Zach Bitter Set 100 Mile World Record (in 11 Hours) | Joe Rogan

Explain the record you broke. You ran 24 in less, well, it was 100 miles and it's a 24 hour time period but you did it in 11 hours and 40 what minutes? Yeah, so it was, yeah, let me, I'll explain a little bit. So it was, the event itself was called Six Days in the Dome and really what it was was you could do anything from a 24 hour event to a 48 hour event to a six day event and just see how far you could run within that time frame. Six days. Yeah, I know there's some crazy people out there. So just wait till David Goggins finds that event. But yeah, so I've been, it's interesting because there's not a lot of timed events that are necessarily structured 400 mile or for like 12 hours. So a lot of times you find yourself jumping into some of these other events that are longer in duration and just kind of using them as a way to try to run a fast 100 miler or a fast 12 hour. So the race director for that particular event had reached out to me because he's known me for a while and knew that I was targeting fast 100 mile times and just said, hey, I've got this cool event set up at the Olympic training facility in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the Pettit Center and I think it's going to be pretty conducive for fast times. And asked if I wanted to do it. So I actually didn't have an ideal timeline to that I would have normally wanted to work with in terms of getting ready for it. But training went really well. And I went there targeting the 100 mile world record, which was 11 hours, 28 minutes and three seconds prior to that and ended up running 11 hours, 19 minutes and 13 seconds for 100 miles. And then since we have like this 100 mile distance and also this 12 hour timed event kind of structure, you can find yourself if you're under 12 hours kind of double dipping and getting two events for the price of one, I guess you could say. So I kept running after I hit 100 miles and ended up going 104.88 miles total in the 12 hour timeframe. So that was another record. Yeah. So it's two world records, a hundred miles in 12 hours, dude, six minutes and 48 seconds for a pace for a hundred miles is fucking bonkers. That is so fast. That's so crazy. That's such a fast pace, man. Yeah. You know, it's funny, like when you look at it, cause I think sometimes people look at like a hundred miles and 11 hours and 19 minutes and there's not a lot of context in their mind unless they're kind of familiar with ultra marathon running. But when you start to break it down into like the subcategories where it's like, well, that's like four, like sub three hour marathons in a row, or I can't remember how many or what the 5k time is. There's like, it's like 31 5k's at some, sometimes four sub three hour marathons in a row. Yeah. Wow. That's so crazy. That's so fast. And are you still eating mostly meat? Uh, so yeah, this gets brought up quite a bit, I think, because I mean, I eat a ton of animal products for sure. Uh, but, uh, you know, I wouldn't classify myself as a quote unquote carnivore or quite in that category. Well, this is cause the carnivore diet people want to claim you. Right. And we discussed this kind of the last time you were here where you, you take in a lot of glucose and you, you ramp up your carbohydrates considerably before a race. But like, what is, what is your, what is a daily diet? Let's say in training, you're preparing for something like this. What's a daily diet for you? Like? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, let's jump into that. I think there is some nuance within that even because when you think of my lifestyle, the way I like describe it is if you took a calendar year and you grabbed a single day out of there and you grabbed a day where I was like a peak training day versus a recovery day, those are like so drastically different in terms of my energy and my, my energy demands. Uh, so like things tend to fluctuate quite a bit and change quite a bit. And I think that's oftentimes what confuses people because they want to, they look at what I'm doing, say on race day, or they look at what I'm doing on one of my big workout days or my rest day and think that's what I'm doing across the board. So when you get the folks saying, Oh, well, Zach follows a carnivore diet, they're probably looking at like a post race recovery day where then I might be eating almost all just animal products, a lot of eggs, a lot of salmon, uh, you know, red meat, uh, that sort of stuff. Um, but if you pick a day out where I'm doing like a big training day, doing like a 30 mile run or something like that, uh, that's where I'm going to kind of bring back some of the carbohydrates, try to supplement that activity. And the best way to maybe describe it is, uh, you know, there's like this, this, uh, like kind of train low race high or this carb periodization concept that's getting more momentum behind it and, and more studies and science behind it too. There's some interesting folks that are looking into this in more detail. And if folks are really interested in doing a deep dive in it, there's a guy named Dr. Mark Bubbs. He wrote a book called peak and he kind of dives into kind of like some of the nutrition science where it's been and kind of where it's, it's kind of heading and, and they highlight some of that. And one of the big things they, they're starting to recognize that even with the elite athletes, when you're periodizing your training, like I do, uh, you know, your nutrition should be being periodized as well. Uh, you know, the science is pretty clear that like, if you're doing a workout and you take in glucose or fructose, uh, I think most science says a two to one ratio is ideal for maximizing the one that you can take in that, I mean, you're going to give yourself an advantage. That's like rocket fuel. So then it becomes a question of like, do you need that a hundred percent of the time or do you even want to do it a hundred percent of time? Because when we look at it, you pause you right here when you say glucose two to one, like, what do you mean by that? And what glucose to fructose? Okay. Because what they found out is when they started doing a lot of like the exercise science and nutrition was that the real limiter is your gut. So like on paper, so absorption. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. There's a finite amount you can absorb and you increase the amount you can, you can absorb on average if you have that two to one ratio versus all of one or the other. So two glucose to one sucrose. Yeah. Interesting. And now what, what are the different sources for glucose versus sucrose? Like sucrose is simple sugar that you get. Is that more like a refined sugar? Yeah. Yeah. You, I think like, uh, the, the way, like the most, most like sports supplements and things like that are going to be designed to kind of meet those, those specific, because they're looking at the literature and they're seeing like, okay, this is how you optimize. Like a power eight or a Gatorade or something like that would be a two to one. Yeah. I'd have to look to see exactly if they have that, but my guess would be, they would be if they're looking at, at the research and where that's kind of that. Um, but yeah, so like really when the question that I think needs to be asked with a lot of this stuff is like, if I want to make a workout, feel as easy as possible, if I'm trying, if I can get in like say 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour, it's probably going to do that. Like my pace, my perceived effort at that pace is probably going to feel easier, but then you have to ask the question, like how often do you need it to feel that easy? So for me, the answer to that is like, well, if I'm doing something really strenuous or something that's in a little bit of a gray area where it's just fast enough to dip into the glycogen stores, but just slow enough that I can do it for quite a while, make maybe even a couple hours, then you're kind of in this area where, uh, that could be an advantage for you from a performance standpoint. But if I'm going out for an easy run of like 60 to 90 minutes, and it's going to be like a two to three out of 10 perceived effort anyway, like there's no real need for me to be hitting glucose during that or, you know, sports drink during that to make that feel even easier yet. Cause my goal isn't necessarily to, you know, make an easy run feel even easier, I guess is the way to call it 90 minute run easy. Nothing just a stroll, just a few dozen miles. Well, and I think that, that also brings up a really good point too, where like a lot of this stuff, when we're looking at carbohydrate usage and performance is we're looking at elite athletes. We're looking at folks that are training for like, you know, the Olympics, you know, sometimes there are even Olympic medalists and that's just not a very good comparison, I think to the average person who's out there running, because you know, they're, they're getting their purposes are different, you know, their objectives are different. Their lives are very different. Like one is doing basically everything around a specific, specific date and distance and trying to run as fast as they can on that date. And another person may be trying to run as fast as they can, but there's so many other factors in life, like their work, their relationships, their, um, you know, the level of training they're actually able to have with the time they have. And then also like, you know, managing their own health and nutrition, because like, you know, elite athletes don't have a very rosy picture in terms of long-term health either. So for someone who's like, you know, maybe 10, 20 pounds overweight and is trying to run to get into shape or trained to get into shape or something like that, they're probably thinking just as much about health as they are about performance. So for them to be, you know, shuttling in 60 grams of carbohydrate every hour during training and racing is, is probably not the direction that they'd want to go. Now, when you get ready to do something like this hundred mile run, um, how many miles do you run on a typical day and do you ramp that up or do you just give yourself a base and know that you can push through like how do you handle that? Yeah. So I'll build up my training. The way I kind of describe it is like, I'm always focusing on specificity, kind of being king. So depending on the race, distance, and the intensity is kind of how I'm going to structure my workouts. So the rule of thumb that I use is the closer I get to the workout, the more specific the workouts I do are going to be towards that race, distance, and intensity. Uh, so for me, what that oftentimes means since I'm training for like a hundred mile distance races is early in a training block, I might be doing some like shorter interval work, like VO two max, like an example, that would maybe be like a three minute, uh, kind of almost all out effort followed by like a three minute recovery jog, and then another three minute interval like that. Some of those real short interval sessions. And how many of those would you do in a row? How many sprints versus recovery? Yeah. Uh, it'll depend. I'll start like pretty easy. And the first one, the f when I first started, I might just do three by three on that and what my goal really is to every week is to kind of build volume within that. So that first week, it might be just three of them, but by like say the eighth week, I might do a total of like 24 to 27 minutes worth of volume within that VO two max context. So it's, it's really interesting. Cause like, you know, I could go out on any one day and do like maybe 10 of those. But if I do that, and then it takes me like a week and a half to recover from that session, it's not nearly as probably effective as if I spread that out a little bit and said, did like five by three and then five by three, three days after that. Give your body a chance to recover and build versus just destroying it all in one and then feeling like shit for a couple of weeks. Exactly. I like to, I like to call it microstressing when I'm working with folks and my own training, I'm like, we want to microstress. We want to stress you just enough to elicit a response and so you get stronger. And then we want to do that over and over and over again. Are you aware? I'm sure you are. You know who Pavel Tatsulini is. Yeah. Yeah. So he's got this sort of concept when it comes to weightlifting with kettlebells in particular, calling greasing the groove. Yeah. Whereas instead of doing all these sets to failure, you would just do like half of what you're capable of and then do it again in a more frequent pace. Like do it again rather, you know, do it again on Wednesday, do it again on Friday. And then give yourself a lot of time in between each individual activity too, particularly in training for strength. He actually recommends as much as 10 minutes of recovery in between sets, which is, you know, kind of, I mean, most people don't have the time for that. You know, six sets is an hour in. I mean, it seems like you're just laying around the gym. People would, if you were at the gym, people would mock you, but that's his protocol. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's, I think it, you know, endurance is like, say it's a patient person's game, so I think if you can build that volume in a, in a microstressing or in a, like a sustainable way, that's what's going to keep you or get you strong. And it's also going to make it less likely to get injured. How much time do you need? Like, like if you got, you know, up to that insane pace that you did when you ran the a hundred miles, when, if you took like a week off or two weeks off, how much would you lose? Not much in that amount of time, especially at that intensity. So the thing is, is like the six 48 mile pace, you, we need to be kind of relative about it. So like for me, when I'm out training, when I'm not, when I'm not, when I'm fully recovered, that's like a pretty reasonable pace, uh, from an intensity standpoint. So the interesting thing about ultra marathoning is race pace is sometimes faster than even some of your easiest runs in training. So your training is kind of all what we call like overspeed training. Whereas in most endurance events from like the 1500 up to like the marathon, the majority of your work's going to be sub race pace. And then you're going to have like, depending on the program, you know, maybe 20, 30% of that be like overspeed training. Why is that? Uh, well, just because the relative duration of the event is so long, like, you know, I can't run fast or if I run too fast, then it's just going to end badly for me. Right. But why is that with marathons? Oh, um, well, because it's, it becomes, it's similar to strength training, where like, if the limiter is like the amount of like stress you put on your body, so if I was going to train to peak in say a marathon, my, my max potential pace for that wouldn't be sustainable to do every run. So I'd be running, I'd be running too hard, too fast, too often. And then we'd get into that, that kind of situation that we were talking about before, where you're starting to macro stress versus micro stress. So if you run a marathon, what is your standard marathon pace? Uh, so I, I'm a little goofy where I competed in high school and college. And then I did some marathons, but not really in a structured manner. And then I got an ultra marathon running. So I haven't really done what I would consider a real legitimate marathon training program. So you're basically saying marathons are for pussies, right? Is that what you're saying? Just say it. I actually think the marathon, I actually think marathons are maybe the hardest event of them all. And I'll explain why, because you're going fast. Well, yeah, it's just short enough where you have to be pushing like a fairly intense pace, but it's just long enough where if you make a mistake, you're going to pay for that for quite some time. So you're on such a razor's edge and you're also just one tiny mistake away from things going really badly. And what you're saying about mistake, you're talking about pacing. Like if you go out too hard, I see your watch. What is it? What kind of watch are you wearing? It's a Coros Apex. Well, I've never heard of that one before. Is that a GPS watch? One of those? Yeah, it's, it's relative. They're a relatively new brand like in, in running, I guess, like the two kind of big players historically have been Suunto and Garmin and, uh, yeah, Coros kind of came to the market a few years ago. They wanted to try to make like, take that high end technology, but make it maybe a little more affordable and also make it user friendly. Cause now everyone's there, they care more about the post workout or the post run data that you're uploading to these platforms like Strava. So like Coros kind of made it a big, uh, uh, point to make it real user friendly on that end. So you like, I get down to the run and I load it up to the app and it's up on Strava, like within a few seconds sometimes. And, uh, then you go dissect all the data, like how much elevation gain and loss your pace per mile, uh, all that. Is this primarily a running watch? Uh, I mean, you could use it for running or cycling or hiking or mountaineering or anything like that. It's got like all those kinds of bells and whistles on it. Okay. So, so if you're, my question was like, so if you're running, how are you, are you checking your watch, if you're doing a marathon, you're making sure that you're not going crazy because it's, is it otherwise you just have to kind of gauge it just based on the pack and based on how you feel? Yeah. And I think that's actually a good, especially when you get into ultra marathoning, I think the metric that people should dial in the most is their rate of perceived exertion because that's something that's not going to necessarily lie to you. Uh, like if you base your thing, your stuff off heart rate exclusively or a pace exclusively, you can find yourself like justifying something that's not necessarily where you need to be. And if something like that malfunctions and that was your like only compass, then you're in trouble. So I like when I'm doing my training and when I'm working with other folks, I like to use heart rate and I like to use pacing and stuff like that. But ultimately I'm trying to get the person to really understand like how hard is this effort and then across the board, uh, from like very easy to very difficult. And then when it comes time to race, we can kind of dial in like, with this is the intensity you're trying to look for so that they can kind of feel that out. Do you use a metric? Like do you say like, how do you feel seven to 10? Yeah, pretty much. I have a scale of like one to 10 that I'll use a lot of times. And there's like a whole variety, like most people are going to be using some sort of like probably like zone system of training where there's like, there's numbers that are associated with heart rate ranges or intensities. And there'll be descriptors and you know, there's some that are like one through 20, there's some that are kind of one through five and then one through 10. And isn't that so, so weird too, right? Because it's so it's subjective in the whoop, whoop strap is what something I wear and it uses something like that. Like what's your perceived exertion? I'm like, I just push it towards the far right. I don't know. Like, what does that mean? Like it's, it's so hard to gauge your perceived exertion, especially when the workouts over, yeah, it was hard. I went hard on, went all out. Like, what does that mean? I don't know what that means. You know? Yeah. Yeah. It can be tricky and it is very subjective, but I think it's one of those things where it falls into the same category that a lot of endurance events are where you just got to be patient and really work on kind of understanding that. And you, you learn from experience too. Like you, you find out like, Oh, I went and did this workout and I thought that was the right pace and intensity, but it turned out to be a little too fast. Do you keep a training log? Yeah. And do you like write it on Excel or something like that? I basically just load all my stuff up to Strava and then, yeah. So that's kind of like the go-to for most runners these days is I'm sorry, but do do you keep like a diary? Like today felt like this and this was an issue and I felt like I didn't have enough fluids or do you do anything like that? Not so much anymore. I did it a lot when I was in college and I did it a lot when I first started, when I was really trying to kind of learn my body and kind of learn what things mean and, and, and how I respond to them. But now I've been kind of doing it long enough where I have enough of a, of a, like an understanding of kind of how, like when things go wrong, like why they did, or if something went really well, like why it did that I don't feel like I need to take as detailed notes, but I think it's really valuable for someone who's especially while they're trying to learn the rate of perceived exertion and kind of really dial those things in. It's, uh, probably worth a lot of worth a lot, worth their time to write that stuff down so that they can look back at it. And they have that resource available to them as they're kind of reflecting on things. Now, say if you're getting ready to do something like this crazy 100 mile run, trying to break a world record, what, what do you, what, how, how much time are you giving yourself to really truly prepare for that? Is it based on what, how you're at right now? Like what your baseline is, like what kind of preparation you've done before you knew that this race was available to you? Like how do you do that? Yeah, no. And this is, this little week, we can kind of hop back to where we were talking about before, because like when I was talking about the VO two max workout, stuff, that's kind of early in my training plan because that intensity is very unspecific to a hundred mile. You pace, uh, you know, that's, you know, those VO two max workouts are much closer to something shorter, like a 5k. So what are you trying to do with those VO two max workouts? You're just trying to elevate your, your base. Yeah. Like just in like a here, like there's the different systems of training and that's kind of a higher intensity system. So it's not very relevant to the race pace that I'm doing specifically, but it's not irrelevant to my overall, like, uh, aerobic, uh, efficiency. So like by doing some of those faster stuff, things you can work on things like your form and just because when you're running that fast, like things tend to be a little more dialed in, uh, and it just expand it. Basically what you do is you give yourself kind of a bigger range of what your potential is going to be when you start focusing more in on like the aerobic side of things that we're going to see, like, as I would move further down in the training plan. So once I kind of do that section of training, to answer your question, though, like ideally I'll have maybe about since I'm coming into most programs, not completely out of shape, like four months is kind of the sweet spot for me.