 Congrats again, Will, sending the sketchers. Let's go, everybody. Got the baby wipes. Got them. So I have found that Dawn dish soap or baby wipes do really well at cleaning up running shoes on the exterior of the running shoes. So anyway, that's what I'm doing before sending these off to Will. I'm going to wipe these down. Yeah, I'm telling you, it just gets the grime off, the dirt, all of that. Take that baby wipe and just wipe them down. Wipe them down. Get them nice looking good. So anyway, if you're sending me shoes, it's just an idea, you know, clean them up a little bit. Here we go. And yes, I was not going to steal Michael's baby wipes. Oh, I couldn't do that to Michael, could I? Okay, there we go. Looking good. Looking good. I even like to get the outsole. There's one to get the other. It's cold out, by the way. All right, one more. I don't have the air freshener yet that's coming. Got to order that from Amazon today. And there you have it. A little TLC goes a long ways. All right, go drop these in the mail. And away they go. All right, Will, let me know when they arrive. It's just so awesome. So awesome to listen. Just get the shoes to a new set of feet. More miles, baby. And then back to the studio. Nothing like a stop at the Army surplus store. It's always an adventure in there. And I could not resist. I was swayed by the socks. I'm planning on some big mountain runs this spring and it's still going to be freezing up in the mountain. So thermal socks, give it a shot. And then a shout out to Crystal on Strava. Thank you, Crystal, for the idea for the face mask. I will research that brand. But I need something basically immediately because I'm worried about my nose getting too cold on my runs. And so anyway, picked up a face mask for the mountain runs coming up. So anyway, shout out, Crystal. Thank you for the idea. I will do more research. All right, see you at the studio. And here we are. Okay, why the question here for today that I am contemplating thinking about for all of you on my 20 mile run today. Why build your aerobic engine first? I'm going to try and dive into this topic as best as possible. Keeping in mind, I studied history in college. I didn't study science, but I will do my best. And yes, today's 20 mile run, I did not film. You saw a clip there at the end of the run. Just filmed it with my phone. Basically, as I continue to increase the volume and the intensity of the workouts, I will not always be able to carry the vest and the GoPro. So anyway, that was one of those days. Just put my head down and ran pretty solid, pretty solid. In fact, I want to go through a few of the splits with all of you. It was 20 miles, which is, okay, 20 miles, 32 kilometers, 650 per mile. So 415 per kilometer. And the goal was to just attempt to be as steady as possible, steady eddy today, okay? And the splits, okay, started off with a 721, then a 659, and then a 655, and then jumping ahead to mile 10 through like 16. Here you go. 644, 644, 644, 643, 643, 648, 645, and then the last one, a 651. And so how did I feel at the end of the 20 miles? I felt solid except the last two miles. Mile 18, and we're going to talk more about this in a minute, but at mile 18, yeah, the legs were like, okay, this is starting to hurt a little bit. And sure enough, oh, this is a beautiful connection. Sure enough, it was almost to the minute at the two hour mark. It was unbelievable. And it was cold today. It was about 20 degrees Fahrenheit. So it was chilly. And I think that does impact our muscles to a certain extent, our breathing even, you know, sucking in cold air for over two hours. And I always like to say that you got to listen to your coach. If you have a coach, if you're following a training program, you got to listen and you've got to believe, listen and believe when you have a coach that is guiding your training. Because if you don't believe in the workouts, if you don't believe in what this person is telling you to do to get faster, there's a good chance you're not going to get faster. You're not going to do great workouts. You're not going to follow the training plan and therefore you probably won't reach your full potential on race day. So I always want to mention that before diving into a topic. And listen, this is what I do. What I'm about to tell you is what I do. It's not based on me taking biology classes. It's me based on life and training for the last, yeah, 20 years of my life since middle school through high school, through college and then post college as I dove into the ultra running world and now as I dive into the marathoning world. So I, and this is not an earth shattering statement if you've been watching for a while, but I firmly, firmly believe that focusing on aerobic development, especially early in a training block. So what is a training block leading up to a peak race? You've got usually, I like to say three to four months of training leading into a peak race where you're just, you're training, you're putting in the miles. So for my training, I like to focus on intervals and speed work. The last four weeks, maybe six weeks at the most leading up to a peak race. And why is that? Well, our bodies can only give us so much. Like we can take them to the brink, but if we go through the brink, there's a really good chance we're going to over train. We're going to burn out and it actually becomes detrimental to our performance on race day because we continue to train at too high a level. And scientifically, this is what happens. When we go into oxygen debt, a lot of times that can happen during interval training, that drops the pH levels of our blood. And when we drop our pH levels too low, too often in training, basically what can happen is it can impact our ability to recover, our ability for our bodies to absorb the correct nutrients that we need to recover. And it can even impact our sleep. And those three things combined with continued high intensity interval workouts really is walking the line of over training. And I know some of this, I've experienced it and I've read it. I've experienced it, especially in the ultra running world. Me personally, but even just watching other ultra runners who are pushing the envelope a little too much with high volume and high interval training. And those two things, it's walking the line of disaster. There's no other way to say it, of disaster in how your body can recover to get ready, guess what? For the next day. And so pH levels and plunging them down, and that's what happens when you do a hard interval, you plunge your pH level down and then it slowly comes back up and you plunge it down again. And when we do that over and over in our training, we just got to be careful. Okay, therefore, the other option and this is how I train is focus the first two, even three months of training leading up to a peak race on aerobic development. Meaning where we're not going into oxygen debt. We're approaching oxygen debt, but we're not pushing through. Does that make sense? And so by focusing on aerobic training, not anaerobic training, and that another way to phrase it and you hear it in the running world is long slow distance or LSD runs, you know, kind of like your traditional long run. What happens is we're working on the cardiac efficiency of our hearts. So our hearts, believe it or not, you know, it can expand and get bigger with more training and that can impact basically the power of the contraction of the heart, which means you can pump more blood into your system, your, I guess, your pulmonary system and that allows us to carry more oxygen or sorry, more blood through our bloodstream and therefore more oxygen. In addition to this cardiac efficiency, which we can improve through steady state running, meaning mile after mile, nice and steady, not plunging our pH levels down with surges just steady. It's preferably for two hours, we'll talk about that in a second. In addition to that, there's this pulmonary ventilation and again, bear with me on the science but from what I understand when we go at this aerobic level, at a steady state, for two hours and above and this two hour mark is fascinating to me like why is it this two hour mark but study after study has proven that running for two hours and above really begin that's when we really begin to see the changes in our aerobic systems and so on a scientific level there's capillary beds in our lungs that begin to develop at this two hour mark and so the air from the outside is breathed into our lungs into these newly developed capillary beds and then into our heart, into the bloodstream and delivered to our muscles and that's what we want as runners right? We want as much as much oxygen as possible being delivered to our muscles as possible and today's run was a perfect case in point almost exactly at the 18 mile mark, the two hour mark I was like oh this is kind of hurting a little bit and and then I focused focused on my form I definitely was like okay I would like to stop now this is starting to hurt a little bit but no like for another I ran for 217 so for another 17 minutes I was I hope developing these capillary beds in my lungs which again I'm hoping pays off in two months from now no um 6 to 7 weeks from now when I begin to introduce interval training into my workouts preparing for the marathon and so in summary and just bear with me I'll do my best here in summary the quicker that our hearts can deliver oxygenated blood to our muscles the faster and longer we're going to be able to run meaning our capillary beds are well developed in our lungs to bring in more oxygen which is delivered to the heart which then is processed into the blood through the heart and pumped because we've been working our heart so well for months and months without overtraining without plunging our pH levels too low too often with high intensity interval training uh then when then when this is when it's exciting when we decide to add interval training into the workouts that is when more oxygen will be present to our muscles and guess what we're going to be able to run faster and guess what we're going to be able to have faster turnover voila there it is that's what we want right that's what we want as runners we want to be able to have fast turnover without going into crazy oxygen debt I always say that on race day like race day should not be um a death battle like you should be fit enough that you feel so confident in your training that you just show up at that starting line and you say bring it on and literally like you're in the race and it hurts but you're so confident in the in approaching that threshold of pain and oxygen debt that you know you can sustain it for the given distance that you're racing on that particular day oh my goodness I hope that made sense keyword engine keyword engine and listen I guess I should have said this at the beginning of that last monologue that is why you should develop and focus on developing your aerobic system first in your training block I probably should have talked about this in December shouldn't I but that is where I'm at in my training block leading up to the marathon again listen to your coach listen to your coaches I'm happy to answer your questions about aerobic development and steady state running and long slow distance and why I believe it is I'm just going to say it is way more important early in the training block especially compared to interval training and speed training but listen we're just having a conversation here you might have a different philosophy and if it's working for you stick to it you know what I mean stick to it this is how I train this is how I've been raised to train through my coaches and I love it and I love it and do what you love you know what I mean some of you I know are out there I just track junkies and you love going around that oval and more power to you more power to you and the question of the day how do you approach aerobic training like what's your thought process behind what you're doing for developing your aerobic system and this could be within a training program or not like I you know I whether you follow a training program or maybe you just go completely by feel on a given day alright so that's the question of the day all about aerobic training and turning that key for the aerobic engine I love it oh man and again this is a topic that we could talk for 10 videos on this one topic but I hope to simply get the conversation going get the thought process going down below oh beautiful day beautiful day seek beauty work card thanks for being see you tomorrow