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Expand your running knowledge, identify running misconceptions and become a faster, healthier, SMARTER runner. Let Brodie Sharpe become your new running guide as he teaches you powerful injury insights from his many years as a physiotherapist while also interviewing the best running gurus in the world. This is ideal for injured runners & runners looking for injury prevention and elevated performance. So, take full advantage by starting at season 1 where Brodie teaches you THE TOP PRINCIPLES TO OVERCOME ANY RUNNING INJURY and let’s begin your run smarter journey.
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On today's episode, how to make 2026 your best running gear. Welcome to the only podcast delivering and deciphering the latest running research to help you run smarter. My name is Brody. I'm an online physiotherapist treating runners all over the world, but I'm also an advert runner who just like you have been through vicious injury cycles and when searching for answers, struggled to decipher between common myths and real evidence-based guidance. But this podcast is changing that. So join me as a run smarter scholar and raise your running IQ so we can break through the injury cycles and achieve running feats you never thought possible. Welcome back Run Smarter Scholars. I want to record this episode similar to what I did uh last year, around about late December last year, where we have a reflect back on the past year and analyze what has happened, what went well, what didn't go so well. What did you learn? What can we change in order to better ourselves as a runner? uh I did this last year. I'm doing it this year and no doubt what I will discuss and even just like talking through my own thoughts. would at least provoke some self-reflection on your own running, your own training, how you've raced, how you feel like you've performed, how you've negotiated injuries. Cause as I'll soon reveal, I've had to manage and negotiate my own injuries of late. And no doubt you'll learn a thing or two about training smarter, making better decisions. And as this episode is going to be about most importantly, bouncing back stronger and more resilient. Um, we're not just going to be talking about running. We're going to be talking about like the holistic sense. I'm talking about running as well. No doubt there's going to be some nuggets in here. Um, but like I say, I hope with this episode, at least while you're listening to this self reflecting on your own running, and then that would help trigger something that maybe isn't discussed on this podcast that then helps make you more resilient. Um, I know I haven't done any specific running races this year. I have done a. Hirox race as of last week, but I've been training for this Hirox race pretty much the entire year. um If you're not familiar, if you're not really caught up with last year and what happened. So I ran two Hirox races last year and I've just been trying to better myself more and more. If you're not familiar, it's one, there's eight, one K runs, but a workout station in between all eight run segments. and they involve different things like a ski jog, a sled push, a sled pull, burpee broad jumps, the rower, a farmer's carry, lunges and wall balls of various reps and weights that are absolutely grueling. But it seems to be a passion and a love that I have that's fitted into my lifestyle very nicely and aligns with a lot of my fitness goals, but also longevity, health, wellness goals as well. And so, yep, I've sort of nestled into that love quite a lot and looking forward to doing this for the next decade and seeing ah how I evolve as a person. But as I like doing every year, I like self-reflecting. It's good that these high rocks races um in Melbourne come around December because not only does the race ended December, which is a nice time to self-reflect on how the whole year has gone, but it's also December. It's like the Not only is it the race has ended, but also the year has ended and I can sort of have a great moment to self reflect and look back on. And like I mentioned last year, when I did a similar episode like this, I like focusing on the particular categories of what went well, what didn't go so well, what did I learn? How can I change? And so that's what I particularly focused on. And just for the flow of the conversation, I kind of want to start it with what didn't go so well. because this is where I'm going to talk about my injuries. um And that's going to, I guess, be a better transition into what did go well. So I think the order of it just purely for this podcast episode um would help suit. long story short, taking a bit of a tangent, I'd have talked about this in depth on my second podcast, the overcoming proximal hamstring tendinopathy podcast, because this has been one injury that has popped up and I thought, relevant and helpful for the audience to be transparent about that particular injury that I've had to overcome. So I have talked about it and I have also disclosed on that podcast that my girlfriend and I have been going through an IVF cycle, which has been going on for a very, very long time. It's gone for two years now. We do obviously have a two and a half year old daughter, which we absolutely love, but trying for a second has proved difficult. And so it has been a drawn out process of about two years. uh I'll talk about this, why this tangent matters in a second. uh But one of the most recent interventions that our IVF specialist has come to is, hey, let's try to boost up Brody's testosterone levels to help the production of sperm and get see if that's an intervention that we can try, because things haven't been that successful of late. And so while it isn't a testosterone direct testosterone injections per se because that um tanks your production of sperm. It is this HCG uh boosts up your luteinizing hormone. think it is uh essentially just a secondary way of tricking the body into producing more testosterone. And so I had started that and I was on it for about two months before I realized, hey, I'm actually putting on a bit of weight here. I'm actually like, I felt strong. I felt like my my arms were a bit bigger, but I was putting on a stack of weight. And after about three, maybe even four months, I was about eight kilos heavier than what I usually am. And I'm like, wow, like I knew some of this was muscle, but I just wanted to know how much it was. And so when I got a Dexa scan and thankfully as of a year and a half ago, I had my first Dexa scan. I had baseline measurements. And I go to the um doctor who organizes scans, said, look, I'm eight kilos heavier. And I want to know how much of that is muscle, how much is fat. And they did the scan. said, in terms of that eight kilos that you've put on, you've actually put on eight and a half kilos of muscle because you've actually lost half a kilo of fat and yeah, put on eight and a half of muscle. it's essentially just been pure muscle, but coming back to the injury side of things, about a couple of weeks prior to that, I was starting to get a lot of calf tightness. And I've had calf tightness in the past, sort of just played it off, but ended up getting a calf strain, well, I would call it grade one calf strain, kind of felt sore walking the next day, just doing a run. And I didn't really link the two together until I had that calf strain when I'm like, huh. my body really isn't handling this increasing weight. As we know that with running through your calf Achilles complex, eight to 10 times your body weight is ah forced through that calf Achilles complex. And so if I put on eight kilos, that's 80 kilograms of force per step extra that I am taking and combine that with heels, which around my house is quite hilly. Yeah, my calves were just... telling me ringing the alarm bell saying we're not adapting to this running that you're doing. And so that was a wake up call and had to make some big shifts towards that. But also which took me a long time to sort of catch on to I was getting super, super strong in my gym sessions, like obviously piling on muscle will do that. So for example, my chest press, I've sort of been close to maxing out for a good two years now about 80 kilos. three sets of six would be my um generic kind of rep range. And I was getting about 80 kilos, um which is over my body weight. So that was, um I mean, at the time I was only 68 kilos and I was pressing 80 kilos. So I was doing really well, but I was close to maxing out, close to dropping the weight. actually increased my weight to 82 and a half kilos once just to see how it'd go. And I actually dropped the weight. on myself or like, you know, uh slowly lowered it down but could not push it up and had to roll it off myself, which was really, really uncomfortable. So just a general gauge of like, that's how max I was 82 and a half kilos is what I dropped it at. Now, I'm at 90 kilos as my warmup set. And I'm at up to 100 kilos with my bench and doing three sets like yesterday did three sets of six and felt great, felt like I probably could add some more. that's just take that example and apply that to almost all of my strength workouts. That's how strong I was getting. So this takes me to my second injury that I've had to negotiate at pretty much the exact same time was my proximal hamstring tendinopathy reemerged. I've had a long history that don't want to really dive into the full history of those that that whole saga, but looking back on it, it was because I was lifting heavier, I was doing heavier squats, heavier deadlifts, heavier hamstring curls, heavier lunges, and slowly this tightness, sauna started creeping in to the point where I think I caught it a little bit too late, where I'm like, damn, okay, I obviously have this PHT returning. And why, why is this? I was feeling so good in the gym, I was lifting these weights and they were feeling like nothing. But obviously my tendon was like, this is too much. And so I would say this was about two months, two to three months leading into the race. And so I had to make some drastic shifts. If you're wanting to learn more about how I negotiated my proximal hamstring tendinopathy, like I said, I talk about it in depth on my second podcast. The calf, I had to take some steps into wearing a higher heel stack with my running shoes. I usually run in a zero drop shoe, um but had to make the switch. I went to treadmill only running. went to running every second day, like avoiding consecutive back to back running days and just running really slow and trying just to find the cusp of what's my adaptation zone versus what's a strain or like overload in the calf and just keeping below that strain kind of threshold, just doing that every second day seemed to have a very slow carryover of improvement that still kept me fit. I didn't have to take significant time off. It was just the decision I decided to make and the trajectory I decided to follow. It seemed like I was slowly getting better. But about six weeks, eight weeks before race, I decided, you know what, running fast isn't going to be the goal right now for this Hirox race. Let me just focus on the workouts, which are like the non running stations. And let me just get super, super strong at those. Let me see how good I can perform in those. But the running segments have to be slow because I don't want to four weeks out, two weeks out, doing a speed session, having a calf strain, and then not being able to race at all. I'd rather get to the start line fit and not injured and giving the strength sessions my best effort and then come 12 months from now, I'll try to maintain my strength as much as possible, try and perform at those workout stations the same I did this year. However, try to run faster. And that is my goal for the next 12 months. ah And so, yes, made various decisions in my training to negotiate the calf, but also negotiate the hamstring while trying to preserve as much fitness as possible. And so, so in a way getting injuries was something that didn't go very well, but I've learned a lot from it. And in ways that things did go well, I did manage to get to the start line injury free, feeling really strong. And so glad that was managed and handled well. But the other things that didn't go so well, um I think two weeks out, just dabbled with her. I've heard a lot about bicarb soda prior to intense races and really short running races as what people seem to be reporting as ah the bi-carb soda theory to the best of my knowledge is like it sort of buffers a lot of the lactate in your legs and so you don't feel as tired or as slowed down and I'm like, haven't really experimented with that but do I try to experiment with it? uh decided last minute to give it a go. So I had a high rock simulation race like one week prior to race day and I can't, I didn't have the time to necessarily prepare for that. So what didn't go so well was the lack of preparation for me to do that. But I decided to try it anyway. I did a two day sort of bi-carb soda loading and then did a VO2 max workout on the Monday of race week. And then thought that went okay, and then decided to try it again on race day, which was two to three days of having eight grams of bicarb soda two to three times a day, just trying to see if that can manage how my stomach can manage it and then decide to race with it. Didn't really like skipping ahead, but didn't really see much improvement or much change. But I think just like leaning into it, what didn't go so well was my Decision to do it, but like I also should have prepared and made the decision a lot earlier on so I could test it within my training to see if it's relevant or not, as opposed to just trying something new, relatively new on race day. Um, but what did go well? Okay. This was my first kind of really 12 month cycle of really staying dedicated to one particular goal. I had a relative off season throughout January, February, March. I decided to get back into it. Um, based on my self reflections of. the race prior, doing a lot more workouts that focus on my weak links. That was being the sled push. uh For those who aren't familiar, you have to push a sled that's 152 kilos and you have to push it for 50 meters in total. And at the time being like a lighter frame, uh I really struggled with it. I struggled with the sled pull as well, but the sled push was, it just really blew me up. in terms of my comparison to the rest of the field, I was It was definitely a weak point of mine. So I started doing a lot of sled pushes and I did it throughout the majority of the year. um And about three months leading into the high rocks race, I got really specific with my workouts. So I was really happy with all of that. And this has been the first year where I've actually gone through deload weeks, like really structured deload weeks. I would have a five week training segment where the first four weeks were progressive, progressive, progressive of just like mild builds in my strength um and my weekend workouts. And then followed by a D-load week, which I just took that as a four weeks of working hard, not only just in the gym, but doing cold showers, um trying to get really good sleep, eating really well, like four weeks of a lot of dedication followed by a D-load week where I could reward myself. I let go of... um progressing the strength, progressing the running and like got like some treat meals and that sort of stuff. And so I think that worked really well. um And the deload week kind of was nice that I could shift it here and there. Like if I got sick one week or if I had to travel one week and didn't have access to all of my gym stuff, I could just like delay or push forward my deload week, couple of weeks um here and there. Just so. and I just felt like I was still being productive um because I would just shift things. Sometimes I'd do a five week ramp up followed by a one week deload. Sometimes it'd be three weeks followed by one week deload, but it still in there as a buffer, which I found really helpful and I'll continue for the next year. um My diet worked really well this past year, like side topic on me, but the last year or two I've been really focusing on like fermenting my own foods. So. ah This has been for my metabolic health. This has been for my gut health. I've been really focusing on the microbiome because I've had like bowel issues for best part of maybe 10 years and last two years, it's been the best it has ever felt. So really diving into that, my protein intake was really nice. I experimented with creatine this last year. That's worked really well. In terms of my fermenting experiments at the moment, I am uh fermenting my own kombucha, fermenting my own sauerkraut, fermenting my own lacto-fermented pickles. I've got my own uh garlic honey, which I'm experimenting with, and just recently experimented with some garlic asparagus. So like all these things I'm finding really fun, but also sort of great for wellness. What else went well? So I got to the start line uninjured. I got to the start line feeling like I've prepared as much as possible despite having those two injuries. uh This year was also the first time I've really experimented with like VO2 max workouts. With the calf issue especially, uh my go-to VO2 max workout was doing the ski erg, 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off, and just grinding through that um for about eight rounds. And then... After eight rounds, you have a rest for three minutes and then you repeat that whole thing for about three rounds. uh But my arms were just blowing up, absolutely blowing up uh after those workouts. could feel like a carly move them like the lactic acid buildup was just intense. So got myself a erg bike or like an assault bike you would call it and decided to switch that off 50 50. So I do 30 seconds on the ski erg as hard as I could have a 30 second rest, then jump onto the bike. and do the assault bike for 30 seconds as hard as I could, 30 seconds rest, and then go back to the ski yoke. So was like alternating, sort of giving my arms a little bit of time in like a different direction, but also pumping the legs as much as possible. And so yeah, I was doing eight rounds um of each, so four of each in total, and then doing three rounds of that. And yeah, just spiking up my heart rate really, really high, um which I don't usually do. And so that worked out really well. I was really happy with them. They're the hardest workout and I don't look forward to them. I hate them. I would love much rather do like a high rock simulation race, but it's yeah, that worked out well. And what also went well, which is kind of out of my control. didn't get sick leading into the race uh two weeks out or like three weeks prior to the race. Our daughter got gastro and then like we thought we negotiated that neither Megan or I got sick and then a few days, a week on from Mackenzie feeling healthy, Megan then also caught gastro. So like the family has had a two week window of gastro in the household and I didn't catch it, which is extremely contagious. So I was blessed because that's like two, ended up being two and it could have been one week out if I ended up catching it at the tail end of it, but didn't get sick. And that could have like really disrupted a lot of the preparation. So that's a list of what didn't go so well, what did go well. What did I learn? I'll start sort of the subcategory of like pre-race. What did I learn? I learned about bicarb soda, bicarb doses. I actually just use chat.gbt about um what the research shows. And there's a lot of reports of, I guess, GI issues with trying to do a real big bulk of bicarb soda, but uh it can kind of be offset if you just do smaller doses. two to three days prior rather than just doing a big huge dose just prior to race day. ah Whether one suits me or not, not sure. Like I say on the race itself, not sure if it was totally effective for me, maybe because I was just running super slow, but I learnt, learnt about bi-carb doses. ah I also learnt about different sleep strategies. mean, sleep has been one of the things I really want to focus on. I have been focusing on for many years, but I'll continue to focus on for the next year. ah What I tried differently was what they call cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. During a particular period about two months ago where my sleep was just really, really bad. And one of the main components of it is if you're laying in bed in the middle of the night and you haven't gone back to sleep in 20 minutes, you get up and you read a book or you move around. I was just doing housework in the dark and you don't go. back to sleep or you don't go back to bed until you feel tired. And so that's something I've never done before. I gave it a two week go. Could say that it helps somewhat. um But the idea is to retrain your brain to think bed only means sleep. But if you lay awake in bed for a long time and you're not going back to sleep, you are associating bed with ruminating thoughts, with staying awake with, you know, all the frustrations and those sorts of things that accompany it. And so as soon as they become ingrained, you need to break that cycle, you need to break that habit and get up. And so experimented with that, experimented with melatonin, experimented with magnesium. I mean, magnesium was great. I've started taking, like when my calves were getting quite tight as well, I found myself in bed, stretching when I'd stretch my calf would often feel like they're just about to cramp. But since taking magnesium, that just went away. So that's good as well. ah What else did I learn? I learned about how impactful testosterone can be when it comes to strength and building muscle, because I tried putting on muscle for the last, well, ever since starting to train for this high rocks, I think like I was um under muscled and I think more muscle could have helped my performance. I've tried stacking on some muscle and to limit, yes, maybe one to two kilos here and there when I tried really, really hard. But I kind of see it now as like I was baking the cake. I had all the ingredients with the right protein, the right creatine, the right workouts in terms of this. um the dosages of those workouts, how often, and I had all the ingredients to bake the cake, I just never put it in the oven. And then when my testosterone level started increasing, hey, we're in the oven now, let's start growing. And it just took off like crazy. And so a few of those things, some learning points, obviously learned a lot about fermenting food as well. That was great the last 12 months. But let's get to the race day. So if you're not, I don't know. I don't want this to turn into a high rocks podcast, but hopefully some of these conversations are uh helping you self reflect on your own running and marathon training. um my didn't wreck it. Well, I knew going into the race itself, that it wasn't going to be my best because running is half of 50 % of the race. And if 50 % of the race is going to be unfortunately slow, technically from my standpoint, it's not going to be a best overall time. I did get a time of one hour, 24 minutes, but the workout stations I was really, really happy with. I came in super calm. One of the, looking back on my last races, my heart race just threw the roof when I raced these high rocks races, despite like going out slow, going out easy. I think I'm just like really ramped up anxiety, probably a component, obviously adrenaline, a big component, but like heart rate. super, super high, we're talking like 180 for most of it last year. And this year, very similar for the first half about 174 to 175 average. And this is despite in training with my heart rate monitor on the treadmill running at the same speed, same intensity, like my heart rate would calm down to 158. So like a big discrepancy and who knows who's to say like when I didn't race with my heart rate monitor. So the wrist probably wasn't that incredibly accurate, but seems to be a theme. so upon self-reflection last time, I'm like, all right, let's not get myself worked up before the start. Let me just not go to the venue too early. Let me not get into the warmup area too early. Let me stay calm beforehand. Don't take any caffeine beforehand. So I did all those things. I just hung out with my family on the grass in the, you know, nice fresh air and just mingled with them and had conversation with them until, you know, 20, 15 minutes before my race. I think that went really, really well in terms of feeling calm at the start line, but then as soon as it got underway with the race, like that heart rate came back up again. But managed to handle myself quite well. I feel like even though the heart rate was really high and it did feel really tough, I feel like I tolerated it. Like the last two races prior to this high rocks, I had these moments of really lightheadedness, like feeling really unwell. And I thought that was sort of like a crash in the adrenaline, but also just maybe the heart rate being way too high and me just not tolerating it. So I feel like even though the heart rate was quite high this race, I managed it. And I feel like the VO2 max workouts really helped with that. uh Yeah, like I said, the bike cups, really think that had too much of a difference. um The sled push like was tough, but I worked my way through it a lot quicker than I have in previous times. Getting off that sled and starting to run, I felt like I could not move my legs like my biomechanics was way off. So I feel like I just went into the red zone just a little bit too much with that. um The sled pull was my slowest workout station of them all. Um, I think like this first half of the race is just, um, the hardest. Uh, but then in the second half of the race, I kind of found my own stride, despite the intensity being the same, despite me performing really well with my workouts and the running still remained consistent. Maybe my heart rate came down a little bit and I was just feeling like myself again, like usually when I do these workouts and I'm like in a gym setting in a gym group setting where we're doing high rocks, really, really hard stuff. I feel like I have energy for days. feel super strong. feel really good. And I feel like that feeling started to come back. And so that second half of the race went really well. Worked my way through the ROA, worked my way through the farmer's carry to the point where like the last station was the wall balls and you have to do 100 wall balls. Uh, and it's with a six kilo wall ball weight. And I was comparing my workouts to the rest of field, the rest of like all males, like 3,200 participants. And I finished in the top 4%. So like just for that one workout. So the wall ball station, ah I was in the top 4 % of fastest, whereas all the other workout stations were hovering around maybe the 15th to the top 15 % to the top 35%. So that was all great. The running was just average average like you know, top 50%. So smack bang in the middle. um But that's where I'm improving for my next race. um Felt great afterwards felt like I really, really worked out hard races are just so much different to simulations. I tried pushing myself really hard in the simulations. ah But I bounced back really quickly, hardly any doms after the simulations. But after the race, was my legs are stiff and sore. Really bad for like two days, uh which hasn't usually happened. So You know, this is what it is for some reason. They're just harder. And then on the train home, I was just self-reflecting, writing down all the things that I can try to do better next year, um which takes me into the last component of this is what can I do differently? So we went through what went well, what didn't go so well, what did I learn and what can I do differently? And I think there is a long way to go with my sleep, but I've really started to journal and analyze you know, certain components of my thought patterns and sleep and what's really not linking well, I think as soon as I wake up and I think about workouts and I think about running and I think about high rocks, that's a big trigger for me not to get back to sleep. So I've tried to avoid that really setting up like if I wake up in the morning, what am I doing, writing down exactly what time I need to get up? Because I think one of the biggest issues is I have so much to do in the morning. It's like, well, if I get up earlier, then can get it done easier and it makes the rest of the day smoother. And so really planning, okay, don't, these are things that you're gonna do in these certain times. So you're going to get up at five, you'll have plenty of time to do all these things, as opposed to waking up at 3.30, four o'clock and being like, hmm, you know, if I get like, you know, 30 more minutes of sleep, then I'll get up and I'll do this, this, this, this. I think just breaking down that thought pattern and coming up with strategies to keep myself in a calm state. is going to be what I'll work on over the next year. For the first time, I have some super shoes. So I mainly train and race in minimalist shoes uh apart from, you know, nursing these calves as I mentioned, but the past couple of weeks, I managed to buy myself these high rocks specific shoes. They are a Puma Nitro Deviate 3, I think they were. uh So they are running. shoe but they've sort of made it a little bit more accustomed to hyrox with different grips on the bottom of it and it's got a big nice hyrox name along the side of it which makes it nice for my new found identity. So I managed to purchase those haven't run in them yet but we'll spend some time this year training in them and seeing how they feel and then racing in them so I'm really excited to do that as something new for this year. I think Self-reflection is what I do differently, try to move faster through the sled pull. So just trying to come up with better strategies to keep that sled moving quicker because it was one of my slowest workouts. I have self-reflected on the sled. I think pushing or training with a harder, heavier sled might be helpful, but then also on race day, coming up with a few micro breaks leading into the last kind of 25 meters of this push, the sled push. and just shaking out a bit more lactic acid so I don't have so much accumulated getting into the run. I think maybe doing some like training simulations where I just plan for or train for that first three stations, the ski, then the sled push, then the sled pull, and then into a run. That seems to be the hardest segment for me. So just doing workouts tailored to adapting to that. I also think training with a heavier wall ball. I have since finishing that race now purchased a 10 kilo wall ball because what I think I did really well on the wall balls this year is I trained with an eight kilo wall ball and raced or on race day, it's a six kilo, uh which is why I think I did so well. So let me lean into that a little bit more. Now let's go 10 kilos. um So that the reps are a little bit less. It doesn't have to be as grueling as doing a hundred, but can still get some adaptations there. And I'm also buying a second rope to pull the sled. um So that in the past what I've done is either, cause I only have one rope to push this or to pull the sled. um So that what I've typically been doing is pull it to one side of my garage and then push it to the other end of the garage and then pull, push, pull, push, which sort of gives myself a little mini break. um Or I've been taking the rope off, connecting it to the other side and then pulling it. taking it off, connecting it to the other side, which again is a little mini break. But what you do on race day is you've got two ropes attached to each side. So you pull, run, pull, run, pull, run. There's like very little time to recover. So buying a second rope, I've bought it secondhand. And so I've taken both of those actions with purchasing a wall ball and a rope. I've actually sold a lot of my gym stuff over this week, because I'm like, oh, there's a lot of gym stuff that I actually don't use. I actually haven't picked up in two years. And so that's... some trade-offs. So I've sold some things, I've bought some things just to tailor it. And so they're the things that I'm going to try this year. I will try getting myself faster. And I will try to come up with dedicated, more dedicated kind of like threshold pace workouts, kind of tempo pace workouts, strides, like these things that are working in some speed, training with these super shoes, some of the time, not all of the time, and just seeing how fast I can get. It's going to be an interesting experiment and seeing if I can just hold on to the strength that I've gained. But that's what I'm looking forward to. I'm excited and constantly look back on, this is a, this is a mission, a goal that I'm on. This isn't just like the next race is the be all and end all. I know a lot of runners sort of hold their hats onto one race and it's like this next marathon is all that matters. And they put them put a lot of stress on themselves and a lot of um stress on the preparation of it. And it's like all that matters. Whereas I'm seeing this is what does my next 20 years look like? And what's this next race look like in the scope of that 20 years? um Just like for this past race that happened last week where I'm like, you know what, this is just a stepping stone to see how strong my workout stations can be. And then I'm going to layer in the running component. um I then think looking ahead of that, seeing how good I can get just training myself. Maybe five years for the next, maybe after this next race, 12 months from now, maybe I look at doing, getting a high rocks specific coach. ah Maybe I see where my weaknesses are or, you know, where I can, where my potential is, where my weak links are. Maybe someone else can analyze it for me and then see where my technique is breaking down. Maybe that's an idea that I have, but this is looking like the next, I'm looking forward. to the next 10 to 20 years of doing these races. And hopefully you can do the same for your races, your marathons. This next race that you're preparing for, hopefully is just the next stepping stone to the next 10 races. What can I learn? What can I try differently? What can I try differently on race day or in my training that can help me learn more, can help strengthen my weak links, that chink in my armor, that performance anxiety or that one moment where I just keep hitting the wall. What can I do differently? Is it fueling? Is it warmups? Is it harder training? Is it more mileage? Is it more sleep? Is it better hydration? Like all these things we wanna be constantly working on because uh we do wanna be getting better, but it's also like makes it fun, makes it interesting. I I love the self-reflection components of it. And so hopefully this hasn't just been a... listening to Brody ramble about something that you're not interested in. Cause I know, like I say, this isn't a high rocks podcast, but hopefully this helped prompt something for you, something for you to change or learn or self-reflect on in your training. And let's bounce back. Let's make 2026 your best running year. If you are looking for more resources to run smarter, or you'd like to jump on a free 20 minute injury chat with me, then click on the resources link in the show notes. There you'll find a link to schedule a call, plus free resources like my very popular injury prevention five day course. You'll also find the Run Smarter book and ways you can access my ever growing treasure trove of running research papers. Thanks once again for joining me and well done on prioritising your running wisdom.