Tag Archives: Recovery

Episode 11: Tommy Rivers Puzey, Motivations, Aspirations, Training, Durability, Injury Prevention, Run Commuting, Diet, and more



In episode 11 of the Art and Science of Running Podcast we visit with Tommy Rivers Puzey. Tommy is a husband, father, accomplished marathoner, trail and ultra runner, iFit Trainer, anthropologist, linguist, doctor of physical therapy and licensed massage therapist who works on some of the best endurance athletes in the world when they are training in his hometown of Flagstaff, Arizona.

What motivates Tommy to get out the door and run?

“Trying to keep my own mental and physical health in check. Movement outside helps me keep my own emotional health.”

“The first biggest motivator is to get my head on straight before the rest of the day starts.”

“There are few people whose company I enjoy as much as the voices in my own head.”

“More than anything, I’m motivated by fear of not reaching my potential.”

What was it like growing up in the Puzey home?

“We always knew that we were loved, but there was always an expectation to excel.”

What motivated Tommy to pursue the academic tracks that he pursued?

“Our dad taught us from a young age that you can either work with your hands or you can work with your mind. If you choose to work with your mind, you have to go to college and if you want to go to college I’m not going to pay for it so you either have to be a scholar or an athlete or both.”

“We knew that if we wanted to work with our minds that we needed to go to college so we tried to become the best students and athletes that we could be so that we could pay for college.”

“Waste of any kind is sinful. Waste of food, waste of time, waste of opportunity. Waste of potential is the very worst form of waste.”

“Anthropology class felt like Sunday dinner with our family. It just felt like home being in the anthropology department and that’s what Jake was studying so that’s what I did.”

When did athletics come into the picture?

“Our recreation as kids was simply being outside in the rural southwest.”

“You learn to run as kids and then you are told to stop and then eventually listen. Whether it’s for church, or school, or the pool. We learned to run as kids and we just never stopped.”

Tommy has had success on the trails and the roads. Some find the transition back and forth difficult.

How does he specifically target specific types of running races?

“I start my weeks from the back to the front. . . People have these preconceived notions that you are either a trail runner or a road runner. One of the first things I learned about when I first started studying human physiology is Wolff’s Law. Wolff’s Law essentially says that bones will strengthen themselves. The fibres of the bones will align themselves specifically in response to the stresses that are placed upon them. If you stress a tissue or blood or tendon a little bit those tissues will make adaptations and become what they are being trained to become. If you stress it too much without adequate recovery you will get injured.”

Tommy’ weekly training schedule:

  • Five days a week Tommy does what he calls the Vuelta del Taco Run which is 10 miles from his home on a dirt mountain road to Del Taco where he eats a burrito and drinks a Powerade and then he returns home (10 miles) on the same mountain run. These 20 mile runs are done below the first ventilatory threshold at a heart rate of about 140 BPM. The last mile or two of the runs, Tommy inserts 4-6 x 30 second strides.

“Other than that, I do strides. I define strides as pretending that I’m starting a 10K race 4-6 times in the last mile of my run.”

  • Hard, race specific work with a group – either on the road or the track.

“I feel like I need to do really hard, specific work on the track or the road to keep the turnover going up and working the neurology.”

  • Day in the Canyon – 5,000 ft down and 5,000 ft up – usually to the River or Phantom Ranch and back up.

“If I maintain the durability that comes from running in the [Grand] Canyon once a week, I can handle better the impact that comes on my legs if I’m racing hard on any kind of course.”

“I try to find a way to make training a part of my everyday life. Figure out ways to make training not be something that you dread and something that you enjoy.”

“If I do it that way, there is always going to be stress, but emotional stress isn’t going to be one of the stresses. If there is not emotional stress contributing to that total pool of stress from my training – if it’s not something that I dread. If I’m not worried about hitting a certain pace or heart rate zone then my total overall level of stress is lower which means my cortisol levels are lower and my testosterone is higher and then my mood is better and my energy is greater. All of the things that people are illegally doing to try gain an advantage. You can get all of those same advantages by changing your perspective and mindset of what you’re doing.

“I learned that from run commuting during graduate school. I was running 24 miles a day to and from school. It never felt like I was training because it was simply my mode of transportation to and from school.”

“If you cannot injure yourself during a marathon, you’re the fittest you’ve ever been three weeks after the marathon. Your body can absorb the fitness, the durability, the neuromuscular efficiency from that marathon the same way that it can from any training run.”

Tommy recommends the book, 80/20 Running by Matt Fitzgerald as a foundation upon which training should be designed: “80% percent of training should be under your first ventilatory threshold. What’s important is that the other 20% needs to be at a high intensity. If you’re running 100 miles a week that means that you can do 20 miles of quality work. The problem is that people don’t do 100 miles a week and want everyday to be a high intensity interval workout.”

“Too many people don’t run the slow runs slow enough that they aren’t able to do their hard runs hard enough. Without adequate stress and rest runners aren’t able to absorb the training that they are doing and then they can’t make the gains they are hoping to make.”

Durability and Recovery

“The easiest way to recover from a race is to be in shape for the race before you run the race.”

“There’s not a quick way to do it. You have to earn the fitness, the durability. And slowly, slowly build up.”

“It has nothing to do with effort. Emotionally you may be tough enough, but structurally you have to be tough enough otherwise you will break.”

Food, Diet, Nutrition, Weight and Supplementation

Tommy recognizes that everyone is different and our bodies are able to adapt to a lot of different fuel sources, but the best way he finds to describe his own diet is with the words of Michael Pollan from his book, In Defense of Food:

“Eat food, mostly plants. Not too much.”

“The more food I eat, the better I feel and the more energy I will have, but if I eat food and don’t burn it I will wear it. . . . If I don’t run over 100 miles a week I’m 180 lbs. If I don’t run enough miles, my body isn’t a runner’s body. It’s a farm kid’s body.”

“I find that learning to identify cravings has been really, really helpful. If I’m craving something sweet it’s that my body is craving carbohydrates. So I could eat a bag of Swedish Fish or I could eat bananas. And if I eat bananas, I will feel better. If I’m craving fat, I could go eat ribs, or I could add an avocado to my meal and if I eat the avocado I’ll feel better after. If I’m craving salt, I could eat a whole bag of potato chips or I could eat a pickle. Learning to listen to my body and what it’s telling me based on my cravings has been really helpful. Having an entire spectrum of options of things that will help me towards my goals and which things will hinder me is also helpful.”

“Another thing that helps me is to eliminate refined foods except during really intense training and racing.”

“I can get away with a lot of things that others can’t get away with because of how much I train.”

“The less meat I eat, the better I feel. But if I eat no meat then I have a really hard time regulating my energy. I would love to. I feel like the world would be better if we ate more plants and less meat. I’m more motivated to not consume any animal products because I don’t like the idea of killing animals more than any health benefits.”

“I kinda go back and forth depending on the time of year, what I eat. Depending on my cravings, depending on my training load.”

“I know a lot of people that are really, really strict with their diet and they run really fast and I know a bunch of dudes here [Flagstaff] who seemingly fuel off of beer and pizza and they’re the fastest people in the world.”

“Our bodies are incredibly, incredibly adaptable and they can take almost any combination of foods as long as everything that is needed is present and do incredible things with that. I think that just a reflection of how adaptable our bodies are and how unique our microbiomes are.”

Supplementation

Tommy shares the supplements that he takes:

Daily routine:

Wake up, get caffeinated and hydrated (sip some sort of hot caffeinated drink for a couple of hours while I read). Might drink simple electrolyte drink. “Recovery will be quicker if I don’t get dehydrated.” Eat bananas + walnuts. Run. Recovery shake with Ultragen, bananas, berries, peanut butter, etc. Half gallon.

“I eat almost completely plant based carbs for the first 8 hours of the day and then when I’m trying to “harden up” and get lean before a race, I eat almost exclusively animal protein after 4 pm until the next morning. So all carbs for the first 8 hours of the day and then no carbs for the next 16 hours.”

“There’s nothing magical about walnuts. I just like them.”

“I eat a lot of walnuts and a lot of bananas. 10 bananas a day and lots of rice and beans.”

Weight, Weight Loss, and Disordered Eating

“It’s typically easier to lose weight than to gain fitness.

“This is not as simple as the equation that fitness = amount of energy that you can put out / kg”

“The female endocrine system is very different than a male endocrine system.”

“I try not to let my mind to get too consumed by it. It’s not popular for males to talk about body dysmorphia and disordered eating, but it’s real. It’s definitely something that I’ve wrestled with for two decades. Sometimes its easier than other times.”

“I think because we grew up around wrestlers we didn’t ever view it as disordered eating. It’s not so much based off of trying to look the way that I think a normal male would want to look. It’s trying to look like the East Africans that I line up next to. It’s not healthy. It doesn’t look good. It’s not sustainable.”

“There’s a huge amount of pressure to run as fast as you can within the rules. It is a form of abuse if it is pushed upon you from another individual. But for me it has always been about fear of not reaching my potential. What could you do if you trimmed a couple more pounds off?”

“The hard part is that it’s physics. But what you’re not told in that simple one-dimensional physics equation are the other five dimensions that come into play: longevity, mental health, durability, bone density, confidence are the other things that you can struggle with for the rest of your life. For males it’s different than it is for females, but none of it is sustainable or something you would wish upon another person.”

“Take the stress out of it in any way that you can and do it because you love it.”

“I’ve been super fit and depressed and run terribly and I’ve been a little bit soft and stoked to be in it and run completely out of my mind. I’d rather be soft and happy than hard and sad.”

All of this and more in Episode 11 of the Art and Science of Running Podcast.

This episode is sponsored by ILO Endurance.

ILO Endurance is an online company dedicated to supporting the hydration and fuelling needs of endurance athletes. They deliver product fast, right to your front door saving you the hassle of going out to different stores!

They carry products like First Endurance, Gu, Endurance Tap, Clif, Picky Bars, and they’re one of the only retailers in Canada right now selling Generation UCan.

You get a 25% discount just for listening to this podcast….  use promo code ASR25 to claim your discount at checkout when you visit https://iloendurance.ca/

Intro and outro music GOIN 4 A WALK by Dallin Puzey.

Please listen, subscribe and rate this podcast on Apple PodcastsSpotifyStitcherYouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Please follow us on TwitterInstagram, and Facebook and let us know what you’d like us to discuss in future episodes.


Episode 10: Manu Vilaseca, Trail & Ultrarunning, UTMB, Stage Racing, Coaching, Travelling, Language Learning, and more



In this episode of the Art and Science of Running podcast we speak with international trail and ultrarunning superstar, Manu Vilaseca.

In this conversation, long-time coach, Jacob Puzey, chats with Manu about her experiences at UTMB, moving to a new country and learning a new language, cross training, training for a stage race, and how coaching has helped her become a better runner.

They also discuss how Manu’s background as a multi-sport athlete training in Brazil has informed the way that she trains and coaches those she coaches in Catalunya and beyond. They specifically discuss the old school HIIT workouts, Cruz Intervals, named affectionately after Brazilian mid-distance star, Joaquim Cruz that Manu and Jacob suggest for some of their athletes to work on speed, agility, and power – especially when they aren’t able to train on trails.

Manu hails from Rio de Jainero, Brazil, and currently resides in Moiá, Catalunya where she and her partner, Gerard Morales, lead a group of athletes known as Team Peak Run Moiá.

Manu has a background in product design and a gift for learning languages. She loves travelling to races around the world and learning about the people and the places she explores on foot. To date, Manu speaks Catalan, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Manu has placed top ten at two of the uber competitive UTMB races, UTMB and TDS and has been ranked top ten in the Ultra Trail World Tour for her top performances at internationally competitive ultramarathons around the world. In 2019, Manu placed 5th at TDS in what she describes as one of the most challenging courses she has encountered thus far.

In addition to training together, Manu and Gerard will be teaming up to to tackle the Everest Trail Race in Nepal.  Manu ran it last year and will be returning with her partner to see how they fair against the altitude and the elements.

All of this and more in Episode 10 of the Art and Science of Running Podcast.

Intro and outro music by Dallin PuzeyGOIN 4 A WALK.

Please listen, subscribe and rate this podcast on Apple PodcastsSpotifyStitcherYouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Please follow us on TwitterInstagram, and Facebook and let us know what you’d like us to discuss in future episodes.


Episode 8: Sanjay Sachdev talks World Champs, Training through Cancer, Positivity, Perspective, Perseverance and more



Imagine being in the best shape of your life and qualifying to represent your county at the next world championships. And then imagine discovering a malignant mass while still recovering from the national championships.

In this episode of the Art and Science of Running Podcast we speak with Sanjay Sachdev shortly after he competed at the 50K Road World Championships in Romania and just over a year after being diagnosed with testicular cancer. He shares what he learned through the process, how he stayed positive through treatment, and how the past year of cancer treatment led to a new appreciation for life, family, running and led to a new perspective on training that resulted in lifetime best for 50K at the world championships!

Just weeks after qualifying for the World 50K Road Championships in May 2018, Sanjay found a mass on his testicle. Over the next few weeks, he had the mass surgically removed, was diagnosed with embryonal carcinoma testicular cancer, and then started the process of trying to find and eliminate the cancer.

Throughout this time, Sanjay exercised 83/84 days while undergoing treatment for cancer both to maintain health and to provide purpose to each day.

Prior to cancer, running was always a means of dealing with stress from work and life so Sanjay pushed most runs.

“This past year has forced me to slow down. I look at the overall benefit and the overall time difference and the numerical values and I have to ask myself, ‘Holy smokes, what was I doing before?”

Sanjay has a demanding, stressful, dangerous job. He could choose to see life or the world through a very negative lens, but instead he is one of the most positive, optimistic people that Malc and Jacob have ever encountered.

“To stay positive, I think you have to be around positive people.”

“Are you going to let adversity define you or are you going to define yourself through the adversity?”

“You’re a lot of things before you’re a cancer patient. Stay true to the things you are before, and you’re going to come out on top. For me, I looked in the mirror and went through the list and made sure I did something each day as a husband, father, athlete  . . . and then you get to the part where it’s like, ok, you have cancer. Make sure you do what you have to do to get through this.”

Sanjay’s optimism extends beyond day to day life to his running. Rather than freaking out when things don’t go as planned, Sanjay adapts on the fly and makes the most of each situation. This has led him to have positive results, even when conditions or circumstances are less than ideal.

For more on Sanjay, please read: https://globalnews.ca/news/6041732/calgary-cancer-cycling-chemo/

All of this and more in Episode 8 of the Art and Science of Running Podcast.

Intro and outro music by Dallin PuzeyGOIN 4 A WALK.

Please listen, subscribe and rate this podcast on Apple PodcastsSpotifyStitcherYouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Please follow us on TwitterInstagram, and Facebook and let us know what you’d like us to discuss in future episodes.


Episode 2: Group Training, NN Running, Recovery, Trusting the Process



Live from Malc’s basement in Cochrane, Alberta, co-hosts Malc Kent and Jacob Puzey discuss group training, specifically the NN Running Team, with whom Malc has been working in Kenya.

 

Malc originally moved to the area because a research and development center for Garmin is located in Cochrane. Malc’s wife worked as a wireless developer for Garmin and Malc did some consulting and testing work on wearable running technologies.

Over the years, Malc has worked as a consultant for a number of companies and groups.

Most recently, Malc has been working in Kaptagat, Kenya with NN Running, the training group with which marathon world record holder, Eliud Kipchoge, trains.

Coach Patrick and team physio, Marc, monitoring a team track session in rural Kenya. Photo by Malc Kent.

Malc discusses some unique features of the group that help make it so successful:

  • Everyone accepts the process.
  • Everybody does their job.
  • They don’t burden themselves with over analysis.
  • Often in training, the superstars are in the middle and not out front pushing the pace on every run.
  • There are no secrets.
  • The training is essentially the same workouts on the same days every week.
    • The track workout happens on one day.
    • The fartleks happen on another day.
    • The long run happens at another day.
  • This routine helps make recovery predictable and manageable.
  • They just consistently do the work and consistently recover from the work.
  • The altitude and dirt roads help, but the group mentality is what really sets NN Running apart.
  • Running camps are almost military style and foster camaraderie.
  • When not running, the athletes are fine doing nothing.
  • One key to success is recovering from hard work.
  • The group dynamic is one of constructive interference.

Malc relates his experience as an elite climber to trusting one’s teammates or coach. The stakes in climbing are extremely high. There is no middle ground. You’re trusting your life with a person hundreds of thousands of times in one trip.

Jacob describes some of the groups of athletes with whom he has worked and how important trusting the process, trusting the training, trusting your teammates, and trusting the coach can be.

Outro music by Dallin Puzey, GOIN 4 A WALK

Please subscribe to and rate this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Please follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook and let us know what you’d like us to discuss in future episodes.