Kimberly Underwood: From 3:38 to 3:11 Marathon in Under 2 Years With A Few Changes to Training and Mind Set
(Part 2 of 2)
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Absolutely. No, I understand. That’s really interesting, thanks for sharing that. Another really good post of yours, which I’d like to briefly touch on – because this is something that we’ve definitely learned from speaking with athletes such as Eliud Kipchoge over in Kenya (more info here) and from Mo Farah’s training group (more info here), the header of the post is ‘Why every workout isn’t a PR workout?’ You briefly talk about… I think one quote from there is, ‘I’m realising I need to relax my standards for a good workout, and not limit good workouts to ones where I can run faster than I previously ever had in a workout, because that’s not necessarily the point of them.’ I think this is something that a lot of people, again, do accidentally. They really try, and maybe it’s not an accident, but they try and push themselves too hard in every single workout. So, it would be really good to know how you discovered this kind of idea, and what you think about this topic…
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Yeah. Well, I think that it’s… You know, a lot of maybe really type-A people gravitate towards running because it’s such a quantifiable activity.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Absolutely.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): You know, and so, it gives you kind of that gratification that you need out of something, because you can quantify it – there’s paces, there’s, you know, all these types of things you can measure. And so, that’s why a lot of people like me tend to gravitate towards running. The bad thing is, though, that we use these measuring standards to tell us if we had a good or bad day, which is not totally fair.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Absolutely.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): There’s so many variables that go into it, and the point of some workouts may not be to have the very fastest, you know, 800 you’ve ever ran in that workout. There’s just so many different things that go into a full training plan. And so, I think that realising the purpose for workouts, and realising that everything fits into a puzzle, and that it doesn’t have to be your very best day every single time you go out to have a workout is super helpful. It’s definitely something I’ve still been trying to grasp as, like, an amateur runner. My husband, Tyler, he’s a 2:18 runner, so he’s extremely fast, and he also just has a more laid back personality, so I think being around him has helped me to take a better approach to things, because he can go to a workout and not have executed all the fastest K repeats, thousand repeats, you know, he’s ever done, and he can say, ‘It was a good workout. It did what it was supposed to do.’ And so, I’m learning that that’s the approach I need to take for longevity. The way I’m looking at it as, like, success or failure, is just too hardnose to make this a really enjoyable, you know, and successful approach to, you know, training for races.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Absolutely. And this is something that we spoke very briefly about with Patrick Sang, who is Eliud Kipchoge’s coach… (article of interview with Eliud Kipchoge’s coach on training here). He mentioned that, in the work… Within his group, there are a few people that are, sort of, this personality, and they really like to try and smash themself on… In every workout, and try to improve themlself, and it’s interesting…
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Yes!
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: He mentioned something along the line… This is a year ago now, last August we were over there, he went something along the lines of, it’s interesting for him to see a large group of people that… There’s Eliud on one end of the spectrum, that’s completely contempt with going out and doing a session where he’s nowhere near hitting his best times because he knows it’s part of a bigger picture… And then, there’s athletes in there that are trying to improve themself every session. And he mentiones something like, ‘It’s funny how all of the faster athletes, at the end of the day, are towards Eliud’s side of things, where they don’t necessarily track how they’re comparing each workout, and they just turn up, they get it done, and when the time is right – which is often three to four weeks before a big race – they really try and hit the session then. But when they’re three, four, five months out, it’s not overly important. So, it’s really interesting to hear you discover that on your own, as well, because I think it’s something that a lot of people never figure out.
[Link to full Eliud Kipchoge Training Log in e-book here]
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Totally. And I think that it’s… I mean, it’s such a key part to us, honestly, just enjoying this process. Because, if we’re looking at every single workout as an opportunity to succeed or fail, it’s, honestly, way too much pressure to put on ourselves, it can lead us to being overtrained, or just stressing us out too much, you know? And it really is just showing up every day and being faithful to the work that day, not having to knock it out of the park every single time, you know, you go out and run.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: For sure. And I guess this is a perfect way to transition to another part of… I liked a lot, which the header was, ‘I don’t… Why I don’t get hung up on mileage anymore’.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Yeah.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: And the first thing it says, ‘Mileage is sexy. What’s not sexy is doing a conservative amount of miles with a lot… At an easy pace.’ So, yeah, it sounds like you’ve learned a lot of lessons on the way here, and I think they’re lessons that a lot of people are still learning right now, so it would be good to hear a little bit more about your opinion on the topic of mileage.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Yeah. You know, I think that… You know, while you’re going through these lessons, you’re like, ‘I wish that I had figured this out, you know, a different way, where I didn’t have to be learning the lesson the hard way.’
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Yes.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): But, you know, in the grand scheme of things, I spin around it for about…
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: I think that’s how you learn best, through – when they hurt you the most.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Exactly. And, you know, in the grand scheme of things, I’ve been a runner for six years, so I guess it didn’t take me twenty years to learn some of these lessons, and if I can now take the super conservative approach to my running, you know, to the rest of the time I’m running, then, you know, it’s a well-learned lesson. But, yeah, I… You know, I think that I belong to this Instagram world of running, and it’s so easy to get caught up with what everybody else is doing, and… You know, I don’t know if elites post their trainings so much, or really care about what other people are doing, but, you know, in our little world, it can be easy to get caught up in what other people are doing, and then compare what your training is… And, honestly, after I got burned after Boston, you know, I did eighty mile weeks for, I think, six weeks straight. And I was so burned from that, and I took such a conservative approach that I really don’t care what everybody else is doing, because I’m over here, doing pretty much the max I can do without burning myself out. So, there would be no possibility of me doing more, you know? And I think that’s what every person needs to find, just like, what’s the sweet spot for you? And the sweet spot should be: what has you improving, you know, and progressing at a steady rate? What has you feeling good and not completely overloaded? And just stick with that. If somebody else is able to do a hundred mile week, that’s great. That’s amazing for them. But, you know, for me, I’ve had to realise that being able to hit that kind of high mileage takes years. And for you to try to rush the process and at high mileage, and workouts… I mean, it’s not a great recipe for a successful running career.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: No. And one really good quote you have on the same post is, ‘If you do not have the proper base foundation, then too many miles may be counterproductive.’
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Absolutely. I mean, when I was training for Boston, I was so focused on the mileage I was hitting each week. That was, literally, what my posts were about. Like, ‘I hit eighty miles!’ And all of my workouts during that time were suffering. I wasn’t hitting paces, I… During my tempo runs that are supposed to be, you know, not stopping – so it’s, let’s say, six miles, you’re not supposed to stop one time, I’m having to pause my watch multiple times to take breaks, because I’m, like, totally winded. You know… And I was just so blinded by this, like, idea of mileage, and just this, like, status of mileage, that I was neglecting the huge red flags that were coming up. You know? I’m not hitting any paces, this should tell me that this is not working out for me. But I just thought mileage overruled it. Like, even though I’m not hitting paces, it’s OK – I’m hitting the miles. And, you know, now I’ve learned, you can hit all the miles you want, and you’ll probably not hit that marathon out of the park if you’re not hitting any of your paces in any of your workouts leading up to it.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Absolutely. That’s really interesting. And I think, again, it’s another lesson that a lot of people take a while to properly learn.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Oh, absolutely.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Well, thanks very much for all of your advice here. I think… One of the last things I’d like to ask you is about an interesting post that you posted about sugar.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Oh, yes.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Yeah. So, you’ve been experimenting, it sounds like, with no or very low sugar. You mentioned that you’ve been using Hammer nutrition gels, which have a little bit of sugar… Yeah, I’d love for you to talk a little bit about this, because I think it’s something that… It’s a great experiment to run, and I’d like to hear about your experience here.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Yeah, absolutely. So, basically, I had gone a year without sugar back in 2013, and, you know, when I was on it, that whole year I, you know, didn’t crave it, and I loved it. And I slowly started introducing it back in, and then, you know… It’s like a weed, you can’t get it out once it’s there. So, in April this year, I decided to, you know, to try to stop sugar, you know, cold. And I did, like, a no sugar April type of challenge, and , you know, the first day or so was a little bit tough, mostly in just figuring out what to eat. Kimberly Because, you know, you go through your day, and you have, like, your routine of what you typically eat. And if you look at your routine, there could be a lot of sugar in just, like, even health foods, you know? So, I was realising that, you know, my proteine bar in the morning had twelve grams of sugar, or my Kombucha in the afternoon had, like, sixteen grams of sugar… And, you know, it all starts adding up, and so, I just started finding good substitutes for things that I was already eating, that had hidden sugars in them. And I just created a routine that was sugar-free. And, so, after April, I’ve, you know, allowed myself to have treats now and then, but it’s basically… Like, I just have, like, a sugar-free routine, so if something comes up that I really want to eat, it’s not a part of my daily life, but I can enjoy a treat now and then. So, I feel like that’s a better way for me to live.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Sure. And I’m sorry if you just briefly touched on this, but I may have missed it – what initially got you interested in trying this experiment? Was there any particular reason or was it just you wanted to run an experiment with it, or…?
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Yeah, so, I mean… I think that there’s way too much sugar in all of our foods, and, you know, I think the real travesty is that a lot of health companies market things ‘for athletes’, or just as health foods, and they have so much sugar in them. Sugar is just not good for our health. I think the excess consumption of it can just do so much damage to so many different things, and so, because of that, I really wanted just overall health, you know? I’ve taken the last couple of years to really just build myself into the right athlete through just a bunch of different means, and so… Nutrition has been one avenue, and my sugar consumption has been one thing I want to get under control, because, you know, excess sugar feeds inflammation in your body. In order to help your body heal and recover better, it’s better to do, you know, less sugar. And so, like, the most elite athletes aren’t eating all the doughnuts and all the pizza that all of us, you know, Instagram runners are posting about. So, I just wanted to kind of clean up my diet and help my body to handle the pressure of running with just better fuel. So, yeah… I just decided to try to see how going low to no sugar would be, and I started that in April, and I’ve continued it ‘till now. And, you know, my performance has only increased, and never… You know, I had people expressing concern that I need sugar, and I was, like, ‘I don’t think I do.’ And, you know, I still feel great not doing it, and… Like I mentioned in that post, you know, for a race or for a super long run, I’ll take a gel just so that way I’m giving my body what it needs at the moment, but I… You know, I wasn’t trying to address, like, those type of things when I was going no sugar. I’m trying to address the 99% of the time sugar that you’re doing, you know?
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Sure.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Taking gels at a race happens so infrequently that, you know, I can take those and I’m not really that concerned about it. But, I don’t need to be just having brownies for breakfast like I had been having.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Awesome. Well, yeah, thank you very much for joining us today. It’s definitely been a lot of top advice there, and I recommend anyone listening to this, or reading this, to check out Kinberly on Instagram. She’s got a lot of very good posts, with a whole lot of very good advice that I came across a couple of months ago, and I felt like more or less all of it was very much related to a lot of the advice and information that we’ve come across and discovered through our time interviewing and speaking with a lot of the other elite athletes that are featured on this site. So, all the best in your preparation towards the marathon in December. What is your goal?
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): My goal is to run sub three this December.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Another big jump.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): It’s been a… It’s been a goal of mine for a while, and, you know, I wanted to set myself up for it well last year, so I took a huge chunk of time off last year, and I know that I’m capable of taking another big chunk off this year, and then seeing where I can go from there.
Matt Fox @ Sweat Elite: Absolutely. Cool. Well, thanks again, and all the best for the race in December.
Kimberly Underwood (@trackclubbabe): Thank you so much, Matt. I really appreciate it.
