're willing to do, you know, over the longterm. If you believe that you can be great, then you're gonna train as if you're gonna be great.
Whereas if you believe that you can be mediocre, you're less likely to put in the really hard work and the sort of ambitious training that might get you to a higher level.
Tyson (36:34.23)
For sure. I mean, it expresses itself in so many different ways. One of my friends here in Australia is, I don't know how closely you follow the Australian distance running scene, but Stewie McSwain is obviously one of our best distance runners, like a 1250, 6, 5K man, just 727 for three. It's just unbelievable. So we had the same coach here in Australia in a little town. I don't know if you know Ballarat. I know you said you were in Sydney for four years. Yeah. So we're down in Victoria, country town, Ballarat.
400 meters altitude, not much to brag about, but a lot of great athletes, Colas Birmingham's from there, Stuart McSwain's from there, Steve Monaghetty is from there. Um, but what was really interesting with Stu and what has been really interesting to watch with Stu is his ability to back up from a poor race. I noticed when a lot of athletes have a poor race and I was guilty of this on a number of times throughout my track career.
I would go into a race believing I was in really good form and for whatever reason I would go out and it might not have been my best days and it would play on my mind. I would overthink it and I would just lead myself too often to believe, Oh, you're not in the form that you thought you were when I really was. I just had an off day. But one of the things that I love watching and still love watching about Stu on the rare occasion that he has a bad race is, you know, it's a once off thing, you know, if he goes out and he's a 727, three K man.
And he goes out and has a stinker, which for him, he might run 740. You know that the next week he's not going to come out and run 740 again. He's coming out and he's going to run close to his best. And just that, just watching how this psychological conversation plays out in so many different roles. I feel like this is one that a lot of athletes could get some untapped potential or untapped advantage in just watching the self-talk throughout the week after a bad race, because you can see certain athletes. Ingebrigtsen is another example.
of these top world-class athletes who go, okay, I've done poorly. I'm not in bad form. It was an off day for whatever reason. Let's go out again. Another thing that I watched recently was a, a Gebra Selesi, I've forgotten her name. It's not Hailey Gebra Selesi. It's a, um, a female, I can't believe I've blanked on her name. Uh, Ethiopian chick. She's like a two 18 marathon runner. She in a recent sweat elite training video was just talking about how, Hey, like I, when I finished third or when I finished second.
Tyson (38:55.622)
I celebrate like it's a good outcome for me. And just the whole perspective on what it is that you're doing and what it all means, I know so many athletes who finished second in a race, they believe they should win and maybe fall into a bit of a hole like what I said I did. But then you have athletes like this. And I feel as though so many of the top athletes in the world have this ability to go, okay, just that was what it was. Got another opportunity next week. I don't know if you've got much to say to that, but I just find it interesting to watch it play out.
Alex Hutchinson (39:23.506)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, first I'll just say like, Stu McSwain, one of the things that's fun to watch about him is he goes out in the lead. Like he's not afraid to mix it up with anybody. He'll lead a race and I'm sure that's partly because he thinks tactically it's his best bet, but it's, you know, it takes a lot of self-confidence to be in a Diamond League race or a World Championship final or whatever and be like, yeah, I'm going to take this on and I'm going to dare everyone else to go with me. And that's...
So he's obviously got a lot of confidence. And then even, you mentioned Ingebrigts, and he takes some heat for, on the rare occasions when he loses, it's always like, ah, I was sick or whatever. And I get it. Look, if I was teaching an etiquette class, I would say, when you lose, you make no excuses, and you say,
got beaten by someone who is better than me today and congratulations to him and I'll do my best next time. But if I wasn't teaching an etiquette class but teaching a sports psychology class, it's not that you should be a jerk about losing, but I think to some extent what Ingebrigtsen's behavior reflects is that he's just absolutely self-confident. If he loses, it's not that he wasn't good enough. It's that, well, something went wrong today.
judge your behavior on whether you win or lose. You want to judge it based on whether you execute your best race on a given day. And if someone's better than you, that's... And if you listen carefully to Ingebrigtsen's excuses, I mean, you can, I guess, hear what you want to hear, but I mostly hear him comparing himself to his own expectations as opposed to comparing himself to other people. In fact, that's kind of one of the criticisms is he doesn't seem to care what anybody else does.
I didn't race as well as I was capable of today. And so next week I'm going to come back and I'm going to be better. And so he hasn't lost any of his confidence even though the race didn't go the way he wanted to.
Tyson (41:29.43)
That's true. I remember watching him in 20, I'm not sure what year was it? Was it 2021 when he was beaten by Jake Whiteman over 1500 meters at the World Champs and he just got, yeah, it was sort of the 1500 was the first event and he still had the 5k and I guess it's a great example of what I was just referring to with Stewie, but he finished that race. He was beaten. And in an interview that really stood out to me, he goes, I just don't understand how I can be so good, but so bad at the same time.
Alex Hutchinson (41:39.918)
22, yeah.
Alex Hutchinson (41:56.271)
Pfft.
Tyson (41:57.746)
And what a great description of where you found yourself. Because if there was one thing you're gonna say to sort of summarize the experience you've just had, yeah, like you still know that you're very, very good. But I think if you like read it and in the context of the interview is actually referring to the way that he raised the actual tactics that he implemented on that day, which just didn't work. But then again, a few days later, he went out and absolutely just dominated.
the 5K and again, if you're teaching an etiquette class, you probably wouldn't do it. But I remember him on the back straight and it's so entertaining on the back straight of about the third lap, just like giving these ones to the audience, like telling them, hey, like lift your noise a little bit.
Alex Hutchinson (42:35.018)
and taking some water from the water stop in the middle of the race. Love or hate him, and if we're gonna tell Ingebrigtsen stories, I have to say one of my favorites, this is sort of apropos of nothing, but I think it was that same year, maybe 2022, he came to do the pre-classic earlier in the season. And so he flew all the way to Oregon. The race started, he went to the front, nobody came with him, he blew everyone away.
Tyson (42:37.882)
Hahaha, yeah.
Alex Hutchinson (43:04.47)
And after the race, people were like, are you kind of, the reporters were asking like, are you a little bit disappointed that you flew all the way across the world and then, nobody was able to kind of challenge you or push you. And his answer was, well, you know, you can't be disappointed in people for not being better. And I just, you know, people asked him about that afterwards. You know, they were like, don't you, wasn't that a bit obnoxious? And he was like, what do you mean obnoxious? I'm just saying what I think. So look, I...
Tyson (43:20.674)
Yeah.
Alex Hutchinson (43:31.53)
I am not like Jacob Ingebrigtsen in any facet of my life, including his self-confidence, but the guy's a great runner and I think it's not entirely disconnected from the fact that he has this ironclad sort of self-confidence or belief in himself that he's just really, really good. And so when there's evidence that suggests he's not as good as he thinks, he's like, well, that's fake evidence. That's not real. And when there's evidence that supports him, he's like, yes, of course.
I knew that's how good I am. Like, why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't that happen?
Tyson (44:04.747)
It's so good. I'm to one race I'm really excited, especially after watching Josh Kerr in the World Indoors recently, I'm so excited to see that showdown in Paris later this year, because I think, I mean, I didn't actually realise this until relatively recently and maybe he didn't either, but Josh Kerr is in that same category of self-belief and I guess we just didn't get a full taste of it until he started to win a couple of big championships.
And now, I mean, like the way he closed out that three K at the World Indoor Champs a couple of weeks ago was a fairly strong suggestion that he fully believes in himself. And the class of opposition that he took down to win it was even more evidence of that. So I mean, yeah, there's no shortage of examples of athletes who are, yeah, I like the way you said it. When things go well, of course it did. When things go badly, well, this is why. Yeah, it's really fun to watch.
Is there anything outside of like the sports psychology that you think is on the same level of sports psychology when it comes to your ability to perform?
Alex Hutchinson (44:54.712)
And.
Alex Hutchinson (45:03.098)
I mean, yeah, I guess going back to what I said earlier, I mean, I think we have to remember sports psychology is actually just a small part, right? Like it's the cherry on top. It matters. But you know, you have to do the work and then there's all sorts of facets of all sorts of things you need to take care of and whether it's just, you know, like building a base of endurance training, whether it's doing some high intensity running, whether it's
nutrition recovery hydration. I guess it's easier to say what I don't think matters. I don't think supplements matter for the most part. I don't think the minute details of nutrition matter. I don't think the perfect stretching or strengthening routine make much of a difference. There's a lot of things that I don't think are...
Not that they have zero impact necessarily, but the important thing is getting out and doing the training. That's more important than sports psychology. That's more important than nutrition. That's more important than heat acclimation. That's more important than altitude training. It sounds obvious, but it's just like sometimes people get excited about the ancillary stuff. I guess-
There's a lot of subtle debates about the right way to train, right? Should we be doing polarized training? Should we be doing Norwegian double threshold training? And if so, should we have our lactate at 2.5 or 3.5? And it should it be? And, you know, I trained with some pretty good groups over the years in different places. And sometimes the groups tended to kind of eventually self-destruct because people had these sort of minute philosophy differences about, ah, no, we shouldn't be doing like
three by two K, we should be doing four by 1.5 K. Why do we have two and a half minutes rest instead of two minutes rest? That's not gonna prepare us for the, or shouldn't we be going faster? All these sort of minute, sort of almost religious differences about what the right training was. And I really strongly believe that you could write out any number of different training programs that could all be successful.
Alex Hutchinson (47:23.402)
as long as the runner understands, okay, how hard do I need to be going on balance in this session? How tired should I be at the end? Do I have some long stuff? Do I have some short stuff? So I guess I would strongly argue against looking for the magic workout or the magic workout plan, that it's more a sense of developing a feeling for when to be working hard and how hard to be working and when you need some recovery.
Tyson (47:51.19)
For sure, for sure. Man, I had this conversation with a friend of mine the other day. So when I'm not running or coaching, like my big passion, the audience knows, is I do a lot of standup comedy here in Australia. And the same conversation takes place with standup comedy, but in regards to how you prepare to actually get up on stage. And I was saying to a friend the other day that what I'd been trying to do was like a little bit of a Jerry Seinfeld approach to writing. Like I'll just sit down and for 20 minutes each day with a pen and paper, I like just to write. And it was just...
whatever came to mind and if something funny came out of that, great, I might take that out and use it as a premise. And he goes, no, but like, yeah, like you can't get into any flow after 20 minutes. And I kind of agree with him, but you can't get into much of a flow until like an hour and a half worth of work. So what he likes to do is sit down for three hours on a Friday morning and he'll just do all of his writing then. And, um, like throughout the conversation, we just started speaking about the ways that different comedians prepare for the same thing.
And yeah, essentially we came to this idea that will pretty much do like do the work. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how great or how effective or how much more impressive some formula is if you never actually apply it. And I've noticed this so much just to sort of riff on, on your point in the world of running is a lot of time people, uh, they'll ignore the simple things in order to go and
figure out what this less than 1% facet of performance is. And more than that, like that search does come with at some certain level of emotional stress and constant questioning of, because even when you think you've found the perfect thing, if you've got a philosophy or a mindset like that, you're never fully convinced because like part of the excitement is finding the next thing. And so one of the things that I've constantly spoken about on this show is that for a majority of my running career, I'd always been relatively field.
Alex Hutchinson (49:34.938)
Exactly.
Tyson (49:43.006)
uh, feel based. So I wasn't really looking at data or heart rate or whatever, sometime to my detriment, I think, um, but sometimes, you know, for what's the opposite of detriment for my benefit. Yeah. Uh, I think part of that was because a lot of the coaches that I had for whatever reason, but like in their seventies and eighties, and then the other part was just a lack of interest. And since starting to pay a little more attention to the data, the same thing is true, I am mind blown at how deep you can go with data.
Alex Hutchinson (49:53.532)
Yeah, yeah.
Tyson (50:11.762)
And some of it's interesting and important and some of it I don't think is, but you can get so bogged down with the unimportant that it just completely takes away your confidence and focus on what it is that you're actually trying to achieve with your running.
Alex Hutchinson (50:24.694)
Yeah, absolutely. And I, you know, I should say my relationship with data is, is actually that I, I love it, but I recognize that I love it too much. And so I don't use data. So like back in the nineties, when I was, you know, doing my main running data was hard to come by, right? We didn't have GPS watches and heart rate monitors were just new. So I used to, you know, I used to track all my mileage and I used to, I'd read that if you wanted to have an early warning of overtraining.
Then when you wake up in the morning, you take your heart rate just with your hand against your artery or whatever. And so you count your beats for 15 seconds before you get out of bed. And then you get out of bed and you wait 15 seconds and you do it again. And the difference between your lying heart rate and your standing heart rate gives an early warning of your autonomic nervous function that blah, whatever.
So I did this every morning and I would plot it in Lotus one, two, three, which at the time was the equivalent of like Excel and have these like running average graphs and same with my mileage, I'd have the four week running average and the cumulative total and the blah, blah. Because that's the kind of like, I, like I studied physics at university. I was interested in data. I loved all this stuff, but it became very obsessive. And so all, you know, my running, I would be, you know, how many kilometers do I need to run on Sunday to get my mileage to the point where I want to get it.
And so I had to back away from the mileage because I figured it was not putting me in the right direction. Fast forward like 10 years even, let alone 30 years. Now there's so much data and it just flows out of your watch or whatever, on to Strava or wherever you keep your data. It's just possible to spend all your time looking at, okay, what happened to my cadence when I went up this hill at this pace versus that pace and plot all these metrics?
Very few of them have been demonstrated to have any particular relevance other than how much you're running and how hard you're running. And there's studies that compare subjective measures of fatigue like, how did you feel? How hard was it to all these heart rate variability or whatever? And the subjective measures do just as well. So yeah, I really think there's not one right answer for everybody. The right balance of...
Alex Hutchinson (52:48.75)
For some people data is very motivating, for others it's a source of obsession, for others it's just boring. Um, but, but I don't think you need to, uh, I don't think, I don't think there's anything that anyone needs to do, or there's very few things that anyone needs to do other than train. You don't need to know what your average pace was or anything like that. And I, you know, I, I run with a Timex Ironman same model I started running with in the early nineties. It tells me how long I've been going and that's it.
That's all I feel like I need.
Tyson (53:18.37)
Wow. Okay. That's a, that's an interesting statement for a lover of data to run with a watch like that. Like, was there a little bit of a weaning? I was going to say there had to be a weaning period there. Cause I, I think as a bloke who's come from the other side of the spectrum to you, even, even I get a little bit more excited about the data that I could get from that watch now. So maybe I'm going to have to start weaning back towards one of those Rob DeCastello 1980s watch with the 25 buttons on the face.
Alex Hutchinson (53:24.118)
It's because I love it too much. Yeah.
Alex Hutchinson (53:44.834)
As long as you're doing okay, as long as it's not a source of stress, whatever data you're collecting is great. And most of my training partners, they're all on Strava, they all love it. I just, yeah, you know, for me, I don't need any extra sources of stress in my life. I'm happy just knowing how long I ran.
Tyson (54:01.924)
How much are you training at the moment?
Alex Hutchinson (54:05.406)
At the exact moment, not a ton because I broke a rib playing basketball. I actually broke a rib playing basketball about three months ago and then waited six weeks, went back and played basketball and broke another rib. But in general, I guess in the cross-country season, which in Canada was in the fall, I was probably running about 60, 70K a week maybe and with a couple of workouts a week, two workouts a week.
Tyson (54:16.08)
Oh.
Tyson (54:33.086)
Oh yeah, makes a... Sorry, I was just gonna say, yeah, any broken ribs. I've done that playing Australian football a couple of times. And I mean, like the idea of going for a run, let alone just trying to breathe is difficult enough. It's, I don't even, man.
Alex Hutchinson (54:45.65)
It's extremely frustrating. Yeah. It's like, you know, it doesn't, it's just the jarring of running. Like I just had to stop running for, for a number of weeks and then I couldn't do eventually I could do easy running. But if I started, if I got above threshold where I wanted to breathe more deeply, it would start hurting again. And, um, so anyway, yeah, the moral of the story is never do anything except run, but no, uh,
Tyson (55:08.443)
Man, before I let you go, I don't think I'm making this up. I think you said the last couple of months had been super busy because you had your, sort of heading the books or, I'm trying to think of the expression, I can't think, but you've been going hard working on your new book. Is where you're at with that at the moment, is that done or?
Alex Hutchinson (55:25.758)
So I got a first draft in a couple of weeks ago, and I just got feedback back from my editor. And so I'm working on a second draft now. Hopefully it'll be out early 2025. It's a book on exploring, why are we drawn to pursue new things? And what do we get out of it? What do we do well? What do we do poorly? How can we explore better? So, but I still have to do a little, I still have probably a couple of months of hard work on it.
Tyson (55:50.733)
Awesome.
Tyson (55:55.602)
Yeah. All right, man. Nah, it sounds great. I look forward to it. Well, for everyone listening, I'll make sure I link in Dura. I'll link, uh, link to whatever else it is that you might be interested in checking out about Alex. So check that out, but man, I'll, uh, I'll leave it there. I'll love you and leave you. I really appreciate you making the time to come. And I was, I was so looking forward to it. And, uh, it was a great, great chance to sit down and pick your brain, man. Thanks so much.
Alex Hutchinson (56:17.706)
Thanks, Tyson. It was a fun conversation.
Tyson (56:19.85)
Awesome. Dude, I'll, uh, I'll cut that off there. Um, still recording. I'll edit it out, but man, thank you so much. That was a, that was a heap of fun. I'm glad we got to, uh, go down the rabbit hole of running talk a little bit as well. That's always fun just to speak to a fellow running nerd about what's going on.
Alex Hutchinson (56:35.87)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, McSwayne is fun to watch. It looks like he was back to himself this past year, or getting back. He had a bad year, I guess, but I'm hoping he, or two years ago, I guess, he was post-COVID or whatever. But...
Tyson (56:50.902)
Yeah. He had a really negative response to his booster shot apparently. And I think he had that pericarditis for a while. Like he had a little bit of heart inflammation. And I remember there was a time there where I was like, I didn't know anything about it and I was like, Oh no, like, does this mean Stewie's done or what? So I was, yeah, I was having that. Yeah. I was having that conversation and then all of a sudden he came out and ran 727. I was like, okay, he's fine. He's back. And I was so relieved.
Alex Hutchinson (56:57.518)
Yeah.
Alex Hutchinson (57:05.469)
I thought he might be, yeah.
Alex Hutchinson (57:13.342)
Yeah. Thank goodness. So yeah, he's fun to watch. I'll definitely be cheering for him this year, as long as he doesn't race any Canadians, which he probably won't because they aren't any that good.
Tyson (57:20.798)
Yeah, that's right. And Cam Levens is running the marathon anyway, so we won't have to worry about him. Speaking of endurance, wow. Anyway, he's crazy, man. He's so fun to follow on Instagram, just because he's like, oh, I'm 45 miles into my afternoon run. And I'm like, oh wow, I didn't know that was a thing. All right, man. Hey, I'll let you go. Really appreciate it. Thanks again, Alex. All right, see you, man. Bye.
Alex Hutchinson (57:25.886)
Yeah, exactly. That guy's crazy. Yeah, there's another topic.
Alex Hutchinson (57:37.324)
Jesus, to my third afternoon run or whatever.
Alex Hutchinson (57:43.982)
Okay, thanks you two. Yeah, bye.