The most incredible thing that running and running long distances has brought into my

life is it's really helped me understand who I am and how I deal with everything.

You know, every situation.

A big part of consistency is setting yourself up to accomplish something and then watching

it grow from there. Welcome to Trailhead of Trail Runner Nation. We go on virtual trail runs every single week consistently, Don Freeman. Every single week we go on runs with people that we invite to help us become better, to learn more, to try new things, to be healthier, athletes, to be better runners, and maybe just better human beings. In this episode is one of our favorite, is we look back to find which episode can we bring back to our consciousness and it was consistency. So important, every big breakthrough has an element of consistency. Welcome to another edition of Trail Reign Nation. My name is Don Freeman and I'm Scott War and today's episode is an encore presentation. We were looking back and we thought we did an episode with our friend and coach, Adam Kimball back in 2022 on consistency. And boy was at a good episode. And we thought we should share this again. You know, Scott, one of the items that came up that was, I think, really important. We talked about consistency and how it compounds. It's the quiet engine behind every big running breakthrough. Let's unpack that a little bit. Consistency compounds. The other time you use compounds is like when you're talking money, compounding interest. I think there have been some smart money people that say that compounding interest is the sixth wonder of the world or something like that. Somebody will correct me on that, but it's interesting because compounding interest and compounding consistency is an amazing wonder when it comes to endurance sports. Scott, wasn't there already seven wonders of the world? Did you kick one out? Maybe this is the eighth. Maybe this is the eighth. I don't know how many wonders there are. I wonder more about more than seven things in my life. One of them certainly should be consistency. And it's one of those things that if you just keep putting in the work, something's gonna show up. And it's consistently using good technique and not overdoing. So there's a big difference between consistency and volume. And I think this may be where part of our enthusiasm for our one is greater than zero philosophy came in because consistency isn't about perfection. It's about being present or actually doing something every day or whenever you say you're gonna do something, go ahead and do it. Do something, you don't have to be perfect at it. Just get out there and do it. Now Scott, one thing that occurred to me as I replayed this episode and listened to it, I can confirm that I was there the entire time because my voice somewhere is throughout this episode, but I learned a lot listening to it for a second time. The first time maybe my mind was distracted and I was thinking what's my next question or maybe I was just listening for my first time and I was driving or running on the trail and I missed something. So the second review, there's so many, as you say, golden nuggets that I pass by. And I think sometimes we get into a mindset that it's all about the workout. And if you scheduled a workout and you had it, you know, have it specified what you're doing during the workout. And, you know, sometimes it's a big workout and it's a very important workout. And we struggle sometimes of putting more emphasis on the actual daily workout or what we're doing that day than doing something that day. I think we oftentimes struggle with the habit of consistency. And I think that's one of the things that I get out of this. It's made me a better person because of that. You know, I may blow the whole episode up, Scott, and everybody may turn it off after this. You see, consistency is key, but consistency can also kill. Because if you do too much and you just stay regimented on, I must do this, I must do this and you hold yourself to that spreadsheet instead of listening to your body, you can end up with a problem with consistency. So I think it's a double edge sword. Unless Scott, we're using your new counting method. It's a triple-edged sword. Well, and here's the deal. So, you know, we're talking about how important consistency is and it's compounding effect. We talk about that on this episode without him, Kimball, but then we get into some of the specifics on why you wanna listen to this. We talk about some tools and tactics for staying consistent. We talk about what do you do on those tough days when you get up and you don't feel like doing anything? How do you deal with that? What are some tactics there? And then, like I said, that mindset over perfection that we need to be perfect if we don't go out and do the 15 mile long run this week with the sprinting intervals in there that it's not going to be worth anything. And that's incorrect. So I would say sit back, make sure your earbuds are securely fashioned to your ears. That's where you should put them. And listen to this thing, and see if you pick up on some things that you may have missed last time, or if it's your first time, you can always rewind and listen to it twice. I'd be interested to hear what other people think and what other tactics people have for being consistent because I'm not perfect at it. I still have to put my one is greater than zero hat on the pedestal by the door so that when I'm walking by the door, it forces me out the door. Scott, are you still marketing your ones is greater than zero hat? Do we still have some left? We have, we have some hats left. Yeah. And I will say we get emails all the time from people that are saying they love it. It fits great. It looks great and it's motivating. It's, it's a hat that has its own message. I got to come up with a better pitch than that. No, it's bad. Enjoy this episode. Enjoy your run this weekend. And we'll be back next week, just like we are every week because we're consistent. Thanks for joining another edition of Trail of Reternation. I'm Don Freeman. And I'm Scott War and today we're with Adam Kimble again. He's been on a podcast multiple times

We always enjoy talking to Adam Adam. Thanks for joining us. I pleasure. Thanks for having me guys If you don't know who Adam is boy, he is a multi-talented athlete. He is a division one college baseball player He won the famous prices right. I love to throw that one in there price is right is is a game show, a TV game show, Bob Barker hosted for many, many years. And Adam won the showcase showdown and won a car. And I love that. You can go on Google and you can Google that. And I've actually seen the video of Adam winning the prices right. I love it. He has a lot of really good things in

his resume. He broke Kylian Jornays fastest known time around the Tahoe rim trail. How many miles is that? 172 miles around Lake Tahoe here in Northern California, Nevada. He is a winner of two self-supported multi-stage races, he broke the FKTN 2017 running the length of Great

Britain. in California and Nevada. He is a winner of two self-supported multi-stage races. He broke the FKTN 2017 running the length of Great Britain with his friend, Chris King. He's getting ready to toe the line at Western States coming up in June. And today we have a really good topic. Adam is also a coach. And so in addition to his own personal training and running, he also coaches

people, which brings a unique perspective. And today we're going to talk about consistency. As many of us are now into the early summer months of the year, trying to build base, which we have a podcast coming up in training principles that's going to be airing here in a couple weeks, we think that consistency is a key in training.

Adam, why is consistency so important? Yes, Scott. I've just noticed that over time, both for myself personally as an athlete and for the many athletes that I coach, just kind of analyzing the data and the various training blocks over the years. I think a lot of times I have the tendency to think when I'm in a training block, if I'm hitting big workouts or feeling fast or doing things like that, that that is the most important thing. But upon reflection, whenever I look at the times when I really executed everything, whether it was, you know, the best workout I had or not so good, just getting out and doing all the workouts and being consistent with my volume, with my intensity, all those kind of things. When I would look back at that data, I would realize that those were the times that translated to my best performances. And so it's just a matter of, for me, personally recognizing that it's not, I think my default is sort of like oh am I am I feeling really fast and I feel in super fit all these things and that stuff is great but more important for me and for many of my athletes has been showing up every day and having that consistency throughout training as opposed to a great workout here there. I'll tell you one area that I really try to practice consistency and that's when I fall out of shape and I just don't feel like getting out there and what used to be easy is now hard and you know I'm going through clothes that I used to wear because I was a little bit heavier and I I'm in those stages. That's when I really need to practice consistency because I know just with blind faith, if I go out there and I just keep putting the work in and I keep showing up all of a sudden one day, bang, it all comes. It's like, whoa, this got a little bit easier. But it took many, many, many efforts before I arrived there. And you just have to just keep going and just keep your head down and keep checking the calendar, saying another one in and you just keep working at it and you'll get there. And that's what I love about consistency. You just put the work in. Hey, Don, for people that haven't listened to our full category of podcast episodes,ate your little metaphor story about the puddle of water. That's a great visual. You know what, I think is good Scott, since you tell it so many times and you tell it different every time, I don't think people have really tired of it because they don't hear all the time. So let me get a shot. Let's hear it from you. Let me get a original one. There's a hole in this filled with water, and you take your shovelful of clean gravel,

and you take your shovel full of clean gravel and you shovel it into that hole And you have to shovel depending on the depth of the hole and and you just keep shoveling the rock and their rock never shows up Then all of a sudden you take another shovel full and you throw it into the into the water hole there and the gravel sits on top. And it doesn't matter if you take a heaping shovelful or a half-a-s shovelful, it all counts. Right. It all adds up. And finally, when it surfaces, it didn't matter how many shovelfuls or how big the shovelfuls were. It's just they were shovelfuls that needed to get there. And that's what training is. And that's consistency. And that's getting out there and doing the work, putting another shovelful of clean gravel into that mud hole. We're gonna have Ryan create a gif of that story and just have you repeat the number of times you said shovelful. How many times have I said? Probably about 20. If we have a good editor, you'll only hear three. Keeping shovel full, it didn't matter how many shovel full. It's just they were shovels full. Yeah, Don. I think that's a great point. One of the important things to remember about the value of consistency is just that the results don't necessarily come until months or sometimes even years later, right? So you might be thinking where are the fruits of my labor? And then like you said, all of a sudden, maybe it's one day, maybe it's over the course of a period of time, you're like, whoa, it's happening now. And I think, you know, a lot of times you might have the tendency to see a friend of yours or someone that you know

Performing well and you think wow, you know what what's been happening and my guess or I would venture to say that It's likely that for a longer period of time they've been doing the right things and being consistent and it's paying off It doesn't you know, it's it's not a do something for two weeks and then you see the result at the end of the month It's a do something for months, years, and then you see that kind of pay off over time.

Can you recall a time that aha moment that all this and that feeling of, ah, it's here. It happened. Have you witnessed that? Have you experienced that and is tell me about the joy? Because that's one of my favorite moments in this whole athletic stuff. Yeah. For me, I can just think of a handful of times when I've been preparing for a big race where I'll go out on whether it's a trail I tend to run fairly frequently or just a route that I'm familiar with. And I'll just have that thought, oh, this feels easy. That's, that's the wipe-old moment.

It's like, okay, the fitness is there, the work is paying off. Here we go. And it's okay to dip down because if you're going to peak for something, you can't live on the peak. Otherwise, it's called a plateau. And you never want to be on a plateau. You want to peak at some point. So you have to live below that. And so you have to go through this cycle and you have to be okay with the cycle and you

have to recognize when you're not on that peak and accept it and be okay with it. And give yourself a little bit of compassion or sympathy or empathy or something to see some. So something that gets some. It seems like I, I'm dogging on you quite a bit, but that was a really good metaphor.

Living on the peak. If you, you can't live on the peak or that's a plat, that's beautiful. The plateau and the peak metaphor was brilliant. Well, this is a guy that can't say sympathy or empathy or empathy or find the right word. So, you know, I was peaking when I said that and now I'm I'm down into a valley trying to go to my vocabulary. So it's all there.

Scott and Don, are you familiar with the term super compensation? I was peaking when I said that and now I'm down into a valley trying to go to my vocabulary. So it's all there.

Scott and Don, are you familiar with the term super compensation, a training term? No. No, I want to know. I want to learn. The boiled down version of it is in a training block when you're building up an increasing volume and intensity, you get to a point where if you take a recovery week, then the following week, I'd eat in an ideal setting, your fitness then grows that following week.

So super conversation is the idea of training hard, giving your body time to recover, and then seeing the gains after that. And that is illustrated by the analogy you just made. Hey, let's talk about consistency versus doing the same thing over and over. So as you say, training blocks. I mean, as you as a coach, you design training blocks for your athletes. And some of those blocks you're working up to a point, maybe doing a little bit more speed training or hill climbing or whatever. And then there are some recovery weeks. Let's make no mistake about consistency being the same thing. Going out there every day, running the same pace, running the same route, running in same distance versus these variability in training. Talk to us a little bit about that, Adam. Yeah, that's an excellent point. Actually, just yesterday, as you guys know, I was out pacing my friend Jim at the Cokodona 250, which is still going on, and there was a group of guys that we sort of ended up around for a while, and we were sharing some miles with them. And one of the things that we started talking about was they were asking me some questions as a coach about how I train my athletes and what I look for, and I said, I still think one of the biggest and most valuable things you can do in training is have variety. And so I think that's a great point that you make there Scott. Consistency is not the same thing as doing the same thing all the time. Consistency is showing up every day and in an ideal world doing a lot of different things to make yourself better. So mixing in some speedwork or tempo runs, mixing in some hill work, going really easy, running conversational pace with friends, going long, running a fart like where it's an easy run, but just a few bursts here and there. All those different types of things are really important. If you continue to do the same thing all the time, as Don said before, similar to trying to stay at the peak all the time doing the same thing all the time is gonna have the same plateau effect. So there's consistency in showing up but there's also consistency in variability. You want to keep changing it up and i think we've talked to some. Physiologist that say that the body loves variety. and the times when you can throw in different variety, the body responds to that in a very good way physiologically. Yeah, I just, for me, I think of it as a really basic way. Maybe this isn't the best way to think about it, but it's how I do. It's like the same way if you're going to the gym, you wouldn't want to be doing bicep curls all the time because all you're doing is working the same muscle groups. If you're doing all sorts of different exercises, you're engaging all the muscles and making your entire body stronger, not just one part of the body. Similarly, when you're changing your pace, you're changing the grade that you're running on, you're changing the terrain you're running on. All those different things are challenging your body in different ways and it's only going

to make you... changing your pace, you're changing the grade that you're running on, you're changing the terrain you're running on.

All those different things are challenging your body in different ways and it's only going to make you more well-rounded and stronger. So I think it's important to do that. Even if you can look at it from this way, even if you were doing something hard but all the time, if you were doing just hill works, uphill repeats all the time, that wouldn't be good either because you'd be, you know, working and continuing to work the same muscle groups

all the time.

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