I think a lot of people undervalue just how good walking is for your fitness, for your

health and for your ultra running. You've got to understand the value of using power hiking preventively and proactively. It's not the thing you are going to help us become healthier, faster, stronger, more motivated runners and maybe better human beings. And today we're running again with Ian Sharman, and he on this very podcast today is going to disclose the secret weapon found in ultra running. Hey Don, quick question. When's the last time you replace those beaten up bull tights? I think these babies have seen more miles than my car. Well, good news. Our friendship, John G, are making it easy right now to upgrade. John G's Black Friday sale runs November 17th through December 1st, with up to 30% off. On jackets, shorts, tights, even the stuff I probably don't need but really want. And if you're not a member yet, you can join right on their site. It's free. That includes favors like the women's pay shorts, men half trail tight, and trail ties for both women and men. Perfect timing for winter training, or gifting your favorite trail partner. And the bonus for trail runner-nation listeners, get 10% off your order with the code trail runner Check it all out at john g.com Welcome to another edition of trail runner nation. My name is Don Freeman. Then I'm Scott war Today we're going to discuss one of the most overlooked performance boosters in trail running the power of of not running. We're talking active recovery, power hiking and weight vest hiking. These tools can help you build durability, reduce muscle damage, conserve glycogen, and keep your pace steady long after most runners fall apart. And joining us is the perfect guide, Ian Sharman. He's an elite runner coach and the author of the soon to be published book, The Art of Ultra Running. And we're gonna get more information on that upcoming book here a little bit later in the podcast. Ian has helped countless athletes get faster by training smarter and not harder. Today we're going to explore why hiking can make you faster, why the slowest mile matters more than your fastest, and how small tweaks in your training can completely transform your long race experience. Ian, thanks for joining us. First question I have for you. I think in this chapter that you have about active recovery, you mentioned that active recovery isn't optional, but it's the secret weapon. What did you mean by that? Basically, what I mean is that everyone has to do something between their runs. You may be running an hour a day, but you're not running all the time.

So how you recover from that is gonna make a big difference to how much adaptation you get. And the key thing here is a lot of people get too focused on maybe their volume or their vert and trying to maximize that number. What you really want to maximize is your adaptation. And sometimes that means doing less or having to back off a little bit or just allowing for better ways to be able to recover between those harder sessions.

How do you measure adaptation? You say that's important, should we, is there a way to measure that? Simple ways you get fitter or quicker. So I often get asked that, especially when I get maybe triathletes or people who are really numbers focused, particularly maybe from a road background or cycling background. They they're saying, okay, well, I've seen my power meters and I see all these things and I can tell how it's getting better over time. But what do we get in running that tells us that? And the simplest thing is, can you run faster? Can you do that hill quicker? Can you do that Strava segment quicker? For the same amount of effort, can you do something faster? or can you feel better at the end of a long run? Like if you're trying to train for hills and trails, can you feel better once you've been out there longer because your legs are not as fatigued? So let's make some definitions. I think that we can make some assumptions in what active recovery is, but let's get your definition. What do you mean by active recovery? Active recovery really is just moving to try and get recovery between your training sessions. So rather than just complete rest sitting on the couch, it means getting the blood flow moving a little bit. There's a few things in particular that's helpful with. So it helps promote your circulation, increasing the blood flow through very gentle movement. It's not To cause more pounding and more muscle damage and that it accelerates things like the removal of metabolic waste products like lactic acid Also reduced delayed onset muscle soreness doms by keeping your muscles supple and lightly engaged Enhancers your physical recovery without losing fitness Because you get less downtime between your exercise so you can keep yourself moving between them rather than one hour a day that you're doing something. You've got movement the rest of the time. And that can be as simple as just going for a walk. It doesn't have to be really structured. Also, it's helping with your mental recovery because you've got less perceived fatigue and it keeps you a little bit more engaged in a very gentle way with the training. So it makes things a little bit easier and maybe helps you to recover a bit from the other stresses of life when you go out for a gentle walk or a gentle bike ride or similar. And also it's helping prepare you for the next workout with a better transition between them because it's not just do something, then do nothing for ages and then do something again. Ian, can you think of a time in your experience where you've come into a race thinking, I have done all the work and really have pushed yourself to the limit ready for a great finish and compare that to a time where maybe you felt you didn't have done all the work and all the sudden that race went swimmingly well. How did I perform so well? I thought I really wasn't prepared like I thought my spreadsheet said I should have been. I think everyone's had that where they may be misjudged what their fitness was like. And I think one of the key things that I want to get across today is the idea that walking is excellent exercise. I think to run as we think of that as, oh it's what you do when you're tired or it doesn't really count if you go for a few miles walking the dog. All of that is adding to your volume in a very gentle way. That's like with the things I just mentioned, it's helping you to get more training. And so a little bit more adaptation in a very sustainable way. And so most of us are looking to get as much adaptation as possible. But if you can do a bit more training, all other things being equal, you will get more adaptation. You know, someone doing 50 miles a week is typically going to get fitted and someone doing 10 miles a week. But not everyone can, uh, personally, it doesn't have the time to do lots of running. They might be other things they can do that don't involve having a shower or having to get changed. And also, there's only so much your body can withstand.

So at the point where you've done the maximum amount theoretically, let's say, of running

that your body could sustain, you could maybe still have a little bit more training on

top of that with lighter stuff like gentle bike riding or actually we're seeing quite a

lot of elite ultra runners, I know Jim Worms, Lee, David Roche, they do quite a lot of

harder cycling as well. But that is a way that they can get more volume but without the pounding and the muscle damage. So it's a fine line there and actually one thing to point out here is the difference between active recovery, which is helping you maybe do a little bit more gentle stuff and helping you recover for the next thing. And then using some of these cross-training modalities to to leave you more tired because's a hard, specific training session. So we'll talk about that more particularly with white fists because that can either be easy and active recovery or it can be hard, and that's what again, some of the elites are using it at that more extreme level. You know, I remember some time ago there was some kind of chart to give you some trail mile credit. If you watched your car, that was worth a couple of miles down the road to say, hey, you get credit for some of these other activities that you're due during the day. They count too. Is this a chart you made up, Freeman? Maybe it is. I'm washing the dog dog I get one and a half miles.

You know, all movement and exercise is valuable. So it's not like you did a run or you didn't do a run and that's the only thing that counts for running. But of course, specificity comes in here. So certain things are more specific for running. Walking and hiking is more specific for what you can do in a trail ultra than being on a bike, which is more specific than swimming. So there are lots of gentler things you can do, but ideally you want stuff to be more similar to what you're doing on race day. And that's where you're going to get the most adaptation that it was helping you with what you actually want to do. Now make more no mistake, this is a very complex algorithm for the car washing. I mean, it's all relative. But when you when you look into the details, go ahead Scott. You know, Don, I remember at one point, you were training really hard, and you were doing a lot of swimming as well. Were you doing active recovery or were those swimming laps part of the heavy training like Ian was saying? Was that active recovery? Well, I'll toss it back over to Ian and say some of those were just because I couldn't put the long miles in It was beating my body up So I had to look for alternative ways to run the engine to keep myself going It wasn't active recovery. It was actually part of your training Yeah, I think you can make an argument for it either way.

You know, depends on the intensity.

I agree.

That could be a bit of both.

So it depends exactly. It depends on how hard it is. If you do a really tough swimming session, probably not going to be active recovery. You're going to still get fatigued. Your body will need to recover from that. If you do something a bit lighter, and there'll be a wider range of things there

that could work that are still active recovery for running

because you're not going to get the pounding,

you're not going to get the muscle damage.

That's why I think Michael fell. and there'll be a wider range of things there that could work that are still active recovery for running

because you're not going to get the pounding, you're not going to get the muscle damage. That's why I think Michael Feltz was known for doing something like 10 hours a day of training. There are no runners who do anything like 10 hours a day, 70 hours a week. That's an insane number. Although there's some who do 20 to 30, which is also an insane number. But the less muscle damage you get from it, the more hours you can do.

Cypolis typically do about twice as many hours as runners, swimmers even. 30 to 30, which is also an insane number. But the less muscle damage you get from it,

the more hours you can do. Cyclists typically do about twice as many hours as runners, swimmers even more than that. So yeah, it just depends on the intensity of that other type of exercise. I would say that all other sports, you've got to be a bit more careful. So swimming and cycling, you can do it in a way that is gentle enough. If you go and play a game of soccer or anything that's a little bit more intense tennis, something where you'll

be sprinting around and you're still running, that's probably not going to be active recovery. That is going to be effectively maybe more like a speed session because there might be a lot of sprinting and changing in direction. So we probably should do this right now and let DMB the heavy here. I don't think your hot tub at home there is going to count for anything Scott. That's active recovery. It's heat training. Oh, there you go. He doesn't need your help you. Help me out with the timing and how this active recovery is involved in a training log. So you come up with a schedule for one of your clients and it has some hard workouts. Let's say it's to go out and do, I don't know, maybe a two hour workout at race pace, so it's a hard workout. Do you back that up the same day with some active recovery? is that the next day, maybe as a rest day and you're doing some active recovery on the rest day? Are you saying to put this active recovery back to back or same day as these hard workouts or is it the rest day is actually active recovery day?

...