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Denny Krahe is a Running coach & the host of Diz Runs Radio. Today, we dive into HR and effort-based training. I and the podcast patrons ask the following questions: What are heart rate and effort-based training? And what are the benefits/limitations? How do you see runners misusing this form of training and what are some common misconceptions? Should HR zones change over time as you improve? Is low HR training beneficial for new, unfit runners or runners with higher than average heart rates? Does an elevated heart rate or HRV indicate a lack of recovery? Be sure to listen to Diz Runs Radio! Find Denny's website here along with 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, Heart Rate and Effort-Based Training with Danny Cray. 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. Welcome back Run Smarter Scholars, we have Denny Cray joining us today, he is the host of Diz Runs Radio and we've been, I don't know, collaborating back and forth for a couple of years now and thought I'd reach out to him a couple of months ago actually and wanted to know like if you ever want to come on, do another episode just to work together again that'd be great and what do you find, what are you most passionate about or what do you think? runners need to know more about and he said, yep, heart rate and effort-based trainings right up my alley very passionate about it and Think runners need to know a lot about it. So that's what we dive into today We have ton of patreon questions coming in. So thanks to all the patrons that have submitted their questions and There's a fair few Interviews coming up over the next couple of weeks. And so patrons are being busy submitting their questions I haven't really done a lot of interviews of late. I've done a lot of solo episodes, but the interviews are going to come quite, they're going to come in waves very soon as I've got a fair few scheduled in. And then we'll probably have a break from interviews over the Christmas break, but they'll probably be scheduled out and they'll kind of come out in segments. And so you probably won't notice much of a dip there. Uh, yeah. So we talk about heart rate. We talk about ever-based training, the pros and cons for each, uh, how to kind of practically implement each, how to calculate your heart rates or determine a heart rate for you to follow and what particular ratios you might want to follow, what the benefits are. And then all the, the patron questions are submitted about heart rate zones. Do they change over time? Does it depend on fitness levels? Does it, um, indicate. lack of recovery, if there's a change or an elevation in heart rate. So we're going to dive into all of those. Once again, it seems to be a general theme with my interviews these days, but they're just jam packed full of value. And so no fluff and hope you learn a lot. Hopefully it takes away some practical takeaways and let's dive in. Danny Cray, thanks for joining me today. Hey Brody. Thanks for having me looking, looking forward to a good chat today. Absolutely. I'm looking forward to this topic as well. And a lot of the patrons have been very interested in this. So I've got a ton of questions coming in, which we'll go through in a second. But before we do, for those who aren't familiar with you, do you want to just introduce yourself, introduce your podcast and what you're doing with the running community? Sure. So, um, like you said, I have a podcast, I guess we'll start there. I've been podcasting now for about, uh, closing in on seven and a half years. Uh, Diz runs radio is the podcast and you've been uh, fortunate enough or not fortunate. I've been fortunate enough to have you on the show a couple of times. Um, and, and the idea is we're just talking about running stuff. And obviously when, when you were on, I think we talked about running injuries, a fair bit, some of your own, and just also some stuff in general. Um, but it's, it's just all kinds of running conversations, uh, kind of designed to be the type of conversations you have out on a long run where you're out with, you know, with a couple of buddies and, you know, you're shooting the breeze and sometimes you just talk about running and sometimes you, you know, angle off into life. whatever else the topic kind of, as the conversation just meanders along. And that's what I've been trying to do and having a good time and approaching, probably by the time this gets released, approaching episode 1,000. Maybe you're crossing 1,000. Yeah, I saw that. I saw those episode lists. Very well done. It's bananas. It's one of those, sometimes, almost kind of like some of the running stuff where it's like you don't realize maybe, you get towards the end of the year how many miles you've run or how many kilometers you've run or whatever your metric might be and you go back and total things up and you're like, well, gosh, how did I get to... you know, a couple thousand miles or 1500 miles or whatever it is. And it's, you know, I mean, it's one cliche, but one mile at a time. And it's how did I get to a thousand stinking episodes of the podcast? And it's, it's just been, uh, one at a time, but that's, that's the main focus of my podcast, at least is talking about running. I coach runners have been doing that full time now for, um, I guess, closing in on four and a half years, I guess, getting closer to five years now. Um, that's, that's my, my full time job. And, and, uh, you know, just, just trying to help runners on social media, answer questions and put out. content once in a while and things like that as well, but have kind of made running my life, um, which didn't start out that way. I was never a runner really growing up. I don't know if we'll want to get into that or not. It doesn't really matter, but kind of fell into it. And, uh, my background's in athletic training, sports medicine. So similar, similar somewhat to you with the, with the PT world. Um, and, uh, and just kind of realized that, that this is, this is what I like to do. I like to help people. I like to work with, with folks that have athletic bents, but you know, All the folks I'm working with, none of them are pros. None of them are elite level athletes. No offense to any of them that happened to be listening, but I think, I think they all know the score and, uh, you know, just helping them work towards their goals and, and get the best out of themselves and their training. And, um, it's been, uh, it's been an interesting ride and, uh, a lot of fun and looking forward to, you know, whatever the next handful of years and hopefully even more have in store. You can definitely hear the passion. You can definitely hear the energy when you start talking about running. And I think. You can't get to a thousand episodes on a podcast and not be like highly passionate and highly, um, energetic about the same topic. And so when I know that when we were chatting, um, and coming up with an idea for an interview, you said that one of your passions is around heart rate based training and effort based training. Um, is that just mainly what predominantly what you do when you work with runners? Yeah, definitely. Um, it's that's, I don't force anybody to go all in on, on heart rate training. Um, but definitely I encourage effort and training by effort. So the most common workout is whatever the mileage window might be, three to six miles or four to eight miles, whatever it is for each person, of course, but instead of giving pace guidelines, it's easy. Or if there's days that we're going hard, here's the workout, whether it's an interval or a tempo or whatever it might be, but then again, instead of a specific pace recommendation or instruction. it's 85% effort or 90% effort or as hard as you can for the shorter intervals or whatever. And I guess the big part of that is just, we've all had those days where the runs feel like where the miles just float by and they're super easy and it's no big deal. And on those days, if that happens to line up with a hard day, like if I were to tell you to run whatever at an eight minute pace, and normally that would be a pretty solid effort, but today like that feels really easy, well, don't be constrained by eight minute pace like. push it, go a little bit faster. Likewise, we've all probably had more days, at least I've certainly had more days, where normally a 930 minute mile might be pretty average for me, but some days, man, 1015, it still feels like a slog. Well, in that case, don't try to force 915 or 930, like embrace 1015, embrace 1030, keep it at an effort that feels legitimately easy, if it's an easy day, a recovery day, whatever. And so I've just kind of, over the last... four years or so, like really hardcore for the last four years, but probably even a couple of years before that started dabbling in this idea of, you know, the whole no pain, no gain type of mindset mindset, or, you know, if you're not, if you're not pushing hard, like you're not getting the benefit from it, um, I've really, I mean, I kind of was like that in the, in the early days, uh, certainly with my running career. Um, but thankfully in my opinion, at least thankfully I've seen the light and, and no longer kind of really believe that. you know, you got to just hammer it all the time to get anywhere. And I've seen the progress in myself and a lot of the athletes I coach over the years by backing off, run it easy and you know, dot, still getting faster, which is, which is the goal. A lot of us have. Yeah. And it's, it's actually really good timing. Cause I've recently just put out an episode around RPE and my interpretations going from like a zero all the way to 10 and what I kind of interpret those effort levels, those intensity levels to be just based on like sort of. characteristics and what my breathing is like, how, how it like internally feels. And while I know that everyone has their own calibration and they might need to adjust those calibrations if they are getting overuse injuries on a regular basis, or if they're maybe too conservative and not really seeing results. But, um, it's actually a really nice. Timing that you'd come on to kind of talk through these, these training philosophies and that sort of stuff. So, um, I guess. When it comes to heart rate based training, um, can you maybe explain exactly what it is, um, and exactly. What, how it's practically implemented. Sure. Um, although when you say exactly, that's a little bit difficult because there are some different, different takes on it, some different slants on it, but, but basically, like kind of in general, you know, if you're going to do some type of heart rate based training, um, you have some type of guideline in terms of a target heart rate that you're trying to either stay within a range of, you know, maybe 140 beats to 160 beats or obviously sliding scale based on various factors, but maybe you have a window that you're trying to stay in. Maybe like what I tend to do for myself is I just have like an upper limit and for 99% of my runs, as long as my heart rate stays below 141 beats per minute, I'm happy. You know, I don't care if it's 119 if it's 125, like as long as I'm not crossing what I would be kind of like the aerobic limit or whatever that I've set for myself, based on some formulas and etc. We'll get into that I'm sure in a minute. But as long as I'm under 141, I'm good. So so that's the kind of the maybe the first the first limit or the first You know part of your question. What is heart rate training? It's just it's just training based on heart rate data as opposed to pace or as opposed to something that you know like with effort based stuff like you said our PE the rate of perceived exertion and Those things are fine. And like I said, I'm I don't force anybody to go heart rate So I have some athletes that absolutely trained by you know, it felt easy. It felt comfortable whatever And that's fine, but that can be a little bit more wishy-washy. You know, what feels fine today, maybe feels fine tomorrow, but, but your heart rate's a little bit higher, so maybe it's not as easy as you think. Like there's just a little bit more gray area there versus if you've got the heart rate data or the information you on your watch or whatever, you can kind of see how hard is my body working based on the heart rate is a little, a little less subjective, a little more objective, which can help things to be a little bit more consistent, but. So that's, that's the first part of the question. I apologize. I feel like as a podcast host, I should be able to answer to a two part question. Uh, since I ask them all the time, what was the second part of the question again? Let me, um, maybe rephrase the second part of the question. So when you say you have a window or a limit to stick to, is that limit changing per workout? Like are you saying, okay, this is my harder workout or this is my slow, easy run. Therefore I need to allocate the. the limit and stick to under that. And so it's changing constantly throughout the week. If yes, absolutely. So it depended on again, depending on exactly which, um, kind of train of thought you want to follow in terms of heart rate training, some, some lines, um, and admittedly the one that I'm mostly aligned with for myself personally is that pretty much everything is easy. I do, I do one hard workout per month typically, um, and everything else, whether it's a long run, whether it's a short run, whether it's, it's whatever. Um, I'm only just worried about staying below my number, but for, for some of, certainly some of the athletes I coach and certainly just in general, um, you know, you might have two or three easy runs during the week that those are just staying below a certain number. And then you might have, you know, like a tempo type of run that you're trying to stay your heart rate in, you know, a higher window, you know, cause obviously a tempo run again, and it's, it's kind of, it could be interchangeable to paces. So if you're a tempo run, maybe you might be looking for a pace of, you know, eight minute per mile to eight 15, or I I'm going to apologize for not being able to do the conversions to the kilometers per hour there I can I can be close but I know if I try to get too detailed I throw it way off but whatever your window might be you know maybe that would be one way of doing it but heart rate could be the same thing so if you're normally like for me trying to stay between your below 141 if I was doing a tempo run maybe if my window would be 155 to 163 and I'm just making up those numbers there's nothing magical about those numbers but I would have a window where I was trying to keep my heart rate so that I was in kind of that tempo effort of It's hard, but it's not a full all out sprint, of course, but I'm not gonna let myself drift back down into easy. I've got a range I'm trying to be in. And then of course, if you were doing some type of sprint or interval or something like that, you could have even a higher level. Like I mentioned earlier, with what I would encourage my athletes to go hard. If somebody was really locked in on heart rate, then maybe instead of just giving them a heart, I would give them a window, a 165 to 170, or depending on what the workout specifics were. So. So absolutely, just like how you might set up your workouts or your runs throughout the week based on different paces for different type of workouts, you would do the same type of thing with heart rate or effort or RPE as well. Just that way instead of, it was a little bit easier to, or maybe not easier, but a little more able to embrace how your body's actually feeling that day and adjusting up or down based on what the heart rate's saying as opposed to you trying to hit a pace, but on that day, your body's just not doing it. Uh, and so you might feel a little more defeated that way versus, Hey, I got my heart rate where I want it to be. So, you know, that's, that's going to be good enough. Yeah. I think what you're talking about when you said it's like a number that you stick to, there's less wishy washy subjective kind of, um, internal processing that's required or awareness that's required, because I think I instantly think about a beginner runner who hasn't really done RPS or effort based stuff before and has, doesn't really have much. They're not really fine tuned, honed in on what their body's doing. And instead they follow a number. It's just like a really simple process. And I do know like in the past, when it comes to effort based stuff or interpreting RPE, it does require a lot of practice and it requires, Oh, when I'm feeling this way, like you're basing it off experience and like months, years of experience. And the, the more you hone in on it, the finer tunes you get. But for beginners, that's not possible because they don't have that experience. And so sticking to a number that's just on your watch or getting alerts, as soon as your heart rate clicks up above a certain intensity is just like super easy to follow. Um, I do see people have certain heart rate zones and they have the goals of like, Oh, spend this amount of time in zone three or zone four. All I only keep to say zone two. How does, how does one calculate those zones or find those zones. And, um, I know you say there's different training philosophies in terms of how often to spend in those zones, but can you maybe explain exactly what they are and how we determine those? Sure. I'll do my best. And I'll admit that I have a bit of bias here, maybe not bias, but a prejudice maybe is the better word and that I feel like in most, and maybe not in most cases, but in, in there's a possibility of things becoming more confusing or more complicated than they need to be. When you start. having a bunch of different zones, which is why I like just having one number that I have to stay under, you keep it simple type of philosophy, but you might look on your watch, you finished your run and you look on your watch, the data and it says you spent X amount of percentage in zone one and zone two and zone three or whatever. Basically those are just, it's formulas and again, there's a whole host of formulas out there that you can find and adjust and figure out, but basically the percentages of like maximum heart rate. So like zone one and zone two, typically, tend to be what you would consider more of your aerobic level training. Your sublactate threshold is another term that people throw around, aerobic. Those are where I would call them easy, would be kind of zone one, zone two typically. And so those are the ones that I personally feel and professionally feel should make up like kind of the bulk of your training diet, because those are the ones that are building your aerobic system, a little bit less stress and strain on the body so you can... maybe reduce your risk of wear and tear injuries that way. Certainly can't eliminate them, I wish we could, but you can at least try to minimize the risk a little bit. And those are the runs, especially for longer distance runners, building that aerobic system, that's like kind of all endurance, mostly endurance. It's the stuff that's gonna keep you going at the end of your half marathons, the end of your marathons, try to keep you from fading as much, which is a lot of times where people run into problems. Certainly I'm guilty or maybe not guilty, but have been that guy that started off great and everything was going good in the last 5K, the last 10K, whatever, things really fall apart and you lose so much time at the end and it's not a top speed issue, it's an endurance issue or it's a pacing issue that may have happened earlier as well. So by training aerobically, which again, zone one, zone two, you can really help to set yourself up to try to maintain that pace towards the end, finish strong, et cetera. You start getting into zone three, zone four, zone five. That's different kind of levels of, um, higher intensity, typically, you know, certainly, and starting to get more into bringing the anaerobic system into, into play, um, and without trying to go too deep down the physiology rabbit hole. Um, you start getting anaerobic. That means that you're, you're working harder than you can fuel via oxygen, which would be the aerobic system. So our bodies are capable of doing that. It's what sprinting is. That's what any type of explosive movements are all anaerobic type of movements. And there's certainly a time and a place to train those, but kind of what the philosophy is when it comes to a heart rate or an effort-based training and trying to get the bulk of your training in that easy zone is that you don't need as much training anaerobically to get the most out of it. And you actually get more out of your anaerobic training and that higher effort. You know runs whether it's a workout or on race day when you have a solid aerobic base in place So you kind of think about you know, any type of whether you're building a structure I heard recently somebody talk about launching a rocket You can't launch a rocket from a rowboat because there's not enough foundation. There's not enough stability in the base And so that's where and I'm apologize. I'm probably not answering your question very well Brody But like that's own one zone to that aerobic stuff or the aerobic training It's all about making sure that base is solid, that the foundation is in place that you can build your house upon or you can launch your rocket from so that when you do those, those harder workouts, so that when you, when you, when you really push it and get into the aerobic training and things like that, whether it's in a periodized part of your training or just a workout here and there, you really get the maximum benefit out of it because that base is already in place. Yeah. And I, all of those are derived from your maximum heart rate. So you're going off percentages of your maximum heart rate. And I guess when it comes to establishing those different zones, are they just like loose calculations? Does someone just create that off? Um, I know that age and calculating max heart rate off age is a very. loose but commonly used calculation is that kind of what we're talking about? Yeah, in most cases. And the ones that like, again, when you look on your watch and they've got the zones calculated there, those are all just kind of, it's a general formula where, yeah, you put your age in, probably gender, things like that, and it's going to calculate your zones for you. And that's, I don't want to say that that's, it's not necessarily ideal, but that's not a bad place to start, is with something simple. You can get more in-depth, various tests, there's lactate threshold tests, there's maximum heart rate tests that you can do as far as like, you know, run in hill repeats, and then you take the average of your heart rate when you're full sprinting up a hill. Like, to me, they're a little bit complicated. And again, going back to my philosophy of trying to keep things simple, there's, like, I'm fine with a simple formula, but sometimes, you know, you want to see, maybe you can get a few more beats out of it, or maybe, you know, you want to double check like does the simple formula line up with the more complicated formula, you can take it all the way up to like a treadmill stress test in a physiology lab where they'll, you know, strap you up with the mask to measure your VO two or the measure of VO two as well, but the measure your, you know, the carbon dioxide coming out and that helps to figure out where you're where you tip over from, you know, aerobically to anaerobically, and then they can help figure out where that those thresholds are and what your max heart rate is, etc, etc. But but yeah, I like to keep it simple. I'm a math guy But even when it comes to this simple formula and I am a proponent of the mathatone method or the mathatone formula Which is just simply well that one could get a little bit not complicated But you can add some layers to it, but the base formula is just 180 beats minus your age So so for me, I'm 39 which is where if you know I do the math that puts me at the 141 that I talked about earlier So that's just where I where I said it there are some adjustments you can make based on injuries or amount of time you've been training or whatever to lower it up or down a little bit more to make it a little bit more fine tuned to each individual. But but that's the formula that I use, not because it's the best, but because it's the simplest. And when I actually got started with it, I did, you know, I took my 180 minus my age, which I think at that time was I was 35. So, you know, it was 145. And then I did one of the fancier calculations of formula and weight and, you know, heart rates and all those types of things or an age and I think I got out, I came out to like 141.2. So I was just like, I'll just make it 141. That's the lower, I'll err on the side of it being lower and that'll be fine. And so the plus to that is I haven't had to adjust my maximum limit on my watch for the last four years because as I've gotten older, I'm still at 141. So whatever, we're still fine there, but I guess next year I'll have to bump it down to 140 since I'll be turning the big four-oh and actually in just a couple more few weeks, but. Um, but yeah, that's, that's the formula I use. You can get complicated and some people try to push back and be like, well, 180 minus your age is just two, one size fits all. I want to really squeeze it in. And usually it ends up being one or two beats one way or the other. So it's fine. Go for it, but keep it simple as far as I'm concerned. I like how it, you start off simple, like just the simpler, the better, and then see how it goes and based on that, you can make like. little adjustments in the dials here and there, if it's not really agreeing with you. And sort of what you talk about with the math method, it's, uh, finding a heart rate score or finding a math score and just close to all, um, most of your training is just keeping under that for just, uh, um, for those who aren't really familiar with that particular method, but I did want to talk about the benefits and limitations of like the. the heart rate and effort-based sort of stuff, but we've kind of delved into most of it. But so what I might do is I might kind of reiterate a few of these, what we've already talked about, and if you want to jump in and add any more, any others, let me know. So what it seems like for the heart rate training, first of all, really simple, like when it comes to the benefits, you're just following a score, which is, um, for beginner runners can be really, really nice to do. It's, it's kind of calculating intensity as well. And you can, depending on your actual training method, you can just follow the numbers. And I guess with heart rate training, with limitations, they say it is loosely based off some zones, but you can always just start there and see how it goes. The other limitations that I would think of when it comes to heart rate is the other variables outside of exercise that affect your heart rate. And so it would be like diet, caffeine. heat, like those sort of things, stress, um, all of those sort of things that can manipulate heart rate and then carry over into your training. Um, are there any ways to mitigate that? Or are there any, um, approaches that you might suggest, or are we happy with a few of those inaccuracies and then just the bulk of your training is just, even if there are some inaccuracies, that's okay. Yeah. And I think that, that it kind of depends on a few variables, but I get the original, you know, kind of point of the question is absolutely other things can affect it. And what I've what I've found for myself, and I fully recognize it doesn't work necessarily for everybody. But if I if I get my runs in first thing in the morning and let the record show I've not been a morning person, pretty much my entire life. But when it comes to heart rate training, it's a game changer running at five or six in the morning versus even eight or nine in the morning. Uh, where I live in the U S I live in Florida, which is hot, humid, 12 months, or maybe 10 months out of the year. Um, and so just getting out before the sun gets high and makes it even more uncomfortable, which definitely brings the heart rate up because of the heat stress, um, makes a big difference. You know, getting out before I have my first cup of coffee, which five years ago would have been laughable. I would have laughed at you if you suggested going for a run before you had a cup of coffee, um, but now I run pre coffee because I know the caffeine is going to be another, another thing. You know first thing in the morning five or six o'clock in the morning Hopefully life hasn't gotten crazy work hasn't gotten crazy You don't have the random emails that cause all kinds of stress or the boss hollering at you or your spouse or partner Or kids or what like all of those things that are natural normal everyday parts of life Don't tend to happen as much at 5 a.m. As they do at 10 a.m. 5 p.m. Etc So, you know, I just try to mitigate all those extra stressors and all those extra outside influence as much as possible by getting my runs Done first thing in the morning Um, and, and of course, you know, there's also some of those benefits of getting the exercise done, getting the blood flow in, uh, the, you know, the, the endorphins and things like that, that helps set the day up well, um, anyway. But from a heart rate perspective, if I feel like not again, not that you have to do it first thing, but if you can, that helps to eliminate all those other things that might cause your heart rate to bump up, which might have to, if you're really being hardcore about it means that you're going to have to slow down, maybe even mixing some walk breaks and a lot of runners, let's not kid ourselves. And I'm one of them like. would rather not walk if we don't have to. Um, so if you, if you're really trying to adhere to the heart rate stuff, getting it done early can make a, make a big difference. Yeah. And it makes me think like, if you are stressed, like chronically stressed, if things are going on at work and your heart rate is elevated, like your resting heart rate is elevated and that's carried over into your workouts and you try a really easy effort and your heart rates climbing, it's probably not best to do a harder, like a harder training anyway. like based on your conditions, based on the stress that you're going through, maybe it's best that you do break up with some walks and lower that heart rate while you're in that particular stressful time in your life, because we do know that carries over into injury as well. So yeah, that the limitation might actually be a benefit because you're following your heart rate and you're seeing, you might not know that the stress that you're experiencing is actually having an effect on your body. And you can make those adjustments accordingly, which is really nice, I guess with the Moving on to the benefits and limitations of like the effort based stuff, obviously with the, the benefits you are like, if you have a real good internal awareness of what is going on, then maybe those, what used to be an easy day isn't so easy because you are getting maybe a lack of recovery or maybe you are feeling stressed or, you know, just those easy runs are just feeling a bit harder in that moment. And so if it's effort based, then you're making those adjustments based on how the body is feeling. And I know a lot of people say, I just run just how run off feel. And that can be a really nice way of calculating a lot of things. It could calculate the, how fresh the legs are, how well you've recovered, how well you've slept, what your heart rate is actually doing. And the, the limitations of that would be, okay, it needs practice. You need to actually tune in. Sometimes people collaborate there. effort levels and what they think is easy is actually a little bit harder than. Run a B. Um, is there anything else you want to add onto that when it comes to the benefits and limitations of effort-based training? I, not, not a whole lot. I mean, there, there can be a gray zone where you're kind of, um, you know, not really easy, but not really hard. And a lot of times that feels comfortable. Cause that's just kind of what we've kind of grown up doing or, you know, if you've been running for a while and not focused on heart rate, it's, it's easy to kind of fall into that gray zone, which is in theory, not bad, but you're not getting really all of the, you're not getting the benefits of running easy, but you're also really not getting the benefits of running hard from a physiological perspective. So that's where just relying on RPE can be, can be a little bit of a slippery slope into kind of a middle ground that's not really doing as much as it could. If you tilted the scales a little bit easier, or on a hard day, you were really pushing a little bit harder, but. But yeah, and I've had a couple folks where trying to run by heart rate, that's caused stress, so then it's like, just worry about easy. Just don't, like, at the end of the day, we want this stuff to be fun. We want to enjoy our runs and our training and our races and things like that. And so, yeah, if numbers are gonna stress you out, then running easy is totally fine. Just be aware that what feels easy may not always physiologically be easy, but again, if that's too much to handle, then just go with whatever works for you, for sure. Yeah. I want to use the second half of this interview to go through some patron questions, but before I do, do you see any people like misusing these type of methods? I know like the actual training methods, it just depends because there's so many different methods out there around, you know, intensity distribution, um, and actual heart rate zones and that sort of stuff. But do you see someone saying, Oh, let me train to a heart rate or let me train to effort-based and then they totally like. just don't, they just totally misuse it and it ends up being of their detriment. Is it any mistakes, any, any misconceptions that might be surrounding these particular methods? I think that the, the two, the two areas that at least come to mind that things are most likely to maybe go sideways is, is one, not being patient enough with it. Um, heart rate training or effort-based training. Again, I'll use the terms relatively interchangeably. Um, it's a, it's a process and it takes a while and, and you're not going to get Uh, you're not likely to get a lot of rapid improvement, rapid growth, see rapid progress, but it really builds on itself over time. Um, so, so that's maybe the first area where it's just an impatience issue. And I mean, as endurance athletes, like progress takes a while anyway, no matter what type of philosophy you're going with, uh, but it feels even slower sometimes with making progress and seeing progress when it comes to, to heart, but heart rate or effort-based training, but, but trust the process. It really does work. And the other thing that I think sometimes people can get themselves in trouble with is constantly trying to move the goalposts, always trying to get an extra couple of beats. Like, well, if I do this, if I use this formula, I can go a little bit faster. And who says that whatever, 146 is the exact number? Maybe 148 is probably okay, and then pretty soon it's 140. Well, now it's 150, and you kind of get that drift of what your target is, and then that gets you back into that gray zone or gray area. where it's not really easy. So you're not gonna get the benefits or you're not gonna get the full benefits, which means the progress is gonna take even longer, which means that you're more likely to get frustrated and throw your hands up and say, oh, you know, forget about it. Like, we'll just go back to just hammering because at least that way I felt like I was getting a good hard workout in and I felt like my 5K times were improving or whatever. So yeah, those are the two. Being impatient and not being, you know, disciplined with this is what my zones are, my numbers are and trying to move them from there. Yeah, and... I know from the general personality, personality traits of a runner, I think sometimes it's hard to trust the process. Sometimes it's hard just to do easy stuff. Most of the time, some people exercise because they want the feel of working hard or putting in a good effort, or they say they'll go for an easy run and they want to do like a 40 minute easy run, and then it gets to 35 minutes and like, it's way too easy. Let me just pick up the pace for the last couple of minutes. And then it's. Yeah, it's hard to be patient. It's hard to follow a process and it's hard to see if it is a long term strategy. Then sometimes it's hard to follow that process. Yeah. Okay. So let's dive into some patron questions. Um, who do we have here? So Melody and Jackie say the same thing. So I'll ask it. So they ask if, should the heart rate zones change over time, because they've seen both when they do low heart rate training, um, they've stuck to their zone one zone twos for a very long time. And now they struggle when it's time for their higher intensity efforts to get, get from, um, zone three to zone five. It's really hard to achieve that to actually run hard, fast enough to get into those zones. And so do you see that over time? Do you have you seen that with your runners and what would you recommend? Honestly, the way I'm understanding the question for both Melody and Jackie is that means that you're doing it you're doing it spot on that Be and the reason for that is that if your aerobic? System your aerobic base is improving so much that it becomes harder to take your heart rate up that To those higher levels like that's kind of what we want You know like I've found For myself that four years ago like I mentioned earlier, like I had to walk a lot, or at least it was very rare that I'd have a run where I didn't walk to keep my heart rate from going higher than it needs to be. And now, to get my heart rate up into that 140, 141 range, like I really have to be like huffing and puffing and like working hard. And that's good. I mean, that's ideal, because that means on race day, like I can maintain a lot faster pace per mile over the course of... you know, a half marathon, a marathon, whatever, without really, you know, having the lactic acid build up, without the tapping into a bunch of carb stores and really, you know, the risk of bonking is lower. So to Melody and Jackie, great job, keep it up. But to the more general question, do your zones change? I mean, they might, they very well might, you know, as like for me with the Maffetone thing, as I get older, that means my target's gonna keep coming down and that's, you know. It's a fact of aging and I guess it beats the alternative because if you're not getting older, then you're probably not running either. So that's a problem. And yeah, with some of the other formulas, sure, those numbers are gonna shift a little bit. And again, as you get older, you plug in the formula and you go, oh, well now my maximum heart rate is X, or it's X minus five versus what it was before. And so that means that my percentages for my zones, that's gonna shift as well. So yeah, it's not locked in, it's not written in stone or etched in stone forever. It's going to move a little bit, but it shouldn't move a lot. You know, it's going to be a couple of beats here, a couple of beats there over, over the years. Um, but if your effort, if you're having a harder time getting there, it doesn't mean that you're getting slower. What it means is your body's getting stronger, your aerobic system's getting more efficient. And you're just going to have to work that much harder to get a zone four zone five workout. But that's, that's a good thing. Not a bad thing. It means you're gaining fitness, not losing it. 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? Yeah. Um, that's the goal. And I think, especially if we're talking about the mafotone method, the math method, um, the idea is to run at a really low heart rate or under a certain heart rate and over time, as you start to improve on your aerobic fitness, your, your time should improve. You should get faster with that same. That same methods, like say if you're keeping to under 141 and you run 5Ks in say six months time, if you keep under that same score and run 5Ks, you should be getting faster. And so it, like you said, it seems that methods working for them. And if they, let's just say they're finding it impossible to get into zone five, should they then just accept, maybe just base it on effort? Should they just say, okay, let me just do a hill sprint and let me achieve this rate of perceived exertion rather than actually following their heart rate? Yeah, absolutely. If you're doing it, if you're doing a hard workout and you're, you know, whether it's, it's a hill sprint or any type, any type of repeating type of real hard, high, high intensity effort. Um, if you're, if you're putting. everything you've got into those repeats or those segments or those, those whatever. I again, going back to my keep it simple philosophy that works, you know, and if, if you're, if your watch is telling you that you only made it to zone four, well, okay. Like if you, if you couldn't go on any faster, you're good. You tick the box, you know, work done job, job well done, move on to the next workout. Okay. Fantastic. We'll move it on to Jessica's questions. So she has just completed a hundred mila. Congratulations, Jessica, about a month ago. And. She's saying that now when she's getting back into running her heart rate is spiking, even though they're easy efforts that she used to be to say at a similar effort, it used to be her heart rate in the one thirties. Now it's in the one seventies at that same intensity. So her question is, um, is an elevated heart rate during the easy efforts and indication of lack of recovery and like, what, what steps should we do from the, from here? Yeah, first of all, congratulations, Jessica. 100 miles is territory that I have not ventured into myself. I'll say yet because I don't want to say never, because then that's inevitably going to make it happen. But I have no desire to do anything that crazy right now, but hat tip and kudos to you. As far as the heart rate still being up, that would definitely be an indication that your body is still recovering, you know, that there's still, that the recovery process is still happening. It doesn't, and it doesn't necessarily mean that you've done. poorly with your recovery to this point, or that there's anything that you've done wrong or that you could have done better or anything like that. It just means that running 100 miles, that's some serious wear and tear on your body. The training for running 100 mile race, serious wear and tear on your body. And again, the lack of patience piece that we talked about a few minutes ago, that's something that all of us runners, I think, it's safe to say that just about all runners struggle with patience, especially when it comes to recovery after a race. Um, but, but I don't feel like still being in the recovery process a month after a hundred milers is, is out of, out of the ordinary, you know, in an ideal world, sure you'd be everything would be back to normal baseline, good to go. Um, but, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't stress about it, you know, make sure you're prioritizing sleep, prioritize an easy, easy exercise and that could just be walking or some cycling or some type of cross training that's, that's low impact. Um, make sure your, your diet nutrition or, you know, You're taking care of things, giving your body what it needs to allow the recovery process to happen. Um, and, and I wouldn't be shocked if in another week, two weeks, three weeks, something like that, you see that heart rate continue, hopefully it's been dropping back down, getting more close to the normal range. Um, but yeah, if it's spiking during easy runs right now and you're a month out from a hundred mile or Jessica, I would say that nine times out of 10, you just, you're still in that recovery zone and that's okay, nothing to worry about. Yeah. Great. And similar to Rachel's question is heart rate variability indicative of like fatigue, lack of recovery, that type of score. Do you, do you maybe, uh, let's answer that before I, before I move on. Yeah. I mean, I think that, I think that would be, uh, again, same, same line, same line of thought. Um, and, and it, it could be. And depending on when you're measuring your HRV, if you're doing it, you know, overnight, if you got the rings or the watches or things like that, that measure it while you're sleeping, which I think a lot of is probably the case. It could be that you're fatigued and you're not recovered from a race or a hard workout or things like that. It could be that you're not getting enough sleep each night anyway, so that, you know, maybe trying to get to bed a little bit earlier. Maybe, you know, there's so many different factors that can mess with can impact it, maybe not mess with this right way, say, but impacted from You know, having caffeine later in the day, having an alcoholic drink before bed, um, you know, too much screen time, uh, exercising later in the day. If you, if you want to run at the end of the day to kind of burn some stress off, that's great, but that can impact the quality of your sleep, which can then impact your, your HRV. But, but yeah, it sounds like something, some, some piece of the equation, um, with regards to the quality of sleep could maybe be, try to be tweaked or optimized and see if that number doesn't improve. Yeah. And for those who aren't familiar, so your heart rate variability is the difference like in between heartbeats. And sometimes like you your heart might beat, you know, 100 times a minute, but it doesn't beat exactly at 100 times a minute, there's a bit of variability in between those beats. And the larger the variability, the more theoretically the more indicative it is that your body is responding well, like it's in a nice state for exercise, and it's just like all in line in tune. And so To the opposite of the heart rate, like a high heart rate variability is actually good in a low heart rate variability is meaning there may be something else going on, lack of recovery, for example. And from my experience, uh, I do wear an aura ring during the night and does calculate my heart rate, heart rate variability. And I know like when it comes to say drinking alcohol, I don't do it that often, but even if it's one or two drinks. My heart rate variability is affected overnight. It's extremely low when I wake up and that's just extremely consistent. As soon as I have two drinks, that's what I expect to see. And the other thing is, uh, when I have done. Harder efforts. So every time I race a triathlon, like even if it's a sprint distance triathlon, and I sleep well, my recovery is good. My nutrition is good. My heart rate variability is low for three or four days. I'm actually quite surprised at how low it is. Um, and how long that lasts for until it starts ticking back up again. And so that's been extremely consistent with every triathlon that I've done. And it has, um, actually surprised me how that's how consistent that pattern is. And so, yeah, it might, maybe indicative of lack of recovery, at least from my experience, I'm more than happy to follow those numbers of when the heart rate variability goes back up, I interpret that as time to exercise and like time to start getting back into normal. of exercise, I guess. Um, that's just my experience. I'm not throwing that as scientific, but just that's the pattern. Definitely that I've seen, uh, anything you want to add before I move on to Alan's question. I'll just, I'll just second the same type of patterns I've noticed as well. So, you know, again, not that that, not that makes it conclusive, but, um, that's, that's the trend. That's, that's the theory behind heart rate variability. And, and so, um, you know, focusing on some of those, those other factors, hopefully what will help you, Rachel. Yeah. Uh, Alan's helping someone out and she said that, um, would the heart rate based training program, like the math method be suitable for a beginner? She is currently coaching or helping someone out who is a new runner, is a bit overweight and, uh, quite unfit, just getting into exercise and has a very high heart rate and it just spikes like really quickly, but if we're trying to keep under a certain math score, maybe that's really, really hard to do, maybe unachievable. Um, so would that particular process, the following, like a math method, would that be suitable for this particular person? I would, I would make the argument that that's probably the ideal person to get into it, uh, in large part, because you don't have any preconceived notions of paces or. distances or things like that could that a lot of times when people I guess back up but a lot of times when people get into heart rate training the first time Ellen there's some ego checking that has to be involved and again I'll use myself as the example not because I'm anything flashy but just because I'll throw myself under the bus any old time when I when I first started it I was running I thought nine minute per mile pace was pretty easy and then I started doing you know getting really serious about heart rate training and it was 1045 11 minute pace 11 1115 some days in order to keep my heart rate below the, you know, the Maffetone number that I had set. And that was, it was frustrating. It was maybe, I don't wanna say that it was embarrassing, but like I could see how, you know, if you're posting your stuff on Strava or, you know, wherever on social media like I do, you know, that could be a little bit of like second guessing of like, well, gosh, like I was running a nine minute pace two months ago and now I'm struggling to break 1030, like, you know. Like that's kind of embarrassing. And the fact is like, nobody really cares. Like nobody's really checking that and like how you measure up, but you know, there's, there's ego involved. And so for somebody who's newer to training, newer to running, um, newer to working out and, you know, starting their fitness journey, I think that having some of that, not having that baggage can be, can be huge and, and yes, it's going to be a little bit. Difficult because the heart rate is going to spike pretty quickly. Um, but you also have a lot of, you know, there's a lot of probably low hanging fruit in terms of. progress to be made early. You know, I mentioned earlier that heart rate training is a process and patience is required and I'm not going to say that the person you're working with, Ellen, is going to see the change overnight, but they're also probably not going to feel as frustrated about trusting the process as somebody who's been, I've been running for eight years and now all of a sudden you're telling me to slow down two minutes per mile and what's like that person probably doesn't have many of those factors. So yes, they might not be running as much, but again, and this is maybe paint some generality, some broad brush, but somebody who's a little bit overweight, not real fit, they're probably not just gonna go out and run a solid 5K right off the bat anyway. They're probably doing some type of run walk intervals or maybe just even starting with just quote unquote, just walking, certainly nothing wrong with starting there. We all started there probably in some form or fashion. So focusing on that and building some of those habits is fantastic, is absolutely how I would say. to you, Ellen, to encourage your friend to do it that way, to really embrace it. And the other thing that is easy to maybe overlook, but again, for somebody like this who's new to fitness and doesn't have a lot of experience and a lot of history, doing the Maffetone or heart rate or effort or whatever we wanna talk about, it's gonna be a lot less probably uncomfortable in terms of soreness and aches and pains and things like that in the early stages because you're not pushing as hard, because you're not trying to hammer and see how far you can run and how fast you can run or things like that. in theory, gonna make it more likely that they're gonna stick with it long term and really develop a good healthy habit going forward because they're not gonna run one day and then be like, gosh, I can't even get out of bed for the next three days because I'm so sore. My knees hurt and my back hurts and my hips hurt and then my calves and everything. It still might have some discomfort, of course, because they're gonna be working their body in different ways, but it hopefully will be lessened, which will make them more encouraged to get back out there the next day for their walk and maybe mix in a couple run intervals and things like that. So. long-winded way of saying, if you haven't figured out, I'm a long-winded guy, but Ellen, I love it for somebody who's, who's new to training. Absolutely. I would, I would encourage you to encourage it and support it and cheer them on. And hopefully, uh, they'll find that it really works for them going forward. Yeah. Like as soon as you started answering that question, I wrote down a couple of things. I wrote down, um, maybe some cross training options might actually keep the heart rate a little bit lower because running is like whole entire body. It's like it would. climb the heart rate quite quickly. Whereas if you're just say, using the legs, if it's like low intensity on a bike or if it's a cross trainer or something, that might be a really nice option as well as the walk running, which is the other thing that I wrote down is you can just do a lot of walking and it might just be, you know, 60 seconds of walking and then 15 seconds of just a jog and to see how that goes. But, um, the other thing I wrote down, which you highlighted perfectly, which just. What we discussed before is just being patient, distrusting the process and reaping the rewards slowly as the, as it starts to have effect and starts to show effect and, uh, that's, that's great. You answered that one perfectly. And lastly, Paul asks, which is very, very similar. Um, Paul has tried the math method and his heart rate score is 141. Um, and feels too easy and he has to do a fair few walks. walks are required for him to maintain underneath that 141 math score and believes that his heart rate his actual heart rate is significantly higher than an average person thinks it's like around 200 or something. So is it worth trying another heart rate method? Or is it just about adjusting heart rate or just sticking to the process? What do you think? Yeah, Paul, it's a little bit tricky and you're probably not gonna like, my gut instinct is to say to just stick with it. And as you continue to be disciplined and staying under that 141 number, in theory, and certainly, you know, everybody's an N equals one, so I'm not promising that this is gonna happen for every single person, but in general, that is your aerobic. system continues to get stronger, your aerobic capacity, or not aerobic capacity, but your aerobic endurance, your aerobic base continues to build, you'll find that you aren't walking as much, maybe not even walking at all, and still keeping your heart rate under that number. That said, and to kind of circle back to something I said earlier, if trying to keep your heart rate there is sapping all the fun and the joy, and you're like, God, this just sucks, like this is not what I want to do, then, by all means explore whether it's different formulas, whether it's different methods, maybe something like an 80-20 where you still kind of have some type of, like that one's more of a lactate threshold number, but it's still the same type of principle. But instead of trying to keep every run there, it's like, let's keep 80% of our runs below the lactate threshold and then 20%, we can blow it out and you can push and you can go hard. And maybe that gives you enough of those days that you don't have to worry about keeping your heart rate low that brings some of the fun back, but you're still getting. a lot of the benefit because 80% of your runs are gonna be in that lower intensity zone. But yeah, I mean, I'll admit again, I think I said this earlier, but I'm biased towards the Maffetone method. I've seen it work so wonderfully for me. I've seen it work so wonderfully for the handful of folks that I work with that really have committed to it and have locked into it. That I believe that it's pretty darn good, that the science is pretty strong. But at the end of the day, I mean, you got it like, we're doing this for fun, we're doing this for our enjoyment. Last thing I want is for somebody to be more stressed out at the end of their run because they're worried so much about their heart rate that they're not able to just enjoy this, the sites, enjoy the scenery, enjoy the time, enjoy the ability that they're able to move. So if you need to try something else, Paul, you've got my permission to do so, but I would encourage you to try to stick with it. Um, and, and again, you know, going back to trust in the process, it will bear fruit if you stick with it. Nice. And. The last thing I want to do is actually talk about what other training philosophies are out there, but, um, I think you're kind of disalluding to it already that first of all, they are training philosophies, they are ideas, they are opinions, they are like, everyone has a little different take based on the results they've seen in themselves and results have seen with others. But I think you highlight that really nicely there that like, depending on the runner, the runner wants it's for fitness and it's for fun. You want to enjoy what you're doing. Otherwise it's not sustainable. but it's also for fitness, like you need to reap the rewards of the fitness. And if you follow a particular training philosophy and you say, let me see how it goes, let me see if I enjoy it. But if you're constantly breaking down and you're injured with overuse injuries, that's not fun and you're not getting fit. And so it's finding the kind of combination between the two. It's finding maybe if you don't enjoy 100% of the time, just being really easy. And I think the math method encourages like for the... for the first like, you know, six to 12 months or something, always being in that really low effort, but then it says, once you start reaping those awards, you can start spending occasional efforts like up in higher intensities when it comes to say performance and things. Is that right? Yeah. And it's, it's not quite as bad as six to 12 months. So like, like I've kind of gone that route, but, but yeah, I think, I think the, the minimum recommendation is eight weeks. So a couple of months of just all easy, all the time. Um, the encouragement is longer. The encouragement is more like 12 to 16 weeks, but at least go with eight. And then from there, you know, like what I do is, and I'm probably not the best example because I don't really have like, I don't race a lot. So I'm not having like big training blocks where I'm trying to really build fitness. But like, if you were doing that, if you were having a buildup to a marathon, you could have that higher intensity period where. not every run of course, but like over the course of, you know, six weeks kind of in the middle of that, you know, kind of the later stages of the training cycle, like you'd be doing a lot more tempo runs, a lot more pace-based workouts and things like that for like goal paces, things like that. And that would be fine. Like without absolutely still fit in the confines of Maffetone or any type of heart rate training philosophy. The key is that you're not neglecting all of your easy, you're still gonna have some easy runs. And then when you get past the race and you get back to more of a maintenance phase or a rebuilding phase, you're gonna start, you're gonna reinstitute that period of nothing but easy, build the base, get that solid again before you start building again. So yeah, if you decide to go down the route of heart rate-based or effort-based or any of the different philosophies of 80-20, mafetone, et cetera, it's the zones, all those types of things, it doesn't mean you can't or never should do hard workouts again. It's just you're gonna be intentional about when you do them, maybe strategic about when you do them. Um, and, and the bulk of your training is going to be the easy stuff because, uh, you know, not to beat the beat the point home anymore. So then we already have, but that's, that's what gives you the foundation for everything else. So you make that the priority. Add, add a little sizzle once in a while with some hard workouts and things can really kind of build over time if you just keep sticking with it. Yeah. And for a lot of the runners that I work with as well, I tend to follow the 80 20 kind of ratio and aware. Like a lot of people think 80 20 they've seen it before, like 80% is just really low intensity and then 20% is upper efforts, but 20% isn't the max out if it's either like the, the 80% is the really low stuff, but the, the 20% is the medium efforts and also the harder efforts. And I tend to think of maybe 5% of your weekly mileage should be like, like the upper limits. Um, and the other you know, 10 to 15% is kind of like those, the medium sort of intensities. And like once a week, maybe there's some interval stuff in there, just some short intervals. Maybe there's some strides in there. Um, but the bulk stuff, the, the vast majority, 80, 85, 90% is really, really low intensity. I've found that's a really nice ratio, um, for myself, for the people that I work with. Um, but like I was saying, like stick, find a process. whether it's math, whether it's something else and stick to it and then reevaluate things moving forward reevaluate if you're having fun reevaluate if you're getting the results that you wanted reevaluate the how your body's feeling if it's getting tight sore if it's getting injured and make those adjustments but it does take time to trust the process or evaluate the process you can't do it for two weeks and then see if it's reaping the rewards it does take time six to eight weeks and Adjust those goals, adjust it if you it's not agreeing with you or if you're not having that enjoyment. I really think that's a nice lesson. I think that those are the nice tips that you've summarized to, to finish up this episode, any other final tips before we, before we wrap up? Um, yeah, one, one last thing real quick. And I'll, if you'd like, I'll send you a couple of articles, um, that you can post in the show notes so that people know I'm not just making this stuff up, but, um, people don't like to hear that a heart rate strap is definitely better. than just using the optical stuff on your watch. But it really is. There's article, there's a study from 2017 from the American College of Cardiology that shows that that's the case. And another study from 2019 from, let me see, what is this? The Cardiovascular Diagnosis and Therapy Journal that basically says the same thing, that the risk-based stuff can be accurate, but the margin of error is wider. So if you're serious about it and you're gonna commit to it, You're better off getting the heart rate strap. I know it's a little bit uncomfortable. I know it's not, not ideal when you get the tan line that goes right across your channel. I know it's not, not ideal when you get the tan line that goes right across your channel. If important. Great. Uh, what social media channels should people go to if they want to learn more about your podcast, more about what you do. Um, what links should I add in the show notes? Uh, disruns.com is the home base for everything. Uh, and that's just probably Twitter is my favorite, but I, I'm pretty I guess, hang out equally on both of them. Um, and, uh, does runs radio as a podcast. And if you're interested, give it a, give it a listen and let me know what you think. Great. Yeah. If anyone's enjoyed, um, hearing Denny's energy and the, the insights that he has, the wisdom that he has, definitely go check out those episodes. There's plenty to choose from and, um, anything that you're interested in, anything that you, anything that you, um, you want to learn more about this, you're bound to find an episode about it. So. Denny, thanks for coming on. Your podcast is great. You're doing great things in the world. You're spreading the right information and thank, um, thankfully, yeah. You've come on today to share it to my listeners. So thank you very much. Oh, thanks for the opportunity Brody. And same to you keep doing what you're doing. You do great work in, and I am glad that we've been able to cross paths several times, appreciate you. 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 recognise 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.