1:59

How fast is a 1:59 marathon? Technical speed: Crazy fast. (Laughing.)

If you want to feel it, go out to your local track and run the experiment above.

Another way to look at it: While you’re at that track, if you can run a lap in 70 seconds (high fives!!) then just carry on and run a mile in about 4 minutes and 33 seconds (if you can do THAT, backflip high tens!). Then repeat that 26.2 times. <- Yah. That’s fast. :)

Of course, elite athletes in every sport do the seemingly impossible—whether that’s LeBron James playing basketball or Michael Phelps swimming laps. But… That’s still crazy fast!

For the record, the current world record for the marathon is 2:02:57, set by Dennis Kimetto of Kenya on September 28, 2014, at the Berlin Marathon. And, for the record, that’s ALREADY almost 30 seconds faster than the record Maffetone cites when this book was published earlier that year—which was 2:03:23 which was set by Wilson Kipsang at the 2013 Berlin Marathon.

So… The clock is ticking on that 1:59 marathon. Let’s look at how Maff thinks it’ll go down.

P.S. First, let’s talk about the whole “26.2 mile” thing. Do you know WHY the marathon is set at 26.2 miles? It’s another fun example of Yuval Noah Harari’s concept of “imagined realities”—the stuff we take for granted in our culture like lawns, high-heels and… marathon distances.

Here’s the origin story: “When the modern Olympics were birthed two decades later in Athens in 1896, the organizers wanted a unique event that could recall the ancient glory of Greece. That’s how the marathon came into existence. The winner of that inaugural Olympic footrace was Spridon Louis, a Greek water-carrier, who won in a time of 2:24:52. The total distance, however, was 24.85 miles.

So how did the marathon end up becoming 26.2 miles? Why were those extra 1.3 miles added? At the 1908 Olympic Games in London, the marathon distance was lengthened to twenty-six miles to cover the ground from Windsor Castle to White City stadium, with another 385 yards tacked on so the race could finish in front of King Edward VII’s royal box.”

Well… There ya go. Fun sports trivia for ya! Think of King Edward the next time you run the final few hundred yards of your marathon! And think of his lawn and other “imagined realities” you’re iconoclastically freeing yourself from at the start of your race!

That’s from Chapter 1. It all starts with our minds.

Want to do the seemingly impossible? Awesome: Define it with precision and remember: a) The DETAILS matter—a lot; and, b) It all starts with winning in our minds.

Remember our discussion about marginal gains in this +1 and our Note on Black Box Thinking?

Short story. Former Olympian Matthew Syed tells us about Sir David Brailsford, the general manager of Britain’s Team Sky racing team. Long story short, no British cyclist had EVER won the Tour de France. 100+ attempts. Zero wins. Brailsford said they’d win within five years. People said he was crazy. They won in two years. Then they won it four out of the next five years.

How? Obsessing about marginal gains. Obsessing about the TINY little things they could do to Optimize, then aggregating and compounding those tiny little things into very big gains.

Syed tells us: “Every error, every flaw, every failure, however small, is a marginal gain in disguise. This information is regarded not as a threat but as an opportunity.”

How’s THAT for a way to approach every little error/flaw/failure in your life?

Begs the question: What marginal gains are “in disguise” in YOUR life? What’s one TINY thing you can do to Optimize? Get on that. Repeat. Aggregate. Compound. And voila. Magic.

And, of course, our minds are INCREDIBLY important. As former Navy SEAL Commander Mark Divine (with whom I happen to be chatting in a few hours—hooyah!) says in Unbeatable Mind: We need to “win in our minds first.”

Specifically, he says: “I think by now I have made it clear that SEALs operate at an elite level because they learn to control their minds and establish the win internally before they enter the fight. This is the First Premise.”

btw: Do you know what the word athlete *literally* means? It’s from the Greek athlētēs. (I just love those lines over the “e”s.) It means “one who competes for a prize.” To be clear, in my world, we’re ALL athletes—in the broader game of life AND in the traditional sense of physical mastery.

So… Spotlight on you. What race are you trying to win? What prize are you going for?

Are you clear? Have you won in your mind? Get on that. Unbeatable-, marginal gain-, 1:59-style.

P.S. One more fun historical fact: Do you know where the whole idea of a “mile” comes from? Get this: “Mile is derived from the Latin or Roman word mille, or 1,000, because a mile was the distance a Roman legion could typically march in 1,000 paces (or 2,000 steps, with the pace being the distance between successive falls of the same foot). Roman soldiers were quite fast marchers. They typically covered twenty-five miles in five hours while carrying a seventy-pound backpack and wearing their body armor.” <- Fascinating. And… Quick math: 25 miles in 5 hours is a 12-minute/mile pace. Carrying a 70-pound backpack and full body armor? Wow.

P.P.S. One more quick note on the importance of getting our minds right. Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile barrier on May 6, 1954. “Seven weeks later, Australian John Landy broke Bannister’s record by going 3:58. Earlier, Landy had said the following after running a 4:02 mile: ‘Frankly, I think the four-minute mile is beyond my capabilities. Two seconds may not sound much, but to me it’s like trying to break through a brick wall.’”

Captain Obvious here but thinking you need to run through a brick wall to do something isn’t helpful. Watching someone else do it and then KNOWING you can do it? Made it easy.

Moral of all the stories: Win in your mind. Then marginal gain it. And win in the race of life.

Maffetone is an incredibly holistic thinker-coach, but this is, essentially THE key to his endurance kingdom. It’s ALL about building a super strong aerobic foundation so you can go REALLY fast while staying aerobic. He calls that AEROBIC SPEED. It’s the secret sauce.

Context: As we’ve discussed, Phil Maffetone coached Mark Allen. Outside magazine called him the fittest man on the planet while Triathlete magazine says he’s THE greatest triathlete ever. He dominated his sport. How? Well, Maffetone helped him build a SUPER powerful aerobic base which led to EXTRAORDINARY (!!) aerobic speed.

We’ve touched on training in your MAF-approved aerobic zone then testing your progress with a MAF test. Quick recap: Assuming you’re healthy, the basic aerobic heart-rate training zone is found at, roughly, 180 minus your age. Subtract 10 from the upper limit to get your range. (For example, at 44, my maximum aerobic function (MAF!) is 136; my aerobic training zone is 126-136.) Find your zone. Train there exclusively for 3 to 6 months. No anaerobic work AT ALL. Once a month, test yourself by running a mile at your MAF! Track your progress.

If you’re doing it right (with proper training + recovery), over time you should be able to go SIGNIFICANTLY FASTER AT THE SAME HEART RATE. THAT’S AEROBIC SPEED.

Get this: “Triathlete Mark Allen progressed to a 5:19 pace over a period of several years (beginning at an 8:20 pace at the same 155 heart rate). Although he ran a 29:59 10K on a certified road course, Mark’s focus was the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon Championship, which he won six times. His sub-2:40 marathon (which included the bike-to-run transition time) in 1996 is a record that still stands today.” <- Wow. That’s a case study on going slow to go fast.

btw: I did my first MAF Test last month at an 8:38 pace. I am GIDDY to Optimize that. You?

P.S. One thing I was surprised NOT to see in this book was a discussion about Optimal Breathing. There’s no question that getting this right would provide significant marginal gains for the aspiring 1:59-marathoner. I’d love to see what Maffetone and McKeown could cook up.

I was wondering how I should set up my training schedule. As an Optibot, I like nice, flexible, yet precise Optimizing Algorithms. So, I found this passage SUPER helpful.

An endlessly evolving training process based on your well being on any given day? Sign me up! Actually, I am signed up and have already started putting this in practice.

Short story: As we strive to find the right balance of pushing ourselves (“overreaching”) without going too far (“overtraining”), Maff recommends we test our resting heart rate (and/or heart-rate variability) every morning so we know if something is a little off. If your resting heart rate is more than 3-5 beats outside your normal range, you know something’s not quite right and that you need a little more recovery. If you push it on too many days like that, you’re prone to injury.

Now, I can usually get my heart rate down to 40 (or 39!) and basically always down to 45. So, when I couldn’t get it below 50 the other day, I knew it was time to take the day off and just do an easy walk. #trainrecovery

How about you? How’s your training schedule? Let’s remember to be flexible as we find our own dynamic equilibrium.

That’s from a chapter called “Feet First.” Maffetone is ALL about Optimizing our feet—the literal foundation of running. In fact, he wrote an entire book on the subject called Fix Your Feet. Check out those Notes for more.

For now: Want to know how run properly? Practice the “hot-coal technique.” Seriously. Try it out on your next run. :)

Maff also tells us that when he used to give lectures on running, he’d have someone from the audience come up on stage and ask them to run across the stage in their normal, thick-soled sports shoes. They’d tend to overstride and heel strike. Then he’d ask them to take the shoes off and run across the stage barefoot. The difference would be profound.

Christopher McDougall echoes this wisdom in Born to Run where he tells us: “Eric had a foolproof system for teaching the same style. ‘Imagine your kid is running into the street and you have to sprint after her in bare feet,’ Eric told me… ‘You’ll automatically lock into perfect form—you’ll be up on your forefeet, with your back erect, head steady, arms high, elbows driving, and feet touching down quickly on the forefoot and kicking back toward your butt.’

Then, to embed that light, whispery foot strike into my muscle memory, Eric began programming workouts for me with lots of hill repeats. ‘You can’t run uphill powerfully with poor biomechanics,’ Eric explained. ‘Just doesn’t work. If you try landing on your heel with a straight leg, you’ll tip over backward.’”

So, for the perfect running gait: Run over hot coals with your bare feet. That’ll do the trick. :)

Want to grow? Remember the two phases of training: catabolic and anabolic.

We need to be break our body down (catabolic!) and then build our body back just a little stronger (anabolic!).

Maff captures this in his oft-repeated training formula: Training = Work + Rest.

Or, in this language: Training = Catabolic + Anabolic.

btw: Here’s a fun etymology lesson: Both anabolic and catabolic come from Greek words. Catabolic literally means “to throw down” while anabolic means “to throw up.”

Important: Don’t just throw your body down, constantly breaking it down. Remember to “throw it up” as well!! Give it time to recover and get stronger!

And: When we hear “anabolic” we tend to think illegal “anabolic steroids.” Well, guess what?! Want some super-powerful legal anabolic steroids?

Here they are: Eat really well. Get great sleep. Don’t forget naps. (Laughing.)

Seriously. Those are nature’s magic pills. Let’s train smart then pop our new healthy steroids!

Here’s to YOUR 1:59!!