Written by Christopher Kelly
Sept. 29, 2015
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Christopher: Hello and welcome to the Nourish Balance Thrive Podcast. My name is Christopher Kelly and today I'm joined by Mark Allen. Hi, Mark.
Mark: How are you doing, Chris.
Christopher: I'm great, thank you. For those that don't know who Mark Allen is, he is the world's most successful triathlete. How amazing is that? Do people call you that on the street?
Mark: On the street, they have no idea who I am.
Christopher: I should read some of your -- I found some of your accolades on the website and they are completely astonishing. He is the first ever ITU Olympic Distance world champion in 1989, six times Hawaii Ironman world champion, ten times undefeated champion of the Nice International Triathlon, 2012 voted the Greatest Endurance Athlete of All Time in a worldwide poll conducted by the ESPN. That's pretty cool. That's amazing. I better find out how you did it. Is it just talent?
Mark: Well, definitely not talent. When I was a kid, I loved to be active. I was a swimmer. I liked to move. But I was very mediocre at whatever it was I did physically. I was kind of small, kind of little shrimpy, short and skinny. I just assumed that I just didn't have those natural genetics that you needed to be a great athlete. So when I started competing in triathlon in 1982, I was 24 years old. I'd been out of university for two years and was kind of trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life.
I saw the Ironman on TV and it just sparked this interest in me to just go there and see if I could even finish the race. I had zero expectations or zero foreshadow in that maybe I could be really pretty good at this sport. But right away, I saw that I was -- I kind of had a knack for it. I think part of it was that I was a swimmer for 12 years growing up as a kid, so I had this big cardiovascular engine inside that had been built. But I'm not genetically put together to be a great swimmer. I'm not tall. I don't have these super flexible shoulders and knees.
But I assumed to be put together pretty well to bike and run. So when I took this fitness that I had and translated it into combining three sports together then all of a sudden I felt like, wow, maybe I do have something here. And one of the interesting things in triathlon is that part of it, for sure, is your physical capabilities. But also, if you're doing a long race like the Nice Triathlon or you're doing an Ironman distance race, a lot of that mental strength and that ability to just stay calm in the midst of this race chaos is a huge factor in how the end of the day turns out for you. And that was something that I seemed to be able to develop and employ as part of my strategy when I was in the events.
Christopher: Yes. So you're trying to tell me you're 22 years and you'd already been swimming but you weren't -- So how much running and cycling were you doing at that time?
Mark: Well, prior to 1982, I probably ran 100 miles total my entire life. I rode my bike to school as a kid but I had zero background in either of those sports. I had run a 10k actually earlier that year just for fun with a friend of mine and I was, whatever, 24 and these guys who were over 50 were running faster than me. I thought there was something wrong with this picture here. Back in the early '80s, I just kind of assumed that when you exited university of college, that was the end of your life in terms of athletics and sporting and that was going to be your peak, that was going to be the best you would ever be ever.
When I saw these older guys twice my age running faster than me, kind of a light bulb went on. It's like wait a minute here, these guys are in their 50s and they're running faster than me so maybe there is room to keep developing that physical fitness and your endurance and your speed over a much longer lifespan than just your first 20 years of your life.
Christopher: Yeah, that's pretty amazing. It wasn't like you were just incredibly gifted then the first time you ran you did a five-minute mile or something ludicrous.
Mark: No. I mean, actually running, it took me about three years of running before I really felt like it sort of came easy for me. Up to that point, it was getting my body used to that impact. Swimming, obviously, is almost zero impact because you're not holding your body weight.
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But running, every step, you're absorbing that impact of your body weight on the ground and it's a hard surface and it doesn't give. It took almost three years of gradually building my running up before finally I felt like, okay, now I feel that sort of fluidity in this sport as well.
Christopher: And tell me how you got there. I think it's really interesting. Am I right in thinking that you didn't have a coach at this time?
Mark: Well, back in the '80s, there were no coaches. The sport was young. In '82, Ironman was exactly four years old. So there were no coaches that knew how to combine swimming, cycling and running together into this one thing called triathlon. I contacted people who were experts in cycling and also in running to kind of get their input on how to get ready for those two sports. But if I did exactly what they wanted me to do, as a cyclist, to get ready to ride 112 mile time trial and to get ready to run a marathon, if I put all that together, it would have killed me.
So right away, I realized that even though the three disciplines come from individual sports, that combining them together into this thing called triathlon is a unique sport in and of itself. A lot of it was trial and error. There were a bunch of us who were kind of at the forefront of this sport at that time. When somebody was doing really well, we'd say, "Okay, now, what is he doing?" And we try to copy that. And if it worked for us, we keep those tools. And if we blew up trying it then we knew that maybe short term it will be okay but long term it wasn't a solution to getting fitter. And so, we kind of really, I think, paved the way for a lot of the knowledge and information that people who are coaches now are utilizing.
Christopher: And so what did you learn? What were the things that you found worked best?
Mark: A couple of things. One is that because there's such a huge volume of training that you can do, first of all, you can never do as much as you could plan on putting down on paper as your ideal program. I always tell my clients, "You're probably going to have to cut back from what you think you should be doing because you're going to get plenty fit with less training than you needed."
Secondly, most of the endurance that comes in for a triathlete is actually built on the bike. So we do a lot of over distance on a bike but you don't have to do huge volumes of running because you're already gaining your endurance because of the long cycling sessions that you do. So even a modest amount of running, you're actually going to be able to run really well in the triathlon. And then the third thing was that because you are doing three sports, the overall sort of energy expenditure on your body is quite a bit. So you don't have to do as much faster high intensity speed work as maybe an individual sport athlete would need to do to get the same amount of fitness.
Christopher: Interesting. I'm just kind of wondering, how much volume does a professional triathlete do now?
Mark: Well, it varies, of course. If you're an Olympic distance athlete, you're not doing big volume training program. You're doing much more intensity. But for somebody who's trying to win Ironman, they're going to have some weeks where they're training over 30 hours, long bike rides, can be six to seven hours in length, long runs, anywhere from two to three hours, long swim sessions up to 6k in the pool. So it's pretty hefty but you don't do it all year round. You really vary your training throughout the different phases of the season.
In the beginning of the year, you're maybe having a lower intensity but you're building your volume and then you get the volume up and then you start to add in your speed work so then you cut back on your volume a little bit. It just varies. The body is so good at adapting to any stress that if you do the same thing throughout the entire year, you're going to plateau early. But if you vary the type of training that you're doing throughout the season then you'll continue to build your fitness.
Christopher: Interesting. I heard an interview with you and Phil Maffetone and I wondered how these two things fit together. So for people that don't know, Phil is very much an advocate of this kind of -- Maybe it would be better if you describe Phil's philosophy for coaching and the MAF method.
Mark: Yeah. Phil is one of the guys who really pioneered utilizing heart rate to set your training zones.
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That's kind of the holy grail of training, is figuring out what's hard enough but not too hard. Anybody can go really hard and really fast in a workout but if you're not absorbing the benefit of that, then you're not developing the right physiology, you can actually get weaker, you can get sick. And so one of the things that Phil discovered was that endurance athletes do much better if they stimulate the development of their aerobic system, that fat burning energy systems in the body and in the muscle.
And the better you become at utilizing fat for fuel, the more sustained your effort can be at the higher end in an endurance event. Certainly, Ironman is an endurance event because you're out there for hours and hours and hours. Each of us has an almost limitless supply of fat in the body but we only have about 2,000 calories or about 20 miles worth of carbohydrates stored in there. So, if you burn those carbohydrates really quickly in an Ironman, then you're kind of out of gas because it's hard to replace it quickly.
So, he actually, when I started working with him, it was about almost three into my career, I had some good results but I also had a lot of points where I was really exhausted from the training. I came from a swimming background where my mentality was just to go hard and push it every workout and so that's what I do with cycling and running. Anybody who has run much knows that you have to do easy days in addition to your faster days. But I didn't really understand how important that was.
And so, when I started working with Phil, he set my training zones based on heart rate and he said, "I want you to go to the running track and we're going to put a heart rate monitor on you and have you work up to 155 beats a minute." Because he had figured that as the operand of my aerobic fat burning range. And he said, "Then we'll time a mile and we'll see what your pace is." And it was about eight-minute 45 second mile. It seemed abysmally slow. Like how can you tell me to train this slow if I'm going to have to run a five-minute mile in a race?
But he said, "Just try it. The next month or two, just keep everything aerobic." And I did. Initially, it was very humbling because here I am, I'm trying to be an Ironman champion, win races and I'm running at a pace that wouldn't win a race for a guy who was twice my age. But I stuck with it and eventually I saw that I was starting to be able to run faster and bike faster at those same heart rates developing that aerobic system, stimulating it each time I went out to train.
Aerobic fat burning workouts are lowest stress on the body. When you do high intensity anaerobic work, accessing that carbohydrate store, that's high stress on the body. So that's kind of the blend you need to figure out as an athlete or as a coach, getting your athletes to do enough aerobic training that they really develop that aerobic system, the fat burning system. They train in a low stress physiology so that they can be consistent with their training.
Athletes who do a lot of anaerobic work, sure, they're going to get a skyrocket improvement in fitness in a very short period of time but then they'll plateau then they'll go down the other side and they'll be hanging on by the end of the season if they're not even injured. So I look at all different ways of setting training zones like using lactate testing, doing a VO2 max test and taking some percentages off of that. And I still come back to heart rate as really the best way to set your training zones, so training aerobic, anaerobic and helping you to really improve over a long period of time, not just the short term.
Christopher: This is super interesting. So for those that don't know, you do have your own coaching business and you are coaching clients now. So the method you just described to me, that's what you recommend for your clients now.
Mark: I do, yeah. In cycling, one of the big things now, obviously, is measuring your power. And I get some clients at Mark Allen Coaching and they'll say, "Well, how do I use power?" And I describe it this way. I say if you're just using power to measure your improvements on a bike, well, maybe this month you go out and you do a certain loop and you're riding 200 watts and then you go out next month and you're riding 230 watts, if the only thing you have is power, you don't know if you got the improvement because you're more fit or because you went harder.
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However, if you do that same test the first month, you ride 200 watts at, let's say, 150 heartbeats a minute, and then the next month at 150 heartbeats a minute you're riding 230 watts, that is clear solid fitness gain because you have the same heart rate but you're pushing more power. And that's how I like people to utilize that tool of power output for cycling, is to measure against a specific heart rate and see how that changes over time.
You can do the same thing running. Basically, you're measuring your running pace against a specific heart rate. This month you're running a seven-minute mile at 150 beats a minute, next month a 6:30 mile. That is a pure fitness gain. It's not because you went harder. It's because you're more fit.
Christopher: I know for me personally that my heart rate is affected quite a lot by the environment. So, you know what it's been like in Santa Cruz. Not so much now. It's cooled off a lot. But certainly last week, it was 100 degrees, which is unheard of in Santa Cruz. And I know that when I'm on the bike in the direct sunshine, I get really hot and my heart rate is absolutely higher than it would be normally. And then there's other things which could influence that heart rate too. How do you correct for those? You just kind of have to know about it or how do you deal with that?
Mark: Yeah, that's a great question. When you're in heat and it's really hot, your body tries to throw off that heat by pushing a lot of the blood to the skin surface and away from the working muscles. So in essence, in heat, your working muscle is being starved of oxygen because most of the blood is trying to go to the skin to cool you. And so it's a big physiological stress to deal with heat like that. And so as you so eloquently just said, in the heat, your heart rate is really high, your perceived effort might be low and so should you compensate and let your heart rate go higher?
My answer is no because heat stress is another stress on the body and if you try to push your perceived effort up to what normally would be normal for you on a specific ride or run, what you're really ending up doing is you're just going to jack your heart rate way up because, again, not much of the blood is going to be going to the muscles compared to what would be on a cooler day. And that's also a reason why training year round in a super hot climate isn't necessarily the best way to do well at a hot race like [0:18:09] [Indiscernible].
Because of the heat stress, you just can't train as hard over time. And so you're not working your muscles the same. It's much better to have at least a good portion of your season in a cooler climate where you aren't having to deal with so much of the heat stress and you can go at a faster pace, you can work your muscles more. And then even seven days of training in the heat or being in the heat seven to ten days, your blood goes through a lot of adaptations to deal with the heat. And then after that, there's really no physiological adaptation. The only change is maybe is your mindset. And so somebody can train in a cool climate go to a hot race a week or ten days in advance and still do super well.
Christopher: I know what you're saying is true because I see the same change when I get into the sauna. I'm not quite geeky enough to wear a heart rate monitor in the sauna but as an athlete, you become quite aware of how fast your heart is beating and, of course, it's very easy to check it, just by putting your finger on your neck. I see the same thing. I see my heart rate will go up to about 120 beats if I stay in the sauna long enough. It must be for the same reason you just described.
Mark: Yeah. And there's other things that affect it too. If you ate a big meal, the same thing is going to happen. A lot of blood is going to the stomach and less the muscle so there's less oxygen available for the exercise that you might be doing. And so your heart rate is going to be higher for any given perceived effort. If you're starting to get a little sick, your body is having to fight something off, maybe you don't even feel that yet, you'll notice that your heart rate all of a sudden is much higher than it should be. If you're dehydrated, same thing. If you're low on sleep, same thing.
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If you start to get really over trained, often what happens is that even at a low heart rate, it feels like a really hard effort. That's a sign that, okay, I'm just really tired. And if you don't get that sort of validation by looking at the heart rate, sometimes you think, "Oh, I'm just being weak. I need to push through this." When in reality, when you have that heart rate and you see you're only at 100 beats a minute but you're already loading up with lactate, that's a darn good sign that it's time to take an easy day.
Christopher: Yeah, for sure. I know exactly what you're talking about. A couple of years ago, I did a stage race across Canada on a mountain bike. It's called the BC Bike Race. And I could remember on, I think, it was either the third or fourth day. I'm there on the start line and I looked down at my little garment and my resting heart rate was 36. And this is like 45 seconds before the gun goes off. You don't normally get a little bit of sympathetic nervous activity before the gun goes off.
And on the first climb, the perceived effort is maximum. I'm going as hard as I can. And I'd been going that way for a while and I looked down and I see 142 beats per minute. At that point you know that something has changed inside you. You know it's not right.
Mark: Yeah, yeah. They say after it's on that third, fourth day of multiple efforts in a row where your body is starting to get really depleted and then everything changes. The Tour de France guys, they say they're golden for the first three days and then after that everything they do each day affect the next day and so it's much different.
Christopher: Yeah, it's quite an experience. It actually got better from there, I'd say. Once I kind of hit that wall, the subsequent days weren't as bad. It was that third or fourth morning, I can't remember which, that it was just like a real nadir of feeling. But I'm super interested in it. I've got a power meter on every single bike that I own and I love having the computer scientist as well as the pro mountain biker and I love looking at the numbers and seeing the changes over time.
I've always felt like I need someone to look over my shoulder and look at this power data and say, "Hey, Chris, being an idiot here and this is not right and you need to be doing--" So, is that something you do on a day to day basis, like look at the power data or do you think that's not necessary?
Mark: In general, my philosophy, I don't look at anything specifically day to day. I kind of keep track of it loosely in my mind and look at trends over time. Because if you're looking at it every single day and trying to compare it exactly to what yesterday was and what you're hoping tomorrow will be, you can drive yourself crazy. And the reality is the body doesn't change that much day to day nor does it change in a linear fashion.
So, for example, I just had a client yesterday who had been struggling with his pace aerobically running and then also on the bike. He just said his power didn't seem like it was getting any better. And then literally overnight his running pace dropped about 20 seconds a mile and his cycling improved as well. And he hit that critical mass. So do I think it's good to keep track every day? Yeah, keep track but keep loose track. Don't put a lot of -- Try to look at trends over a little broader period of time, broader spectrum, than just day to day because then you won't be chasing your tail so much.
Christopher: Yeah, absolutely. You can definitely drive yourself nuts with this stuff.
Mark: I think it's great to have power measured against heart rate, keep tracking your pace running against heart rate, see what your pace is in a pool per hundred and keep loose track of it and know that some days it will be a little bit better than other days. But over time, there should be a general improvement in the trend. So you're a little slower today, you're a little faster tomorrow, a little faster the next day. Over time, that whole up and down trend should be getting overall faster.
And if it's not, then you need to, like at the end of a month, let's say, if you're not seeing improvement, there is something going on. So either there's something not right with your training or there's something else blocking your improvement. Maybe you're not getting enough sleep, maybe there's something with your diet that's not exactly right. Maybe you're eating too many carbohydrates, not enough protein, not enough good oils. Maybe you have some kind of a low grade infection or something illness going on that's holding back that fitness improvement that you should be getting month to month.
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Christopher: I wanted to ask you that. So you already said that the ability to tap into this almost limitless supply of stored body fat is critical for endurance. So, how do you -- Say, I turned up on your doorstep and I pay to become your client and I was consuming vast amount of carbohydrate and was clearly quite dependent on those carbohydrates for exercise performance. Where would you start with me to get me towards that point where I could start tapping into those fat reserves?
Mark: Well, the main thing is going to be to structure your training intensity so that the bulk of your sessions are stimulated in that aerobic fat burning system. And the reality is if you're a carb king and you're eating tons of carbs and you're training hard all the time and you're very comfortable at whatever, 180 beats a minute, when I tell you to slow down to 145 beats a minute, I'll just let you know it's going to be humbling, it's going to be shocking, you're going to feel like, "What? I have to go this slow? I can't ride any hills because my heart rate just skyrockets."
But slowly, as that fat burning system develops, one of the bonuses is that your craving for carbohydrates starts to wane as well and you actually start to want to have more fat, more protein and eat a little bit more balanced. You still need carbohydrates but you will probably reduce it, the craving for them. And the ones you want will probably be healthier as opposed to simpler, more complex and no simple sugars and things like that.
Christopher: Yeah. So, okay, slowing down is one thing. So you look at what the person is eating as well. Do you have recommended guidelines from macronutrient ratios? How do you do it?
Mark: It depends on -- Yeah, I have general guidelines. Like if somebody is not working out a whole lot but they're exercising a bit, about 40% of your total calories is from carbs, 30% from fat, 30% from protein is good. If you're exercising a lot, you're doing a lot of long riding, long runs, you're putting in 25 hours a week or something, the actual ratio of carbohydrates that your body will need will go up just because you're burning through them.
Fat burns in the flame of carbohydrates. So there is no such thing as pure fat burning. You need a little bit of carbohydrate to be burning to spark that breakdown of the fat chain to release its energy. So even in the very low end of fat burning, low heart rates, you're still going to need a little bit of carbohydrate. And if you do a six-hour bike ride and it's all aerobic, you're still utilizing a bunch of carbohydrate to do that. So your percent of carbohydrate that you need is going to go up.
But I'm more simplistic than an analyst. I tell people just look at your plate, look at what you're going to be eating before you eat it, ask yourself is there a good source of carbohydrate here, something like that's a whole grain? Or is it all simple carbohydrate? Is there a good source of protein here, a complete protein somehow whether it's animal protein or combining a grain and legumes so you get all the amino acids you need to rebuild your muscle?
Is there a good source of healthy oils? Did I sprinkle olive oil on whatever it is that I'm eating? Are there almonds or walnuts or some other kind of nut that has good oils? Is there some avocado there? Just simple questions you ask yourself. And if you look at your plate and you can't say yes to all of those balanced questions, then figure out what you're going to add into it or take away so that the answer does become a yes.
Christopher: And so do you think -- Like I said, I'm racing this mountain bike races. They're typically two hour events, sometimes longer. Do you think I'm making a mistake in going too low carb. Previously, I've had a big problem with over consuming carbohydrates and perhaps developed pre-diabetes almost. And a low carb solution has worked really well for me. Now, I've got to the point where I'm not really eating carbs at all, like probably less than 30 grams a day and I'm measuring blood ketones. Do you think that's a mistake for exercise performance or do you think that -- Or is it too hard for people to normally do so you wouldn't recommend it?
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Mark: That's a good question and in my mind the jury is still out on that philosophy. A lot of people have tried it and seemed to be really doing well with it. The one piece that I wonder about is if you are really restricted on your carbohydrate intake, when you're exercising, your body has to get that carbohydrate somehow to spark the fat to breakdown. And if you're out of carbohydrates, the only way it does that is it breaks down lean muscle and then convert it into carbohydrate and to glucose.
So the one caution I would say is to just be really, really good with your protein intake because you are going to be metabolizing lean muscle to get that carbohydrate you need to break down the fat for fuel. One thing is when you're exercising, that's a time when you can take in carbohydrates. And basically, the way we're hardwired is that if you're going at a pretty good pace, your body is going to be burning those carbohydrates at about the same rate as you're absorbing it. You usually don't get any kind of blood sugar spike if you're taking in carbohydrate while you're exercising at a good pace.
Christopher: That makes sense. I have seen that. Actually when I first switched to a very low carbohydrate ketogenic diet, I lost an awful lot of weight and most of it, I think, I don't know I should have got some DEXA scan or something done, where it's a lot of lean muscle mass. I was trying to restrict protein too much, I think. I'm pretty sure that was a mistake. And I got down to the lightest weight I've ever been in my life by quite a stretch and my power to weight ratio was actually pretty horrible compared to what I'd seen in recent years.
I'm actually much faster now even though I'm quite a lot heavier. So, yeah, definitely that makes a lot of sense. But what do you think about -- I mean, surely you've heard about the Paleo diet and the exclusion of grains and dairy and soy and some of these other things which have traditionally been considered healthful foods. What are your thoughts on that philosophy?
Mark: I think that's a great question for everybody to be asking right now. Our genetics haven't really changed a whole lot in the last couple thousand years. This great, great quote a couple of years ago said we are no more genetically adapted to survive in a shopping mall than a saber-toothed tiger. Everything we do is built on what helped us to thrive in a time when we didn't have anything that was refined, we didn't have anything that was in such vast quantities and varieties.
And so, I think, what we just have to kind of look at our sources of food and ask ourselves is this healthy or not? There's a lot, as we know, a lot of genetically modified things out there that are in the food chain, that are in the grocery stores and they're probably good to stay away from. It's pretty hard to improve on nature. And so, I just try to ask myself, okay, what I'm eating here, is my body feeling good when I eat it or is it giving me a little momentary thing but then I feel lousy later?
Our bodies are so smart and if we just tune in a little bit, in a matter of weeks, you'll start to really feel what works in your body and what doesn't. And some of it might be close to Paleo and some of it might be a little bit different. The one thing that is different between what we have now and what our ancient ancestors had, well, two things. One, the food itself doesn't have the same nutrient density that it used to have because of depleted soils and stuff.
The tomato we eat nowadays doesn't have nearly as many minerals and vitamins as what it had as our ancient ancestors had when they ate a tomato. Things had changed a lot. So corn nowadays is like 3% or 4% protein. Traditional corn was over 30% protein. So traditional corn was a good source of protein when you combine that with beans.
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Nowadays, you combine corn that's 3% protein and whatever, 97% sugar, you don't get a lot of that grain-legume-amino acid build your muscle thing that it should have. That's one issue. The second issue is that most people are under a lot more stress now than our ancestors were on a day to day basis. And stress requires a lot of concentrated nutrients to manage it. And so, maybe a Paleo diet with no oils and everything is as natural as it could be worked for our ancestor. But with the amount of stress that everybody is under these days, you still may come up short of what you need nutritionally.
Try something. See how it works. See how you feel. Just like you did. You went on a pretty extreme diet and maybe initially you felt good but then you realized your power to weight ratio is way down. Now you feel better. Use that Paleo, use whatever you want as a launching off point but really tune in and see how your body is responding over a long period of time, not just how you feel this week or next week but how are you feeling six months down the road from doing this thing.
Christopher: So the exclusion of grain is not something that you do personally or you think is necessary to be a successful athlete at this point?
Mark: It's going to be individual. I don't eat a lot of wheat, let's say. I eat organic tortillas. I eat a ton of beans, lentils, legumes. I eat a ton of legumes. I eat a lot of nuts, olive oil, hummus, some animal protein but not a lot. And that works really well for me. If I ate a ton of bread all the time, it wouldn't do that well for me. If I ate a ton of cheese and ice cream all the time, that wouldn't do well for me. I just know my body doesn't feel as good when I do that. A little bit, great. A lot of it, forget it. It's individual. But if you tune in to your body and what it's doing and you're really honest with yourself, you're going to know what works and what doesn't work for you.
Christopher: I'm just wondering how you work with people like in terms of everything that's not the training plan? So when I first started -- I've not actually, although I'm nearly 40 years old, I've not actually been racing very long. I started in my early 30-ish, maybe mid 30s. In the beginning, I thought it was all about the training plan, whatever my coach put in my calendar as long as I just tick those boxes then I would get the right results.
Now, I'm a little bit more mature and a bit more experienced, I realized that's probably one of the least important things I want to say almost, and it's everything else, it's the diet, it's the rest, it's the stress management, it's maybe some supplements. And then the biochemistry, I think, is super important. That's why I'm really into now is doing testing and seeing what's going on with cortisol or seeing what's going on with some of the blood work. How do you encompass all of that? Is that something you deal with or do you just strictly do the training plans?
Mark: Well, my coaching is all online. And so the main thing that I give people are the training programs. But then I really encourage them to keep in contact with me especially if things feel off or they're nervous or something doesn't feel right. Then we dive into the other issues. Maybe something is happening with their diet. Maybe they're not getting enough sleep. Probably the biggest thing that I get as a coach is, "Hey, I've been doing all the training but I'm not getting any faster."
So then we look into the lifestyle and what's going on. Are you feeling any stress? How is your diet? Some pretty basic questions. And usually like, "Well, yeah, I'm going through a divorce and my job and I'm staying up late and getting up at 3:00 in the morning to get my long ride and all that stuff." You're never going to get faster if you continue on this route. It's much better to cut back on the training so that you can absorb it, get some more sleep so your body is not under stress. Make a few simple changes and all of a sudden they start to get better, their body is responding, they can see their fitness going back up again.
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And then it's just like a positive feedback cycle because they're not stressed about not being more fit. That's probably one of the biggest stressors for an athlete, is when they feel like, "I'm not getting anymore fit, what's wrong?"
Christopher: Yeah, absolutely. Have you ever had to send someone away? Have you ever just told someone to -- Especially guys like me, actually, are probably your worst nightmare, the Cat 4 road racer with two kids that's just started a business and his marriage is on the rocks -- I'm not saying that's me. The super overstressed masters athlete that doesn't really have even time to do the training program let alone benefit from it. Do you ever send people away?
Mark: I just tell people, this is the reality. If you continue with all of these exterior things that are affecting your fitness and your training, it's going to be tough to reach those goals that you're after. So, it's your decision. If you don't want to change any of that stuff then just enjoy the experience for what it is. But if you want to get better, these are the steps that you're going to have to take. Then I leave it up to them.
A number of years ago, I was noticing that almost all of the gals that I coach, all the women, were really, they were spot on. They were getting the improvements that you would expect. But maybe only half the guys were. And it's like, "Geez, is my training more designed for women?" I mean, I couldn't figure it out. Slowly it bottled to the surface and the answer came out that the women were actually doing the training that I laid out for them.
And the guys, they'd look at it but then they'd still go out with their buddies and they're trying to be the champion of every workout. Basically, they were just going too hard all the time and they hadn't changed anything in the way they train and so they were still getting the same results that they had prior to coming to me. So it's just an interesting dynamic of how it works. But ultimately, some guys it's like -- or some people -- they have more fun by just going out and hammering and maybe not seeing the race results they want but on a day to day basis it's fun for them.
The only catch is that the human being is not designed to put their body under that kind of stress every day. We're just not built to absorb that over time. And so eventually, it does become a negative. People can get depressed, their energy levels drop, they get injured, they get sick more often, heart rates high, blood work comes back from their yearly checkup and they don't look like an athlete, they look like somebody who's got some serious cardiovascular problems. And it's just from the overdoing the anaerobic stuff and under doing the aerobic training.
Christopher: Yeah, absolutely. I know that too well. You can look super fast and super skinny and maybe your doctor says to you, "I wish I was healthy as you just because of your physical appearance." But then when you run some blood work you see things which are certainly undesirable and so you may not be as healthy as you think. But what do you think? I'm always interested to know what people think about the state of the science. Would you describe yourself as someone who's influenced -- Do you spend a lot of time reading scientific studies and are you influenced by them? What do you think of the current state of things?
Mark: Yeah. I'm always reading as much stuff as I can that's coming out in research just to see what science is saying and see if it's validating the experiences that I had and seeing if people coming up with something new that will either be a tool that athletes can use to get better or stay healthier. I think science is a good starting point but the human body is such a vast dynamic little cosmos in and of itself so I don't think we'll ever fully have all of the advances that had completely fine tune it when we're talking about getting better and more fit and having better races.
And the other aspect of it that really doesn't get mentioned much is all the numbers in the world don't mean anything if your internal landscape, your mindset, your ability to focus, your ability to keep your mind quiet in the race isn't developed also. Once that gun goes off, you have to deal with yourself. You have to deal with how you approach things that are unexpected, how you deal with seeing an athlete pulling away from you that you think you should be stronger then.
[0:45:05]
How do you turn these things around? How do you stay fully engaged in the effort even when you're in a position that you never thought you'd find yourself in?
Christopher: You could interview yourself. That's fantastic question. So this happened to me at the weekend. I'm in a cycle cross race and my front tire went soft just unexpectedly. I've no idea what -- It's been perfectly fine for I don't know how many couple of weeks since I put the tire on there and then suddenly it just lost 10 psi. I realized I'm going to have to stop and I don't know where the pump is and I definitely don't have pit wheels and all this kind of stuff. At that point, in my mind or certain part of my mind, the race is over. But it's ridiculous when you think about it because in the end I lost 20 seconds to put some more air on that tire. And even in the cycle cross race that's not the end of the world. How do you deal with that? How do you train your athletes to deal with that type of event?
Mark: I tell them to, first of all, expect the unexpected. Go through your race, try to imagine every scenario that you possibly can happening and before the race, figure out how you're going to deal with each one of those things, how you will resolve those things that might come up that are going to be tough for you, so that if they do indeed happen in the race, you already had your answer. You already know how you're going to approach getting your goggles kicked off or getting a flat tire or not finding your transition bag when you come in on the run? How are you going to deal with all those kinds of stuff?
But then also be ready to deal with the unexpected. And when something unexpected happens that not in a million years had you even anticipated, approach that with as much calm as you have already programmed into yourself to deal with the things that you thought you would have to deal with. And that's ultimately the best solution. It's just taking it calmly, dealing with it and then moving on. And also realizing that there is no bad race. The only bad race is one where you don't learn anything from.
Maybe the result is not what you would hope or you had fitness but it didn't come out because you did have a mechanical or whatever it is, but ultimately there's something to be learned from it and those lessons are what will enable you to have an even better race the next time. The first six years that I went to Ironman, I didn't have the race that I'd hoped for. I could be in the lead. I could really off the bike. I could be in the lead halfway through the marathon. I could be in the lead with a few miles. But I could never win it.
And then finally, in 1989, I was able to put together the first of six races that were enough to be the champion over there. And so part of me, that cynical part was like, "Geez, why did I have to have all those lousy races? Why couldn't I have won the third time or the fourth time or whatever?" In retrospect, when I look back now, I can realize that those tough races were where I learned so many of the things I needed to know to be able to deal with the tough moments in the races that I was able to actually win.
Because all of those six victories in Kona, even in everyone of those, there were still a thousand moments where I wanted to stop and give up and throw in the towel. But it was the lessons learned in those sort of bad races that got me through those tough moments in the good ones and made the result even better. That's something that every athlete can utilize. Like I said, the only bad race is one where you don't learn anything from.
Christopher: And then as you gain more experience, you just have less and less of these unexpected events.
Mark: Right. You've dealt with them all.
Christopher: Yeah. So, do you deal in the same way then? So when you see someone pulling away from you in a race and maybe you weren't expecting that, how do you deal with that in the same way? Or you decide how you're going to react to that and just you're not surprised when it happens?
Mark: Well, a lot of times you're still surprised but you just try not to let it rattle you. Especially race like Ironman, you know that the day is not over until you all cross the finish line. Maybe somebody pulls away at mile 70 in the bike, there is still a lot of racing to go. Somebody pulls away mile 5 of the marathon, there is still 21 miles left after that. I've seen so many huge leads just evaporate in a matter of a mile or two on the run because somebody didn't manage that lead right. They went too hard and they blow up and they're walking and you're still running and you end up passing them and winning the race.
Ultimately, I know that there's only one person that's going to be the champion of every event. And so even if I don't win it, if I give it everything I have, and ultimately we all know if we're giving everything we have even if we're in a bad patch.
[0:50:07]
If you know you crossed the line and you gave it what you had, you can still hold your head high and your life will still go on. The sun will still rise the next morning. Your family is still going to love you. You still have two arms and two legs and you have another chance later. So it's never really that bad.
Christopher: Yeah, that's great advice. And it's true even in the shorter event, say, the cycle cross I mentioned before. What quite often happens is one or two guys who are very much stronger than the rest of the group and they go off and they set an incredible pace at the beginning and then maybe ten guys trying to match that pace which they're not capable of and so you maybe see the bunch disappear and you're like, "Oh, that's the end of my race then. That's over."
And then, of course, seven of the other guys who are in the same group, the same thing happen to them. They explode and then when they got spot off the bunch they're like they really kind of lose it mentally and that's your opportunity to come back and pick up a few of those guys off and get a better than expected result. And this is in a 60-minute race. I mean, yeah, it's a long event. Very few events are so short where you can't come back from a disappointment.
Mark: Exactly, yeah.
Christopher: So finally, I wanted to ask you. I mean, you've probably seen some of the press recently on maybe the deleterious effects of cardiovascular exercise and that some of the changes that happen in the heart might be a pathology or something they rather not. And I thought it was interesting that you don't run or bike or swim much anymore. Surfing is your thing. Do you think there's a time that all endurance athletes should hang up the bike and do something else?
Mark: Well, I don't know if you necessarily have to hang it up and say I'm not going to do any long anymore. But you do have to honor your body. And I'm just not sure if really pushing that peak level of performance for years and years and years is good for you. If you back away from it and really rest and let your body recharge and regenerate and you are eating a real healthy diet and all that, honestly, I don't see anything wrong with that. I think you're probably going to be living pretty healthy.
If you don't move, you're definitely going to feel worse. It's always good to do something. But I'm just not sure that peak performance, really jacking your heart rate up to max heart rate for couple of hours at a time for the rest of your life racing every weekend is necessarily going to be healthy for you.
Christopher: I think that's the answer I wanted to hear. I was hoping that you wouldn't say, "Oh, you're 40? Oh my god, you shouldn't be doing this."
Mark: I mean, look at Ned Overend. The guy, he's amazing. He's famous for actually his going out and training pretty hard most of the time. However, he does very little volume. I think it's a kind of a close end equation. You can kind of go out and do a lot of long stuff but don't do it too hard or if you do not much. You can train a little bit harder and both can be healthy. Yeah, nowadays I surf most days here in Santa Cruz. I still do a little bit of running for cardiovascular conditioning but I don't go long and I don't go hard.
I do some functional strength work to keep all the muscular integrity intact. And surfing is kind of a combination of aerobic and anaerobic because you are basically usually pretty slow, just paddling. But then when you're going for the waves sometimes you're padding really hard. And if it's a big day, it can be very anaerobic. But it's low stress. It's so fun to be out there and moving to all these different directions, so it's hard to get overused because you're always in a different position.
Christopher: Yeah, I used to -- I hope I'm not one of the people that annoyed you. I'm one of those kiteboarders out there at Waddell Creek. I've not done it for a while. So the people that don't know, kiteboarding is this thing -- It's a bit like wind surfing but it's kind of a hybrid. You're on a surfboard-ish, kind of almost like a wakeboard. And then you got this gigantic kite that pulls you along. It tends to annoy surfers because it takes up so much space. Yeah, I hope I'm not one of those guys.
[0:55:00]
Mark: Well, usually today, you guys, when you guys are out there, the wind is not good for surfing.
Christopher: Yeah, it's true. It's true. Although there's some unique spaces in Santa Cruz where like there's the kind of the wind is like is there and you can use it but somehow it's not coming in all the way to the shore and so you get nice glassy wave even though it's actually pretty windy. It's a pretty extraordinary place. Well, this has been great. Thank you very much. I really, really appreciate your time. This has been a fantastic education for me. I think it's really enlightening to talk to people that's so successful and to find out how you do it. Where can people find out more about you and your training programs?
Mark: Yeah. You can go to markallencoaching.com for my training programs for triathlon. You can also go to fitsoul-fitbody.com for some of the retreats that I teach with Brant Secunda who was very, very important in getting my internal space in the right place to be able to handle the pressure of Ironman racing. I've studied shamanism with him now for over 25 years and we do workshops together where we integrate those two themes of fit soul and fit body to kind of give people the whole package so that you get the tools to not only get your body fit and healthy and in the right place but also to release negative emotions and to help deal with stress and to just really learn to quiet your mind and find that place of gratitude which is a real amazing and powerful launching off point when you're on the start line.
If you're grateful to just be there, the anything that happens is bonus and there's so much less pressure on the day that it often freeze you up to actually have that great race that you were looking for. So, fitsoul-fitbody.com. We have our next workshop here in Santa Cruz in February, so check that out. And, yeah, email me any time if anybody has any questions, markallencoaching.com, fitsoul-fitbody.com.
Christopher: Excellent. I will link to both of those sites. I think I might be there because I'm local in Santa Cruz. So February. I have to find out and sign up about that because that sounds fantastic.
Mark: Awesome.
Christopher: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Mark. I really appreciate it.
Mark: All right, Chris. We'll talk to you later then.
Christopher: Cheers then.
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