How To Become A One Percent Better Runner Everyday

 Welcome to the 1 percent Better Runner. I’ve spent the last 12 years researching, experimenting on myself and talking to experts to get 1 percent better in my training, racing, and life. All to make it a bit easier for you to try to do it on your own. 

I’m Darren D. Lake runs a lifelong runner and all around performance optimizer of all things.  In this episode the tables were turned and I was interviewed by the Run Tok Live podcast crew. I touched on how to get one percent better in your running, the hype around the Sydney marathon, and how they might become a marathon major very soon.

My goal to slow down the slowing down and perform better as I age And I went in super depth on my 35 year plus journey of sprinting as a five year old running track through college How I got into Ironman, triathlons, marathons, and now running 5k is my fastest 5k  and how I transitioned from music production and being a musician to doing all of this running content to hopefully Help you out. Go check them out. That’s the Runtalk live podcast crew on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and their own podcast on whatever podcast player you use.

If you want some chatty company on your next run, let’s get into it.

Hey, what is up another episode of run talk live podcast, Jake, Carolyn, you guys raced this weekend. How are you guys doing?  I’m warmer than Carolyn was when she was in NYC  up there. Perfect weather. What are you talking about? That’s my home state, by the way, Carolyn. That’s where I moved to Florida from New York. 

Why? The weather was literally perfect. No, you’re such a liar. Such a liar.  We do have a 5k guy with us today.  Darren Lake, AKA D Lake is joining the podcast today. What’s up, Darren?  I’m good. Hello. What’s up? I’m chillin I’m very thankful to be on here and wanted.

All the way from Australia, right?  Yeah, Australia. It’s funny, I, every time I hear Americans say Australia, I’m like, God, you say Australia like an American. It’s the, it’s, it’s Australia. So it’s Australia. Australia is the Australia. Yeah, because Australia is the way that we pronounce our R’s with what is we have a rhotic accent is in British and English don’t have the rhotic, they don’t pronounce their R’s, they drop them. 

Where are you originally from? Cause I don’t want to sound prejudice or anything, but you don’t sound like you have an Australian accent.  Yeah. Yeah. No. New York. New York originally by New York, then Baltimore, D. C. area, then back to New York, then here, then back to New York, then here again.

So that is the life story. What part of New York were you living in?  Queens, till I was about 11. Then upstate New York for a year and a half. Binghamton, Endicott area. So what brought you to Australia? A very nice woman that I’m still with.

And we have a five year old.  He’s not five. I keep calling him five. He’s four. He’s turning five in three months. I just can’t wait for him to grow up. I love him, but  I don’t know if you have kids. The age between I don’t know when it’s going to end. I hear around five, six, they get really good.

But  He’s old enough to understand things, but his emotional logic isn’t there. And it’s it just does meet my anxiety and my ADHD. I’m just like, just focus. What is going on? I love you, but Oh my God. So yeah, I love the kid, but I keep wanting him to be five. 

But he’s a great runner. Let’s bring him back to running. He, you know what? He’s not a great runner. He likes doing endurance things, which is interesting. We don’t have a car. We live pretty close to everything and he just sees us running. My partner, Nadia, she runs.  We’ve run commute everywhere.

Like we have this like stroller and we just push him in it and get in places. He’s riding his bike now. He was like riding a bike at three years old, like a regular, balance. No, not even a balanced bike, like a proper two wheel bike. He’s swimming now. So we’re just like, I did a bunch of triathlons.

She did triathlon. So everyone’s Oh, he’s getting ready for triathlon. We’re not pushing him into anything, but it’s he just sees it and it’s pretty cool. Don’t even want to X. I have no expectations that he’ll be a runner, but he does have the genetics for it. It’s like between him and sorry my my partner and me, it’s hopefully he runs, that’d be great, but I don’t want to push him. 

Let’s backtrack a second because we introduced you and I’m sure of most of the people listening to us have probably heard you or listened to your podcast or subscribed to your podcast, but you have a podcast and a running journey behind you, give us your running resume, including your podcast history. 

All right. I will. It’s funny. It’s always I’m always like, let me just get this in two minutes. It’s got to be brief. One minute from tick tock elevator. Yeah. Elevator pitch. So my running journey and the podcast, right? I can melt them all together. So I.  I started running in 1994 like proper endurance running.

Like I’ve actually been, I think about it, I’ve been racing people and sprinting, which track running sprinting is that really running, like obviously it is running, but it’s such a different sport than the couch to 5k marathon people, ultras, like it’s just two totally different brains, two totally different bodies body types.

So I’ve been sprinting, like I’ve been racing people. I remember I just used to race.  Other kids in the neighborhood at six and seven, it would be like race to here. And I just remember I could, I beat everyone except for one kid and he was just that much faster. I hated it. So I got the, I definitely have the power gene.

But I was able to use a lot of that early and that helped me with basketball, but through basketball I just,  I wanted to get in shape. And this is early nineties. I’m 42 years old at the time of recording born in 82. And it was the, it was 90, 93, 94. And I remember I was like, I need to get in shape. 

So it’s let me run. That’s what you do to get in shape. It’s probably not the best thing I could have done. Now that I’m thinking about all the sports science that I know now, but I just ran three miles. I do have the three mile loop. I ran it three times a week at 15 years old and I loved it.

I love zoning out. I was doing, I was in the gray zone. I was doing a lot of tempo running. Cause I didn’t know how to run easy. There was no Z2, but I’m sure I developed some aerobic base in there. And I just, I had naturally more.  Endurance like the speed basketball endurance and all them and I trained it and like we went to tryouts and we would do this Thing called six and thirties, which is I don’t know play basketball But you have to run up and down the court six times in 30 seconds I would come through in 24 like it would just and I the next guy would be like 29 30 And then everyone over 30 they would get penalized.

So it’s just this big gap. Side note  It was this other kid named richard smith If you Google him, Richard Smith Richard Smith,  800 meters. And he was a year below me, I think. And I remember watching him and he would do it in 22. And I was like, holy shit. And they were like, Darren, someone’s faster than you at the six and thirties.

And I was like, Oh my God, two seconds faster than me. He won nationals at the 800 meter. So I was like, all right, cool. Like his actual, like he was a basketball player, but his real strength was the 800. And I think the 1500 And he ran with Alan Webb. I don’t know if anyone remembers Alan Webb. I went to my high school.

Yeah, I actually, I beat him when I was 12. And yes, it was a cross country race. And I remember I, I’m sure I came in front of him about a minute, but he was also 11 years old and it was like, just started running. So that’s my claim to fame. I always tell everyone I beat Alan Webb when he was 11. But yeah, Richard and Alan, they went, they ran together and Richard was 15 and sorry, Richard was eight.

Alan was 15. But Yeah, it’s just a side note about running and basketball. So  I then was like, I want to run track. So it was senior year and basketball was done. I tried to run track my, I tried to run across country actually in ninth grade. And my one friend, my best friend, I love him 30 years, still talk to him almost every day.

And he was like. You don’t want to run track because they wear short shorts.  And I was like, what?  He’s you don’t want to not be cool. Like it’s high school. And I like, I’ll never forget. And I was like,  I can’t run. I can’t run cross country. Cause I, they wear short shorts. People see me wearing short shorts.

I can’t be not cool in high school. So I didn’t see my full potential in running. I didn’t get aerobic base because I didn’t want to be fat. I’m just so angry at myself because of that I ran, I did one cross country run and I said, Nope, I’m not wearing a performance outfits with the short shorts.

Sorry in the competition outfit.  So then senior year, I’m like, all right, I’m done with basketball.  I want to run track. And then I talked to the track coach who was Alan Webb’s coach Roscoe. And. He was like, all right, Darren. It was like four weeks left of of the track season. And I was like, sure.

Yeah, let me do this. It’s my senior year. And he goes, all right, let’s do the 400. And I want to run the one in the 200. He’s I do the four. I was like, hold up. Oh my God. So they put me in it. I run a 54 and they were like unfit. It was the last hundred meters. I don’t even remember it. I passed out.

Everyone was like, dude, you ran a 54 untrained. What the hell? I was like, is that fast? They’re like, oh my God. And I was like, okay. And they were like, all right. Next week, I quit. Cause I was like, senior year, how would I be running track? This is crazy. So then I get to university college and I was on the basketball scholarship and I did not like basketball.

Just wanted to party. My love for music kicked in. I was like, I’m going to be a DJ, musician, music producer.  So quit basketball my sophomore year. Luckily my scholarship wasn’t really tied to basketball. It was a D three school Susquehanna university. And I was like, okay, I’m going to All right, I’m going to run track now this is it like I can’t not do a sport and I was like tracks chill  Like I could come to track three days a week, it’s fine.

Like it’s fine. It’ll be chill I can do my thing party. So I go in there and they’re like the first two weeks It’s like cold and snowy the track season starts and it was outdoor season Whatever’s like November when the middle of Central Pennsylvania and it’s like ice everyone was like, oh It was like the third practice like it’s too cold and I just didn’t go the next day coach like why don’t you come?

I’m like it’s cold He’s what’s dude, it was freezing outside, man. Like it was like 31 degrees and he’s you can’t do that, dude. And I was like. But I’m not like I don’t have to be here like and I just remember like going back for All right, whatever like take this seriously. I ran the hundred two hundred  didn’t touch the four.

Did I do the four? I don’t know why I think I did the four I don’t know ran hundred two hundred cuz I was like, I’m a sprinter. I’m a sprinter. I’m a sprinter I did alright times like I don’t know if Sprinting times I did eleven one hundred, which is pretty good, but the guys were running like mid tens, like 7 to like, go to nationals D3.

So I was getting like fifth in my heat. And then I ran 200. I remember I ran 23 one, which I don’t know if you know that, but it was decent. But again, I wasn’t winning my heat or anything. There were guys on my team running like 20, 22, low 22. So I’m like, so I was just like and then we did the sprint guys.

We did a.  600 repeat workout, like six by 600 with three minutes rest  cake to me now as a five K, 10 K runner marathon runner. I’m like, but back then it was like, Oh my God. Anything more than 400, everyone freaked out. Like everyone in the all the sprinters freak the F out. They were like, Oh coach, why are you having us run in like mid distance?

This is crazy. We’re sprinters. I just remember I was like, calm down guys. I smoked all of them. And the mid distance coach was like.  You are doing the wrong events and I was like, what? And he’s you need to do the eight, man. You need to do the 400 relays and the eight. And I was like, 400 is cool.

It’s 800 is two laps too long. That’s what I can barely do one, but no two laps is crazy. So I’ll never forget my first workout. It was five by one thousands one K. So two and a half laps on the track.  I was with the slowest guys on the distance team who were, ironically, they were running like  35, 36 minute 10Ks, which is really fast now.

And they were the slowest guys on the team. And I’m in the back of the pack with them as we do this 5x1K workout. I absolutely panic. I’ve never done anything that long that fast. I think we were holding like I don’t know the minutes per mile. I’m in kilometers now. We were holding maybe like three. 

Like 530 pace which like it’s not that fast like I can run, you know I can run a 450 mile when I’m super fit So it’s like it’s very slow But my brain was like you’ve never done this before dude, and I remember like actually Panicking on the last 200 meters of every interval. And then I’ll just, he was like a super nerdy guy, really skinny.

He’s breathe, calm down. You got this. And he like really got me through that workout. And I was like, I can’t do this 800 stuff. This is crazy. And I was like panicking. And then the next workout we did 10 by 400 or something fast. And I was like, here we go. I was like, this is good. There we go.

I’m a sprinter. Here we go. And I did really well. So then I realized I just needed more aerobic fitness and that just became like this ongoing thing. Like you have no base there and you have no aerobic base. You have no road based. Actually was it that year? The next year, I think I ran my fastest time.

Two minutes, one second. I couldn’t break to did pretty well on the full back. And it was just like really fun. It was like, okay, cool. Then the next year sorry, that was junior year. And then senior year I was like, here we go. I’m going to break to this year. Like I was like captain and it was really fun and all this stuff.

And I just love the,  honestly, I love the sprint stuff, but I also love the long, the LSD is a long, slow distance runs where it was just like, run slow, but we’re also 22 years old and you get a whole bunch of 22 year old track kids together running slow that we were sprinting the last. Like mile, like every time it’s go out slow for easy six miles.

Sure. Coach. And the coach wasn’t there. Cause we went out into the, the woods and stuff. And I didn’t know that we weren’t. And I remember my coach was like, you need to come back easy guys. What are you doing? Like, why are you all coming back out of breath? This is not an easy run. You need to build up your aerobic system. 

We were like, whatever, dude, we’re running. No, there’s no sense. No, it was 2004. No one knew about aerobic base and any of the exercise science stuff that we know now. So it never broke two minutes. Like my best year was junior year and I attribute to a lot of different things. And I remember once I got into, so fast forward, I was like, let me stay fit.

So I ran, half marathon 2007 did decent, but I got into cycling and I was doing cycling and running. I was just riding my bike everywhere and I was building up aerobic base that way, but I never properly built a real base. So I then moved here. And I always ran just for mental health. And ironically, I found out a year ago that I have ADHD and exercise and diet and sleep and all these other things help that meditation and I’ve gravitated towards all these things because they felt good, but it was actually because like my brain needed it.

And I just love going out cause my brain was able to just focus on. Whatever. Like it was, you’re all runners, but it, a lot of runners need headphones in, I don’t need them, I don’t mind them but I don’t need them. Like it’s cool. Yeah. I’ll listen to this thing, music. But I like a lot of people, like I need headphones.

It’s the only way I can get going. And I just love actually going in the trails or like going on a road next to water where there’s no cars. And just my, let my brain just zone out. It’s the best feeling. So I kept doing that because it felt good. And then I gained a bit of weight in my twenties. Cause I wasn’t really training that much.

I was hanging out at the clubs too much eating junk. And I was like, Ooh, I’m getting fat. What’s going on here? And I was like, I need to run more. That’s how you get, that’s how you lose weight by running more. And that is not how you lose weight. But maybe some people, but it did not work for me as I hit like 35, 38. 

So ended up going to moving down here. And I was like I’m in Australia. Yeah. I’ve done cycling and running gotta learn how to properly swim now and do triathlons and then I was like, all right, after four years, I’m gonna do an Ironman. I, running was always like my best thing, but I never really did 5Ks and 10Ks or anything.

I just was like, okay, I’m gonna do triathlons because I love this. I love this stuff. And can I swear, curse, curse or is it not good? Yeah, go for it. Okay, I’ll, I can self edit myself though. I’ll, I’ll do the self edit because there might be people listening with their kids. I learned that my early on in my podcast, which I’ll get to my podcast early on my podcast, I was like,  I want this to be like who I really am.

And I like, I cuss a bit for color and dynamics, dynamic range of talk. And I listened to Tim Ferriss and I love Tim Ferriss podcast. And he, it’s a business podcast, but he like, he just lets loose and whatever, talks about stuff. I was like, I’m going to do that. Cause this is me.

And then within the first like year or two, people like, can you tell me when you’re going to. Curse I’m like, I was like,  all right, as much, I want to be me, maybe stop. So I’ll just like self edit. I’ll bleep myself if I really have an impactful thing. And I’m like, but this is who I am. You need to get, but it’s also you’re just going to immediately turn someone off that could be a new listener.

That could be, a listener for life. I’ll get to the podcast stuff in a second. So with that all Triathlon did the Ironman. And then I was like, eh, that took over my life. That was crazy. And that was the second marathon I’d ever done in my life. When, no, that was the first marathon I’ve ever done in my life.

Yeah. That was the first, it was after swimming two, two and a half miles in crocodile shark.  Jellyfish infested waters up in Cairns, Australia. They literally, like if you go there, every single thing that can kill you is like there.  Fun, fun story about the swim.  Though there’s, I don’t know if you know anything about triathlon, but there’s a certain limit where the wetsuits are not legal.

And it’s about 24 degrees Celsius, which is like 74 degrees Fahrenheit, right? And They go, all right, wetsuits are illegal because it’s too hot and you’ll overheat and then you’ll die or something.  This is Cairns where there’s literally everything in the water. It’s 28 degrees. So it’s 81 82 and Maybe even mid 80s And they’re like, everyone has to wear a wetsuit.

And everyone was like, what? And my partner, she hates being like, hot. And she’s I, they’re like, please wear a wetsuit, please. And I was like, we should all wear wetsuits. ’cause they they don’t care about you dying, like dying from heat exhaustion. They’re like, everything will kill you.

There’s jellyfish, there’s this. Yeah, somehow swam in that it was, and it was like, it wasn’t crystal clear water. It was like murky brown water, which Australia has very clear water, but for some reason this beach had, and I was like, this is. The only thing that made me keep going was that there was like 3, 000 other people all around me splashing around there was lifeguards everywhere But yeah,  it was by myself I think we did a swim than the day before and I just decided I was zoned out I was like, oh man, this is such nice and I was like Maybe 20 feet away from the group and I said what the hell am I doing?

I was like, go back to the group. You are New York city boys swimming in Australia water. What are you doing right now? This is crazy. You’re going to get eaten by sharks. I like, I’ll never forget that, that feeling of I got too comfortable and then I needed to bring it back. So did that. And I said, I need to work on like my strength, which is running.

And I was like, you know what? I’m going to get fast at the 5k.  Actually, you know what? I did a marathon because I was like, I’m still Ironman fit. So I thought I could hold that fitness for two months. I was like, I’m going to do a what is it? A panic marathon. So I just put together a DIY marathon really quick with my friends.

Dumbest thing ever had IT,  IT, ITB syndrome halfway through couldn’t finish it. My knee. I did finish it in four hours, 15 minutes. I was like, why did I do that? Because I was like, I need to do a fast marathon. The Ironman I did in 10 hours, but the run was horrendous. I just broke down because I just wasn’t ready for it.

I was like, let me do the five K.  And I then was like, all right. And I did a couple of 5k’s like,  how about I like focus on the 5k? I had my kid and I was like, all right I’ve got,  I don’t have the time to run marathons personally. I don’t have the energy to feel drained and not sleep well. Like I didn’t want to do that.

The marathon was never sexy to me. I’m a sprinter. The 5k is like the shortest race, even though I’m like a 400, 800 runner. As an adult, it’s really hard to do 400, 800. You could do master’s track, but  I’m going to drive somewhere two hours to run for two hours. For two minutes. That’s crazy. Like, why would I do that?

Like I have, I love my life and my balance. Like I’m not 20 years old anymore. So the 5k, there’s park runs everywhere. The 5k makes sense. It’s fun runs, 5k, 10k, half marathons. So I just did 5k, 10k, half marathons. And then it was he was born 2019. I said, I’m going to run a sub 16 minute 5k because I already ran like a 17, 20 or something.

I was like what’s a minute 20. I could do this. This is easy. I’ll do this in six months. 2019, five years later 1647 was the fastest. And yeah, I’m taking off this year from the, from that journey  to focus on some other things. Like I’m actually training with power now and speed and force.

So I’m actually using my strengths.  And there is some theory and I’ve talked to enough people that like, this could help you, especially just backing down from all the the load, even though training for 5k, I was still doing 60, 60 mile weeks, 50, 60 mile weeks. I was putting a lot of load on my body and I don’t have that like endurance gene that like long distance, slow twitch muscle.

That’s not my specialty. So there are some theories that.  I’m not as efficient as like my partner who can just do like Marathons all the time and trail runs and stuff and triathlon like she’s way more efficient than me at doing the slower stuff And my body is just like obviously I can work on it, but I don’t have that natural ability So I might as well train the speed stuff and that could help me  Do the longer stuff.

So there’s some marathoners that actually do a lot of fast stuff to get there. And then there’s some that do a lot of slow stuff and it’s actually who’s right, who’s wrong. It’s just depends. It’s like different sorry. Right tool, right job. So yeah, 2018 I started the podcast.  It was mostly health and fitness related.

I wanted it to be. A triathlon endurance sport podcast, like Tim Ferriss, where like we talk about life stuff and how it’s all in the master of some was the name of it. Which I’ve changed that now. I’ve grown out of that and did a bit of a pivot, but I wanted it to be like this metaphor for life thing.

And I was like, this is so cool. This makes sense. And it just, it was a bit too broad. It wasn’t hitting. And as I got more focused on running, I was like, it’s way easier to just talk about running. Cause with triathlon, there’s all these three sports. Like it’s hard to target you, you’re targeting triathletes who just.

They have ADHD. Like I call all triathletes, they’re just ADHD. And that’s why I gravitated towards this. It was like, Ooh, run, swim, bike, run, swim, bike. You can just bounce around and transition and nutrition. So it was a bit too unfocused and. Now it’s just running specific, but it still is that I’ve now rebranded it to 1 percent better runner.

So getting 1 percent better each day, cause I’m all about doing this for as long as possible. That’s my goal. It’s a lot of people, they want to do one marathon or one Ironman or whatever. And that’s fine. But I’m like, let me try to like. What is it? Slow down the slowing down as Mike tree says run dot energy on Instagram and it, like he’s 60, he’s almost 65 and he runs a faster 5k than me, which is unreal.

That, that dude is such a beast, but  what is it? If you don’t use it, you lose it. And if you’re sitting there training for one race, one year, they’re not training at all and training for you’re just going to slowly deteriorate. Whereas if you can just stay consistent and just get 1 percent better, just every day, every week, whatever it is. I look at Mike trees, he’s genetically a freak. He has he was able to run in his prime, a 14 minute, 5k, a low 14 minute, 5k. So he’s definitely a freak. And like he, he is on the outliers, but at the same time, if he would have stopped at any point for three, four years. 

I’m sure it would have been even more work to get back as you get older. So again, this stuff keeps us healthy, ish. I always I was like, is a marathon really healthy? Is it healthy? Is all this running really that healthy? That’s subjective and that’s, everyone’s got an opinion on it, but it keeps you healthy.

It keeps your brain healthy, keeps your heart healthy and all that type of stuff. And I’m just like, how can I do this for as long as possible? So that’s how the podcast ties into it. And the podcast is cool because. I’ve got this whole music background, which I don’t even talk about, but I have the music audio background, which allowed me to learn a lot of the marketing side of things, the just the general, like just approach to making content and I’ve got all these audio chops and now I’m getting I’ve gotten into video.

So it just was like, I had this, if you do a Venn diagram of content creation, skillset running, and then just.  Ideas about life and all that and being  what’s the word? Philosophical, for lack of a better word. And if there’s a triangle of it or a Venn diagram, it’s like  the podcast and the content just sits right in the middle of it all.

And I probably should have studied exercise science. I studied music technology which is great. I got to use my degree. Early on and still some things I’m using now, but I’m like maybe I should gotten a business in exercise science but it’s all good. I’m talking to experts now. I’m learning stuff I don’t need to get a degree because I’m just learning all day long and I’m coaching people now and You know implementing a lot of things that I’ve learned and telling them things.

So  So yeah, that is the story and thank you for giving me  The platform to tell it that long feel free to ask any questions about anything  I don’t have a question. I do have a comment though back to the short shorts and scaring you away from running just a friendly reminder that Courtney DeWalter, one of the greatest ultra runners out there does everything on basketball shorts.

Yeah. I dude yeah. Sorry.  No that’s the first time I’ve actually heard Jake refer to her as Courtney DeWalter. He always calls her a basketball chipper.  Yes.  I my friend who’s in the trail running, he actually two, three years ago, introduced me to her. And then I started hearing about her everywhere cause she was beating men and I was like, who is this woman?

This is crazy. We eat junk food and just doesn’t look like an athlete at all. And she’s cool. I like it. It’s so dope. But I was like, I was looking, I was like, Why is she wearing baggy shorts, dude? That doesn’t feel comfortable. He’s it’s like the trail running thing. It’s either you wear the tights or you wear the shorts.

It’s just polarized. You have the beard or you look like Super Arrow. You drink beer or you drink Gatorade. It’s just, trail running is no rules. It’s just have fun. Yeah, trail running, it’s a thing of its own. Yeah. And I was like, they would chafe. Like my basketball shorts chafed on me.

Maybe it’s my body anatomy, but I would always get this cut in my inner leg from my basketball shorts and it was annoying. And I remember like where I had to wear the longer tights underneath to stop that cut. Yeah, sure. Like baggy shorts, yeah.  In the 90s, I wouldn’t have gotten away with that.

But now I could have been like Courtney DeWalt wears it, I’m gonna wear baggy shorts.  Basketball shorts.  Is it, does she really wear basketball shorts? Are they basketball shorts? Or are they baggy shorts? Yeah, they’re basketball shorts. Oh, shit. I thought they were just baggy shorts.  She runs for Solomon, right?

There’s Solomon shorts. So I’m sure there’s some kind of, there’s probably some kind of specialty there, but like they made it especially for her. They altered them in some way where we just can’t see it.  And I’m sure it’s probably, it’s like anything like what the Nike dragon flies, they’re the they’re the track shoes, the Nike track with the spikes, but they’re basically the vapor flies, but the track shoes.

So there’s some. Athletes that don’t like their, so if they’re soccer knee or whatever brand has tracks spikes, they don’t like their spikes. They want the dragonflies. So dragonfly makes an unbranded version. And if you ever see someone with no brand on their shoes, it’s a person that’s signed to another brand that wants to wear the dragonfly.

That’s hilarious. So the point of that is. Solomon might just be, it might just be a Solomon badge on some basketball shorts. So they were just like, all right, we’ll do this one off for you guys. Yeah. They, there’s some no name brand Chinese stuff from a wish or something. And they were just like here, Courtney, like at least you just got to wear our thing.

They bikes do that too. I heard about that.  People wouldn’t like not pro cyclists, triathletes. They wouldn’t like, pro triathletes didn’t like their bike brand. And they would just put their logo on another bike because they were like, I don’t like this bike for that. And they’re just like, all right, you signed it was for here.

So they would de brand it, like paint it all black. 

. I was going to say, we talked earlier and I can’t remember if it was before we started recording or after, but you were talking about your Achilles issues and I had a similar issue, I was having a bunch of Achilles problems in the shoes that I was running in and I won’t mention the brand Brooks, but I started doing some,  I started doing some investigation on my part to, to learn more about shoes and found out that, Started learning about drops and toe boxes and all those things and found out what really worked for me.

And I think that’s where, when a lot of people start digging into that type of stuff is when they start picking up these injuries and they don’t really know why. And they start looking into the different metrics.  Yeah, I knew nothing about heel drop until I had my plantar fasciitis. And then I went with like lower heel drop cause I was wearing 12 mil stuff.

And then I just, whatever cheap 50 shoe I could buy from  Dick’s Sporting Goods or whatever. It was, I could have got them on Amazon. I don’t know. I wasn’t really shocked. This is, again, this is 12 years ago when I got into proper endurance running. And when I moved down here, it was like, There was no Amazon back then.

So I then, I read a book Moffatone, the Moffatone method, the Moffatone and the big book of endurance, which is his whole book on zone two training. He’s been talking about zone two training since the seventies, eighties. And now it’s like super hot now. And I’m like, I read that book 12 years ago, like, he then, he he takes a holistic approach to it, which I really like. I actually took that from my coaching. I, whenever I coach people, I go, Hey, it’s holistic. I’m not just going to coach you on intervals and long runs. It’s actually looking at your whole life because it all is combined, which is again, on brand with my whole brand.

And it’s in alignment, but he was like, he talks about feet. And he’s like drop like get the lowest drop possible that you can get And I just went to the store. I was like, I want a low drop and I didn’t like the nike freeze This is again 12 years I think the nike freeze is still around I tried them was like I don’t like them like for the two minutes I had them on in the shoe shop.

I was like, oh, I don’t these and then he’s oh, how about these sakani? Kinvara, Sakini Kinvara 3s, and I put them on, and I put them on the treadmill, and I was like these are amazing, fell in love with them, I bought that shoe four times over, that same exact model, four times over, it was like, three years later, I just kept buying it, I was like, oh, backlog, I found size 11, got it, and I just remember I had to go to the 4s, and I was so sad, I was like, ooh but I’ve just gotten Kinvaras, and no lie, they, Solve my planter.

Like I, and my producer is you started using it. You woke it up like you, because I was wearing all the heel stuff. I used to walk around with like sandals, flip flops in the house or and then I just started walking around barefoot. Everywhere I try to run not like I wasn’t like that type of guy.

Everyone walks barefoot around here, by the way It’s very much country. i’m like even in the city people just barefoot. I’m like put some shoes on But that’s the new york city boy and me. There might be a crack file over there and some needles You never know you can step on that. Uh but yes, I started walking around more barefoot and  I solved my planter, but he’s you just got your foot working more and you got out of the shoes with all the chunky bits in them and 12 millimeter.

So after that, I was like, I’m only wearing four mils, four mils and Sakhni Kavar, and then I slowly got into other shoes and then I got into the zero mils, they worked well and then they broke me. So I went too far to the left, whereas the people in, the 12, 14 mil vapor flies are too far to the right.

I went too far to the left. And it was like, of course, correct. Come back in the middle. And here I am, and I’m like, Okay. So like the original part of our conversation, I’m now back on, I wear zero mils for easy running and just walking and stuff. Like ultras are great. Cause they’re not, I try minimal minimalist, like the proper minimalist shoes.

I have a pair. They’re just a bit too aggressive for running for me. There’s not enough stuff on the bottom. My feet are just like, ah it just feels like it’s too jarring for my body. And. Ultras are like, they’re minimal, they bend, like I can feel the ground with them, but there’s just enough technology to where I can do six, seven miles.

I’m fine. I can do sprints in them lift weights, like all that type of stuff. And the other ones are more just for walking. Yeah, I don’t know why I just went on that rant, but thanks for listening. So another rant, you mentioned you mentioned a book to the the Mofton method, which For the listeners, if you haven’t read that book, or if you don’t know who he is, like definitely, there’s actually a couple books out there, but I believe I’ve read the one that you’re referring to a while back.

The Big Book of Ignorance is the one. That’s the main one. He basically created like heart zone training and heart rate training, and came up with the methods and the zones that we have now are zones that are really established by his scientific And there’s zone 1, zone 2, zone 3, an aerobic base building and all that stuff comes from him.

So I think it’s cool that you read that book. You’re the first person we’ve ever had on here that’s ever even referenced that book before. It’s super zen and and just like really it’s a bit woo. And the book, he has no training plans in it. And he’s there are no training plans.

And he says it throughout. And at the end he goes, there’s no training plans because you need to figure it out yourself. And everyone was so mad at him. And he’s it’s too subjective. I’m not doing it. And then like about five, six years ago, he finally came out with a training plan.  And he’s actually, he’s gone a bit backwards on some things.

Like he used to be like, he was like the proponent of zone two MAF. So if you ever done an MAF run or you’ve seen someone do an MAF run, it’s his. It’s from his science. It’s a maximum aerobic function. And it just so happens to be Moffaton. He was like coincidence. I didn’t do it on purpose, but that’s at the high end of it’s high Z two and the beauty of high Z two is that it doesn’t wear your body.

Lactate levels are low enough to where you don’t produce stress hormones like cortisol and other free radicals and stuff that end up wreaking habit on you because that’s what happens when you get into zone three and more tempo running and. Basically, you can get very similar benefits from zone two, high zone two running, you can get faster and even your 5k.

And he actually did a pretty good study. Self reported study where he just reached out to a whole bunch of people and said, Hey, can you just give us your 5k data by just doing zone two training and no speed work? We want to see how this works in the real world because obviously he knows it works, but he had a really small sample population and yeah, a lot of people were like wrote back and were like, I went from 25 minutes down to 18 minutes by just doing high zone two runs, like 30, 50 an hour.

And I was like, Oh, that’s impressive. If you start off at a place where there’s you’re slow. It’s always yeah, there was a lot of gains to be had. I did my first 5k. I ran 20 minutes maybe like 19, 1950. And. Now I’m at 1647. It’s that’s almost a 25 percent gain, and it’s I had no fitness at 20 minutes so it’s for me to compare myself to that person. It’s so someone that goes from 30 minutes down to 20, it’s like you probably started way beyond where I was away, earlier than I was. But yeah, no, Moffatone is great, but I think it’s interesting. 

He,  He’s come around, like he actually has a hit, he has a hit program. High intensity interval training, cause he’s he was anti zone four, zone five to the point where I followed his training plan so perfectly, I was like, I’m not doing any, I did 16 weeks of base of zone one, zone two running.

And the biggest complaint of it is just boring. But actually what happens is you’re not ready for racing like at all. So I did my first triathlon. On. off of all this Zone 2 training. I’m like, I’m gonna have the best aerobic engine. It’s my weakness. I’m gonna do 16, 20 weeks of just Zone 2. And I go in there and start sprinting.

And I just like, everything’s cramping up. And I was like, what’s this cramping? And everyone’s didn’t you drink? Didn’t have your sodium and you electrolyze and drink Gator? I was like, I’m so hydrated. And then I’m reading into it’s oh, too much load. It’s actually muscle spasms.

It’s not cramps. My body’s Nah, you’ve never done this before. You haven’t done this in six months. What are you doing? And you’re actually just involuntary spasms and stuff. And I was like, Oh, I have to run hard to get ready for the races. I can’t just do zone two training.  So it was like, okay.

And that’s what I was like, there’s some holes in the system. I love it. It’s definitely, most people should read it. Cause again, zone two is it’s so hot right now. Like all the YouTube videos and stuff are like Dr. Peter T is talking about zone two training. I’m like. That was a thing 20 years ago.

Like what’s going on? Like, how is it now hot? Like I’m almost like I should probably start doing more content because I have a lot of content on zone 2 training  But yeah, everyone read that book if you haven’t already and you want to because I’m sure what is it?  It’s everything’s aerobic up until 

the hundred meter is the hundred meter dash  is like  20 percent aerobic. 15, 20 percent aerobic and then a marathon is 99 percent aerobic. So a 5k run is actually any, depending on your body makeup is from 80 to 90 percent aerobic, 80 to 90 percent aerobic is a 5k. And a lot of people think of a 5k as a sprint and I’m like, fuck, ain’t no sprint, like 5k is a slog, like it is a burn.

Like you said, it’s two, two 5ks, a 10k is two 5ks and 5ks, it just sounds like 5ks aren’t it hurts like 5ks hurt. And, um, like it’s, you think it’s a sprint. I’m like, no run a 200. That’s a sprint. It’s very different than a 5k, 5k is I’m going fast, not really, I’m cruising.

All right. And it’s ah, now it starts to hurt. You hit the second mile. It’s it hurts. Everyone can benefit from aerobic training. And yeah, and it carries into your, you can keep developing that as you get older, where speed you do  speed, you can’t develop as well. And it goes away quickly if you don’t use it. 

So that’s another thing. That’s why I am focusing on speed stuff now, because I’m 42 and I’m like, if I don’t run fast, if for the next two, three years, it will be that much harder. And I basically will have lost it. So I think the studies are The people that keep running fast can keep running fast into the 60s and 70s.

But if you just, if you stop doing sprints and strides at the end, you basically are just training your slow twitch muscles like  over that speed stuff. And then when you try to sprint, it’s like your body can’t do it when you hit your fifties and sixties. Yeah, I’m going off on tangents, but  anything else? 

Your bio says learn tips and tricks from my 26 years of failure, but after talking with you over the last, I don’t know, hour and ten minutes, it doesn’t sound like you failed, it sounds like you learned so many lessons, so my question for you is we have listeners that are beginners that are pros, things like that.

So what is a good tip that could, resonate with all of our listeners?

Way to ask the in depth question, Karen. Yeah, that’s a good one. That’s a good one. Deep. That’s deep. I know.  Beginners, runners, so 

many things I could say I’m going to try to sum it up. Yeah, I’m always trying to like self edit myself again. I’m in this Tik Tok, Instagram reels like head, just in 20 seconds. Just get to the point hook. All right. 

You have more time than you think.  A training block  is a while, but it happens fast. Even a marathon training block, which I hope you’re doing 16 to 20 weeks of a marathon training block, which every time a runner is I want to do a long race. I’m like, we got nine weeks. They’re like, that’s, I’m like tiny.

That’s nothing like, and I’m like, I also got to get some base in there. Come on, dude, nine weeks. And then I like lay out the plan and I go, you see how we don’t have enough time. I need 16 to 20 dude. And he’s Oh, I get it now. He’s 16 just sounds so long. I’m like, it’s not really. So I guess that’s, that’s one thing, take your time with it.

Go easier than you think. That’s something that  I,  it’s gonna be multiple little nuggets. That’s just something that every time I go out, you don’t have to have that. Oh my goodness. I’m going to die feeling  on 99 percent of your runs. You can go hard, but from the evidence and the actual scientific data and my own, you literally can like back things down from 90 to 80%. 

In whatever way, effort, pace if you were supposed to do nine intervals and you do eight instead, and you are still going to get the gains. It’s crazy. That’s the wildest thing. I’ll there’s this one workout I do 5k repeats,  and I always want to hit a certain time early in the season.

I go, dude, just back it up. You have your zone of pacing, go on the slow end. And I literally eight, 10 weeks later, I’m exactly where I was the year before. And I’m just like,  and I feel fresher. It’s maybe that’s it. I feel fresher, feel more recovery recovery. You show everyone here trying to  prioritize recovery.

It’s real hard in the beginning. Cause you feel like you’re cheating.  And I feel like a lot of runners, when they get into it and they get the bug, they type a personality, they go really hard. They want to feel that burn that I’m out of breath. I’m really sore later in the day. I’m smashed like  that actually is like bad most of the time.

And there’s a time when you need to use that tool and turn that lever, but it isn’t great in the long term and learning when to do that versus like I said, backing things down.  It’s really interesting. Like you, you will get what is it?  be better. I think I’m Cal Newport. Who’s was a productivity writer.

He wrote deep work is his big book. He has a new one called slow productivity, but it’s more on like working intentionally and I love his, it’s just literally do less be better.  Like just like doing less. So if. Yes, you do need to go out there and run 20 miles of, uh, of a marathon long run  three weeks out to be as ready as you can.

I’m not saying you can’t just do five miles and be ready for the marathon, but. Like just do a little bit less and that will allow you to do it for as long as possible, because that’s the goal. I always tell people especially.  I go,  you’re not doing this for six months and then you’re just going to stop and then get fat, right?

And just not run anymore, get out of shape. And they’re like, no, I’m like, so we got time. Let’s stretch this out to two to three years. I know you’re trying to get, one 39 for this half marathon, this hilly half marathon in Baltimore is one guy I’m coaching him. He has to do on the hilly half mountain.

I’m like, bro, it’s hilly. Like, how about we do a flat one? I think he can get the time. He said, he’s got to be Baltimore. I’m like.  We’ve already seen your times. We know what your tempo is. We know that you spike up and your lactate just goes crazy. Like you’re at one 41, like to get down to one 39, we need two years of base.

And he’s really? I’m like, yes. Realistically speaking, you’re very well trained. You’re not going to get 10 minute PRS  every year anymore. Like we need to just slow it down. And He was like, yeah, you’re right. I was like, it’s okay. Cause you’re going to keep running. Once you get your time, what are you going to do?

You think I’m done? And that’s another weird, like it is the journey. And if you think about the next 20, 30 years of your life, it makes it just more approachable because you’re like, I’m just showing up every day and the races yeah, they’re nice little milestones and little things to jump to and be excited for.

But it’s let’s keep doing this till, 70, 80. So I’m sure you’ve seen the a hundred year old guy run 21 seconds, a hundred meters and it’s What, like he’s a hundred like my, my, my stepdad is 64 and, he’s basically in a wheelchair. He won’t be watching this, but it’s like my father in law, he can’t even walk like down the street.

And he’s 71 and Mike trees is 65 running a 17 minute 5k. I like, I literally that’s, that is sexy to me. That is exciting to be old AF and like keeping up beating the young guys. Like that’s all I envisioned. That’s a story I play in my head. And I’m like, that’s why I like, I put up those zero mil shoes.

I said, that’s not going to get you to 70 years old. And everything I do runs it through the filter of 1 percent better. I’m, I know I sound like a brand junkie, but it’s true. That’s why I picked that.  Does that help with Carolyn?  Yeah, no, that was awesome. And I’m glad you said that because I’m starting to slowly base build for Chicago and I just, I’m freaking out because Chicago is hopefully going to be my BQ.

And I’m like, shoot, like I need to be cracking out all these PRs, all these milestones now. But I have months to base build.  All three of us are running Chicago. It’s October. Yeah, we’re all three of us are running Chicago, actually. Oh, cool.  Very cool. You should do Baltimore in a year that I’m going to be there. 

So we can all meet.  So my, my last question that I want to know, and I’m hoping Darren, that you got some kind of local insight on this, but it’s looking like nothing’s for sure yet, but it’s looking like Sydney.

Is going to be the next world major added to the six are going to be the seventh. Is there any kind of local buzz about that? Is there any kind of excitement going on about that?  Yeah, I know we don’t have too much time. I’ll give you a short answer before. Oh, it’s so hyped. And I don’t do marathons.

I’m not a marathoner. I did say I’m going to do when I turned 45, I said, when I turned 45, I’m going to do an Ironman in 10 hours with 10 hours of training, I love doing these stupid, like having these upper and lower limits. I was like, 10 hours of training, I’m going to do a 10 hour Ironman 10 years later because I did my first Ironman and only at 35.

And then I was like, I’m also going to run a marathon. Like I’m going to properly train for a marathon because it will have been a seven, eight years. And as I’m turning 42, I’m like, No, so that Iron Man. Nope. Nope. Glad I didn’t put that out there because I do. I was like, why would I do that? What? I’m literally like, I just have PTSD of the training back when I had no kid all the time in the world was working for myself and I hate it.

I didn’t hate it. It just was draining. I was just like, Oh God, another five hour little. bike ride, like really, and I just zip around the park, like doing 100 laps of this park. Crazy amounts of buzz from the running scene here and my partner, who is a marathoner, she was like shooting me all this stuff and like the hype from the last one, I was able to pace her on the last few two miles.

I was pushing my son and in the pram and sorry, we call him pram here. Stroller, run stroller. And.  I was able to see the finish and it was like, Whoa, this is big. Like it felt like New York city marathon big. And they put on a show. Cause they had all the they had all the directors, not all. They had a couple of directors come in to see what was happening from all the other majors. 

And I’m really close with the marketing. One of the marketing people for Sydney marathon. So he’s been like feeding me information left and right. And It’s dope what they’re doing. They changed the whole course up this year. It’s going to be flat. It’s going in it’s just  all the stuff they’re doing.

They dropped the half marathon finally. Cause it used to be a whole running festival event. They had a 5k, 10k fun run, half marathon. And the half marathon was starting before the marathon and it was throwing everyone off cause they’re like, and it was a really hot day. It was like 85 degrees.

And they’re like, why are you starting at 7am? It’s cause we need to have the half marathon go out and it’s no. So they just scrapped the whole half marathon. And people are complaining now and everything, people are like, what about, and this is the thing. What about the slow runners that, that don’t have the ability to do a marathon?

Et cetera, et cetera. But. It’s crazy. I, so many people signed up for the marathon that wouldn’t have done it.  That, because there was all this hype last minute I’m gonna sign up three weeks before. And I was like, dude, you haven’t trained for a marathon this year. They’re like, I’m doing it!

I got FOMO right now. And I was like, okay, cool. They put it on. I was, the Sydney Marathon has always been like a cool, fun run  that had a marathon tacked onto it. But like they went hard last year and now this year they have the government behind them the state government and now it’s okay We’re about to come major and the state government’s oh Millions of dollars coming in for tourism.

Sure. Now, we’ll close more roads for you. Do whatever you want guys, so now it’s interesting. It’s interesting because New York Marathon’s been around Boston The big ones have been around forever Chicago. You don’t take those for granted But seeing Sydney 10 years ago, where it was a thousand people did this, and it literally, after the first mile or two, you’d be like, where’s everyone?

It’s I’m just doing a long run today! It just, it, there was no one on the course, and now seeing the whole course line for 26 miles, I was like, oh! It’s fun I don’t get the city nationalism or, I’m not like, I’m an Australian, Sydney I don’t care  as a New Yorker.

I never really cared as a Baltimore. I don’t care. I don’t do that. But I actually am proud of my city right now. For. Literally being like a nobody and coming up. Yeah, that’s the short end of it.  Hopefully they can get a Kipchoge down here and, rest in peace to Kip them, but they were trying to get one of the big, they got like a big pro he, he was an unknown pro, but he was like a 205 or a 206 or marathon guy, which is still amazing.

But they need to get like a big pro down here to run it. And it just, it sits in a weird time in September. So it’s like before all the other marathon majors, it’s like right after summer training. So I think once they get that big pro down here, it’s it. Another cool thing is a lot of my Instagram running friends.

Probably three or four have already booked tickets and they booked their they’re ready to come down. No one has come down to visit me for running yet. And now three or four people that I know are coming down. So when it becomes a major, the year after here hopefully I see you guys down there, but it is expensive.

The plane ticket is not cheap.   Well, Darren, do you want to? Give a quick shout out to where people can find you on social.  Yeah, I’m on Tik Tok. I know that’s where your followers sit. Mostly. It’s called the run talk podcast. I’m on Tik Tok at D lake creates or just type in D like runs.

I know it’s a different name to the handle. I need to sort that out, but D L A K E creates like.  And Instagram, I’m active on both. I also have a YouTube and a podcast. So just type in DLakeCreates everywhere. If you just Google it, you go on my website, DLakeCreates. com, you can find all the different places where my stuff is.

And whatever medium you like, I do written blogs, newsletter I like to write. I like to make stuff. I know that in the social media era, it’s like writing. Why would you do that? But I like writing and there’s a lot of, a lot of people that, that read,  people do read. So if you want.

The information that I make, I try to go in depth on how to stuff, VO2 max, temple runs, like what are they, how can you do them, certain types of workouts. So I do the practical tactical, but I also do the, I got something like why your city is best served before 7am. Like kind of philosophical.

Existential things that I go down deep. I’m going to probably do one on marathon. Basically is the marathon really healthy? That’s been rattling around my brain for about two years and I want to have arguments for both sides, but I’m going to trigger some people because I watched my partner and I’m like, this ain’t healthy.

And I’ve done it and I’m like the balance is off the balance is way off so I want to approach it tactfully and sense it in a sensitive way because I don’t want it to immediately come off as just like i’m triggering you and i’m just trying to be Contrarian just to piss everyone off.

I want it to actually be like it’s consuming 20 gels in three hours Really? Is that really a thing? Is this good but at the same time like is this helping your mental health? Is there a middle ground? You  That’s where I go a bit deep into and evidence based, always evidence based, but throwing a bit of my theories and opinions in there to make it spicy.  Thank you for your time. I really appreciate you all and yeah, it was amazing Thanks for letting me just ramble and just talk for no reason  and you’re listening.

No problem Thank you for joining us carolyn. You can give everybody a let them know where they can find us at  Yes, you can find us on youtube spotify facebook Oh, shoot. All of that at RunTalkLive. You can email us at runtalklive at gmail. com. You can find me on TikTok at carolynmcduff  and you can find me on Instagram at carolynmlevenway.

And I am chasernopacer  basically on All the social media platforms, you can hit me up anywhere there, Jake.  Same thing.  📍 you can find me on all social media platforms, cultural runner,  Instagram, Tik TOK, all the above. And this has been an opposite off it. Awesome episode of run top five,  right?

Thanks again, Darren. And thank you everybody for listening. We’ll catch you next time.