Mastering the Art of Pacing: Insights from Matt Fitzgerald

Paul Warloski (00:28)

and welcome to the Athletes Compass podcast where we navigate training, fitness and health for everyday athletes. We have a very special guest today, author and athlete, Matt Fitzgerald. Matt has an extensive and impressive career in endurance sports as an author, coach, nutritionist and athlete. He has written over 30 books, including popular titles like 80 -20 running, How Bad Do You Want It? And his latest How to Run the Perfect Race,

better racing through better pacing. His work is widely recognized in the endurance sports community and he frequently contributes to publications such as Runner's World, Triathlete and Outside. In addition to his writing, Matt is a certified sports nutritionist. He's also the co -founder of 8020 Endurance, a leading provider of training plans for endurance athletes and the creator of the Dream Run Camp in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Matt, I hope you get a little bump in your royalties this month. I bought three of your books and after reading them, want to get back into running. So I appreciate it. Welcome. So Matt, let's start off right away. You're an investor in Athletica .ai. What do you see in Athletica and why did you choose to invest?

Matt Fitzgerald (01:32)

Right on, thank you.

I've seen AI coming for a while. I mean, probably I was just more tuned into its advent than maybe the average citizen, partly because I have an older brother who's a science geek who would teach me about it. And then also because I just have like an abiding interest in neuroscience and the brain. And of course, AI is like trying to, we're trying to create a silicon brain essentially.

and then, you know, in my, in my milieu in the, in the endurance sports space, I just, you know, just seemed to me inevitable that AI was going to reach a level of maturity where it could start, you know, providing real value, in the endurance space and, just started scanning about and then suddenly the wave hit, right. And like, like it's coming, it's coming and now it's here. and yeah, it seemed like a lot of things were happening simultaneously, which

put me in an advantageous position because I could talk to a lot of people, kick a lot of tires, make a lot of comparisons. you know, probably, I mean, part of it, it's not really so much like picking a winner and getting rich, but like wanting to be, I've always wanted to be like at the forefront of innovation and just, you know, it's what my entire career has been about in a way. It's like just being a step ahead.

athletic, think it is a step ahead of the pack. I really liked that. you know, one of the co -founders, Paul is a, is a coach and athlete and exercise physiologist. think that's important. No matter how much you know about computers, you can't necessarily make a good AI app that, just makes sense. you have to know the sport Paul knows the sport. And that was a difference maker for me.

Paul Warloski (03:34)

You write in how to run the perfect race this quote, pacing is everything in competitive distance running. I mean it, everything. It is the sports defining characteristic, the singular quiddity that makes distance running different from all other sports and exercise activities, including other forms of running. First of all, Matt, congratulations on getting a word like quiddity, meaning a distinctive feature into that sentence.

On second, could you explain a little more of what you mean?

Matt Fitzgerald (04:03)

yeah, if you just compare, you know, distance, like competitive distance running, and you can toss in any, any and all endurance sports. But you know, that, that book does focus on running. So if you, if you compare that discipline to, you know, cause you know, not everyone who runs is a competitive distance runner. You take sprinters on one end, they run, they compete, they do not pace. Right. So, I mean, I think for me, by definition,

A sprint is any race that's short enough not to require pacing in order to minimize completion time. So, obviously like distance running is there's just a line somewhere, right? Where, pacing becomes a necessary technique or method to minimize completion time, which is the goal of any race. And then you have other people who run, they're not sprinters, but they don't run competitively. They might run.

for their health or weight management or stress relief or it's a social thing or a way of communing with nature. That is also running, but that is not necessarily paced, at least not in same way. You're not trying to thread the needle of completing 42 .2 kilometers in the least time possible. So the pacing element is the one thing that makes competitive distance running different from

other forms of running and then really by extension, other sports.

Paul Laursen (05:33)

Yeah, I'll just chime in just saying it's just kind of the whole concept of pacing. and the fact simply that you, know, the decisions that you make on race day are, you know, I guess to the book's point that, they can be a defining characteristic in how well you're going to go. Right. And I think we've all had epic fails in our pacing and we've, we learn through experience, but, yeah, gaining knowledge and understanding and actually like really putting some thought into this.

is it actually makes, it makes a massive difference in, your time and ultimately you're probably your enjoyment on race day as well. Wouldn't you say Matt?

Matt Fitzgerald (06:13)

definitely.

it's like, you know, I think, I mean, you ask any, any runner off the street, you know, is like pacing important and you'll get a nod, but I think, you know, most athletes, they don't, then you ask them like, are you good at pacing? And then the answer is very likely to be no. And then you ask them, what are you doing about it? And the answer is going to be some version of like, just sort of vaguely hoping it fixes itself. You know, it's like, people know it's important. They probably don't recognize just how important.

And then it's just, it's

receiving quite the emphasis that it merits.

Marjaana Rakai (06:47)

one of the things that I took from the book, thank you for sending us those, was that there's a difference in wanting to and being able to. We all want to run a certain time, right? But we can't will through it. There are physiological limitations what we can actually do and kind of like creating a plan for yourself.

And you wrote about thinking firstly about your pace and then the time instead of what I would say a lot of new to running or new to distance running. They think about, okay, this is the time that I want to achieve without thinking too much of the pace and if that's realistic. So that was one of the things that I took from the book and also

Matt Fitzgerald (07:37)

Mm

Marjaana Rakai (07:43)

that anyone can be a pacing master. Can you talk to us about the sentence that you wrote about anyone can be a pacing master?

Matt Fitzgerald (07:47)

You

Yeah. I mean, for me, like, that's how I view my role as a coach. It's like, I'm trying to move athletes toward mastery of the sport and, mastery, you know, to me, it does not mean you're faster than everyone else because I mean, that's nice, but, you know, that, that, makes everything that makes your goal hinge on a lot of things you don't control, you know? and so for mastery is actually when you have just achieved your full potential. It's like, you know,

potential is kind of baked in at conception. But like, you you could have a lot of potential and just get in your own way and self limit and only realize, you know, half of that potential, whereas someone else could be born with a lot less potential. you know, by virtue of like figuring out how to control the controllable elements, they reach their full potential. And there's just deep satisfaction in that.

I mean, I put myself in that category. was lifelong endurance athlete. I when I was a kid, I wasn't going to the Olympics. But still, I cared about it enough to just want to see what my ultimate limit was. So that's the journey I had. I think it was just incredibly fulfilling. so as a coach, I'm trying to offer that to other athletes.

There you have it, right? I mean, that is simply a true statement. Like, in a race of 40 ,000 people, someone who finishes 20 ,789th could actually be the best pacer in the entire race. So for me, like looking at it that way is very democratizing. It gives you something to work on, something that is very satisfying to make progress in that is not, in no way hinges on things you can't control.

Marjaana Rakai (09:50)

So when you talk about self limits, do you specifically mean by runners self -limiting themselves?

Matt Fitzgerald (09:59)

Yeah, I mean, it happens in myriad ways. Like, you know, here at Dream Run Camp, you know, I've got two houses full of visiting runners and they're just coming cycling in and cycling out all the time. I interact with a lot of runners and almost all of them, probably all of them self limit in one way or another. could be, you know, a common one is just self doubt, you know, just undercutting yourself with self doubt. Another one is, you know,

technological dependency. mean, that one is just like an epidemic these days. And I get into that in the book where athletes just sort of like they see control for their development to a device, which you just can't do. Your device cannot fulfill your potential. It's on you. So it's a very long list of it's highly individual specific ways in which athletes self -limit. My thing was impatience.

I did a lot of things right as an athlete, I would create problems that didn't have to come about because I would get impatient.

Marjaana Rakai (11:08)

Yeah, I can totally relate to their impatience and technological, like the watches, but I had a little bit of revelation this weekend. I was doing a 20K run and usually I start way too hard. Like I want to hit the targets, right? So I usually start a little too fast and then I fade.

Paul Warloski (11:18)

you

Marjaana Rakai (11:35)

But then after reading the book, I'm like, okay, I need to like really mentally like check myself and try to negative split. So start slow. And I was running four and a half K loops and I started really slowly like holding back. And he felt like, this is super slow. And I timed each loop and I actually like felt really good the longer I ran and I negative split it, you know, halfway through.

Matt Fitzgerald (11:54)

You

Marjaana Rakai (12:04)

So it was really like, hey, I think I need to take this with me to my racing and just start really patiently and conservatively, which I typically don't do and then I fade. So that was a revelation for me.

Matt Fitzgerald (12:10)

and...

You

Excellent.

Paul Laursen (12:23)

Matt, I've forgotten the name of the, I read this, I read it last night, but there was a, I think it was a Badwater, hundred miler guy who had won that. And then he went to UTMB and, you know, kind of basically he, he raced hard and kind of Steve, you know, with guts, Steve Prefontaine kind of like, and then, you know, that just didn't work at UTMB and, he kind of got, you know, a lot, a lot of DNS kind of thing.

racing with that ego, racing with those guts. And, and then he, and he finally took it a different way and he, he raced almost too slow at the end. Kind of like what you're talking about there, Marjaana where you're just like, okay, let's just go slower this time and build into it. And of course, you know, his story is that he, that he, that he won that way with that, that sort of new method. it's, kind of speaks to the, the journey, I think that so many of us are on probably even yourself, Matt, I know myself, I used to race with ego with big

Paul Warloski (12:57)

you

Matt Fitzgerald (13:02)

and

Paul Laursen (13:22)

big absolute time goals first. And there's the old adage when you speak in the Ironman culture, I just killed the bike. I don't know what happened in the run, right? You hear it all the time, right? And it's, think, if you're a listener right now and any of this kind of sinks in and go, maybe I should sort of think about this.

Matt Fitzgerald (13:27)

Mm

Paul Laursen (13:48)

bit deeper and maybe I can hold back a little bit. again, it's part of that whole journey and finding out sort of what's optimal. Of course, you can speed that up too, right? If you start to look at a little bit of the science, use other various tools, we're working on some in Athletica as well that can help you to see where those paces are.

Matt Fitzgerald (13:54)

Mm

Paul Laursen (14:13)

I don't know. I'm just, yeah, it's a journey. guess that's kind of my point. I think it's hard to get this right, right out of the gates.

Matt Fitzgerald (14:19)

I mean, who even knows what I mean, the title of the book is how to run the perfect race, but that's actually indefinable. Like you can't, there's nothing you can measure that like proves indisputably that like that was a perfect race. know what I mean? So I think, you know, for me, you know, I started running competitively at age 11, kept at it to 49 when long COVID took me out. You know, that's decades where I just felt like I was getting

better and better and better and better at pacing. So I don't think there's any arrival point. that's important to understand because if you're expecting perfection, it's gonna be frustrating. So you need to focus on just getting better. And that can start today.

Marjaana Rakai (15:03)

I want to reel back science into this. see, you have a short section about sports science, how pacing is related or not related to science. And I think it was so beautiful because there's this whole theory of feeling of effort, connected emotions and how we just can't will our way to run faster. And you refer to

Matt Fitzgerald (15:15)

Mm

Hehe.

Marjaana Rakai (15:33)

Dr. Tim Noakes theory about the central governor that our brain is regulating how much effort we can put in. But you also bring in Dr. Samuel Marquora's work, which proposed that endurance athletes pull the plug when either the goal is met or they decide the effort to keep pushing is just too much. So instead of the central limiter or physical limiter, endurance performance is limited by a feeling.

Matt Fitzgerald (15:39)

Mm

Mm

Marjaana Rakai (16:02)

Can you talk more about that?

Matt Fitzgerald (16:04)

Yeah. I mean, that's sort of like the rest of the answer to your opening question, you know, about, you know, you know, well, you know, running being, pacing being the singular quiddity that makes competitive distance running different, different from other things. So yeah, you know, the, you know, you know, my clerk wheel definition of, pacing, specific to racing is the art of finding your limit. Like that's what you're trying to do is find your limit. So then it's like, okay, what is the limit?

that's where things get really interesting, you know, because if you take like a lot of other sports, like the limit is obvious, you know, like going back to sprinting, you can't move your legs any faster. You can't apply any more force, directional force to the ground. Very simple limiters. Yeah, they're just staring you in the face with endurance sports. different. Like, it's really hard to identify exactly. I mean,

Look at it this way, like say you're running a marathon and you're pacing it well. And I ask you, just pull up alongside you on a mountain bike and ask you at 10K, like, could you run faster? Like the answer is yes. I pull up alongside you at 20K, could you run faster? The answer is yes. So where's the limit there? Like, you know, like, so the limit is there, but it's not that direct. Like you could choose at any point.

in a longer race to speed up, you know, presumably until you hit the finish. And so like, that's your limit. Like you're just like making a choice not to have to go any faster than you are in the hope that when you know, you know, hit the hit the gas pedal pedal when you're within sight of the finish line, you get what I call an underwhelming finishing kit where you know, you've thread the needle so perfectly that

You neither lose speed nor are able to really speed up much when nothing matters anymore and you can empty the tank.

Marjaana Rakai (18:09)

Yeah. And in the long run, like talking about ultra marathon, marathon even, you know that you're going to have these ebbs and flows where you feel okay. And then next moment you feel just trash and you want to quit, but somehow you always just like kind of find your next, flow. So it's like, and then you read some stories about these crazy ultra runners that

Paul Laursen (18:10)

Yeah.

Matt Fitzgerald (18:30)

I

Marjaana Rakai (18:38)

can't see, they're hallucinating and they still keep going like in the dark down the mountain. So it's really interesting how some people can push through where others would quit.

Matt Fitzgerald (18:42)

Yeah.

Paul Laursen (18:53)

There's a lot there, for sure. But I think the mind is always making these calculations at some level, consciously or subconsciously, in terms of the mind knows the end goal, and that should be pretty locked in. And then it's like you said, the ebb and flow, you're trying to connect that endpoint

Marjaana Rakai (18:54)

Hahaha

Paul Warloski (18:56)

Yeah.

Matt Fitzgerald (19:08)

and

Paul Laursen (19:20)

to enable the fastest, shortest possible time, And you're always kind of, and then to the central governor model, there's always these, there's these millions of afferent signals that are kind of coming through about energy status, muscle, pain, any resources that are on board.

Matt Fitzgerald (19:25)

Yeah.

Paul Laursen (19:45)

potentially pH levels and on and on it kind of goes, hydration status, et cetera.

and then there's this, there's probably some form of memory that's involved in this as well, where it's like you've got, to Matt's example, right, where he went from 11 to 49 and

There's a whole bunch of memory that's kind of instilled in that, that allows him to learn and be better time after time after time, right? So that the pacing gets better and better and more more refined. yeah, lots of science going on as just an absolutely fascinating topic. I think I could talk for days on it.

Matt Fitzgerald (20:08)

Mm

Mm

Yeah, I could write an entire book about it.

Paul Laursen (20:29)

You could. You did. Make sure you get it, folks. It's a beauty. It's a beauty.

Paul Warloski (20:30)

You know, after reading the book, I used that concept of the steady pacing with several of my athletes doing, you know, doing long events, including one doing a $12 mountain bike race and one doing a half Ironman. They both raced their personal best and felt strong throughout the races. And you write in the book, the goal of racing is to find one's limit and

superior body awareness enjoyed by experienced and high level athletes that makes them better to feel their way to the limit in competition. So what are some ways that everyday athletes can learn this body awareness?

Matt Fitzgerald (21:15)

that's where the rubber meets the road, right? And I have so much fun with this as a coach. And it really is like fun. a lot of the actual tools that you integrate into training to get better at pacing, they're they're ways of gamifying and making like every, know, turning a mere workout into a deliberate practice. So just to throw like a couple of examples at you.

One that I like to do is called blinded fart licks. actually have an athlete this morning who did a version of this and that an example might be you're going to do 10 times one minute surges in an otherwise easy session. And if it's a run, they could be like at 5k race pace, except that you're not allowed to look at your watch either to judge the time or to, or to dial in the pace. So you just hit your lap button.

You run for what you think is about a minute or what you think is exactly a minute at exactly 5K pace. Hit the lap button again. You're allowed to look then just to see how you did. And then you get nine more bites at the apple and you just try to get better at, you're just, there's no net, there's no life preserver. You're just thrown in and you do the best you can. That would be one. you're just, you know, just these exercises just force you to be more present, you know,

You know, kind of the it's very easy compared to other sports. It's very easy in endurance sports just to not even really be there doing doing the work, especially if you're really depending on technology. So those types of exercises, they just kind of forced you to be present and to pay attention. And that that is the alchemy like that. You know, it doesn't matter if you just completely botch it like as long as you're making a good faith effort to get it right. And I do like to see some progress over the course of the session, not just

across sessions. And then another one I like a lot and use a lot is stretch intervals. My kind go -to format for that is like 8 to 10 times 30 seconds hard uphill. And there you would, the idea is you have to cover slightly more distance in each repetition after the first. You can't game the system by walking the first rep, so you have plenty of room for seven to nine more increases.

I like to have people run with brightly colored socks, run the first 30 seconds, you know, hard, but just a lot of this is really cognitive. You're trying to just think about, right, you know, what's the hardest effort I can sustain in this first rep that allow me to cover more distance seven to nine more times and drop a sock at the end of 30 seconds, go back down the hill, run up, you know, this much harder. and, see if you, you know, can drop the sock, you know, five to 10 feet further on.

and repeat that, know, pick up the first sock, keep going. And that one, know, someone who's like just like a true, you know, pacing master, part of what makes them so masterful at that skill is like, they don't just have like slow, medium and fast. They have like, you know, where others are using like a three point scale, they're using a 100 point scale and stretch intervals, you know, they get you to start thinking about

Marjaana Rakai (24:19)

It's like.

Paul Warloski (24:34)

Hmm.

Matt Fitzgerald (24:38)

very fine gradations in perceived effort and also perceived velocity. And again, it's okay if you botch your first set of stretch intervals, but if you're at least making that good faith effort, you'll get something out of it and do better than the next time you try it.

Marjaana Rakai (24:53)

out of that.

Paul Laursen (24:57)

again, you make a really important point that we can be little bit too focused with our technological tools on the pacing. I remember reading those sections, and I completely agree that we can be too focused. But at the same time, we can also use them for

you know, for learning as well. and, know, just, just in terms of some basics, you know, basic, you know, if a GPS is providing, you know, pace, you know, you know, a minute per kilometer, minute per mile kind of pace and stuff. And, and, you know, to a tuning yourself, I love actually even playing games with my technology in the past, right. Where I can actually kind of try to guess what pace I'm going at right now. And then seeing how close my mind is to.

Matt Fitzgerald (25:44)

Mm -hmm. Yep.

Paul Laursen (25:49)

to what the GPS might be kind of saying.

And we have to give credit to our

AI guru with Athletica, Dr. Andrea Zignoli where he has invented this new parameter that we're calling workout reserve. And what this does in Athletica is it actually, looks at your history over the last six weeks of your movement speed, your movement speed history. And we're basically just leveraging

Matt Fitzgerald (26:13)

Mm

Paul Laursen (26:17)

the exercise intensity or pace in this case versus the time, right? And we can always get capture and gather what the average is. They're called mean maximal paces or mean maximal powers. You could have a mean maximal pace for two hours, right? Say that's an eight minute mile or whatever it might be for you versus a sprint, right? Where it might be, you might be running 15, you know,

you know, or what is the reverse? 15 miles in a minute or whatever it might be, right? You're getting that shape of that curve. And it's always, it's within the algorithm that's sitting within your watch. So you can actually watch how much reserve you have, whether it is one minute versus whether it is two hours kind of thing. And I know a lot of us like Marjaana, for example,

Marjaana Rakai (26:54)

Thank you.

Matt Fitzgerald (26:58)

Mm

Paul Laursen (27:15)

We use this little tool to see how much is kind of sitting in the tank. And we believe it can also be helpful for potentially for racing as well. And Marjaana, I'm not sure if you want to talk about your experience with Workout Reserve.

Matt Fitzgerald (27:27)

You

Marjaana Rakai (27:32)

Yeah, it's, it's been really helpful because we tend to forget what we have done. Like you don't have this like pace memory. You have a certain type of like, you know, I know I've done this, but when you're in the moment, and especially if you're running in the heat or, know, you're super fatigued, you kind of like forget what you've been able to do.

And then when you have this workout reserve on your watch, you can check, it's closing to zero. That means I'm running really good today. Even might not always feel like you're running at your best pace the last six weeks.

Matt Fitzgerald (27:58)

This is?

Yeah. Yep.

You

Paul Laursen (28:15)

Yeah, that's a good point. Just to give yourself a visualization, if you start on anything, it'll start at a hundred percent, but depending on how fast you go or how hard you push on your bike and the power, that really kind of looks at the speed at which it falls from 100 % down to zero. And then if it goes negative, it means you're going faster than or harder than you've ever gone before. You're having kind of a breakthrough workout. And it's just one extra kind of variable, but it's looking at your

Matt Fitzgerald (28:22)

huh, yep.

Paul Warloski (28:24)

Thank

Matt Fitzgerald (28:25)

Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Right. Yep.

Paul Laursen (28:45)

your last six weeks ultimately, which is good. think it's like, you shouldn't be going down to zero too quick if something's kind of important for you. You're going to be potentially in trouble. You should have like a gradual fall down towards that so that the end, the time point kind of fits alongside with the end goal sort of thing.

Matt Fitzgerald (29:10)

I'm glad you brought up the technology piece because it is like, you know, a major theme of the book. And, you know, the straw man version of my thesis is, you know, technology is bad, throw your watch in the ocean. And like that, that is not my message. It's like, think athletes basically have, they can do three things with technology. It can be a crutch.

And that's what it is for, I would say the vast majority of endurance athletes. It can be a tool. and there's a crucial difference between a tool and a crutch. Like a tool is useful without creating a dependency. And then option three would be just don't, don't use technology. And so of those three options, I am not telling athletes don't use technology. I'm, telling them, turn it from a crutch into a tool. And that's, that's the.

That to me is the proper use of tech in endurance training is to cultivate the self regulatory expertise that is the be all end all of endurance performance. The buck stops with you. And it's like the analogy I make is

Marjaana Rakai (30:23)

like, you know.

Matt Fitzgerald (30:25)

you know, as a writer, a thesaurus. A thesaurus can be a crutch for a writer who has a terrible vocabulary and like never knows the right word. But if you use it right, a thesaurus can, you know, help you develop. And so the proper use of it is actually weaning yourself of dependency on it. So, you know, I've been writing longer than I've been running.

And I still consult a thesaurus, but the way I use it is very, very different. Now I'm much further along in my development as a writer. And so I think what's exciting about what you're doing at Athletica and what's happening in other spaces, not enough yet is like, some people who are behind some of these innovative tools get this. right now, I look around left, right and center and I see devices.

Marjaana Rakai (31:06)

Thank

Matt Fitzgerald (31:16)

like almost like going out of their way to foster dependency. And like that doesn't, we don't have to stay there just because something is an advanced piece of technology does not mean it has to do that. so when like good sound coaching principles are factored into the design of some of these tools, then like really exciting things can happen. Cause like you get to use the technology, it can do incredible things, but it's actually helping the athlete develop their own self -regulatory.

Paul Warloski (31:21)

Hmm.

Marjaana Rakai (31:45)

So thank you.

Matt Fitzgerald (31:46)

ability. And so yeah, I'm psyched to see where it's going.

Marjaana Rakai (31:51)

so most of our athletes are longer distance runners or triathletes from half marathon up to marathon or Ironman distance. How would you call somebody who is quite new to longer distance where pacing actually matters a lot to use technology as a tool as they prepare for their races?

Matt Fitzgerald (32:19)

Yeah, I we've discussed some of those ways, you so much of what you're doing is, you know, just calibrating internal perceptions against objective, you know, external metrics. And, you know, those little guessing games, it's like one thing I found, I think actually like a rigorous scientific survey would confirm my suspicion here that like athletes who just have a knack for pacing,

they play these games without anyone prompting them. They just come up with them. Cause it just seems natural because there's like a deep inner, like it feels like a game, but it also feels like, you know, turning up like a mere body activity into a body mind activity and deliberate practice. So yeah, there's all kinds of ways you can, you can do that.

I'm just trying to think of like another one, like, you know, one that I do, I like, is precision, what I call precision splitting. And that is where you just pick like a super specific, this works for distance based repetitions. So it could be, one I like is like, like 12 to 16 times 300 meters at, critical velocity. So something that is like relatively short reps, given the intensity so that you can get a lot of reps.

And then like you say, okay, you're trying to hit 85 .42 seconds. Take it right down to the hundredth. It's like you get 12 tries to hit 85 .42 seconds. And then it just, again, it's engaging you because you have to feel what you're doing. You have to perceive your movement through space and your level of effort, but you're also, technology is a crucial part of that design, right?

Marjaana Rakai (33:51)

it.

Matt Fitzgerald (34:07)

And yeah, and so you would want to see a movement toward like bullseyes as that workout unfolds. there's just like, there's so like, another one I like is what I call mini intervals. And that's where you make the intervals ridiculously short relative to the intensity. So it could be a hundred times 20 seconds at half marathon pace. you know, like, because like one of the, one of the defaults for people who just haven't

put a lot of work into getting better at pacing is like they automatically tune the effort to the duration. So if it's 20 seconds, it's a sprint. Even if the instruction clearly says half marathon pace, it's like it's 20 seconds of sprinting it. And so there's just kind of like this mindlessness that's happening. But again, you get a hundred bites at the apple there. So like, you know, as the thing unfolds. So that's so much of what's going on is like, you're just.

Paul Warloski (34:43)

Thank

Matt Fitzgerald (35:03)

you know, parallel processing between like one eye on data, one eye on what you're feeling inside and just trying to get them to line up. It really is very much a calibration

Marjaana Rakai (35:06)

Thank you.

Paul Laursen (35:14)

Well, Matt, mean, you had me on talking to your Dream Run camp folks. Can you just tell us a little bit about Dream Run Camp and do you do any pacing teaching throughout that camp for all the people that are coming in that you see?

Matt Fitzgerald (35:30)

Thank you.

Yep. So the seed for Dream Run Camp was planted in 2017 when I spent, I was living in California, but I spent the summer here in Flagstaff. And I was a fake professional runner. was 46 years old at the time, had never been, you know, elite performance wise, even when I was in my physical prime. But I had this opportunity to train with the HOCA Northern Arizona elite professional running team for 13 weeks. Ran the Chicago marathon.

as a pro at the end of that, some rules were bent so I could do that. Wrote a book about it called Running the Dream. And was like, you know, I tell people it was the best 13 weeks of my life. mean, why wouldn't it be like I created this fantasy and then went out and did it. And then Dream Run Camp is like my way of trying to, yeah, can read the book and have the kind of vicarious experience through my eyes, but Dream Run Camp.

Marjaana Rakai (36:07)

Thank

Matt Fitzgerald (36:27)

makes a version of that experience available to anyone who wants it. So it's a twist on the traditional adult running camp model. Here it's rolling attendance. So you can come anytime you want. So runners come individually whenever it works for them. So in the summer, I get a lot of college students and teachers. I get a lot of international athletes, all ages, all abilities. But they get to like, the minimum stay is one week and you can stay for up to 12 weeks, which is basically an entire training block.

Paul Laursen (36:57)

Mm

Matt Fitzgerald (36:57)

And, you know, so we have, we have two houses, the main house has like everything a runner could possibly want hyperbaric chamber, full commercial quality gym, spa pool, sauna, you name it. And then I have kind of a team of special service providers around me, dietician, mental performance coach, strength coach, physio, all that. And so you just get to like go all in on your identity as a runner. And we welcome triathletes too. And,

Marjaana Rakai (37:17)

And that's it.

Matt Fitzgerald (37:27)

And so for me, sort of the, you know, the, the mission statement is it's on a poster on a wall here. The mission statement of Dream Run campus, let your passion, not your ability decide how far you go. So the idea is like, if you love your sport, and you just want to see how good you could be, like, you can be like, nothing should get in the way of it. shouldn't matter that you're not that gifted, or you're newer to the sport, or, you know, you're

Marjaana Rakai (37:33)

Yes, I it was on that.

Nothing.

Matt Fitzgerald (37:57)

you know, 65 years old or whatever it is. you know, like none of those, where I sit, none of those are good reasons not to go for

Marjaana Rakai (38:07)

Sound like a team.

Paul Laursen (38:07)

That's awesome. yeah, yeah, it truly is for the everyday athlete, right? So it's like basically the everyday athlete can almost have that elite athlete experience. And yeah, and, you know, I just, I'll just confirm that. Like I was, you you, when I was giving a chat to your, to your group, was having, you know, great questions right around the table and you were spinning around and, know, it didn't, it didn't look like an Olympic program there. Like it was, there was just, it's just everyone was there and, and,

Paul Warloski (38:08)

Thank

Marjaana Rakai (38:23)

Thank

a year.

Paul Laursen (38:37)

But what a cool concept. I don't know anything else like it in the world. So if you're listening to this, this sounds kind of exciting for you. And training, running triathlon is your passion. Definitely encourage you to check that out for an amazing experience.

Paul Warloski (38:56)

Yeah, we'll put all those links in our the the show notes as well

Matt Fitzgerald (38:56)

Thank you for that.

Marjaana Rakai (39:00)

Based on extensive experiences as a coach, I think you mentioned in the book about gender differences and being at pacing than men. Can you talk to us more about that? Why are women better at pacing?

Matt Fitzgerald (39:18)

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that that is like, that's not Matt's opinion that I mean, there's like empirical support for that for that claim. Obviously, that's a very broad statement. And, know, but it does seem to be generally true. And if you look at like, you know, broader research on, you know, sex differences in psychology, men,

as a result of testosterone or whatever else tend to be more risk -taking and women tend to be more risk -averse, at least with certain categories of decisions. And so I think it's less a factor with shorter distances, but when you get up to the ones where the wall is a factor, like marathons, statistically speaking, women...

are much less likely to lose steam like in the last five to 10 K of a marathon than men are. And it's just because like they're being more, more cautious, more conservative. Another way of saying that is they're being smarter because they actually do end up, you know, getting closer to a perfect race that that way. You know, there's a place for risk taking, but you know, for me, like, you know, I walked a portion of my first marathon.

Marjaana Rakai (40:32)

you know, know, I didn't know.

Matt Fitzgerald (40:37)

I walked a portion of my second marathon because I'm a man. I didn't learn anything from the first one.

Paul Laursen (40:42)

Yeah.

Marjaana Rakai (40:47)

Do you that in training as well? Does it come like the risk of a factor in racing only? Can you tell the difference in training and racing?

Matt Fitzgerald (41:02)

yeah, I mean, that's where I think I'm not sure where, what, what empirical support. mean, because it, like, you only have one mind that you take everywhere you go. So, I mean, that sort of like that basic difference would have to manifest in one way or another in training. could be like, it'd be interesting to do a study on like, like training through pain and, know, are there differences across any, you know, demographic, like in,

and who pushes more stupidly through pain and who is more cautious and lives to fight another day. I'm sure you would find some differences there.

Marjaana Rakai (41:37)

I'm not convinced that there's a gender issue there though, like training through pain, that's probably personality.

Matt Fitzgerald (41:42)

Yeah, yeah, maybe not. Yeah, I yeah, I mean, a lot of it is also because I've taken for another project a really deep dive into like the science of personality. And therefore sure, like, you know, I mean, there's like one trait that's called boldness and boldness is tolerance for risk. So it tends to be innate. Like a lot of our personality traits are like a function of like nuclear family dynamics and in childhood. But boldness, like if you like had it.

Marjaana Rakai (41:56)

It's important.

Matt Fitzgerald (42:09)

If you had a child who at like 18 months was crawling out of their crib in the middle of the night, like, you know, just, you know, falling five feet to the floor, not really carrying, not crying, heading straight to the kitchen. Like that child is bold. They'll probably have a pretty high pain tolerance or pain threshold when they become an endurance athlete later on. So yeah, I mean, you definitely see the spectrum in terms of like, you know, what, yeah, I mean, what the variables are that actually.

are determinative. Personality for sure is going to

Paul Laursen (42:40)

it's, we would really love it if you could kind of almost take, take on the key points that maybe someone can take this whole, you know, the, theme of the podcast, we've been everywhere, but the theme of the podcast has really been around your book, how to run the perfect race and in pacing. And could you maybe just kind of summarize what are the key pacing points?

that an athlete should work on, the everyday athlete should work.

Matt Fitzgerald (43:09)

Yeah, I mean, you know, in as much as I'm trying to get buy -in from athletes to like go down this road, the way I frame it is, you know, when you run a race, you show up with a certain amount of fitness and that's baked in, right? You know, nothing you can do about that once, you know, race day dawns and you worked hard for that fitness. So, you know, if you worked hard for,

$10 ,000, would you want to light 20 % of it on fire, like on the way to the store to buy something? Or would you rather show up with the entire $10 ,000 that you worked very hard to earn? Well, when you execute a race imperfectly and pacing is most of execution in endurance sports, you're wasting a percentage of your hard earned fitness.

depending on, there's one study I cite that puts the number at around 14%, you know, just like through, like not that you wasted 14 % of your fitness, but you finished the race 14 % slower than you could have with perfect pacing. So, you know, to me, like there's just like a frugality to it, you know, to it, just like don't waste your fitness. know, if you want, you know, if you're buying what I'm selling, then,

Paul Warloski (44:18)

Hmm.

Marjaana Rakai (44:26)

Thanks for your time.

Matt Fitzgerald (44:34)

then you just start this process where just like, you know, just the spoken intention is really half the battle. It's like, I am going to work on becoming a better pacer. Then you read the book, you apply the tools, you're patient and you put progress over perfection. And it's a fun and fulfilling journey because everyone gets better. think, you know, like all skills.

pacing is some people just have a natural gift for it and they start off better and they're always a little bit ahead of the rest of us, but everyone gets better with this, better with this type of approach.

Paul Warloski (45:06)

Well, that is all for this week. got through about half of the questions we had on our list. Thank you so much, Matt. And thank you for listening. Join us next week on the Athletes Compass podcast. Ask your training question in the comments and on our social media. Thank you for taking a moment to give us a five -star review. Paul, Marjaana and I are professional endurance sport coaches with limited availability. Contact us at the links in the show notes to set up an appointment to talk about your training.

For Matt Fitzgerald, Marjaana Rakai, and Dr. Paul Laursen I'm Paul Warloski and this has been the Athletes Compass Podcast.