Zach Bitter: Don't Put All Your Goals in One Basket - R4R 253

The Running for Real Podcast

Tina Muir

Sports, Running, Mental Health, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 18 June 2021

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Joining this episode is Zach Bitter, an ultra-marathoner, endurance athlete, and coach. We dive into human performance during long stretches of endurance sports, how to wrap our heads around discomfort and touch distances, and the science behind gear like arm sleeves and their benefits doing long ultras.

Zach is the 100 Mile World Record Holder (11 hours 19 minutes 13 seconds), 12 Hour World Record Holder(104.88miles), has 9th Fastest Time Recorded on the JFK 50 Mile Course, and is a three time National Champion (50mile x2 and 100km).

We deep dive into the inner mind of Zach and how he is able to take extremely long distance races and break them down into manageable training plans and mindset training.

In this episode we cover…

Different types of fatigue: mental and physical
Training for a road race vs trail race and how pacing works with each, as well differences in recovery for each.
How your body handles hard surfaces during road races compared to the uneven terrain of trails and how your body mechanics are different.
Training cycles throughout the seasons (from extreme cold to extreme heat) and how you transition between them and begin anew with each season.
Training gear- learning about shoes like Altras which have zero drop and toe boxes, to hearing about how arm sleeves generate a cooling effect (for hot runs) and a warming effect (for cold runs)

Resources:

Human Performance Outliers Podcast

Zach Bitter Website

Zach's Instagram

Thank you to Momentous, Tracksmith, and Picky Bars for sponsoring this episode.

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Thanks for listening!

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Thank you to Zach, we look forward to hearing your thoughts on the show.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Running for Real podcast, where each week we bring you a conversation designed
0:10.6	to help you create positive change in your life, community and planet.
0:15.9	It's a collective of conversations about running the climate emergency and social justice.
0:25.8	One for real is for the brave, for those with courage and vulnerability, united by our
0:30.8	love of running, we're driving momentum towards some of the really tough challenges we're
0:35.7	facing as humanity.
0:38.4	So come join me, Tina Muir and let's get started.
0:47.6	Hello my friends, welcome to episode 252 of the Running for Real podcast.
0:53.5	Thank you for joining me today, if this is your first time at listening, I'm excited
0:58.3	you are here and I'm sure if that's the case, you are a super fan of my guest today and
1:03.6	I'm really excited to get to show you a different side of him and a different story direction
1:09.8	to what I think maybe you have heard in the past.
1:13.2	Now I am going to tell you a little more about why I decided to go in this direction in
1:17.9	just a moment.
1:18.9	First, I just want to take a moment just to talk about the brand that brought us together.
1:24.7	So both my guest, Zach Bitter and I are both sponsored by Ultra Running.
1:29.8	We are both big fans of what Ultra is doing.
1:34.2	I have talked many, many a time about the wide toe boxes and why that means so much to
1:39.5	me, the shaped shoe rather than a shoe shaped shoe and I also love the zero drop.
1:46.8	I love the naturalness of the shoe and I've talked about many of my favourites over the
1:52.3	years and I will be putting a link in the show notes for you to go get 15% off Ultra shoes
1:59.6	if you do want to go get that so you can go to runningforreal.com for episode 252 if you
	...

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