095: The Evolution Of The Endurance Athlete With Rich Ryan and Ryan Kent

In this episode, we talk competitive hybrid athletics, specifically preparing for HYROX Dallas on November 23 with RMR Training's Rich Ryan and Ryan Kent. We kick off with the inclusive and inspiring fitness culture in Austin, specifics about the Elite 15 qualification system, and the importance of proper training, nutrition, and mental preparation. We also share personal anecdotes and insights from our individual journies, including the evolution of training methodologies, the importance of staying in touch with high-intensity efforts, and managing nutrition effectively.00:00 Intros Chapters 00:23 Morning Run and Austin's Fitness Culture 02:19 Diving into HYROX 02:32 HYROX Elite 15 Explained 04:10 Qualifying for Elite 15 05:30 HYROX Course Challenges 06:17 Evolution of HYROX 07:05 Training Strategies and Improvements 10:12 Aerobic Capacity and Erg Training 11:45 Stay Power and Training Balance 17:03 Data-Driven vs. Intuitive Training 31:44 Defining a Hybrid Athlete 35:00 Transition from Spartan to HYROX 40:47 Meeting and Rivalry 42:18 Rivalry and Motivation 42:39 Fitness Comeback and Relocation 43:22 Friendship and Training Partnership 44:17 Steeplechase: The Hybrid Event 47:34 Evolution of Endurance Athletes 50:04 Nutrition and Performance 55:32 Challenges with Food and Training 01:07:19 Fueling Strategies for Competitions 01:15:36 Workout Planning and Pacing 01:20:53 Conclusion and Future Plans Strength, endurance, and wellness supplements to fuel your performance. SAVE 10% at BPN Supps: https://bit.ly/nickbare10audio Follow: IG: instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ http://instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness http://youtube.com/@nickbarefitness Keep up with Ryan and Rich: Rich Ryan: https://www.instagram.com/richryan610/ Ryan Kent: https://www.instagram.com/dr0p_the_hammer/ RMR Training Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi5cih2R3tbNcifyvD2xRqQ

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Nick Bare?

  Today on the podcast, we have Rich Ryan and Ryan Kent. And we're talking what it takes to be a competitive hybrid athlete. What's up, boys?

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Dude, thanks for having us, man. Absolutely.

• 0:20Speaker 02

  It's great to be here. Appreciate it. Really looking forward to chatting.

• 0:23Nick Bare?

  Been a nice nine mile run this morning.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. I feel like that's just the best way to just kick things off. Get a little bonding experience, doing a little fitness.

• 0:33Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  Felt like cross country practice.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  It did, especially with like all the other people we saw out there running groups of like high school kids, college, pro runners. And it's like still dark. Like that part was crazy to me. Like everyone's up and at it bright and early here in Austin. I don't know if that's to beat the heat or if that's the culture or what it is.

• 0:55Nick Bare?

  I think it's a little bit of both. I mean, that's one of the things I love about the city and I say that often, but it is filled with committed individuals who even if they are not professional athletes, they treat their sport, their hobbies, their passions like they are a professional athlete. I respect that.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  It matters. It like, I've been in communities or areas where I've lived in where I felt isolated, right? Where I was doing the thing and I felt I was the only one on the planet who did this. So being around something like even being in Colorado and being here, it just feels so much more inclusive and just validating of the effort that we're putting in, you know?

• 1:34Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  It's like when we walked in the building this morning, I was like, I haven't even been here a day yet and I'm already feeling inspired by the people that we've like come across already.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's a cool spot.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Pretty cool spot.

• 1:45Nick Bare?

  Appreciate it, guys. We got a full day of training, full day of eating.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:50Nick Bare?

  Uh, Kent, you're falling behind on your calories a little bit.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Dude, I was waiting for you to say, listen, I was waiting for him to say something because you gave us the breakfast after the run.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  Didn't eat it.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Didn't eat it. And now he prepped lunch for us and I didn't eat it.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Didn't eat that.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was just waiting for Nick to call me out on that one.

• 2:07Nick Bare?

  I care about, I care about your progress and your fueling and your gains.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Oh, I've been eating. You just don't know what I've been eating. Candy bars.

• 2:15Nick Bare?

  I did, I saw, I saw the Coca-Cola. Yeah, I did see the Coca-Cola. So I want to get into your guys' background in a little bit to provide context of where you're coming from, but I want to dive right into some high rocks, specific stuff really quick.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Let's get totally.

• 2:32Nick Bare?

  What is the Elite 15 in high rocks?

• 2:36Speaker 01

  You want to take that one?

• 2:37Speaker 02

  Sure. So the Elite 15 is basically the pro track for competition in high rocks. There is, they take basically your times from the general courses and your top two combined times throughout the season will qualify you for an Elite 15 race.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  And through the four different majors, you can qualify to the Elite 15 World Championships. So basically the Elite 15 is kind of a blanket statement to invite athletes into their qualification system. And then once you're in the majors, you can qualify for the World Championships. So it's basically an elite field of high rocks athletes. That's 15 people.

• 3:19Nick Bare?

  So when you are on, when you are qualified into the Elite 15, are you then considered a professional high rocks athlete?

• 3:28Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I mean,

• 3:30Speaker 02

  they, I mean, the term they use is pro. It depends on what your idea of professionalism, professionalism is, right? Like, are we doing it exclusively?

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Like, no. When I think of pro athlete, I think of, are you supporting your life off of

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  sport. And I don't think everyone in the Elite 15 is, is doing that.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Definitely not. But is it at the pinnacle of the sport? Is that what, is that what you consider as pro? Then yes. But is it going to be able to sustain a lifestyle of professionalism? Like, no, not yet. For most of us.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:06Nick Bare?

  How did you guys get into the Elite 15?

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Well, I got into it by.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  This year, anyway, it's an interesting system that High Rocks has where previous results dating back to, I think, a full calendar year, if not more.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Depend, sometimes more, but.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  A result that, so I'm currently, my, I'm in the Elite 15 for the 2025 High Rocks season, simply based off a result that I got at one of the majors last year in Chicago of November of 2023. I won that major. If you win a major, you're automatically into the Elite 15 for the following season. So I haven't had to go out searching for races to find fast times to get me into the Elite 15 because I was fortunate enough to win one of the majors last year, which auto bid me into the next season, whereas Rich has not had that luxury.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  So last year I had to qualify through a major, the top, they took the top three with a roll down to five in each of these majors. So I qualified to finish third of the North American Championship in TC to get me into World Championships, but I don't have an auto bid. So now I'm still fighting to get my time back into that Elite 15 based off times.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Got you. Okay. Which gets.

• 5:30Speaker 02

  It's hard.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  It's a slippery slope too, because, you know, High Rocks is trying their absolute best to, to standardize these courses across the globe, whether they come here to Austin and set up an event in the Austin Convention Center, or they're in Hong Kong, you know, setting up event, like, they do their best to, to make these courses as similar as they can, but in a lot of cases, there's just things that you can't predict and, you know, the, the surface of the floor, which changes the friction of the carpet with the sleds and there's a lot of.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  It's also getting more competitive.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  You know, you, it's just the growth is explosive, the availability to train for this is broad, so brings in a lot of different athletes. So it's getting better. Like, people are just really bringing it to, to, to these courses.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  The level, I mean, when we first started, I did the first High Rocks, that was in, uh, in the United States in 2019, it was in Miami and, uh.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  It's it's crazy like I think they only had like 400 people at that first event in Miami. I mean, it was, I would consider it a huge fail, but like Hi-Rock says, they had a plan. And now it's cool to see events hosting, you know, in the UK, like 10 to 15,000 people. They're pushing through an event in a weekend.

• 6:54Nick Bare?

  That is crazy.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Whereas five years ago, I mean, you'd walk into one of these convention centers and be like, what, like, what's going on?

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, 13,000 in Birmingham.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Just this past weekend.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  It's crazy.

• 7:05Nick Bare?

  What were your times when you first?

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 7:07Nick Bare?

  Hi-Rocks is compared to, what's your best times now?

• 7:10Speaker 02

  What was your first time?

• 7:10Speaker 01

  My first one was an hour seven.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  Mine was two.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Hour seven.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  67. What took you?

• 7:17Speaker 01

  You got blown up on wall balls? I got blown up on wall balls. My first wall ball experience took me almost eight minutes to do 100 wall balls.

• 7:25Nick Bare?

  How are you breaking this up?

• 7:27Speaker 01

  I think towards the end, it was maybe two or three at a time. Yeah, but it was one of those things where I knew that if I devoted time and took this seriously, that I could be very, very good at it. And I, I went all in, man, you know, like, I wanted, I wanted to be a professional athlete. And I put all my eggs in one basket and I dove in headfirst, man. And, you know, thankfully, it's, it's worked out for me so far.

• 7:58Nick Bare?

  And now what's, what's your current PR?

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. So my, started out at almost 68 minutes and now I ran a 55 12 last year.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm, I'm 58, 11 or 13 or something like that.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  So I'm pretty much like done with wall balls before Rich even gets to the wall balls.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Happened once.

• 8:19Nick Bare?

  So obviously this sport is evolving pretty quickly. Where do you anticipate we see Hi-Rock's times in the next five years?

• 8:30Speaker 02

  I mean, the world record right now is 53 low.

• 8:33Nick Bare?

  Is that Hunter?

• 8:34Speaker 02

  That's Hunter. And there was two athletes just recently, Alex Rankovich and James Kelly. They ran like 54s.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  It's going to come down to the running, how fast people can run.

• 8:47Nick Bare?

  I was gonna say, where do you find time?

• 8:49Speaker 02

  It's the run.

• 8:49Nick Bare?

  It's the run.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  It has to be. I mean, there's some space on the sled push and pull. That seems to be the place where you can gain the most time. And how well you can recover from that and continue to still run well. But I don't know, 50, 51?

• 9:04Speaker 01

  I think someday someone will break 50. I think that's

• 9:07Speaker 02

  I haven't, I haven't run the numbers on that, what that looks like. Like what that run pace would have to be. Is that like 515s? Like is like, yeah, of course it's possible. But right now, guys are running like five, if you're running 530s in between, you're the fastest runner. So if you can break it to 515s, 510s.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  I mean, it's all, it's all percentages, right? Like you think about the event as a whole, the running, so each 1K run, it adds up to about 50% of the competition. But you know, the, the skier, you need to train it, but like the skier is only 3% of the race. The sled push is 3% of the race. The burpees are, you know, 3 or 4% of the race. It's the running is what you spend the most time doing. So that's where you're going to be able to just maximize your, your either your potential to get faster, or if that's something you need to work on, it could go the other direction as well.

• 10:06Nick Bare?

  I think about that during a lot of these training sessions where I'm spending a lot of time on the ergs.

• 10:12Nick Bare?

  And if I'm doing a workout that's 5 to 6K of skiing or 5 to 6K of rowing, I then think back to, well, it's only that 3% of the actual competition.

• 10:25Nick Bare?

  But my fall process is this is a way to build aerobic capacity and conditioning without trashing the legs and lower body. Is that the same way you guys view these ERGs?

• 10:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty much exactly. Pretty much exactly. Like you still get the aerobic fitness in these cross-training modalities. You might not get one-to-one better in running, but you can definitely improve how well you can deliver oxygen and just the whole aerobic capacity piece. And it's just like for the recovery part of it, like there is a big, high-volume sport. So being able to bounce back, it's easier on the ERGs. I mean, I'm sure you've noticed that no impact, the range of motion is fixed. So you can't really do as much damage as running. And that's another reason I think that it will continue to improve. What people can do in terms of their aerobic capacity, how big they can build it because they can recover so much better. Kind

• 11:18Speaker 02

  of like triathlon, you can spend so much time on a bike and just build this huge engine. I feel that same way about High Rocks, like with the ski, the row, even the bike, I think translates pretty well.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  And what the machines can do that running can't do is it can build power. And I think ultimately, the High Rocks event is just how much power can you sustain for the duration of the event. So working the ERGs just kind of builds up your power output as well.

• 11:45Nick Bare?

  I heard you guys refer to this term recently, stay power. I'd love to talk about that because I love that whole concept and just that term. And even since you guys have been here in Texas, I've heard you use that term, not just around training, but even around business. What is what is stay power?

• 12:05Speaker 02

  So yeah, I mean, that's just how long you could sustain a high output, right? Just like without, it's basically fatigue resistance is kind of how we think of it. Just being able to be a strong, a strong runner, a strong athlete, and being able to put out for a higher, for a high ability and just being able to kind of sit in it. It's kind of how I think of it.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree with that.

• 12:28Nick Bare?

  One of the things I had to learn early on when I started training for High Rocks. Is kind of how to use the ergs the right way. So I always do my run in the morning, whether that's an easy run or tempo workout, track workout. And then when I was programming my circuits in the afternoon, on days that I had high rocks, specific circuits, I was also adding in 1K repeats in almost every one of those workouts and it was trashing me. I was running almost too much, too high intensity running. So I started subbing out of the, a lot of the running in the afternoon with more erg work. And I saw a huge difference in just my ability to recover, bounce back and still get that aerobic conditioning work.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Right now, you're, you're going through the, the exact same thing that we all went through. I think when we first started training for high rocks, it's, it's finding the, the formula, the right balance of, of how much running versus how much strength versus how much specificity. And you're going to mess it up a few times before you can find out what works for you. And it is very subjective, you know, like how much Rich can do is not going to be how much I can do versus how much you can do. Like everyone's little, got their little way of doing things. And I, I think that's also a really cool thing about high rocks is there's not this

• 13:53Speaker 01

  one blueprint on, on how to get results, you know, it's, it's what works for you, you know? Cause let's just say a power athlete, they're, they're, they're probably not going to need to, or a strength athlete, they're not going to have to spend as much time lifting the weights. They need to be out there working on their running ability. Whereas someone who is maybe a little thinner, they're a great runner, but they need to build strength. They're obviously going to spend more time lifting weights and doing those things. So it's, it very much depends on the individual and what kind of what their strengths and weaknesses are as an athlete.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Do you think, uh, if you, you'll keep the ergs, if you go back to the roads? Are you gonna like keep that as part of the routine?

• 14:34Nick Bare?

  Oh, for sure.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:36Nick Bare?

  I've, I used to hate the ergs. I think it's because I didn't spend enough time on them or learn how to use them properly.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  There's like a muscular point too, that just is so limiting when you start, when I've, especially in the ski, the row I find that too. It's like, I will crap out muscularly first because I'm not conditioned and I'm not putting in the volume that I put on the runs. So it just feels like, kind of torturous at first. And then you get your form down. Is that what happened? Did you just like, kind of dial it in?

• 15:05Nick Bare?

  It just clicked eventually. Like, one of my favorite workouts that I love and hate is 10 500 meter repeats on the rower, 60 seconds rest in between, trying to hold very consistent paces. I look forward to that workout, but I also dread it every single time.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  You crushed that, by the way. I saw that YouTube video where you did 10 by 500 row.

• 15:31Nick Bare?

  They hit 136.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's nasty. Were you feeling it in like your glutes? Were you muscular?

• 15:36Nick Bare?

  My glutes were on fire.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  It's so painful. Like, have you done like a 5K on a, on a row?

• 15:41Nick Bare?

  No, but I've done a 2K.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  2K is miserable. But a 5K at like 3K, for me, I'll get on there and my glutes will be on fire, like I can't go anymore and I still have to sit there and do two more K. But it's like that terrible feeling that just-

• 15:53Speaker 01

  I can't sit on the row for more than 10 minutes at a time and then I need to move to the next, whether it's the ski, or the bike, or go run, and then come back to it. I have a hard time sitting on the row for, unless you put a pillow under my ass or something.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  10 by 500, that's-

• 16:10Nick Bare?

  Yeah, after like rep 5, I have to just like, stand up during that 60 seconds and just move some things around.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  I mean, dude, that's a workout, your power output shouldn't go through the roof.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  And that's what thing with the ergs too, is that like, like Brian said, with the, with the power point of it, like I've gone back and forth of the best way to kind of approach this for high rocks in particular. And at first I was like, maybe I'll just treat it how I treat running where it's like anaerobic threshold, something you can kind of sit in for 45 minutes, something like that, and doing repeats with short rest, like longer repeats with short rest. And now I'm kind of thinking it is, taking it a little bit further. So you do get that power output benefit from it and you still, you know, you might be touching outside of anaerobic threshold, but it is still building a huge aerobic-

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Engine with that stuff. So I think I'm leaning more toward the higher end for the the machines lately, anyway.

• 17:02Nick Bare?

  Right. It seems like you guys complement each other really well in terms of we were talking about this morning, like an objective perspective and a subjective perspective.

• 17:13Nick Bare?

  Rich, you seem like you are really into the numbers and the data. And then programming based off that data. And then Ryan, you're more like.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Feel.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  This feels good.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, definitely. RPE.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  Totally agree with that. Right. And figuring, and that's why I think it does work really well. It's like, I might be able to come with like a hard reason. And Ryan will come and be like, well, this is how this feels. And this is how it feels after I do it for X amount of time. And right. And it just like, is makes things really well rounded in terms of like, trying to figure out how to to connect with people with our programming and things.

• 17:49Nick Bare?

  Do you look at any data?

• 17:50Speaker 01

  I do. Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't say I'm like, I don't pay attention to it.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  He, he writes his workouts down in a journal on paper, like every day since he was like eight years old.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  I have, I have years and years of just like a pile of just spiral notebooks that I write in my training, like every day.

• 18:08Nick Bare?

  Do you go back to them?

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. Especially if I'm in a funk or something and I need to

• 18:15Speaker 01

  look back on just like, man, I had that one race back in 2021 that I absolutely crushed. Like, what was I doing? In that buildup for that race, all I have to do is flip, go to my 2021 notebook, flip open to that week, and I can literally look at the data of like what I was doing. So in that, in that regards, I, I use it almost on a daily basis. But when it comes to like training, I think just because I started at such a young age, four years old, I started running competitively. I'm just so in touch with my body and, or not in touch, but in tuned with my body and like the signs that it's telling me, like even in like the easy run this morning that we were doing, I'm like, I'm constantly checking in with myself and like how I'm feeling.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  And I think a lot of people end up, you know, they go for a run and they throw their headphones on or a podcast and they're not, they're not in tuned with what's going on internally. They're distracted by, you know, whatever. And if you're trying to compete in a competition, you know, I think whether, whether you're competing at the elite level or you're just training for like the, the Christmas 5K, like.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  You should be in tune with your body a little bit and then listen to the signs that it's telling you. That's going to be your best way to to make adjustments on the fly. Cause sometimes you could look down and your heart rate could be low and it feels it feels like you're working way harder than what your heart rate's saying. Or it could be vice versa. So sometimes it's not to be trusted. At least I I think that way. Cause I'm like, I don't care what the heart rate says. I care how I'm actually feeling, you know? So, yeah, I mean, there's a time and a place for for all the gadgets and things that, you know, are available for us today, but I'm so old school when it comes down to it.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Even when it comes to like the shoes that I like to run in or race in and I'm not big on the super shoes. I'm very much old school racing flats with, you know, not a ton of cushion. I like to feel the ground when I run. I don't need the springy pogo sticks bouncing me on my run. So I'm slowly coming around a little bit to some of the new technology. Cause it's, I mean, if it's there, you should use it, I guess, but.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  It's good to learn. It's good to know, right? If it's there and it's going to be helpful. So I like to try to adopt stuff a little bit earlier and see. It's like, is this is this useful? But you gotta be cautious. You know how stuff comes out and it makes promises. But yeah, for sure.

• 20:44Nick Bare?

  In the last couple of years of training, obviously you're always testing and trying new things and just experimenting to get better, to improve.

• 20:55Nick Bare?

  Is there one thing you could each share that might have been an unlock in the last couple of years of high rocks training specifically? That has elevated you to another level of performance? For example, I know Kent recently been talking about you now implement a full rest day. As potentially pushing you forward as hard as rest days are for a lot of us athletes.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  That would be recent. That's pretty recent.

• 21:20Nick Bare?

  Committing to that.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, that one's recent. I think also I'm getting older, you know, I'm 38 years old. Still feel like I have a lot of years to give.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  But we don't recover as fast as we did when we were in our twenties. So giving myself that one rest day, at least for me, is a way to let my body absorb the training as it's happening, rather than waiting for a taper to just hopefully absorb the months and months of training. But as far as like in the last couple of years.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. What do you think has worked? I'm always, I always think the thing I'm doing now is the thing.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  And so I have a hard time not like throwing out all the past stuff, but like looking back.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Recency bias.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Totally. So I'm always like, but the proof is in the results. So yeah. What do you think in the like?

• 22:10Speaker 01

  The thing that's coming to mind would be like really like not, not getting away from VO2 max efforts, even for high rocks training where it's pretty much an aerobic event.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Still doing zone five efforts through metcons. Whether that's, you know, machine, I mean, it could be, it could be machine work. It could be, you know, an EMOM, it could be anything, but not, just staying in touch with that top end, like heart rate. That way, you know, I don't know. There's been times in a high rocks race where the sled maybe, you gotta work it a little bit harder than you thought and your heart rate bumped up five to 10 beats. You didn't expect that. If you haven't trained your heart rate in that appropriate zone, like it's gonna, it's gonna mess you up. So when I think back, the, the main thing would not losing touch with the top end.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  You know, it's very much, you can get caught in those, those zone two, zone three, zone four. But don't forget about that zone five. That's, that's valuable too.

• 23:17Nick Bare?

  What's a zone five workout look like for you? Duration?

• 23:21Speaker 01

  That would be shorter. Yeah. Maybe like 25, 30 minutes tops.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  With rest though.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  With rest.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  With rest and maybe only.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  I mean, it could be anywhere from a minute to, to four minutes in duration. Um, and then having almost like equal rest. So if you do like a big four minute high output, you would then also recover for four minutes, you know, which that doesn't seem very specific to what we're doing in the event where we get no rest breaks.

• 23:53Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Can move the needle.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  It can move the needle.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  Moves the needle pretty quick too.

• 23:58Nick Bare?

  Are you spending those say four minutes on like an Echo bike?

• 24:02Speaker 01

  No, it it could literally, I could say, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do a minute of burpy broad jumps, right into a minute sled push, right into a minute of lunges, right into a minute of ball balls. And I'm gonna send it each one of those for a minute and then take a four minute rest, something like that.

• 24:21Nick Bare?

  And then repeat that multiple times?

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Repeat that.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Have you done any VO2 stuff on the like the row or the, you probably get there into zone five in that 10 by 500, but have you ever do like, um, I did a workout the other day, it was four by four minutes on the ski yard.

• 24:34Nick Bare?

  I saw that.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  Just as hard as I could go and it was miserable and I just blew up really bad. But I was like chasing the feeling of what we want to get out of that effort. Have you ever done anything like that?

• 24:44Nick Bare?

  No, and I I've thought about that recently as I've watched some of your training. And that's why I've shifted some of mine to go after some of this more higher output work. Because a lot of my training up until this point has been a high effort, big volume. But I think sometimes the volume was a little bit too large where the intensity couldn't be great enough. So now I'm, I'm starting to rethink some of the things that I could change in the future to get to some of that zone four, zone five, really targeted work.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  And that's, that's where I've, I've missed the mark in the past, right? On, on either ends of the side, like I'll either lean too heavy into the volume or too heavy into the intensity. And where really, what I think is, looking back on training now, where I currently am, is expanding the volume first and then filling in the intensity later and trying to expand on that intensity within the base that I've built, right? So making that, being able to hold that higher effort for a longer duration because it is. 60 minutes of pretty high output, right? If you really want to, like the guys who are running the world records and Ken's running 55, it's like you're putting out almost from the start. You've got to find that line right where you can go as hard as you possibly can before

• 26:03Speaker 02

  you, before you pop. So spending time there and building that volume right below that line, I think is, is really important.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  It's interesting because in a, in a running race, and you would know this, doing many, many road races, you can kind of build into the effort and like when you get to that point where you're like, okay, let's, we're there, let's just sit here and just, this, that's just where we're going to be. Whereas in high rocks, it can, there's like this ebb and flow with, you know, the effort and the heart rate, you know? It's not like this, let's go pin it at 155, 160, and we're just going to sit there. This thing, you might have your heart rate 130, 160, 170, 150, like it's, it's kind of all over the place.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Um, so that, that aspect of it needs to be trained as well. Getting comfortable with like, having these ebbs and flows of, of effort, um, within like a training session, which I know you've been doing more of recently.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  A buddy of mine once said that, uh, high rocks, it's an hour long race, but it feels like the second hour of a two hour race, right? There's no, there's no like gradually getting into it like in an hour race or a half, that you just kind of get into like this discomfort and you kind of hang on for like the last third. This is just like uncomfortable.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  It's like the last 10 miles of a marathon.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  It's just, yeah, it's uncomfortable right away.

• 27:31Nick Bare?

  What events specifically within that race, do you see your heart rate elevate the highest?

• 27:40Speaker 02

  So I think traditionally burpee broad jumps is going to be what Jack's

• 27:43Nick Bare?

  Yeah, I could see that.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Jack's a heart rate pretty high. For me, on the sleds, my heart rate actually comes down. But what I think is happening, and our other partner, Meg, Meg Jacoby, she had been doing some lactic threshold training, and she tested her her blood after the sled push. And he said the the levels that she had was like 10 to 12 millimoles of lactate in that blood, which traditionally in like anaerobic threshold training would be like two to four. So she was like well beyond. So it's not really adding up the way it would in traditional endurance where like where your heart rate might go up, your effort goes up, and then the lactate levels go up.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  On the sled, you're slowing the heart rate down, but you're like where you're creating this like acidosis is isolated in your legs, right? So that pops really high. So even though my heart rate goes down on the sleds, my RPE goes way up.

• 28:43Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Because in my general fatigue feeling and like the how you feel, it's it's kind of like inverse, which is strange. So I think by the time people get the burpee broad jumps, after they do two sleds, now they're dealing with all this lactate, and it's been 30 some minutes. I think that's where you really see like a big elevation in it.

• 28:59Nick Bare?

  Right. It's kind of what I talked about in the podcast with you guys, on your podcast, is not what I'm nervous for, but what I'm anticipating is just figuring out how to pace this race appropriately, based off of changes in heart rate and efforts between running and the stations, and just like figuring that out in my first competition, I think is going to be my biggest learning curve.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  And you coming from, you know, doing your marathon where you're hitting 550 splits or whatever, just like mile after mile.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  Don't be as conservative as maybe you think you need to be.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  That would be.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  Just send it, dude.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Just go for it.

• 29:48Nick Bare?

  I'm gonna send it.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  Just go for it, man.

• 29:49Nick Bare?

  Definitely send it.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  I'm excited about that.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  What do you think you're gonna ski? Are you ready to talk strategy about this thing?

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Ski is a trap, too, by the way. The ski can be a trap.

• 29:58Nick Bare?

  In what way?

• 30:00Speaker 02

  You're feeling good and you can just kinda go harder than you probably should.

• 30:04Nick Bare?

  I think you were telling me to do 10 seconds greater than my 500 meter.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  2K.

• 30:11Nick Bare?

  2K effort.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, 2K plus 10.

• 30:13Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Would be.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  Safe.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Safe.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Now, some of us, we play those numbers a little bit closer. You know, I've definitely been like 2K plus 4 in some races and you come out of the ski like, might've worked that a little bit too hard. That run coming out is not, you know, it's taken 500 meters to flush out. Kind of what you just did, get your heart rate back down, so.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess it depends on how conditioned you are on the ski. Cause 2K plus 4 would be aggressive. It's doable. The top, like, yeah, the top dudes.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  And you just, you just finished that run, right? Like, the first run, I mean, it's the first three minutes of a race, like, you're feeling great. And then you stop and now you're on the ski and it's like, oh, I've got all this energy. And you could totally just get overzealous and, and push that ski way harder than you should. And then, next thing you know, man, you're going backwards.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  And where you make up time, like we talked about before, is the sleds. Like, if you push and you gain five to six seconds on the ski, you might give that back plus some. Or if you conserve, you can gain like 30 seconds on the push and pull. Cause you have a little bit more juice.

• 31:21Nick Bare?

  I'm feeling strong on the ergs. I mean, I spent a lot of time on the ergs the last couple of months. So I'm feeling strong. I've done a lot of volume, a lot of work, a good combination of volume and intensity. But we'll see.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:34Nick Bare?

  We're getting close for less than 30 days.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  We are, dude.

• 31:36Speaker 02

  It is.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  We are, man.

• 31:38Nick Bare?

  All right, so I wanna know, in your guys' opinion, you asked me this before, I wanna ask you this. What is a hybrid athlete?

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, off the cuff, I mean, it's not something I sit around and think about like a ton.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  But I, I think it's someone who is putting themselves in the arena. And they are testing themselves one way or the other, like it, it, it can be.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  It can be a variety of things, but like you're, you're putting yourself out there, you're putting your goals out there, you know, and, and you're. You know, going to a race or a competition or an event or something, and you're putting your training, the work that you've been doing to the test. You know, a lot of people.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  We call them YouTube athletes, you know, they're just there for the clicks and the content. But like, if you put them in an actual competition, they're not going to do anything at all. It's like what they're, what they're doing is really not that spectacular. It's just optics visually. And I think that's why when this conversation came out. You know, a year or two ago, and you know, someone asked me about Nick Bear and I didn't know a lot about Nick Bear. I'm like, oh yeah, that's just a YouTube, YouTube athlete. Until I started doing more research and I'm like, no, wait, this guy is, this guy's legit, dude.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  Putting in work.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  He's putting in work. You know, I don't need to go over all the, the things you've done, but like, that's, that's what I'm talking about, man. I think you need to put yourself in the arena and, and test yourself and, and be ready for success or failure. You know, like you, I think the term athlete means you were competing in something. If you were just training and exercising and working out, I don't think that makes you an athlete.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  That's just my opinion.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that, I think that's where the competition side of it. Where it's the term athlete for me, right? Like if.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  If you were to talk to someone who's doing

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Because the hybrid is a whole nother. Like, what does hybrid mean? That could go down.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  But, right, well, then it's so broad. It's like, what are we even like, is CrossFit a hybrid athlete? Like, kinda, like, yeah. But the, um, like, if you went to a gym and everyone's training like bodybuilding, do you think they would call themselves bodybuilders? Or they would probably just call them, they probably wouldn't, they probably wouldn't put themselves in any bucket. And even in the running world, I've found people have a hard time calling themselves runners. Have you come across that? It's like, I'm not really a runner.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  But I've done 10 marathons. It's like, you know what I mean? But I've done like marathons. Like, you're definitely a runner if you've, if you've put yourself out there and done that. That's where I get kind of crossed up. If people are calling themselves a hybrid athletes without the competition side, it's like, then you are just training a modality. And like, that's fine, but I don't necessarily, I wouldn't necessarily attach the athlete,

• 34:31Speaker 02

  like, term to, to, to what they're doing. You know, it seems like the only place that has been doing that, that people kind of put themselves in this bucket when they're not competing. You know?

• 34:41Speaker 01

  And that, that segues well into each one of your backgrounds. Cause you both have experienced collegiate athletics. And then racing, Spartan, Deca Fit, obstacle course races. In your opinion, is HiRocks of all the things you've done, the pinnacle competition arena of hybrid athlete training and competition?

• 35:11Speaker 02

  So far.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  So far.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  And, and back when I was doing the Spartan racing thing from 2014 to 2019, which is when I got into, you know, HiRocks, I was training this way even for obstacle racing. Everyone's like, why are you doing bench press and deadlifts? And all this strength training when like, we are out running trails. We're, we're doing 10 to 12 miles and 3,000 feet of vert. And it's like, dude, and why are you, why are you on the rower? Why, why are you doing all of these, these different modalities that maybe aren't going to translate onto the race course? Like, you're way stronger than you need to be, but I just enjoyed it. I enjoyed it so much and it brought me.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Just a lot of happiness, man. I love working out in the gym just as much as I love running. Like, it's literally like a 50/50 love, you know, for both, both ends.

• 36:06Nick Bare?

  I'm the same way.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  And so then when High Rocks came about, man, it was like, oh, now I can still do what I love to do, train the way I want to train, and it's actually gonna, this is gonna translate on course. This is, this is perfect for me, because, you know, Rich will say the same. We thought, we thought Spartan racing was going to be, like, that was hybrid sports, you know?

• 36:28Speaker 02

  It was the closest thing.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  You know, you gotta be fast, you gotta be strong, and maybe it kind of was in the beginning, and then it kind of went a different direction, where, you know, some of the things that would slow down a runner, like carrying a heavy sandbag up a, up a black diamond ski slope, those things started going away.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  So, you know, when, when the chance, when High Rocks came around, it was, I was already ready to kind of make a transition out of Spartan. The timeline just worked perfectly with where I was at.

• 37:00Nick Bare?

  Was Spartan making these changes to make this, the sport and activity more approachable to a larger group of people?

• 37:08Speaker 01

  I, maybe. I think a lot of it.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  They, they did have a thing where they wanted to be in the Olympics, and so standardization did become a thing, but they're an event company, right? That's where, they're not a sport.

• 37:20Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  So when they, I think it was just business, they just kind of looked at it, it's like, where is the sports side bringing us? And they had to, they had to endure COVID, just like everybody else, and an event company takes a big hit on that. And they just looked at it like, this is not a place where we need to invest. So I think it was more of a business decision, really, which is, which is a, you know? Hopefully not something that will happen with High Rocks. But, but just to circle back a little bit on that is, um, I think it's important to...

• 37:50Speaker 02

  To note that like the term hybrid does not necessarily mean like run like what we enjoy is events that are kind of running or endurance biased with some strength because CrossFit has existed. Right. And you could say that that is also hybrid because it is they do everything, but it's strength bias. You know, so that existed, but coming from an endurance background, like we both love running. We would watch it. We still do. We competed in that for a long time. We like that part of the aspect of competition. And that's where this high rocks really kind of like differentiate itself from CrossFit because.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  One's focused on endurance and the other one's focused on strength.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, like to to excel in the sport of of CrossFit, you have to be really strong. In this, you have to be huge aerobic engine, right? And they they cross over a little bit, but the biases are are tilted differently.

• 38:45Nick Bare?

  That's how I view what I do currently and how it's evolved.

• 38:52Nick Bare?

  Where it's endurance first and then strength always. And it's been this slow evolution where I look back at 2009, 10, 11, 12, when I first started getting really into fitness and building my body, it was just strength and bodybuilding. And I was running when I had to because I was in college in the Army ROTC program. So I was just running because I had to run because we were doing Army PT tests that I had to pass. And then slowly, a few years later, it was a 50 50 split between strength, bodybuilding and running.

• 39:33Nick Bare?

  And I wasn't willing to sacrifice body composition and strength goals to be a faster runner. And over the last couple of years, I've prioritized endurance, but strength will always support my endurance. But strength and bodybuilding and resistance training being in the gym, that is no longer my priority focus. It is to support my endurance training. I think that's why I've also aligned with high rocks coming out of a bunch of marathon and ultra preps these last couple of years is because it does prioritize endurance, but strength is always a foundation of that endurance training.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  Hmm. Yeah.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Not one, you know, one's not more important or better than the other. It's just kind of like what's your, what's your poison?

• 40:22Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  I guess.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we like the running. We like the running part of it just because that is our background. You know, we're fans of the, of endurance sport and so Hi-Rox kind of just checked that box as well as, as well as anything we really could imagine. So we're fortunate that it, that it came around. I mean, like Ryan said, I'm just, we're the same age, just at the twilight of our athletic career. But at least we got it for sure. At least we, we got a little bit of it.

• 40:47Nick Bare?

  How'd you guys meet?

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Dude, it's kind of a funny story.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Well, Rich, I didn't like Rich when, when I first.

• 40:56Nick Bare?

  I mean, you guys, you definitely have different personalities.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:00Nick Bare?

  And yeah, I can see it like in the, in the banter, which is almost like brothers. But I could see how maybe you guys started initially.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Like brothers too.

• 41:07Nick Bare?

  Hating each other.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  I didn't hate him. Well, okay, I'll try to keep this, this story a little brief, but

• 41:16Speaker 01

  I had a baby during COVID. I didn't have a baby, my wife had a baby. We had a son and when we had our kid, I took a little break from competing. I, a week or I should say a day turned into two days. Two days turned into three days, turned into a week. A week turned into two weeks, two weeks into three. Next thing you know, I haven't trained for two months.

• 41:40Nick Bare?

  At all, not touching anything.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Nothing. And during this time, you know, COVID's kind of, it's a, it's moving on. They're starting to put events back on and Rich

• 41:53Speaker 01

  during that time was dominating all of the, the Deca Fit events, which is another event

• 42:00Speaker 01

  cousin of Hi-Rox, I guess you could say. And he's crushing it. But before I took, you know, we had our kid, I was, I was the man. Okay, so I took, took a break. I'm out of shape and now Rich is the guy on the scene. He's winning all the races. He's the big name. So I, I'm just like naturally like, I don't like this guy.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  I say nothing at all, I'm just handling my business.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Never had a conversation with him, but I'm like, he's

• 42:25Speaker 02

  hinting the shadows, hating.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  Taking my thunder. Yeah, I don't like it.

• 42:28Nick Bare?

  I get it.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  And that honestly was like a big motivator for me to like get back in shape was to try to like prove that like I'm still the guy. So that's what I did. I ended up, you know, one, it was a rough comeback into fitness after taking almost three months completely off, but I eventually got back to where I was at, overtook Rich, was the man on the scene again.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  For a very short time and the big race happened.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  But ultimately, we ended up meeting at a, at a, at a DECA event.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  And I moved to Colorado. I was living in, in Philadelphia and my wife and I got married, made the move to Colorado. Ryan was there at the time and it was just kind of linked up. It was, it was a high rocks where we like first met. We would correspond a little bit on Instagram, how people talk these days, you know? And then we just.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  It was just one thing. Well, I got, I was like, damn it. I freaking, I like this guy. Like we're going to be friends. So like I wanted to hate him so much, but then when I finally met him, it was like, we're going to be boys.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. So we started training together and we travel a lot together, go to all the same races, pretty much. Yeah. And now business partners, doing the thing.

• 43:35Nick Bare?

  So it's only a recent friendship, actually.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Last two to three years.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. I moved in 21 or 22, moved out to Colorado.

• 43:45Nick Bare?

  Yeah. Were you guys close to each other in Colorado, in proximity?

• 43:49Speaker 01

  We're like 40 minutes apart.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. In Colorado, everyone, all the people kind of live in the same general area, you know, it's like they move up, live close to the mountains and then the mountains happen. And then, so everybody kind of lives in the front range. So it was like 30 minutes straight shot.

• 44:03Nick Bare?

  And you guys just, just so happened to both race the 3000 meter steeple chase in college?

• 44:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Rich got me there.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Rich, Rich had a faster steeple time than me. I can, I can give him that. But like you were saying last night, that was, or was it this morning, that the steeple chase is kind of like the hybrid event.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  It's a hybrid track and field. Yeah. Outside of like the decathlon.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  But I always thought it was so cool that like we had to do an endurance event and, and jump over these barriers and, and go through a water pit. Like that excited me, you know? So I think even from, you know, a much younger age, that style of training and, and event just always appealed to me. Something a little non-traditional, I guess you could say.

• 44:50Nick Bare?

  For anyone who doesn't know what the 3000 meter steeple chase is, can you paint a picture of what that race looks like?

• 44:58Speaker 02

  So the history of it, I believe, is from like equestrian sports, from, from horse racing. So they're, they literally drag out big horse barriers. They're probably six inches wide, right? Six inches like tall. Like the barrier is big. They don't move the way that the 110s or the 100 hurdles will like hit and they'll fall over. And then it's

• 45:19Speaker 01

  No, did you see that guy eat it during the Olympics?

• 45:23Speaker 02

  Did you catch it? Did you watch any of the track to feel in the Olympics?

• 45:25Nick Bare?

  I did, but I didn't, I didn't see that one.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  So you can like the, the, they don't move these hurdles. Like they are, like if you hit them, you go down. And then there's one part where they have a hurdle over a water pit for some reason. And you have to clear the water pit in the middle of the race. So you have to clear that seven or eight times.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  There's five hurdles every lap and you, you run the first 200 meters without barriers. And then from that point on, you have seven laps and every lap you have five hurdles. And one of those hurdles is the water jump. So you end up doing 35, 35 hurdles. By the end on your last lap, man, you're, you're, you're, you can barely get your legs up.

• 46:06Nick Bare?

  I believe.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Over that thing, man. You're so lactic too.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  It's a miserable feeling. It's not. It starts out feeling good because you gotta go a little slower than a typical track race. But by the end it's, it's not a feeling that is like any other.

• 46:16Nick Bare?

  No. What even draws you to wanting to, to compete in that?

• 46:22Speaker 01

  I will, I never was like the fastest guy, you know, like I was, I was decent, but I think the steeple is kind of where the guys, either you have, um, I feel like it's just like you have talent, but you're never going to be the best at like the 5K or 10K or like the 800, 1500. So that's where they, they kind of send.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  It's like you're not, not fast enough. But there's also that different element. It's like, I think, I, I believe I'm more athletic than these other runner runners. So it gives you a little bit of an advantage where the 15 or the 5K is just going to be output, little tiny guys just running around. So, um, yeah, it probably was a little bit of that. There's a, there's an opening and you kind of have to be a little crazy to try. Most people don't want to. So you just pop into it and give it a shot and it's fun.

• 47:11Nick Bare?

  It's different. It's so different.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I still remember like my coach was like, hey, we're going to throw some hurdles into our 1200 meter repeats today. I want you to jump over some hurdles.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  And I like I did it and I was like, dude, this is this is fun. And next thing you know, like the next week and I was in the steeplechase. It was crazy.

• 47:29Nick Bare?

  That's wild. So I'd love to know from like your guys' perspective, being athletes for a long time now, how you've seen the endurance athlete, the typical endurance athlete evolve from what you might have experienced and thought an endurance athlete looked like when you were in college? And who people look up to, who is aspirational in like that endurance space? And then what has changed over time and how we now view endurance athletes? Because I would argue that if you showed today's endurance athletes, high rocks athletes, for example, to people 20, 30 years

• 48:11Nick Bare?

  ago, no one would say that's an endurance athlete. So how are you seeing the evolution of that?

• 48:19Speaker 02

  So if, when I look at it and I look at it at the like competitive level for just say we'll talk about running on that end. I think the awareness, information and education available around like nutrition and strength training is just so much more widely available and accepted that it's definitely changing the body composition of these athletes to look stronger, to look more healthy. And I think that is carrying beyond then. So it's not, so then people aren't put into a certain box of a body type. Like you were saying, it's like, oh, everyone is small or is super lean. Now, even on the competitive side, athletes don't necessarily look that way because

• 49:02Speaker 02

  of the information that's available and because of the hardships of people of the past athletes, right? The thing, the stories that come out and the horror stories that that people kind of endure because of this lack of information that that they had when they were going through it.

• 49:14Nick Bare?

  And we all suffered from it.

• 49:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. And we all, we all went through it. You know, we, we shared these stories before and like, uh, just now it seems like there is an acceptance of it. Where before it's like, if you want to be fast, you have to run. You shouldn't like lifting isn't going to make you faster was kind of the, was kind of just like the tale.

• 49:32Nick Bare?

  I mean, I, yeah, you don't touch weights when you're just focusing on running.

• 49:38Speaker 02

  The word, the word bulky.

• 49:39Nick Bare?

  Yeah, like I don't want to get, I don't want to get bulky. When you guys were in college, did you spend any time in the gym?

• 49:44Speaker 01

  We went, but I didn't do really anything in there.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  I did some stuff in the summertime. We, our coach made us go. He didn't come, but he made us go. And then we just kind of like stood around, not on a program. And then we just like went running. So it was just like a time to meet up to run some more. But we didn't really have any guidance at all.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  And you know something crazy is I'm sitting here in front of you right now, weighing like 190. And my 5K time right now versus where I was at in college, weighing a buck 50. So a 40 pound difference. Dude, if I put in a 5K block right now, I could probably come pretty darn close to what I ran in college.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Almost 20 years ago, 40 pounds lighter. So.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  I don't, I mean, at some point, like it can become dead weight, but if you're able to use your muscle for, for power. You know, then I think it's a great, it's great to have like extra muscle, you know? But the moment it becomes dead weight, you know, then you're not able to utilize that, that strength that you have. But I don't think it, I used to think it mattered, but I don't think it really matters so much anymore. In terms of like the weight thing and, and how much muscle you have, because we're starting to see evidence across the world now of all these really high level athletes who are dipping their toes in, in both

• 51:18Speaker 01

  areas and are seeing like insane results from it.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  I'm still taken back when I see people, like you're a good example, Nick, is in the split shorts, just being jacked, running around and running like runners did, like how runner runners run. Just with the training. So I always think that that's interesting when people are stepping into that field and, and take it real seriously and not like wanting to worry about like the stereotype that came before them.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  So it's still, it's still like kind of a transition for me, seeing people that are getting real into running.

• 51:54Nick Bare?

  Do you think part of that evolution, you guys briefly just touched on it there? Is maybe the the spark behind the evolution is the understanding of proper fueling in diet and being a healthy runner, which then automatically creates bigger, stronger runners. When you guys were in college, what was the talk around nutrition and fueling, if there was any?

• 52:21Speaker 01

  None. I don't think there wasn't any. I went, no, there wasn't even like a resource for, you know, hey, like if you're dealing with something, eating disorder, whatever, like, hey, go talk. That stuff did not exist.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  I think we had one like kind of group meeting with all athletes where they kind of

• 52:36Nick Bare?

  You were D1 though. I was D2.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  We don't care.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  But they just like put all the athletes in in an auditorium and were like, basically kind of like food pyramid stuff, just general, everyone just like, why do we have to be here? Um, so no, we didn't get a ton of guidance. There was a point where I did reach out to my coach to try to get some help because mostly on my end, it was mostly ridicule. Like I was had dealing with some weight issues early and the way I was told about it was basically just like being embarrassed in front of my teammates, you know? So when I went for him for help, he sent me to the physical trainer who like, you know, tapes your ankles and they didn't know what to do either. And then, and it took a lot for me to even ask for help once. That's really not in my character.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  So then when it didn't come through, I just figured I just will have to deal with it on my own. So yeah, we didn't have any really like hard resources for us. I hope that there's more now.

• 53:32Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  And maybe just with the amount of information available through social media, through YouTube, and people can kind of do a little more self-study on it. Uh, but before it was like, yeah, just read a book or two, didn't really have any strong resources and just made a bunch of mistakes.

• 53:47Nick Bare?

  Were you struggling to, were you overweight? Then your coaches were encouraging you to lose weight?

• 53:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Encouraging is a nice way to put it.

• 53:54Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:56Nick Bare?

  Although I'm assuming there was like this. Expectation of like, hey, you have to get skinny. You have to stay skinny. Do whatever it takes to get lighter, to be faster. And there was never a conversation about fueling your body to perform.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. Right.

• 54:11Nick Bare?

  And fear of gaining weight.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. From the coach's standpoint, right? Like, I was underperforming and my body composition did have something to do with it, right? So he wants to get the most out of his athlete and I was there on scholarship. So he's like, what's your problem? And I'm like, I don't really know how to do this. Can I get some help? And he's like, no, figure it out. So, yeah, there's just not a lot there for us.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  I was telling you last night, going into my junior year of cross-country season in college, I lost 25 pounds over the summer, healthy, you know? And then when, when I got into the season and my results were all of a sudden, like, the times were dropping like significantly. Like my 8K got better by like over 90 seconds. My 5K dropped by like 45 seconds. And I'm thinking like, oh, this is like the recipe for success here. I need to be light. I need to be thin. And then your body, I think naturally wants to eventually get back to its homeostasis of like, what, what is your natural body weight? And for me, mine is like 175, 180, you know?

• 55:17Speaker 01

  So I could only sustain it for so long until you just can't anymore. And that's when, that's when like the eating disorders can pop up. And like, like it did for me.

• 55:32Nick Bare?

  Do you think endurance-related sports naturally create unhealthy relationships with food? I, I, I feel like there are more people with unhealthy relationships with food who participate in endurance sports than there are who have healthy relationships with food, fully healthy relationships with food.

• 55:52Speaker 02

  It's just because everyone, I mean.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  What percentage of people do you think that are doing like endurance are doing it for the aesthetics?

• 55:59Speaker 02

  Quite a bit. I mean, that's where my mind went too. It's like, is it the endurance sport that's creating the poor relationship? Or is it the the person who already has the poor relationship is more likely to lean toward endurance because of caloric burn?

• 56:16Nick Bare?

  It's good observation.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  Right. So I think that it's hard to kind of untie the two. And I probably would think it's like, if I need to burn this many calories, I will do this much cardio. And then it's, but on the other end, when you do a lot of output, it's hard to eat that much. I mean, it's been great being being around you, seeing the way that you kind of operate in your nutrition. I've been taking advantage. Ryan has not decided to forego.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  I might die in this workout.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  Your hospitality on that. But, um, but yeah, it's also hard to fuel enough if you're not like locked in. But I probably think it's more the person who has already had some poor relationship and is kind of drawn to endurance.

• 56:59Nick Bare?

  Gravitates towards that.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 57:01Nick Bare?

  Yeah, I've trained with a lot of different people, men, women, high level athletes, you know, people just getting started. And I'm always surprised how often I meet people who have really poor relationships with food and think lighter is better. And they will just bury themselves before even getting into a training session because, I mean, I'll never forget this one day on this during this track workout. I've told this story multiple times before, but I was doing this track workout with this group of athletes here in Austin. And I was running with this female, who was a really strong runner. She was struggling to keep up during the workout. And I asked, you know, what did you eat this morning before the workout?

• 57:46Nick Bare?

  And she said, nothing. And I'm thinking, well, I've already had 120 grams of carbs, you know, at 6 a.m. I was like, well, what'd you have last night for dinner? She said, chicken and veggies. I was like, well, when's the last time you had some carbs? She's like, maybe yesterday morning, like my oatmeal and breakfast.

• 58:02Nick Bare?

  And that was a, an eye opener for me of, okay, obviously this is why your performance is being affected. And you're getting so upset because you can't perform, but you're self-destructing, like you're creating this environment and these conditions for yourself. How many other people are experiencing the same thing where you cannot even achieve your potential? Cause you're not doing the bare minimum to fuel that potential.

• 58:33Speaker 02

  And that's, yeah, like where to even start with that with.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  With just the, and there's something else what you're talking about with the education and what people are kind of knowing about it. And the bad rap carbs have had in the past, it's coming around, right? I mean, it's probably been, I was what, maybe 10 years ago when everything was low carb. And I guess we're still kind of fighting it a little bit, but I remember I had a moment where I got a carbohydrate powder, just whatever from GNC or something like that and put that in my water before my run after a long stint of being low carb. And the feeling that I had at the end of the run was just so night and day. It felt like I was like coming on and still having energy. And then that was just like the moment that clicked. It's like, oh, this is actually a tool I can, I can utilize that's, that's going to help me perform and not something that's going to like make me fat.

• 59:23Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 59:24Speaker 02

  You know, so I think we're coming around to that now.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  I think most people just don't know, they're not educated in it.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  It's a lot. It's like, where do you start? You know, and, and trying to figure out where the right place to be, you, you should probably seek out help. You know, you should probably get a coach or somebody that can help you figure out where your habits are and where to start on it's all, but it's within your control. You know, you can, and it's low hanging fruit, the nutrition part, especially.

• 59:49Nick Bare?

  Low hanging fruit. Yes.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  Especially for, for performance.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  I mean, you were saying last night, you know, you got back to your house and you were a little bit hungry before bed. And you went to the fridge and pounded some potatoes.

• 1:00:02Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  And got some, got some carbs, you know, like you knew like today was going to be a big day. And, but you're educated and you know that, and I, I, I'm starting to get better at that, like being like, okay, tomorrow morning I have a big volume workout. I'm going to need extra carbohydrates, extra calories. And, you know, I try to set myself up for success. Haven't always been that way, but I am getting better. But I mean, even if I'm, if I'm struggling with it, you know.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  You're also like the same thing that you mentioned. When I've learned this whole thing, it came from tracking and just like being meticulous. And that's how I learned, like Kent is just intuitive. He like knows when he's hungry, he knows what to eat. And I think a lot of people miss that. They don't have that at all. Where you, you have it much like a little bit more like dialed in internally.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  I'm learning a lot about myself. It was podcast.

• 1:00:57Nick Bare?

  This is actually intervention.

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:01Nick Bare?

  That's how I learned actually nutrition as well. And how to manipulate my calories and macronutrients is through a very strictly tracking. Cause I signed up for my first bodybuilding competition when I was in college, it was 2012. And I went to my nutrition teacher, cause I was studying nutrition in college. And the head of the dietetics department, I went to her and I said, I just signed up for a bodybuilding competition. Can you help me create a diet? And she said, I have no clue where to start. Cause in college, we were focused on nutrition around disease intervention. Diabetes and cardiovascular disease primarily. And it wasn't around performance nutrition or sport.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  Body composition, yeah.

• 1:01:45Nick Bare?

  None of that. So that's when I went online. And at the time, if it's your macros, flexible dieting was really popular and tracking your nutrition. So I downloaded my fitness pal. I set my macros, made a plan. And over the course of like 16 weeks, I reduced primarily carbohydrates and fat. Kind of like stair step down, reduce total calories and then lost body fat. And that's where I learned how to track, how to manipulate calories, macronutrients.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  That's pretty crazy.

• 1:02:16Nick Bare?

  And that was like such, that was an unlock for me in terms of, oh, I can make these direct changes to my diet and see how it affects body composition.

• 1:02:28Nick Bare?

  And then eventually it was, well, how do I apply the same principle to performance? And making sure I'm eating enough and then adjusting primarily carbohydrates to fuel greater efforts and demands that my body requires.

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, an unlock's a good way to put that. I was around the same time where I was looking for that and I found it really challenging because everything I searched for before, it was like a method or like some rule, right? When it comes to dieting where macros isn't really like that. It's like eat whatever you want, but as long as you're tracking these macronutrients, then you can manipulate however you want. So I had a hard time grasping it because it was a little bit more obscure than just like, don't eat carbs or don't eat this food or just eat this food. And I found it really kind of challenging to understand like where I was supposed to go with this because there was no hard rule, you know? Did you have a challenge like that with, with that or was it pretty intuitive on your end?

• 1:03:25Nick Bare?

  Um, it was intuitive in the beginning, but it definitely messed me up because when I was like 14, 15 years old, I had a severe eating disorder. So when I learned how to track macros, that re-triggered this control that I wanted to have around food. So my bodybuilding competition was over. I thought the next day I'd be able to stop tracking macros. And for years after that, I kept tracking things. Like if I said I was going to consume 300 grams of carbs in a day, it was 300. It wasn't 299. It wasn't like 301. I vividly remember this, this time in college where I made my entire meal, I weighed everything out.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  Eating shouldn't be this stressful, guys.

• 1:04:09Nick Bare?

  It should not.

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  But it's also, but when it's control, it's like you, you hit that, you hit it and it doesn't, it feels like less stress. Like I, I'm exactly where I need to be. I know exactly what's gonna happen.

• 1:04:19Nick Bare?

  True.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  Like the control part makes it feel less stressful.

• 1:04:22Nick Bare?

  Yes. So yeah, this time in college, I, I prepped my meal, I weighed it all out, I put it in my fitness pal, it was counted for, I was walking back to my room to eat it. College apartment, lived with five guys. I mean, shit all over the floor. I trip, I drop my food. It was like eggs, potatoes, cheese, everywhere scattered. I picked up every piece of food.

• 1:04:45Speaker 02

  Put on the scale.

• 1:04:46Nick Bare?

  On that plate and I ate every bite. And I, even me after that, I was like,

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  This was perfectly calculated.

• 1:04:54Nick Bare?

  It's like that, that was messed up.

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  That was, that was a little crazy.

• 1:04:57Nick Bare?

  Messed up. So it's like, it can be a blessing and a curse.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:05:02Nick Bare?

  Uh, cause you can control this variable, but it can

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  Kind of open the door.

• 1:05:06Nick Bare?

  It can take over.

• 1:05:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:08Nick Bare?

  The goal of what fitness and athletics and sports should be.

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  Is it something you think about like nowadays, or do you just, you, you've, you've done the numbers for so long that you just know? Like how many grams of carbs are in X? Like you just, you just know, like you don't have to spend the time planning out what you're going to eat throughout the day. You just, you already have a general idea.

• 1:05:33Nick Bare?

  I'll occasionally track just to like have an awareness, but it's maybe like once every two to three weeks. But now my, my diet's so consistent and I know what's in what, that I can have a ballpark range.

• 1:05:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:48Nick Bare?

  And I know like if I'm putting a big effort out, it's like this intuitive, I should add some more carbs in around this training session. I should add some more carbs in post-workout to fuel. And then it's this subjective feedback loop. Where I'll wake up the next morning and I can tell if I under-fueled the day prior, especially going into a big session. I'm like, ah, I definitely like should have ate something else yesterday in preparation for this big day.

• 1:06:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. The, uh, I'm probably around the same kind of method now. I don't, I don't track often. And what I've found to be really helpful is that I started to understand what it felt like subjectively when I was fueled. And so that, then that's a marker I can kind of aim for without having to track all the way there. Where before where I would be under eating, I just thought that that's how I should feel. But when you eat more, you can kind of feel the satiation happening, you know? And that's something that, that I found was really helpful with it now too. Now, if I do have a big session, I can kind of tell where.

• 1:06:51Speaker 02

  How much I can continue eat, like I'll eat and I'll stop and like, should I eat more than this? Like, am I fueled? Did I fill it? Did I hit my marker? And I found that to be really helpful too, because it pushed me to eat to actually fuel myself.

• 1:07:04Nick Bare?

  Right. What's, what's kind of interesting about these high rocks competitions? And this will be new for me, where potentially competing later in the day, fueling enough without being overly full in preparation for the competition. So how do you guys kind of prepare for a competition day when the competition is later in the afternoon or evening?

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't even, it's, it's more than even just the diet. It's like the mental piece too. Like, what are you spending your time doing during the day to where you can show up eight hours from now, 10 hours from now, mentally fresh? You know, like, for me, I, I try to stay away from like the stimulation things, you know, like I try not to look at my phone as, you know, all that much throughout the day. I just want my, my brain and my mind to be as fresh as possible from like a mental standpoint, you know, there, there's, there's things you can do too, to keep

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  your mind fresh. From a, from a diet perspective, I don't have like one thing that I follow, like every, every time that I race an evening race, but I do find rather than, you know, if, if you wake up and you, you hit your, your, your race in the morning, you can have a big dinner the night before, and it can kind of carry you over to where in the morning, you might just need a gel or like a little bar, and then you go and hit, hit your race. I have found that I actually just eat normal at dinner. And then the morning of, I actually try to have like a bigger breakfast

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  that carries me over through the day, where kind of after, after my breakfast meal, I'm just kind of nibbling the rest of the day, topping myself off with glycogen or, or whatever. So I just kind of move my last big meal up one versus, you know, if the race were in the morning, you know, versus.

• 1:09:05Speaker 02

  It's more time to digest.

• 1:09:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Easy carbs, stuff that I know is not going to be sitting there. I try to stay away from fats or big, big protein.

• 1:09:15Speaker 02

  Meals in the middle of the day, just things that I know, white rice, peanut butter jelly, peanut butter.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  PB and Js, baby.

• 1:09:22Speaker 02

  Jelly and Js.

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  I could go for a PB and J right now. That sounds really good.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  I can eat a PB and J and be out the door in three minutes.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  Have no issues with peanut butter. Peanut butter is a little bit slower for me. So I'll try to give a couple hours for something like that. But banana, banana before I can hit it. That's fibrous. I don't know.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  I've done donuts before. I know, look, it's not the, the,

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  at some point, we're here for performance. We're not here for, to be healthy. And sometimes that donut or gummy bears or whatever gives you that spike that you need to, to perform at a really high level. So I'm, I'm definitely someone who keeps kind of, uh, just like unhealthy snacks around, especially like on race day.

• 1:10:13Nick Bare?

  Quick sugars.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:14Nick Bare?

  Digesting.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:10:16Speaker 02

  Have you ever wore a, the, um, continuous glucose monitor?

• 1:10:19Nick Bare?

  Yeah. Yep.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  Did you find that, did you find that interesting?

• 1:10:22Nick Bare?

  Kind of. I, I didn't see much benefit out of it. Cause I would watch my blood sugar spike and then come down. I saw some changes based off of what I was eating, but I had Lane Norton on the podcast, Dr. Lane Norton, and we talked about this. And if we have healthy bodies and, you know, we train and we exercise, we regularly consume healthy foods and healthy amounts, our body will naturally, blood sugar will go up after a carbohydrate rich meal. And insulin will be released from the pancreas and it'll bring that blood sugar back down to baseline. And like spikes are okay as long as it comes back to baseline. So I really don't get concerned about trying to keep my blood sugar as low as possible

• 1:11:07Nick Bare?

  with some of these spikes from meals.

• 1:11:09Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:10Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I kind of felt the same way. It's like, okay, now I know that a banana spikes it. So maybe I'll keep that closer to pre-workout, kind of. But yeah, I wasn't sure if, I really haven't taken away anything for performance. Some people wear it. I, uh, Camilla Masah, one of our partners for the, the like events that we run. She would wear it during her high rocks sessions and would find and would track where the dip was happening.

• 1:11:35Nick Bare?

  Interesting.

• 1:11:36Speaker 02

  And that's how she would know where to fuel.

• 1:11:38Nick Bare?

  That's, that's actually really smart.

• 1:11:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, I guess that's a, and the problem is it's not real time. I think there is a way you can get it real time now. I think there's some sort of app where it can be, you can see where, where you're at, but it's usually after, right? You do your workout and see it's okay, 35 minutes, it's where it dipped. But maybe that's a place for it to figure out your feeling. Think you're gonna fuel during a high rocks?

• 1:12:00Nick Bare?

  Probably not during, but I'll fuel plenty before. Is there, is there an option? Like, how do you consume fluids if you need them during a high rocks? Do you at all?

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  They do have water.

• 1:12:15Speaker 02

  The water table.

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  Water tables. It's not always in the ideal location where like it's right on the run path and you can kind of grab it as you go. It, sometimes it can be like the run's going this way and then the water's like over here and you kind of gotta, you know?

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  Veer off two or three seconds and get it and it's at that point, I'm just like the hell with it. But it's there. It's available if you want it.

• 1:12:36Speaker 02

  The uh.

• 1:12:37Speaker 01

  It just might not be the most convenient spot.

• 1:12:39Speaker 02

  The Elite 15 races are nice because they'll give us a table, how they will for like the pro marathon athletes where they'll have their bottles.

• 1:12:45Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:45Speaker 02

  And that's nice. Uh, but you could, yeah, use the water table or I think the best bet is to have like a soft flask in a waist belt. If you, if you have like a

• 1:12:56Nick Bare?

  I might be taking.

• 1:12:56Speaker 02

  Solution that you want.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  I might be wearing a, a waist belt this year.

• 1:13:00Speaker 02

  You might try that?

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  We'll see. Yeah.

• 1:13:02Nick Bare?

  I know my body pretty well at this point and like, as long as I front load nutrition prior to that race starting, I won't need water or anything during. Most of my, even marathons that I've done, I don't ever stop and get liquid.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:13:19Nick Bare?

  Water or anything throughout. Now, C I, C I M I did, cause I could feel some cramps coming on. So I was grabbing electrolytes at every station, but I can go that hour without any. Anything.

• 1:13:30Speaker 02

  And you train in the heat. That's one thing if like for I would try to grab some just for a cooling strategy, just hoping it works, but you're gonna be fine because it's hot down here.

• 1:13:41Nick Bare?

  Are people dripping sweat in these competitions?

• 1:13:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:13:44Nick Bare?

  I feel for some reason, all the videos and photos I see, it never looks like everyone's dripping sweat.

• 1:13:49Speaker 02

  By by the sled, like I will wear a shirt until the sled because to take on the sweat just because the way we push the sled, I've in the past, I've been like kind of slipping up it. So I'll wear a shirt before and take it off after just to manage the sweat a little bit. But by the sled push, 12 minutes in, you're drenched. Yeah, I've been anyway.

• 1:14:07Nick Bare?

  What's your heart rate usually sit at this entire effort?

• 1:14:12Speaker 02

  I don't know, actually, because I've never, I've never worn a heart rate monitor in a race, but I got to imagine it's, it's 170 plus for. It's my, my anaerobic threshold is around 152. So if I can keep it around there, by the back end, it can be like 160, like the back third, like I'm over it. But because it comes back down, like into farmer's carry, the heart rate drops, like lunges, it'll drop a little bit. So I can go up above it a little bit during the runs. But I'm usually at or just above anaerobic threshold for a lot of it.

• 1:14:48Nick Bare?

  What's your heart rate sit at on these easy runs you do?

• 1:14:51Speaker 02

  It was 120.

• 1:14:52Nick Bare?

  I saw that. I saw that.

• 1:14:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's just, I think it's just genetic. I think I would like to say that I have superior fitness because of it, but it's mostly, it's just, I think it's genetic.

• 1:15:02Nick Bare?

  And there's a lot, when you ever you share data, your heart rate's always pretty low.

• 1:15:06Speaker 02

  Like, yeah.

• 1:15:06Nick Bare?

  What's your max?

• 1:15:07Speaker 02

  Which, if I see it at 170, like that's, things have gone crazy. But yeah, like 120 for zone two, 122 ish is about where it will be averaged out.

• 1:15:24Nick Bare?

  It's wild.

• 1:15:25Speaker 02

  It was like my max, I can still get it above 190 still. So. Heart is jacked. My heart is yoked. My heart is so strong. Yoked, dude.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:36Nick Bare?

  So what's the goal with today's, this afternoon session? Like, what is the purpose? What is the intent of today's workout that we're programming?

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  I mean, this is, I tried to program something for Rich. I knew, I knew he wanted, uh, some grindy.

• 1:15:51Speaker 02

  We got, we got an important race coming up. It's, it's, we gotta feel this thing a little bit more, you know? Something longer, something I can sit in for a while.

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:00Nick Bare?

  Walk, walk us through what we're, we did nine, nine easy miles this morning.

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  It's a big day, dude. It's a big day.

• 1:16:07Nick Bare?

  It's a big day.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, so we're gonna do, we're gonna do three rounds of twenty, basically three by twenty-five minute intervals. And each interval will start with a one mile run. And we will go then directly into, uh, an E2 mom where we kind of go back and forth between, um, row and ski for 12 minutes. And then we will complete each set with a one mile run on the back end. So it's one mile up front, right into an E2 mom, and then a one mile on the back end. And then we will repeat that for three rounds total. But each round, the E2 mom piece will change stations.

• 1:16:52Speaker 01

  So in the first round, it'll be row and ski. The second round, it'll be farmers and burpee broad jumps. And then the last round will be, uh, lunges and wobbles.

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  So you kind of get, you kind of get the fresh piece up front. You get the run piece up front. Legs are gonna be feeling good. And you kind of get a little punch in the middle. And then you gotta go run on fatigue legs at the end of it. So you kind of, it's a, a good little blend of, of everything.

• 1:17:18Nick Bare?

  Mm-hmm. And between the rounds, are you doing, cause it starts with a one mile, ends with a one mile. So between one and two and two and three, is it two miles straight?

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  Um, no, we will, we will do, uh, we will, we can do like a quick pause or a break or

• 1:17:38Speaker 02

  To go, oh, you're saying after that second mile into, oh, oh, would the middle be a two mile? Oh, I don't know. I guess we didn't think about that. We could break it.

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  We didn't think about that.

• 1:17:48Speaker 02

  We could, we could, uh, we still need to workshop this thing a little bit.

• 1:17:52Speaker 01

  Well, initially it was going to be two miles up front.

• 1:17:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  And then right into the E2 mom and we would just do that for three rounds, two miles, E2 mom, two miles, E2 mom, two miles, E2 mom. But then we were thinking like, man, it might make sense to do.

• 1:18:03Speaker 02

  A more compromised.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit on end, but if that doesn't, that might not work out. We'll see.

• 1:18:08Speaker 02

  We'll figure it out. It's just sitting at a higher effort, you know, 20 to 25 minutes of an interval is like long enough. They have to respect it, but short enough that you can kind of punch it a little bit.

• 1:18:18Speaker 01

  And honestly, I kind of want your heart rate to spike a little bit more on the E2 mom. When we get into the stations, I want the, the heart rate to, to spike more than it did on the run. And then when you get on the run out of it, you need to settle it back down, get back into your rhythm. And then we're just basically going to keep repeating that process.

• 1:18:38Nick Bare?

  What are you going to try to hold on these one miles?

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  Um, I mean, we should, we should make like a standard, right? Like you can't be slower than six minutes.

• 1:18:46Speaker 02

  That's why.

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  If you're slower than six minutes, you gotta.

• 1:18:49Speaker 02

  That's why I wanted to.

• 1:18:50Speaker 01

  Do enough to work out.

• 1:18:50Speaker 02

  That's why I was thinking we do like complete in 25 minutes, this work.

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  And.

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  We could do that too.

• 1:18:56Speaker 02

  And then like whatever it is, you, you have the, the rest to, to the three minutes of rest. But yeah, I think I want to start around 550 and cut down as, as it progresses and try to find a sweet spot. Like where that is.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, in any session that you do, especially a high rocks workout, you're going to want to

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  start a little bit conservative and build into the session. You always want to be going forward. You never want to be going backwards. You know, a lot of people end up, you know, not only messing up their training, but messing up the race by going out a little bit too hot, you know? So, um, we're always looking for like, you know, even when like mile repeats and stuff, you're looking for the best average. You're not looking for the best one rep that you can do. You know, like you want to the sum of all parts. So. Taking a little conservative approach and if you want, if you feel good later in the workout, we can always push the last round, like a little bit more, you know, you want to have something

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  to give later in the workout. You don't want to just be dying, you know, so be smart out there, be smart, pace yourself.

• 1:20:03Nick Bare?

  Yes.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  You know, and sometimes you gotta trial by fire, learn the hard way. And whenever I'm coaching somebody, that's usually the best way to learn is, you know what, go blow up. And I guarantee you'll learn, you'll learn the next time. So I learned that way.

• 1:20:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. For sure.

• 1:20:20Nick Bare?

  Well, guys, I appreciate you making the trip out here to Austin, Texas. Come on the pod. I've been a big fan of RMR Training Podcast since I started training for High Rocks and appreciate all the content you guys put out there and it's been extremely helpful. So.

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  Appreciate that, man. Super fun being here and kind of seeing this whole operation.

• 1:20:39Nick Bare?

  It's inspiring, dude. Appreciate that.

• 1:20:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you for letting us come on and tell our story and, and we appreciate you being in the space, man. We're excited to see you in Dallas. We're all throwing down.

• 1:20:50Speaker 01

  We need to talk about doubles too. We might be doing, we could do some doubles in Houston.

• 1:20:53Nick Bare?

  I'm down. It's gonna be fun. Yeah, ever since I started listening to your guys' podcasts and then I heard you guys talking shit on me.

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  There's a special surprise out there.

• 1:21:05Speaker 01

  Let's see what these guys are all about.

• 1:21:07Nick Bare?

  Come on out, come on out.

• 1:21:08Speaker 02

  We'll show you.

• 1:21:10Nick Bare?

  I appreciate it, guys. Thank you.

• 1:21:11Speaker 02

  Cool. Thanks, Nick. Later, guys.