On May 25th, at 4:00 in the morning, Dave Proctor pressed start on his treadmill and started to run. Twelve and a half hours later, he hit the stop button, having run 100 miles, while breaking 2 World Records en route. Months of preparation go into training for and executing a feat like this, and the following is a recap of the preparation and execution of the treadmill event, and the future directions of Dave’s training.
Background:
With any endurance sport, there are four main pieces that make up the race day performance puzzle. These pieces are: Physiological Fitness, Structural Tolerance, Mental Strategy and Race Nutrition. If you were to compare yourself to a high performance race car, Physiological Fitness would be the engine of a car, Structural Tolerance is the chassis, Mental Strategy is the driver, and Race Nutrition is the fuel.
The combination of these four factors leads to our race performance (or failure), and generally whichever one is the weakest on race day is the limiting factor of your performance. If you were to put a Ferrari engine in a 1993 Toyota Tercel, top it up with premium gas, and stick a skilled driver behind the wheel, you would be fast, but you still wouldn’t be able to push that engine to the limit without the car breaking down.
By looking at these four factors, you can plan and execute a great race performance, and you can also use them to design an optimized training program .
What we identified going in:
When we initially started working with Dave in December of 2018, we looked at all of these factors using a gap analysis (what is the gap between where we are now vs. where we need to be on race day) taking into account his whole history of training and racing, wins and losses, successes and failures. From this, we identified that the two main areas where we could make our biggest improvements were Structural Tolerance and Physiological Fitness.
To learn more about what the switch was like for Dave, listen to the Personal Peak Podcast: Episode 2
1) Structural Tolerance
After Dave’s body broke down with a herniated disc derailing his attempt to run across Canada in the summer of 2018, we knew that we needed to get his Structural Tolerance back to baseline if he was going to be able to handle running on the treadmill at 4:40 min/km for 12h. (See the car example above – Yes Dave… I just subtly compared your body to a 1993 Toyota Tercel)
2) Physiology
Historically, Dave ran a lot of mileage at a moderate pace, and we knew we needed to work on optimizing this, first to reduce the number of miles of stress he needed to endure in training, and second to improve his physiology to be able to run faster. The body responds in very specific ways to certain stimuli, and we need the right stimuli in the right amount at the right time to work together for optimal performance. The moderate intensity Dave used to train at we like to call this the physiological grey zone. In this zone, you are trying to get race specific training effects, but can’t go long enough and aren’t going hard enough to get the stimulus you are looking for. We worked with Dave to run really hard on his hard days, and really easy on his easy days, polarizing his training, and avoiding the grey zone.
What we did to prepare:
Physiological:
Because Dave had such a big history of low intensity, high volume training, we knew we had to make a shift to high intensity, lower volume training to work on improving oxygen delivery, central efficiency, and running economy, to get him ready to run fast for 12h. We also elected to use this strategy to reduce the load on his body to allow him to recover from previous injuries.
These improvements netted him a 5k personal best (16:31), and first place tie in a 30k race (1:53) on the way.
As race day approached, we used a small amount of back to back training getting him ready for what the last half of the attempt would feel like without having to subject the body to actually running that far. To do this we would follow an intensity day (Z4 or Z3 intervals) with a goal pace long run (4:00) the next day. Through this method, we were able to get Dave mentally and nutritionally depleted, but the total volume of running can be much lower.
Structural tolerance:
Our goal was to first return Dave’s strength and mobility to baseline before building up a reserve of strength. This would ensure that as he fatigued, Dave had room to decline during the race without injury.
Our approach utilized the Personal Peak Injury Prevention Toolkit, which is composed of Strength 3 days per week, and Prehab (preventative maintenance) 4 days per week. This covers all the basic things needed to keep a runner healthy. On top of this, Dave also did frequent physio work with Tyson Plesuk at Movement Sports Clinic to address any specific issues that came up.
In order to keep injury at bay while returning his structural tolerance to baseline, we used a considerably lower running volume than Dave has historically done with the aim of going into the event with less cumulative stress on his body. This resulted in an average training volume of only 9:00 per week, spread over 6 days, and we managed to avoid any injury going into the event!
Mental:
Just like your body, your mind responds and adapts to the different types of stimuli it experiences. After years of pushing his mind to the limit on long runs, through high volume training weeks and long grueling races, Dave’s mind had adapted to tolerating staggering amounts of discomfort for long periods of time, and he is one of the most mentally tough athletes I know. In order to change up the stimuli, we worked on the ability to push HARD for short intervals, and repeatedly tolerate high amounts of discomfort for very short periods of time.
As a busy father working full time as a massage therapist, while also running a charity on the side, Dave gets to work on his mental fatigue on a daily basis. Any mental energy we could free up in his training would get put to good use spending time with his family, and enjoying his life outside of training.
For more background on Dave’s mental strategy, check out the Personal Peak Podcast – Episode 4: Death and Dragons
Race Day Nutrition:
During his 12 hours on the Treadmill, Dave burned approximately 11,500kcal. However, a runner cannot process that many calories while running. A more achievable fueling goal includes consuming between 280-380kcal/hour. Which means Dave would be replacing roughly 30-40% of the calories he would burn while running.
These calories were mostly carb based and came from: Fruit, Honey Stinger (waffles and chews), Chips, G2G bars, Juice and Skratch
How it went:
The treadmill presents such an interesting environment for testing an athlete’s limits, as we can control so many factors that affect performance. The treadmill does the pacing for you, climate and terrain are constant, nutrition is always available, and all you need to do is jump on the belt and not fall off the back. However, even with the controlled environment, months of training and a top notch race plan, you always need to be on your toes and ready to jump into damage control!
Physiological:
Going into the attempt, Dave was in amazing shape, and this was confirmed when we did a lactate test the day before to check in on his fitness and fine tune our race strategy. We determined that physiologically, Dave had potential to run the 100 miles in 11:15. Despite this, we knew that he wouldn’t be able to sustain that pace structurally, so we used a more conservative approach with our pacing strategy, aiming for a 12:00 finish, but ultimately finishing in 12:32:26.
Structural Tolerance:
We knew that this was going to be one of the limiting factors on his race performance, since Dave had some catching up to do after his big injury running across Canada last summer. Continuing the metaphor from above, Dave wasn’t strong/stable enough to run as fast as his engine could go (just like putting that Ferrari engine in that Toyota Tercel, his body just can’t withstand the stress of those speeds!).
Our race day strategy was to run a safe, comfortable pace, while still building up a bit of a buffer on the existing record early in the attempt, to give us some peace of mind if any issues appeared as we went. If things went well, we could ramp it up, but if everything went off the rails, we could still coast in ahead of record pace. 70 miles in, Dave’s hamstring started to grab if he opened up his stride when he had the treadmill faster than 4:30/km. Because we had a buffer on the current record, we were able to stop for two quick physio treatments with Tyson, and still just snuck us under the 12h record.
One point of frustration for Dave while he was running was that he had so much more fitness reserve to tap into but couldn’t use it. We did try bumping up the speed a few times but his hamstring couldn’t take it, and we were forced back down to our constant 4:30/km.
Mental:
Mentally, Dave had a great day! As with any long race, there were ups and downs but things went quite smoothly. Having a crowd present always makes these attempts tricky, as you always have people distracting you and pulling you out of the flow state, and the crowd’s energy doesn’t always match your own, but Dave buckled down when he needed to, and pushed through the brief rough patches.
It also helped that Daniel Bowie with DB Visuals had a custom screen set up on the treadmill for Dave, so he could watch a movie, youtube, or his pace/distance, or all at the same time! It helped keep his mind occupied, and focused on the task at hand.
Nutrition:
Right from the start, nutrition was a little rocky, and within the first hour of starting, we had to pull Dave off the treadmill for an unplanned bathroom stop as he was having some GI issues. The source of the issue was quickly revealed however thanks to Tom Hanks character in the movie Dave just happened to be watching at the time – Castaway. Apparently Coconut Water is a natural laxative… Dave had some coconut water before he started… Dave isn’t going to be using coconut water in the future…
Shortly after that, we had to slow the treadmill down again when the sound of coughing echoed around the expo venue as Dave choked on a protein bar.
After these couple of stumbles, we got things back on track, and were able to keep things mostly problem free the rest of the time.
Where we are going next:
Upcoming races:
3 training blocks until 6 days in the dome (Milwaukee, Wi)
5 training blocks until Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra (Nashville Tn)
In these training blocks we are going to be working on:
Physiological Fitness:
Continuing to work on optimizing his physiology to run a moderate pace for a ridiculously long time; however,these gains will be less extreme than when we started working with Dave, as his body continues to adapt to the training stimulus.
Structural tolerance:
Our most important area for improvement will be related to Dave’s structural tolerance. We will be working toward improving his strength and durability to get him ready for longer efforts with more focused strength work and physio now that we are back to baseline.
We will also be working on strength training after runs to practice recruiting proper stabilization muscles when fatigued.
Mental:
Keeping it sharp as we train and race
Nutrition:
Optimizing nutrition as races get longer (stay tuned for details)
Stay tuned for more updates as we go!