Borderlands.

Somehow we're still not learning Borderlands.

We still suck at running.

Hey, welcome to the Borderlands Trail and Ultra Running podcast.

My name is Josh Rosenthal and I feel lucky to be the host.

Today we have Floris Gearman, host of the Extra Mile Less podcast, co founder of PATH Projects, and we cover a wide range of topics from low heart rate training to his podcast episodes with Eliud Kipchoge to being patient with your running goals.

Floris used to work for Tony Hawk and a lot of companies talk about being inspired by skate culture, but so.

What does that even mean?

I think Florist is uniquely positioned to answer that question.

And like I said, Florist is part owner of path and we're doing a run with PATH Projects in Billy Yang on January 18th in Salt Lake City.

I'll be flying back from Paris for just 36 hours to host and enjoy the run.

Record a live podcast with Billy Yang.

Be stoked to have him there.

Flores will be there.

The other co founders of PATH will be there too, and they're also sponsoring the Salt Lake Foothills Trail races 10k half marathon and 50k that are happening in Salt Lake City on May 31st of next year.

Suffice it to say, I like PATH a lot.

And I bet you do too, unless you haven't heard of them, in which case this is a great time to click on the link in the show notes.

They're now headquartered in Utah and my life's work has been about giving people more reasons to love Utah.

For the last 22 years I've cared about that, so I'm stoked to be in this relationship with them.

If you're enjoying these podcasts, it would mean the world if you would share them with a friend, rate it where you listen, or just leave a comment.

I can't grow without you and I really want to grow this thing.

Finally, we have a hotline.

Now here's the song.

That's 786-667-3649.

That's right, 786-667-3649.

Call and leave a message about trail running or our bad runners takes or gear, anything like that and I'll play it on a future episode.

Okay, here's my interview with my new friend Floris Gearman of PATH Projects, the Extra Mileage podcast.

I loved this episode and I think he Today I've got Flores Gearman with me.

I'm.

I'm really stoked on it because I'm, I'm stoked on all the stuff that he's doing.

I, I, I got to connect with him because I first met my friend Brian Rather in Salt Lake City, and, and we became friends, and he's, he's co founder of, of Path Projects, which was crazy coincidence that day, because I was just talking about how I just bought some Path shorts and he was sitting across the table from me, and he's like, hey, I, I'm co owner of that company.

I'm like, you're, you're crazy.

You're kidding.

So we start to develop this friendship and this.

And then he kind of brought me in.

He's like, hey, if you're going to we do something professionally together, you got to talk to this guy Flores.

I was like, oh, I've heard of Flores.

I know who Flores is.

I don't know Flores, but I've heard of Flores.

And through the course of that, Flores and I've been interacting a lot.

He's got a lot going on, and it's all stuff that I, I really like.

I mean, just from top to bottom, the, like, the things that he has his hands in or if he's doing it, it's something that you want to pay attention to.

So before we go any further, though, Flores, thanks for joining me.

You're in California.

Yeah.

And I'm in France, so it's late for me.

It's lunchtime for you.

Southern California.

Yeah.

I appreciate the chat.

I think ever since we started talking, we saw how many, how many overlapping areas that were what it was skateboarding or running or entrepreneurship.

So.

Yeah.

Excited for the chat.

Yeah, yeah.

And you've also, you've got a Dutch accent.

Yeah.

Am I right?

Yeah.

But grew up in Amsterdam or just outside of Amsterdam.

Where for.

It's a place called Daventer.

It's like an hour outside of Amsterdam.

So I lived there until early 20s and then moved to the States to work in skateboarding.

Oh, gosh.

Okay, man.

Yeah.

There's so many threads I want to pull on because Amsterdam is probably my favorite city in the world.

That's where we would have when, you know, my family's traveling.

We're living abroad right now in Paris.

Our first choice when we bought our plane tickets, it was to go to Amsterdam.

We just couldn't figure out the visa.

And I love Paris, and we're very happy to be here, but Amsterdam is just something of a dream.

Yeah, it's good.

There's a lot of good to it.

And then again, I think every place comes for it with its own benefits.

And like, I, one of the reasons I actually moved out of it was that the weather here in Southern California was something I was really drawn to.

As much as I love living in the Netherlands, I'm such a sunshine person that I really enjoyed actually some more average sunshine than half a year of rain.

So.

Yeah, well, you've got your hands and running from just about every angle, every part.

From coaching to apparel.

You've got a vast network of what feels like friends, more than even professional partners.

Your name comes up.

You know, I was on the.

Oh gosh, the podcast 10 Junk Miles.

And he was.

And he was talking about it.

Just, just come up all the time.

So how does everybody know you?

How do you know everybody?

How what?

Like bring us into your world of running and your place in the industry.

Like, you specifically.

Not even path.

Yeah, I think, I think it's kind of the combination of a few different things.

I feel a lot of people in running are very passion driven and it doesn't always come from like, let's start a business first around it.

It's really.

I started about 11 years ago.

I grew up making skateboard videos.

I really just enjoyed going out skateboarding and recording things and putting it out there just for me and my friends.

Yeah.

And then in 2013, once my first child was born, I got injured skateboarding so many times that I picked up running and I was like, started really for me.

I started running more and more consistent, enjoying it.

And then I was, let's start making some videos around this.

So one of the first videos I made was run like 100 miles from my house in Long Beach.

I left in the morning and then I ran to San Diego.

That was your first video.

That was one of my first running videos.

I brought a GoPro and I was just like, oh, let's document what this is like.

I've never run a hundred miles.

Let's just bring a GoPro along the way.

And then I ran it and then I just put that video.

I got to San Diego 17 hours, 45 minutes later, just in time to catch my last train.

Got the last, last train back.

I made a little YouTube video.

Put on YouTube.

Didn't think much of it.

I was like, oh yeah, it was like an adventure run.

And then.

And I was pretty active on Reddit.

I just put a link on Reddit and then it went to the number one spot in Reddit running.

And then from there on I started getting quite a bit of traction.

I was like, oh, this is interesting.

Let me start making some more running videos.

And from there on it just grew naturally over time.

And then I started a, a podcast purely to interview people that I respected a lot.

Like I discovered low heart rate training.

So I interviewed Dr.

Phil Maffetone and Mark Allen and from there on a variety of different guests.

Yeah, and it was a really good way for me to like get to know people and learn from some of the people that have an interesting voice in the space.

And there was zero business idea around it.

It was purely passion based.

And then eventually like I ended up seeing some opportunities with getting sponsors on board for the podcast.

At some point people asked me if I could help them coaching.

So I started creating some digital products around that.

And then like an opportunity came up to become like a partner in Path Projects, one of the businesses that was one of my friends founded at the time.

And so yeah, at one point I just ended up having to quite a few different hats on and I think everything worked quite well together.

I think it's quite important to do something that you're passionate about.

And this was kind of a natural integration for me.

That's how over time it's just kind of grown.

Yeah, I mean, so, you know, I have my hands in a lot of things and people will often ask, how do you do so many different things?

And I'll always say, well, yeah, I do a lot of things, but.

But it's because I do a few things really well and I can do a lot of different places.

What is your thing?

What is your place in all these?

What's the common thread between coaching and what you do for Path projects and your whole professional life from skateboarding?

Is there a common thread through all of that that is consistent for you when you jump from thing to thing to thing to thing?

The funny thing is it might sound like I'm jumping from thing to thing to thing, but actually I think a lot of people underestimate what you can accomplish in the long term.

If you just show up long enough and you just stick with it, with the right reason, with authenticity, doing good in the world and not thinking from like, this is going to make me this much money.

No, it's like, do the right thing and the money part will fall into place.

Like, I think it started when I first really wanted to work in the skateboard industry in America.

And I didn't know anyone.

I just said like, hey, I'll just move over there, work for free.

Just give me the opportunity to work there for six months.

And like, I just proved myself, worked really hard, and eventually was able to get a Full time job at Tony Hawk Skateboard Company.

Really?

And I feel, yeah.

So I worked with them for like three years and like, really learned a lot.

Just traveling around the world and learning the ins and outs of.

Oh my gosh, that's cool.

The marketing industry for, like, for some of the brands that I really respected.

So.

And I think thinking longer term, zooming out your time horizons, that was the same with the YouTube channel.

I started just putting videos out there because I cared about it, I was excited about it.

I would do it if I wouldn't get paid.

Yeah.

And then interestingly enough, over time, you start gaining momentum with it and it becomes easier.

And so I think there's not.

I think the superpower might be like just patience, patience and longer, longer horizon than some other people might have.

And determination keeps showing up, like one step at a time.

You might not see the result right away, but as you zoom out further, like, I think that's the same with the running progress.

Very often, I think runners just want to qualify for the Boston Marathon in four months or in six months, where it's like, how about you go about training in a gradual, sustainable way, Go through a few races, gain race day experience.

What is it like to get to mile 20?

What is it like to finish a marathon and actually having some energy left at the end of a race?

If you pace yourself conservatively, being able to pass people at the end of the race, you gain that joy and you run healthy, injury free and your race times will improve.

So, man, I think you've nailed it.

When I would talk about, I was in coffee for a long time and the question was like, hey, how are you gaining market share in coffee?

And it's like, well, it's crazy actually.

If you just do what you say you're going to do, when you say you're going to do it, you're actually ahead of 95% of the people.

So the product, I was like, yeah, I believed in our product.

We had a great product.

But I was on time.

And actually the philosophy was, early is on time, on time is late.

Late is unacceptable.

Like if you're just there and you're present and you're listening and you're taking notes and you're adding value every time, you know, And I love how you just connected it straight into running.

That's.

And I've never done that until as soon as you said that, I was like, oh, God, I don't treat my running that way.

And that's probably half my problem.

Does it?

I've literally come to realize that over the years, as we know, I've had like, thousands of runners from across the world going through some of our, like, digital coaching programs.

Like, we have people from 60 countries and we jump on ZOOM twice a week.

And for years we just hear like, what's working, what's not working.

That's one of the main things.

Like just the patience in that and then realizing the overlap between running and between personal life or running and like business as well.

There's so much overlap right there.

Yep.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, let's, let's talk a little bit more about that when it comes to, to path.

I mean, disclosure, of course.

If you've listened to this podcast at all, you've heard me talk about PATH sponsoring our race.

We're doing the fun run.

Not.

Not called a fun run.

We're doing this enjoyable run with you and Billy Yang, January 18th in Salt Lake.

But we're hearing about it all the time.

I even saw like, Ethan Newberry the other day posted about how much he loved the jacket.

The Ginger Runner.

It just seems like it's showing up everywhere.

And you're the head of marketing, so how, I mean, how are you getting this message out there?

I mean, the product is fantastic.

I mean, I'm not just saying I wouldn't work with someone whose product I didn't really genuinely love, but it seems like you're just gaining market share quite a bit right now.

What's the plan?

What goes to your head, how you do?

Is it just pulling through your network?

How are you getting it out there the way that it's out there right now?

I think you kind of like mentioned the one part that's most important in this entire equation is that you love the product.

Yes.

And at the end of the day, if the product is really good, eventually the world will travel through that.

And sometimes we see if you want to scale a company really rapidly at the beginning, but your product is not up to par, people are going to have a negative experience with it.

So at the beginning, when Path just launched, there was a tremendous amount of product testing.

This was iterations on product.

It's not rushing to put a product in the market, but actually truly, like one of the slogans we have is mountain tested running apparel.

And like, we put it through the rigger in like extreme conditions, people get to test it.

And then if it works in those conditions, then typically in the shorter distances, in the shorter, like shorter races or training runs, it will work quite well too.

Yeah.

So for us, it all starts with having the best product, not going cheap on the fabrics, like, making sure that there's a lot of quality control with that.

And then from there, going back to some of the things we talked about earlier, like not rushing through the product, through the process.

So we first started seeding product to the right people, and these were all like, for example, you mentioned Scott Gummer from 10 Junk Miles.

He was a friend of mine.

So it was like, all right, let's send him some product, and he will naturally talk about it.

And yes, if it makes sense, we would get involved in a podcast or in a local race or whatnot.

But we've had about 80 different ambassadors, and those are not the people who podium necessarily at every race.

But these are the community leaders, these are the race directors, these are the podcast host.

I think Billy Yang was a perfect example there that you've spoken about earlier as well.

He was someone from the very beginning, I really appreciated his quality of storytelling.

And so there it became very natural, like, hey, here's some products.

And he absolutely loved the product.

From there, we started hiring for certain video projects.

And then naturally, that relationship has grown over time.

And so we have done that within the industry.

And I think some of my contacts, but then also some of the other team members have had great contacts that they all brought to the table.

Brian Rather, Scott Bailey, Eric Frey, we all come from our own angles into this, and I think naturally that has grown then.

Now, about 18 months ago, Brian Rather got on board, and he has a tremendous amount of product development experience and creative direction experience and also marketing experience.

He was able to really help bring a fresh perspective to creative.

It was Almost like a 2.0 version of Path, where we not only had updated logo and updated branding, but the entire product category kind of got elevated to the next level.

And I think people started noticing that from there on, like, the product had proven itself, and we were able to start scaling some more on the digital spend.

And just naturally, the.

It's almost like a snowball that's rolling down the hill that keeps rolling faster and starts gaining more momentum.

And I think we're at that stage right now.

Yeah, I start to roll faster.

I feel that groundswell for sure.

And anyone who, like, when I was pushing it a lot through this, that when they would buy the product, they would reach out and, you know, like, it was.

It was, you know, four or five people at least, who said, hey, I bought one thing.

And then I went back and bought, you know, two more things.

So you're right.

I mean, it's.

It's legitimately.

It's legitimately good stuff.

Like in Paris, the only thing I have to run in is the brown shorts that I Wore for my 100 miler in April.

Like, it's still.

Those are the shorts I wear every time.

You know, they're as good as the day I bought them.

I know it sounds like a commercial here.

That's really not what this is.

But I think it just speaks to.

I mean, your value proposition is like, stuff that lasts and looks good.

Like, you know, it's stuff that you could wear every day and it looks nice and the price is not like punching you in the gut.

Yeah, well, and we sometimes, from time to time, we have quite frequent conversations with our customers.

But like also just walking around at the trade show last week, we're in Austin, the running event.

One of the things that sometimes does get brought up, like one of your disadvantages probably for you as a business is that your product lasts so long.

And it's like, well, we'll take that as a compliment.

You know what I mean?

It's not that we're going to downgrade the quality just so people would buy more.

It's like, no, let's have that good experience that people will tell people, naturally.

Yeah.

I think the first time I heard about it, speaking of Billy Yang, I mean, and that.

That Billy is on board.

I mean, and that I.

We get to do this event with.

With Billy on January 18th in Salt Lake.

Like those.

That's mind blowing.

Like that.

That guy, I would say, between Billy and Chris McDougall, born to run author, those two were.

And I'm not alone in this, but those two were like some of the most formative, you know, special people in that era of running that really brought, you know, exponential growth within the ultra trail space.

And so he did a video once, I think he's like sitting in a hotel room or something like that, and he was like, hey, this is the gear I'm excited about right now, or something like that.

Anyway, I remember him talking about Path and that PATH separated the liners from the shorts.

And I thought, that's the most intuitive thing I've ever heard.

Why has no one done that?

And since I made that switch to PATH years after that video and other people, I guess, have the system now, but like that chafing on the lower back is gone.

It's incredible.

Yeah, we put a lot of thoughts into developing that system and that's like, yeah, the personalized performance and prevention of chafing are two of the things that come up.

You can put your phone in it, and it's like, everything's fine.

I put my phone back there, put my keys back there, put some nutrition all in my shorts.

It's crazy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think.

I think you're right, though.

Like, both Chris and Billy has brought a lot of people into the sport.

And I think one of.

One of Billy's videos in particular, the why of, like, running 100 miles.

Like that.

That video gets referred to so many times.

Yeah, that's like the seminal, like, the quintessential ultra video.

I made my dad watch it.

Like, hey, this is what I'm trying to do, dad.

Like, is what I'm into right now.

I know it doesn't make any sense.

You got to watch this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's.

Okay.

So stoked on the January 18th thing that we're doing with you.

There's more details still to come together for that, but that's fun.

So turn the page, though.

I'm.

Since I've got you here, I mean, like, with.

With you and all the coaching help.

Give me.

Give me a higher level or give me a lower level.

We've done high level.

Like, what is your value proposition within your coaching?

Like, you have videos, you have, you know, stuff that people can subscribe to.

Like what.

What's going on there?

Exactly.

I will kind of explain how it all started is in 2013, I kept, like, trying to improve and running.

I kept trying to run, and I wasn't really going anywhere.

As in, I.

I was running way too hard.

I was running a lot of zone three, zone four, like, often out of breath, often injured, and it was pretty inconsistent because of that.

And it was in 2013 that I listened to a Trail Runner Nation podcast where they interviewed Dr.

Phil Maffetone.

Okay.

And he talked about low heart rate training.

And that changed everything for me.

Meaning, like, for you to learn how to run faster, actually slow down in most of your training runs or in all of your training runs for several months, you will start becoming faster at the same heart rate.

I was like, this sounds.

Sounds kind of counterintuitive, but let me give this a try.

He mentioned some of these examples of other athletes.

And so when I started out, it was like, at 100.

I was 30 at the time.

It was like, there's a different formulas for it, but let's say you do 180 minus your age, which for me was 30 at the time was 150.

And you tried to run at A heart rate not above 150.

And when I did that the first time, like on the trails, at the walk, it was a lot of like uphill walking, like 11 minute miles.

Like, but on the road it was like nine minute, like 8:30 minute.

And I thought it was relative fit.

And like I was doing a lot of running before that at six 37 minute miles.

So I had to slow down with several minutes per mile.

But then after a month of running only at low heart rate, at the same heart rate, I improved by more than 30 seconds.

And I was like, this is interesting.

Like, so it becomes more efficient, you develop your aerobic system and so you use more energy from your body fat instead of from your glycogen.

Is there hope?

I'm 41, almost 42, you know, and I've never really leaned into that.

Is it too late?

Am I too late?

No, absolutely not.

Like there's, there's a, there's a lot of people in the 50s, 60s that are running their personal best times.

Okay.

Purely based on the fundamentals of slow, slow slightly.

And that's the thing, like you, you guys are doing like trail runs, ultra runs, longer distances in particular there.

Like, I know you have had some challenges sometimes on some of your longer races with your gut even.

Yeah.

And I've had like, I honestly meant to talk to you about this.

At some point it's like, hey, you might want to look at what is your actual heart rate that you're running at, what is your lactate buildup, what is your, what's happening in your gut at what point?

And so I think if you can even improve your aerobic pace and bring that down over time.

Yeah, because for me, like it took about three months and I started seeing a significant drop, made my runs more enjoyable, was able to recover very quickly, had a lot of energy, didn't have that crashing out on the couch in the afternoon because I was out of energy.

And the weekends, like I could do a long run and still function that day, hang out with my kids.

Yeah.

And there were like, the risk of injury goes down significantly.

So that was kind of the angle that naturally over time, in like an 18 month period of time, I just improved a lot in my running and I just documented that.

And that's basically the whole fundamentals of the coaching program that we're doing.

There's like low heart rate training.

And then once you have developed a base, like after the base building phase, there's more like higher intensity that gets integrated within it.

But it's super holistic.

It's not like David Gorgon style, go kill yourself in training, but it's kind of like more of a gentle approach of like being flexible in the training, like bit of a day to day adjustments if needed, but at the other hand, also like slowing down the majority of it and be able to push when you're ready for that.

And over time, we see a lot of people who said, like, for 10 years I tried to qualify for the Boston Marathon, never hit it, always missed it.

And now all of a sudden I broke like the BQ barrier by like 10, 15, 20 minutes.

And like literally people crying on some of these conversations of like, I never thought this was humanly possible.

And here I am in my 50s or 60s, running injury free.

And so these things are very meaningful.

It goes much beyond, like I was saying earlier, it's not the financial, like, it's like you're making a positive impact in other people's lives because it has made such a positive impact in my life.

Like, all I want to do was kind of get a stress relief from work life, from family life, and instead of like going out and killing yourself in workouts and coming back completely beat up, it's actually like a stress relief to go on some of these runs and enjoying a more holistic approach to running.

That's beautiful.

I.

So I've, you know, last 12 years, it's been all trail and, you know, ultra.

I'm.

Because of where I'm living now, kind of in the periphery of Paris, like in the, in the heart of it.

Trails is just not on the.

It's just not possible.

I.

But I am on the waitlist for something called Eco Trail Paris, which is a super cool race that ends it like running up the Eiffel Tower.

So if I, if I get in, I'll.

I'll probably suffer through that.

But I'm.

I'm optimizing for the Paris Marathon.

I'm in and so I'm optimizing for that.

And so what are we at?

We're about four months of training on that.

And I want to, like, the number I have in mind is 345.

That would be a big accomplishment.

That would be a personal best by a long shot.

Because the first time I ran one, I was no idea what I was doing.

But now I'm going into this thinking, hey, this is my life.

I live right by the river here where it's a good place to run and I want to get a 345.

So from that level, like the, into the other old men like me who are, who are here, like, and maybe like you, but you don't have as much gray there.

How do you know?

How do you, how do you start to think about your personal best?

Like, what's your first step towards your personal best?

Because that's where I'm at right now.

What's my first step?

So I would first, like, if you, if you, if you really like in your case, like, all right, I got four months to train.

Like kind of going back to what we talked about earlier.

Like, there's a lot of people who want to qualify for Boston in four months or want to run a personal.

This is literally you right now.

I want to run my personal best in four months, right?

Yeah.

Whereas like sometimes I'm like, I think you have way more personal best ahead of you in the next 12, 24, 36 and beyond months if you get the basic fundamentals of training.

Right.

Yeah.

But that also means like allowing for a certain period of time to really do gradual, gentle training.

And like, because every time when you start doing too much high intensity, it just adds more cortisol, like higher stress levels to the body and sometimes that could block some of the aerobic process.

So like you want to be a little bit cautious if like sometimes we see people who are like high intensity or five times in a week CrossFit and then trying to do like low heart rate training, it's like it's counter, counterbalancing over there.

So I think for you, if even for the next four months you would do your, like, you would still do some of the training you were planning on doing, but when you do a lower intensity run, like actually slow down enough, there's a lot of people who just run in zone three and it's a mediocre yellow zone land where you don't really get that many benefits for it.

Whereas if you can slow down enough, which might be for you like a 9 minute mile, might be an 11 minute mile, might be a 13 minute mile, like whatever it is.

Right?

Yeah.

Because are you saying so like the opening rule of thumb is the 180 minus my age, so.

180 minus 42.

Yeah.

So that formula generally gives a ballpark number.

That works okay for most people.

However, like for athletes who are in the 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond, sometimes further personalization may be needed.

Or for athletes who have a high max heart rate, some, some playing around, I think it's one way to get to a number that's a ballpark Number from there, something else you can do is go out, run with a friend, have a conversational pace, or make a phone call to someone else.

And while you have that conversation, after you're warmed up, you just look down on your watch and you see, like, all right, I can have a conversation at a 140 heart rate.

It's like, let's aim not to go.

But once I go to 145, I start to, like, have a bit harder time to, like, be able to speak sentences and whatnot.

So let's stick to that 140.

And, like, it doesn't have to be exact.

This is more ballpark numbers, but most people are doing all of their runs at that 160, 170 heart rate.

Yeah.

And depending on where you're at, that could often be a little bit too much.

I'll do a lot of my work calls on a run, so that helps me a lot.

Like, you know, to keep it.

Like, it's my work calls with people that I'm at least friendly enough.

Like, if I'm a little out of breath, we can laugh about it, but that helps me.

But I have a high heart rate.

I mean, I think I run pretty hot.

Like, I pushed myself.

Just out of curiosity, when was it?

Yesterday?

And I was like.

I was, like, at 189.

Like, when I was just, like, I just wanted to see how high.

I just wanted to see if I could get it to blow up.

Yeah.

But on those phone calls, I'm at, like, 150, 152.

That feels really high.

But I'm able to talk.

What is the.

What is the device that you use.

To measure this chorus Apex two.

Oh, just.

Just the wrist.

I don't have a chest or anything.

So as much as I'm a fan of chorus and a fan, like, funny enough, I'm literally working out of the chorus office right now.

Okay.

So you at least respect.

Yeah, yeah.

No, like, I have a lot of respect for them.

That being said, we have found that external heart rate monitors, whether that's an armband, like Chorus and Polar and some other brands are making these armbands, or whether it's like a chest strap, they are often more accurate.

Like, yes, the optical wrist heart rate monitors have come a long way, but I still see discrepancies of sometimes 10, 15, 20 beats.

And this could be that it picks up your cadence.

It could be that it picks up, like, and, like, how tight you have it around your wrist.

Like, all of these things come into play.

So one of the first things that we say is if you want to train with accurate heart rate, get an external heart rate monitor.

Whoa.

This might, this might actually be eye opening for you as well.

Absolutely.

I mean, I don't, I don't do deep dives into gear.

I'm not like a super technical person.

But, you know, I've been.

I was with Garmin for, I mean, my lifetime value of Garmin.

I was a pretty good customer, you know, probably spent three grand over eight years or something like that.

Nine years.

And now I'm the Coros Apex too.

And I absolutely love it.

But I've never, I've never read a review, so I wouldn't, I would.

Oh, nice, Nice.

Based off what you just said, I thought, well, maybe.

I bet if I read an article or two, maybe I would have known that maybe my audience, everyone who's hearing you say that.

Yeah, of course you have to have external.

I've never even heard that, that they could be that far off.

That's wild.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've done quite a bit of testing myself too, in different scenarios, and sometimes it's just more accurate than another.

But, yeah, I'm sold.

I'm gonna do it.

I'm gonna buy it.

There you go.

Okay, so I get the, you know, the four months.

Yeah.

And I like that.

Okay, then maybe let me tell you my two year plan because I'm here.

So I'm going to run the road marathon.

I'm not passionate about road.

I wasn't.

Now I'm starting to love it.

I did a podcast interview with Jacob Pusey and I've referenced it so many times because I loved.

I'd never heard anyone talk so romantically about road only trail.

But the way that he talked about road was so compelling.

And so this is my life.

And so I'm running on the road and I'm starting to really love it.

But I wanted to do the Paris marathon at some point.

Then I wanted to do a road ultra of some certain distance.

And then once we, you know, resettle back in America, I want to get back into, you know, my heart of the hundred miler.

But I thought, hey, it'd be great to spend time at these shorter, relatively shorter distances.

But my real true ultimate goal is to do better at the 100 mile distance.

Yeah, well, and that's, I think, the beauty that sometimes people don't realize that having a well developed aerobic system, if your aerobic pace is improved, it will be beneficial in all distances.

Like as soon as your heart rate comes down or like, yeah, your heart rate comes down at the same pace or you're running a faster pace at the same heart rate.

Yeah.

It translates like to like your race time's right there.

Like we, as much as I absolutely believe there's a time and place for high intensity running and to reach your optimal performance, like, yes, I think it's a combination of low heart rate training and then adding in high intensity running at the right time.

We have seen many people who even for a period of time don't do any high intensity running and just run low intensity and running the absolute best races ever.

Even though they're racing, for example, marathon at a much higher heart rate.

Often like 10, 15, 20 beats higher than the low intensity training zone.

Yeah.

Still they're able to raise that much more efficient because they're using less energy.

So when you're coaching somebody that's, that is choosing to just do all their training in the low heart rate.

Are you, are the programs that you're giving them a time on task type program, are you still saying, hey, no, get these, get this number of miles, you know what I mean?

Because Camille Heron at one point was talking about this coach that I think is from France who is always about like, never do the long run, never run more than 120 minutes.

I don't know if you're familiar with any of this.

I haven't done the deep dive.

But I mean, what's the prescription?

It's an interesting one because realistically if you have an hour available to train and whether you run a six minute mile or whether you run a 12 minute mile, that makes a difference.

Right.

However, realistically, if it's in your zone two, you're both getting an hour of zone two training in.

And so most of our training schedules are all time based, meaning like, all right, this day, go out for like 60 minute round, do this type of warmup, this cool down and like and then so, so mentally you kind of know how long you're going to be out there for.

Yes, that's what I was going to say.

You could.

Because when you do that, as someone who's super busy, you can actually put it on the calendar and that it's not six miles.

I'm feeling bad it ended up being an hour and five minutes.

Like I love that from a time blocking standpoint.

Yeah.

That being said though, in the, like in some of the further weeks when you get closer to race day, I do think there's a time and place for hitting a certain mileage point.

Because, you know, for example, for a marathon, you got to run 26 mile 42k.

So getting, for example, a 20 miler in or a few 20 miles in will be beneficial.

Just so you've been at 80% of the race and what that feels like.

Yeah.

And you.

I don't know what, what the timeline was within this, but you've run all the world majors, right?

I just finished it in London this year, actually, yes.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Do you have like one that you got to go back and do again?

It's kind of funny.

The only one that I didn't run under three hours was the New York Marathon.

And that was because Billy actually asked me to help him on a video project for Strava in 2019 where we were following three different runners that were running that first marathon at New York.

And so all three of us are running with a different runner.

And so I ran with this guy named Matthew and he had gone from being pretty significantly overweight to losing a lot of weight and running his first marathon.

Amazing.

And even though this was like a four hours something marathon, it was my slowest one out of the six.

It was the most special one because we had this, like, I got to experience, experience the race.

Not from a racing perspective, but really observing everything.

I was the filmer.

I got to run like, relative comfortable pace, and I was able to enjoy this experience like nothing else.

And he had lost his dad previously and his run was dedicated to his dad.

So we were literally both running through Central park, like tearing up and literally both crying while we're running those last miles through Central Park.

And that was just such a special experience.

Like, that was one of my favorite races.

Well, the question that was coming to mind that I think you put to rest was, you know, was the psychology hard for someone who can run sub three to run a, you know, over four?

But it sounds like the trade off was a really special moment.

It really is.

And I think there's a lot of people who are so focused on their race times.

Yeah.

And funny Enough, I interviewed Dr.

Rangan Chatterjee from the UK on my podcast last week and we had a deep dive into this topic of conversation that a lot of people attach their identity to their race times.

Like, if I hit this race time, I'm okay, I'm enough.

I'm this.

I got this identity.

Yeah.

Versus, like going for the experience.

And the longer I've been running, the less I care about my race times to a point that I.

The reason I'm also more and more drawn to trail running.

Like, I've run 50, 50 road marathons.

I've done trails.

I've done ultras.

Yeah.

I don't have the desire to try to go out and try to break my PB at this point and train 80 or 90 miles a week.

I have, yes.

Two startups, I have two young children.

I just don't have the bandwidth to train that many hours a week.

Yeah.

But if I go out on the trails, like, first of all, I think when you're racing on the trails, it's not apples to apples.

You're not comparing yourself to this time on a flat marathon course that you've done at this time in your.

Or like, at this age.

And so I think every race is different and, like, just the joy of a sunrise trail, regardless of whatever time it is, it's a much different experience.

Yeah.

For me.

What.

The reason I'll trail run until I can run no longer is because there's, like.

There's a deep, like, soul work that happens there.

That's like you're saying, if I'm at mile 30 of Zion, I cannot compare that to mile 30 of Wasatch.

And so I'm at peace.

Where is that?

The road.

I can already feel it.

It's like you're.

You know, I'm gonna be thinking about where should I.

Like, what are my benchmarks and how does it compare to my Salt Lake City marathon that I did?

And no judgment.

It's just.

It's just two different animals that are existing within the same sort of kingdom, you know, of.

We've got our road.

I've got my road brain, and I've got my trail brain.

My troll brain is like a very healthy brain.

My road brain is like, trying to find.

Find its.

Find its lane.

You know what I mean?

Totally know what you mean.

Yeah.

It's apples to apples.

Not always at that part.

And I think even on road races, though, like, the one year it could be warm.

The other year it could be cold and windy and even there.

Like, what we have going on in our daily life is so different from year to year.

And so sometimes it's just all about what is the best that we can do on race day given our circumstances, given our.

Whatever we have had leading up to that race.

Right.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

Where do.

Where do you go after 50 marathons and what you've done?

Like, where.

Where is your personal ambition in running right now?

It's a good question.

Funny enough, they just added the Sydney Marathon as a seventh world Major.

So that's where it went.

So I did have a conversation with my wife last night saying, like, ah, do we want to go to Sydney?

But then again, you have to get through the lottery and find a way to get in.

Which, honestly, I'm kind of drawn to doing some more backyard adventures.

So at the beginning of every year, it's not necessarily let's sign up for this race.

Last year I sat down with Ryan hall in Flagstaff and we recorded a podcast about excitement in training and in racing.

And he really talked about following what brings you joy.

That doesn't have to be the next road race.

It doesn't have to be the next trail race.

And that really got me thinking.

Last year we did an adventure where we swam a mile in the ocean, we rode a bike 85 miles to Mount Baldy over in Southern California, and then we ran up and down Mount Baldy.

There was like a 14 hour day with like 12,000 foot of climb and it freaking bonked on the bike.

But like, adventure with friends and just documenting it along the way.

Now for New Year's, we planned like, let's go for a long barefoot run by the ocean.

And every jetty that we see, we swim around the jetty.

So just like it's a cold plunge and we're running barefoot and it's like, with a few friends, like, I think it doesn't always have to be that structured of a race for me.

So right now I'm really just enjoying some of these adventures and doing.

Doing that.

So.

Oh, man, that.

That sounds great.

I think one thing that we have to have to talk about, because I'm just curious, is that you've talked to a lot of awesome people on your podcast.

Most, you know, most recent notable I think probably for my audience is Courtney, but Eliud Kipchoge that you got to have a conversation with him when very few people have had conversations with Elud Kipchoge.

How did you even do that?

You know what's funny?

I'm a big believer in vision, like vision boards and putting something out in the universe.

And I think everything happens for a reason.

Yeah, I already have this conversation.

And so last year I was.

No, it was about two years ago.

I was kind of at this slump with the podcast and I was like, I don't really know.

I want to keep doing this.

I don't.

Like, there's just a lot going on and I didn't really know what angles and whatnot.

Yeah, all I did is I created a vision board of Kind of like, where do I want to go?

And I kind of almost jokingly put on there like Elliot Kipchoge and Killian.

And sure enough, within six months, both of his teams reached out to me to get interviewed, which I was like, how does this even work?

Like, so Elliot Kipchoge was coming out with a movie about Running Sub two.

Yeah.

And it was Universal Pictures, I believe it was.

They reached out like, hey, do you want to interview Elliot on your podcast?

And then I was like, oh yeah, absolutely.

This would be great.

Of course.

And then they put all the, all the rules about it.

Like I just said like, yes, absolutely, great opportunity.

And they were like, it's going to be 15 minutes.

It's going to be, it has to be about the movie.

It's going to be.

There's going to be these three directors on the zoom call with you.

And I was like, yeah, great, let's find a way.

And so all I did was I had 15 minutes time.

I got the three questions about the movie out of the way very quick.

Within two minutes we got those questions out of the way.

Then I asked them the questions I was interested about.

What advice do you have to non elite runners looking to improve?

What tips would you give to your younger version of yourself?

What would you like?

Then I re edited it because I told them no one cares about your questions about the movie.

Let's do this the right way.

So I edited all those questions towards the end that if people were into the conversation.

Because that's how the YouTube algorithm sometimes works too.

Yeah.

And so.

And then a week after I had that conversation with Elliot, like Lewis from chorus asked me to fly out to Eugene for like the pre classics.

And so we actually got to have coffee with Elliot and got to hang out with him and Sifa Nassan.

And so I had an offline conversation of about half an hour, not close to an hour with Elliot and I asked him all of the questions.

I didn't record it, but then I went back and I actually just edited that in.

Like, here's the learnings from that conversation.

And it just integrated that within the conversation.

So it ended up being like longer than a 15 minute interview about his video.

But I think it's just about getting creative to get the most out of the situation, man.

I think so.

My favorite thing is you say, I have a very good friend named David Figgy in Salt Lake and he has the same thing.

It's like, hey, if you have a thing that feels that you want to do, that's so big.

It's like that it feels stupid.

You have to say it out loud because it is so it's actually stupid to keep it in, like, because you never know who's going to know somebody who might be able to make this thing happen that you want.

So you have to say these things.

I want to hang out with Elliot Kipchoge.

I want Casey Neistat on my podcast.

I want to, you know, something like, if I.

If I never say it out loud, there's actually no chance, you know, Like, I say it to you and you're like, hey, I know a guy.

You might need to connect with this guy, and he could, you know, like, that's how you.

That's how stuff.

That's how stuff happens, you know, in entrepreneurship, it really is.

And I think you also get drawn to it more, right?

Like, let's say you want to.

You want to buy a certain car, and all of a sudden you start seeing that car everywhere, right?

Like, that's just how the mind works.

Like, put something out there and you all of a sudden start seeing it, and like, all of a sudden you start to draw connections to that something there.

Yeah, man.

Yeah, I love that.

And so it was a great interview, but what a cool thing to get to talk to you.

Talked to several legends over time on your podcast, but even at that time, but just everything that he had done, such a cool opportunity, such a cool thing to see.

It really is.

And I pinch myself sometimes with it being like, this is something that I've looked up to for a very long period of time.

But I think at the end of the day, they're all just other human beings, Right?

We got a chance to hang out with him in Tokyo at the marathon in March and got a chance to record a longer form interview with him.

Like, yeah, I think I saw it sitting at the table.

Like, sitting at a table, right?

Yeah.

And even he had the worst race out of his career.

He had all sorts of death threat, like, people, like, after the whole dying of the other marathon runner, like, he got accused by it, and people were saying, like, this and that.

And he was.

He hadn't slept for days before that interview.

And so I think treating someone just like another human being who just had a.

Had a poor race experience.

So all I did is I walked into that conversation and it was like, oh, nice to see you again.

And like, from one dad to another dad, like, hey, here's a drawing from my kids that they made for you.

It's the four of us Running together with you as well as a family.

And we're all holding hands because my kids, like, really, like, look up to you.

Yeah.

And he was like, it just kind of level sets the situation to like, oh, here's just two people having a normal conversation.

Yeah.

I think someone at his echelon, like the upper echelon of echelons, he doesn't often get treated just like just another guy, you know?

And so I think that's what a great.

What a great way to approach those conversations.

No, I think it just brings the best out of people when they can feel comfortable instead of being nervous of, like, why did you not race well at Tokyo?

What went wrong?

It's like, no one cares about that.

Like, yeah, it's like, let's have a human conversation here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, final thread before we wrap up the skateboarding connection.

I mean, I was a skateboarder growing up.

I loved it.

I mean, I was like a skate kid who was into punk rock as well.

I don't know.

In California.

Well, no, you were in Amsterdam growing up skateboarding.

Were you like a skate punk kid?

Were you hip hop?

What were you listening to?

What was your life?

Yeah, it was definitely hip hop.

There was a lot of Nas and whatever Wu Tang.

It was.

It was the variety gangster and.

Yeah, it was.

Growing up in Amsterdam, I actually ended up working at one of the biggest skate parks and skate shops over there.

It was called Burnside in Deventer.

So, yeah, we would be skateboarding every day at the park and setting up the skate contest and all of that.

So there's great skating around Paris.

I'm always shocked because where I grew up in West Texas, there wasn't much skateboarding.

Like, we had a little skate park, whatever.

But the amount of just, like, skateboarding in the city, all of a sudden, like here at Republique, like, there's just.

All of a sudden, there's ramps and same thing in Copenhagen.

We spent the summer in Copenhagen.

All of a sudden there's.

There's a half pipe.

Like, it's just like.

It's a.

It's a culture that welcomes it.

Compared to certain cities in Texas, you know, Fort Worth, Dallas, like, it wasn't terribly receptive.

Totally.

Like, I think French Fred and the whole S Video.

Manic Maddie.

Like, a lot of videos have been filmed in Paris.

So there's so many great skate spots there.

For sure.

Ah, so good.

And you mentioned him earlier.

Jeff Rowley, right?

Your old buddy.

What's.

What's the connection there?

Did you work with was he.

Did he skate.

Who did he skate for when you.

Were working at Tony Hawk Flip Skateboards.

So I became the.

I became the marketing manager for Flip Skateboards and we at the time for three years we just traveled around doing skateboard tours together.

So we would.

I would be in charge of setting up like we did a skate tour early 2000s that was a flip firm skateboard tour.

And it was like 20 pro and am skateboarders like Tom Fanny, Mark Appleyard, Bastian Solibanzi, Jeff Rowley, all in vans, like just going to skateparks, autograph signings and.

And I was the one helping set that up.

So we spent a lot of time together and then later on I went to Volcom to become the marketing director there.

So we did a lot of.

We went to Japan together, went to like the UK we did screen printing tours.

We would go to like skate shops, set up screen printing for blank T shirts, like customize all of that.

It was super grassroots.

But I think the more one on one connections we had with customers like do those events like many times and you do build up a lot of grassroots organic connections.

I mean when you think about and one basketball what they captured, they were the heart of basketball.

That's what inspired Borderlands to be the heart of trail running.

Like that's where it came from.

It's like this antithesis to the NBA.

This was.

But I even and one became this massive thing.

I always thought that and won borrowed from skateboarding culture.

So the way that they would just gather around on the street and the way you know like the screen printing on there and then you know, handing out a VHS tape, all this sort of stuff then they, you know, they made some amazing decisions that sent and one to the moon.

But I and maybe skateboarding took it from somewhere but it just felt like all of the coolest stuff that was.

That was emerging was coming out of that late 90s, late 80s 90s and you know, such.

Such a great time to.

To be in the industry and to be around some of the legends that.

You were around 100%.

There was a lot of creativity in there, in the, in the skateboarding like in the.

In the whole skateboarding media from a photography standpoint, videotography standpoint.

I think it was very like made a lot of impact in street culture.

And it's really cool to see that actually pivoting.

Not pivoting but happening within the running culture right now at this point as well.

Like there's a lot of creativity happening and I think this is just the beginning of it.

There's still.

There's a ton of creativity.

The thing that I'm looking for next in trail running is someone who can actually capture the spirit of those old skateboarding videos.

I don't think anyone's touched it yet because it's hard, as I think about, like, how do you actually capture that?

Because it's hard to get the video out on the trail.

And, you know, there's like.

There's no, like, trick.

There's no, like, one thing that's like, hey, watch this for 10 seconds and you're hooked.

But I think, you know, someone will solve that at some point, but.

Because I think that every great sports meteoric rise has something is in some way rooted to all the cool marketing stuff that skateboarding brought to us.

It really is.

And I think sometimes the footage that's happening inside a skate van like, that is about as.

Or as roots and organic as it can be.

And I think even not necessarily always having the documenting of, like, just purely the run, but it's also what's happening before and after the run or in those little moments that's not easy to capture.

But there's definitely.

Well, and that's the birth of.

That's the birth of Jackass.

Like, that.

It.

Like, there's those dudes skateboarding, and I was like, oh, my gosh, look at this crazy stuff we do.

We should put a.

Put a camera on this.

Like, that emerged out of it as well.

Like.

And I love the way you put it.

It was.

You know, it's hanging in the van.

It's.

What do we.

Let's do something crazy, and then you capture it.

But, man.

Well.

All right.

Hey, Flores, I know we got a hard stop here.

I want to respect that.

I love this.

I look forward to meeting you in person.

January 18, Salt Lake City, with you, Billy Yang, and the other More Path crew.

But it's going to be open to the city.

We'll get a lot of details out about that.

But, man, it's just fun talking about all this stuff.

Absolutely.

Same here.

And I'm.

I'm impressed by all of the different things that you've been able to do from.

From your end.

Like, you definitely wear a lot of different hats and excited for what's to come next year with.

With both the group Shakeout run and then with the race that we're.

Yeah.

May 31st.

It's a 5K, I'm sorry, 10K half marathon and 50K.

We got a lot of fun stuff planned for it, but it's going to be awesome.

Path is the, is the presenting sponsor, you know, and it's.

We're going to have a blast.

It's going to be a good time.

So thanks, Flores.

Appreciate it.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Later.