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Voice of the Mountains: The Edge of Effort with Alex Hutchinson
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In the first episode of Voice of the Mountains Season 2, journalist, author and athlete Alex Hutchinson reflects on his journey from writing the acclaimed book Endure to navigating the uncertainty of future pursuits. He and host Steve House explore the tension between exploration and mastery, the “effort paradox” that makes hard pursuits meaningful, and how personal values shape decisions in sport and life. Alex shares how his own changes in direction, from physics to journalism and from external validation to intrinsic fulfillment. They discuss how athletic experiences can teach resilience which transers to all avenues of life, and help us push beyond perceived limits. The conversation offers rich insights into motivation, purpose, and the science behind our desire to do hard things.
You can find more about Alex Hutchinson on his website, alexhutchinson.net.
If you'd like to check out our special offer for podcast listeners visit: uphillathlete.com/letsgo
You can also write to us at coach@uphillathlete.com
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Transcript
Introduction & Themes of Season 2
00:00:00
Speaker
Truth does not offer you a path that is frictionless and smooth and free of blemishes. Truth asks that you are willing to lose everything to get closer to her.
00:00:11
Speaker
To have the courage to be demolished in her honor by opening up wider and wider to a staggering, awesome, complicated, heartbreaking, brilliant life.
00:00:22
Speaker
to bear witness to what is joyful and also to what is painful with the same curiosity, respect, and love. Because we live in a world of darkness and light, and they are equally our teachers.
00:00:38
Speaker
Welcome to Voice of the Mountains and the first episode of our second season. Today's conversation cues up some new themes for this season. Perhaps the most obvious being that we will be borrowing our guest's perspective to examine the quixotic art of becoming from the outside looking in.
00:00:58
Speaker
Our first guest has helped us all think more deeply about what drives us forward. He has lived a life that remained open to choosing the harder path. He has asked himself why our achievements do not resolve our inner restlessness, and he has discovered for himself that the finish line, more often than not, is the starting line for a new kind of journey.
Mastery, Exploration & Meaning
00:01:22
Speaker
I invite you into a new season, and I invite you to contemplate the tension that exists between mastery and exploration, to examine the paradox of effort,
00:01:35
Speaker
and to think about what it truly means to seek meaning and toil and struggle and reflection. Let's begin.
00:01:48
Speaker
So Alex, thank you for being on the podcast. It's really great to have you. Thanks, Steve. It's awesome to be here. So you know yeah our listeners are going to know you from your work at the New York Times, from Outside Magazine, of of course, your book Endure, which many uphill athletes are fans of and have have shared with me personally.
Alex Hutchinson's Restlessness Post-Success
00:02:07
Speaker
I heard you talking about how you felt like you had sort of reached a professional peak with Endure, and and in another interview and that you felt sort of restless and maybe not completely settled somehow with that.
00:02:25
Speaker
And how did that how did that play out for you? How did that come up? How did you recognize that feeling? And then where did that lead you? Yeah, I mean, endure...
00:02:39
Speaker
and you know not to break my arm patting myself on the back, but Endura, I was really proud of that book and was the culmination of probably a decade's worth of of pretty focused reporting in one specific area.
00:02:53
Speaker
and and and it It resonated. like A lot of people read it and I heard a lot of people said nice things. and you know All in all, I guess what I'm saying is if if I had written on a cocktail cocktail napkin in 2004, I guess it was when I decided to go to journalism school, if i what what would be amazing? What would fulfill your dreams in this career?
00:03:16
Speaker
um Endure was pretty much it. yeah I had a chance to spend years covering a sport that I'm really passionate about running and to talk to scientists and so talking to people that I found interesting and um and and engaging in a conversation with a broad audience, not just with my buddies on the long run.
00:03:37
Speaker
so you know all the different and it and It sold a lot of copies too. so all All the different sort of modes of external gratification were being scratched for me.
Goal Pursuit & Career Path Decisions
00:03:48
Speaker
and I shouldn't have been surprised but because you kind of think, oh, well, then life will be complete and and I'll just settle back on the sofa and there'll be nothing more I want. but if If there's one thing I should have learned from running, it's that um achieving one goal gives birth to the next goal.
00:04:05
Speaker
and In running, it's it's very obvious what the next goal is. if you If you run a certain time, you want to run faster than that time. ah in In journalism, it's less clear. and so i in the so Endure came out in 2018, and I sort of was busy with Endure that year. but By 2019, I realized that I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do next, but I had the feeling that it wasn't just kind of doubling down. It wasn't writing Endure 2. I was little actually actually a little bit struggling to figure out what it was I did want to do or what or what what would make me happy or or fulfilled or, or, and so on.
00:04:42
Speaker
I can imagine there was a lot of, uh, external pressure from probably publishers and, and others who were like, Hey, here's, it's all teed up for you. Do endure too. It'll be easy. It's going to be popular. There's more to say on the topic.
00:04:58
Speaker
You know, you could probably write an outline in your head in 30 minutes or less. yeah,
00:05:05
Speaker
you know But you didn't do that. How did that how did that play out? Yeah. i mean and um it's as As much as there's perceived external pressure, a lot of it was also internal pressure. like i you know i i'm must I'm a strategic guy. I i like making a living. yeah and so i was aware of the the realities of the situation and and um really i'm i'm also I would say if you look back over the course of my life, I've been pretty good at following the prescribed path um at, well, if if you if you're good at science in high school, you go do a science degree in university. and If you're good at physics in university, you go do a PhD following, quote unquote, the next logical step.
00:05:54
Speaker
yeah and There've been a few times where i've I've deviated from that and the biggest one was I was a physics researcher in my late twenties when I was like, actually, and and, you know, the next step is to start looking for a a professorship or whatever.
00:06:07
Speaker
And I thought, actually, this isn't what I want to do. I want to be a journalist. And so I, I'd taken that big leap at that point, that would have been 2004 when I was 28. And so this felt like another one of those moments where the, the, the science, the, the, the,
00:06:23
Speaker
the ruminations or the the the signs in my head were that actually, Alex, this is a time not to just keep doing the the thing that's expected. and And I guess one one thing I'll say is I had role models that in in this. And on the one hand, you know,
00:06:43
Speaker
Within my family, my dad was an engineer, an oil field engineer, until he was 28. And then he went back and and decided to to go to theological college at that point. And my older brother was ah was doing a PhD in math until he was 28. And then he decided he actually wanted to be an archivist and he went to library school. So I've i've seen people take these...
00:07:04
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ah left turns. and Even within my own with my own field, you know someone who I really, really look up to is is David Epstein, who had written the Sports Gene in 2013, which really set him up to be the the sort of sports science guy. He was at Sports Illustrated at the time.
00:07:22
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and And it was a sports gene that was fantastically, it was a fantastic book and fantastically successful. And he left Sports Illustrated and went to ProPublica to do investigative environmental reporting. And then he ended up writing a very different book called Range.
00:07:35
Speaker
And so i had I had conversations with David about about his thinking, and and but he really... um His example sort of helped me to believe that, okay, you know you know you don't have to do what's most lucrative or um will be most you know materially obvious. You could do other things and and it's it's not totally irrational to think about what would be fulfilling.
00:08:00
Speaker
So you have, you know, these these role models, let's say, and i mean, Epstein's an an amazing writer. I love both of his books for different reasons, but just like I love both of your books for different reasons or in different topics.
00:08:15
Speaker
But what what do you think, having written this book about exploration, what do you think is fueling this kind of urge to take left turns, as you put it? Where does that come from? Where does it where does that...
00:08:29
Speaker
You know, and and I mean, you wrote a ah lot about this and in the book, but i'm I'm very curious because it seems to have affected you very personally and what the intersection between your personal journey with this and what you observed in the scientific literature and talking to all these experts in penning, you know, many chapters.
Human Urge for New Challenges
00:08:50
Speaker
Where was that intersection and how do you or is it or did it feel were they divorced these two areas for you? No, they were it was there was very much a sort of meta kind of chasing the tail of of the dragon element where I started writing the book to find out why I wanted to write the book.
00:09:10
Speaker
Once I got into the book, it became it became its own topic. And and in a sense, that that that sort of faded away. I knew like this is the book I wanted to write. And so there was no longer this... like ah I could almost no longer even remember why I was confused about what I wanted to write. Like, this is perfect for me. But starting out, I was like, I know I want to write something different, but I don't really know why and and and how this connects to all the other times in my life where I've felt like I wanted to, I was didn't want to just stick with the same old that I was attracted to novelty, almost for the sake of novelty.
00:09:42
Speaker
And so, yeah, there's definitely this element where I was writing trying to write it and and In fact, in the initial draft of the book, the in the introduction, i so i so have a sort of i had a very long section where I was sort of like Hamlet soliloquizing about, but do I dare to write another book about you know endurance? what should Should I did you know to to write or not to write?
00:10:06
Speaker
and My editor was like, look, I get it. i get it. You can put a paragraph in there, but no one wants to start a book, open a book and have be like, I don't know what I want to write a book about. like You want to feel like the author knows know what he's talking about. So anyway, all of which is to say it was very personal.
00:10:18
Speaker
and And in terms of the answer, in terms of like where this urge to do something different comes from, you know There was no like simple pot of gold at the end of the rainbow there' was like, oh, now I understand everything about my my inner workings and and life is simple. But I did come away with it with the feeling that, um you know as as I argue in the book, that that ah that in a very fundamental, deep way, we're we're wired to want to pursue the unknown, that we're we're not wired to sort of get to the destination and um
00:10:49
Speaker
and be like, all right, we're here. now i'm got to be we're we're We're always looking for the next thing in ways that can be very productive or sometimes unproductive if if it becomes ah if you if you lose the ability to ever enjoy you know getting to your summit or whatever the case may be. But um yeah, i think I think it's a deep thing that we all experience in different ways and in different contexts, but is there for deep evolutionary reasons. Yeah.
00:11:16
Speaker
You talked about this idea of the explore-exploit dilemma. Can you explain what that is for the listeners that haven't read your book yet? Yeah, yeah. So, know, when I started digging into this the literature about exploration, this is the concept that probably that dominates the way scientists have... Like, there's there's different ways of thinking about exploration, and there's sort of philosophical ways and and ah personal development ways, and there's science or business ways.
00:11:43
Speaker
And... So scientists will try and put people in situations where you have to choose between exploring something new or exploiting the knowledge you already have.
00:11:56
Speaker
um and And once you start to think about decisions this way, you realize that these decisions are everywhere in our lives. And what one of the classic illustrations is you go to a restaurant that you've been to before,
00:12:09
Speaker
Do you order the hamburger that you know is, it was good. You had it last time. It's fine. Or do you try you know the special, which you have no idea. Maybe it's going to be better. like It's special, right? like Maybe it's the the best meal they can make.
00:12:22
Speaker
On the other hand, maybe it's the special because it's you know the the fish leftover from two days ago that they need to get rid of and it's going to be terrible. so and And you have no way of knowing until you until you order it. And of course, there's all sorts of layers of ah hope and regret. like you You order the special, you the someone else at the table orders the burger, and then you get the special and you're you know you're eating the fish. and You're like, oh man, I could have had the burger and look how good it Oh, it's so juicy.
00:12:46
Speaker
so we you know We agonize, them at least, i don't know. I don't think I'm alone in saying we agonize about these yeah about these decisions and not just about which ones should we take, but why am I doing this? What does it say about me that I always order the burger? or yeah or so ah but So that's on the micro level.
00:13:01
Speaker
You can zoom out and it's like career decisions, relationship decisions. ah Do you ah explore for a better boyfriend or girlfriend? or do you Exploit has is a word that has some bad connotations, but in this case, do you do you stick with what you know?
00:13:17
Speaker
If you're a company, is use it R&D versus research? If you're a society, what do you value? So ah we're We're always facing these decisions and they and what's with the crucial point about the exploring option is that you don't know how it's going to turn out.
00:13:34
Speaker
Particularly when you when you zoom out of the restaurant example, you start talking about you know, society, but I'm specifically thinking about the athletes that I work with on a daily basis where they're juggling like, I don't know which trip I should do this year. I don't know which races I should run.
00:13:52
Speaker
ah Those types of decisions and all these factors go into who else is going to be there, how competitive will the field be? Am I going to get, you know, points for the, for the finals that I want to enter? Like all these factors, right?
00:14:06
Speaker
And at a certain point, like it often comes down to values. like I value but points because I really want to go to the UTMB World Finals. So the points are super important, so I'm going to choose to go to to canyons instead of something else that weekend.
00:14:25
Speaker
So how does that manifest, though, in terms of how the scientists think about these things when values are something that are very human, very subjective among individuals? I'm dying to your answer about this. Yeah, yeah.
00:14:45
Speaker
dying to hear your answer but yeah yeah so In the lab, when they when when scientists are studying explore-exploit decisions, they'll try and strip it of all these all these all this context. right so the the the they'll try and and and The way they end up studying it is what's ah in in many cases is what's called a multi-armed bandit.
00:15:06
Speaker
ah game where it's basically, it's like it becomes a gambling game. You go in and there's a bunch of slot machines, which are one-armed bandits. And and you don't you know some you don't know what the payoff or probability for each of these machines are. So you have to kind of explore the different machines and then find which one you think is best and exploit that with your money.
00:15:24
Speaker
And okay, there's an inherent value in there, which is that money is good or whatever that you want to do, or or competition is good, whatever you want to do as well as you can in this game. But it's this ultra simplified, you're just playing the odds of what you think is going to um good going to pay off. And so I had this discussion with a a magazine editor a few months ago where I was trying to explain the explore-explore dilemma and you know using the example of a career decision like, oh, well, what if... Because studying the math of these...
00:15:57
Speaker
by studying ah the math of these slot machine games, you can come up with various rules about how you should approach these, or not rules, but guidelines. ah you know you should You should be optimistic in the face of uncertainty. You should choose a path that has ah ah choose choose an option that has a route to your best possible outcome, even if it's low probability, because then you'll be less likely to regret the choice than if you choose a job that is more stable, but but more of a dead end, not going to lead you. Anyway.
00:16:27
Speaker
so You can go down that path, but what the editor said to me is like, hang on, this is like you're telling people to make this decision based on whether it has a route to their best possible scenario, but we don't know whether this person, you know maybe they're trying to support their they they have to support their extended family right now, and maybe that you know blah blah but yeah there's all these contextual real life things.
00:16:48
Speaker
and It was sort of was a good wake up call for me. it's like Yes, yes. We can't make decisions purely on the basis of on attraction to the unknown or or optimism in the face of uncertainty.
00:17:03
Speaker
It has to be embedded in all all the other factors that we decide. And some of those are, are are like this editor was pointing out, very real, like... but If by exploring, if by taking explore option, you're going to risk not being able to eat tomorrow, then that's a bad decision independent of your you know whatever
Exploration vs. Exploitation Decision-Making
00:17:22
Speaker
youre you're itching for. but But on a more subtle level than just um like can you eat tomorrow, like think things like values like you're talking about,
00:17:33
Speaker
the The explore option ah may lead you somewhere that is... It's an itch that you feel, but it's going to lead you somewhere that's not consistent with what you the way you want to live your life. And so yeah I guess the that so the short answer to your question is these sorts of explore-exploit The exploration framing of the question is just one dimension in your decision matrix. And and and there have there have to be others.
00:18:02
Speaker
And sometimes those others have to be more important. And so even going back to my post-endure, like, what do I want to do? I was in an extraordinary privilege extraordinarily privileged position that Endure had done well enough that i didn't have to just sort of say, let's do whatever it takes to make sure i can i can you know pay my rent next year next or next month or or whatever the case may be. so
00:18:27
Speaker
And i look, so I started out as a freelance journalist in 2006. And if you were to say, and you you look at what I used to write about, and I wrote about jazz, I wrote about philosophy, I wrote about accounting, I went to accounting conferences and wrote for accounting magazines.
00:18:44
Speaker
And on one hand, it's like, wow, that was really exploratory. That was awesome. like I was pursuing all these different interests, pre-existing interests like music and and sports, but also things that I'd never even thought about. I hadn't studied philosophy, but I went to a philosophy, you know, I did stories on on a philosophy professor.
00:19:01
Speaker
i didn't have any interest in accounting, but actually that kind of... So it's like, that was really exploratory. But if you look back to what was my actual decision matrix then, it was like, I'm a freelance journalist. I need to pay my rent. I will take any assignment I can get. I will leverage any connection I can get.
00:19:15
Speaker
So it's you know it would be reinterpreting history to say I was exploring at that point. Sure, sure. Yeah. And so that was where I was going to ask... What I was going to ask you next is if you look back at these big decisions, do you see them as acts of of courage or just a necessary course correction that you needed to do?
00:19:36
Speaker
There's a mix, I would say. So, i mean, i would say the decision to write the explorer's gene was almost an overly conscious decision of like, let's let's take a chance. Let's be exploratory. Let's let's lead down a path where I... When I started writing The Explorers Gene, I didn't know i didn't know the science of... i hadn't I wasn't immersed in the science of this area, so I didn't even know how much science there was.
00:20:03
Speaker
And so that that actually made it a very hard book to write because that you know two years in, I'd be like, Holy crap, there's a whole branch of research that I'd never come across. How did I miss this? Oh my God. like got ah and yeah so i was I was over a year late on this book. now
00:20:19
Speaker
Now, the decision when I left physics, for example, and decided to go to journalism school, I can tell that story in like five different ways ah in terms of what were the key moments where it crystallized in my mind.
00:20:33
Speaker
you know and it's It's very hard to get back into my head at that point. like Sometimes I'll be like, oh yeah, i had I'd never even thought about journalism. Then I'll be like oh wait, but I i volunteered for like a month at a student newspaper when I was in grad school. so I must have been interested in it then.
00:20:48
Speaker
so
00:20:50
Speaker
I don't think I would have explicitly framed it as I need to explore at that point, or i'm it's the call of the unknown. i think that played a role. I think I think i was just, like the the trajectory in scientific careers,
00:21:04
Speaker
is you know you start out you know in high school, you're taking nine different science courses or whatever. and At the beginning of university, you're taking still a but you know you're taking biology and chemistry and physics and math and you know calculus and algebra.
00:21:17
Speaker
and you just You start to get narrower and narrower. and Then you know you go through your PhD and you're getting quite narrow. and Then I was doing my postdoc and and the the trajectory is you're eventually like the world expert on on almost nothing, right like you're on this super narrow area.
00:21:32
Speaker
ah And I think I was feeling the the constraints. and I mean, brilliant scientists um can break out of those shackles, right? They can jump across disciplines and they can they're they're creative. i was I was a scientist who was maybe not going to be able to do that, and I could feel the walls closing in. And I think part of what why I left was i i wanted...
00:21:57
Speaker
a broader palette to play in. but But yeah, it's it's it's it's hard to it's hard to rewind the tape and know exactly what was going on in my mind. I didn't go down that path personally, but I have very close friends who did go down the academic path in different branches of science, and especially knowing them through our twenty s and 30s when they were when they were working really hard. It was extremely competitive.
00:22:24
Speaker
the the the The chairs that they were aiming for at the end that they could then, you know, continue to do the research they wanted to do. I mean, there was a very narrow path to that outcome So I ive many times thought to myself during those decades, like, wow, um I'm glad glad I didn't go down that way because i wouldn't have made it that far. And some of them are professors at universities and some of them hold chairs now. And some of them are one of them ah went and opened conference.
00:22:56
Speaker
specialty audio retail shop, you know, so, you know, that's, there's, there's a ah wide variety of, of, of outcomes there. So I can totally understand how, how that would feel. Those walls could feel are closing in. And I also understand hearing that, you know, and having read you for years and years, you know, you are a journalist and just, you know,
00:23:22
Speaker
perhaps I'm mixing the real Alex with the journalist Alex, you are a science guy. Like you get into the details of what the paper says and how the study was done and, you know, what studies it's referenced, where, you know, where it's published, who reviewed it, all these things are important in your mind. And, you know, that obviously important.
00:23:46
Speaker
partially, i must i would think, has to be somewhat formed from you know your science education you underwent. Yeah. and and it is like i thank you Thank you for that. That's nice. and and For sure. and so i when if If I were to be given a time machine, it's like, do you wish you'd started journalism when you were 21 instead of 28 or 30 or or you know but by the time I finished journalism school?
00:24:12
Speaker
um No, and part of you know for a couple reasons. One is that I had fun doing my PhD and doing some research. That was pretty cool to be exposed to that world. um But also, it I'm a totally different journalist than I would have been had I gone to journalism school at 17 or 18 instead of at 28.
00:24:33
Speaker
Now, that's fine. like Some people know they want to be journalists. and i yeah or Some people want know they want to be whatever they want to be at a young age, and that's great. I didn't. and But i I definitely don't view those years I spent in my 20s as a waste because you know and and you can i can so i can say cliches like the the journey was more important than destination. And and I think those cliches are true. That's why they're cliches, that that I enjoyed the journey.
00:25:01
Speaker
But also the destination is different as a result. And and I think I'm ah a different and hopefully a better journalist than I would have been if even if I'd been studying journalism for those years. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Pursuing Hard Paths & The Effort Paradox
00:25:12
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think this is part of the exploration of Voice of the Mountains is trying to understand why we do the things that we do and why we we're so passionate about them.
00:25:26
Speaker
And brings together a lot of the points that you bring in your book and we've even touched so where you're going be a the You know, it's there's there's an exploration component. There's like understanding who I am component.
00:25:40
Speaker
You also talk about an idea called the effort paradox, which I think applies here, because to me, it's very more.
00:25:52
Speaker
ah part of doing the hard thing is to become someone because you did the hard thing. you you You are a different journalist because you had this rigorous hard science education.
00:26:06
Speaker
You wouldn't see the world the way you do if you hadn't done that. You can't separate that anymore. And that's part of what makes you a great journalist. And uh,
00:26:17
Speaker
how do you talk How do you think, also as a runner, you know yeah as a lifelong runner yourself, how do you think about this effort paradox and how it connects into ideas, like whether it's a decision related to which run to do next or a decision to what to explore next academically or or cognitively?
00:26:41
Speaker
Yeah. so ah This idea of an effort paradox is something that really spoke to me. And and so basically what just to state it clearly, I think the most succ distinct way of stating is it's that we sometimes we enjoy things not in spite of the fact that they're difficult, but because they're difficult or not just enjoy. Sometimes we value things yeah and precisely because they're hard.
00:27:05
Speaker
And so to zoom out a bit and back to you know the the beginning of your your question about um like understanding our motivations and that the different motivations. The first thing I'll say is that I'm suspicious of anyone who thinks they know, who is confident that they know why they do the things they do.
00:27:23
Speaker
that That at least, you know i can only I can only generalize from my own personal experiences, but I find it very difficult um to be sure that I know why I'm doing what I'm doing. I know what i like I kind of, with enough introspection, I know what it is I want to do, whether it's leave journalism or you know write a book about exploring.
00:27:41
Speaker
Why do I want to do it? That's that's harder. and there's so i can always As I said, I can tell the story in different ways. and i think I think in general, we are multi-motivated. like were we're we We have different motivations that come together. but This idea of doing the hard thing.
00:27:56
Speaker
i mean, one thing I'll say is how did I end up in physics? Like I coming out of high school, I i liked a lot of things. I didn't know what I wanted to do. i was I was really torn.
00:28:07
Speaker
And I think probably the most influential piece of advice I got, and it was from some friends of my parents, Just saying, if you don't know what you're going to do make sure you do something hard because you can move from something hard to, excuse me, to to something that's a little easier, but you can't move up the gradient. it's It's much harder to, like, if I studied English literature, which I would have loved, I'd At 28, I couldn't have said, man, maybe I'll be a physicist.
00:28:35
Speaker
Maybe I'll catch up on 10 years. like it It doesn't go that way. So in a sense, I did physics because it was the hardest thing I could think of. ah and and that And that was in keeping with who I was as a as a runner. ah you know like you know The slogan on the backs of the t-shirt is, my sport is your sports punishment. like We're doing the thing that's hard.
00:28:56
Speaker
um And- ah you know When I think about this, i you go back to George Mallory, like, why are you climbing Everest? Because it's there. And it's like, the classically, ah you know, we remember that not because it's a good answer, but because it's a bad answer. It doesn't tell you anything, but it speaks to the fact that, as I was saying before, we don't always know why we're doing what we're doing. And so I think the effort paradox was the first time a kind of light went off in my head of like,
00:29:23
Speaker
ah Yeah, that's that makes sense. A lot of my decisions are based around this idea that things that are difficult feel meaningful. feel they they made It feels like you have a purpose when you're when you're undertaking this hard thing, whether it's climbing upwards or you know veering off to the right in your career.
00:29:40
Speaker
and so I think it's it's a pretty good unifying theory, and I think it's also not a bad kind of organizing principle for decision-making. Yeah. I mean, it really resonated with me because to me, it sort of explained all of climbing in two words.
00:29:56
Speaker
Because if you think about climbing, and and I know you've you've taken up rock climbing as ah as a hobby, according to... at a very low level. Well, yeah. But we, climbers have essentially created...
00:30:12
Speaker
imaginary systems of numbers, but just a system of numbers that just we pulled out of a hat to rank which climb is harder than the other c climb.
00:30:23
Speaker
And which climb do we value the most? The one that's the most difficult. And how is that judged? Well, just by like how many people can do it if and how hard they think it is compared to other things that they've done. It's all completely subjective.
00:30:40
Speaker
And you know If you go into alpinism, my kind of niche part of that that sport, you know we were never interested in climbing Everest because that was super easy. It had been done lots of times.
00:30:54
Speaker
We were interested only in doing the really hard, like what's the what's the biggest unclimbed wall in the world that we can find? Let's go do that. like nobody What has nobody done before?
00:31:06
Speaker
And then even better, what have been people been trying to do for 20, 30, 40 years and not been able to do, you know that's the more effort has gone into trying to do it and failing, then the bigger the prize when finally somebody pulls it off and all the stars align. And for me, that effort paradox idea just immediately explained all of this.
00:31:30
Speaker
Well, I mean, I think there is that the sort of paradigmatic expression of what is the effort paradox? The effort paradox is that people climb mountains by deliberately taking a harder route up. it's like so you know You can get all mushy in terms of motivations, in terms of like, well, you want to get to the top because it's so beautiful up there, because you you know because you want the satisfaction of making it to the top. It's like,
00:31:59
Speaker
you know the whole point of of or the the The whole existence of alpinism is like, it doesn't matter it's not about who got to the top. It's how did you get there? what What route did you take? And, oh, it's not, oh, you were so clever. You found an easier route to make it to the top. It's not, oh, you were so great. You found a ridiculously hard route. let's you know it's like the And so there's this definition of of games or playing games but from a philosopher named Bernard Suits that it's the ah the voluntary alpinism.
00:32:27
Speaker
acceptance of, or the but the the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles. I mean, that is a description of climbing mountains. And we all know intuitively that if there's an escalator on the backside of the mountain, or more realistically, if there's a gondola on the other side of the mountain,
00:32:42
Speaker
but but For a certain type of person in a certain context, you're not interested in the gondola. The point is not to to be at the top. So yeah, the effort paradox is, I mean, mountain climbing is the example of the effort paradox and the sort of the existence of mountain climbing is what tells us that we're not like rational economic beings just trying to max you know get the best view. or get or like There's something about the effort that that calls to us. Yeah.
00:33:08
Speaker
And I would argue that the whole trail running category of running would fit into this too. And I've had this discussion with my fellow coaches and athletes where, you know, you have people trying to decide, okay, i you know, I want to go, i don't know, to a certain location to do a certain race because I've never been there before, for example.
00:33:31
Speaker
those are Those are valid reasons. And then you also have people are like, well, I just want to go do this FKT because – you know fill in the blank, whatever the reason is. But all of those things are ultimately decisions you know be that are prioritizing you know this this magical point between what they what they say I can do and what I think I can do that's a little bit more than what people say I can do.
00:33:59
Speaker
And it's not impossible, or at least I don't think it's impossible, but it's it's going to change
00:34:09
Speaker
how i'm how I show up in the world because all of a sudden I'm the person that can run 230 marathon instead of a person that can run a, I don't know, 330 marathon. Like those are very, in the running world, if you can run- Or 230 versus 231. Yeah, yeah. It's a world of differences. It's a huge difference, right? In some contexts.
00:34:29
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And so though it within those those social groups, that that becomes very, very important. Yeah. And the, I mean, what you're, this zone you're talking about of just, you know, on the border of what you're capable of, that is, that is the magic zone. And, you know, when, when people talk about flow states and stuff, what that's one of the preconditions. It's like, you need to be trying to do something that is hard, but, you know, in theory ah ah achievable. And so, you know, when I think about why people run,
00:35:01
Speaker
We have all these explanations about runner's high and you know mental clarity and stuff. And and there are definitely, i think that's part of it. And there are people whose primary experience of running is just to get out and clear their heads.
00:35:14
Speaker
But for people who get deeper into it, I think there is... It's not just about going out and running. you You have to find some challenge for yourself that you're not sure you can do. that that That's what really becomes, addictive isn't the word I'm looking for here, but compelling.
00:35:33
Speaker
And it's it's like, we don't, it's not exciting to do something you know you can do. And so just, you know, my version of you, you not climbing Everest is me like, can you run a marathon, Alex? It's like, that was not interesting to me. Like I could, I ran close to a marathon in training for one mile race.
00:35:51
Speaker
I knew I could run a marathon and I did eventually run one once for a magazine story, but I wanted a challenge that I wasn't sure I could do, and but but but one that was possible. not not you know my My goal was not to you know run a two-minute mile or set a world record. Neither neither of those things were were possible to me. But one of the nice things about running and and and about any good hobby is that you can find it's It's infinitely scalable. you you know Like I said, between 2.30 and 2.31 for a marathon or whatever, you you you can set the challenge at just the level that will that will keep you interested.
00:36:25
Speaker
And setting that challenge appropriately is, I think, a skill that that that helps differentiate who ends up sticking with these activities over the long haul, that they continue to find ways that are or ah challenges that are ah attainable but not easy.
00:36:44
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:36:47
Speaker
if You've talked elsewhere and written elsewhere about consistency being one of the primary predictors and keys to performance. And with x explorers or these this people, know, I'll throw myself firmly in that basket of people that always have to kind of look around the other the corner or ski down into the next valley or climb that next mountain over there that they see.
00:37:14
Speaker
you know, how does that kind of
00:37:18
Speaker
Explorers drive and the need for new challenges balance with the need for consistency to become good enough, you know, again, relative to your goals to master something difficult like running. Like running is, people think it's super easy. Of course, biomechanically, maybe it's to do it at least average. It's not that hard, but to do running well is extremely difficult.
00:37:47
Speaker
There's a tension, yeah, for sure. There's there's there's a tension between those things. and and you can You can think of that tension it in the context of, of ah maybe this is a bit of ah a stretch, but but in the context of things like ADHD.
00:38:01
Speaker
so One of the things I read about in the book is, you know there's a and I won't go you know too deep down this rabbit hole, but there's a gene related to a dopamine receptor that is linked to um heightened exploratory behavior.
00:38:14
Speaker
in in people historically and in the present. and That gene is also linked to ADHD. You can see that like
00:38:23
Speaker
traits that were really adaptive for hunter-gatherers that lead to greater success as a hunter-gatherer, the desire to always find out what's over the next hill, whether there's something better to eat or somewhere somewhere better to live, that was really helpful.
00:38:37
Speaker
And it's maybe not adaptive in grade 11 when you're supposed to sit still all day and and listen to the teacher. um and so what you know the the The need to explore, it's not inherently good or bad, but but it's context specific.
00:38:55
Speaker
and so If you want to be great at running or at you know most other things, there comes a time when you have to knuckle down and just do it.
00:39:06
Speaker
And I think yeah this is obviously a complex topic, but what I would say that one of the interesting insights that comes out of um both the the math of exploration, but also the the the analysis of people's career trajectories and and how you know how great science happens is that the optimal is to have periods of exploration followed by periods of exploitation.
00:39:31
Speaker
So if you want to know... um when When an artist is going to paint some their greatest works or when a scientist is going to produce their greatest ah experiments, if they're if they're in a period that's purely exploratory, they're doing something different every week or every month or every year, that that's useful, but they're not they're not likely to that's not when they're going to do their best work in their career.
00:39:53
Speaker
and Similarly, if they're just kind of exploiting, if they're just doing the same thing over and over again, they're not going to do their best work. But if they have a period of exploration, a wide period of exploration where they're really checking out different options until they find the thing that clicks for them, and then they knuckle down into a period of exploitation, that's you know under this is that that's when career hot streaks happen. That's when people do their best work as scientists or artists or in other fields.
00:40:19
Speaker
So you know as ah as a runner for sure, like ultimately, how exploratory was I in my twenty s not very exploratory because every morning and every evening I was going out for a run and that was often quite hard. and i was I didn't have a lot of bandwidth for anything else, but i but I had made the choice that I wanted to see how good I could be as a runner.
00:40:43
Speaker
and so and you know and Unlike mountain climbing, trying to be your but but your best as a runner does not involve traveling around the world a lot except during you know during the competition season. so yeah Yeah, you have to you have to think about the context and and um sometimes yeah you have to turn off that exploratory gene or you have to be willing to to knuckle down.
00:41:07
Speaker
Yeah, i it's great to hear you tell that story through your personal experience. For for me, it was very similar in that Through my 20s, we talked to a lot of athletes about how to develop as an athlete, right?
00:41:27
Speaker
And so it's quite similar to what you said. And it for me, my story was my 20s, I was doing lots of different climbing because... I knew I wanted to be an alpinist and alpinism is kind of like the decathlon of climbing. You have to be pretty good at everything, but you're not the best at any one sub-discipline of, of climbing mountaineering.
00:41:47
Speaker
And, and then I reached a point where I just, cut out everything I could and just focused on, okay, what do I need to do to train, to have enough money to go on these trips, to you know line up all these things? and And that was the mission statement and nothing else.
00:42:06
Speaker
And it's hard, I think, today, especially for the younger climbers in this environment where a lot of value is put on validation of having done and not a lot of value is put on the validation of being in the process of building or as you said, knuckle under and just running.
00:42:32
Speaker
And you know that's that's what most of it actually is. How do you ah take what you've what you've learned from writing these books and talking to people, how do you frame that up for people and what do you tell them?
00:42:49
Speaker
Yeah. ah the The challenge is that the best thing to tell people is something they've heard over and over ah but you know about journeys and destinations, but you have to keep hearing it. And I have to keep telling it to myself. that This is not a lesson you can learn once.
00:43:02
Speaker
So, I mean, my athletic story is that the most important thing in my life until I was 28 was trying to run faster on the track.
Lessons from Running & Writing
00:43:12
Speaker
I really, really, really wanted to make the Olympics. Yeah.
00:43:16
Speaker
And I did not make the Olympics. And so that the most, you know, look, if I had, if, and and if I could, you know, alter the, ah alter the trajectory of history, of course I would make sure that I made the Olympics, but not having made the Olympics, I gave me a valuable lesson, which was that, you know, I looked back and to my surprise, you know, as I, as I moved on from that portion of my life, I was like,
00:43:39
Speaker
I don't regret a damn thing. That was an awesome time. And and and not just that I got to you know travel around and race in some cool places. ah The feeling of having
00:43:53
Speaker
gone absolutely as hard as I could on this one thing, of of having left no stone unturned, of having... really exposed myself in the sense of like, I'm doing everything. I have no excuses. It's not like I could have been better if I'd tried harder.
00:44:10
Speaker
I tried as hard as I could and I got as far as I could. And that was such a powerful experience. Like even and even at the time I was sort of conscious of this, of being in a race or or let's say finishing ah a really hard workout at the end of a really hard training week and thinking, you know there's not many people on this planet who have given...
00:44:31
Speaker
they're all to something in the way that I'm doing right now. And so that lesson I think has, I've taken to, into the journalism world.
00:44:42
Speaker
When I was writing Endure, I had, you know, I was filled, my mind's, my mind was filled with doubts about whether anyone else really cared as much about the nuts and bolts about the of the science of endurance as I did.
00:44:55
Speaker
And because i sort of and i don't know whether it's true or not, but I created this sense in my mind that my career was it you know hanging in the balance. that this If this book did well, I'd make it as a journalist. and If it didn't do well, I would have to go mop floors.
00:45:11
Speaker
um but I was able to kind of talk myself down from the ledge and say, Alex, just write the book you want to write. um Write the best damn book you can write about endurance and
00:45:25
Speaker
you know hopefully people will like it. But if if not, it'll be just like that the 10 years of your life you spent running where you didn't make the Olympics, but you you have no regrets about giving it your all. and so And I tried to take that with me for Explorers Gene. And you know honestly, it doesn't mean that I don' i am not was not and am still not full of doubts and worries and and like hopes and all this stuff. that All that stuff doesn't go away, but it gives me a ah sort of... You talked about values. It gives me a sort of bedrock where I can, when I'm feeling like, oh crap, I can't believe that you know it's not going well or whatever.
00:45:58
Speaker
Hey, i i I spent whatever it was for this book five years doing it because I thought it was worth doing. So it doesn't really matter what what happens now because the process was valuable.
00:46:11
Speaker
Yeah, and you've been able to knuckle down on this process, whatever, at least three or four, i don't know, probably more times in different areas of your life. And I know people are going to ask, and I don't know, so I have to ask. It was 1,500 meters? is that Was that your event?
00:46:29
Speaker
Yeah, my I ultimately... Look, it's that's a complicated answer too. I think I might've been better at 5,000, but I had injuries, but I ran 342 for 1500, which is right around a four minute mile, which is national class. It's, um, but, ah not quite good enough to, to take the next step up.
00:46:47
Speaker
well A lot of our listeners are runners and they're going to love to know that. So when, when you think back to that, let's say first, and I'm presuming that it's running is maybe that first,
00:47:02
Speaker
love or that first thing that you put left no stone unturned um on in pursuit of, where did that come from? Where did you, what what was, what was the impetus? Like what made you leave? What made you go so hard for that?
00:47:20
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, this is a question I think a lot about because my kids are now nine and 11 and, um, and I want them to care about things in life and to, to, to to push themselves hard, but I really, really, you know, I'm unclear.
00:47:35
Speaker
Like, and so I look back trying figure out, so what, what was it? Cause it wasn't, know, my parents didn't push me into running. They didn't, they didn't know anything about running. Um, and so my feeling is, oh, we need, I need to back off. I need to, you know, I need to model for them what the way I think people should live, um, without like pushing them.
00:47:55
Speaker
And, and Not to go too far down a tangent, but my my wife is was also a very, very good runner, and but she had a very different childhood than me. She was running when she was you know eight years old and going her dad was training for a marathon.
00:48:08
Speaker
so She has a model of like parental active parental engagement and leadership and, hey, let's get you joining a club at eight. Whereas I have a model of, let's just leave the kids alone and and see what they stumble into to to see.
00:48:22
Speaker
But then the the the worry is it's like, okay, if I leave them alone and just let them hang around, they're going to decide that actually sitting on the sofa and playing video games is is a really fulfilling way to live their life. and then i'll And then I'll feel really stupid.
00:48:34
Speaker
So, I mean, I think honestly though with running for me,
00:48:41
Speaker
this i think And I think this is actually somewhat counter to the usual trajectory is that probably external validation got me got me in the door that I was good at running. So I won races.
00:48:52
Speaker
And so like but the first when I first joined a track club when I was about 15, it was because i was I had three more months i left to to run in the younger age group in in high school. and I thought, well, I'll just train for these three months to try and beat up on these little kids.
00:49:07
Speaker
Um, and then, but then I did way better than I expected and I was like, well, okay, i'm hooked. i'll I'll keep, I'll keep training. And so for me, i would say that the click actually didn't come until about a year after my undergraduate, when I was, when I was then in graduate school, uh, I got a knee injury that ended up lingering for a couple of years.
00:49:26
Speaker
And so that derailed my track career and As time went on, my worries went from like, am I going to miss this season to, am I going to miss this year to, am I going to be able to get back to where I was?
00:49:42
Speaker
And then I realized I was just worried about like, am I going to be able to run again? Cause I really liked running. I really want to. And that was almost an epiphany to me to realize that at some point I had internalized or I had I had fallen in love with the with with the process and that, yes, I still wanted to get back to to competition, but if that running with I had a different relationship with running at that point once it was taken away from me. but but i know like so the The usual thing is that people start doing things they love and then they get external validation and the external validation replaces the internal validation. They start only doing it because other people tell them they're good at it.
00:50:19
Speaker
for me, at least as I think about this just now, it it feels like it was almost the opposite way that it started out. I i was doing it because I was good at it. And then I realized that that I loved it, but it was only having it taken in a way that prompted me, prompted those that level of reflection to to realize how much I liked it independent of the results.
00:50:40
Speaker
Yeah. And there's so many paths to this, right? Like I have a couple of friends that have achieved a lot in their lives. And and our joke among the three of us is that we're the insecure overachievers club.
00:50:57
Speaker
Like we have to prove it to ourselves because, you know, somehow we weren't born with that feeling that we can do whatever we want.
00:51:07
Speaker
and And so we have this internal critic that's always saying, you can't do that. And it's like to tell the, show the internal critic that they're wrong, that I can do this.
00:51:18
Speaker
And ah yeah there's, so there's, there, there are many paths to this. And i also always tell people that these, things,
00:51:31
Speaker
these pathways only reveal themselves as you're walking on them. Or another way to put it is these ideas just don't simply come out fully formed, right? Like in hindsight, it looks like a clear trajectory. Oh, I went from this to this to this to this.
00:51:46
Speaker
But in reality, it was a bunch of little steps and some of them were left, some of them were right. And when you look, when you zoom way out, it looks like it goes forward, but you know, the forward could have been lots of other directions.
00:52:00
Speaker
Yeah. i And so that, yeah, my, I definitely would say distrust anyone who's maybe not anyone, other people may be different, but distrust trajectory stories that are too linear and too, that makes sense that, that there there has to be some, some meandering and that that meandering is, you know, in terms, in terms of the story or the idea is not emerging fully formed that you learn them by, as they walk the path. It's like, what what I find is often a,
00:52:29
Speaker
when I think these things through, i feel like, ah, I understand it all all now and what you know it all makes sense. and Then I realized that this idea that I've understood through 10 years of journey is just like, it's something that people were telling me the whole time.
00:52:45
Speaker
and It's the advice that I was already... it's like and Again, that the that sort of most prominent cliche the value of the journey, not the destination. it's like It doesn't matter how many times people have told me that,
00:52:56
Speaker
the But there's there's a sense that in living it, you know I could only fully grasp that it's like, yeah, the running, as much as I enjoyed running good times, that's not really what I mostly remember about running.
00:53:10
Speaker
he It's not even the most positive things I remember about running is is not the finish of the race. and'm I'm dwelling on this because this is a big part of This is one of the larger themes that I want to pull through this season of this Voice of the Mountains project, where I have this theory that learning to do hard things in a field like running or climbing teaches you that you have the ability to do hard things in other parts of life, whether it's writing books or running companies writing.
00:53:46
Speaker
ah you know, did that there's a million other ways to express, uh, heart, you know, doing hard things and very often doing a hard thing in not, not always, but doing a hard thing in sport very often does not have any value to anyone else other than, you know, the person, a couple people that were involved in, in doing it, but doing hard things in other areas of life,
00:54:14
Speaker
ah medical literature, all kinds of other, could potentially have massive benefits and value to other people. And the process we we focus on, oh, well, that scientist discovered such and such, and that was you know penicillin, and that led to this, changed the trajectory of the of the world and changed world history. It's like, well, how did they learn to how did Pasteur learn to try and fail and rerun experiments and and do this and do that to I mean, eventually essentially stumble into a discovery that, you know, was for probably bound to happen at some point because
00:54:57
Speaker
it but yet still changed the world. There was all these things that happened before in the development of that human that allowed them to try and fail and keep going.
00:55:08
Speaker
And yeah I mean, even the pursuit of an education in medicine, especially at that time, was was was out of grasp for i don't know what percentage, but the vast majority of of humans on the planet at that time. So there's a lot of steps that happen before the big result.
00:55:31
Speaker
Yeah, and and i I definitely, obviously, yeah and it will be no surprise to anyone that I i share share your yeah your your thoughts about doing hard things in one sphere can can can lead to or can help inform your ability to do it in other spheres. And you know again, I think about that a lot with my with my kids. And for better or worse, we've taken our kids out on some some fairly demanding things backpacking trips and and you know we're not we're not assholes so so my you know my wife and i'll be like ah did we misjudge this time like if if one of them is struggling um but we really like i really i look at my daughters who are 9 and 11 and it's like i believe that they have
00:56:21
Speaker
a confidence in their ability to endure their ability to keep going, even when they don't want it. And it's like, you know, I, I, I make the analogy to this, even when we're sitting at the table and it's, and it's like, yeah, I don't like mushrooms or whatever. And it's like,
00:56:37
Speaker
I get it. And, you know, I don't serve you mushrooms often, but when, sometimes when you get a food you don't like, sometimes you just, you just do it. In fact, I was was reading Scott Jurek's book recently and he, that's one of his, that his dad's sayings would be like, sometimes you just do things.
00:56:51
Speaker
And I think you learn that if you're climbing a mountain or if you're out on a backpacking trip, um you know, it It becomes real because you know if my daughter's asking me, like I just want to sit down. It's like, well, this is no longer daddy just being a jerk making you do something.
00:57:07
Speaker
We are out in the mountains now, so we don't have a choice. You can sit down here and die, or we can keep walking. and you know They might love that answer, but then much they're much like, okay, well, I guess get up and keep walking. and or even like not even It doesn't have to be in in the mountains. It's like my kids walk to school.
00:57:24
Speaker
It's about a mile. And it doesn't matter if it's raining or snowing. They walk to school. And it's like, I think a small thing like that, I like to think, I flatter myself to think that they're learning a lesson about just getting it done.
00:57:36
Speaker
Yeah. And the interesting thing about your story of them, you know, on a backpacking trip and sitting down and then having to, when they're sitting down, they're like, no, I can't, I can't.
Mind's Role in Physical Performance
00:57:49
Speaker
it and And this is also so true in so many of these sports is like if you have to, actually it turns out you can, right? Like there's there's there's endless examples of this in sports and particularly in in endurance and your book is is full of several of them, but yeah.
00:58:06
Speaker
Yeah. like so i love that I think it was Ambie Burfoot, who was a a mentor of mine at the at Runner's World, who his his his explanation of the greatest workout and that you can possibly do is five times a mile as hard as you can. and Then when you're done and you're lying in the gas, grasping gas my for breath, the coach comes over and says, do one more. and You say, well, I can't. I did them as hard as I can, like you said. It was like, tough. Do another one. You get up and you're like, oh, I did another one in almost the same- the same speed.
00:58:31
Speaker
And and ah I mean, even so outside of the sports realm, i had ah i had a boss who I really liked and when I was a postdoctoral physics researcher. The boss was quite a character. And when something was, you know he would be requesting some, like, i want I need this adjustment to my lab or something. I need something built here. And the you know the administration response would come back, then oh we can't do this.
00:58:55
Speaker
And his response is always like, you can't or you won't. and you know It was an obnoxious response, but it was also it's one that i i I often think about for in in for myself and for other people. It's like, when you say you can't do that, you you actually just mean you won't, right? But you could do it.
00:59:12
Speaker
Just like my daughter, you can get up and walk. Your legs are still working. You just are tired. And I understand that, but you can do it. What is going on physiologically when i know, sorry, we have to go into physiology at least once in this conversation.
00:59:29
Speaker
When you do that sixth mile, And, you know, it's it's so interesting because, you know, in life, we don't get to do this very often with Uphill Athlete because we are we're coaching remotely. But one of the things when I've had the opportunity to coach people live, especially, you know, the oldest trick is in the book is in the weight room is, you know, the athlete, you know, you're just doing, you're just putting the weights on the bar for them. You're not, you know, maybe you're, they think it's their usual weight, but it's actually,
01:00:05
Speaker
much you know maybe not drastically, but 5% more. And they think that they can't do that. But, you know, they they start doing it and they're like, well, this is this is hard, but they still do the eight reps or whatever you prescribed.
01:00:20
Speaker
And then at the end, you tell them, oh, by the way, did you notice um that was a PR or whatever? So the the brain has has this has this way of tricking us and we can we can reverse it and trick each other with with this tool. Tell tell me about that.
01:00:36
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it's definitely a trick you can't play every week, rights right? it's it's ah It's a tool to be used valuefully. No, but so I think a couple things to say about that. One is... To me, i think the the way I think about this physiologically, the way the the what the the most convincing explanation about this is that the master switch that determines whether you can keep going or maintain a pace or lift a weight is your sense of your subjective sense of effort, of how hard it is.
01:01:02
Speaker
so you're you're you're running along i'll I'll use running because it's the easiest example for me. you're you're You're running along at a given pace. your Your rival starts to pull away. um And your decision about whether to to try and stay with them, fundamentally, it's not that it's not that at that moment in time, you're running as fast as your legs can can can physically go. At any moment in a marathon, right up until the final 100 meters or something, if a lion jumped out from behind the nearest lamppost, you would start sprinting. You still have you still have the ability to go faster, but you're judging
01:01:35
Speaker
that it's ah not prudent for you to start sprinting with 10 miles to go still left in the marathon. So you're making your decision based on a subjective effort. And that effort does depend on all the physiological stuff.
01:01:47
Speaker
It depends on your core temperature and and the lactate levels in your blood and your respiration rate and yada, yada, yada. But it also depends on the thoughts in your head. Because if you're asking yourself, can i you know can i keep can i Can I maintain pace and stay with my rival?
01:02:03
Speaker
if if if what you're telling If what you've been telling yourself for the last hour is, oh, this is awful, I'm having a terrible day, this obviously I screwed up my training, or boy, that you know that injury I had last month must have really messed with my training. I can't do this. I'm just not tough enough. I always fail in these situations.
01:02:19
Speaker
then you're just far more likely to answer, no, I can't do it because you have all these reasons already teed up for why you can't do it. Whereas if your your internal monologue is like, this is good, everyone else is hurting just as much as me. It's hard. This is what I trained for.
01:02:34
Speaker
that I did the best training I possibly could. And you know I'm ready. This is the day where I want to give. You're just more likely to be willing to to push. And so The feeling that you can't go any farther, I think that the the crux is is not a representation of your legs' inability to to move.
01:02:52
Speaker
It's a warning light. Your your brain is is getting into that zone where it feels that ah you probably better hold off. and so You can turn that warning light off. not indefinitely and not forever, because eventually it's going to come back on and instead of orange is going to be red.
01:03:05
Speaker
But yeah it's it's ah it's a it's an it's a negotiation as opposed to an ultimatum from from your brain that you can't go. and And so if if you you if you fiddle with those settings by by changing the input, then then you you find you might be able to to squeeze a little bit more out.
01:03:25
Speaker
Yeah, I like all the input idea. you know, we work with a lot of athletes who have ah not done formal training before. And so with them, very often I start them with a heart rate monitor or because they don't have a sense of – what is easy and what is what is hard. they've They've not used training zones before.
01:03:49
Speaker
But once people have been doing that for a while, we get rid of often can just get rid of that and go by feeling. Because then the the train by feel is more like you know you you have all the inputs. you You know what the temperature is. You know what your hydration level is. You know if you've slept well.
01:04:05
Speaker
And you know what your heart rate is and your perception of that that exertion, the kind of RPE idea. And, you know, that's when, once we get people to that, then we can really like make a lot more,
01:04:19
Speaker
ah I would say you make less progress in turn because the the biggest gains come in the beginning, right? but But you really get to a point where you can really help them understand their body and how it works and how their physiology is changing to adapt to being able to do long duration, you know, running or climbing or alpinism or mountaineering, whatever the sport is. And it's really interesting to see people go through that process. And there's there's definitely ah there's definitely a learning curve for a lot of people.
01:04:52
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I definitely agree that it's for people who grew up in a sport, like, you know, I started running seriously when I was, let's say, 15. it it's It's sometimes hard to remember that the average quote-unquote civilian has done very few things that will put them in as much prolonged, if they're lucky, you know, assuming like leaving trauma and stuff out of it, but and physically has done very, has has rarely experienced the kind of ah distress that you can go into in an interval workout and stay there for an hour and and and you know you're not dying because you've done this before.
01:05:30
Speaker
But for for for someone who's just you know doing a couch to 5K or something, or just getting into something, you absolutely have to calibrate those those feelings and and help them understand what's possible through experience, but also through telling them what's what. And then in terms of like ah moving to the field-based approach, which is that's certainly how I i run.
01:05:51
Speaker
i have ah i have a complicated relationship with data. like I'm fascinated by the science and like, oh, what can we learn from heart rate variability and real-time tracking of lactate or glucose or whatever the case may be? But I will say I have yet to see any
01:06:06
Speaker
data that or any convincing demonstration that all the data we're currently able to collect can make better decisions or be a more sensitive marker of how you feel than asking, how do you feel if you're someone who's tuned into your sensations? So um I'm not anti-data. I agree, yeah.
01:06:27
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not into data either. um i think that a lot of people want they want the right answer, and they want it from a credible source. And they want it to be as digestible and simple and easy to understand and utilize as possible, which are all valid once.
01:06:46
Speaker
But the reality of being and a human body is often a little more complicated than HRV tells you to do this today or not do this today. that's That's one reading on a variety of things. And I understand people are hoping that it captures a bunch more than that.
01:07:04
Speaker
But again, i also haven't seen that any of these one features do. The the other thing is that the the reality of of training and of doing hard things is that you you do have to ride that edge sometimes. You do have to you have to make a difficult decision of like, okay, I'm very tired.
01:07:24
Speaker
I've been training hard this week. ah Sometimes to to you know to to do well in running, you have to train when you're very tired. but you also like And so you have to face, am I being a coward? am i Am I saying, I don't want to do this workout because I think I'm getting sick or something? Or is it just that I'm like tired? and and so i' So these decisions become all sorts of the internal dilemma. And so the best case scenario for me is have a good relationship with a coach.
01:07:50
Speaker
And then the coach can make that decision. And then, you know, there're there I have a conversation, the coach knows me, I say what but how I'm feeling. And they're like, yeah, give it a try or go for it or back off or go have it's And so for me, that offloading the moral dimension of of ah of making that decision is helpful.
01:08:10
Speaker
and Not everyone has like has that relationship available to them. And so I think people are looking for that from data. It's like, oh, well, my my readiness score said I wasn't ready to go today. So that's why I'm taking data off. Not because I'm being lazy, because we we all fight with that like you know that ambi ambiguity of um when to push when we're already tired.
01:08:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:33
Speaker
There, you've said that, i don't remember where I heard you say this, but you talked about how ultra running is kind of the the wild west because it's so of running, the wild west of running because it's such a hard place to kind of collect information, collect data, understand, ah you know, predict performances, predicts.
Challenges in Ultra Running & Training Science
01:08:58
Speaker
for variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the terrain is super variable, the weather can have a really outsized effect on on performances and and other things.
01:09:10
Speaker
as a As a journalist that is, at least my from my viewpoint, very grounded in the peer-reviewed research side of things,
01:09:26
Speaker
how do you how do you pull those How do you pull that apart? How do you how do you look at that? Yeah, it's it I mean, honestly, it's it's a struggle in its attention because ah yeah my preference always, the way you know when I write sweat science columns for outside, almost always the starting point is a single peer-reviewed study. like Someone has done an experiment and they've published it.
01:09:49
Speaker
Now, I'm not just going to take that experiment and swallow it whole. I'm going to try and... evaluate where it fits in with a larger body of literature, and I'm going to look for trying to understand what the strengths and weaknesses and what it can tell us and what it can, blah, blah, blah.
01:10:03
Speaker
So that's that's where I'm most comfortable. So how do I deal without ultra running? Like you said, there's a lot of sources of variability. First of all, Like it it's a lot, it's very hard to get, you know, 20 volunteers to come in and say, okay, we're going to have you run a hundred miles as hard as you can on four different occasions under slightly different conditions.
01:10:26
Speaker
in the lab on a treadmill. And then of course, even if you could, like what does that treadmill tell you about how someone is going to perform at Western states or whatever, or you know at altitude or in heat or whatever?
01:10:38
Speaker
So there's all these known sources of uncertainty. But I think there's an even deeper one, which is, let's say, All we cared about was the 100-mile record on the track.
01:10:51
Speaker
So it's going to be a very predictable conditions. It's an indoor track, so we're going to control all the conditions. And we have a bunch of crazy volunteers who are willing to do a bunch of studies for us ah where they're they're going to do a bunch of 100 miles on the track, and we can test all these different conditions.
01:11:08
Speaker
Even then, my reading of the very patchy literature on on on ultra running is that the longer the distance goes, the less predictive physiological variables are. So, you know, if you want to know who's going to win a mile, if you know VO2 max, lactate threshold, running economy, maybe some other parameters, but those three are the big ones.
01:11:31
Speaker
you You can go a long way. it's never It's never perfect, but it's like, yeah, you can all the way up to a marathon, you still, you know, lactate threshold, VO2 max running economy. You have a pretty good idea of how the race is going to going to pan out.
01:11:43
Speaker
so the longer you go, and there's been a few studies that have compared like ultras where there's you know there's a 50K, a 50 mile, a 100 mile, and it's like the the value of those predictors goes down even within a given race.
01:11:56
Speaker
And you know my my sort of um interpretation of that is that ah yeah the The longer you go, the more it's coming down to the mental side of the of of performance.
01:12:07
Speaker
and and We don't have any ways of, or we have very um in imperfect ways of quantifying what's going on in someone's head. so so you know fundamentally ultra running, think is a ah demonstration of the the idea or the claim that um the mind you know that it's not we're not just doing a ah physiology measuring contest, ah but it means that it's it's hard to write much about the physiology.
01:12:33
Speaker
and And it's hard to write about the psychology because that's so personal. It's hard to say, well, here are the four things you should say when you're halfway through a hundred mile race.
01:12:44
Speaker
Yeah. When you... How do you so when you're, and this could be ultras, but ah originally if we go back to Lyddiard's time or something, it was the marathon. It used to be the the the gold standard of endurance.
01:13:05
Speaker
um How do you,
01:13:10
Speaker
The way I see that sport endurance sport specifically has developed over the decades is that athletes and coaches have trial and errored their way to the best practices.
01:13:27
Speaker
And trial and error, I mean by things like doing lot training, base building, doing a lot of high intensity interval training, and and then seeing what happens in competition.
01:13:40
Speaker
Does it stack up to the other people that are the best in the world at that time? And then in most cases, the scientists come along later and explain why things happen the way they happen.
01:13:55
Speaker
One of the things I wanted to ask you is how you handle that or how you view that as a science writer. And as you said, you so you typically start with a piece of re peer-reviewed research and then try to interpret it.
01:14:11
Speaker
Maybe that's, I'm putting words in your mouth, but you try to interpret it within the context and what's what we know. Whereas a lot of things, and I've been part of projects that have failed this this test, right? where we Where we used to think, like both myself and also with as a team of coaches, if we roll back six, seven, seven eight years ago, we were telling people to do a lot of fasted trading.
01:14:41
Speaker
Now it's like completely, we we know better, partly because literature science came out and said, actually, you know, this is having some very negative effects on these people and in other ways and hormones, balances and all these these other things. And and then we we switched and then guess what? People started to run faster. Now we're maybe swinging the other way. Everybody's consuming as much dehydrate as they can.
01:15:06
Speaker
yeah. and yeah ah But for the most part, it's the athlete coach test on the test and competition that is that is leading things forward from my point of view.
01:15:20
Speaker
Do you have a different point of view? And if so, can can you explain how you see that progress in the terms of what we know about endurance training? Yeah, no. So I would 100% agree that it's the athletes and coaches who are – ah who are coming up with the ideas and trying them,
01:15:41
Speaker
um inevitably that process has some blind alleys. um And and and it's I think it's relatively self-correcting ah that that you don't need a scientist if if you've if you've come up with the idea that and let's say flashing back to the 90s, which was when I started running seriously, that actually low mileage is the way to go. you should You shouldn't do too much mileage. You should do all speed work.
01:16:09
Speaker
um that was you know It was sometimes cloaked as a scientific approach, but really it was just some ah some athletes and coaches trying that. and the In general, people got slower.
01:16:22
Speaker
and Now, the problem is you always have, the the way this usually works is you have a few examples of people who are like, wow, that guy won the Olympics and he was only doing two miles a week or whatever. so then ah Then a whole bunch of people are doing it and then it's like, wow, this whole country is way slower than it was 10 years ago. That sucks. and so There is this self-correcting mechanism, totally independent of any science. Science doesn't doesn't even need to come into it.
01:16:45
Speaker
So what, now, why am I spending life- It is little bit of a scientific process though, right? Like experimentation, getting just not a peer reviewed science. Right, you're right. it I shouldn't call it not science. There's observation and hypothesis and and you know and and self-correction. But in terms of the the stuff that ah that I write about, it's like,
01:17:04
Speaker
but Why am I devoting my you know my career to writing about peer-reviewed science? so Part of it is like, well, hey, that's that was my my ah my competitive advantage. i I am comfortable reading the the physiology and and talking to the scientists. and so It was something that I didn't see a lot of when I was younger and and kind of wished I'd known a little bit more about how this stuff works.
01:17:27
Speaker
But I think the science can play a role in and an important role in testing some of these assumptions and by you know by figuring out ah you know whether, but let's say we something works.
01:17:42
Speaker
but there's different ways of explaining why it works. Well, if we figure out why it works, then we can probably do it better. we can We can figure out a better way of taking advantage of um a tactic that that science didn't come up with. and i can't I have a hard time thinking of um examples of you know training methods or performance enhancing methods that came straight out of the lab as opposed to being validated after athletes that experimented. I mean, they exist. like people you know It's not that athletes were like, I wonder what ketones will do.
01:18:17
Speaker
Scientists came up with that. Now, the truth is I don't think ketones do very much, but but there are things that come out of the lab that are that are science first. But for the most part, it's like yeah like training low training and ah in a depleted state, it's like, well, you know Miguel Indurin in the nineties was doing five hour fasted rides. and And I think people have had that idea for a long time.
01:18:40
Speaker
The question is, is it good or bad? And that it's hard because there's so many variables. ah Experience it doesn't always self-correct quickly enough. And so, you know, that, and you know, a cheap example would be, um,
01:18:55
Speaker
If you look at the list of athletes who endorsed power balance bracelets 15 years ago, these are like pieces of rubber rubber name bracelet that's supposed to align your chakra or something like that.
01:19:07
Speaker
I mean, and they're very good athletes. These are like Shaquille O'Neal is claiming that he scored like 67 points one night because he put on the power balance bracelet. And so experience isn't the perfect guide. So science can test um contest claims that are outright crap, like power balance, but it can also try and sort through this complicated thing of like, how many carbohydrates should you be taking when you're in a, you know, in an ultra endurance event?
01:19:33
Speaker
And it, it, it doesn't, it's not easy to answer and it's not like one experiment is going to resolve it, but I think it's going to guide people more accurately and maybe more quickly than just sort of waiting for the weight of experience to kind of come down on this is how many carbs we should be taking or or or we shouldn't be taking because there's a, there's a, you know, David Epstein, who we mentioned earlier, he, he, yeah he had a line that I, that I've always liked, which is just because you're a bird doesn't mean you're an ornithologist.
Athlete Experience & Scientific Study Collaboration
01:20:02
Speaker
So, you know, You ask a bird how to fly, you might not get the the right answer. So there there's, I think, value in that external perspective. But we shouldn't but the cart but you know confuse which is where the where the bulk of the knowledge is coming from is athletes and coaches trying stuff.
01:20:20
Speaker
Yeah. yeah now that I agree, and that aligns certainly with with my experience. And as coaches on our group chat, just this week, we're having a I wouldn't call it debate, but ah i like nobody knows what to do with carbohydrate. like like There's all these, like I did this and my athlete did that and we tried 90 and we had to ah do this to get their gut to handle this. and
01:20:49
Speaker
And we want to have this conversation with that outside perspective at the same time. Like what the people studying this, what are they saying? You know, like we need to be having more of this back and forth conversation.
01:21:01
Speaker
And i think that that can bring a lot of value ultimately to to the athletes that are either just trying to be better runners or trying to run their best race or whatever.
01:21:12
Speaker
Or, you know, in in many cases, especially around nutrition, the topic is, you know, not make themselves sick because, yeah you know, they need to support the training, the the load that they have on their bodies from training and competing or traveling and expeditions and and so on. And they need to stay healthy.
01:21:31
Speaker
And that's, but's you know, as as you know, from your own experience, it's a massive, it's a lot to carry physiologically to be training a lot. Yeah, and and i think that dialogue between you know the practical world and the scientific world is is super important. And the best the best scientists in in this field are ones who are highly attuned to what's happening, ah to what athletes what's going on in the peloton of the Tour de France, and who are testing that. And so you might say, ah the scientists are always behind. they're always They're always just looking at what the athletes... And it's like, that's what they should be doing. They they should be looking at what's going on at the front of the pack and and trying to test whether it's a good idea or how does it translate to other people?
Training Recommendations & Individual Differences
01:22:12
Speaker
How individual is it?
01:22:13
Speaker
As opposed to just like, let's try and make up something completely new. and you know that's if that's I think that's less likely to to pay to pay fruit. so Whenever there's questions that athletes are arguing about,
01:22:26
Speaker
I always am thinking like, even this seems like a boring question. I wish more scientists would study this question because, because athletes still aren't sure like stuff like stretching. Like, couldn't we get some better studies on on, different types of stretching? It's like, there've been hundreds of studies, but we still don't really like have a good sense of, of what it does in what context for whom and why. Yeah.
01:22:47
Speaker
yeah Yeah. That's a great example. We, you know, again, like we get that question all the time as coaches and as coaches, we have, and highly individual responses to that question based on our experiences and know and and and to a certain point you have enough experience if you've been doing this for 20 years you can give an athlete feedback that's appropriate for them at their know knowing their body and and so on but that's that's that's a narrow case right we're hoping for something that helps let's say everyone with with that kind knowledge yeah and and that that may be a uh
01:23:23
Speaker
a not not to be a downer, but that may be a pipe dream. Like how many carbohydrates should people take? It may be 30 to 180 grams, depending on who you are and what your specific context is. And and the the who you are part is what makes it hard to write recommendations.
01:23:41
Speaker
um So yeah, look, hopefully we hopefully science continues to progress and we get more specific answers. But like, yeah, that the the the the dream of ah There being one answer may be bit of an illusion.
01:23:56
Speaker
Yes, of course. Of course. But we love the idea that there will be certainty waiting for us, right? like comfortable Just around the corner. Just around the corner. Just over the next horizon. One more book.
Conclusion & Resources
01:24:08
Speaker
Where can our listeners connect with you online or or come to any of your book presentations or Or read your book. Yeah. So probably the best place to find me these days is at my website, alexhutchinson.net.
01:24:24
Speaker
And I have a list of upcoming events. There are there are a few and going around wherever I get an opportunity and giving a talk about exploring and stuff. um But also i am on various social media outlets. There's links there. um Usually it says sweat science, sometimes a sweat underscore science, but alexhutchinson.net is probably the the best starting place.
01:24:44
Speaker
Great. Well, thanks very much, Alex. This has been a great wonderful conversation and got us off on a great start for our second season of this this exploration into you know who we are and who we become through doing hard things and thinking about it, how to thinking about how to do it better. And I really appreciate your voice and keep doing what you're doing. You're you're you fantastic out there and look forward to connecting again in the future.
01:25:13
Speaker
Thanks so much for having me, Stephen. It's really an honor to be part of this conversation. One of the most common questions I get is, how should I get started with training? Well, they say the first step is the hardest, so let's make that easy.
01:25:26
Speaker
We are offering free four-week samples of our most popular training plans for mountaineering, trail running, climbing, and more. Go to UphillAthlete.com slash let's go to sign up for our newsletter, and you will not only get monthly insights on training for uphill athletes, but you'll also get a sample training plan.
01:25:45
Speaker
It's totally free, so why wait? That's UphillAthlete.com slash L-E-T-S-G-O.