Episode 342: Ultramarathon Legend - Pam Smith
Human Performance Outliers Podcast with Zach Bitter
Zach Bitter
4.8 • 622 Ratings
🗓️ 14 March 2023
⏱️ 74 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is part one of two episodes with Pam Smith. Pam put together what many consider one of the best build ups and race execution at the 2013 Western States Endurance Run. Nicole and I will be interviewing her in part two, specifically on this topic. For this episode, I dive into all sorts of ultramarathon topics with Pam Smith, including: her massive range within the sport, her fueling strategy, stories of overcoming mental and physical hurdles, managing career and family while training and racing, and how she manages heat.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Human Performance Outliers podcast with Zach Bitter. |
| 0:09.8 | All right, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Human Performance Outliers podcast. |
| 0:14.3 | I'm your host, Zach Bitter, and today I have a guest interview for you. |
| 0:18.6 | Today's guest is Pam Smith. |
| 0:20.4 | This episode is actually going to be paired with another one. |
| 0:23.5 | It's going to be a two-parter with Pam Smith. |
| 0:25.3 | This first one, we are going to cover her career as an ultramarathon runner. |
| 0:30.8 | And in the second one, I'm going to bring her and my wife, Nicole, on. |
| 0:34.8 | And we're going to break down in a deeper dive into her historic performance |
| 0:40.6 | at the 2013 Western States 100, where she not only battled some of the hottest |
| 0:46.5 | tempts that that course has offered over the years, but managed to win and finish ninth overall |
| 0:53.0 | that year. So one thing that made that particular win, kind of historic in my opinion, is it came |
| 0:58.9 | off the back end of a prior year where she had to gut out a tough finish, barely actually |
| 1:05.4 | finished under the cutoff. |
| 1:06.7 | At Western States, there's a strict 30-hour cutoff. |
| 1:09.4 | So if you cross that finish line in 30 |
| 1:12.0 | hours and one seconds, you do not receive a finish. Pam finished that year in 28 hours and I think |
| 1:17.3 | like 55 minutes. So she was just over an hour ahead of the cutoff. And then the following year |
| 1:22.9 | came back and won it and then finished ninth overall out of everyone in the race. So it was quite a turnaround from one year to the next. |
| 1:31.1 | And she has been open about kind of how big and strategic that training approach was for that year. |
| 1:40.0 | And I want to know more. |
| 1:41.9 | So Nicole and I are going to chat with her specifically about that in the follow-up. |
... |
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