Consistency Compounds Over Time.
1) The Tim Ferris Show #364 w/ Safi Bahcall: On Thinking Big, Curing Cancer, and Transforming Industries. (2hr:25min)
2) The Bare Performance Podcast #59: The Journey to a Sub 3-hr Marathon (45min)
3) The Run Smarter Podcast: Q&A (34min)
4) Human Performance Outliers Podcast #247: Extreme Explorer Ray Zahab (1hr:15min)
5) Becoming Less: [YEG] Cart Roll Out (38min)
1) This pod came to me as a recommendation from a buddy and the discussion ended up in a lot of really interesting places. I haven’t listened to Tim’s podcast before and I had no idea who Safi Bahcall was prior to listening. Safi’s career path is nothing short of intriguing - from physicist, to bio-tech entrepreneur, and finally to author, he’s got a wealth of information and experience to draw on and the discussion reflects that.
All these things you’re sure are true - what if they weren’t?
The whole pod is designed around the above quote, the idea of taking a counter-intuitive stance on an idea that everyone does or believes is true, a Loon Shot. TIm and Safi bounce around so much that it’s hard to give a complete synopsis of what to expect so I’ll focus on what stood out for me, but there may be many more valuable lessons to unpack for yourself.
They spend some time dissecting a method to analyze decisions in personal and business life. Using a mindset to analyze the process that led you to a decision rather than reflecting only on the outcome of that decision, as that may lead you astray. Process vs outcome - think chess. You move your bishop to take an opponent piece, which leads to you losing. It’s easy to say moving that bishop was the reason you lost and thus I should never move that bishop in that sequence again. However, Safi recommends taking a step back and thinking about what led you to the path to move that bishop in the first place. What were the decisions you made. That may have been the correct play based on circumstances, but how did you get there in the first place?
This reflection on process can be utilized in many circumstances, to which they give a lot of examples.
Later they get into a discussion on writing which for many might not be of use but for a complete amateur like myself it was interesting to digest. Safi’s #1 suggestion was to write FBR. Fast - Bad - wRong. Don’t stop, just flow and follow the narrative thread. It’s easy to stop to search facts or correct typos, but it takes a long time to get back up to speed - if you get there again in that session. You lose creativity when you move slow. Safi describes creativity as the ability to utilize speed, attention, and courage.
Safi describes a few other acronyms he uses to organize his thoughts while writing and reading. He uses the analogy of what “hat” are you wearing to help keep you on track.
For writing he wears 3 hats: hunting, drafting, editing.
For reading he wears 2 hats: RICLS - reading for information, content, and lessons and REAS - reading for art, ear, and skill.
I would say 100% of my reading is for RICLS.
They unpack a concept that I had never heard before which is that of a “false fail”. This is the appearance that a concept or idea failed when it was actually a flaw in experiment not the result.
The example given was that of Zuck’s money raising efforts before Facebook became the behemoth it is today. Many investors at the time were scared away because of the appearance that users of Friendster were all leaving for the new kid on the block, My Space, thus this would be the same fate for Facebook when a new social app came around. This made the whole field an unworthy and risky space to invest due to the assumption that you would be unable to sustain a consistent following. Was Friendster failing because users hop around too much or was it something else? After getting access to some user data one investor found that many Friendster users were staying on the site for hours despite the crappy coding and glitchy interface. What the investor determined was that My Space just had a better site with less glitches, not that the concept of social apps was doomed to fail. Friendster was a false fail. One guy gave Zuck 500k to get going and well, the rest is history.
The revisionist histories of many great ideas hide the fact that many were dismissed as non-sense before finally being accepted and written into history as such.
Safi and Tim unpack numerous examples including beta-blockers, rocket flight in space, the Eiffel Tower, and the 2 largest movie franchises in history - James Bond and Star Wars. None of them would exist today if the creators took a “fail fast and pivot” approach, which is common in modern day Silicon Valley. The advice given by Safi is that you must nurture your loon shots. Nobody knows what is going to be a “disruptive innovation” when they start. But if you challenge the ideas of what everyone believes to be true, you will certainly hit some friction but with perseverance, you may stumble onto something big.
Star Wars’ original name was “The Adventures of Luke StarKiller.” You can let that sink in and think in awe for a moment of how that turned into one of the greatest movie franchises of all time.
***
2) My buddy asked me if I’d heard of Nick Bare. The answer was no, but a quick IG search suggested maybe I should be following this guy. Nick is an extremely strong dude turned endurance athlete, turned sub 3 marathon finisher. I figured there had to be some lessons to learn from this guy and wouldn’t you guess it - he has a podcast. So I took a quick scroll through to find something and landed on him detailing his experiences on how he hit a sub 3hr marathon.
I’ll save some of the timeline for the listen but his first marathon attempt was in Austin in 2018 and he finished in 3:59. His second was in 2019 and he was slower by about 15 minutes.
After doing some training for an ironman and learning a bit more about endurance sport he attempted another marathon in early 2020 and finished in 3hr 24min.
His sub 3hr attempt came on Jan 30, 2021 clocking in at 2hr 56min.
I was thinking brilliant - here is a guy who year over year is dropping huge amounts of time off his pace while maintaining a larger frame than probably 100% of the field. Here’s what he had to say:
“The way to run faster is to actually run slower and focus heavily on building your aerobic base/foundation. 80-85% of my training were easy slow runs, HR lower than 150, conversation paced. I used the MAF method with a chest HR monitor paired with my Garmin and would run only based on HR. I would do 1 fast run a week, either a tempo workout or 800m - mile repeats.”
HA. I swear that was his quote not mine. The programming is nearly identical. Although there was no new info in the training discussion the confirmation (bias) that I’m on the right path to see some gains is nice. Here are some examples of his training sessions.
Example Tempo Run (mi):
2 mi easy pace warm up @ 8:20-8:40
4-6mi tempo @ 6:20-6:30
2 min rest
1 mi @ 6:15
2 min rest
1 mi @ 6:15
2 mi easy pace cool down
Example Interval Session (mi):
2mi easy warm up
10*800 @ 6:00 with 1 min break
2 mi easy cool down
His marathon pace was targeted to be 6:45:mi.
He goes on to discuss some of the fueling he did during training and the race and makes note that a big change he made from his previous attempts compared to his current one is the addition of proper fueling for training runs. This included a lot of a certain glucose-based product from his own line of supplements (G.1.M Sport - Endurance and Electrolytes mix). He is heavily pro-carb. He would never train fasted and for all longer runs he would bring additional fuel for the tank during the run.
He was hitting 55-60mi/wk during his training and started his taper 2-3wks before the race.
Here is a quote I liked that came from someone he was talking to before the race:
“The hay is in the barn.” In other words - you’ve put in the work, now go run your race.
He speaks a bit to his mindset going into this marathon effort with a classic car analogy - but I dig it.
“You don’t want to redline your engine for too long during the race - if you push it too hard and your engine breaks, it’s over. Professional drivers race their vehicles as close to redline as possible without going over it for too long - you want to push it at threshold. Push it to the pace it can hold for a long time without pushing over.”
Here’s another great quote to end on:
Show up consistently and the consistency compounds over time.
***
3) This was a quick Q&A with Brodie Sharpe where he answers some questions from IG. I particularly liked how he addressed the question regarding mental health and the return to running following an injury. Nothing he said was extraordinarily novel in and of itself but making sure you check all the boxes can lead to a client leaving feeling a lot better about their plan and prognosis.
His 4 main talking points were: discuss the potential of a flare up and what plan you will have in place in the event that happens. Brainstorm ways to keep them as active as possible if they are unable to run at that point so that they can maintain fitness. Lay out the expectations of what the rehab process will look like for this injury factoring in the individual nuances. Finally, continually ask them if they have questions…many people are too shy to ask what is really on their mind and it may take a few offerings before they spill the beans. In other words, you can’t rush the discussion.
Brodie also touches on why you would include plyo exercises in your routine, his evolving thoughts on mobility work, and tib ant treatment.
4) I’ve mentioned Colin O’Brady quite a bit before as he is a prominent name in the realm of professional adventurers, but never have I come across Ray Zahab. This is more of a knock on my knowledge of the scene than anything to do with Ray. It doesn’t take much research to find out that this guy is legit. His resume is too big to note here but one of his iconic feats was running across the Sahara Desert, a casual 111 days covering ~40mi/day. Ray is Canadian and considers himself a professional explorer and was Zach’s guest on a recent pod.
They go back and forth discussing Ray’s various adventures and swapping experiences. Ultimately, Zach was looking for some input on his upcoming challenge. He’s going to be running across the US in the fall which is obviously much different than the single day events the 100miler is used to. They discuss preparation and planning, managing adversity as it arises, nutrition, and recovery as it relates to running day after day, something Zach is not used to.
Ray also has the opportunity to discuss his charity Impossible2Possible. They bring youth along for different adventures and connect students and schools with the places he’s going introducing learning modules around environment, culture, traditions, or any number of topics specific to the region, all for free. He’s done 20 expeditions to date and is in the works to get more going as we near the end of the pandemic. You can see more of what he is doing here.
Ray’s famous quote is:
Limitations are 90% mental and the other 10% is all in your head.
***
5) Our local eco-friendly experts are back at it again dropping some knowledge on the upcoming cart roll out in Edmonton. Yes, we are behind the times, even compared to some of our neighbouring communities like Sherwood Park but we’re on track for a big update in our waste collection system. In this pod they give a comprehensive overview of just about anything you might be wondering involving the differing carts and the appropriate utilization of them including what to do if your cart is involved in a crime…
If you have any questions regarding the transition to a world of more organized waste removal give this pod a listen as I’m sure they’ve got the answer.
Thanks for reading!
