Training By Time or Distance? The Great Running Debate

Carrie Tollefson: Hey everybody. Welcome to the RunDot podcast. Today we are joined by run coach Ryan Tibball. Ryan is a has a BS in Biomedical sciences from Texas A and M University and respiratory care from UT Health center at San Antonio. He serves as a head PWR cycle coach at Lifetime Fitness, is a certified cross CrossFit coach and a pose method certified run coach. That is a mouthful. Ryan, you are busy and I'm Carrie Tolleson, Olympian broadcaster and your guide to the world of RunDot. We treat the show like any good workout. We'll start with our warm up question, settle into our main set conversation and then wind down by having coach Ryan answer an audience question on the cooldown. Lots of good stuff. So like I say on my other podcast which is called CTALI Run, let's get after it.

Announcer: This is the RunDot podcast, the running show that brings you world class coaching with every conversation. Let's get started with today's warm up.

Carrie Tollefson: Right there are fabulous runs all over the world. Ryan and I know that you have been to many of them and runners sign up and train for a lot of the races that you've been at and that I've been at. But I want to know today, what is your favorite local run event to participate in?

Ryan Tibball: Now this, that's an easy, easy question. I love this. Throwing me a little softball today. I'll start, I'll start right there. Being from Fort Worth, I, I'd have to say the Cowtown of marathon weekend is absolutely one of my favorites. I have actually done that. I, I am a half marathon junkie of sorts. But the, the hat the marathon weekend has a 5k, a 10k, a half marathon, full marathon and an ultra marathon split between a Saturday and Sunday events. And I tell you they have been doing this for I think it's well over 20 some odd years and I have done it now. I think I'm going on 15 or 16 years, something of that sort, maybe even longer. I have lost count, I would have to count the number of finisher medals. But you know they have such a unique, unique thing about it. It's, it's in Cowtown or Fort Worth. It's so much fun. You go through a lot of the landmarks of the city which is really cool. And you know, on top of that the crowd comes out, the Fort Worth crowd comes out and you know this is a big city and then the finish line and everything, all the goodies and the medals are very unique. They run a series of medals as well. And so if you like do this event for like five years in a row, you get put these metals together and you can end up putting again this little mosaic of metal. It's huge when you're done with it. So lots of fun stuff that the Cowtown Marathon does. It's one of, absolutely one of my, my favorites.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, I love that too. And I, as you do, go all over to race or be at races, but there's something about not having to pack a big bag, you know, and not have to check your bike or your run shoes or whatever you're doing. And for me, I love being right here. The two big events in Minnesota are probably the Twin Cities Marathon, which is right in my backyard, I think. My husband and I, our house is about 1 mile off of the 22 mile mark. So we always tell people, do not just keep going. Don't, you know, don't veer off to the right and come to our house at 22. You can do this, get through it. But the Twin Cities Marathon is at such a beautiful time of the year in Minnesota. A lot of people always just equate Minnesota to cold, but we actually have four beautiful seasons here. Even the winter is beautiful. But, you know, I, I'd have to say that October, the first weekend of October is so beautiful because not only is it perfect running weather, typically it's, you know, late. It's like upper 30s, maybe, maybe into the 40s in the morning when we start. Now, I know that's probably really cold for you, but that's for marathon.

Ryan Tibball: Perfect.

Carrie Tollefson: Perfect. That's perfect for perfect. And the colors are just amazing. It is like the most beautiful fall day you can possibly think of. Most years now, we have had hot years, but typically it's a cool morning. And then obviously Grandma's marathon. I mean, Duluth is just such a cool city. So if people have never been, you know, it is, it's a city that could have warm and humid conditions, it could have rain, it can have cool conditions, but regardless, you will have a blast. So I'd have to say those two are probably my favorite ones in Minnesota. Have you ever raced either one of those?

Ryan Tibball: I have not, but actually I've had some of my athletes race those, so, yeah, very familiar. And they, they, they, like you said, they keep coming back. They keep going back to them every year. So it must be good.

Carrie Tollefson: It is good. And we want to remind you audience members that we want to hear from you. So we'll ask this question on all of our RunDot social media accounts. We have listeners and athletes from all over the world. So let us know what your favorite local event is to race.

Ryan Tibball: Let's go.

Carrie Tollefson: All right, are you ready for the main set? The main questions?

Ryan Tibball: Oh, let's go, let's run. Okay.

Carrie Tollefson: All right. So when we go for a training run, usually we have an exact idea of how long or how far we want to run. And this entire podcast is going to be about how long we're running and whether it's by minutes or by miles. So some athletes prefer to approach their runs by distance. Some prefer to run for a certain amount of time. So does it matter? Like, how do you train and how do you coach?

Ryan Tibball: Well, you know, I know it's a little, you came at me with a big bat this time. All right, so threw a fastball at me. But I, I, I love this question. This is a, this has been such a debate over, over time, but, you know, I think, you know, I'll answer through this and, and kind of break it down with basically distance, obviously. Running for distance or versus running for time debate. And, you know, there are pros and cons to both, and I'm going to try to try to lay it out, starting with, with running for distance right now. So basically run training for distance. It's certainly viewed as a more traditional method. I can remember back, you know, in my earlier career of running it, I would just go specifically go out for a run and say, all right, I'm going to get three miles today, I'm going to get five or six miles today. But what's interesting is many times I ended up, there was variations in how long I ended up being out there and some of the factors that were how I felt or the conditions or the terrain, or maybe I chose a different place to go run this time around for my five mile run versus the other one. And so there was some huge discrepancies on how long I was out there on my feet. And so that was running by distance. And, and so, you know, the only positive I can really pull out of that was the fact that if I kept running the same one or if athletes run the same distance over and over on the same course, they might be able to see some progress being made and getting faster. But outside of that, there are some big cons against running for distance. And, and, and with those said, the cons definitely outweigh the benefits in my opinion. Now, one of the biggest cons of running by distance, as I mentioned earlier, was the potential for overused injuries when, you know, you, you know, when you maybe a five mile run might have taken you 40 minutes or something, but the next time you go do it took you an hour because you did a whole different course of the terrain or the elements were different. And then turn around. He's like, I haven't been on my feet for that long. And then this is where those injuries start to occur. And this is the warning against running, against, in my opinion, against running for distance. I think I see this the most, I have seen this the most out of friends who have gone running. And it's like they, they run by distance. And I. What do you do, Ryan? I go run by time. And you know, again, like I said, it's adding more times than not. It adds way too much time on feet. That volume time on feet ends in injury. You know, and in talking about this injury thing with the cons against it is while running, you know, run training unfortunately has a very high by most studies. I mean I've seen a lot of studies out there, but on average 50 to 70% of runners get injured in a given year. That is insane to me. It's crazy. I hate seeing that. But running by distance doesn't account for the most important variables that I mentioned earlier, like intensities, time and intervals. Most importantly time on feet. Example of this, as I was, you know, also said earlier too is like go out for a six mile run, one day it's 45 minutes, the next time you go out it's an hour and 10 minutes. You just added an exponential amount more time. Yeah, the intensities were probably different, but you know, what is your body used to that pounding for that amount of time either? And so there, there is a point of no return. So you know, with, with distance as a primary focus is again there's also that risk of rushing through your runs to get them over with which you know, may hinder your training goals too. I love that you're laughing about it. Just like, have you been there? I've been there. I know, I remember Beck every day. Every day. Yeah. And in the desire to complete a set distance quickly can lead to neglecting proper pacing and basically ineffective training. So it basically turns into random training. And one of my favorite things to say as a coach, random training produces random results. But now, now I'm going to move in. This is such a big question. Now we're going to talk about running for time, running by time. So ironically enough, I literally just got done with an hour and 20 minute.

Carrie Tollefson: Run today and bragger because you know, I only went 35 minutes. So stop it Okay.

Ryan Tibball: I didn't realize how far or how long you ran exactly, but yes, but I'll start with this. Your body understands two things when it comes to working out training. It understands intensity and time. So time based running can absolutely be a game changer when prescribed properly. Now the pros, again, the pros of running by time is that the likelihood of injury is far less when you are considering running by time and factoring in the proper intensities and slowly increasing that time on feet through your, through your training as you get ready for whatever you're training for, a 5k, 10k marathons, etc. So that way you can control that time on fee. So controlling the time on fee can most certainly help minimize and reduce the potential for injury. Also being able to train by time, the training stresses, the residual training stresses are quantifiable when you can identify, measure the time and intensity within your run intervals. So this is important in the longevity of the sport of running in injury prevention. With time based training, you can specifically set time intervals, set your zone intentions like zones 2, 3, zone 4, zone 5, zone 6. These zones by definition in themselves require specific work times and recovery times to allow for adaptations to occur. So basically removing the pressure of completing a certain distance and focus on the quality of the session, the intentionality of your session by time. So lastly, I will end with this. It's such a big question, but running by time is most beneficial with when, especially when coming back from injury. And I think this is important to say to people you're coming back from injury or you just, even just starting out, you haven't run in years and you're like, you know what, I'm ready to go do this. It's safer and much more achievable to measure from time on feet and that way you can again hopefully prevent any injuries. The only con I do see, I have to mention this to be fair, is sometimes athletes may not feel mentally ready for a certain distance and if they have not run that distance, this is where the quality based training, specifically measured time domains and zones makes a big difference. I know we'll talk about what it's going to be like. Okay, well, do I need to run this amount of time or this distance in order to be ready? And I'm sure we're going to talk about that a little bit. But yeah, such a big question, Carrie. And I hope I broke that down pretty well and can see the differences and what it can, the impacts it can make.

Carrie Tollefson: Oh yeah. And I'm going to come Back at you in a couple things just because you know, I've done both, I've done both where I've trained by time and by distance. And I think also even though you coach and train by time, you're still looking at that distance. So it's, it's just we have to figure out how what works for our athletes and what works for a platform like RunDot. So I want to talk to you a little bit about RunDot. Like why did RunDot choose to have all of their coaches go by time and prescribe training by time rather than by distance?

Ryan Tibball: Yeah, that, that's a great question. I love this. And you know, the first and foremost, you know Rundot has done it, has leveraged and continues, continues to leverage AI across more than 20 plus years of training and race data. And, and that's very important to note is that again the 20 plus years of data collecting and, and is has gone through the machine learning processes and continues to get, gather the insights and the data analytics that has happened over this amount of time and continues to go. As athletes train on run, it continues. The AI develops and gets smarter and smarter and generates the most personalized and optimized training. And that's what RunDot does exactly. It personalizes and optimizes each person's training based on their age, their gender, their sport age, how long they've been running in general. It can take in past data from your Garmin devices, your Garmin connect and so it also accounts for what, what I like, and I have to mention this, is that what most runners don't understand is that temperature, humidity and elevation are huge factors when going out for runs. And RunDot actually environment normalizes your runs, your paces, your power, if you run by power, by chance and actually adjusts your program based on that. So RunDot is obviously not traditional in any sense because it utilizes, because it absolutely utilize real data and, and it again it quantifies the training, loads the training stresses from your run activities. RunDot measures training intensities, intensity distributions, time spent in zones, total time. And I as I mentioned the factors, the environmental factors are absolutely impactful on your day to day runs. I'm in Texas and it's been 90 plus degrees and it's amazing to see and it's so welcoming to see my zones get adjusted because of the environment so I can run that day, I can run the next day or work out the next day and not feel like I just blew myself up in 90 degree temperatures. So as stated earlier, training by time is more precise time is quantifiable. So that's why this is why we do what we do at RunDot Absolutely.

Carrie Tollefson: And RunDot. I mean because it's, it's fairly new to me too. So for someone that's newer to the platform or to the programs that are given to them, when you have an elite athlete and then you also have a new athlete, it, it doesn't really matter because like you said, it takes, it might take your old garment information and kind of calculate that. But how do you calculate it if you don't have any information for RunDot? Like what if you are totally new? How do you guys do that? Do you still go by time?

Ryan Tibball: Absolutely. But we start off taking in and having that when athlete comes on board is that they go do an assessment. And this is probably the one case that actually that an athlete would run by distance. At that point it's doing a 5, 5k assessment or a 10k assessment. Depends on the athlete. If it's an elite level athlete, I'd ask them to do a 10k assessment. Gathering in their total time it took them to do a 10k plus any. The heart rate data would be very, very beneficial in order to of heart rate and a newer runner, a brand new runner do a 5k. In fact, you know what, maybe a 5k may be out of the reach initially. And what I always tell athletes who are there is like, hey, you know what, let's go ahead and let's just start off. Let's go run for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, work ourselves up until we start to see that we, we can get to that point. Point of hey there there. Can go do a 5k give, give their best effort here. And that way we can really set up their zones, get their heart rate zones, get their pacing zones or even if they're running by power, get their power zones all set up. So those are those cases where we actually utilize running by distance to set the standards right there.

Carrie Tollefson: Let's talk about like a coach to 5K or a couch to 5K. Excuse me? When yeah, I coach women at Moms on the run, for instance, and I just took them to the track a few weeks ago and I had them do predict your mile time. And see and I, we weren't, we weren't sprinting it for some. We weren't running really hard. We were just saying okay, I think today I could do a mile in 12 minutes or 8 minutes or whatever it is. And one woman came up to me and said Carrie, I've never run for one mile straight. And she was a person that is a couch to 5k person. So what would you recommend there? Is that something different where you say go for a little bit more on the distance side or do you still do time?

Ryan Tibball: That, that's a great question. You know, I, I think, you know, we, what I would normally do with someone athlete coming off the couch to the 5K is like, hey, you know, let's, let's see what you can run at. You know, what kind of RPE, you know, rate of perceived exertion can you run at and feel more comfortable where you feel, hey, get to that uncomfortable feeling and hold on to it and then maybe walk for a minute and we do a little run walk method and. Absolutely. I love the run walk method. I've known marathoners who have done the run walk method and been gone under three hours has been very successful. You know, it's amazing. But going back to the question is like, yeah, methodically working by time on feet. It's like maybe you do the run walk where you run for three, walk for one. Again, it seems to always come back to time and, and, and not necessarily distance because, you know, any given day, you know, a quarter mile might take a person two minutes or four minutes. It, it just depends. But those are two different impacts. And while, you know what, let's just run by time and it simplifies it. It's more quantifiable in the stresses and time off, you know, et cetera.

Carrie Tollefson: So it's one of my favorite things to do on the treadmill is to be able to go with someone that doesn't run the same pace that I do. But we can go out and do timed intervals together and I might get a little further or they might get a little further or whatever. But it's kind of fun because we can say, okay, we're going to do four by, you know, six minutes or four by two minutes or whatever it is, and we still are able to do it.

Ryan Tibball: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, that's what I like. You know, you have that, those time intervals and then you can, you can compare and look at consistency in, in your efforts and, and seeing that, oh, you know, every time I ran for four minutes, I, you know, accomplished a quarter mile and, or, you know, and, and then you see that consistency and then that's going to lend towards specifically, you know, into RPE, even for that matter and effort, you know. Right. So there, there's, you see the, you see how those benefits of running by time can really really be very, very helpful.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, I always laugh when I think of the run walk method. Not because I think it's a funny way to trade, I think it's a brilliant way to trade. But my husband, during my first marathon, you know, as an Olympian running their first marathon, it wasn't my distance, but I remember like just being so humbled by it. And my husband, I said to him, I walked through the last six water stations and he was like, most people do like duh, you know, like that's kind of how it is. And you know, I think that it is so smart for anyone to really understand that there is nothing wrong with that. Especially when doing the longer stuff or if you're new to the sport of running, you have to build up slowly and like you said, having time as the goal might be the way that keeps you healthy and not, not injured. I want to know though, are there any sessions that Rondot prescribes that are by distance and not by time as much?

Ryan Tibball: Yeah, there are a few. And I think the most important one I mentioned earlier was the actual assessments. You know, getting those assessments done is really the big goal from the get go. When you get onto run dives like get those assessments done, do a 5k assessment or again, if you're more of an elite runner, a seasoned runner, you might consider doing a 10K. And in that way, again, these are very obviously they're distant focus. But you know, again, what you're gathering in is the data for how long it took you to run along with your average heart rate for that particular distance. And it's necessary because again, this is what sets up your zones and regular assessments are what continues to monitor your progress. And I think it's very important for athletes to understand with RunDot is that that's how you understand your progress, not by going out and try to run the same course over and over and over. Go in when and very methodically do these assessments when they're prescribed and you will see your progress happen. Another occasion that you might see on occasions is when the system will prescribe, you know, run 200 meters or run 400 meters or run 800 meters. It's like a good track session. So you might do, you know, two by fours or four by fours or you know, something like that. So that's where you might see a distant prescribed workout in your system. Outside of that, that that's pretty much it. Everything else is going to be run by very specific times and very specific zones so that it trains you properly and, and, and you know, to dive in just, just a little bit into what means by training properly is again you, you should only be spending so much time in a given week in, in zones so five or you know, maybe every couple weeks. And, and zone four, you should be spending some time in that one. Zone two, spending time in that one, those are important zones. And, and so you know, being able to measure that time spent and specifically prescribing those particular intervals in your workout is, is what makes progress happen. And, and, and, and it's again very quantifiable.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, I mean you touched on a little bit. So like my next question was, does the type of event you're training for play a role here? But you already mentioned it, like there are times when you prescribe a track workout and obviously you can do three minute intervals or whatever on the track, but when you have an athlete that's specifically trying to run a 5,000 meters on the track, you do see sort of need to know mile pacing or even you know, half marathon or half, half 800 meter repeat pacing, those kind of things. I'm losing my, my words with all these different distances. So what, how does that work though? You touched on a little bit. But does the system know that? Does the coach have to tweak it? How does it work?

Ryan Tibball: Yes, absolutely. And I love this, this is a great question because I hear it a lot from athletes coming on board is, you know, there are specificities to, and demands of all distances when it comes to training. But also there's some, many similarities. Assuming now this is the big one, assuming technique is good or acceptable, you know, but that's a whole other podcast.

Carrie Tollefson: We can talk about technique another time.

Ryan Tibball: Yes, but running it shorter distances like a 5K where, where high end speed is a factor, you will see more opportunities in RunDot to raise that functional threshold. You know, zone four also seeing fine.

Carrie Tollefson: Explain that a little bit because that is pretty high. You know, those are like big words there. So big words about that.

Ryan Tibball: Yeah. So your functional threshold, that zone four is basically what is a zone that is most sustainable, the highest amount of speed and power depending upon what you run with, that is sustainable for one hour. And so that zone four is that threshold zone where your lactic threshold is. And again as a short distance runner, 5k or 10k or you know, you think about, hey, you know, this is that zone that you're going to be running in and more than likely running in, in a race, especially a 5K where you're in zone four, zone five where that VO2 max zone. And you know my joke about VO2 max is, you know, VO2 max, you're genetically limited. But you know, again it's like I believe that most athletes fail to reach their genetic potential. But I also tell athletes, you know what you know, choose your parents wisely so that way you have the best do max zone. So there you go, there's your joke for the day. I, I've got no more Carrie. But you know, basically speed and anaerobic capacity and that's at zones 5 in is that anaerobic capacity is what needs to be built. And so RunDot's going to prescribe that to you at the right frequencies and durations because if it knows you have a 5k coming up, you put in the 5k race into your race calendar. It's going to know exactly how to train you and train you appropriately. So that way again hopefully avoiding injury and again. But it's also very important to note I mentioned earlier, all zones have specific time domains for workloads as well as recoveries. And I think a lot of runners have a tendency to neglect that recovery side. But it's so, so important that you can't sit, you can't tell a runner to go run in zone five, you know, three days a week. It's just a bad idea, you know, and, and because there is lingering, lingering residual stress on that body. And so Rundy is going to specifically monitor all that and be able to give you appropriate timing of when you should be doing that kind of work and achieving these proper adaptations with quality training. Now, you know, training for a half marathon load will absolutely, it does look different frequencies are different, time in specific zones are different. To achieve proper adaptations to your training specific to a marathon, half marathon, ultra marathon and to develop that and build that endurance, you know that zone two is going to be important. You're going to see more of that, you know, at the beginning that time on feet, building that stamina and, and, and also going into a little bit of that lactic threshold in, in those sub maximal efforts. So where you're not going, you're definitely not going all out but you're definitely trying to. What I like to say is raise the bar, you know, push, push your zones up through your training and so going into the sub at maximal efforts and you're going to see that kind of training is very specific to you. Again it takes into account everything about you is that that's what makes it personalized training. I, I know you haven't mentioned this But I'd like to mention this too was, you know, running on trails. We have a lot of trail runners and I, I think it's very important to note that running, running for time is much more beneficial to those trail runners because, you know, you think about, you know, when they go out, it's like, I know a lot of trail runners and I've done it myself. He's just, you pick a different trail half the times to go explore and, and, and you don't. If you start running by miles, boy, you can get yourself deep somewhere else and you turn around, you ended up adding 30 minutes to what should have been an hour turns into an hour and a half. And it's just not, you know, 30% more. It's exponentially more stress on the body. So that's why running by time is much better as a trail runner. And you know, the trail anyways itself adds to intensity, training intensity and difficulties. And, and that's why it's important to run, you know, by, by minutes rather than miles, even on the trail.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, I was wondering about that because, you know, if you follow elite distance running right now, you will see athletes that are on the track one week, on the roads the next, then they go and run across country, race or you know, they're doing ultras like at the beginning of their season and then they rest up and then they start doing ball marathons or whatever it may be. So they are really like back when I was racing, you ran the mile, maybe you would dabble in the 5k. Like that was the middle distance runners, they just stayed right there in their lane. They didn't dabble out onto the course, cross country course very often because it was either 4k or 12k. So if they didn't have a 4k, well then 12k was way too far for a 5k athlete. You know, that was the mentality then. Now it's just changing and athletes are, there's a huge range. They are running road miles all the way up to the marathon. So can you talk a little bit about how the program will adapt if you are doing different, you know, different types of racing, whether it's on grass or on the roads or on the track.

Ryan Tibball: That, that's. That is a fantastic question. And, and so, you know, I kind of go back to, you know, kind of what I was mentioning earlier is that you're going to get some sessions where they are track workouts too. And, and, but you know, keep in mind, you know, really the huge percentage of all the workouts are Going to be time based. And that's again very, very important to note is because they're time based, it is good for any athlete no matter what they're training for. Because as I mentioned with all the metrics that are being measured that residual stress and, and the, the training loads and the specific intensities in the specific zones, again, again it's good for anyone from the 5k all the way up through the ultra and, and you know, as long as you're wearing a device that's going to be measuring, hey, this is be going to, to, you know, ideally it be nice to have heart rate data associated with all of that. Yeah, I know many runners choose not to run with heart rate and I like. No, that's very important. There's a lot of what can be taken out of a heart rate graph. Throughout an hour and a half run, two hour run, you can see, you know, holes, you put holes in it. And this is outside of even the training part of it is like looking at going, gosh, what was your hydration like, what was your nutrition like? What did you do there? Or what did you didn't you do? But you know, to go back to your question again, because it's time based, it is, it is right for everyone, absolutely do this. And again, you, you know, like I said, there is nothing wrong with, you know, going to the, you know, utilizing the track properly and if you're going to go out, if you're a trail runner, yes, time spent on the trail is absolutely 100% important because of, you know, the terrain, the change in terrain that's going to require some different muscles, everything. There's a lot of adaptations that need to occur when running on trail. And so, you know, again, everything can be quantified through time. Easily, very quantifiable through time. And so going out on a trail run and methodically building up your time on that trail is what's going to be the safest and best way to do it in order to prevent injuries and be able to get to the start line of your race.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, for sure. I mean I'm thinking about all these fall marathoners and they're getting ready, especially those early fall, you know, October races. Like we are now getting to the final big pushes of their training block. So you know, they're thinking about that 22 miler, maybe some are even overshooting distance. We've seen a lot of people that are now going past the marathon distance in training, maybe more so on the elite side of things. But you know, they're trying to hit 26, 27, maybe even doing like a practice race. So what would you recommend there? Do you say, hey, I'd like you to Try to see 24 miles on your watch or do you ever like deviate a little bit just to give them that mental boost that they've actually seen a 24 or a 22 on their Garmin?

Ryan Tibball: You know, I would say that's a nice question and I do hear it often and it's talking that athlete off the ledge is what I end up doing most of the time. And you know, there's a difference between an athlete who's like say maybe, maybe perhaps have accomplished 22 miles in X amount of time in one of the workouts versus an athlete who has only gone 15 miles in X amount of time in one of the workouts. And they're saying, coach, I, I want to go 24 miles because I want to feel mentally ready for this. And I'm like, yeah, so we're going to go ahead and add nine more miles onto your, onto you. Meaning this is probably going to add at least another hour and a half onto you where you haven't even come close that amount of time on feet. The answer is absolutely not. And, but I, I give them, I give them this, this to co op of 2 typically, you know, I would have them much more ready. The system would RunDot would even have them much more ready. They're training without a coach. As long as what the, the important word is. And we've all heard this and it, it's like some music to some people and it's, it's an evil word to others. It's called consistency. Oh, and, and if you're not consistent, guys, you know, it's like, it's not going to benefit you if you haven't been consistent. Your longest run was probably somewhere in the 15 mile range. If you got a marathon in three weeks and you're going, hey, I think I should go ahead and run 24 miles this weekend. Hey, bad idea. You know, and just, you know, let's, let's adjust and let's, let's figure out another method. I do want to dive into this a little bit more real quick in this answer too, because there is a point of diminishing returns on long runs for most runners. And, and, and that that point of diminishing returns is somewhere between just above two and a half to three hours of time on feet. A lot of stuff is out there. Talk talks about this too after this point and What I mean by diminishing returns after this point, the additional physiological and structural benefits of running, they diminish. Running longer doesn't help you if you're not been ready for it and, and the risk of injury and the, in the time required to recover from this significantly increases. If you decide, hey, my race prediction says I'm going to run, you know, four or five hour marathon and the most I've been out on my feet has been two so I'm going to go ahead and run for four hours next weekend. Yeah, you're, you just, you're, you're playing with fire and, and yeah, it's probably gonna, it's probably gonna burn you. So the primary gains in endurance and fitness are achieved within that 2 1/2 hour to 3 hour range period. There's a lot of science and studies out there that show this. And so if I'm the coach, I say you know what, trust the process. The real concern would be are they hitting their time based sessions, are they being consistent, are they focusing on the other factors like recovery, nutrition, mobility, strength. There's so much more to running than just the run and if they are, I will reassure them they don't, they don't need to run a marathon in training to complete a marathon on race day doesn't need to happen. Reassurance comes from me as a coach and with RunDot quantifying and optimizing their workouts, they will be pleasantly, pleasantly surprised on race day.

Carrie Tollefson: No question for sure. But what do you say to an athlete that looks at their, that like for me, I mean I have for years talked about miles per week and you know what I'm trying to hit and things like that. How do you get like someone like me out of that mindset? Or do you still look at that like you prescribe time but then at the end of the week do you look at how much we've gotten in during that time that you prescribe?

Ryan Tibball: God. Absolutely. You know, looking at you know one it, it, you know, like we've been consistent and, but you know, also being able to, you know, look through all, all that, you know, your distances that you've covered in that X amount of time and just again I go back to, you know, my job as a coach is reassuring you that hey, you can do this, you're going to be tapered on rage day, you're going to be fresher, you're going to feel like a different person on top of that. So I think it's, it's worth mentioning that, that, you know, right now you may feel beat up, you know, through training, but, you know, it's like, gosh, you know, that, that, that, you know, 18 mile run, that was really, really hard today. And, and I like, do I, I gotta figure out what am I gonna feel like at mile 24, you know, or 20, you know, and it's like, you know what, you're gonna be a different person. You're gonna be fresher, you know, and taper. So there's some reassurance that needs to come into play. But in the end, every athlete has to ask themselves, are they being consistent? And, because that's, you know, that's the key. There's no magic besides that, you know, be consistent and you will build and build appropriately and avoid those injuries.

Carrie Tollefson: There are a lot of people training with run clubs right now. This is the fun time of year for most places to get together and everyone's doing their long runs or they're all meeting to do a hard session together. How do you recommend, and what do you recommend for athletes that are trying to use the RunDot program and then going in like, oh, we have 10, 8 hundreds today. What do you have? What do you, how do you mesh two things to make it fun for everyone?

Ryan Tibball: Yeah, I, you know, first I say I love running groups and I love the social aspect of them. It is, it's. I love the community of runners. I mean, it is great. And, and definitely I don't like keeping my athletes from joining any of those groups. I think I encourage it, in fact, even for rides too, even, you know, for my triathletes. But, you know, keep in mind, you know, the workout that many of these running groups are going to do is probably not, definitely not personalized and optimized to you and your PR progress. So it, so what can you do to, you know, mitigate that? I, I would say don't sacrifice one your quality sessions. And, and, and what I mean by that is those sessions that have those intervals in them that, you know, you like, I need to hit those intervals. Well, you know, what if your running group happens to be joining them, they go show up for that day again, if things, if things are diving between you and the running group and what they're prescribing for that day, Absolutely. I think that's probably the best way to figure it out. It's like, look, ask your running group, what are you, what are you all going to do this week? All right, cool. Now then, look at your own training and go like, how, which one of these, match up to the best and go from there, and then you get the best of both worlds at that point. So, you know, my rec, like I said, recommend is to pick and best match those days. And if, you know, for example, this isn't a run day for you, and you're like, man, my favorite group meets on Wednesday. I don't have a run prescribed today. You know what? Go run easy. Go run a zone two. That's going to be helpful. Just don't overdo it. Don't, you know, it's like, hey, my longest run has only been 45 minutes. And they're going to run for an hour and a half. You need to stop at 45 minutes.

Carrie Tollefson: Right, right.

Ryan Tibball: You know, and, and run. And be, be, be intentional. Be intentional run in, in that zone 2 heart rate and, and where your devices measure it. And because RunDot wants to know if you're doing anything extra, it's going to quantify that load and stress so that way it can continue to prescribe you safely. And so don't hide the data from RunDot. Don't do that.

Carrie Tollefson: Don't hide the data from smiling about. Yeah, don't hide. I tell all my athletes, whether they are 13 years old or they're 73, if you're going to have a coach, don't, you know, communicate with them. You need to communicate even if you do extra or you skip or whatever, because it all comes together when we're all communicating. So I like that. Don't hide it, don't hide it.

Ryan Tibball: Don't. I feed on Strava. I'm connected to your Strava garment. I do that with all my. I'm connecting with you, and I do it so I can see what they're doing, but they also can see what the coach is doing.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, it's like that, that old song. Somebody's watching me, you know, their eyeballs are going back and forth.

Ryan Tibball: It's so true.

Carrie Tollefson: Okay, but we talked earlier today about you doing an hour and 20 minutes. I only did like 36. But did you want to get. I don't even know how. Do you know how far you got in that hour and 20 minutes?

Ryan Tibball: Yeah, I did. I think it was like 9.23 or something like that.

Carrie Tollefson: Okay, so did that bug you? Because, like, I went until I got to 5.0, whatever. One, because Strava, you know, sometimes, like, doesn't give you that, so you got to go over five miles. So did you like, oh, I'm at 9.23, maybe I should run.02 more to hit 9.25. You think about it?

Ryan Tibball: Nope, I did not. I love, I love it when it's odd because I know my friends are looking at it going, why did he, it's like everybody wants even numbers. And I, I laugh. In fact, I always hope that it ends on something weird like, you know, 9.97 miles. Oh, my gosh. You were just.03 from the 10 miles. Why did you stop? My workout was over. That's why. You know, like, yeah, I'm, I'm different. I know I'm a different cat, you know?

Carrie Tollefson: And you're disciplined.

Ryan Tibball: Yeah, I guess so. But, yeah, I don't, I've seen some runners, though, and I, and then triathletes, too. You know, I'm not picking on just one, one discipline.

But, you know, I, I tell you, they, they, they get to like 11 or no, more like 13 and a half miles. Oh, man, I really wanted that. Even 15 today. I'm like, okay, yeah, don't do it. You know, don't do it. You know, please don't do it. And, you know, again, you know, we're only talking a, it sounds like a little bit, you know, but it, it turns out to be a lot more time and, and, you know, it goes back to, hey, don't put additional stress on the body. I, I, I know that that was an odd case, but, you know, the difference between emailing out your miles? It was 9.97. You ran an extra 0.03. Second I heard. You know, it's not, it's just a funny thing. It's just a funny thing to mess with people.

Carrie Tollefson: But it can add up. I mean, really, if you think about that every single time you're trying to round up, you can add a few miles and, you know, when you're running, you know, 60 miles a week, does that three matter? Maybe not, but when you're new and you're trying to just run. Well, I should go back to minutes. Maybe it's, you know, 100 minutes for that week. If you keep on adding, that's going to, you know, that, that could hurt you. So you have to be careful. So good to hear that you are okay with 9.23.

Ryan Tibball: That's right.

Carrie Tollefson: The cool down question. So the cool down question comes from our audience, and today they want to know how many days should you run and strength train without overdoing it? So what do you think, coach?

Ryan Tibball: First got to find out where they're at. I mean, you know, like, hey, I Just came off the couch. I haven't run in years and I haven't done any strength training in years. You know, with my background in CrossFit and lifting and stuff like that, I absolutely 100% prescribe that to all my athletes and highly, highly recommend. Just short of just requiring all my athletes to do strength training. You know, with that said too, adding the strength training in, you know, it's always a good idea to start off very, very, very light, if not body weight, and, and start there with a very specific strength regimen. And, and, and that's that regimen that hopefully will help you build as, as a runner. And, you know, and that would be very helpful. But again, you have to be mindful of, again, how much strain you were putting on yourself. And again, it's not exactly, I can't exactly give the exact answer without knowing the athlete just saying, hey, be patient. Be very patient because you can get hurt so quickly by adding in too much strength and too much running too fast. That's the most common error that I have seen out there all the time is they, they get hurt within the first two or three weeks of starting the training. And, and I, I think it's just being patient and being, listening to your body is very, very important. And, and I, I think this, you know, again, if this athlete reached out to me, I think, all right, we, we got to talk. You, this is a conversation. We can't just, can't just tell you this is how many days you should run. Now it's like it might be just good enough for one day, one week and you do two the next week and then, and then we add strength training in as well. And I, not to ignore mobility. I mean, this wasn't even asked in there, but I'm telling you what comes first. Mobility or strength? Mobility. Start there. Can you even move in space? Oh, boy. This is just a loaded question. I can go on and on, but.

Carrie Tollefson: You know, we have, we have lots more to talk about in the future for sure. But yeah, I agree with you. You can't just look at the articles online and say, oh, they say two to three times to strength train a week. That's what I'm going to start doing. I mean, you know, again, like running, like walking, there's a huge, huge diff, like, I mean, different differentiation between starting off or a veteran athlete that knows how to take breaks and come back from injury or from time off. So you have to speak to your coach. You have to have a plan and stick to it.

Ryan Tibball: Absolutely.

Carrie Tollefson: Well, thank you so much for your time today. This has been really fun.

Ryan Tibball: Absolutely. Carrie, it's a pleasure to. To meet you. I've heard a lot about you. So it's. I was excited. I was like, I gotta knock down my run and hurry up.

Carrie Tollefson: I know, I know. And you had to go twice as far as I did. So next time I'm gonna call you up beforehand and say, what are you doing today? Because I'm going to see if it's on my plan and if I can go that far, too.

Ryan Tibball: All right. Oh, challenge. Yeah. Love it.

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