#354 – Zach Bitter

Sevan Matossian (00:01):

Bam. We’re live and we’re live solo, but live. Oh, I hate running, but I’ll listen. All right. Fair enough. Fair enough. I dunno if I hate running. I remember when I was, uh, 34 and I found, um, CrossFit and one of the one workouts I can’t, I think is it Nicole, one of those workouts, you, you run as fast as you can around a 400 meter track, and then you do some pullups. And I remember thinking to myself, I can’t, I can’t, I don’t even know if I’ve ever run as fast as I can for 400 meters. I don’t, even if I had 34 years old, I don’t know if I had ever done that. And I just remember thinking how crazy it is that someone could be 34 years old and, and never in their life run as fast as they can for 400 meters. It was nuts, but that was me, Zach. What’s up, dude. How’s

Zach Bitter (00:55):

It going?

Sevan Matossian (00:56):

Good. Wow. Hmm. I almost always say amazing or something like I’m living the dream in someone else’s nightmare. But, um, I, I got sick two day. Like I, I, I, someone told me I have strep throat. I don’t really care about being sick, but it’s just that if it jacks up your sleep, you know what I mean? Like you, you toss and turn and sleep. You gotta have sleep. Did I lose you? I lost you ladies and gentlemen, Zach bitter. Can you hear me, Zach?

Zach Bitter (01:28):

Yeah, loud and clear.

Sevan Matossian (01:30):

Oh, okay. What a remark world. We live in that any human being around the globe planet earth has access to, uh, Zach bitter. And, and what he did, this is the kind of thing a hundred years ago. If he did this one, you wouldn’t even know and think it’s possible, but you would’ve no access to him. And yet through these little box with these screens, we have, you can actually learn to do what he did is that exaggeration that they can learn to do what you did.

Zach Bitter (02:00):

Yeah. If you have internet, you can find quite a bit of content on that sort of stuff. I think, uh, one, one, uh, aspect of the sport that I really wanted to kind of showcase, I guess when I got into it was to us, let’s share everything that we’re doing. And, uh, whether that be the nutrition strategy or the training, I like to make that stuff public and talk about it as much as possible for as long as people are curious in it about it, because, uh, I think that’s how people learn and how we kind of grow the sport and improve it. So, uh, I, I think that’s been around for a while and certain aspects in other sports and things too, but it’s also been, you know, areas of endurance sport in the past two where it’s very kind of secretive of like I found out this way to go about things, so I’m gonna hide it. So my competitors don’t find a type of mentality as well,

Sevan Matossian (02:47):

And that didn’t

Zach Bitter (02:48):

Sit well with me.

Sevan Matossian (02:49):

Ah, interesting. Um, look at this guy’s there, this guy, Zach, her teaches people. He has multiple courses on how to run a hundred miles it’s it’s absolutely. Was there ever a time in history when like, uh, when that was normal

Zach Bitter (03:11):

Running a hundred miles?

Sevan Matossian (03:12):

Yeah. Was there, was that, was that ever, um, you know, I I’ve been to, I filmed movies in a hundred different countries in, I spent a lot of time in Africa, uh, and in a lot of time in India and places in Africa, I would see women, uh, walking with, you know, a baby strapped to ’em in the giant yellow bucket with 20 gallons of water, crazy amounts of water on their head, you know, um, uh, not 20 gallons, whatever 47 pounds of water is. And they’d walk 10 miles each direction. They’d walk 20 miles a day.

Zach Bitter (03:38):

Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, uh, it’s one of those things where I think ultra marathoning has been around essentially for, for survival purposes, as long as the hum as humans have been kind of flourishing around the, around the planet. And it’s just, now that we kind of document them and create this environment of I’m gonna go this specific distance and try to do it in this specific timeframe. Whereas like you mentioned, a lot of it in the past was just, well, I actually need to get to this spot or, you know, tomorrow may not happen or, you know, like our

Sevan Matossian (04:09):

Right, right, right. Right. Tomorrow may not happen. Yeah.

Zach Bitter (04:12):

So, so then it was just kind of like a thing of like, well, we need to do this in a sustainable manner, which is gonna be a little different. I think like if I had to move all day long with the anticipation that the next day I gonna have to do that as well. I’m gonna pace myself a little bit differently than I would for say a hundred mile race or a 50 mile race or any ultra marathon. Uh, but that same mindset and that same kind of human capability is there. For sure.

Sevan Matossian (04:34):

It’s I, I wonder if it’s, you know, 150 years ago, no one ate sugar, basically added sugar by, by sugar. I mean, added sugar and refined carbohydrates. And now in, in my estimation, it is the source of everything from type two diabetes, coronary heart disease, Alzheimer’s it is at the root of everything, added sugar and refined carbohydrates. I think you get to the 95 yard line if you stop eating that shit. But I wonder if 150 years ago it was, it’s the same thing with running cuz we, you, and I know, I mean you and I know people who haven’t run a mile ever in their life, like that’s probably the majority of the people we know, maybe not you, you and I know since we’re kind of in these weirds, nah, even the people I know.

Zach Bitter (05:14):

Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (05:14):

Nuts.

Zach Bitter (05:15):

Yeah. And I think, I think a lot of that is just kind of the, the environment we’ve placed ourself in. Cuz if I think of like, oh, we think of the people we were just talking about who had no choice. Yeah. They don’t remember the day they weren’t moving around all day. Those days just don’t exist. So for them it’s like it’s as crazy to think about sitting in a desk all day long and not covering at least one mile as it is for us, you know, in a more sedentary kind of environment to think of actually getting up and moving all day long or do a, an ultra marathon or something like that. But you know, the sport is filled with people who at one point in time said like, yeah, I’ll never run a mile or I’ll never do this. I’ll never do that.

Zach Bitter (05:52):

And then they find themselves kind of shipping away at it kind of almost subconsciously as they get curious about different elements of exercise and things. And then next thing they know, they find themselves, you know, running a hundred mile races. I mean, take, take me, for example, when I spoke with my college cross country coach, he kinda laid out just the mileages that every year or student would, could follow from freshman through senior. And when he got to the juniors and seniors and mentioned that, you know, it wasn’t that some of the higher volume athletes on the team would hit a hundred mile training weeks in the summer. I remember thinking I’ll never run a hundred mile training week. This never won’t happen. You know, this was me roughly four or five years before I was consistently running a hundred mile weeks and had done my first ultra marathon and things like that.

Zach Bitter (06:34):

So it’s a lot of, it’s just like a perceptional thing of just a where you are currently and how much further along where this expectation is from where you’re currently at. And the thing I think is the valuable lesson in that is if you’re someone who thinks, oh, I can’t even go a mile, it’s totally fine not to be thinking to yourself. I need to be running a hundred miles and it doing it as soon as possible. I think one of the reasons why I find myself at age 36, running ultra marathons for over a decade and still wanting to kind of keep doing it for at least another decade is because I kind of had that approach happen to me gradually. So I wasn’t like I didn’t go from a non runner to running hundred miles. The next year I went from like some and sort of interested in running to a little bit more interested in running a little bit more interested in running very interested in running and then kind of gradually doing the steps in order to get to the point where like physically and mentally normal was training on average, a hundred miles per week, over the course of a year, uh, doing a hundred mile races and maybe six plus ultra thoughts in a normal year.

Zach Bitter (07:39):

And things like that.

Sevan Matossian (07:41):

God, you are a dream guest. Has anyone ever told you that you are a dream guest? Do you know who Josh bridges is in hunter McIntyre? Yeah know they know you. Okay. So I spoke to both of them yesterday and I told them that I, and they, they are dream guests also. And I told em that I, I asked both of them randomly, Hey, do you know Zach bidder and Josh like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I know him, him and I are sponsored by the same company endurance. And then hunter, I just was talking to hunter and he just said, Savage dude, the guys that complete SAV. But the, but, but then I watched your podcast with, uh, L and, and Joe while riding the assault bike yesterday. And I remember thinking, wow, Zach is, and I’m so sick right now. And I’m like, this is a dream guest. I mean, you just, you give it, you bring it, you do that on, do you know that you come on and you’re like, okay, I’m gonna give it.

Zach Bitter (08:28):

Uh, no, I don’t. Wouldn’t say it was, it’s like intentional. I just try to come on. And kinda, like I said, in the beginning, there’s gonna be questions that I’m pretty sure are gonna get asked. And those I’ve more or less rehearsed just by doing tons of other podcasts. The way I like to tell it is like, you know, everyone angles, I guess maybe if they like podcasts or have a message they wanna share to get on a podcast like Lex Friedman or Joe Rogan. And yeah. And I think, uh, and they have questions for me about that too. Cause it’s like, I’ve been on there a couple times and on Rogan and, and Lex once and they’re like, well, how did you do it? It’s like, well, really what I did was I got interested in podcasts at a very early age. Like I think when social media and online stuff started really getting much more like every day for folks around the same time I got an ultra marathon and I thought podcast were a much more interesting platform than say, like, you know, the social media channels out there, the short form stuff.

Zach Bitter (09:20):

So I went on hundreds and hundreds of podcasts and I think that’s

Sevan Matossian (09:24):

Kinda, you did as guest, as a guest man, dude, there’s a lot of really, really, really bad podcast and a lot of really, really, really bad. Uh, and by that, I mean, ho yeah. And a lot of really, really bad guests, man. It it’s cause I have to, I research people. I’m a, just a world class plagiarizer I’m like as, as burrows William burrow said, there’s nothing original here. It’s all just plagiarizing. But man, there’s some bad dudes. Like there’s people who expect their guests to carry it. And then there’s hosts that I would never want my guest to think that I’m uncomfortable and if I’m uncomfortable the whole time. Right. But I would never want them to know it cuz then the viewer’s gonna know it and they, no one wants to come and just watch two dudes be uncomfortable for an hour and a half.

Zach Bitter (10:06):

Yeah. Yeah. You get some that are kind of okay. I mean now I host my own podcast now too. So you, it’s definitely a little bit of a different, different experience coming from the host versus the guest. That was a, I would say when I first started doing that, it was a, I knew there was gonna be a difference and that’s why I kind of waited a while to do it. But it, I, I was kind of surprised at how much of a difference it is. It just feels different sitting in that chair. Uh, I wouldn’t say,

Sevan Matossian (10:29):

Do you love people? Do you love people?

Zach Bitter (10:32):

Yeah. Yeah. I love talking to people. I’m just curious about like the, how and whys of what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. And I think when I get comfortable in either chair, whether it be the guest or the host side of things, it’s just accepting like, okay, like if you do this enough, you just, by the nature of being human, you’re gonna be wrong or you’re gonna say something stupid or you’re gonna maybe like misquote something or have errors and stuff. And you just gotta be comfortable with like being open to correcting that. And then I think when people realize, oh, if I approach so and so about a mistake they made on a podcast or something, they said, and they respond, oh, thanks for sharing that. I’ll look into it or, oh, you’re right. I didn’t make a mistake there. I didn’t even realize that. Here’s what I really meant to say. Then they’re not gonna be quite as like it critical about your, your output or how you look or come across because they know you’re an approachable person who’s willing to like, you know, be ideas. Yeah. Right, right. So that’s the key I think, is not feeling like it has to be perfection. Uh, you know, it’s, uh, there’s nothing kind of

Sevan Matossian (11:34):

The opposite. Be willing to be wrong at all times. Right. Right.

Zach Bitter (11:37):

Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (11:37):

Yeah. If you’re gonna stand your ground, you’re gonna go to war with people. You don’t. I hate to invoke my mom, but my mom says, this is my house. Treat people like guests.

Zach Bitter (11:47):

Yeah. It’s a good way to go about it. I think

Sevan Matossian (11:49):

Even though some people need to be slapped around a lot,

Zach Bitter (11:53):

You get that every once in a while. Well, some people come about it in EST way. And then they’re the ones that make it kind of difficult because it’s like, here’s a person who is trying to present themselves as an imovable object and someone who knows everything already, even if the, you know, the relative knowledge of said topic is pretty finite. Those are the people that make a little, little more difficult because they create an environment where people expect error, free rhetoric, or they create an environment where people expect someone to be knowledgeable about everything. When in reality they’re an expert at one thing, but potentially happy years of people for other topics. And, and that’s where I think it gets tricky is, is that kind of environment getting created, uh, in,

Sevan Matossian (12:34):

In this, I have the world record bench press and I also have the solution for, uh, the Ukraine, Russia.

Zach Bitter (12:41):

That’s right. Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (12:43):

Guys, uh, you are watching, um, because you know, I’m gonna say something funny and you love me, but you’re really watching because we have Zach bitter here who ran a hundred miles in 11 hours in 19 minutes and he knows how many seconds and, uh, that’s at a 6 48 pace. And when he did that, um, that was the world record. Yeah. I said it, you guys heard that a hundred miles, 11 hours, 19 minutes at a 6 48 pace. I don’t think I’ve ever run a 6 48 mile. Um, when you, when you broke that record, when was the previous time it had been broken?

Zach Bitter (13:23):

Do you know? It was, yeah, it had the previous world record had been broken. I believe it was 2001 and was, uh, 19 or 11 hours and 28 minutes and three seconds. So I took, you know, roughly nine minutes off of it.

Sevan Matossian (13:37):

And then, and, and since you’ve done that and, and what year was that? That you broke it?

Zach Bitter (13:42):

2019.

Sevan Matossian (13:43):

Okay. So it had been 18 years. And since you’ve done that something has happened, right. You you’ve, you’ve, re-energized the a hundred mile thing.

Zach Bitter (13:52):

Yeah. I wouldn’t say the a hundred mile thing as much as just kind of maybe more road runable environments. I think we’re seeing the interesting thing is like the sports actually quite old, you can date ultra marathons back quite a ways. In fact, Madison square garden used to host ultra marathons in the 18 hundreds. So, uh, there was all sorts of like pedestrian, they call pedestrianism, they’d call it where you were seeing like how far you could get in certain amounts of time and things like that. And, and there there’s like really old events to like the spar Athlon over in Greece, which is this 153 mile point to point race that goes, uh, uh, goes through all sorts of different areas. Uh, and so there’s been, that stuff has been around for a while. And what ended up happening is, uh, in the, in like the eighties, there was a little bit of a surge were like, I guess, like kind of fast, like relatively fast marathoners dipping their toe into like say 50 miles, a hundred miles, some 24 hour stuff.

Zach Bitter (14:46):

And, uh, the sport was really small still though. So it got about as much as attention as to expect it to then around 2010 or maybe a little earlier, we saw this big upsurge in ultra marathon running, but it was born in the trails this time. So we’ve seen in the last 10 plus years now, this trail ultra marathon community just explode relative to what it hadn’t before. What didn’t kind of happen at the same magnitude was some of these flat runnable, like short loop type courses didn’t get nearly as much kind of love and attention in part was just because the draw into the sport was the antithesis of that. It was people who wanted to get away from monotony, get away from bored. I mean, get out into nature was kind of the pull. So you’d see these guys like, uh, like Anton Graco was a big one where he was, uh, just a dude out there running crazy amount of miles, jumping in these trail, hunter miners, and then like just writing blogs about it. And there just wasn’t a lot of info around. So people poured over that stuff and got pulled out from his experiences and talking through it. And then, you know, living vicariously through him long enough where you finally decide, Hey, I’m gonna do it too. And, and, uh, there was definitely some interest still in kind of road and track and flat runnable stuff in the comrades ultra marathon in South Africa has routinely produced 20 th 20,000 plus participants every year. So that’s kinda like the big one, but especially

Sevan Matossian (16:07):

What’s the name of that one in South Africa,

Zach Bitter (16:08):

The comrade, they call it the comrades marathon. It’s actually about a 50, 54 to 56 mile race, depending on which direction they go. They flip directions every year. So that changes the endpoint a little bit in the, at the one, the up, I think it’s the up here is two kilometers longer or it’s one or the other I’d have to double check, but,

Sevan Matossian (16:26):

And that’s one of the top three that you’ve mentioned in the world, right? The west states, the comrade and the, there was one other one.

Zach Bitter (16:32):

Yeah. Ultra trail Mount block is another one, which

Sevan Matossian (16:34):

Is

Zach Bitter (16:35):

A little over a hundred miles, I would say right now most Al runners would probably pinpoint that as being like the biggest one, uh, from a competitive standpoint, it’s a little bit of an apples and oranges comparison when you’re comparing a 56 mile road race to a hundred and roughly five mile like mountain trail race, uh, historically UTM B and Western states 100 from like the hundred ish mile distance have been the two big trail ones that are kind of like, if you win this, that’s gonna be a career maker type of a type of a position to have yourself in. And, and that side of the sports grown a ton now where like, if you find yourself winning one of those two chances are, you’re already a professional athlete. You’re not really breaking into the scene necessarily at that point any longer, cuz it just takes quite a bit to get to the point where you’re even in a position to win one of those two. Uh, but yeah, I mean I think, uh,

Sevan Matossian (17:24):

But, but you broke that record. It hadn’t been broken in 18 or 19 years. And then now since you broke it in 2000, uh, 19, it’s been broken like three or four times, right?

Zach Bitter (17:34):

Yeah. Yeah. So the hundred mile and 12 hour has gotten broken twice since I did by the same guy. Okay. And he, the, he also broke the 24 hour world record, which was considered one of the most stout, if not the most stout world records that had left been left standing. So

Sevan Matossian (17:48):

Can you define stout for me?

Zach Bitter (17:51):

Yeah. So it was a, roughly just under 189 miles for 24 hours. And uh, Alex Sorkin ran 192 and a half. So he bested it by, uh, like three and a half miles or so and yeah. Yeah. And he’s also he shortly there. So the way it kind of happened is in 2021, uh, Alex Orkin went to this race over in the UK called the Centurian hundred and broke my world record by a few minutes. He ran like 11, 14. And he had been in the sport for a while, but uh, he more or less was like kind of half in half out. I would say he had like other priorities life as well. Pandemic happened, all sorts of things went on and where he just was like, I think a lot more dialed into his training and kind of took it on as a little more of a priority. And uh, it worked well. So

Sevan Matossian (18:41):

This is the, does he do this in Lithuania? This is the Lithuanian cat, right?

Zach Bitter (18:44):

Yeah. He’s from Lithuania. I believe he does. Most of his training in Kenya. Now he’ll go to like big training camps, but for his races and train out there, at least that’s what he’s been doing for like the last few months. And uh, I wanna say that started after he ran the 1114 for a hundred miles. And what really blew him up though, I think was a few months after that he tow the line for a 24 hour race. And that’s where he broke Yiannis KIS for our world record, which on the road running side of ultra marathon, that was by far the most stout. You could even make an argument that was the most stout quote unquote unbreakable records out there, which clearly wasn’t the case cuz he broke it. But uh, you know how that always goes like that. So, uh, he did that and then a few months later turned around again and did another a hundred mile, 12 hour effort and BR Oak his own world record and became the first human to break 11 hours and a hundred miles, which has been kind of a benchmark that I’ve been excited to see come down since I kind of got interested in flat a hundred mile running.

Zach Bitter (19:40):

So, uh, he’s been on a tear he’s right now in the middle of a massive buildup for another a hundred mile, 12 hour or I guess it’s a hundred mile, but I’m guessing they’ll let him go 12 hours. If he finds himself in a position to have the time to do it. My assumption is he definitely will. Uh, and then see where if he can lower it further yet. But yeah, he seems to be able to make no mistakes right now. And uh, it’s fun to see, see that side of the sport kind of get some attention and, and other people target it. So, uh, yeah. And I mean outside of, uh, of, so and too, it’s just been really kind of a cool part for me in terms of an experience with this sport is, uh, I was, I, I wouldn’t say I was like the person who brought back flat ultra marathon running, there were great guys and gals doing it far before me and while I was doing it and same like that, but I definitely put a really big spotlight on it. So

Sevan Matossian (20:31):

I mean, you were resurrected the a hundred mile, I mean, to go 18 or 19 years and no one break a record and then you to come along and do it’s pretty powerful.

Zach Bitter (20:39):

Yeah. You break the dam kind of a little bit, I think. And yeah. And the cool thing is I think we’re gonna see this continue with like volume or like depth now because I, I talk to guys who are, you know, I’m, I’m old enough now I’m 36 where there’s there’s guys coming into the sport who are a good decade younger than me and incredibly hungry and excited about say coming from a road track background, like I’m not exhausted that I wanna just see what I can do at longer distances and explore like hundred K a hundred mile 24 hour stuff. So I think as that continues to be interesting to some of these guys, we’ll just see more talent come in, uh, folks that are just, who are like legit Olympic trial, qualifier, marathoners coming in and seeing what they can do for flat hundred miles and will start to see, you know, some of these times get, get a little more defined as what it takes to say win a S a TF national championship at the a hundred mile distance on road, or what is it gonna take to run the fastest hundred mile or in a calendar year.

Zach Bitter (21:40):

You’re gonna see all these kind of trend downward over the next few years.

Sevan Matossian (21:43):

And the guy who holds the record that we’ve been talking about Sorkin, um, he’s got it at

Zach Bitter (21:50):

10, 10 51, 10 51. So that’s like a 6 31 mile pace essentially for a hundred miles. So imagine, uh, he ended up going, I think almost exactly 110 miles in 12 hours. So he’s, you know, he’s running like sub three hour marathon pace for over four marathons in a row is the way that kind of plays out on paper.

Sevan Matossian (22:08):

What what’s the most you’ve ever weighed in your entire life? Zach,

Zach Bitter (22:11):

The most, uh, I’ve been up until like the mid to high one 50 S in the past. Usually I’m closer to like one 40 when I’m in kind of like racing shape.

Sevan Matossian (22:20):

And how tall are you?

Zach Bitter (22:22):

Five foot nine.

Sevan Matossian (22:23):

Wow. Okay. What do you, what do you think about your body? What is your both, both like on the, in the most superficial sense when you look at it and you’re naked in the mirror, when you get outta the shower, you know what I mean? Like I always look at my lats or, you know what I mean? Like, there’s these parts of these BIS I look at, or I turn around and look at my calves. It’s like the only two muscles I have, I think. Um, yeah, but, but also in, in a more, um, me think mechanistic way of thinking in spiritual way, kind of tied together about your body, the, the, what it’s doing for you. Cause you must have a relationship with your body and an appreciation that like most people don’t have or, or shit. What do I know? Maybe you take that shit for granted.

Zach Bitter (23:07):

No, I think you’re right. I think it’s, uh, it’s, it’s weird. I, I think there’s probably growth there cuz like when I was in my twenties, it I’ll quote my friend, Matt Vincent, who said like, when you’re in your twenties, you can just abuse the machine and it responds. So you can kind of just, you can do almost anything and you, you see progress, uh, in the more you do of the better. In some cases, you know, you get into like your early, mid thirties and all of a sudden, you know, you start doing stupid stuff to the machine and it lets, you know, you did stupid stuff to it. So

Sevan Matossian (23:36):

Can you gimme an example? What would that be?

Zach Bitter (23:38):

Yeah. So I mean,

Sevan Matossian (23:38):

Stay up too late before race,

Zach Bitter (23:40):

Exactly. Something like that, where like, you know, you could, I, when I was in my twenties, I could like get like a few NA days. Like let’s say I went on like a trip where, you know, maybe it’s even a training trip where my main goal is to get a ton of training in. And I end up sleeping two hours a night last than I normally would for like three or four days, just cuz there’s a lot of like kind of like action and activity going on and you just blast right through it. You get back home, you maybe take day and sleep an extra few hours and bam me right back to normal. Whereas now like if, if I do that now, I feel like I’m really threatening, like an injury to pop up or, you know, taking a quality workout off the table that isn’t worth losing for the sake of, you know, a couple days where I’m not quite getting a bed early enough in that sort of thing.

Zach Bitter (24:23):

Uh, that sort of stuff I think is a little more obvious to me now, uh, than it was like in my mid twenties. So sometimes it’s like, you learn what your body has and what it takes to kind of get a certain response from it. And you map that and you get used to predicting it, but you have to be kind of open to kind of evolving with that as you get older. And you also have this scenario where like the advantage of being in your mid thirties being, you have to be a little more careful is you also have an extra decade of foundational work kind of in place where, uh, I have both, whether it’s the psychological side of things or just like the physical adaptation, you know, I have some, some things I can get away with now that I wouldn’t have been able to before. Like, uh, if we look at the psychological side of things, when I was in my like mid twenties, I’d go to a race, I’d hit a hurdle somewhere in there that was like, went, went off a script or off plan of what I envisioned to happen before the race. And

Sevan Matossian (25:20):

What, and what does that look like? What does that look like?

Zach Bitter (25:22):

So it could it, yeah, no problem. It could be something as simple as like I’m trying to hit this per size split range on a 400 meter loop. And I don’t

Sevan Matossian (25:30):

Expect, what about like something else? Like you bring the wrong shoes or you, you made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead of a baloney sandwich. Like shit like that.

Zach Bitter (25:38):

Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (25:38):

There’s those constitute as errors also.

Zach Bitter (25:40):

Yeah. I would count those as maybe slightly smaller ones. Although the shoes one could possibly be an issue. I, that one’s a little harder to make, I think, unless like there’s some sort of like transit issue when you’re like flying or something like that, but okay. Uh, at least I haven’t had that issue in terms of, although I have had issues where I assumed a certain type of shoe was gonna be the right shoe for a course that ended up not being okay. Uh, I could have had a better option that I had available to me, but just wasn’t aware and didn’t necessarily, but that feeds into what I was saying too. It’s like, now that I’m in my mid thirties, I’ve made a lot of those mistakes already. So when I’m running through kind of the Rolodex of what to look out for before a race, I have a lot of these experiences of like, oh, I know if this happens, I do this.

Zach Bitter (26:20):

Or if that happens, I do that. And you just know a lot more. So like when you do hit some of those, those rough patches or those, those errors in an event or a race, you just have a real quick kind of more snap to like, oh, this is the path forward here. I know this one already versus you kind of have to white knuckle your way through it a little bit when you’re doing it for the first time. If you don’t know, cuz you’re just like, well there’s this host of different things I could do here, which one’s the right one. And you find yourself maybe debating your mind or debating with yourself, which one is the path forward versus just making that right decision right out the gate. And not second thinking it again,

Sevan Matossian (26:58):

An indie car goes 200 miles an hour. Right. But if that sucker hits a potholes toast. Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (27:05):

And so for its capabilities on one end, it has to compromise some other shit. I guess that’s what I meant when you, when you, when you see your body. Gotcha. Like, um, you, you push, you’ve pushed, you you’ve demanded so much for your body. So you, I, I mean, I don’t know this for sure. Cause I’m not a race fan, but I’m assuming race cars don’t have side mirror. Right. Cause they would slow the car down. You wanna least win. So I’m guessing that there’s things you’ve taken off of your car that other cars have. Yep. That like, whoa, this is, this is risky. Like, you know,

Zach Bitter (27:35):

No, that’s a perfect one and yeah, I get what you’re saying here. Yeah. So I think like the, the best way I think to answer this is like when I get done running competitively, when like when I’ve decided I no longer want to run in order to try to find my best possible time, uh, when I’ve controlled for as many variables I can and taken everything as seriously as I can get away with. Uh, I’ll probably try to put on a good 15 to 20 pounds of muscle. Uh, I think it would be much more convenient from a just functional lifestyle standpoint. If I was a hundred fifty five, a hundred sixty pounds versus 140 pounds. Yeah. It’s uh, it’s way more conducive for me, uh, to be racing at the way I race that. Like you said, like there’s just certain aspects of, uh, of either functional or vanity that, uh, are not necessary for running fast and probably get in the way.

Zach Bitter (28:23):

So you just avoid them. Right. Uh, I mean, I, I was, uh, it’s funny cuz when I was in high school, I was like a lot, I think guys where it’s like, you eventually get around to thinking, like if I get myself in the weight room and get buff, it’s just gonna be a much better like perspective for me across the board. Right. And uh, you know, so you get into strength work and things like that. And you know, I did all the, like the bench pressing and things like that in high school and even a little bit in college. So like those are activities I enjoy, but I also realize like, you know, a little bit goes a long ways for what I’m trying to do from a competitive running standpoint. So then you don’t prioritize that as an activity that I’m doing say like three times a week. Like I would, if I was trying to peek out in the bench press or squat or something like that,

Sevan Matossian (29:03):

Um, I think that I heard this story, um, Kelly star tell the story of Dean Knasis coming into, um, CrossFit, San Francisco. And um, he was there for a couple days, but he couldn’t even squat below parallel.

Zach Bitter (29:16):

Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (29:17):

And, and, and, and, and I think he made the assessment that he didn’t wanna mess with it either. Like it’s like he wasn’t concerned. He was like, Hey, there’s no reason to mess with that because this, but that is important to be able to squat below parallel in order to stay out of the nursing home. Right. I mean, you gotta be able to sit on a toilet, wipe your butt, like yep.

Zach Bitter (29:37):

Yeah, yeah. There’s

Sevan Matossian (29:38):

And I don’t think people really probably realize unless how fine tuned you are. Like, do you weigh yourself before you, before race starts?

Zach Bitter (29:46):

No, not usually like usually what I’ll do, because at that point there’s nothing I can do about it too. And I don’t wanna necessarily go down list. Like I, I think you gotta be careful with like very specific numbers too, because it’s typically a range that you’re probably gonna.

The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.

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