Expert Pro Run Coach vs ChatGPT AI: Who’s Better?

DLake x Mike Trees – Coach vs Ai – Transcript

00:00.328 Daren DLake Run: All right, AI is here to stay. I’m not fighting it. I’m working with it, in particular, using it for my training. And I use it for making all this content around running. And it’s a tool. It is not the end-all be-all yet. Yet. It can’t replicate me, but it’s a nice tool. So there’s all this hype about how AI is making gym workout plans for, obviously, normal people going into the gym and runners. But how good is it really? We all know it’s the worst it’s going to be, as they say, but let’s put it to the test. It’s Mike Trees versus artificial intelligence, AI, real coach versus a not-as-informed version of your smartwatch that has all the data points of you from the last few years. Remember that. Your smartwatch actually has a lot of data. So a lot of people, you know, I know we’ve been SHITing, poo-pooing on smartwatches. We did a whole podcast on that, listen to that one, where we were like, you know, your smartwatch isn’t that good, it’s not there yet. But that thing has all your data. AI does not have your data. So if you go into ChatGPT and you’re like, make me a training plan or help me run this marathon, it doesn’t know anything about you. So it’s going to be really generic. We’ll get into that in a second. Here are the rules. I’ll come up with three different scenarios of three different runners. Mike will answer first, and then we’ll see what ChatGPT says. Mike doesn’t know what ChatGPT is going to say, neither do I. So we’ll hopefully be surprised and see if it gets it really right or really wrong. All right, future Darren here, I need to add a bit more context for you to fully understand this whole thing. We’ll have two different runners, aka cases, not three as we ran out of time. The first one is a 22 year old male runner that sprints 400 and 800 meters back at college university level

and wants to look to do his first best half marathon. And the second one is a 50 year old woman that has been running for about five to six years and wants to best her marathon by 20 minutes. So run her best time. and then get 20 minutes faster. We’ll talk about things like can someone speed interval train their way to a fast half marathon, why AI could help coaches do better quality work with runners, where AI could actually help runners better than human coaches in the future with all the data that it has. We’ll talk about smartwatches in that. And the downside of chat GPT and AI in general, getting things wrong. And a bunch more. Oh, who am I? Well, I’m Darren D. Lake Runs, and I’ve been running since 1994. I did a sub three hour marathon and I’m a 10 hour Ironman finisher. And since 2012, I’ve been researching, experimenting and talking to experts on how to get 1% better in training, racing and life. just to make it easier and simpler for you, just so you don’t have to do it. I’ll be joined by pro running coach and exercise scientist of 50 plus years, Mike Trees, AKA run.energy on Instagram. He’s an exercise scientist and still can run a 17 minute 5k in his mid sixties. He’s the founder and head coach of NRG coaching, which strives to help amateur and advanced runners run their best through training plans, one-on-one coaching and assessments. Last, if you’re listening via audio only, please make sure to have a look at that episode website, which has visuals, infographics, the video, and a text article of what we speak on. Having visual cues alongside will help you understand some of these concepts better. Just go to the link in the show notes or the YouTube description to get to that website to see those visuals. Let’s get into it. So Mike, are you ready for the challenge?

03:25.750 Mike Trees: Yeah, yeah. I mean, before we start, I’d like to say that when you coach someone, you don’t just have a list about that person and come up with a schedule. You talk to them, you chat to them, you get a feeling of where they’re at, what they want. It’s an interactive approach. And so, in a sense, I’m almost a little bit like ChatGTP, because I’m going to give you an answer which probably would be totally modified and changed once I actually met with a person and discussed it with them. But I’m still up for the challenge.

03:58.792 Daren DLake Run: I think it’s fun because one, it doesn’t even know it’s being challenged, and two, we don’t know what it’s going to say. So I think it’s very blind in a lot of areas. It’s not you versus someone else.

04:09.096 Mike Trees: The scary thing is if it agrees with everything I say.

04:12.718 Daren DLake Run: So we got a 22-year-old male runner that is straight out of college. They ran competitively Division 3 USA and did the 400 and 800 meters. They genetically have a lot of power, athletic build. Their times for the 400 was best times 49.9 and 2.01 for the 800. Oh, this is very specific. I wonder who this is. They haven’t ran in more than one to two weeks for 20 minutes. They’re like fresh out of college, but they’re like, oh, you know, so no strength training because it was the early 2000s. Eat whatever junk food they can, sleep about five to six hours a day, drinks three to four days a week, three to five drinks a night minimum. They don’t do masters, but they want to stay competitive. They’ve ran a fun 5K once untrained in 19 minutes, 55 seconds. So they signed up for a few park

runs over the next six months and their first half marathon. So in the next six months, they’re like, OK, I’m going to do a couple of 5K park runs and a half marathon. What kind of training plan would you prescribe to them for the next three to six months to try to run their best half marathon? It’s obviously the first one. So let’s break it down into the base period and a race period. And then tell me how long in each period and try to describe in detail as much as you want. I know we could go on for days and usually write this stuff up, but have fun with this.

05:32.679 Mike Trees: We can see it initially that this guy, a lot of fast twitch fibers, 49 seconds of 400. suggests that he’s way underperforming on his, uh, 800 meter time, uh, for me. So that’s, that’s the first thing that sticks out massively to me. So I’m thinking, yep, got to get some endurance. He’s got the leg speed. So as opposed to a lot of older people that come into the sport, I would give them a lot of leg speed and try and pick them up. I think he’s got the fast twitch fibers, the leg speed, the power, and so needs to do less of the power work, the gym work and the plyometric work. He hasn’t run more than a couple of times a week over 20 minutes. So if he’s going to run a half marathon, I’m going to have to load up the aerobic training, ramp it up without him getting injured. He’s not done any strength training, but naturally very strong and powerful. So maybe in this instance, we don’t need to give him a lot of strength training, maybe a little bit of core to make sure that he’s not fatiguing the core muscles to allow him to run further. Junk food, yeah, we need to fix the diet. So these are just some quick tips I’m saying before we get into it. He needs to sleep more. Drinks, three to four days a week, three to five drinks. Yeah, he’s 22, probably just get away with that. I think I would leave that for now and start to tighten up on that if he’s not hitting his results or make sure that he doesn’t drink before a hard session. So 5k 20 minutes, that’s solid time. And then progressing to a half marathon. So we can see that he’s already lining things up nicely. I would definitely do the approach of let’s get the 5k nailed, then move on to a 10k and then onto the half marathon. Six months. possibly a little bit early in my view to run a half marathon. If he’s serious about doing this, I would really, you know, say he could complete a half marathon in six months, but he’s not really going to get anywhere near his potential. I would like to slow him down and say, let’s spend, you know, the first three to six months on nailing the 5k. Then, let’s look at the next six months, well, the next few months on 10k and progress to a year’s time half marathon and looking at doing a marathon in two years time. That’s, you know, if you’re looking at running for life and developing at still a reasonable time frame, so I would slow it all down. So let’s get back into a bit more detail. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to give him what I like to do with everyone, whether they’re doing 5K or marathon, I give them a base training plan, which is based on the polarized approach, sort of at least 80% of his training will be aerobic. So I need to do some runs, check his heart rate, workout, that he’s working to a good heart rate or better still, he has a good understanding of his body and can work to a perceived rate of exertion and make sure that he’s running aerobically so he can breathe relaxed, he can talk while he’s running and he’s not over fatiguing. So this would be 80% of his training, maybe even more in base training. I would give him some gentle gym work so that it’s not fatiguing his legs too much. He seems to be powerful enough. a little bit of upper body and core stability work in the gym, and then I would make sure that he’s doing

one session a week at a reasonable pace. So he could even do a 5k for fun, a park run. I know we talk about park runs, there’s a lot of people around the world that don’t know a park run, A park run is a free time trial, essentially timed run of 5km that takes place at the same place in many countries and many parks around the world at the same time. So if there is no park run near you, I would give you a 5km time trial to do once a week, or might even vary it and give you intervals of 5km by 1km, something to mix it up. The rest of the running for him, I would probably keep as easy aerobic running, maybe once a week, have him doing a few gentle strides so he doesn’t lose that speed. But with a 49 second 400, I don’t think we need to focus on the speed too much. So to recap, I would get him doing just a lot of easy aerobic work. He’s not running much at the moment, so we need to build it up. And again, we need to be cautious. No more than, you know, I know it’s a simple rule, 10% a week we say, but we build up for three weeks and then we cut back for a week and recover. But this is where I think AI My view isn’t there yet. I talk to him, we make sure that he’s not aching, that he’s not tired, that his resting heart rate is coming down and so that he can recover well and keep building up the volume. So some people can build volume quicker than others and we have to take it on an individual basis. And so I’m not going to say yes, I’m going to get him up to running 50 miles a week or 80 kilometers a week. because we can’t fit that definitive number in until we see how he’s coping with the distance and so I don’t want to say what distance he’s going to be doing but to do a 5k he could improve his 5k on as little as 30k a week in a sort of 20 miles a week but to do a half marathon we need to get him up. So we need to use the 5k and then gradually increase the distance over time. And this is why I like to have a year’s plan because it allows to have a few cycles, some rest period, recovery period before building up again. One last thing, I don’t know whether ChatGTP will do, but he needs to be sleeping seven hours a day and for every hour of training, I say this a lot and I get shouted at a lot, he should be looking at trying to get an extra hour’s sleep for every hour of training he’s doing over. So if he’s training an hour a day, for example, he needs to be sleeping eight hours a day. There is the law of diminishing returns. If you’re training five hours a day, you can’t get an extra five hours sleep. But I would also argue that only professionals can have the time to run that much. In general, I’d like to have him on eight hours sleep a night. And then I look at his diet, try and cut the sugar down, make sure he’s getting enough protein. I like to go for higher protein content, you know, 1.5 to 2 grams per kilogram of body weight. So quite a high protein, quite a high carbohydrate, but trying not to get simple sugars in there. It’s hard to put it all together without talking to someone, but that’s a quick summary of where I’d be at.

12:34.789 Daren DLake Run: That’s good. I know. I know. It’s really hard. And you know, you’re trying to be holistic and also, so this is all fun. Theoretical. No, that was great. Um, I think the biggest thing that surprised me about that was, Oh, by the way, this is, this was me. This was me. It still is me. But, um, you know, this was me 20 years ago. It’s funny. I actually didn’t do a lot of sprint work up until about three, four years ago. So I actually started just doing a lot of aerobic work, but for you to say, you’ve already got the power stuff. If you want to really focus on the half marathon. So my question to you then would be. Before we kind of wrap this up and have ChatGPT do it, would speed working my way to a

fast half marathon be possible? Like, could I interval, fast interval my way to a half marathon? Well, along with aerobic, like, I know you can’t just do either or, but like, along with aerobic, do you think, like, I could cut back the longer runs and just really get in, like, some threshold, like, proper threshold Z4 stuff?

13:29.595 Mike Trees: Uh, no, I think you need the longer runs. You’re naturally geared towards longer running. Your 49 is so far towards the sprint-based fast twitch fibers. that I would focus on just getting you out and doing lots of long, slow running and intervals as well. Fartleks, sprinting up hills, down hills, recovering, varying the pace, you know, longer intervals of, you know, the classic ones, a mile, you know, five by one mile, getting out there to get you started, that sort of thing. I find that 1k intervals for someone like you with the fast speed work wouldn’t quite be long enough. You need the 1k to sort of get to steady state and then that extra 400 on the top, well the extra 600 on top of that, makes a difference. 2k I find often, you lose the plot basically. It’s too far. And so it falls apart. But 1k is too short. So I would get you, since you’ve, you’ve come clean you 20 years ago, I’d get you doing mile intervals and try and give you longish rests at first. So you can get a nice pace going and gradually get tighter and tighter with you on the rest I’m giving you so that you keep that pace going. But we, we close the door on the recovery time.

14:48.807 Daren DLake Run: All right, I’m taking this moving forward, so I appreciate that. I keep getting free advice from you, thank you. Let’s go to chat, GPT. So I’m gonna share my screen. Right now is the part where I go, hey, if you’re not feeling this, make sure you subscribe, rate, share it out with your friends about how amazing this is, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, all right. While you should go out and do that anyway, how about I actually give you something that will help you? Is the running, health and fitness, and endurance sport internet too much sometimes? Is it too much conflicting content on how to train right? Or you just don’t have time to read and watch the latest trends on how to, I don’t know, carb cycle for your next marathon. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of that for you by showing you how to train, race and live 1% better consistently. To do this, just sign up for my free newsletter, OPB. I figure out this whole 1% better thing so you don’t have to by scouring the endurance sports deepest and darkest corners of the internet. Go to dlacreates.com forward slash news, all spelled the normal way, to be inspired and motivated on the regular. Let’s get back into it. Let’s go to chat GPT. So I’m gonna share my screen. So this is Notion, and to all the listeners and viewers out there, I’m using Notion. So I said, based on a selected text, what kind of training plan would you prescribe to this fictional runner over the next three to six months to try to run their best half marathon time? Break it down into a base period and race period. How long in each period?

16:22.269 Daren DLake Runs: Explain the why in a few sentences on each period.

16:32.794 Daren DLake Run: then try to describe the details of each week, day, and how it progresses. Okay, here we go. Okay, I’m gonna read this out to all the listeners.

16:41.337 Mike Trees: You’re gonna have to read it out, because I need my glasses to read that.

16:44.738 Daren DLake Run: All good, okay. So, given the current runner’s fitness level and lifestyle, it’s important to start with a base period of training. The base period, oh, that’s exactly what you said. The base period should focus on building aerobic endurance, developing strength, and improving nutrition and sleep habits. This period should last for six to eight weeks. During the base period, the runner should aim to run four to five times a week. Whoa! With two to three of those runs being easy, conversational run at a comfortable pace, one day should be reserved for a long run building up to 10 to 12 miles by the end of the period. The remaining run should be focused on speed work, alternating between hill repeats, tempo runs, and intervals. Strength training should be incorporated into the base period, focusing on exercises that target the lower body and core. Bing! The runner should aim to train two to three times per week, with one day being full-body workout. In terms of nutrition, the runner should prioritize the whole nutrient-dense foods and aim to eat a balanced diet with plenty of protein, complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats. They should also aim to get at least seven hours of sleep per night and limit alcohol intake to two drinks per week. You said to keep that, so I like that, because that was you being a human. After completing the base period the runner should move into a race period focused on maintaining and improving fitness while preparing for the half marathon. This period should last eight to ten weeks. During the race period the runner should continue to run four to five times per week with one day being a long run build up up to 12 to 13 miles. The remaining run should be focused on speed work, alternating between intervals, temple runs, and race pace runs. Strength training should continue during the race period, but should be tapered off as the half marathon approaches. The runner should aim to strength train one to two times per week with a focus on maintaining muscle mass and preventing injury. In the last three months, the training plan could look as follows. Basically, it starts off with week one, two by four miles easy runs, six miles long run, and then it progresses from the long run all the way to 13 miles. Speed work, strength training.

18:35.961 Mike Trees: No, this, the speed works too short for half marathon. So in essence, for me, I think it’s very good. What I would do the base periods too short. Uh, they have, uh, uh, a lack of aerobic base. I think they need to be doing a minimum of 12 weeks for the base and they say six to eight. Uh, and, uh, also, Yeah, there’s a lot of very good things in there, but I think the speed work, you know, 4×400, you’ve already got, you know, in essence, you’d sail through that. You need to be looking at, you know, 6×1 mile, you know, 6×1600, you know, it’s a totally different thing. You know, 200s, you don’t need 200s for the half marathon with your background, you know, because you’ve got the speed. So we need to be looking at longer intervals, you know, building up to even like a 10 mile tempo run, you know, a 16k tempo run for the half marathon. I think the speed works a little bit too short there, that’s more of a 5k program. But if you’re going for a 5K, and there’s a 5K program, I would be questioning whether you really need to be doing 13 miles, 22K, 21, 22K runs near a 5K because you’d be losing too much speed. I would shorten the long run in the race plan for a 5K. But yeah, it’s pretty good.

20:00.909 Daren DLake Run: It’s pretty good. And everyone keeps saying… This is the worst it’s ever going to be. So it’s like, oh, it’s like the scary part. But again, it doesn’t know

you like the human element. And I think what did someone say? It’s going to be the last 10 percent. That’s all it’s going to take forever for AI to get or the last one percent or whatever. Like the human the humanity of it all. Like, it will never fully replicate humans, or it will take a very long time.

20:28.473 Mike Trees: The hardest thing for it is to look in your eyes and say, you need a rest day. I don’t care what the plan says, you need a rest day. You need to eat more or whatever. So you could be looking at that and follow the plan and go down a rabbit hole because you’re just blindly sticking to the plan. Then, you know, you could then feed a question, do I need a rest day? It may or may not help. I think it’s very good, definitely. And I think it’s, as you say, it’s only going to get better. But amazing how close they were in the seven hours of sleep. It’s picked out a lot of the things I picked out.

21:11.999 Daren DLake Run: I mean, but you could also say this is a lot of common knowledge that you can find on the internet, that a lot of science and a lot of human information, you know,

21:20.428 Mike Trees: Yeah. So if there’s a lot of misinformation on the internet, ChatGTP will actually come up with a lot of, depending on how good misinformation and fake news becomes, it will also pick up fake news and get mistakes in there. That is the problem with it. We just have to hope that there’s more correct and good stuff on the internet for it to pick than false.

21:41.880 Daren DLake Run: And then you know what? This is how I look at it. It can free you up from doing all the monotonous stuff that there’s everything we do in life. There’s always the monotonous, repetitive tasks. It could free us up from doing that. And can it make you do more of the humanity, the human side, the behavioral, the looking at people in the eyes, and then you could just really do more of that which people need. They need to talk to a human and this could help you as a tool or even help the runner as a tool, but you still need to be kind of the doctor, the GP, the general practitioner of sorts that talks to everyone and everything. Yeah, this is an overview.

22:17.643 Mike Trees: I mean, running efficiency, running economy, it’s not just about getting the aerobic engine bigger. It’s how can we become more efficient? How can we land better, tow off better? Are there any small muscular changes we need to do? Is there an imbalance in there? Do you have any injuries and imbalances going on that I can pick up? At the moment, I’m not sure whether we could throw a video in to chat GTP and get it to analyse the running that we’re doing, but that’ll come. There are lots of things that we can do, but it’s pretty good.

22:54.197 Daren DLake Run: All right, so case study number two. We’ll do a third one in the future if everyone loves this episode. Mike Trees versus the robots. All right, we’ve got a runner in their early 50s that just started running in their mid 40s, okay? So they’re coming to you and they’re in their early 50s. They started running about five, six years ago. They love it, but they keep getting injured if they run longer than 45 minutes or too much in a

week. They’re genetically predisposed to hamstring issues, as this is what they tell you. Their fastest time to date is a 420 marathon, and they want to run under four hours. They can only run three to four times a week. They have time to do two by 30 minute strength sessions. They complain about being tired a lot and need caffeine to wake up. They also have to care for sick parents and have a demanding job. What kind of training plan would you prescribe to them over the next six months so that they could try to run sub-four hours? So we have an exact time now. The other one was just like, I just want to run my best time. We have an exact sub-four hours, but their best time is 420 marathon. Again, break it down into two periods, base and race, and try to describe in detail each weekday and how it would progress if you can.

24:04.817 Mike Trees: So we’ve got six months to look at, which is half a year, 25 weeks, roughly a bit more 26. So we’re probably looking at splitting it up evenly, because I’d like the base to be as long as possible. But again, if you’re getting ready for marathon, you need that to be long. So probably 24, 12 weeks of each plan with yeah I mean we’ve been rough here, 12 weeks each plan and a little bit of a taper in there. So that’s how I could split that up. But what I need to look at actually, before we get into the specifics, is there’s a lot there that worries me. Are they actually taking something on that’s a little bit beyond what they should be doing? I’d be looking at actually trying to talk them and find out more about how realistic this is. Caring for elderly parents, that’s stressful and it’s fatiguing. I’m also very concerned that they need caffeine to wake up on a morning. I mean, I love a coffee, but if that’s what’s getting you out of bed each morning, it means you’re not getting enough sleep. So they’re already sleep deprived, already fatigued, their body is stressed. They’re pretty much, you know, probably if they drink a lot of coffee, could be dehydrated. It could be that they’re not fueling correctly, and this is leading to injuries and things. So we need to look at the bigger picture. And they might actually need to step back. It might be that these two periods don’t work. I would almost say, well, look, let’s just have a six weeks period where we cut the training right back. We focus on strength and conditioning work. So instead of focusing on the running, let’s say prioritize the gym work. getting the diet right, getting the fluid intake right, getting the sleep. And that might mean we have to take time off the running and prioritize three strength sessions a week of probably around about 45 minutes each. Let’s look at getting strong in the gym, building up the hamstrings, the quads, the glutes, core, the connective tissues, make a period of running where we’re doing drills uphill again, some skipping, some hopping, some form work with strength based in there. And let’s not push much distance. Now, this will shock the runner because they want to get ready for the marathon. And if you’re doing the distance, you can’t really build up that gym work and the strength work. So this is where I think I might vary a little bit from chat on this one that I want to have a six week block of strength work, then maybe a couple of weeks of easy running, and then transition into a base period where I’d still be doing the strength work, but I’d cut it down to maybe two times a week. And in my block of 12 weeks of base, I would try and get them to gradually build up the distance, while also maintaining some leg speed work, drills and strength work. I wouldn’t focus anything on specific times for the marathon, the base period. I just want to build up a big base and get them strong. And I’d also be stressing their diet, checking their diet is good. I’d be checking that their

fluid intake is good, that they’re not dehydrated. I’d be checking in on them to see how stressed they were. And if they’re really busy and stressed with the parents and not sleeping enough, I’d cut the program down and give them easy days and rest days. So that would be interactive as we go. And then once we’ve got through that base period, assuming they get through that okay, the hamstrings starting to loosen up a bit, they’re running okay, then I’d get them onto a plan. They want four hours, whether it’s realistic or not, Uh, it’s touch and go taking 20 minutes off a marathon time from 4.20 to 4.00. Uh, it’s tough, but we can set them on a plan and I would get them started on the race plan with easy running and intervals at a four hour pace from day one, but I’d keep the intervals light. So there wouldn’t be a lot of volume in there. So maybe they’re just doing 5k. which is one eighth of the marathon distance. They’d be doing 5k at race pace. And then we’d gradually build up over the weeks to 10k at race pace, 15k at race pace. And probably I’d push it to a maximum of about 20k of training at race pace before unleashing them on the marathon. And I’d have 12 weeks to do that. It’s still going to be a tough ask. If I had an option, I would say no, I don’t want you doing this. I would really want them looking at a year’s plan and spending six months on getting their lifestyle sorted, their sleep up, their strength work done and push everything back so that the marathon is not in six months time, it’s in a year’s time. So that was how I would approach it. They’ve got too much going on in their life. You can just see from the lack of sleep, the stress, the caffeine, there’s too much going on to be training for a sub-four-hour marathon for them. And again, I haven’t even covered the issue that they’re in the 50s, you know, recovery times take a lot longer than someone in the 20s. In the 20s, I’d say, okay, let’s go for it. Yeah, maybe. But in the 50s, quality of life is more important. And having a healthy, you know, good quality of life for a longer period of time is much more important than hitting a an artificial number that ultimately is meaningless in the big scheme of things. Four hours, ten, four hours. It’s not going to change your quality of life. It psychologically might make you feel better, but we’ve got to focus on quality of life and living a good quality of life for a longer period of time than hitting a certain number. I want to be fit and active. for as long as I can, to as old as I can, and then have a quick and painless death. I mean, to be totally blunt about it. So, you know, if 80 is the number I reach, because that’s the way I’m designed, I want to be running and lifting weights and doing everything and chatting quite happily till I’m 80. And then, you know, that’s it. But I’m hoping that with all the work, strength work and weight training and balance of life, that I’m going to live on to be 100. That’s the plan. So if I plan to be 100, I will. I think if people plan to live to be 80, they probably will fall apart around 80. So I’m planning to live well into my hundreds and see what happens. Yes, I doubt ChatGTP will be telling the runner not to go for that time. You’re telling ChatGTP ATP that they need, they want to do a 420. So it’s going to come up with a plan to get sub four hours. Whereas I would be more, let’s come up with a holistic approach, include training and running and let them run the marathon and enjoy the marathon, but in a holistic lifestyle.

30:59.226 Daren DLake Run: Let’s see what chat GPT says. I’ll give it the right prompt. It’s all about prompting here. So this is for our next one. Let’s ask it. This is what I asked you, but I’ll just say using the selected text. Text, what kind of training plan would you prescribe to them over the next three to six months to try to run sub four hours? All right. I think that’s

good enough. Let’s see what the robot says. It’s amazing that it spits it out this fast. That is absolutely crazy. I know it’s a robot, but. It’s still. The craziest thing is that like this is going to become normal. Like, you know how your iPhone works and you just go, Oh, it works. But like 20 years ago, I’d be like, Oh my God, how does this thing work? And now it just works. You’re like, whatever. We just take everything for granted. Like, we’re going to start taking this for granted very soon because it will become normal. All right. So this is what it said. In order for this individual to try to run sub four hours in their upcoming marathon, a training plan should be developed over the next three to six months. That’s exactly what I said. Thanks, chat. GVT for literally summarizing everything I said. The base period should last six to eight weeks and focus on building a foundation of strength and endurance. During this period, running should be done at a comfortable pace with an emphasis on increasing mileage every week. Same thing as before. Additionally, strength training and yoga should be incorporated one or two times per week to build overall strength and flexibility. Race period. The race period should last 12 to 16 weeks. This thing is really hard on a late race period. And focus on maintaining the base fitness while increasing intensity and specificity to marathon training. During this period, speed work, temple runs, and long runs should be incorporated. That’s interesting. To improve running economy endurance at race pace. That’s not what it said on the last one. So that’s interesting. Uh, additionally, strength training and yoga should be continued at a maintenance level. This is what it said in the last one, a sample 12 week. So week one, Monday rest Tuesday, four miles easy Wednesday, five miles of tempo. It doesn’t tell you exactly what the tempo is. Thursday rest Friday, three miles easy Saturday yoga Sunday, eight miles long. This is really generic. Like this isn’t doing anything. Uh, like what’s the tempo pacing? You know what? Well, like Yeah. Okay. Uh, last one. This is interesting. Whether or not the individual can achieve sub four hours, depending on various factors, such as their current fitness level, running experience and dedication to training with proper training diet and rest sub four hours is definitely achievable. However, if unable to dedicate enough time to training due to their busy schedule, it may be more challenging to achieve this goal.” That’s so generic and vanilla.

33:22.116 Mike Trees: And also, I think that at the age of 50, with everything going on, 420 to sub-4 hours is not definitely achievable. It’s a big question mark. A big, big question mark.

33:35.557 Daren DLake Run: So I’m glad this is where it just went really generic and it got it wrong and where the humanity, I keep saying that, in the way that you as a human can talk to this other human and relate is where a coach comes in.

33:48.063 Mike Trees: The big issue for me is that The first one was pretty good. This one isn’t so good, but someone who doesn’t know training doesn’t know if they’re getting a good plan or a bad plan. So they’re going to go to chat GTP. They might be getting a good one like the first one, or they might be getting this one, which isn’t so good. And I think could set that person up who already has a hamstring injury and needs to be sorted. It hasn’t addressed the hamstring issue at all. That could be a big, big issue. And we need to look at the biomechanics on that. So there’s a lot of issues with the second one that I’m not

so happy with. But I think it’s very, very, it’s exciting time. I think if we can control it and use it wisely, it can create more free time for coaches to focus on the bits they need to be doing and the personal touches, the human interaction.

34:34.637 Daren DLake Run: I said the same thing earlier, and I may or may not put this at the end, but yeah, I think we get rid of the repetition of certain things that people have to do, and we have this analyze things that would take me a while, or I just don’t have the brain capacity to do, and allow me to really look at people’s holistic lives when I coach people. I think that is where it will work, and again, will it get to the 10%, the 1%? uh gap because right now it’s like kind of there i’d say it’s 60 there but you know that other 40 is where it gets it really wrong and that 40 can lead you down a black hole where you as a runner are like oh i got this plan off chat gpt and then it’s like oh now i’m injured well i’m burned out i can’t do it and it’s like chappy chi you got me you know whereas a coach can adapt this isn’t adapting that’s another thing this doesn’t adapt so uh i mean maybe maybe you can keep feeding it over time, but I think this is where a Garmin would kind of adapt, kind of even, you know, the smartwatches. Well, you’re on Khoros now, so I can’t even say Garmin too much. I don’t know, you’re getting the big money from Khoros, so I don’t, you know, I mean, Khoros even, like, I think Khoros is doing some cool stuff, but it’s still just a robot, so I don’t want to hate on Khoros, because Khoros, I’ll take your money. You want to sponsor this podcast, by all means, you can. So, but Khoros is, would you say Khoros is doing better stuff in the AI area than Garmin?

35:56.640 Mike Trees: They’re developing more stuff in the AI, you know, their route planner, their pace, so when you’re off-road it predicts your pace that you’ll be running on the flat. They’re trying a lot more, I think, than Garmin. They’re definitely trying a lot harder. And they’re building up the stats. But essentially, it’s still a watch. What you need to do is, maybe the best thing is to take that data and then down the line, throw it into chat GTP, because that’s a bigger bot for analyzing it. But the data is good if you know how to interpret the data. And that’s the problem. Some people will take certain things like, oh, my VO2 has fallen again. It’s just the way that it analyzes it, you know, all my, I’m really unfit. No, you’ve just got to accept that the temperature’s gone up, you know, 30 degrees. Uh, you’re sweating a lot more, your core temperature’s more, so your heart rate is going to be high for the same thing. So the, the watch isn’t quite there, but I think maybe chat could pick those things up if you feed it the variables, but then you know what, You need to be a coach almost to know what questions to ask it. So we ask ChatGTP specific coaching variable questions that maybe a novice runner wouldn’t know how to ask the questions to ChatGTP to get the answers, elicit the answers that we need to get. So that is the other issue. We know what questions to ask. to get the answers.

37:23.331 Daren DLake Run: Look, we learned a lot today. I learned a lot. We learned about how to take a runner who was me in there, straight out of uni, a young runner that has a bit more speed and then wants to do more marathons and 5k because Doing track races when you’re basically out of university is pretty hard to do, as in, you gotta either be masters or it’s just hard to do those things.

37:47.452 Mike Trees: So the takeaway is, you’re going to use band work as a warm-up before racing, and you’re going to incorporate more longer intervals into your training to get quicker.

37:57.330 Daren DLake Run: There we go. Yeah. And then when I turn 50, I'll then make sure that, you know, I, I prioritize me having a good time in life over, you know, trying to run a fast time and also, you know, taking care of my parents when they're, if they're sick. So that, that is the takeaways for today. Uh, Mike, thank you for your time. Thank you very much. I enjoyed it. You've made it to the end. Thank you so much for listening to all this stuff on how we try to make running and training and life and all that stuff work, because time is a resource that no one can make more of. Not yet, at least. So we appreciate you taking the time out of your day to listen, watch and generally consume all this stuff. Accessibility is pretty cool nowadays, so we have a transcript for all the episodes. Make sure you go to the show notes section of this episode on whatever podcast player you're listening to, or you can go to the description of the YouTube video, or just go to podcast.delaycreates.com to find the episode and the transcript. All of this was produced in Sydney, Australia, so I acknowledge the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, who are the traditional custodians of the land. I pay my respects to elders past, present, and emerging. A lot of people ask how they can support us, and I think the easiest way is to just share this out to people you know that would like this. So whether it's a podcast link from Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whatever you're listening to, or watching on YouTube, send them a link, just flick it to them, email it, text it, you know, Instagram, whatever. Send them a link of this episode, or my newsletter, or whatever you can, the YouTube link, whatever you can. The second easiest way is to rate, like, or subscribe to this podcast and or video on YouTube, or even subscribe to my newsletter. If you have any feedback, feel free to hit me up. Talk at 1betterrun.com/. That's T-A-L-K at 1betterrun.com/. Spelled the normal way, train smart, race, and live easy. Peace.