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The son of a novelist, Matt Fitzgerald has a special passion for writing books. His best-known titles include Racing Weight, 80/20 running, Brain Training for Runners, and Triathlete Magazine’s Essential Week-by-Week Training Guide. Today, Matt answers patron questions all to do with the 80/20 principle. Such as: Can 80/20 work for athletes with high resting heart rates? Does the 80/20 principle work for all types of runners, from speed, distance, low to high mileage? Is there a way to determine what speed dictates 80%? Lastly, Matt talks about his upcoming book titled, Run like a pro, even if you're slow. We dive into the key principles of the book and where you can get it! https://mattfitzgerald.org/ https://www.8020endurance.com/ Follow Matt on Twitter and instagram Become a patron! Receive Run Smarter Emails Book a FREE Injury chat with Brodie Run Smarter App IOS or Android Podcast Facebook group Run Smarter Course with code 'PODCAST' for 3-day free trial.
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 let’s begin your run smarter journey.
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On today's episode, run like a pro, even if you're slow, with Matt Fitzgerald. Welcome to the Run Smarter podcast, the podcast helping you overcome your current and future running injuries by educating and transforming you into a healthier, stronger, smarter runner. If you're like me, running is life, but more often than not, injuries disrupt this lifestyle. And once you are injured, you're looking for answers and met with bad advice and conflicting messages circulating the running community. The world shouldn't be like this. You deserve to run injury free and have access to the right information. That's why I've made it my mission to bring clarity and control to every runner. My name is Brodie Sharp. I am a physiotherapist, a former chronic injury sufferer, and your podcast host. I am excited that you have found this podcast and by default become the Run Smarter Scholar. So let's work together to overcome your injury, restore your confidence and start spreading the right information back into your running community. So let's begin today's lesson. A man who doesn't need much of an introduction for many, Matt Fitzgerald joins us today. He has authored several running books. I've got his website in front of me so I can have a look at a lot of the books it is. He's released. He has one coming out, Run Like a Pro Even If You're Slow, which is available for pre-order at the time of me recording this, but he also has The Running Dream, he has Life is a Marathon, The Endurance Diet. How Bad Do You Want It? The famous 80-20 running, which I hear so often, Racing Weight, all of these books and several others. Wealth, wealth of knowledge. Loved having Matt Fitzgerald on and... We structured today's episode. I sort of messaged Matt and said, you know, most of what he talks about. Oh, well, a lot of the podcasts that I've listened to with Matt talks about the 80 20 running philosophy. And I know we talk about it on the podcast a lot, but thought we might talk about the 80 20, even though I thought he might've. been talking about too much and become bored of that topic, but he's like, no, let's, let's talk about it and let's talk about my new book that's coming out as well. So what I did was I had some patrons. I just asked the patrons if they had any questions for Matt around the 80 20 running principle and got several submissions. So we'll go through all of those. And then at the end, we're going to talk about his book and his new book that's coming out and you guys should all get it. I've got the, the print copy and it's. It's really good, really love it and gets me in the mood for me writing my book, which is super, super close to finishing the rough draft. I, which the rough draft is almost like a completed version. It's I've got at the time of recording now I've got maybe about two or three chapters to go. So I've got some special runners and editors looking over part one and two. which the feedback I'm getting is just really great, gives me a lot of enthusiasm as I am currently writing part three, which is the injury specific stuff. So today I'm working on the stress fractures chapter, and then I have about two or three more chapters to go. And then I am done with the you know, head down heavy writing and it just comes into like a bit of the editing, a bit of the images and then getting into all the fun stuff like the titles, the, the covers, the illustrations and all those sorts of things, which looking forward to. So yes, very, very close. I'm getting very, very excited and it was good to chat to Matt after the recording. We chatted about books and him publishing his books. I had a ton of questions about his writing methods and that sort of thing. as I'm going through this journey. So without further ado, let's bring him on. Matt Fitzgerald, thank you for joining me on the Run Smarter podcast. Thank you for having me. It is an honor to have you big fan, love all of your books. And, um, we'll talk about the new books that you have lined up. Uh, but before we do, if someone isn't familiar with you, would you mind introducing yourself and, uh, what you're currently doing, what you're currently working on? Sure thing. Yeah, so I am coming at you from Oakdale, California, the cowboy capital of the world. I am I describe myself as an endurance coach author and nutritionist that sums it up pretty well. Uh, I think the writer thing comes first. Um, my dad's a writer and I was just, I, it's, I inherited it. Um, a lot, love writing about endurance sports, very curious person. And I never seemed to run out of things to write about. Yeah. Excellent. And, um, I know, I guess most people would know you from the 80 20 running. Was that the first book that you, that you released or was it the most popular? Do you think, um, had that book come about? Yeah, definitely not the first. Um, my, so I think, I think 80, 20 to running came out in 2014 or ish. And, and so my first book came out in 20, uh, 2003. So, um, and I don't actually think it's my most. my bestseller, I think one that I wrote called Racing Weight. It was back when, I don't know, diets were huge and people thought it was a diet book when it wasn't really. It was like an endurance nutrition book, but that one just became a bestseller out of the gate and went into a second edition. So if you combine the two, I think that's my bestseller. And then I have another one called How Bad You Want It, which is, I have a big and abiding interest in sports psychology so how bad you want it. Indulges my interest in the mental side of being an endurance athlete. And that's been a big seller as well. But 80 20 running is creeping up on those two and it may, may overtake it eventually. And there's a big concept that I talk about a lot on this podcast and a lot of people try and follow. Some people might not know a lot about it. And then once they implemented a huge game changer, I just had a success story a couple of weeks ago about a fellow who was struggling with injuries, struggling to increase his performance and then just turn things around, learned about the principle, started like documenting his weekly mileage, his intensities and finding getting that right balance and found not only was his niggles and his injuries totally subsided but he's actually starting to increase his running performance as well and like the concept itself is brilliant for beginner runners, for elite runners and it's really nice to grasp and if someone doesn't really understand training principles really nice to have on their tool belts. And I thought it'd be a really nice topic to start with. Because it is so popular and a lot of people have a lot of questions, I proposed it to the podcast patrons to see what questions they have about that. And you also have an upcoming new book, which we'll discuss after the patron questions. So if you're ready, do you want to dive into some of these questions? I do. All right, our first one comes from Virginia, 20 concept, but have struggled due to a naturally high heart rate. I have I stay within this rule. And if I stay within this rule, I need to brisk walk most times. Swimming and cycling is a lot easier. Do you have any particular advice for Virginia? Yes, you know, when I hear that question, my first thought is that it shouldn't matter. You know, the you know, if you're implementing the 80 20 principle appropriately, it tailors itself to whatever your individual heart rate profile is and you know there's a high degree of inter individual variation in how you know our resting heart rate our maximum heart rate and how our heart rate responds to changes in posture and intensity and so when I hear when I you know because I get that I hear that a lot and usually what's happening is that you know the person asking the question is trying to use one of those one size doesn't fit all heart rate formulas, which I do not advocate like 220 minus your age or anything like that. It's probably not going to apply to you if you're on the lower or upper extreme in terms of like your resting and maximum heart rate and those sorts of things. So I think, you know, there's a chance, I don't know, Virginia, but there's a chance that she doesn't have heart rate zones that are appropriately calibrated, you know, to if you have a naturally it doesn't matter You know if you have a naturally low heart rate a naturally high heart rate or somewhere in between You can practice the 80-20 method. So it's not only for people who are in the middle or whatever So, Virginia, if you're listening, if you haven't calibrate, if you haven't used my methodology to, which is anchoring your zones to your individual and current lactate threshold heart rate, then do that. And then the second scenario is like, athletes who have done that, who just don't find that heart rate is working for them, that they find it's difficult to stay in zone one or zone two when they're supposed to. Forget about heart rate, train by pace. So you can use heart rate, pace, perceived effort, even power if you have a stride, one of those run power meters. So heart rate is not your only option. And so I often end up... steering athletes who have trouble staying at low intensity when they're supposed to, when they're using heart rate as their primary intensity metric, I steer them to pace or power. And so you can just use like a time trial or a recent race result, 5k, 10k. If you go to 8020endurance.com, there's a zone calculator there. You can just pop in your result and it will give you pace or power-based zones that... should be easier to respect if heart rate is giving you trouble. Nice. Yeah. And I do understand that. the very simplistic term of 220 minus your age and then build on the calculations from there is highly like simplistic and you know, it's the individual sort of components don't really factor in which should. And so yeah, plenty of things to fall back on the pace, the rate of perceived effort, power. You mentioned the anchoring your heart rate zones to your lactate thresholds. Do you have any particular you know, methods or any particular training sessions that would accurately calculate the lactate threshold? Yes. I mean, you know, the gold standard is to go to an exercise lab and, you know, go through a lactate testing protocol with, you know, the invasive pinpricks, like taking little miniature samples of your blood. There you know for sure. But even there, it's an inexact science. You could do that five consecutive days and you would actually find... five slightly different results because you're just you're not the same athlete, you know on five consecutive days. So, you know, there are plenty of like, you know, pretty reliable field tests that you can use as an alternative to that. Quite honestly, I'm not in love with the time trial method for pace zones and power zones. Yes, but for heart rate zones using a time trial You know the issue I have with that is like if you run You know a 20 minute time trial and use that to determine your heart rate You know your lactate threshold heart rate your heart rate is actually not stable That entire time it's increasing so and then they use an average and it's like Really like isn't your isn't your lactate threshold heart rate like a certain like stable number. So I prefer to actually back into your lactate threshold heart rate through pace or power. So you can use a time trial and I prefer like a standard race distance like you know 5k is the easiest go out and run a 5k time trial and then it's pretty it's very reliable and empirically validated to determine your lactate threshold pace through something like a 5k time trial. It's going to be you know a little bit slower. than your 5k race pace. And then what you can do is once you've determined your lactate threshold pace through a test like that, then you can go out and run at that pace and wait for your heart rate to stabilize and see what heart rate correlates with your known and reliable lactate threshold pace or power. And that I have found. found is just, you know, that's not the scientific way of doing it, but just, you know, having helped, you know, literally thousands of athletes just, you know, zero in on appropriate, you know, training zones, that I find is reliable method use. So, you know, I'm not saying don't train by heart rate, but, you know, you're probably going to get the, you know, the best zones, the most reliable zones, if you back into it through pace or power. Yeah. Very well put. And it was a little bit further down the list, but very relevant to this topic. So I might ask Manny's question. He says, is there a way to determine what speed classifies as within that 80%? Um, and he said, for instance, relative to race pace or something along those lines. And he said, I understand that effort levels is an element, but struggles to determine what is a slow enough speed to, you know, sort of fall within that 80%. Is that sort of similar guidelines to what you're talking about before? Yes, I mean, that's a different version of the same question. And really, just to get a little bit into the physiological weeds, there's a coalescing scientific opinion that because when we talk about low intensity, moderate intensity, high intensity like God didn't invent these intensities. Like, humans have to agree on what they are, right? So, and there've been differing opinions over time about what is low intensity, what is moderate, what is high. But there is, in the last 20 years, 15 to 20 years, there's been an emerging consensus that the proper boundary between low and moderate intensity aligns with physiologically with what is known as the first ventilatory threshold or the VT1, which is it falls between 77 and 81% of maximum heart rate for the typical endurance athlete. So that is really, if you happen to know what your maximum heart rate is and what 70, 80%, 81% of that is, you would know experientially that is like, it's not that hard. it feel in terms of RPE on a 1 to 10 scale of like perceived exertion, it aligns that threshold aligns perfectly with a 4 for the typical endurance athlete. So it really is low to moderate and it's critical because if you're just above it, then It takes a lot longer. It's much more stressful to your autonomic nervous system And it takes longer to recover and if you're just below it, so actually not going that much slower That's why it is really a physiological threshold You recover much more quickly. It's much less stressful to your autonomic nervous system So it really is you know It's like if you if you're if you're above that threshold when you intend to be at low intensity just one time no big deal but if you do that habitually which most recreational endurance athletes do, then it creates this like chronic burden of unresolved fatigue that really just ends up impacting your training. And you get less fitness out of the same volume of work because you're failing to respect that threshold. So that's what you're trying to, no matter whether you're trained by heart rate, pace, perceived effort. whatever, like that's that is the goal is to stay below that threshold when 80% of the time. And so yeah, you know, again, to reiterate, my preferred methods are, you know, performance metrics. If you're in the field, if you have access to an exercise science lab, great. But if you don't, which most of us don't, then I prefer to use performance tests, time trials, to find your lactate threshold pace or power. And then it's pretty easy, there's pretty well-defined mathematical relationships between everything from lactate threshold, the VO2 max, to this first ventilatory threshold that I've been talking about. So again, I would refer you to the zone calculator at 8020endurance.com. Uh, run a five K 10 K time trial and you can see exactly how, uh, you know, where you should be relative to your race pace. Nice. And I agree. Most of the runners that listen to this are recreational runners that aren't, don't have access to a lab or really. care about the, you know, honing in on the data and the performances, they just want to reduce their risk of injury and they want to maybe increase their marathon time and just following going back to Virginia sort of scenario if she feels that just using heart rate as a metric to hone in on this 80 20 would it be worth, you know, calibrating with a whole bunch of other things, effort being one of them, and maybe saying 15 beats higher and then try that for a couple of weeks and see what the effort levels are like and see what her recovery is like and make sure that there's not that accumulative fatigue like you were describing the body's bouncing back relatively quickly. Would it be worth that trial and error when calibrating other additional metrics to see if it works for her? Yeah, that's an interesting question. I guess, you know, the starting point for most athletes is they're stuck in what I call the moderate intensity rut. So they are chronically, and there's pretty good science. If you ask someone to run or bicycle or whatever at their own preferred pace, it's not a race, it's not a time trial, it's not a test, it's not anything. It's just like, you know, go run. you know, five, eight kilometers, whatever, at your usual pace. Most people self-select an intensity that is above that first ventilatory threshold. And, you know, I refer to it as intensity blindness. So, you know, because they will think, oh, I'm at low intensity, but physiologically they are not, and that's the blindness. So you do need that calibration. You know, if you look at the elite athletes, triathletes, cyclists, runners, swimmers, the full gamut of elite endurance athletes, they aren't really monitoring during the 80% of their training that they do in low intensity. They are going by feel, but that's because their perceived effort is well calibrated against the objective metrics. And so the starting point for most recreational athletes is not that. So, you know. That's what I would recommend. It's nice to not be just too much beholden to your devices. If 80%, if your training is at low intensity, you don't wanna be staring at your watch throughout all of your easy runs and your long ones. You just wanna know what low intensity feels like. So that's the type of... cross calibration that I would recommend. It's like first to escape from intensity blindness, you have to use testing. You have to use the objective metrics to find out where is the first ventilatory threshold for you right now, your current level of fitness. And then you can go out and... And see what that feels like. And once you have a good sense of what it feels like, then it's easy to graduate from device dependency and just enjoy being able to disappear in the experience of an easy run, uh, because you know what it should feel like to stay at low intensity. Yeah, it's, it's. Such a common experience for a new runner to get like several months in and then figure out they're like, Oh, I've learned how to run slow. It's like a skill that they eventually develop because like you say, they start off with an intensity that I think is running or they feel is running and sometimes it's often too high. And then once they start running slow, what follows is, Oh, now when I'm running, my legs feel really fresh and I'm actually starting to increase my running performance when it's time for those harder efforts. I actually feel like I can have a bit more to give. I've got more of that left in the tank. And like you just see it all just fall into place, which is like what you're describing, initially moving away from that intensity that's accumulating a lot of that fatigue and getting to that gray zone of intensity. My next one comes in from Amy, and I really liked this question. She asks, is the 80-20 rule better suited for certain types of runners? And so she put out there maybe runners focusing on speed or low mileage or high mileage is there any particular type of runner that has different goals that is more suited for this 80-20 principle? Yeah, that is a good question. You know, what is what is most striking about this, you know, 80 20 principle is its universality. And if you look, again, like this wasn't, this wasn't like cooked up in a laboratory. Like this whole principle was based on just observing what the world's most successful endurance athletes actually do. Like, so it's like, you know, you know, it's observational versus deductive. And what's fascinating about it is that it's not just runners, elite runners. If you look at elite middle distance runners, so track runners who run 3000 meters, 5000 meters, they do 80% of their training at low intensity. If you look at marathon runners who are running much, much further, they also do 80% of their running at low intensity. If you look at elite cross-country skiers, elite rowers, up and down the line, they elite swimmers, even pool swimmers who are only swimming for a few minutes at a time in races, they are also doing 80% of their training at low intensity. And so clearly it's just, you know, it's a matter, it's what biologists call convergent evolution because if you look, you know, 80 years ago, elite athletes were not doing the 80-20 thing. They were doing, it was the Wild West. They were trying all kinds of different things, trying to figure out what worked. But clearly what works to optimize human endurance performance is doing a high volume relative to your limits of training with an 80-20 intensity balance. And it is really universal. But there is a little bit of fine print to it. So You know, what I find myself saying is that, you know, the 80-20 rule of intensity balance only applies when you are actively trying to maximize your endurance fitness, but no athlete is always actively trying to maximize their endurance fitness, or at least you shouldn't be. You know, there's such a thing as an off season. and a preseason and you know a base training period and even a tapering period and uh you know regenerative periods between races so uh i would not say that it is universal in that sense where like you always absolutely have to be doing it but um if you are trying to maximize your fitness for an upcoming you know race or other type of test then you should be adhering to an approximate 80-20 intensity balance. And then with respect to the volume thing, because astute individuals who hear that like this 80-20 rule came from the elite realm, where you've got elite cyclists who are on their bikes literally 30 hours a week, and elite triathletes who train swim, bike and run also 30 hours per week, sometimes more. It's like, okay, well, if I'm only training five hours per week, you know, couldn't I make up for spending less time training by doing more time at high intensity? And the answer so far is no. You know, so again, this 80-20 rule of intensity balance was discovered through observation of lead athletes. But, you know, the scientists who made this discovery, you know, they had the same question. It's like, does this also apply to Joe and Jane recreational athletes? So they did prospective studies with folks like you and me to see if we break folks out of this moderate intensity run. And to be clear, the average recreational runner does 50%, almost 50% of the training at moderate intensity. So they're not even close to 80-20. So if they take these folks and switch them over to without. without asking them to train more, just switching them from 50-50 to 80-20, what happens? They improve. So is there a minimum volume below which the 80-20 rule no longer applies? Like if you're training for a marathon and you're only running two hours per week, I would suggest you find another hobby. But if you're training for a marathon and you choose to train only two hours per week, maybe you would get... better results from more high intensity training. I have no idea that study hasn't been done, but as far as we know, there's no minimum threshold, uh, below which 80 20 doesn't apply. Yeah. Good insights that it's, it seems to be like the golden ratio that was just discovered purely through observation. And then, you know, as the decades are trickled down, like honing in on that ratio and then try and like, different alterations and it just keeps coming back to that. Like you say, when you're wanting to optimize performance. And I think that's a really nice tip as well. It doesn't always have to be 80, 20. You can have minor fluctuations in there based on your goals and based on what phase you're in, that sort of stuff is a really nice tip. And the next question comes in from Laura. Uh, what does Matt think about the Hanson's marathon method philosophy? Um, would you mind maybe just explain? Cause I hadn't heard of it prior to hearing this question. We'll delve into Laura's answer. Yes. So, uh, the Hanson's marathon method derives from brothers, Keith and Kevin Hanson, who, uh, live and coach in, uh, Michigan here in the U S. Um, so they, they have a team of elite runners, one, uh, one of their, uh, I guess they're their best known runner. who's no longer with the team, Desiree Linden, who won the Boston Marathon in 2018. And yeah, so they wrote a book called The Hanson's Marathon Method, which just, it sort of like, it sort of packaged their approach to training elite marathon runners for the masses. uh you know the hallmark characteristics of it are um you know the first if you read an article about their method the first thing you'll see is that they never had their runners do like run more than 20 miles in a single session. So the overall volume of their training was very high, but they like to spread out the mileage or the kilometerage over the full week versus concentrating it all on one single long run, the way a lot of recreational runners do, and a lot of running it at low intensity. And so, yeah, it is just... You're not going to find elite runners performing at the very highest level of sport who don't follow the 80-20 method because no matter how talented you are, it is simply impossible. The sport is too competitive. You have to train right. If you train wrong, you're not going to reach the top. So it is 80-20. And, you know, I should say, you know, when I keep repeating that formula, 80-20, it might make it sound as if like, oh, one false move this way or that way and you're doomed. No, it's not that way. There's like, what the best science and real world evidence suggest is that there's actually more than one way to skin a cat. So, there are certain rules that you can't get away with breaking if you want to realize your full potential as an endurance athlete. But within those guardrails, there's room to individualize. So not every runner is the same. And actually any individual runner can use different training prescriptions within those guardrails and probably achieve equal levels of success. And so the Hanson's Marathon method, yes, it's different from other successful training methods and some of the particulars, but they're... they're not breaking the rules. You can't get away with breaking. So yeah, I fully endorse the Hanson's marathon method. By the way, so one of the Hanson's runners back in the early 2000s was a guy named Ben Rosario. Ben Rosario is now the coach of a professional running team here in the US based in Flagstaff, Arizona called Northern Arizona Elite. And Ben was my coach in the summer of 2017, a summer I spent as a fake professional runner at age 46. Just I embedded myself with that team. And then my new book, which we're going to talk about in a minute, Run Like a Pro, Even If You're Slow, I co-authored with Ben Rosario. So there's this whole pedigree. So like I'm, you know, the Hansons are family as far as I'm concerned. It's probably good to know that like a lot of training philosophies are out there. But when you talk about the 80 20, so 80% being low intensity, well, like, you know, a lot of things count as low intensity, and then you've got the 20% high intensity. Well, that's is that maximum sprints? Is it intervals is a threshold stuff? If it is like, where, how much time? Or what do you do within that 20%? What do you do within that 80%? Like that's where all the individuality and different training methods, training philosophies come into it and Yeah, I think it just comes back to that golden ratio when it comes to performance and you know that particulars and individuality and like different philosophies all that's just going to emerge within that golden ratio. Yes, agreed. All right, we have Rachel who asks, given it's been a while since writing 80 20. Is there anything you'd like to change if you were to write it again? And same goes for the other books like Raceway and those sorts of things. Yes, for sure. You know, you know, any serious coach, if you give them truth serum or maybe a couple of beers will tell you that they never write the same training plan twice. Because you're always learning, you're always kind of on, you know, been there, done that onto the next thing. And, you know, to a certain extent, it's okay to change stuff just to change stuff because like I said, there's more than one way to skin a cat. So as long as you don't break the rules that can't be broken, there's room to sort of fiddle around and experiment. And for me as a creative person, first and foremost, before I am like any kind of expert on endurance training, like I hate to repeat myself. I really do. So like I'm always evolving. And it's not that, you know, I look back at a training plan I wrote 10 years ago and say, oh garbage, I'm so ashamed. No, it's just like, you know, I've tweaked the formula a little bit. And yeah, so I'm just, as I mentioned at the top, I'm a curious person. So I'm always paying attention to innovations at the elite level, not even not just in running, but in other endurance sports, because there's a rich history of cross pollination. You know, you know, intervals came from swimming first before they ever entered into running. So I like to be the first to to. I like to be, you know, toward the. the pointy end of the spear in terms of adopting innovations and also trying new things that no one has tried before. Also looking to science. In the bad old days, scientists really were sort of late to the game, like they would figure out why things worked that the elites were doing after the fact. But now today, like... you know, a lot of sport exercise physiologists, they are coaches or they work directly with coaches. So often they're actually coming up with brand new innovations. And so I pay very close attention to sport science research, looking for things, you know, that seem that at least have the promise of working better than anything that's been tried before. So, you know, the training plan that I create today little different in certain ways from the training plans in 80-20 running. I still stand by those plans. In some respects, a plan I create today would be different, neither better nor worse. But in certain respects, yeah, I actually would say that a plan I create today would be a little better in certain respects. This episode is sponsored by the Run Smarter app. This includes all my free and paid content. along with housing the patron exclusive podcast episodes. You can download this free app by searching run smarter app in your app directory and start scrolling through past podcast episodes, blogs and videos. You'll find categories like injury prevention, running misconceptions, strength and performance, and of course, injury specific information. You've already learned a lot listening to the podcast. Why not kick it up one more gear through the run smarter app? As the listeners know. Even just going through the chapters, I'll... wake up one night or one morning and be like, Oh, I need to add this in. And like, it's a really good idea to add this in. It's a really good idea to add this in. Oh, let me write about this. Or I come across a recent publication, be like, Oh, let me include that. And I feel like once it's done, once it's in writing, once it's all locked in, and then it's sent to publishers, I'm just going to keep having ideas and be like, damn, I should have put that in. Or I'll come across a new paper and it'd be like, damn, that would be really good in the book. Has anything like that come across in your, um, the multiple books laced if you had that similar problem? Yes, yeah, I would say to you, welcome to the club. I mean, that that's just how it is. I mean, you know, honestly, there are, there are folks out there who, who is it? Maybe Melville said, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. And so, you know, There are people who sort of refuse to learn for the sake of being consistent, for staying on message. Actually, there are plenty of those people out there, and some of them make a lot of money by being consistent and increasingly wrong over time. But if you have intellectual integrity, then you just have to live with that kind of regret where, you know, you put something out there, it's in print. forever. You know, there are things I've written I wish I could find and burn every copy of, you know, because they're wrong. You know, I've changed my mind. You know, but that is just, you know, I guess I would rather be right today and admit I was wrong yesterday, then, then be consistent. and consistently wrong. That's a very, very good call. And another thing I'd like to ask my guests on a particular concept that they're very knowledgeable about. Have you ever seen any common mistakes, misconceptions when someone learns about the 80-20 method philosophy and then starts implementing it but has a different take on it or misinterprets it in some particular way? Have you ever seen any mistakes, recreation runners might make? Yeah, you know, you know the mix-and-match approach that I alluded to with respect to Virginia's question is one I see a lot where you know, maybe someone has you know been immersed in Phil Maffetone's methodology and then they come to 80-20 and They they're like, okay, I'm gonna try to do 80-20, but I'm gonna use Phil's method of determining zones and it it doesn't work. So you kind of, it's not that I'm territorial about my methodology, but you kind of have to like, you have to use it all. You know, there's a certain coherence to the whole thing. So you know, the mixing and matching thing is a common issue. And then there is a little bit of a tendency to kind of straw man it and interpret it as 100 zero. when in fact it is 80-20, like say, okay, Matt says do everything slow. Like, no, 20% is a significant amount of your training. It's like, for me, I love high intensity. I love going fast. And so I would never follow a training regimen that didn't allow me to ever run fast. So it is, it's... It's 80-20, it's not 100-0. Nice. Anything else? You know, just, you know, a lot of, a lot of, you know, we have on my 80-20 endurance website, we have like frequently asked questions and there are a lot of frequently asked questions, but they're, they're all, you know, the details, like the stuff about like determining your zones or like what zone do I race in on? You know, do I, you know, what zone do I target on race day, that type of thing. So it's a lot of minutiae, but you can work that stuff out. Go ahead and ask your frequently asked questions, but the big stuff I think we've covered. Excellent. Um, your new book run like a pro, even if you're slow, elite tools and tips for runners at every level. Um, what was the idea behind this? Like what, what sort of sparked that idea amongst all your other books that you've published? Yeah. You know, so, you know, my overall philosophy, like, as I guess an endurance coach is we should emulate. elite best practices. There's this tendency to think that Olympians are made out of space materials and they're not even really human. There's no reason to even bother paying attention to how they do things because we're so far below their level. But that's really not true at all. They're human, we're human. um you know you don't see this bifurcation you know if you're if you're like a bodybuilder it goes without saying that you're going to eat and train the way you know professional bodybuilders do in golf you know the you know the you know the weekend duffers they try to Tiger Woods. But in running for reasons that I get into in this book, it's really not that way. This is just this thinking that I should just train the way my buddies train versus the way the elites do. But I don't think that's true. Actually, not just with training, but with diet. with the psychological dimension of the sport, with equipment, with recovery up and down the line, the overall lifestyle. And so I mentioned previously that in 2017, so I live in California and I relocated to Flagstaff, Arizona, which is a high elevation location. and embedded myself with a team of professional runners. I was 46 years old at the time. I had never been, even when I was half that age, I wasn't an elite athlete myself. But I wanted to sort of walk the talk. I wanted to lay it on the line and prove that any athlete could benefit from emulating elite best practices. So for 13 weeks, I did absolutely everything. The, you know, the... elite talent, elite, talented runners, half my age were doing on this team. And I ended up at the end of it, setting a personal best marathon time, the Chicago Marathon, and my previous best time was nine years old. So I hadn't come within nine minutes of my best marathon time in nine years. But by living this lifestyle, just doing everything the way the pros do, it was almost as if I was aging in reverse and. achieved something that I thought was impossible going into this experiment at the end of it. And so I wrote a book called Running the Dream, which is just, it chronicles my experience as a fake professional runner. But so that book is purely narrative. I'm just telling the story. And it was well received and inspired a lot of runners to sort of like, you know, just go all in with their own running. but there's nothing prescriptive in there. You know, I describe my workouts, but I'm not really telling other runners how to do what I did in any sort of concrete detail. So the plan all along was to do a follow-up book where I did sort of take a more prescriptive orientation. And so I collaborated with the coach of that team, Ben Rosario on Run Like a Pro. And so that's what that's all about. You know, I make the argument that no matter how late you got your start in running, no matter how old you are, no matter how heavy you are, no matter what your injury history is, if you know, with proper adaptation, you should be emulating the elite best practices. And so that book is just all about, you know, the specifics of how to do that. Yeah. It's a great concept. And like while. It's not saying that, you know, everyone can be a two and a half hour marathoner. Like, you know, sometimes it would get to a certain level of elite where, you know, genetics plays a role, but everyone, like the vast, vast majority of runners that are out there, even if they're recreational, they're wanting to better themselves, they've got their PBs, they've got their half marathons and their marathon PBs and they're, they're looking to better themselves. They're looking to improve. And it only just makes sense that you would. like you say, emulate training principles, emulate recovery, emulate diet, because all those elites are trying to squeeze out the most amount, the best things possible to try and get performance. And some of your chapters has got plan like a pro manage mileage like a pro balance intensities, pace and stride recover like a pro, like all of those individual components like someone can just tweak a little bit of that to get improvements, tweak a lot of it to try and get better improvements and just all in all just have used those that information as you know developing yourself and trying to get better and better and better might not have to be you know immediately these are all the things you have to do that the elites do you don't have to have a huge overhaul immediately but little tweaks here and there in the right direction and then developing start to emulate everything. But it all comes with the knowledge. So it's all about understanding what the elites do first in order for you to make those tweaks. So that's why I think the books are really, really nice concept. Any anything else the readers might expect from the book? Anything that you know, you want to talk about when it comes to the contents within the book before we wrap up? Yeah, I would say the most important thing is just a reinforcement of the of the message of running the dream, which is, you know, a major goal for run like a pro is to give recreational runners permission. to go all the way with the running. It's like, you know, a lot of, you know, like, you know, four hour marathoners feel like, I don't deserve to get a massage every week, you know, like, you know, I don't deserve to, you know, spend money on the best shoes or, you know, like, you know, why should I, as a four hour marathoner, like ever even consider running twice in one day? It's like, if, If you are passionate about your sport and as you said so well, if you desire to improve, you're in the club. You know, you are, yes, you don't have, you might not be the same age and have the same talent as an elite runner, but like you are in the same club and go right ahead. And so emulating the pros doesn't mean necessarily running 160 kilometers per week, but it does mean running a lot relative to your limits, maybe a lot more than other four hour marathoners do. Like, why should peer pressure limit how much you run? love it and you want to improve. So that sort of permission, that sort of, you know, just that way that shift and how you look at your journey as a runner is the most important thing. The rest is just specifics. Great. And where can we get the book and while you're at it, any other social media links and website links and that sort of stuff that you want me to include in the show notes? Yeah, like globally, I'm not sure exactly where and where not the book is available but yeah I would say just google it run like a pro even if you're slow Ben Rosario and Matt Fitzgerald and yeah and I mentioned a couple times previously my personal website ad20endurance.com I'm sorry that's my business website ad20endurance.com my personal website is mattfitzgerald.org I'm not super active on social media But I am on Twitter at Matt fit writer. I'm on, uh, Instagram as Fitzgerald dot Matt. All of those will be in the show notes. Um, fantastic. This is a great chat. Uh, the, the more I do episodes on this particular like training philosophy, the more I learn about it. And I know that a lot of listeners would be familiar with the concept, but have taken a lot away from today and have a nice brand new book to go ahead, purchase and start reading. So thanks Matt for coming on and sharing. Yeah, my pleasure. And best of luck with your book. Oh, by the way, run smarter is. a title for a book I never wrote. So good on you. Good on you for beating me to it. I've got one ahead of you. Thanks, mate. And that concludes another Run Smarter lesson. I hope you walk away from this episode feeling empowered and proud to be a Run Smarter scholar. Because when I think of runners like you who are listening, I think of runners who recognize the power of knowledge, who don't just learn but implement these lessons, who are done with repeating the same injury cycle over and over again, who want to take an educated, active role in their rehab, who are looking for evidence-based long-term solutions and will not accept problematic quick fixes and last but not least who serve a cause bigger than themselves and pass on the right information to other runners who need it. I look forward to bringing you another episode and helping you on your Run Smarter path.