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Welcome, hi, I'm Mikki and this is Mikkipedia, where I sit down and chat to doctors, professors, athletes, practitioners, and experts in their fields related to health, nutrition, fitness, and wellbeing, and I'm delighted that you're here.
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Hey everyone, it's Mikki here. You're listening to Mikkipedia. This week on the podcast, in light of it being Hawaii Ironman Women's World Championship, I have returning guest, Dr. Dan Plews. I think Dan is one of the most frequent guests that I've had on Mikkipedia. I'm always stoked to be able to have a yarn with him about all the things that he's interested in right now. And that's pretty much what we talk about today.
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training strategies that Dan is employing now, how these might've changed over the last year since we caught up. We discussed the difference in types of gels that are now available, for example, the Mortene versus your standard gels, and if they make a difference as it's suggested. Of course, we revisit metabolic health because both Dan and I are passionate about that for our athletes. And Dan chats about his race at Challenge Roth, which was back in July, but also,
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discusses his upcoming campaign for Ironman California. And so that's happening a couple of weeks after Kona, which is super exciting. So I think anyone that loves triathlon, loves nerding out on all things nutrition is really gonna love this discussion because that's what we do. We just nerd out on nutrition related stuff. And for those of you unfamiliar with Dan, he is an applied sports scientist, researcher,
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coach and competitive triathlete. And as an applied sports scientist, Dan has worked closely with athletes who've won more than 25 world and Olympic titles in sports, including rowing, kayak, and triathlon. And Dan was part of Rowing New Zealand's preparations for both 2012 and 2016 in Olympic Games as a sports scientist, which I must say was quite some time ago. Yet, he has continued to help athletes become successful in, of course, most
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sort of top of mind right now is Chelsea Sodaro in her win last year at Hawaii Ironman. So as a researcher, Dan has a PhD in exercise physiology with a particular interest in heart rate variability, has many peer-reviewed publications to his name. In addition to Chelsea, Dan has coached three professional Ironman triathletes to sub-8 hour times including Terenzo Bizzoni, Jan van Berkel and Tim van Berkel. And Dan has also founded EnduraIQ.com.
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who I consult with, which is an online learning hub for anyone interested in optimal long course triathlon performance. He was also the high performance manager for the recently successful Team New Zealand bid for the America's Cup. So Dan has many strings to his bow as I'm sure you know, and I think you're really gonna love our conversation today. Just a reminder before we crack on into the conversation,
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The best way to support the podcast is to hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast listening platform because this increases the visibility of Mikkipedia and amongst the thousands of other podcasts that are out there. So more people get the insights that people like Dan have to share on Mikkipedia. Alright team, enjoy this conversation that I have with Dr Dan Plews.
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but it's not the one to a thinking. It's actually your stress. It's a stress response in your body. The last time she had it was a number of years ago, not related to her weight, but to work stress. And she was really stressed at work and she wouldn't get night's work. Yeah, it's a sure thing. I definitely, I mean, it's almost, you know, I almost feel that when I'm building up to an Ironman, I almost feel I'm...
03:59
If I'm not having a phase when I'm building up into the night sweats, I've probably not really gone hard enough. You know? Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, totally. You know, I think I've experienced it every single time. I actually think it's almost a kind of requirement. Yeah. Well, that's interesting because of course there'll be people out there who will be like, that's dangerous. You're running into relative energy deficiency. You're, you know, but I mean, I guess.
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It's a time thing too, right? It's not like you just spend months at that point. Relative energy deficiency isn't, of course it's not a great thing, but I mean, it's the time, I mean, everyone has a relative energy deficiency at some point, you know? Yeah. You know, it's just a question of how long and how severe, right? If you're doing it for a matter of a week or so, then you're generally all right, but if you're doing it for months and months and then it becomes a problem, right? And the issue...
04:55
The problem was here, it wasn't that fact that I was under eating, I was just training too much. And also I was at altitude, so there's a little bit, even altitude, your resting metabolic rate is probably that little bit higher because you're at altitude, you're always fighting against altitude, your respiratory rates are a little bit higher continuously. So that's probably adding to the fact. And actually, interesting Dan, and I think we will be recording from now, is that all right? Like just this last little bit that we were talking about, that's quite good.
05:25
It's less about, maybe it's not less about the relative energy deficiency, but it's how you respond and recover, right? Because you're needing to show up and do those training sessions and you also have to adapt and become stronger from them. And now if you were doing that for months on end, you'd break down. That wouldn't be possible. But instead, you're able to, I mean, I imagine you were your fittest, you've been in years actually leading up to Roth. Yeah, yeah, I definitely, I definitely wasn't, you know.
05:54
And I was, I wanted to lose a bit of weight as well. Like I know like it's kind of almost taboo now to just to talk about raceway. But bottom line is I know that I need to be light to run fast. That's the end of it. Like, and, and, and, and therefore I was pleased I was losing the weight, but I didn't have to focus on it because my training was that, was that high. Yeah. I mean, I wasn't eating like what I wanted a total, total.
06:21
I always think that if you eat good food and eat as much as you want, that's great. But I wasn't eating just junk all the time. I was just trying to eat good food and eat as much as I want, and then the risk kind of takes care of itself. Yeah. Now, I want to get into sort of the training, what you might have done differently if anything, if we think about Kona and Roth, obviously. But first, Dan, because we are talking about energy requirements, the question I get a lot from people is...
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You know, Miki, I've got my Garmin and I've got what my bike is telling me I burn. So they've got quite a good setup in terms of the energy expenditure. Yet, if you look at the research, Dan, and it's looking at tools to measure energy expenditure for the layperson, they're really inaccurate. Like, however, is the research around that stuff not looking at power meters and that? And can we be more...
07:16
confident in the energy expenditure that we might see on a power meter than what I might get from my Garmin watch? Yeah, it's a really good question. I think what we can be confident in is the within device. Yes. It's like, you know, if you're comparing one session to another, a two hour ride versus a three hour ride or one day versus another day or a week versus a week, and you're using the same device to measure it, then you can be quite confident. I mean,
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I know for a fact, for example, that in my Today's Plan account, I have calories at the end of the week. So 20,000 calories of energy expenditure in terms of exercise energy is a big week for me. And I look at that over training load. And to be honest with you, it's doing the same thing. That number in terms of calories is almost identical to what train load is telling you.
08:12
the higher the intensity, the bigger the calorie burn, the longer the volume, the bigger the calorie burn. It's just a different way of looking at it. And that's what I use. So if you're comparing week to week, it's great. But the problem is you can't say that this is 2000 calories, therefore I should consume 2000 calories of food. Because one is, it's inaccurate on both sides. It's inaccurate in terms of the...
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that ride is or that run is actually 2000 calories. And then how are you actually measuring on the other side? Because we know food diaries and all these different, I mean, we just talked about it before, that they're taking it. We know it's highly inaccurate anyway. So how can you actually balance that? You really, you just can't do it. You can use it as kind of a proxy measure that's quite of interest, but you can't, you couldn't base that much off it. Yeah, that's great. And I, of course, that makes perfect sense to me. So if I've got a...
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training week where it says I've burnt 14,000 calories in my running one week, and then I'm off on holiday to Colorado like I am next Friday and we'll be climbing 14ers. Then my training, like the calorie burn from that will be far greater. And I wouldn't be able to put a number on it, but it would absolutely tell me that I'm burning more energy. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's, um, I think that's its best use case. And I mean, like I have my other aura ring and the aura ring, it links to, um,
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Apple Health and the Apple Health is pulling my calorie data from like the Garmin or the Wahoo or whatever, or the Formgoggles, you know, it's pulling that data to get the calories. And therefore, comparing one day to the next, it's quite accurate, you know, it's a good way to look at it, you know. And so when I was in St. Moritz, for example, I was over 6,000 calories nearly every single day, whereas normally I'm between 4,000 and 5,000 calories on my...
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on my aura ring. So I know that I am burning more calories compared to normal. So I should at least be a bit more mindful of what I'm doing. So for example, at night, if I'm having my chocolate and cup of tea, I might put a bit of peanut butter on top of that chocolate. Yeah, totally. Now, you probably haven't, I imagine you haven't gone down this road yet, but Ninja Creamy, do you know what I'm talking about? No. Oh my God.
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You'll have to Google this one, Dan. So not at all available in New Zealand, like sold out almost as soon as they arrived. Very difficult. What's he called? Ninja cream? You know, the ninja bullet, like the ninja sort of food. Um, I've got a ninja air fryer and a ninja little bullet thing. And now it's an ice cream maker. But what you can do is you put almond milk, protein powder, a little bit of sugar-free instant pudding, like the Simply Delish, but you measure it out. You freeze that.
11:03
And then the little ice cream machine makes it into ice cream. And I'm not kidding. It is bloody amazing. Sounds like some of the kids might like. I seriously think that they would. And I reckon Dan on his training regime, when he decides that he needs to cut his belly, um, we'll probably go, this is not a bad low calorie snack to be fair. Someone like you doesn't need to rely on these low calorie snacks, but, but as a healthy ice cream alternative for your kids.
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I'll take you in a post of mine. And I'll show you what it's like. Yeah, sounds great. Yeah, yeah. It's super interesting though. Like, you know, like you know, I did that food diet for four days. It's just, it just, it just, I mean, I haven't done one in a long time now. And it's, it's such a good refresher. Yeah. To remind you, it's like, oh yeah, like I said with the Keto 3 cereal, which is great when it's a great cereal, like Esfiel's brilliant cereal, but you have to remember it's great if you're training, but I would not be having that if I was,
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if I wasn't doing a bit of training in the day, because it's very high in calories, which it is designed to do. It's for athletes, it's to give you a good bit of energy in the day. But I was over a thousand calories before I was even, I think it was like eight o'clock. I was just like, whoa, whoa. Hang on here. I know, it is interesting. And foods like that, they can be used just differently. Someone who doesn't have like, I've...
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There's no way that I would burn 4,000 calories in a day. So I might enjoy that cereal on top of yogurt and protein powder with berries, you know, rather than have it as the base of my breakfast. Yeah. And that's, you know, on that point, you know, you said about you not burning that many calories in a day. What's really interesting is that me, like when I was in summer at Chelsea and I were doing almost the exact same training. Yeah. But my, you know, and honestly, she's using a Wahoo exactly the same as me.
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Same watch, same bike computer, basically because she's sponsored by Wahoo and she gave me my Wahoo, so you know. And same form goggles, right? And literally in a week, when I'm at 20,000 calories, she'll be closer to 13, 14,000 calories. Oh, interesting, yeah. Because like, you know, we're going over these mountains in St. Maurice and I'm like, she'll be at 200 watts and I'm at 300 watts.
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know, which is a lot more energy requirement and you have to, you do have to come and consider that of course. Yeah. And of course you're put like, so what's, so actually comparing you in 2018 and Kona and you, and I know that Rock wasn't the, wasn't the buildup that you hoped it would be despite the fact that you had a great, you know, that you managed to pull it out of the bag and I know it wasn't probably the race that you wanted, but Dan, in terms of your sort of race weight, were you around the same?
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a little bit heavier, maybe a kilogram more, but not much. Yeah. Oh, no wonder your Achilles couldn't handle that heftiness. Yeah, but I think that it would have been the same if I'd have kept my running going, because I just find running is the thing that kind of keeps you a little bit lighter. I think it's just a natural adaptation.
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My whole training program had been building up to doing... Why is my camera so out of focus? I don't know. Hopefully it will be better. Your hand is in great focus. It'll be better though when we put it up properly. People don't want to see my face anyway. No, that's not true. I was going to say, what was I talking about? Yeah. Because basically the whole training program had been building up to doing these specific runs, right? That were the key runs of the training block.
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which might be track sessions and specific runs off the bike. I never got to do any of those. Yeah, and I also lost the plot. So it was the Wednesday. So Wednesday before, 10 days before the race, which was the Wednesday, I tried to do a run on my Achilles and I managed one kilometer. And at that point I was like, there's no chance I'm going to do this race. Yeah. So I had a beer and pizza. Yeah. As you do.
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Because I was like, well, I may as well have a beer and pizza. Maybe, you know, and so I didn't, and then, and then I didn't really do anything for, I didn't really train much that day, you know, so I kind of did lose a bit for a couple of days as well. But yeah, then I, and then, I mean, the race itself, I couldn't have asked for more than I did, than I delivered on that day, given the situation, but I also know that I could have done, I could have done a bit better, you know, with the, with the perfect build up.
15:41
And I guess, you know, is any build up perfect? Did you have any issues going into Kona? Was that actually the perfect build up? I mean, there's never a perfect build up, but I guess it's the timing of things, right? Like even in Kona in May, races in October, I had a stress fracture in my sacrum. But you know, that was in May time. So it's not that much of an issue because I got over it. I had a perfect running from that point and it was really good. But you know, when you're not running at all for 16 days and you know, you can't get to run until
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Um, you know, basically it was nine days before the event. That's, that's different, right? It's a lot worse. And the funny thing was, is that when I started running again, because I was, I'd been cycling and swimming and I was very fit still, and I started running, but I hadn't had any of the kind of the muscular, um, conditioning in the lakes, like the eccentric loading and my legs were, I ran 20 K and I ran around, I ran like four 24, 30 K pace and my legs were so sore.
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And this was on the Saturday before the race. So the week before, this is the first run I managed to, proper run I managed to do. And then for that whole week, I was actually just trying to recover my legs. They were so sore. Now, how did you, with regards to like the, beer and pizza, you're like, this is, you know, I'm clearly not gonna be able to race. What happened then? Yeah, it's really, really weird. So, the next day,
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So that day I decided I wouldn't be able to do the race. I went out, I went to the swimming pool and saw Chelsea and Jan and I was like, well, I'm not swimming, I'll just coach. I coach from the pool side in, but we're getting in myself. And then Jan was like, what are you gonna do now? And I said, I'm just gonna go back to my room. And he's like, that's gonna do you no good. You should come out and ride with me. And we ended up riding for four hours on that day, so which was a really good thing in the end.
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And then the next day, Jan and Chelsea had a key track session. So I was coaching that and they warmed up and I ran 400 with them. I couldn't run 400, my Achilles was that sore, I stopped. And then they were doing like 800s. So I was timing them and I had to run across the track, time them, then run back across the track because they had 800 on, 200 off. So like starting at a different side each time. And as I did that, like I didn't really feel my Achilles, but I didn't really feel it for those short distances. And then Jan started to cool down.
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and I ran alongside him and I was like, hang on a minute, my Achilles isn't really hurting. And then on that day, the amfinis is cooled down and I said, well, I'm going to just run a bit more and I ran for 25 minutes and it wasn't really that sore. So then the next day I ran for 50 minutes and I stopped once because it was a bit sore but I still ran for 50 minutes in total.
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and it felt better. And the main thing was it wasn't getting any sore. The soreness after running was, there was nothing there. It wasn't getting any worse. So after that 50 minutes, it was fine. And then the next day on the Saturday, I ran for 20K. I went straight into 20K because I thought, well, I've got to give it a proper test. And it was totally fine. But then my legs were really sore. And then the next day, so that day, we ran in the morning in Dottingham and drove to Roth.
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I arrived in Roth, the next day I did, me and Chelsea cycled the Roth course and we ran 8k off the bike and that was, and it was fine. And then my legs were super sore. I had to, but then I was doing this balancing of trying to prepare myself to run a marathon, but also rest. So I ran, I ended up running, I took Monday off, I ran 15k on the Tuesday, which included some one kilometer reps. I took Wednesday off.
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running. And then I ran another 15 kilometers on the Thursday, which is actually something I would never normally do like running 15k like two or three days before an Ironman isn't normally that advised. But I was trying to just balance things out a little bit. Yeah. And then I ran and then that was that really. So I ran 15k around 20 minutes the day before the race, which was on the Saturday and then race on the Sunday.
19:53
And to be honest with you, I felt really good on the run. And I was running at like 355 on the Canal of Wrath, 355, heart rate was like 150, which is kind of my normal Ironman heart rate. And I thought, it's on here. I'm gonna blast like out of 245 here. Yeah. You know? But then eventually just the conditioning in my legs, my quads just exploded. And my legs have never been as sore.
20:21
I mean, they're being sore after Ironman, but after that race, I could not walk. They were really, really sore. I just recently ran through the muscle soreness. Still ran a 250. I ran a 250, so I can't complain. No, shoot. That was amazing. And Dan, how are you? Did it take a while to recover from there? Yeah. I mean, then we went away to the mountains for a week and we chilled out. Yeah. Then I mean...
20:50
I actually think I still had a little bit of muscle soreness even two weeks ago, just running in Holland, but now it seems to have completely gone and yeah, I'm getting back into it. Yeah. And you know, were you going into that race thinking this is my last hurrah because I'm really going to give it my all and now going, hang on, I've still got something left? I think, I mean, if everything, you know, if I'd had, it's funny because if I'd had a really good run up and a bad race, I probably would have ended it there.
21:20
But because I had a not good rope and a good race, it makes me want to do another one. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, totally. So, yeah. And I had a few chats with some mentors about it and I think we all have this period in our lives where we have a choice. Like at the moment, I'm 40. I have...
21:44
the option to still do a fast time and go faster than 818. And I know that I can definitely go a lot faster than that. But in two years time, we won't even be having this conversation, because it's not an option anymore. So, you've got to, you've just got to make the, like I always think they're gonna make the most of opportunities when they present themselves. And then after that,
22:11
I'm not going to do any racing anymore because my family's young and I want to focus on them for, you know, until they're until they're 12 or whatever, because after after they're 12, they're not going to think at the moment, they think I'm pretty cool. My kids, would you believe it? But you know, they are young. But you know, but after after after they're 12, they'll want to hang out with their friends more than me. So then you got to make the most of that opportunity and then go into different things. And so yeah, that makes
22:41
Quite a long hiatus really, didn't you? From sort of Kona to now. It's not like you've been, that your family has been widowed by... No, no, exactly. All in stages. And like someone said to me the other day, they actually wrote to me and they said, you should write a blog on work-life balance. And I was like, well, I don't believe in work-life balance. Yeah, there you go.
23:08
Because it's, I believe in balance, but I don't believe, I really don't believe balance can be achieved all year round all the time. I think it has to come in stages is that, there's a balance and then you counterbalance it. It was like, if you wanna achieve anything in this world, you wanna achieve anything and do it well, you can't be balanced in doing it. If you wanna do an Ironman well, you can't be balanced in it. If you wanna run a business well, you can't balance doing it. You have to go as all in. And that's why I focused on Kona.
23:38
I went all in, I focused on the, I focused on Enduro IQ and I went all in and now I'm back focusing on Ironman, you know, and then after that's done, I'll go back to the business. Of course, like family is always a corner is always in the background and that's kind of just a constant, but you know, it's really hard to do three things really well. I think you can do two things pretty well, but you can't grow too, you can't grow.
24:04
You can't do three things really well all at the same time. You can't grow a massive business as you want to do well in Ironman and do what you need to do in your family. Two, okay. Three. And as for the social life, then that's just not what doesn't happen. No, no. I would have been super surprised if you'd said that, oh, and then I need a really social audience. Social life is riding my bike with friends.
24:31
Yeah, but that's the thing as an athlete, right? Like, so I, you know, I know for me, like I, I catch up, most people I catch up with, uh, people that I run with, particularly cause I work by myself now. So there are people I podcast with and the people that I run with. And then we just have our, and then it's, um, pub star and I'm like, Oh yeah, that's cool. And that's great. You know, I love it. It's actually really hard when you're, when you're training and you got those two big things going on.
24:59
It is really hard to socialize with people who aren't into your thing. If you can go and train with them, it makes life a lot easier. Otherwise, I mean, as you know, if you're training 20 hours a week, the last thing you want to do is go to a restaurant or go to a pub. You go to a restaurant and you just end up hungry.
25:23
You know, you have to get them out, you spend a lot of money and then you say, right, what should we go, what's for dinner? Yeah, totally. The love and I think that's the great thing about the types of sports that we do, like obviously I'm not a triathlete. I, we do, we run. And so I rock on up to park run. I see my mates at park run. We go running in the hills and mountains. And then we, we have, um, we make dates with our friends to do that. And then we all go to a pub, you know, like.
25:50
And that's the experience. When I have someone's like, do you want to come over on a Saturday? I'm like, how's that going to fit in with my park run? And then I've also got to do groceries and things like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Do you want to come and do the park run with me? You know? Exactly. Yeah. Hey, Dan, with regards to your buildup this year versus Kona, did you do anything specifically different? Like what has changed in...
26:17
how you might train yourself or your athletes, I suppose, as well in the lead up to an Iron Man for someone of your sort of caliber? Yeah, it's a good question. And honestly, I don't, I didn't really change very much to be honest. If hardly really strength training, strength training. Okay. Yeah, that would be the only thing. That would be the only difference really. You know, nutritional nutrition stayed the same. The training was very much the same. I mean, I'm, I'm, I mean, I just wrote a blog actually.
26:47
on about Jan van Berkel's running progression over the eight years I was coaching. One of the first things I mentioned in that blog was consistency. And that's not like consistency as in, I mean, you consistently train. I mean, consistency within a training program. And I'm a firm believer that you should not change training programs. As mundane and as boring as it sounds, you should just evolve and slightly tweak what you've been doing. If it's been working, of course, if it's not working, then you've got to kind of
27:16
But if you've had a success with a certain program, you don't want to be changing it. I mean, I've been working with the women's kayak program in New Zealand since Rio. And I knew what the sort of training Gordie was doing before that as well. And Lisa Carrington has won numerous Olympic medals, gold medals, and most of them. And training hasn't really changed that much. It's just very slight tweaks of what already worked.
27:45
I didn't change much in that respect at all really, kept very much the same. But the only thing that I did include more of was strength training. And that's one of my regrets in the buildup is that I was really good with my strength training. I was doing it two times a week in my gym at home. Then I went to St. Moritz and I just didn't do it anymore. And that could be one of the, maybe one of the reasons I got injured, maybe. But I also noticed that my swimming really went downhill.
28:15
Not downhill, but swimming progressively got worse and it was maintaining really well. What I found with the strength training is that I've always really struggled to hold my swimming up as my running comes up. Because you get wider, you get leaner, my swimming gets worse and worse and it's quite a hard balance. But I was finding that with the strength training, my swimming was really holding well. But as soon as I stopped doing it, I felt my swimming just started to just dip down a little bit and I also got the injury.
28:44
I mean, I used to be a total anti-strength training person. I thought endurance athletes, I didn't really think it had much merit, but I've totally changed my tune on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. It just takes a lot of time. That's the thing. I think one of the things about strength training is you don't see any benefit very quickly and you're just like, well, this is a waste of time. But then after a, it almost takes a year to actually start seeing things come through.
29:14
And then you start to see some good benefits. Also, I wasn't able to run for the first six months of this year. I did a lot more. I just focused much more on strength training. And now- I can tell you're looking quite, you've been quite busy. I'm looking quite buff, I know. And I wonder, Dan, what your advice to me is actually. So I'm gonna use this as a slight consultation at the same time. This is quite a good benefit for me. But I'm trying to maintain my league work with my run program. And-
29:44
I'm, and I need to do it in a way where I'm still getting the benefit of it. And part of the benefit for me, I see with using strength training is, is fatiguing the legs after running without actually doing the load of running, you know, and running that sort of injury risk, you know, like people talk about the, you've got to like, I'm training for Tarahumara 100. And so I, you know, there will be a time when my run, like, I'll do a lot more case than I am now, like it's ages away. So I want to be quite sensible.
30:14
And I still know that I need to do legs twice a week in the gym. It's just trying to figure out the best days to do them. So what's your advice? Like, have you got the secret sauce? Yeah, the nail concurrent effects of training. Well, there's a couple of things with strength training is that, you know, to improve areas of running, running economy and those sorts of things, it has to be quite heavy, like actually heavy weights, like three to six reps, you know, sort of thing.
30:44
But also, a neuromuscular fatigue takes much longer to recover from than energy fatigue. So, say you did three reps maximal versus 12 reps, even though you're looking at it on paper and go, oh, that's quite the shorter session.
31:09
The shorter session is the one that's going to take more to recover from because it's more of a neuromuscular fatigue than a energy, than a kind of my own energy fatigue, if you like, just from the metabolism of doing more reps. So we actually published a paper that, well actually it's not published, we did the research, the paper's not published. And what it looked is it did that very thing with kyakins, it sequenced the strength training.
31:37
So it did it either the same day as a high intensity or the same day as an endurance, the day before the high intensity. Okay. Yeah, so you would do it on the same day as a high intensity training or the day of an endurance training, the day before the high intensity training. And the easily the best time to do it was on the same day as your high intensity training. Okay, is it because you're already fatigued and so therefore you still get recovery?
32:05
Well, there might be a bit of a potentiation activation going on as well, you know, like from the strength training that could actually help the help. And I think especially some of that neuromuscular stuff, the neuromuscular fatigue, you can get a bit of potentiation into the actual training. And the neuromuscular fatigue is almost a little bit later and it's coming out more the next day. So if you're doing it on the same day, you're likely going to get a better result.
32:34
Okay. And what do you do for your leg work? What's your leg workout? Well, I'm quite mundane as I generally do. Um, I just generally do squats and I generally do it within a circuit, but I don't do many three to four reps. Yeah. And I don't go, I don't go massively heavy either, but I will try and go quite deep. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I think that's what I've, I'm trying to work on right now is my depth.
33:00
rather than the heavy. I say I tried to go quite deep. If anyone actually saw me do it, they'd be like... They'd be like, that's not deep. That's not deep. But for an endurance athlete, I mean, we've got to always add that caveat in. For me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love the Smith machine actually, because I feel safe with it. So I can, and I can go deep. Okay, this is good intel. Thank you, Dan. I'll figure out a way to...
33:27
do that just because I still I love doing it and I want to do it in a way that helps my running. I don't want it to feel all too hard and I just give it up completely. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then I think for running as well you want to include some plyometrics. Yeah, I know. You're right. I do need to do that actually. Do you like the non-committal way with which I acknowledge? I hear you like, yes, I do need to do that. I hear what you're saying. You'll be ignored.
33:55
Yeah, no, I do actually. You're that's so true. And that would, that could be a simple of step ups, right? Well, we have got a course coming out, LET 301, which is about strength training. Oh, amazing. This is good. Yeah, so it's run by Adam Storey, who's, who's the guru of all things strength training. He was, he worked alongside me at Emirates Team New Zealand. Oh, amazing. So yeah, it's aimed at long distance triathlon. But obviously,
34:24
it transcends to long distance ultra sports. Yeah, yeah. This is awesome. Hey, so Dan, you didn't do anything different with your nutrition then. You're still the same sort of your daily nutrition, your recovery nutrition. I know that we've talked about what you do on a number of podcasts and I hear you talk about it. Let's not bore people again. No, let's not. People think you're hearing about it. True. But I do actually have a question around the mortene gels actually.
34:52
And because these have popped up over the last maybe six or eight months and they're quite expensive. And there's a lot of people forking out for them essentially because they've got this added benefit from as far as the manufacturers would tell us. Have you got any thoughts around them? Yeah, I mean, I don't want to... What can I say? I don't really want to say anything.
35:21
not nice about another product, but I do think they're a bit overhyped. So I mean, the idea is that they contain like pectin and sodium alginate, and that combination is supposed to be better on the gut, and it's supposed to help with oxidation, improve oxidation. So if you look at the research...
35:50
and the research is very clear is that they have zero effect on oxidation rate. They do not improve your oxidation rate, no more than a normal fructose-glucose combination. We know that fructose and glucose as a combination, you can oxidize carbohydrates at around 90 grams per hour. Nothing's really been shown to go much above that. There are a few individuals who might have freakish oxidation rates, but for most people, it's not going any higher than that.
36:17
And the thing that there was one paper that showed that gut tolerance for the Morton gels is a little bit better. So you can, even if you're shoveling, when you're shoveling in more than 90 grams, you might not get a sore stomach, but it doesn't mean it's going anywhere. It's not being, it's not necessarily being oxidized or used, it's just sat in the stomach and not causing you any gastrointestinal distress. So.
36:46
Do we want to be chugging 90 grams of carbs an hour? Well, as always, it depends, right? For some people, you might have to. If you're a pro athlete, for example, and you're doing an Ironman at 300 watts and you've got a poor fat oxidation, then you'll have no choice. But if you're a base grouper and you're doing 180 watts and you've got a good fat oxidation, then you certainly don't need to.
37:14
I find it amazing. I wrote a blog on this, 90 versus 120 grams, so you can look that up in Enduro IQ. We went through all the research that shows about this. One of the crazy things is that when people have consumed 120 grams, and this was done by the research from Kinga
37:43
Filosidation was blunted so much. In the end, it's all about preserving your endogenous carbohydrate stores. So not just because you're chowing more doesn't mean you're preserving more. In fact, in this particular study, it showed the opposite effect. So more is not better. And I always think less is more in that particular, in most instances, particularly when racing in the heat. There's some great papers that showed the...
38:10
finishing time versus carbohydrate consumption. Yeah. And yeah, and you know, growing like a German Ironman that's in the cool, we are typically seeing people who take more carbohydrate are finishing a bit faster, right? But that relationship is massively diminished at Kona because of the heat and suddenly you're not absorbing the carbohydrates as much. So that's interesting. So basically, the like, so with the research.
38:40
Look, where the research tends to be is that if you are taking on board these massive amounts of carbohydrate, you're blunting your fat oxidation so much that your body has had to tap in more to its endogenous carb stores and you're chewing through them at a greater rate. So actually, you're losing out in that respect. Yeah. And that's what we... I mean, in the particular study by King et al., he didn't measure, he didn't look, he didn't say
39:10
I mean, that's what I think is happening because there's no other reasonable explanation really just to explain why and dozens of carbohydrate stores are going down more when you're putting in that amount of carbohydrate. Yeah. So, yeah. Well, and interesting, Dan, I had a podcast interview with Philippe Prinz and he is a researcher in that low-carb diet space. He's published with Volic and Tim Noakes and stuff like that.
39:38
Their research paper showed that when you, they did a crossover study actually, and he goes into depth in the podcast that I spoke to him about, that the middle-aged recreational athlete of which we could probably all sort of fall into, maybe not you, maybe you're sort of on the cusp of that recreation slash slightly above, but certainly you're middle-aged, they had, when they gave them a high carbohydrate diet, which actually wasn't that high.
40:07
they ended up being pre-diabetic. Oh yeah, that's the classic, that's the one with 800 meter time trial performance with Kunik and Nopes and Lollak. Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And yeah, I think that the prevalence of people with some kind of metabolic dysfunction who are elite athletes is probably higher than we realize as well.
40:36
I mean, it's not the first study to show us that study was 30%. There was another study that was in martial arts athletes that showed showed similar. And yeah, and I just think that people hear about these professionals doing 120 grams an hour, and then they assume that that's right for them, you know. And, you know, you can't compare yourself to these outliers because.
41:01
you know, the people who the athletes who are winning on the world stage Olympic champions or champions, they are not the norm, you know, they're definitely very, very different to your actual average age people who's, who's a weekend warrior or just training, training recreationally, then you can't, you just can't put the two things together. And I think, you know, it's, um, you know, health, health and performance is has to be has to be considered. And that's why
41:27
at S-Fuels, it's one of the things that we're quite passionate about is this idea of right fuel, right time. If you're going out and you're doing your rides and your runs and you're putting in fructose and glucose all the time and you're doing 60 grams per hour all the time, there's no need for it. Do you know what the funny thing is? We just published a paper from Jess PhD and we looked at perceived recovery status versus carbohydrate intake.
41:57
There's no relationship. So there was no relationship. So there was no relationship in most people. There was a big standard deviation. So in like the most people that didn't, but one or two, there was a bit of a relationship, which is the point of this paper was that you have to base it on the individual. For most people, there was no relationship between carbohydrate intake and perceived recovery. So, you know, and yet as nutritionists...
42:23
It's just a given, right? We just go, oh, well, carbohydrates help recovery. They 100% do that. And but like, do they? Really? You know, we don't actually know if they do or not. Maybe there's something else going on. Well, also, if you look at the likes of someone like Zach Bitter, like, and you know Zach well, you guys are both S fuels sort of peeps. He, you know, spent a lot of his time in that low carb state and his high carb diet isn't actually that high anyway. And his recovery is great. So it must also like
42:52
When I think about recovery from training and I say to people, yeah, the carbs are really going to help you recover. If the people I'm working with are in quite a bit of a calorie deficit, and it really does help. Yeah, but then the question is, what's helping them recover? Is it carbs or is it calories? I would say the calories is probably the thing. Of course, if you're restricted to macronutrient, then it's harder to get the calories in, yes.
43:19
I can appreciate that, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's the carbohydrates. I just think it is the calories that is the calories in the main player here all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Although there is research looking at, or is it research or clinically speaking, I'll say that because we know that carbohydrate in the, for example, carbohydrate in the evening helps your body produce serotonin, which is a precursor to melatonin. So there's that sleep relationship.
43:48
clinically I see it all of the time. But I think my point is, is that if I'm working with someone and they're doing steady state exercise and they're wondering whether they need to chug back, you know, a sports drink after that, I'm gonna say no, because you know, that's actually like, you haven't really, it's not glycolytic, you're not doing crossfit five days a week, you probably don't need to worry about that. Yeah, exactly, I would totally agree. And it's, you know, I always feel like I'm a broken record because I do get asked these questions a lot.
44:18
And I'm always like, it depends, you know, I never give a straight answer. No, no. And I think this is, do you know what, it's probably why people ask you a lot, like, are we going to get anything from Dan this time? Is he going to give us that golden nugget? But I mean, there is no golden nugget. So golden nugget is sort of depends and it's quite individual. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Hey Dan, so, um, have you been doing any work with continuous glucose monitors? And, you know, have you seen anything around, you know, pre-training and
44:46
and what might be helpful for your athletes if they utilize them to sort of have a look at fuel requirements? Um, no. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
45:15
I think it's quite, I mean, I know that there's certain companies that almost promote you to have high blood glucose all the time during training. You should keep your blood glucose as high as that. And I think it should be the opposite. You could potentially use them to see how you could not spot your blood glucose and how you can keep it low and stable during exercise. But yeah, I know that didn't give you a good answer, but I haven't done anything in...
45:42
in a very long time now. Yeah, no, that's good. I mean, I wonder whether it's, you know, if someone's using a CGM, they wake up in the morning, the glucose is a little bit high. Like, like to my mind, I'm like, just go out and run. Don't even worry about you don't need to feel like, is that how you might sort of approach that? If someone has a similar situation? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, but I think it's, I mean, if someone woke up with a high blood glucose in the morning, I would definitely, I would definitely.
46:13
I definitely think that and I think that's where it can be useful though is from a metabolic and health perspective. If someone woke up like that, I think they probably want to go out and do a run without eating because they want to bring their blood glucose back down to what would be a normal level. I think that's the main thing as well as if someone's waking up and they're within a normal range of the low, then maybe you might want to eat something.
46:38
Hey, it is funny that you say, you know, they were quite, I mean, they were all the rage maybe, maybe even a year ago now, like Kipchoge had, like was wearing one from, I can't recall which company, and they had all of this data from him and they were busy analyzing it. I just don't know what they were gonna find from that, to be honest. Yeah, and you know, those glucose monitors has been some good papers published now that show that they're not that accurate during exercise. Oh, interesting. You know, like, so they're great for resting, but.
47:08
the accuracy of during exercise is actually quite questionable. So, this is the issue. I mean, I've just seen, I've had an athlete wear during a race and he just went up to 200 milligrams per deciliter and stayed there for eight hours. And I'm like, well, is that real? It wasn't real. In fact, I have one of my friends who's based in Canada. Like I put up my reading from when I did like earlier this year.
47:36
And she said, oh, that low that you had during the night, it's just where your arm is. You know, it's you sort of lying on your arm. It's not actually that you've got a blood glucose low. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Giving yourself a dead arm. Yeah, basically. Not letting the blood flow go to your arm. That's not helpful. That's not helpful for your blood glucose, for what's illustrated on the, on the CG. No. No. Hey, I'm Dan.
47:59
Anything that you're excited about in your field of research or in your coaching, any new things that, and I know you've just said consistency is key, but anything that you're interested in exploring with your athletes? One of the things that we're working on at AUT at the moment is this idea of durability in athletes. So we've been doing a few pieces of research now is looking at how thresholds change over time. I don't mean how a threshold would change from...
48:29
one week to the next, I mean, during the course of exercise. So if you're doing a four hour ride, for example, how is your VT1 changing from the first 30 minutes to the last 30 minutes if it was a four hour ride? And so yeah, we're doing a little bit of research in that and we found some really interesting things. One is how we can measure it. We found that ventilation could be a great way to measure it in real time. And you know, we've
48:57
come across a company who can measure ventilation in real time. So we've been talking with them. And then also looking at what's related to someone who's more durable and who's less durable. We just had one study that's in the process of being written up. That was basically we did a threshold test continuously every 30 minutes until exhaustion and all six hours. And some of the outcomes of that have been fascinating. Right.
49:25
because it's such an important metric for ultra endurance. We just published another paper that's not been published yet, but we're writing up as well. It showed that basically we did a five-minute time trial, prolonged exercise, another five-minute time trial. And those athletes who are more durable, which means that their thresholds aren't changing very much over those two hours, are easily doing more power in the last five minutes. So it has good...
49:53
ecological validity to actual performance as well. So yeah, this is what this is some of the things that we're working on at the moment. Other things that I'm working on, I'm working, I'm just started to be the head of research for pillar performance. I think I've mentioned that to you. It's amazing. Yeah. So that's been really exciting. And my position there isn't to, it's not to
50:18
build the products as such and make sure it's got the correct DHA to EPA ratio in the ultra amigas and the correct magnesiums. I mean, obviously I have a bit of input in that, but it's more to try and bring out some real life use cases where it is showing to improve your HRV. So magnesium is improving HRV, it is improving your sleep, it is reducing inflammation for running, it is improving your phylloxidation and bringing out these cases where we can actually...
50:48
we can actually have clinical proof that these things are doing what they say they do and they are worthwhile for athletes. That's amazing. So did you just tell me that magnesium helped improve fat oxidation? No, but there's potential for ultra-omegas. Ultra-omegas. Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. Obviously, anything nutrition related, I'm interested to explore and know more about. So that's...
51:14
I was just thinking about magnesium. Magnesium is well known to help with blood sugar regulation. So I'd imagine there'd be, I wonder whether there's anything there. Yeah, yeah. And well, and it's also been shown to improve the HRV as well. I mean, it's all maybe there's something in that as well. But, you know, and it's the combinations, it's the glycinate and the, you know, and the citrate and all those different things that are doing all different things, all different. But we've had so many athletes who
51:42
We live in this world now with a lot of wearable data, right? Where people are wearing their works and they're wearing their oar rings and they take the magnesium and they see improved sleep and they see, wouldn't really go too much in the sleep of those devices, but the HRV is quite reliable and we are seeing improved HRV with when taking these supplements and I think it's pretty exciting. Yeah, that sounds it. Dan, if I just go back to the research on durability, I think that's really exciting because a lot of the,
52:11
studies that we look at to inform training and nutrition for endurance athletes. The length of the time that they're actually studying might be say two hours, maybe three hours at a push, which a lot changes if you then extend it to a normal person doing a marathon is actually doing a marathon in about four hours. Then you've got your ultra endurance runner and they're out there for eight hours and of course the Ironman. Yeah, even more, yeah. Yeah.
52:39
So one of the things that we found, we searched for a long time to look at some, because one of the key questions is like, okay, what areas of physiology seem to be improving durability? And we looked at peak fat oxidation rates, and that didn't seem to be related at all, which I was really surprised at. But one of the recent studies that we've found is we've found that fat oxidation rate...
53:04
in general, at a sort of maximal level during the pre-testing. So during the pre-step test, the first step test, we looked at fat oxidation rate in that test. It was very related to how durable the athlete was for the prolonged exercise. Which is great for us because it means that we can, you know, fat oxidation once again is important. Totally. And then of course for females, you know, like we're better at burning fat. Like do you reckon this is the thing that's keeping us going for longer and potentially giving us closer in the gen space? Yeah, I mean potentially, yeah.
53:33
Yeah, relatively better at burning fat. Can I just say? Yes. Okay. No, this is good. That is great. I like that. Hey, and Dan, like you mentioned what you're excited about in your research, obviously, because I asked you that. What about any books that you've read lately that have been sort of informative for you or a podcast you're listening to? We always want to learn from you. The main books.
54:01
that I read recently was I read Outlive by Pete, yeah, yeah, it was brilliant. Amazing. Yeah, it's such a good book. And then when I was reading on holiday, I was reading Man's Search for Meaning by Victor. Yes. Yes, I know that. Is that by The Happiest Man? Is he also The Happiest Man? No, it's a similar book. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. I forgot his name now. Victor something. I remember his first name, but I was not last name. It was terrible.
54:30
And just for you, is it? I have to say, I read The Happiest Man on Earth. Yeah. And I enjoyed that more, to be honest. OK, this is Victor Frankel, if you want to. Frankel, that's the Victor Frankel, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I read that one. And then the other book I'm reading at the moment, I've got a few on the go, is I mean, Outlived. I'm just kind of, you know, I just read bits of it here at no time, you know, and then and then and then I've been reading Ray's, I mean.
54:59
Raising Boys Who Like Themselves. Yeah. Which has been quite good as well. Yeah, awesome. Just because I got a young boy and, you know, I want him to be a confident young man. Yeah, yeah. I've heard great things about that book actually. Yeah, well, my wife read the Raising Girls Who Like Themselves. So we've got a young girl and she read that. So I'm reading the boys one and we compare notes. Oh, that's good. That's great. It's really good. I mean, I think as a parent, it's your biggest...
55:29
One of your biggest projects, right? Is raising raise good children. Yeah. Do you know Dan, strangely, like I love podcasts, but it's only recently I've gotten into audible. And so I also downloaded outlive on audible to listen to it. Yeah. It's really good. I listened to it. I listened to an audible and I bought the book. Yeah. And it's on audible. It's really, it's really good because Peter T does it as well. Yeah. So it's actually really good. I totally agree.
55:57
I don't know. I was thinking, oh, that's another thing I'm doing. I'm writing a HRV book. Oh, yeah. Amazing. Oh, cool. So me, Marco Altini, and it's called Silvia and Labardo, who is more in the psychology space of, oh, I probably just totally butchered his name then, so I'm really sorry. But yeah, and another colleague of his.
56:27
Yeah, and they're in more of the psychology space. So, you know, I'll be doing more of the exercise physiology side. Mark will do more of the tech stuff and then we'll have the psychology. So we've got a deal with human kinetics and we'll be pushing that forward, which will be good because I've never written a book before. So, yikes. Yeah. Oh, no, it'll be great, Dan. I mean, you seem to pump out a lot of content. So it's certainly in your wheelhouse. That's for sure. Yeah. Well, we will, we shall, we shall see how it, how it goes. I think we'll get the.
56:55
I'm in California right away and then that'll be one that I'll try and if I can just put one day a week aside to focus on the book, then I think it'll be fine. Yeah. Awesome. And so where are you off to next? So I'm actually going to Kona on 7th of September for two weeks with Chelsea and then come back and then I go to California for the Ironman.
57:24
When's California Ironman? 22nd of October. Amazing. Cool. And is that just a Dan trip or is it a whole Plues family trip? No, it's a whole, it'll be a whole Plues family trip. Good, as it should be. I'm not into doing like going there and doing it on my own. It's just not what I really... You know, it's just not the same. It's just not really enjoyable. So, yeah, so we're going to do that and it'll be...
57:47
Hopefully that'll be that. I feel like a broken record. That's definitely going to be the last one. That'll be the end of that. And then it's time to get big and strong in the gym. Oh, Ryan Hall Black. Maybe not quite so big. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But hey, goals. Goals, Dan. I believe in you. Yeah. You're going to have goals. I mean, I said, I think I told you this story before. I said, Kate was like, how big do you want to get in the low? You know.
58:15
Chris Hemsworth kind of size. See, you're dreaming mate. And Kate goes, you want to be Thor? Yeah. Isn't that every man's fantasy? It's like, what, it's normal gold, it's fine, isn't it? Yeah. Surely. That's hilarious. Hey, so Dan, Dura IQ, you just mentioned that you've got a new strength training course coming out, LDT 301, when's that?
58:43
Good question. I don't want to put a date on that yet, but sometime, we were getting pretty close though, sometime in the next couple of months. Amazing. Well, super excited to hear about it. It's going to be a really good one, I think. And then, yeah, we just keep building up the training squad and coaching and, you know, do check out our blog. Oh, you guys do an amazing blog. I just love it. So much stuff on there now.
59:10
Although I've got to say, I didn't love the apple study that you highlighted the other week. I was just like, yeah, but apples are full of fructose. So many people have issues with fructose. Does it matter that you are literally comparing apples with apples? And they're both a bit rubbish. But would you prefer to, if you were going to have fructose, would you prefer to have it in an apple puree?
59:30
I don't know. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. You're still going to get that problem. But is it more of a natural... I mean, I'm all about the whole foods, right? It's more natural, right? Yeah, completely. And I think the thing about fructose is, yeah, I agree with you, but sometimes you've got to have it. If you want to... Like we discussed earlier, if you want to compete and your requirement is a high level of high oxidation of carbohydrates because you're doing 320 watts, then I would be prefer that fructose to be coming from an apple than some random...
01:00:00
somewhere else, you know? Yeah, no, I understand. Although if this is you and you have fructose smell absorption, then it's not going to work. So, you know, You're going to be in trouble regardless. Yeah. So go glucose. Go get that dextrose from the supermarket, pop it in that drink bottle, put some salt with it. There you go. That's like the cleanest, the easiest. Yeah, but then what happens if you're pumping out 320 watts?
01:00:24
Get FAT adapted, buddy. Get FAT adapted. There you go. Get FAT adapted. That's the only option. It is the only. Hey, that's the preferred option. I'm on that note. Yeah. Dan, where can we find you? Yeah. Instagram. I'm always on Instagram. And yeah, I'm on Twitter as well. I think Instagram's the plooze. Twitter's the plooze one, I think. And do sign up. If you go to enjoyiq.com.
01:00:53
Do sign up to our monthly newsletter, The Brew Up, and we publish all the blogs out there and we send it out to our email list so you won't miss a beat, so to speak, and you can check everything out there. Yeah, that is awesome. As I said, I love The Brew Up. It is great. Thank you, Plos. Love talking to you as always. I always feel a bit smarter coming out of these talks because I just spoke to you. Well, you know what? I'm a dimwit compared to some of the guests you've had on your podcast now. Oh, I know. I know. That's why I feel smarter.
01:01:23
Jokes! JK, JK, alright. See you later. Cool, alright, we'll speak soon. Ciao ciao.
01:01:42
Alrighty, so hopefully you enjoyed that. Dan is always such a wealth of information. Love chatting to him and absolutely best of luck for Chelsea and Dan and the whole team this weekend at Kona. And I'm sure she'll do brilliantly. I will pop links to how you can find Dan and Endure IQ in the show notes as always. And next week, I'm stoked to bring to you a conversation with I Have with another sort of
01:02:11
goat in metabolic health and nutrition and hormones and metabolism, Dr. Jade Tita, naturopath. Until then though, you can catch me over on Instagram, Twitter and threads @mikkiwilliden, Facebook at mikkiwillidennutrition, head to my website mikkiwilliden.com, book a one-on-one call with me. All right team, have a great week.
Welcome, hi, I'm Mikki and this is Mikkipedia, where I sit down and chat to doctors, professors, athletes, practitioners, and experts in their fields related to health, nutrition, fitness, and wellbeing, and I'm delighted that you're here.
00:23
Hey everyone, it's Mikki here. You're listening to Mikkipedia. This week on the podcast, in light of it being Hawaii Ironman Women's World Championship, I have returning guest, Dr. Dan Plews. I think Dan is one of the most frequent guests that I've had on Mikkipedia. I'm always stoked to be able to have a yarn with him about all the things that he's interested in right now. And that's pretty much what we talk about today.
00:53
training strategies that Dan is employing now, how these might've changed over the last year since we caught up. We discussed the difference in types of gels that are now available, for example, the Mortene versus your standard gels, and if they make a difference as it's suggested. Of course, we revisit metabolic health because both Dan and I are passionate about that for our athletes. And Dan chats about his race at Challenge Roth, which was back in July, but also,
01:22
discusses his upcoming campaign for Ironman California. And so that's happening a couple of weeks after Kona, which is super exciting. So I think anyone that loves triathlon, loves nerding out on all things nutrition is really gonna love this discussion because that's what we do. We just nerd out on nutrition related stuff. And for those of you unfamiliar with Dan, he is an applied sports scientist, researcher,
01:51
coach and competitive triathlete. And as an applied sports scientist, Dan has worked closely with athletes who've won more than 25 world and Olympic titles in sports, including rowing, kayak, and triathlon. And Dan was part of Rowing New Zealand's preparations for both 2012 and 2016 in Olympic Games as a sports scientist, which I must say was quite some time ago. Yet, he has continued to help athletes become successful in, of course, most
02:20
sort of top of mind right now is Chelsea Sodaro in her win last year at Hawaii Ironman. So as a researcher, Dan has a PhD in exercise physiology with a particular interest in heart rate variability, has many peer-reviewed publications to his name. In addition to Chelsea, Dan has coached three professional Ironman triathletes to sub-8 hour times including Terenzo Bizzoni, Jan van Berkel and Tim van Berkel. And Dan has also founded EnduraIQ.com.
02:49
who I consult with, which is an online learning hub for anyone interested in optimal long course triathlon performance. He was also the high performance manager for the recently successful Team New Zealand bid for the America's Cup. So Dan has many strings to his bow as I'm sure you know, and I think you're really gonna love our conversation today. Just a reminder before we crack on into the conversation,
03:16
The best way to support the podcast is to hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast listening platform because this increases the visibility of Mikkipedia and amongst the thousands of other podcasts that are out there. So more people get the insights that people like Dan have to share on Mikkipedia. Alright team, enjoy this conversation that I have with Dr Dan Plews.
03:38
but it's not the one to a thinking. It's actually your stress. It's a stress response in your body. The last time she had it was a number of years ago, not related to her weight, but to work stress. And she was really stressed at work and she wouldn't get night's work. Yeah, it's a sure thing. I definitely, I mean, it's almost, you know, I almost feel that when I'm building up to an Ironman, I almost feel I'm...
03:59
If I'm not having a phase when I'm building up into the night sweats, I've probably not really gone hard enough. You know? Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, totally. You know, I think I've experienced it every single time. I actually think it's almost a kind of requirement. Yeah. Well, that's interesting because of course there'll be people out there who will be like, that's dangerous. You're running into relative energy deficiency. You're, you know, but I mean, I guess.
04:27
It's a time thing too, right? It's not like you just spend months at that point. Relative energy deficiency isn't, of course it's not a great thing, but I mean, it's the time, I mean, everyone has a relative energy deficiency at some point, you know? Yeah. You know, it's just a question of how long and how severe, right? If you're doing it for a matter of a week or so, then you're generally all right, but if you're doing it for months and months and then it becomes a problem, right? And the issue...
04:55
The problem was here, it wasn't that fact that I was under eating, I was just training too much. And also I was at altitude, so there's a little bit, even altitude, your resting metabolic rate is probably that little bit higher because you're at altitude, you're always fighting against altitude, your respiratory rates are a little bit higher continuously. So that's probably adding to the fact. And actually, interesting Dan, and I think we will be recording from now, is that all right? Like just this last little bit that we were talking about, that's quite good.
05:25
It's less about, maybe it's not less about the relative energy deficiency, but it's how you respond and recover, right? Because you're needing to show up and do those training sessions and you also have to adapt and become stronger from them. And now if you were doing that for months on end, you'd break down. That wouldn't be possible. But instead, you're able to, I mean, I imagine you were your fittest, you've been in years actually leading up to Roth. Yeah, yeah, I definitely, I definitely wasn't, you know.
05:54
And I was, I wanted to lose a bit of weight as well. Like I know like it's kind of almost taboo now to just to talk about raceway. But bottom line is I know that I need to be light to run fast. That's the end of it. Like, and, and, and, and therefore I was pleased I was losing the weight, but I didn't have to focus on it because my training was that, was that high. Yeah. I mean, I wasn't eating like what I wanted a total, total.
06:21
I always think that if you eat good food and eat as much as you want, that's great. But I wasn't eating just junk all the time. I was just trying to eat good food and eat as much as I want, and then the risk kind of takes care of itself. Yeah. Now, I want to get into sort of the training, what you might have done differently if anything, if we think about Kona and Roth, obviously. But first, Dan, because we are talking about energy requirements, the question I get a lot from people is...
06:50
You know, Miki, I've got my Garmin and I've got what my bike is telling me I burn. So they've got quite a good setup in terms of the energy expenditure. Yet, if you look at the research, Dan, and it's looking at tools to measure energy expenditure for the layperson, they're really inaccurate. Like, however, is the research around that stuff not looking at power meters and that? And can we be more...
07:16
confident in the energy expenditure that we might see on a power meter than what I might get from my Garmin watch? Yeah, it's a really good question. I think what we can be confident in is the within device. Yes. It's like, you know, if you're comparing one session to another, a two hour ride versus a three hour ride or one day versus another day or a week versus a week, and you're using the same device to measure it, then you can be quite confident. I mean,
07:45
I know for a fact, for example, that in my Today's Plan account, I have calories at the end of the week. So 20,000 calories of energy expenditure in terms of exercise energy is a big week for me. And I look at that over training load. And to be honest with you, it's doing the same thing. That number in terms of calories is almost identical to what train load is telling you.
08:12
the higher the intensity, the bigger the calorie burn, the longer the volume, the bigger the calorie burn. It's just a different way of looking at it. And that's what I use. So if you're comparing week to week, it's great. But the problem is you can't say that this is 2000 calories, therefore I should consume 2000 calories of food. Because one is, it's inaccurate on both sides. It's inaccurate in terms of the...
08:40
that ride is or that run is actually 2000 calories. And then how are you actually measuring on the other side? Because we know food diaries and all these different, I mean, we just talked about it before, that they're taking it. We know it's highly inaccurate anyway. So how can you actually balance that? You really, you just can't do it. You can use it as kind of a proxy measure that's quite of interest, but you can't, you couldn't base that much off it. Yeah, that's great. And I, of course, that makes perfect sense to me. So if I've got a...
09:08
training week where it says I've burnt 14,000 calories in my running one week, and then I'm off on holiday to Colorado like I am next Friday and we'll be climbing 14ers. Then my training, like the calorie burn from that will be far greater. And I wouldn't be able to put a number on it, but it would absolutely tell me that I'm burning more energy. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's, um, I think that's its best use case. And I mean, like I have my other aura ring and the aura ring, it links to, um,
09:37
Apple Health and the Apple Health is pulling my calorie data from like the Garmin or the Wahoo or whatever, or the Formgoggles, you know, it's pulling that data to get the calories. And therefore, comparing one day to the next, it's quite accurate, you know, it's a good way to look at it, you know. And so when I was in St. Moritz, for example, I was over 6,000 calories nearly every single day, whereas normally I'm between 4,000 and 5,000 calories on my...
10:07
on my aura ring. So I know that I am burning more calories compared to normal. So I should at least be a bit more mindful of what I'm doing. So for example, at night, if I'm having my chocolate and cup of tea, I might put a bit of peanut butter on top of that chocolate. Yeah, totally. Now, you probably haven't, I imagine you haven't gone down this road yet, but Ninja Creamy, do you know what I'm talking about? No. Oh my God.
10:36
You'll have to Google this one, Dan. So not at all available in New Zealand, like sold out almost as soon as they arrived. Very difficult. What's he called? Ninja cream? You know, the ninja bullet, like the ninja sort of food. Um, I've got a ninja air fryer and a ninja little bullet thing. And now it's an ice cream maker. But what you can do is you put almond milk, protein powder, a little bit of sugar-free instant pudding, like the Simply Delish, but you measure it out. You freeze that.
11:03
And then the little ice cream machine makes it into ice cream. And I'm not kidding. It is bloody amazing. Sounds like some of the kids might like. I seriously think that they would. And I reckon Dan on his training regime, when he decides that he needs to cut his belly, um, we'll probably go, this is not a bad low calorie snack to be fair. Someone like you doesn't need to rely on these low calorie snacks, but, but as a healthy ice cream alternative for your kids.
11:29
I'll take you in a post of mine. And I'll show you what it's like. Yeah, sounds great. Yeah, yeah. It's super interesting though. Like, you know, like you know, I did that food diet for four days. It's just, it just, it just, I mean, I haven't done one in a long time now. And it's, it's such a good refresher. Yeah. To remind you, it's like, oh yeah, like I said with the Keto 3 cereal, which is great when it's a great cereal, like Esfiel's brilliant cereal, but you have to remember it's great if you're training, but I would not be having that if I was,
11:59
if I wasn't doing a bit of training in the day, because it's very high in calories, which it is designed to do. It's for athletes, it's to give you a good bit of energy in the day. But I was over a thousand calories before I was even, I think it was like eight o'clock. I was just like, whoa, whoa. Hang on here. I know, it is interesting. And foods like that, they can be used just differently. Someone who doesn't have like, I've...
12:24
There's no way that I would burn 4,000 calories in a day. So I might enjoy that cereal on top of yogurt and protein powder with berries, you know, rather than have it as the base of my breakfast. Yeah. And that's, you know, on that point, you know, you said about you not burning that many calories in a day. What's really interesting is that me, like when I was in summer at Chelsea and I were doing almost the exact same training. Yeah. But my, you know, and honestly, she's using a Wahoo exactly the same as me.
12:53
Same watch, same bike computer, basically because she's sponsored by Wahoo and she gave me my Wahoo, so you know. And same form goggles, right? And literally in a week, when I'm at 20,000 calories, she'll be closer to 13, 14,000 calories. Oh, interesting, yeah. Because like, you know, we're going over these mountains in St. Maurice and I'm like, she'll be at 200 watts and I'm at 300 watts.
13:19
know, which is a lot more energy requirement and you have to, you do have to come and consider that of course. Yeah. And of course you're put like, so what's, so actually comparing you in 2018 and Kona and you, and I know that Rock wasn't the, wasn't the buildup that you hoped it would be despite the fact that you had a great, you know, that you managed to pull it out of the bag and I know it wasn't probably the race that you wanted, but Dan, in terms of your sort of race weight, were you around the same?
13:48
a little bit heavier, maybe a kilogram more, but not much. Yeah. Oh, no wonder your Achilles couldn't handle that heftiness. Yeah, but I think that it would have been the same if I'd have kept my running going, because I just find running is the thing that kind of keeps you a little bit lighter. I think it's just a natural adaptation.
14:15
My whole training program had been building up to doing... Why is my camera so out of focus? I don't know. Hopefully it will be better. Your hand is in great focus. It'll be better though when we put it up properly. People don't want to see my face anyway. No, that's not true. I was going to say, what was I talking about? Yeah. Because basically the whole training program had been building up to doing these specific runs, right? That were the key runs of the training block.
14:46
which might be track sessions and specific runs off the bike. I never got to do any of those. Yeah, and I also lost the plot. So it was the Wednesday. So Wednesday before, 10 days before the race, which was the Wednesday, I tried to do a run on my Achilles and I managed one kilometer. And at that point I was like, there's no chance I'm going to do this race. Yeah. So I had a beer and pizza. Yeah. As you do.
15:14
Because I was like, well, I may as well have a beer and pizza. Maybe, you know, and so I didn't, and then, and then I didn't really do anything for, I didn't really train much that day, you know, so I kind of did lose a bit for a couple of days as well. But yeah, then I, and then, I mean, the race itself, I couldn't have asked for more than I did, than I delivered on that day, given the situation, but I also know that I could have done, I could have done a bit better, you know, with the, with the perfect build up.
15:41
And I guess, you know, is any build up perfect? Did you have any issues going into Kona? Was that actually the perfect build up? I mean, there's never a perfect build up, but I guess it's the timing of things, right? Like even in Kona in May, races in October, I had a stress fracture in my sacrum. But you know, that was in May time. So it's not that much of an issue because I got over it. I had a perfect running from that point and it was really good. But you know, when you're not running at all for 16 days and you know, you can't get to run until
16:11
Um, you know, basically it was nine days before the event. That's, that's different, right? It's a lot worse. And the funny thing was, is that when I started running again, because I was, I'd been cycling and swimming and I was very fit still, and I started running, but I hadn't had any of the kind of the muscular, um, conditioning in the lakes, like the eccentric loading and my legs were, I ran 20 K and I ran around, I ran like four 24, 30 K pace and my legs were so sore.
16:39
And this was on the Saturday before the race. So the week before, this is the first run I managed to, proper run I managed to do. And then for that whole week, I was actually just trying to recover my legs. They were so sore. Now, how did you, with regards to like the, beer and pizza, you're like, this is, you know, I'm clearly not gonna be able to race. What happened then? Yeah, it's really, really weird. So, the next day,
17:07
So that day I decided I wouldn't be able to do the race. I went out, I went to the swimming pool and saw Chelsea and Jan and I was like, well, I'm not swimming, I'll just coach. I coach from the pool side in, but we're getting in myself. And then Jan was like, what are you gonna do now? And I said, I'm just gonna go back to my room. And he's like, that's gonna do you no good. You should come out and ride with me. And we ended up riding for four hours on that day, so which was a really good thing in the end.
17:33
And then the next day, Jan and Chelsea had a key track session. So I was coaching that and they warmed up and I ran 400 with them. I couldn't run 400, my Achilles was that sore, I stopped. And then they were doing like 800s. So I was timing them and I had to run across the track, time them, then run back across the track because they had 800 on, 200 off. So like starting at a different side each time. And as I did that, like I didn't really feel my Achilles, but I didn't really feel it for those short distances. And then Jan started to cool down.
18:03
and I ran alongside him and I was like, hang on a minute, my Achilles isn't really hurting. And then on that day, the amfinis is cooled down and I said, well, I'm going to just run a bit more and I ran for 25 minutes and it wasn't really that sore. So then the next day I ran for 50 minutes and I stopped once because it was a bit sore but I still ran for 50 minutes in total.
18:28
and it felt better. And the main thing was it wasn't getting any sore. The soreness after running was, there was nothing there. It wasn't getting any worse. So after that 50 minutes, it was fine. And then the next day on the Saturday, I ran for 20K. I went straight into 20K because I thought, well, I've got to give it a proper test. And it was totally fine. But then my legs were really sore. And then the next day, so that day, we ran in the morning in Dottingham and drove to Roth.
18:54
I arrived in Roth, the next day I did, me and Chelsea cycled the Roth course and we ran 8k off the bike and that was, and it was fine. And then my legs were super sore. I had to, but then I was doing this balancing of trying to prepare myself to run a marathon, but also rest. So I ran, I ended up running, I took Monday off, I ran 15k on the Tuesday, which included some one kilometer reps. I took Wednesday off.
19:24
running. And then I ran another 15 kilometers on the Thursday, which is actually something I would never normally do like running 15k like two or three days before an Ironman isn't normally that advised. But I was trying to just balance things out a little bit. Yeah. And then I ran and then that was that really. So I ran 15k around 20 minutes the day before the race, which was on the Saturday and then race on the Sunday.
19:53
And to be honest with you, I felt really good on the run. And I was running at like 355 on the Canal of Wrath, 355, heart rate was like 150, which is kind of my normal Ironman heart rate. And I thought, it's on here. I'm gonna blast like out of 245 here. Yeah. You know? But then eventually just the conditioning in my legs, my quads just exploded. And my legs have never been as sore.
20:21
I mean, they're being sore after Ironman, but after that race, I could not walk. They were really, really sore. I just recently ran through the muscle soreness. Still ran a 250. I ran a 250, so I can't complain. No, shoot. That was amazing. And Dan, how are you? Did it take a while to recover from there? Yeah. I mean, then we went away to the mountains for a week and we chilled out. Yeah. Then I mean...
20:50
I actually think I still had a little bit of muscle soreness even two weeks ago, just running in Holland, but now it seems to have completely gone and yeah, I'm getting back into it. Yeah. And you know, were you going into that race thinking this is my last hurrah because I'm really going to give it my all and now going, hang on, I've still got something left? I think, I mean, if everything, you know, if I'd had, it's funny because if I'd had a really good run up and a bad race, I probably would have ended it there.
21:20
But because I had a not good rope and a good race, it makes me want to do another one. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, totally. So, yeah. And I had a few chats with some mentors about it and I think we all have this period in our lives where we have a choice. Like at the moment, I'm 40. I have...
21:44
the option to still do a fast time and go faster than 818. And I know that I can definitely go a lot faster than that. But in two years time, we won't even be having this conversation, because it's not an option anymore. So, you've got to, you've just got to make the, like I always think they're gonna make the most of opportunities when they present themselves. And then after that,
22:11
I'm not going to do any racing anymore because my family's young and I want to focus on them for, you know, until they're until they're 12 or whatever, because after after they're 12, they're not going to think at the moment, they think I'm pretty cool. My kids, would you believe it? But you know, they are young. But you know, but after after after they're 12, they'll want to hang out with their friends more than me. So then you got to make the most of that opportunity and then go into different things. And so yeah, that makes
22:41
Quite a long hiatus really, didn't you? From sort of Kona to now. It's not like you've been, that your family has been widowed by... No, no, exactly. All in stages. And like someone said to me the other day, they actually wrote to me and they said, you should write a blog on work-life balance. And I was like, well, I don't believe in work-life balance. Yeah, there you go.
23:08
Because it's, I believe in balance, but I don't believe, I really don't believe balance can be achieved all year round all the time. I think it has to come in stages is that, there's a balance and then you counterbalance it. It was like, if you wanna achieve anything in this world, you wanna achieve anything and do it well, you can't be balanced in doing it. If you wanna do an Ironman well, you can't be balanced in it. If you wanna run a business well, you can't balance doing it. You have to go as all in. And that's why I focused on Kona.
23:38
I went all in, I focused on the, I focused on Enduro IQ and I went all in and now I'm back focusing on Ironman, you know, and then after that's done, I'll go back to the business. Of course, like family is always a corner is always in the background and that's kind of just a constant, but you know, it's really hard to do three things really well. I think you can do two things pretty well, but you can't grow too, you can't grow.
24:04
You can't do three things really well all at the same time. You can't grow a massive business as you want to do well in Ironman and do what you need to do in your family. Two, okay. Three. And as for the social life, then that's just not what doesn't happen. No, no. I would have been super surprised if you'd said that, oh, and then I need a really social audience. Social life is riding my bike with friends.
24:31
Yeah, but that's the thing as an athlete, right? Like, so I, you know, I know for me, like I, I catch up, most people I catch up with, uh, people that I run with, particularly cause I work by myself now. So there are people I podcast with and the people that I run with. And then we just have our, and then it's, um, pub star and I'm like, Oh yeah, that's cool. And that's great. You know, I love it. It's actually really hard when you're, when you're training and you got those two big things going on.
24:59
It is really hard to socialize with people who aren't into your thing. If you can go and train with them, it makes life a lot easier. Otherwise, I mean, as you know, if you're training 20 hours a week, the last thing you want to do is go to a restaurant or go to a pub. You go to a restaurant and you just end up hungry.
25:23
You know, you have to get them out, you spend a lot of money and then you say, right, what should we go, what's for dinner? Yeah, totally. The love and I think that's the great thing about the types of sports that we do, like obviously I'm not a triathlete. I, we do, we run. And so I rock on up to park run. I see my mates at park run. We go running in the hills and mountains. And then we, we have, um, we make dates with our friends to do that. And then we all go to a pub, you know, like.
25:50
And that's the experience. When I have someone's like, do you want to come over on a Saturday? I'm like, how's that going to fit in with my park run? And then I've also got to do groceries and things like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Do you want to come and do the park run with me? You know? Exactly. Yeah. Hey, Dan, with regards to your buildup this year versus Kona, did you do anything specifically different? Like what has changed in...
26:17
how you might train yourself or your athletes, I suppose, as well in the lead up to an Iron Man for someone of your sort of caliber? Yeah, it's a good question. And honestly, I don't, I didn't really change very much to be honest. If hardly really strength training, strength training. Okay. Yeah, that would be the only thing. That would be the only difference really. You know, nutritional nutrition stayed the same. The training was very much the same. I mean, I'm, I'm, I mean, I just wrote a blog actually.
26:47
on about Jan van Berkel's running progression over the eight years I was coaching. One of the first things I mentioned in that blog was consistency. And that's not like consistency as in, I mean, you consistently train. I mean, consistency within a training program. And I'm a firm believer that you should not change training programs. As mundane and as boring as it sounds, you should just evolve and slightly tweak what you've been doing. If it's been working, of course, if it's not working, then you've got to kind of
27:16
But if you've had a success with a certain program, you don't want to be changing it. I mean, I've been working with the women's kayak program in New Zealand since Rio. And I knew what the sort of training Gordie was doing before that as well. And Lisa Carrington has won numerous Olympic medals, gold medals, and most of them. And training hasn't really changed that much. It's just very slight tweaks of what already worked.
27:45
I didn't change much in that respect at all really, kept very much the same. But the only thing that I did include more of was strength training. And that's one of my regrets in the buildup is that I was really good with my strength training. I was doing it two times a week in my gym at home. Then I went to St. Moritz and I just didn't do it anymore. And that could be one of the, maybe one of the reasons I got injured, maybe. But I also noticed that my swimming really went downhill.
28:15
Not downhill, but swimming progressively got worse and it was maintaining really well. What I found with the strength training is that I've always really struggled to hold my swimming up as my running comes up. Because you get wider, you get leaner, my swimming gets worse and worse and it's quite a hard balance. But I was finding that with the strength training, my swimming was really holding well. But as soon as I stopped doing it, I felt my swimming just started to just dip down a little bit and I also got the injury.
28:44
I mean, I used to be a total anti-strength training person. I thought endurance athletes, I didn't really think it had much merit, but I've totally changed my tune on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. It just takes a lot of time. That's the thing. I think one of the things about strength training is you don't see any benefit very quickly and you're just like, well, this is a waste of time. But then after a, it almost takes a year to actually start seeing things come through.
29:14
And then you start to see some good benefits. Also, I wasn't able to run for the first six months of this year. I did a lot more. I just focused much more on strength training. And now- I can tell you're looking quite, you've been quite busy. I'm looking quite buff, I know. And I wonder, Dan, what your advice to me is actually. So I'm gonna use this as a slight consultation at the same time. This is quite a good benefit for me. But I'm trying to maintain my league work with my run program. And-
29:44
I'm, and I need to do it in a way where I'm still getting the benefit of it. And part of the benefit for me, I see with using strength training is, is fatiguing the legs after running without actually doing the load of running, you know, and running that sort of injury risk, you know, like people talk about the, you've got to like, I'm training for Tarahumara 100. And so I, you know, there will be a time when my run, like, I'll do a lot more case than I am now, like it's ages away. So I want to be quite sensible.
30:14
And I still know that I need to do legs twice a week in the gym. It's just trying to figure out the best days to do them. So what's your advice? Like, have you got the secret sauce? Yeah, the nail concurrent effects of training. Well, there's a couple of things with strength training is that, you know, to improve areas of running, running economy and those sorts of things, it has to be quite heavy, like actually heavy weights, like three to six reps, you know, sort of thing.
30:44
But also, a neuromuscular fatigue takes much longer to recover from than energy fatigue. So, say you did three reps maximal versus 12 reps, even though you're looking at it on paper and go, oh, that's quite the shorter session.
31:09
The shorter session is the one that's going to take more to recover from because it's more of a neuromuscular fatigue than a energy, than a kind of my own energy fatigue, if you like, just from the metabolism of doing more reps. So we actually published a paper that, well actually it's not published, we did the research, the paper's not published. And what it looked is it did that very thing with kyakins, it sequenced the strength training.
31:37
So it did it either the same day as a high intensity or the same day as an endurance, the day before the high intensity. Okay. Yeah, so you would do it on the same day as a high intensity training or the day of an endurance training, the day before the high intensity training. And the easily the best time to do it was on the same day as your high intensity training. Okay, is it because you're already fatigued and so therefore you still get recovery?
32:05
Well, there might be a bit of a potentiation activation going on as well, you know, like from the strength training that could actually help the help. And I think especially some of that neuromuscular stuff, the neuromuscular fatigue, you can get a bit of potentiation into the actual training. And the neuromuscular fatigue is almost a little bit later and it's coming out more the next day. So if you're doing it on the same day, you're likely going to get a better result.
32:34
Okay. And what do you do for your leg work? What's your leg workout? Well, I'm quite mundane as I generally do. Um, I just generally do squats and I generally do it within a circuit, but I don't do many three to four reps. Yeah. And I don't go, I don't go massively heavy either, but I will try and go quite deep. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I think that's what I've, I'm trying to work on right now is my depth.
33:00
rather than the heavy. I say I tried to go quite deep. If anyone actually saw me do it, they'd be like... They'd be like, that's not deep. That's not deep. But for an endurance athlete, I mean, we've got to always add that caveat in. For me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love the Smith machine actually, because I feel safe with it. So I can, and I can go deep. Okay, this is good intel. Thank you, Dan. I'll figure out a way to...
33:27
do that just because I still I love doing it and I want to do it in a way that helps my running. I don't want it to feel all too hard and I just give it up completely. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then I think for running as well you want to include some plyometrics. Yeah, I know. You're right. I do need to do that actually. Do you like the non-committal way with which I acknowledge? I hear you like, yes, I do need to do that. I hear what you're saying. You'll be ignored.
33:55
Yeah, no, I do actually. You're that's so true. And that would, that could be a simple of step ups, right? Well, we have got a course coming out, LET 301, which is about strength training. Oh, amazing. This is good. Yeah, so it's run by Adam Storey, who's, who's the guru of all things strength training. He was, he worked alongside me at Emirates Team New Zealand. Oh, amazing. So yeah, it's aimed at long distance triathlon. But obviously,
34:24
it transcends to long distance ultra sports. Yeah, yeah. This is awesome. Hey, so Dan, you didn't do anything different with your nutrition then. You're still the same sort of your daily nutrition, your recovery nutrition. I know that we've talked about what you do on a number of podcasts and I hear you talk about it. Let's not bore people again. No, let's not. People think you're hearing about it. True. But I do actually have a question around the mortene gels actually.
34:52
And because these have popped up over the last maybe six or eight months and they're quite expensive. And there's a lot of people forking out for them essentially because they've got this added benefit from as far as the manufacturers would tell us. Have you got any thoughts around them? Yeah, I mean, I don't want to... What can I say? I don't really want to say anything.
35:21
not nice about another product, but I do think they're a bit overhyped. So I mean, the idea is that they contain like pectin and sodium alginate, and that combination is supposed to be better on the gut, and it's supposed to help with oxidation, improve oxidation. So if you look at the research...
35:50
and the research is very clear is that they have zero effect on oxidation rate. They do not improve your oxidation rate, no more than a normal fructose-glucose combination. We know that fructose and glucose as a combination, you can oxidize carbohydrates at around 90 grams per hour. Nothing's really been shown to go much above that. There are a few individuals who might have freakish oxidation rates, but for most people, it's not going any higher than that.
36:17
And the thing that there was one paper that showed that gut tolerance for the Morton gels is a little bit better. So you can, even if you're shoveling, when you're shoveling in more than 90 grams, you might not get a sore stomach, but it doesn't mean it's going anywhere. It's not being, it's not necessarily being oxidized or used, it's just sat in the stomach and not causing you any gastrointestinal distress. So.
36:46
Do we want to be chugging 90 grams of carbs an hour? Well, as always, it depends, right? For some people, you might have to. If you're a pro athlete, for example, and you're doing an Ironman at 300 watts and you've got a poor fat oxidation, then you'll have no choice. But if you're a base grouper and you're doing 180 watts and you've got a good fat oxidation, then you certainly don't need to.
37:14
I find it amazing. I wrote a blog on this, 90 versus 120 grams, so you can look that up in Enduro IQ. We went through all the research that shows about this. One of the crazy things is that when people have consumed 120 grams, and this was done by the research from Kinga
37:43
Filosidation was blunted so much. In the end, it's all about preserving your endogenous carbohydrate stores. So not just because you're chowing more doesn't mean you're preserving more. In fact, in this particular study, it showed the opposite effect. So more is not better. And I always think less is more in that particular, in most instances, particularly when racing in the heat. There's some great papers that showed the...
38:10
finishing time versus carbohydrate consumption. Yeah. And yeah, and you know, growing like a German Ironman that's in the cool, we are typically seeing people who take more carbohydrate are finishing a bit faster, right? But that relationship is massively diminished at Kona because of the heat and suddenly you're not absorbing the carbohydrates as much. So that's interesting. So basically, the like, so with the research.
38:40
Look, where the research tends to be is that if you are taking on board these massive amounts of carbohydrate, you're blunting your fat oxidation so much that your body has had to tap in more to its endogenous carb stores and you're chewing through them at a greater rate. So actually, you're losing out in that respect. Yeah. And that's what we... I mean, in the particular study by King et al., he didn't measure, he didn't look, he didn't say
39:10
I mean, that's what I think is happening because there's no other reasonable explanation really just to explain why and dozens of carbohydrate stores are going down more when you're putting in that amount of carbohydrate. Yeah. So, yeah. Well, and interesting, Dan, I had a podcast interview with Philippe Prinz and he is a researcher in that low-carb diet space. He's published with Volic and Tim Noakes and stuff like that.
39:38
Their research paper showed that when you, they did a crossover study actually, and he goes into depth in the podcast that I spoke to him about, that the middle-aged recreational athlete of which we could probably all sort of fall into, maybe not you, maybe you're sort of on the cusp of that recreation slash slightly above, but certainly you're middle-aged, they had, when they gave them a high carbohydrate diet, which actually wasn't that high.
40:07
they ended up being pre-diabetic. Oh yeah, that's the classic, that's the one with 800 meter time trial performance with Kunik and Nopes and Lollak. Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And yeah, I think that the prevalence of people with some kind of metabolic dysfunction who are elite athletes is probably higher than we realize as well.
40:36
I mean, it's not the first study to show us that study was 30%. There was another study that was in martial arts athletes that showed showed similar. And yeah, and I just think that people hear about these professionals doing 120 grams an hour, and then they assume that that's right for them, you know. And, you know, you can't compare yourself to these outliers because.
41:01
you know, the people who the athletes who are winning on the world stage Olympic champions or champions, they are not the norm, you know, they're definitely very, very different to your actual average age people who's, who's a weekend warrior or just training, training recreationally, then you can't, you just can't put the two things together. And I think, you know, it's, um, you know, health, health and performance is has to be has to be considered. And that's why
41:27
at S-Fuels, it's one of the things that we're quite passionate about is this idea of right fuel, right time. If you're going out and you're doing your rides and your runs and you're putting in fructose and glucose all the time and you're doing 60 grams per hour all the time, there's no need for it. Do you know what the funny thing is? We just published a paper from Jess PhD and we looked at perceived recovery status versus carbohydrate intake.
41:57
There's no relationship. So there was no relationship. So there was no relationship in most people. There was a big standard deviation. So in like the most people that didn't, but one or two, there was a bit of a relationship, which is the point of this paper was that you have to base it on the individual. For most people, there was no relationship between carbohydrate intake and perceived recovery. So, you know, and yet as nutritionists...
42:23
It's just a given, right? We just go, oh, well, carbohydrates help recovery. They 100% do that. And but like, do they? Really? You know, we don't actually know if they do or not. Maybe there's something else going on. Well, also, if you look at the likes of someone like Zach Bitter, like, and you know Zach well, you guys are both S fuels sort of peeps. He, you know, spent a lot of his time in that low carb state and his high carb diet isn't actually that high anyway. And his recovery is great. So it must also like
42:52
When I think about recovery from training and I say to people, yeah, the carbs are really going to help you recover. If the people I'm working with are in quite a bit of a calorie deficit, and it really does help. Yeah, but then the question is, what's helping them recover? Is it carbs or is it calories? I would say the calories is probably the thing. Of course, if you're restricted to macronutrient, then it's harder to get the calories in, yes.
43:19
I can appreciate that, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's the carbohydrates. I just think it is the calories that is the calories in the main player here all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Although there is research looking at, or is it research or clinically speaking, I'll say that because we know that carbohydrate in the, for example, carbohydrate in the evening helps your body produce serotonin, which is a precursor to melatonin. So there's that sleep relationship.
43:48
clinically I see it all of the time. But I think my point is, is that if I'm working with someone and they're doing steady state exercise and they're wondering whether they need to chug back, you know, a sports drink after that, I'm gonna say no, because you know, that's actually like, you haven't really, it's not glycolytic, you're not doing crossfit five days a week, you probably don't need to worry about that. Yeah, exactly, I would totally agree. And it's, you know, I always feel like I'm a broken record because I do get asked these questions a lot.
44:18
And I'm always like, it depends, you know, I never give a straight answer. No, no. And I think this is, do you know what, it's probably why people ask you a lot, like, are we going to get anything from Dan this time? Is he going to give us that golden nugget? But I mean, there is no golden nugget. So golden nugget is sort of depends and it's quite individual. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Hey Dan, so, um, have you been doing any work with continuous glucose monitors? And, you know, have you seen anything around, you know, pre-training and
44:46
and what might be helpful for your athletes if they utilize them to sort of have a look at fuel requirements? Um, no. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
45:15
I think it's quite, I mean, I know that there's certain companies that almost promote you to have high blood glucose all the time during training. You should keep your blood glucose as high as that. And I think it should be the opposite. You could potentially use them to see how you could not spot your blood glucose and how you can keep it low and stable during exercise. But yeah, I know that didn't give you a good answer, but I haven't done anything in...
45:42
in a very long time now. Yeah, no, that's good. I mean, I wonder whether it's, you know, if someone's using a CGM, they wake up in the morning, the glucose is a little bit high. Like, like to my mind, I'm like, just go out and run. Don't even worry about you don't need to feel like, is that how you might sort of approach that? If someone has a similar situation? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, but I think it's, I mean, if someone woke up with a high blood glucose in the morning, I would definitely, I would definitely.
46:13
I definitely think that and I think that's where it can be useful though is from a metabolic and health perspective. If someone woke up like that, I think they probably want to go out and do a run without eating because they want to bring their blood glucose back down to what would be a normal level. I think that's the main thing as well as if someone's waking up and they're within a normal range of the low, then maybe you might want to eat something.
46:38
Hey, it is funny that you say, you know, they were quite, I mean, they were all the rage maybe, maybe even a year ago now, like Kipchoge had, like was wearing one from, I can't recall which company, and they had all of this data from him and they were busy analyzing it. I just don't know what they were gonna find from that, to be honest. Yeah, and you know, those glucose monitors has been some good papers published now that show that they're not that accurate during exercise. Oh, interesting. You know, like, so they're great for resting, but.
47:08
the accuracy of during exercise is actually quite questionable. So, this is the issue. I mean, I've just seen, I've had an athlete wear during a race and he just went up to 200 milligrams per deciliter and stayed there for eight hours. And I'm like, well, is that real? It wasn't real. In fact, I have one of my friends who's based in Canada. Like I put up my reading from when I did like earlier this year.
47:36
And she said, oh, that low that you had during the night, it's just where your arm is. You know, it's you sort of lying on your arm. It's not actually that you've got a blood glucose low. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Giving yourself a dead arm. Yeah, basically. Not letting the blood flow go to your arm. That's not helpful. That's not helpful for your blood glucose, for what's illustrated on the, on the CG. No. No. Hey, I'm Dan.
47:59
Anything that you're excited about in your field of research or in your coaching, any new things that, and I know you've just said consistency is key, but anything that you're interested in exploring with your athletes? One of the things that we're working on at AUT at the moment is this idea of durability in athletes. So we've been doing a few pieces of research now is looking at how thresholds change over time. I don't mean how a threshold would change from...
48:29
one week to the next, I mean, during the course of exercise. So if you're doing a four hour ride, for example, how is your VT1 changing from the first 30 minutes to the last 30 minutes if it was a four hour ride? And so yeah, we're doing a little bit of research in that and we found some really interesting things. One is how we can measure it. We found that ventilation could be a great way to measure it in real time. And you know, we've
48:57
come across a company who can measure ventilation in real time. So we've been talking with them. And then also looking at what's related to someone who's more durable and who's less durable. We just had one study that's in the process of being written up. That was basically we did a threshold test continuously every 30 minutes until exhaustion and all six hours. And some of the outcomes of that have been fascinating. Right.
49:25
because it's such an important metric for ultra endurance. We just published another paper that's not been published yet, but we're writing up as well. It showed that basically we did a five-minute time trial, prolonged exercise, another five-minute time trial. And those athletes who are more durable, which means that their thresholds aren't changing very much over those two hours, are easily doing more power in the last five minutes. So it has good...
49:53
ecological validity to actual performance as well. So yeah, this is what this is some of the things that we're working on at the moment. Other things that I'm working on, I'm working, I'm just started to be the head of research for pillar performance. I think I've mentioned that to you. It's amazing. Yeah. So that's been really exciting. And my position there isn't to, it's not to
50:18
build the products as such and make sure it's got the correct DHA to EPA ratio in the ultra amigas and the correct magnesiums. I mean, obviously I have a bit of input in that, but it's more to try and bring out some real life use cases where it is showing to improve your HRV. So magnesium is improving HRV, it is improving your sleep, it is reducing inflammation for running, it is improving your phylloxidation and bringing out these cases where we can actually...
50:48
we can actually have clinical proof that these things are doing what they say they do and they are worthwhile for athletes. That's amazing. So did you just tell me that magnesium helped improve fat oxidation? No, but there's potential for ultra-omegas. Ultra-omegas. Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. Obviously, anything nutrition related, I'm interested to explore and know more about. So that's...
51:14
I was just thinking about magnesium. Magnesium is well known to help with blood sugar regulation. So I'd imagine there'd be, I wonder whether there's anything there. Yeah, yeah. And well, and it's also been shown to improve the HRV as well. I mean, it's all maybe there's something in that as well. But, you know, and it's the combinations, it's the glycinate and the, you know, and the citrate and all those different things that are doing all different things, all different. But we've had so many athletes who
51:42
We live in this world now with a lot of wearable data, right? Where people are wearing their works and they're wearing their oar rings and they take the magnesium and they see improved sleep and they see, wouldn't really go too much in the sleep of those devices, but the HRV is quite reliable and we are seeing improved HRV with when taking these supplements and I think it's pretty exciting. Yeah, that sounds it. Dan, if I just go back to the research on durability, I think that's really exciting because a lot of the,
52:11
studies that we look at to inform training and nutrition for endurance athletes. The length of the time that they're actually studying might be say two hours, maybe three hours at a push, which a lot changes if you then extend it to a normal person doing a marathon is actually doing a marathon in about four hours. Then you've got your ultra endurance runner and they're out there for eight hours and of course the Ironman. Yeah, even more, yeah. Yeah.
52:39
So one of the things that we found, we searched for a long time to look at some, because one of the key questions is like, okay, what areas of physiology seem to be improving durability? And we looked at peak fat oxidation rates, and that didn't seem to be related at all, which I was really surprised at. But one of the recent studies that we've found is we've found that fat oxidation rate...
53:04
in general, at a sort of maximal level during the pre-testing. So during the pre-step test, the first step test, we looked at fat oxidation rate in that test. It was very related to how durable the athlete was for the prolonged exercise. Which is great for us because it means that we can, you know, fat oxidation once again is important. Totally. And then of course for females, you know, like we're better at burning fat. Like do you reckon this is the thing that's keeping us going for longer and potentially giving us closer in the gen space? Yeah, I mean potentially, yeah.
53:33
Yeah, relatively better at burning fat. Can I just say? Yes. Okay. No, this is good. That is great. I like that. Hey, and Dan, like you mentioned what you're excited about in your research, obviously, because I asked you that. What about any books that you've read lately that have been sort of informative for you or a podcast you're listening to? We always want to learn from you. The main books.
54:01
that I read recently was I read Outlive by Pete, yeah, yeah, it was brilliant. Amazing. Yeah, it's such a good book. And then when I was reading on holiday, I was reading Man's Search for Meaning by Victor. Yes. Yes, I know that. Is that by The Happiest Man? Is he also The Happiest Man? No, it's a similar book. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. I forgot his name now. Victor something. I remember his first name, but I was not last name. It was terrible.
54:30
And just for you, is it? I have to say, I read The Happiest Man on Earth. Yeah. And I enjoyed that more, to be honest. OK, this is Victor Frankel, if you want to. Frankel, that's the Victor Frankel, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I read that one. And then the other book I'm reading at the moment, I've got a few on the go, is I mean, Outlived. I'm just kind of, you know, I just read bits of it here at no time, you know, and then and then and then I've been reading Ray's, I mean.
54:59
Raising Boys Who Like Themselves. Yeah. Which has been quite good as well. Yeah, awesome. Just because I got a young boy and, you know, I want him to be a confident young man. Yeah, yeah. I've heard great things about that book actually. Yeah, well, my wife read the Raising Girls Who Like Themselves. So we've got a young girl and she read that. So I'm reading the boys one and we compare notes. Oh, that's good. That's great. It's really good. I mean, I think as a parent, it's your biggest...
55:29
One of your biggest projects, right? Is raising raise good children. Yeah. Do you know Dan, strangely, like I love podcasts, but it's only recently I've gotten into audible. And so I also downloaded outlive on audible to listen to it. Yeah. It's really good. I listened to it. I listened to an audible and I bought the book. Yeah. And it's on audible. It's really, it's really good because Peter T does it as well. Yeah. So it's actually really good. I totally agree.
55:57
I don't know. I was thinking, oh, that's another thing I'm doing. I'm writing a HRV book. Oh, yeah. Amazing. Oh, cool. So me, Marco Altini, and it's called Silvia and Labardo, who is more in the psychology space of, oh, I probably just totally butchered his name then, so I'm really sorry. But yeah, and another colleague of his.
56:27
Yeah, and they're in more of the psychology space. So, you know, I'll be doing more of the exercise physiology side. Mark will do more of the tech stuff and then we'll have the psychology. So we've got a deal with human kinetics and we'll be pushing that forward, which will be good because I've never written a book before. So, yikes. Yeah. Oh, no, it'll be great, Dan. I mean, you seem to pump out a lot of content. So it's certainly in your wheelhouse. That's for sure. Yeah. Well, we will, we shall, we shall see how it, how it goes. I think we'll get the.
56:55
I'm in California right away and then that'll be one that I'll try and if I can just put one day a week aside to focus on the book, then I think it'll be fine. Yeah. Awesome. And so where are you off to next? So I'm actually going to Kona on 7th of September for two weeks with Chelsea and then come back and then I go to California for the Ironman.
57:24
When's California Ironman? 22nd of October. Amazing. Cool. And is that just a Dan trip or is it a whole Plues family trip? No, it's a whole, it'll be a whole Plues family trip. Good, as it should be. I'm not into doing like going there and doing it on my own. It's just not what I really... You know, it's just not the same. It's just not really enjoyable. So, yeah, so we're going to do that and it'll be...
57:47
Hopefully that'll be that. I feel like a broken record. That's definitely going to be the last one. That'll be the end of that. And then it's time to get big and strong in the gym. Oh, Ryan Hall Black. Maybe not quite so big. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But hey, goals. Goals, Dan. I believe in you. Yeah. You're going to have goals. I mean, I said, I think I told you this story before. I said, Kate was like, how big do you want to get in the low? You know.
58:15
Chris Hemsworth kind of size. See, you're dreaming mate. And Kate goes, you want to be Thor? Yeah. Isn't that every man's fantasy? It's like, what, it's normal gold, it's fine, isn't it? Yeah. Surely. That's hilarious. Hey, so Dan, Dura IQ, you just mentioned that you've got a new strength training course coming out, LDT 301, when's that?
58:43
Good question. I don't want to put a date on that yet, but sometime, we were getting pretty close though, sometime in the next couple of months. Amazing. Well, super excited to hear about it. It's going to be a really good one, I think. And then, yeah, we just keep building up the training squad and coaching and, you know, do check out our blog. Oh, you guys do an amazing blog. I just love it. So much stuff on there now.
59:10
Although I've got to say, I didn't love the apple study that you highlighted the other week. I was just like, yeah, but apples are full of fructose. So many people have issues with fructose. Does it matter that you are literally comparing apples with apples? And they're both a bit rubbish. But would you prefer to, if you were going to have fructose, would you prefer to have it in an apple puree?
59:30
I don't know. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. You're still going to get that problem. But is it more of a natural... I mean, I'm all about the whole foods, right? It's more natural, right? Yeah, completely. And I think the thing about fructose is, yeah, I agree with you, but sometimes you've got to have it. If you want to... Like we discussed earlier, if you want to compete and your requirement is a high level of high oxidation of carbohydrates because you're doing 320 watts, then I would be prefer that fructose to be coming from an apple than some random...
01:00:00
somewhere else, you know? Yeah, no, I understand. Although if this is you and you have fructose smell absorption, then it's not going to work. So, you know, You're going to be in trouble regardless. Yeah. So go glucose. Go get that dextrose from the supermarket, pop it in that drink bottle, put some salt with it. There you go. That's like the cleanest, the easiest. Yeah, but then what happens if you're pumping out 320 watts?
01:00:24
Get FAT adapted, buddy. Get FAT adapted. There you go. Get FAT adapted. That's the only option. It is the only. Hey, that's the preferred option. I'm on that note. Yeah. Dan, where can we find you? Yeah. Instagram. I'm always on Instagram. And yeah, I'm on Twitter as well. I think Instagram's the plooze. Twitter's the plooze one, I think. And do sign up. If you go to enjoyiq.com.
01:00:53
Do sign up to our monthly newsletter, The Brew Up, and we publish all the blogs out there and we send it out to our email list so you won't miss a beat, so to speak, and you can check everything out there. Yeah, that is awesome. As I said, I love The Brew Up. It is great. Thank you, Plos. Love talking to you as always. I always feel a bit smarter coming out of these talks because I just spoke to you. Well, you know what? I'm a dimwit compared to some of the guests you've had on your podcast now. Oh, I know. I know. That's why I feel smarter.
01:01:23
Jokes! JK, JK, alright. See you later. Cool, alright, we'll speak soon. Ciao ciao.
01:01:42
Alrighty, so hopefully you enjoyed that. Dan is always such a wealth of information. Love chatting to him and absolutely best of luck for Chelsea and Dan and the whole team this weekend at Kona. And I'm sure she'll do brilliantly. I will pop links to how you can find Dan and Endure IQ in the show notes as always. And next week, I'm stoked to bring to you a conversation with I Have with another sort of
01:02:11
goat in metabolic health and nutrition and hormones and metabolism, Dr. Jade Tita, naturopath. Until then though, you can catch me over on Instagram, Twitter and threads @mikkiwilliden, Facebook at mikkiwillidennutrition, head to my website mikkiwilliden.com, book a one-on-one call with me. All right team, have a great week.
