The Tactical Runner: Engineering Metabolic Efficiency and Mental Resilience with Dr. Krista Austin

Kamal Datta: Hey everyone, welcome to What Runs a Run Pod and to its special series on nutrition and coaching in 26.2. If you've ever wondered why some athletes crumble under pressure while others thrive, today's guest has the answer. She has been the secret weapon for the Olympic gold medalists, for professional teams, and even elite Marine Corps units. Joining us today is Dr. Krista Austin. From her time at the U.S. Olympic Committee to her recent leadership as the Director of U.S.A. Shooting and her deep work in tactical human performance, Krista specialized in one thing and only one thing, making humans ready for anything. Today we are bridging the gap between the elite military mindset and the everyday runner. ⁓ welcome to the pod.

Krista Gail Austin: Thank you, Kamal. I'm excited to be here. This looks like a great series, let me tell you.

Kamal Datta: So what did I miss to ⁓ share your background? You have an extensive background, so what did I miss?

Krista Gail Austin: You know, you didn't miss a lot. mean, essentially years ago, it was very serendipitous. I became an intern with the United States Olympic Committee and was just fortunate enough that they kept me around, right? That I gained a lot of sacks and reps as I call it and have just been fortunate to work in high performance sport. And that that carried me really into working with elite military units, whether it was Marine recon or the special forces. And then even, you know, just reaching goals of serving as a director of high performance so that I can implement, you know, more of the leadership aspects that I developed over the years. And really you learn to have success under pressure is what I would tell you that I've specialized in over the years and doing what we used to call the science of winning. I think that terminology is coming back. but it's about teaching people to win for the goals that they set. So that's really, you know, the background and ⁓ we do nutrition, we do sleep, we do all kinds of things to make sure people are prepared to handle the stress they're going to put themselves under.

Kamal Datta: I see. Thank you. Thank you for adding the additional context that I missed for sure. ⁓ So Krista, I had broken down our conversation into four blocks. again, we can transition between different blocks as we feel that the conversation progress. But to lay it out, I call the foundation. layer is the first one, which is kind of the ready state. think which you specialize in how do you make someone ready because you cannot build high performance you if you're not ready to build to start with, right? So that's kind of the foundation layer to start with. And then the second at we build the engine layer, like it is more towards how do you feel for the long haul, which as a runner, if I'm running a marathon or alter running, that is very important. How do you feel? for the long haul. So that's kind of like building the engine, second layer. And then the third layer, I call it the command center, which is kind of the, between my ears, right? The brain and how do you manage the brain to get to the goal that you set to the finish line. then the fourth layer, which I think we talked about to make it, how do you make it individualized? So the concept that you say in these three layers, there are lot ⁓ frameworks are there that probably lay out for the folks that based on their experience, but how do you make it work for a team of one? That would be the fourth layer, and then our fire round and then we'll wrap our conversation. ⁓ If that's okay with you, let's start with the foundation layer.

Krista Gail Austin: Okay, so we wanna start with what is readiness, right? And readiness is an interesting concept. It depends really on what you're trying to look at in terms of what is someone ready for, right? In terms of running, especially like the marathon, we can take a look at all the training an athlete has done and said.

Kamal Datta: Cut, cut.

Krista Gail Austin: how ready are they to go out on a certain pace, right? And how ready are they to fuel their body to go out onto that pace? So we can look at some pretty physical markers, right? But when it comes down to it, ultimately on race day, it's gonna be 90 % mental for you, predominantly because you have done all the physical work.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. I see.

Krista Gail Austin: And if you have not prepared your body mentally to get into the race and do what you're supposed to do, I will just tell you that's when your readiness is not sufficient. So readiness in marathon running often comes down to the physical component being 90 % while you train. And then on race day, it's 90 % mental.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: We look at that as sets and reps success in training and then also if you're a coach You need to know the mentality of your athlete and what are they going to need to control on race day? In order to ensure that they are truly ready. Do they have all their food prepared for the night before?

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: the day of, have they practiced with the right fuel, and have they hit your list of no wickets for going out and executing on the race? Okay, so it's very checklist-orientated when we're looking at something like the marathon. Conversely, when you look at other sports or maybe even the tactical space, readiness sometimes can't be well-defined.

Kamal Datta: I see. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: because there's so much that can actually occur that you've never seen before that you can anticipate that you have to actually be adaptable. And readiness comes down to your ability to adapt rather than ⁓ just hitting the wickets while you're out there. Does that track? If you're not adaptable in those environments, you're probably not truly ready to go into them.

Kamal Datta: I

Krista Gail Austin: So at what point do you just say, all right, everything I used to prepare for ⁓ a talk I'm gonna give or a deployment in the case of a tactical personnel or a basketball game when a coach puts together all of his plays and the other teams run in other place. You're like, okay, this has gotta go out the door.

Kamal Datta: I see. Yeah. That is true.

Krista Gail Austin: So you have to have an ability just to adapt and that is part of readiness in those ⁓ settings. Marathon running is a lot more predictable. We need to adapt there, but you see more and more of that at the elite side or the professional side when you don't know the readiness of the other competitors. We've seen that like when Mev's been in different ⁓ Mevcomplex, he's been in different races. You break down why he raced the way that he did. He had, you know, maybe 205 marathon if you ran

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: in a straight line right in this system. But in order to win on the day, he had other factors that were contributing to his readiness, like his ability to sense another runner's initiative to take off.

Kamal Datta: ⁓ huh. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: or to hold a certain pace for a prolonged period of time, or even his own ability to know that he can test the other runners, he can tell that they can't throw down a really hard mile like he did in the 09 Marathon. And he's like, okay, I'm going to do this to break the field open because he was that physically ready, right?

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: In other instances, he had another runner takeoff faster than world record pace. And he said, okay, I'm just going to try to go with this guy and see if I can handle it. And sometimes, sometimes training is there. Sometimes it's not. You don't know how the tactics are going to play out in a race like that. And you make a decision in the moment.

Kamal Datta: I see. Yeah, yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: to see if you can handle what the other competitor is throwing at you. I think the beauty of, you know, kind of not having to work at that elite level when you go to the marathon is that you can go and execute on your best strategy for the day. And that's your best race. And that's what he shifted to actually when he won Boston in 2014. He's OK. I'm getting older. I'm going to get the best out of myself today. And the best race is like this. And that's what readiness is. You have to be ready for the other competitors or other tactics that you can throw at them. And they throw at you at that level. But I'm personally glad I don't have to race at the elite level.

Kamal Datta: Right. Now, you are credited to get Meb Koflewski ready for the New York City win in 2009. I think you rebuild when people say, you know, he's too old to win a race like New York City Marathon. Now, if you have to take those foundational principles that you laid out. I know you probably have talked or been asked on this question again and again, so that I'll probably ask you, because this is very intriguing, that how do you actually take this principle and get someone, an elite athlete ready when people think, hey, you may be too old to win the New York City marathon or world class marathon like New York City?

Krista Gail Austin: Yeah, I think you see in training that certain facets like foot speed, tempo runs are still there and the pieces can't come together. He was still healthy enough, but there were just certain pieces that needed to be rebuilt. Like he was relying on his TFL, tensor fascia lata, to actually run versus his glutes. So we know we can address that, right? He also has a mindset.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Sure. Okay.

Krista Gail Austin: that has the patience to rebuild his body to where he needed to be. So when you know the athlete still has all the components, you say, hey, we might as well try it. It might take some time to get back from ground zero up to where he was capable. But when none of the facets of what it takes to do what he did are actually gone,

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: You know you've just got to put the pieces of the puzzle back together again in the right way. And I think that's a lot of what I've been able to see over the years in world-class athletes is how do they put those pieces together and how do you know when they are still truly capable and that something else is playing out so they can't continue their career. His was fine. We just needed to put them back together again. I said it's kind of like Humpty Dumpty fell off a wall, right?

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. I see. Mm-hmm. I see.

Krista Gail Austin: You know, he had a great fall at one point, especially during Olympic trials. He had a significant injury to his hip and that probably caused a little bit of the dysfunction.

Kamal Datta: I see. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: The other factor that came into play is that Dathan Ritzenheim was doing extremely well at that point in time. And Meb was still competitive in nature. And I remember being at the Nationals in 2009 for the 10K and Dathan made the team. He didn't, he knew I was working with Dathan and he just sat down with me afterwards and just said, hey, where am I going wrong here?

Kamal Datta: I see. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: And I said, it's not that difficult. Your body's just not ready yet. ⁓ And so just talked them through. I said, you have the pieces. Let's just put them back together.

Kamal Datta: Yeah. Hmm. I see. ⁓

Krista Gail Austin: He had been rebuilding for quite a while and you can't go from major hip injury like he went through all the way back up to 205 capabilities, even 207 capability in the marathon unless you take the time to gradually rebuild all of those pieces. So he was on his way. He just hadn't quite gotten there at the level that he anticipated. So it's partially about saying, okay, let's go hit the wickets.

Kamal Datta: I see.

Krista Gail Austin: Like you can still do this. It's just, you know, someone had to believe in them a little bit, support as best possible. And really I was there like to watch his kiddo, his daughter at the time, Sarah, they had just had the second baby and ⁓ he just needed support, right? So it's putting that support around them to make them resilient enough on the day to go do what they need to do.

Kamal Datta: I see. I see.

Krista Gail Austin: So he's always had immense talent. He's also always been able to outperform workouts because his middle side is so phenomenal. ⁓ So when you see that, you don't give up on the athlete. The question is, can you keep them tracking and keep all the distractors out of their way so that they can go execute again? Elite athletes get a lot of distractors, just so you know. And sometimes, sometimes they're...

Kamal Datta: I see. Hmm. Sure, the human, yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: Right, they end up with your distractors that makes it look like their career is finished. or causes them not to reach all of their goals. I've had that happen quite a bit. But in his case, once you sit down, you talk to him, you lay it out, that's the good thing is that he is so different mentally, in my opinion. He really brings the East African aspects into the American distance running. And that's why it was successful. Their mentalities are very different.

Kamal Datta: I see. You used a term, he was running with TCL versus his glutes. So I'm curious, how do you identify that? And if I am an everyday runner, how would I know?

Krista Gail Austin: Yeah. So the way we figured it out was to bring him to the Olympic committee where we had a thermal camera and also the ability to do some EMG work. Okay, and EMG can help us detect the electrical activity of muscles, things of that nature. And we actually worked with Dr. Bill Sands, who was an expert in that area to understand why he wasn't truly utilizing his glutes and his TFL when we looked on a on a thermal camera which uses heat to show you hot spots in essence on their body, the TFL was just lit up. So they said, okay, this guy is so overworked. If we can decrease the work he needs to do and let him just reengage his glutes, know, we should actually be okay because he described the phenomenon as his legs were just shutting down. So it did take specialized equipment to do it.

Kamal Datta: I see. ⁓ Mm-hmm. I see.

Krista Gail Austin: but ⁓ very standard strength and conditioning, physical therapy, massage therapy, things of that nature to allow them just to re-lease the TFL, herfasa lata, and utilizes glutes again to run. So that's really what we focused on. It just took time to rebuild it. They lose fitness and...

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see.

Krista Gail Austin: you have to rebuild the fitness they need to marathon at the level he's capable of. That just, that can't happen overnight because they'll get injured. So he had enough downtime that we, he needed the time. So.

Kamal Datta: Yeah. We hear as a runner all the time that you need to strengthen your glute. So I'm just curious to your analogy running with TFI versus glute. What is the performance outcome difference between these two? That you see that, I know for elite it's probably very visible, but for any runner or any goal that someone is chasing for, what difference that someone sees if they're running with TFI versus, you know, with GLUT?

Krista Gail Austin: Yeah, you're going to see probably a greater stride length in the athlete that is actually running with their glutes and an ability to progressively put more and more force into the ground and be able to sustain that force. When he talked about it felt like his legs were shutting down, it just means he really couldn't maintain the force production. That's what was happening.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. I see. Hmm

Krista Gail Austin: So if you're a runner and you're like, man, I just can no longer maintain the force production that I used to, it may be that you've got, you know, I don't want to say glute dysfunction, but you're not truly running with your gluteals. You may be actually using other muscles to control the movement. And we see that oftentimes after injury or prolonged periods of time off when we just don't recondition the body properly.

Kamal Datta: Right. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: In his case, it probably was the injury during the 08 marathon. That's probably my guess. And he just came back too fast too soon. ⁓ And he just probably sat there and said, what the heck is going on? ⁓ That's a unique scenario, right? ⁓ it just didn't make sense for him to be finished.

Kamal Datta: I Mm-hmm. That is true, yeah, yeah. I see, I see. Now that's good. And kudos to you that identifying those areas to rebuild him up and get him ready for the 2009 that he won. So kudos ⁓ to that. I'm sure it was a team effort for sure. ⁓ Krista, you refer that the fitness and readiness for a race are not the same thing, right? ⁓ I am fit, doesn't mean that actually I'm ready for running a marathon or any ⁓ long distance competition at any level. How those things are different from your understanding and if you have to give some... kind of use the word markers or in terms of metrics, like, okay, you are fit on this area doesn't mean translated to readiness for this race. If you may want to have some metrics that you would like to share.

Krista Gail Austin: Yeah, so physical fitness is just like your work capacity, right? But if you're coaching someone, that work capacity only materializes on race day if they're prepared to utilize it by employing other areas of readiness to succeed. So think about the nutrition component. If they have not actually trained their gut to handle the fuel they need on race day,

Kamal Datta: share. I see. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: They're not ready to race. They're fit, but they're not ready. If they're not prepared to employ their strategy to run their best on the day, they're not ready. Okay. If you're not prepared to figure it out when times get hard during the race, like maybe you need to slow down because something did go wrong and you're out there and you just let your body hit the wall, then you're not ready to race. ⁓

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. I see. I see. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: Oftentimes people let their bodies hit the wall, which I always find is interesting versus controlling themselves on the day. I'm like, well, if it was that much of a headwind, why did you keep going at the pace you were anticipating? This is a unique condition. People who are ready to perform their best know how to modify and adapt underneath the conditions. Let's say it starts pouring rain in the race.

Kamal Datta: Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: How are you gonna adapt differently if there's slick roads or you're soaked or you're getting cold, right? Adaptability is someone who's ready to actually race. mean, Desiree Linden showed a great job of that when she won Boston. She truly adapted to her day. She didn't even think she was, yeah, I mean, she even said, hey, I'm not going to do well.

Kamal Datta: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That was 2018, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: I'm not going to win this. I'm just going to go try to help other people. I don't feel good today. And the entire race you see her adapting to help others. And then all of sudden realizing, oh my gosh, I'm in position to win this, Predominantly because she was a gritty runner and the race played to her favor. Whereas women who were not as ready to encounter those type of conditions couldn't win on the day. And they're that much faster than she is technically, right?

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: So she was the most ready, believe it or not, for that race, but it just played out that way. The conditions were such that her readiness prevailed.

Kamal Datta: Right. Now, talk about adaptability. ⁓ Again, the variables are probably not as as much as someone in the tactical point of view if you say someone is going to ⁓ combat or some US military point of view. The variables may be one of the things that is prevalent nowadays and I have another series that I'm doing on sustainability which is kind of the unknown of weather, right? I think the example you gave for that and I ran 2018 Boston Marathon. I know exactly what you meant, the conditions that was not in favor for a lot of runners. It does drastic change. up to it. ⁓ So how does someone can, I don't know, when you train you cannot really train for all these variables. Like I trained in Boston so I can train for cold weather but if I do go, say run, in London, going to run next month, and if I'm expecting a deep weather, like I have not trained in that condition, right? I've not gone to a tropical place to train myself. Someone else will have, but how do I adapt? What would be, what would be your recommendation for folks who train or get ready to adapt?

Krista Gail Austin: Find out, do what elite athletes do, right? They find out as much as they can about where they're going, whether it's who they're racing against or the weather they're going to compete in.

Kamal Datta: Sure. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: and they build the strategy that they are capable of in that environment. So like in your case, Boston, if it's cold and you're going to race in tropical weather, you can layer clothing, right? And you can run indoors on a treadmill. You can let the heat increase possibly in that room. Right.

Kamal Datta: That is true. Simulate, yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: So you can run simulations to the best of your ability to create your body's adaptation in advance to going into that environment. In distance running, endurance events, that's very possible. Other times adaptability is just your ability to respond.

Kamal Datta: I see.

Krista Gail Austin: because you have enough knowledge on how to respond. You've had sets and reps over the years, I call them, teach you what to do underneath different circumstances. Okay, so sometimes I'm doing work in an environment where I'm like, this is not gonna pan out. We've gotta do something else here. And you just chuck your material and you use the knowledge you have to adapt to the people you're working with. to adapt to the material just because otherwise you can't deliver maybe on your performance for the day. It comes down to experience. It comes down to being intentional. ⁓ And so whether you're flying to give a talk and you have prepared for flight delays or you're going to go race, right?

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: you know, from Boston to in tropical weather, your ability to write out a plan and have a plan for adaptation and how you're going to handle things being different than you thought they were or going sideways is really up to you. The question is how many people actually do that?

Kamal Datta: Right.

Krista Gail Austin: ⁓ Because maybe they're not taught to do it in high performance sport. We do that all the time We develop high performance plans for every single elite athlete ideally and we take a look at what do we do if things go wrong? What's the probability the weather changes that different competitors show up? That maybe your drinks aren't there on the race course and somebody else took them You know

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: what's the potential for another competitor to race a certain way. So we look at all the factors that could impact and develop the adaptability of the individual. That's the phenomenon of elite sport is that we train adaptability.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. I see, I see. Yeah, that is a good perspective if it can be translated back to, say, a Breda runner. We may not have the team to support you, you know. train you for those adaptability or the key areas. But you can simulate to the extent that you can get yourself ready, how you want to adapt. Or at least have a basic understanding of, these are the potential variables I'm looking at, and what would I do? of ⁓ causal analysis to see, know, how would I, what would I do if this could happen? Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: Right. Well, but I mean, think about traveling to a race, everything that can go wrong, right? If you're in San Diego and you have to travel to Boston to run the marathon, think about everything that could go wrong in getting to the Boston Marathon. I mean, you could have flight delays. You could have challenges with the food that's available to you as a functional flight delays. ⁓ You could get out there on the course and have really bad weather, right? And maybe you did not bring with you a rain jacket for that day, right, in 2018. ⁓ You know, a variety of things can go wrong. Maybe you have a really stressful event just before your race.

Kamal Datta: Right. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: The question is, what can you prepare for? And that's really a coach and an athlete thinking through it. There's so much available to us online. We should be trying to think what could go wrong on race day, right? And look at it from that perspective. Seek out those answers. I want to tell you, no one ever gave me the what could go wrong scenario in life.

Kamal Datta: Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: It's more of an initiative that you take as an individual to prepare for things to go right to the best of your abilities. Sometimes there's factors you just can't control, so you're not going to execute perfectly and you've got to accept why you did not and look back on it and say, can I live with that?

Kamal Datta: Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: ⁓ I've had that happen time and time again in life, but I'm like, you know what? I did the best I could on the day and that's one thing I learned from Meb. You know, he said, you know, give it a hundred percent. If my best isn't good enough on the day, then that's okay. And I've learned to kind of look at it through that ⁓ lens because high performance sport, we always want the win. We want to do the medal. We want to hit our goal.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: But I've learned, know what? You can't always do that. Like, go ahead and set goals, but if you don't hit them, know that you gave your best, you know, in the circumstance.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Now let's move to our second layer, I call the engine, or the fueling for the long haul. You focused on, or you focused on efficiency over intensity. moving away from sugar high into a sustainable energy based fueling. Do you want to break it down? Like what does it mean to just having the sugar high crash versus managing ⁓ your energy level throughout the race? I think you have a great take on how we have worked with some of the brands that you've worked with in the past.

Krista Gail Austin: Yeah, so the way I look at it is that you have to have fuel at this level for most people. You got to figure that out in training, right? What level of fuel do you need to hold on to a given pace? Okay, a lot of that comes down to energy expenditure. and how much our bodies need to sustain life, right? We've got to account for that when we're racing. And then also how much are we burning while we're out there? Okay, so I take it based off what's known as energy availability. How much energy do we need to have available to us in order to create the sustained fueling process? Okay.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: So if your breakfast is not enough to cover down on what your body needs in the morning prior to starting the race. So think about Boston. You start what? 9, 10 a.m. something like that. If you woke up at 6, your body's already had three to four hours of functioning that you need to account for. So your breakfast has to be big enough. to account for the calories it needs there and probably the calories it's not going to be able to consume while you're out there for the next let's say four hours okay for running Boston.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: If you can't give it a little bit of a surplus prior to going into the race, you're probably not going to be able to sustain the energy output because you're going to go too much on empty. The gas tank only has so much in it. And the question is, how quickly are you going to expend the gas? You got to start with the gas tank totally full before you go to the race. So many people start without it being full.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Right.

Krista Gail Austin: So there's no way you're going to have sustained energy. Then while you're out there, a lot of factors play into the energy that you can take in and the fuel level that you're going to sustain because some people have sensitive stomachs, right? Some people don't do well with fluids, so they have to use chews or gels or things of that nature. ⁓

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: So the question is how much can you take in so that you can put out as much energy as possible? That intake and output has to be close enough to sustain a given work intensity really. ⁓

Kamal Datta: right.

Krista Gail Austin: So I try to tell people, you got to keep the fuel fluxing in at the same rate. You can't let it take the ups and downs because the body isn't designed to operate that way. The engine on the vehicle operates best with a sustained level of fuel. And there's different types of fuels out there for runners in order to help them do that. So.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: You know, the question is what's gonna work best for you on race day? I think every runner's gonna come out of a marathon in some type of an energy deficit. But how can we get close enough? to the energy you need for your performance to keep it a nice sustained level of energy output and blood glucose rather than the roller coaster that we see so many out there on. And they're like, well, I'll take one gel every 45 minutes. And I'm thinking good luck with that because you're burning through two to three times that every hour. Right? If you're burning through two to three times of that every hour, you're not sustaining your energy. So it's getting people to think about how do I keep the gas tank as close to full and stable and the gas fluxing in to the engine at a steady rate rather than letting it roller coaster throughout a race.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Makes sense. Krista, how does someone know what is their tank limit is to start with? And then as you start burning it out, what would be a one or two indicators that like, okay, this is the time to, I need to fuel up.

Krista Gail Austin: ⁓ So when we look at the overall tank, it needs to be able to hold enough fuel, Kamal, to take care of our body outside of exercise, right, to keep us alive and well. And then we need to know how many calories we're going to burn on the day per mile at the pace we're running at and say, okay.

Kamal Datta: Sure.

Krista Gail Austin: If we're going to put our body into this much of a deficit and I only have reserves for two and a half hours and my race is four hours and I don't even want to go near bottoming out those reserves, all right? You don't want to run that risk. You're going to possibly hit the wall if you do that. How much do can I take in?

Kamal Datta: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: in order to prevent myself from tapping into the body's reserves and That's really what we have to understand. So I try to teach my athletes Okay, by time I get to the race line, how many calories do I need to have in to take care of the body's resting needs? By time I finish the race Okay, so if my body is gonna burn 900 calories By time I'm finished with the race if I can get 600 of those in

Kamal Datta: Right.

Krista Gail Austin: I've done myself a huge favor right now if I'm going to burn a hundred calories every mile and I am running you know what six miles every hour maybe that's fair for most runners right then I may be burning 600 calories every hour if the upper limit that I can handle is 300 I better get those 300 in

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Bright. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: because you can't do it while you're out there on race day, come on. You've got to practice this well in advance and it's called training the gut. Okay, we have to train the gut to handle the fuel and the fluid it has to process on race day. So that's how I do it with mine. If I'm like, okay, you're going to burn 100 calories an hour. How close can we get to that 100 calories an hour and meeting that demand?

Kamal Datta: That is true. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: If we can get to even 50%, we're gonna be that much better off than if you only take in like 15 % every hour. So everyone's different, but most runners I could probably get about 300 calories an hour into.

Kamal Datta: That is so true. And I think you call it the test run protocol to figure out how much I actually burn per mile or. if you want to do ⁓ time, one hour, how much I'm burning based on whatever pace I'm running, that would be a good indicator to figure out what should be my starting tank and then fuel or, you know, fuel myself up on the race day or the day ⁓ to get ready to if it's a, I'm running a two hour marathon versus four hour marathon, I should know how much I burn. It's a simple, to me, it's a calculation that, know, load, know, fuel yourself up.

Krista Gail Austin: Right.

Kamal Datta: You also talk about the metabolic efficiency concept, Krista, which is in a sense that how to practice, I think you call it, and there's a term called the low glycemic long run. I'm just curious to see, you know, kind of sugar or kind of intake I fuel during the race itself. ⁓ And I have seen this called the hitting the wall that you referred at mile 20. Like, how do I practice that I am taking the energy intake in a way that at mile 20 I'm not crashing? Or it can be mile 21 or 22, which happens for a lot of, lot of runners. So how do I practice for that during my regular training?

Krista Gail Austin: Right, so the recommendations we have out there for fueling training ⁓ actually do this very, very well, come on. We have to abide by them so that our body learns to utilize fat as much as possible regardless of exercise intensity so that we don't hit the wall on race day. Okay, so if you take a look at the recommendations for training, not competition per se, but training. you'll see that if we're not training for more than an hour, we actually don't need to take anything in but water. So why is that? Well, it's because our body has enough glycogen stores to support us for two and a half hours. So we shouldn't need it while we're training for one hour, regardless of the intensity. Okay. The only exception to that is if it's really high intensity intermittent activity, they'll say, you know, have a little bit small amounts of carbohydrate to stimulate the brain to decrease our rate of perceived effort. and output more, but that might be something like, you know, 15 grams of carbohydrate diluted in a sports drink over the course of an hour. It's not going to meet our demands. It's just stimulating the brain. Okay. We can also eat candy and do that if we want it to. ⁓ But that's what's prescribed for that. We're going to actually turn our metabolism on full board.

Kamal Datta: I see.

Krista Gail Austin: When we go to do these intense sessions and we're only taking those small amounts of carbohydrates in, in order to do like an interval session that's six by a mile, you don't need anything more. You're only out there for an hour, right? Like let's say you're running eight minute mile pace. For the most part, the amount of work you're going to do then is 48 minutes of work.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: You're not supposed to take in fuel. Okay, why do we say that? You're teaching the body to actually maximize the use of fat and its glycogen stores to support the effort. the body's being trained to draw on those stores and utilize them effectively for that kind of a duration of session. Now, as we get past really 70 to 90 minutes, and we know we're going for that two hour run, we can start to put in about 30 to 60 grams of carbohydrate, depending on what our overall tolerance is to that gradual depletion of glycogen stores.

Kamal Datta: I see.

Krista Gail Austin: And sometimes for some people who get hungry out on the run or maybe they can't eat a whole lot beforehand, we might go for 60 that second hour. But gradually I try to tap it back.

Kamal Datta: I see.

Krista Gail Austin: so that they're down to that 30 for the second hour of the training run, so that on race day, when we decide to fully fuel the body, we truly enhance performance. If you take a look at any of the trials that were done in the research, they do one without, and then they do the one with it. And that's the biggest thing about research is it's like,

Kamal Datta: I see.

Krista Gail Austin: look they're not chronically adapted to taking in carbohydrate. They're actually giving them that on the day to see if it enhances performance.

Kamal Datta: You

Krista Gail Austin: So that's something we have to understand is that we're in training. If we give the body every single time as much carbohydrate as it will have on race day, that's not a good thing. We need to abide by the prescription that is out there for training in order to maximize metabolism so that we don't hit the wall on race day. And then we need to run race simulations where we practice what we do on race day. You can maximally fuel, you know, a race pace session to make sure your gut can tolerate it, right? But we don't want to do that every single day. We want to take our daily training and use the guidelines that are out there in sport nutrition to actually fuel our bodies. And until we're in that second hour, and I really tell people 70 to 90 minutes, you know, then you start with 30 to 60 grams of carbohydrate. And once you're past two and a half hours, you can go up to 90 grams of carbohydrate if you need to. You don't have to. The guidelines just say up to. And typically I say, you know what, why do you need that much?

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Right.

Krista Gail Austin: As the session gets longer, I can understand that. The energy tank is depleting, right? And some people are like, yeah, Chris, I got a six hour marathon and my long runs build up to four hours. OK, they might need it as they get into that third and maybe fourth hour in order to complete the training session. But they're also going to need that on race day, though. And how are you going to carry it with you? OK.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: You've got to think about all those things as you go into your training. If you can't carry it with you on race day, here's what I would recommend to you for a four hour run. Slow down and practice with what you're going to actually have access to on race day. You know, your body's not going to get given anymore. There's no magic to race day. All right.

Kamal Datta: Right. Right, right.

Krista Gail Austin: So naturally the guidelines in sport nutrition are designed to help us maximize the utilization, our efficiency of fuel. We just have to abide by them. But sometimes I see these athletes out there, whether it's a runner or triathlete, what have you, and they're like pounding three, four gels in a session. I'm like, why are you pounding gels? You know, they have like a waffle before they start and they finish with a, you know, maybe like a

Kamal Datta: Makes sense.

Krista Gail Austin: carbohydrate protein drink, I'm like, what are you doing? Those are not the guidelines. And when they go off-roading like that, I'm like, where are they getting this? But I think they just get confused between fueling for race day and fueling and training, really.

Kamal Datta: Yeah. Krishna, what happens when you the wall to our body, to your understanding?

Krista Gail Austin: Few things. ⁓ It could be that we have depleted our glycogen stores, okay, and we didn't train to fuel properly. So we may hit the wall as a function of that. Okay, so that's more of a physical aspect. Another reason might be because we are expending energy, our physical effort on the day ⁓ is higher than anything we've trained for, right?

Kamal Datta: Sure, sure. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: Then there's the mental component where some people mentally Cannot handle the course itself or the fact that you train up through 20 miles like you're going to do but the race is actually 26.2 and they've never done any type of over distance training ⁓ And so there's multiple factors that can occur when we actually hit the wall

Kamal Datta: Right. Right. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: Tim notes wrote a book called the lore of running where he talks about the governor Okay, and he says the governor does exist and that's where the brain becomes so depleted during prolonged racing That we can actually hit the wall because the brains not prepared to actually take that level of stress or on Okay, that's that mental side where people are not trained to push past 20 miles ⁓ They might actually hit the

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: mentally because they're only used to going 20 miles or they see a false summit or they're not used to how a course is designed right where all of a sudden there's a tough hill all right and you've got to push up hills on the last 10k of boston's course right there's a component of that that is hilly and people are like oh this hurts so bad right and we always love running into the finish in boston but there's something that comes before that

Kamal Datta: Yeah. Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: And everybody just wants to run into the finish, right? And if we're not prepared to do that, then there's different ways to prep people to do it.

Kamal Datta: Right. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Krista Gail Austin: ⁓ then we're going to have an issue. Sometimes if you're like, hey, I can only do 20 miles. I'll say, okay, let's gradually make the last 10K of that 20 miles intensity work. So you learn to work harder than your marathon pace for the last 10K. Something like that will actually prepare you to handle Boston's course for the last 10K.

Kamal Datta: Hmm

Krista Gail Austin: So we have to do things at the really elite level. They'll run 28 miles, know, up at altitude at 530 pace. You're like, man, what are you doing? Well, he's getting ready to handle Boston, right? If they're doing things like that and training as their third workout of the week when they are running 120 to 140 miles a week.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: That's what's going to give them the resiliency to handle the last 10K of Boston's course. But they're used to putting their body through it. They don't just train 20 miles. They have a few sessions where they push well past 20 miles.

Kamal Datta: So they're well trained, not like an average runner who probably will do 20 or 22 miles and then, you know, they said the heart will take you to the finish line. And I hope that that takes you really to the finish line. So that would be a good, sorry, go ahead Krista. Do you want to say something about?

Krista Gail Austin: you No,

Kamal Datta: Now, so I think it will be a good transition to our third segment to the command center. I think you brought up hitting the wall is not only from a fueling point of view, it's also from a mental point of view. It's also... ⁓ So you worked with the USA shooting where precision is everything, right? And running, think precision fails when you get tired, which I think you mentioned hitting the wall. ⁓ We pretty much stop when our brain tells us to stop. Usually what happens, you your brain gets tired before actually your legs are or the body gets tired. ⁓ What would be a brain fuel? I know we talked about fueling for the energy, but what is the brain fuel that a runner should be training about to get ready for hitting the wall?

Krista Gail Austin: Oh, a brain fuel? So fuel for the brain might be something like a ketone ester. I think you might have seen these out on the market. Ketone esters actually will supersede glucose, carbohydrate metabolism in the brain, and they can actually go in and modify the fuel source that the brain utilizes. We haven't done a ton of research to understand how well they can work in runners to supersede carbohydrate, but it is something that you can look at as an actual source of brain fuel. The other source might be not a fuel source but caffeine. caffeine can go in and stimulate different areas of the brain to help keep you focused and going. Okay you have to take a look at how is your brain working. You know someone like Meb he didn't need the caffeine and he didn't need the ketone esters right because he already was a certain mentality with the marathon and The training side that you know, he's just gonna get through it. That's innate, right? But if we have to teach people to have brain fuel either one We've got to give them something that keeps their brain going or two We have to train them not to stop right a lot of people will actually stop in training when they when they just feel like they can't focus anymore

Kamal Datta: Sure.

Krista Gail Austin: And the question is, how are we gonna get you to focus and just keep pushing when physically you're not actually tired? Ironman athletes do this all the time where they've gotta learn just to go an ultra distance. Ultra runners do it, but they're teaching their body not to stop. And sometimes you do things like, okay, I'm gonna put myself out on a course where I cannot turn around.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: ⁓ and get back to my car until I have put all the mileage in. So let's say you're kind of known mentally for hitting the wall at 20 miles. So what are you going to do? You might put yourself out on a course that's 12 miles out and 12 miles back to your car. You're not allowed to stop because guess what? You're not going to back to the car now, are you?

Kamal Datta: ⁓ huh. Yeah, yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: You're going to learn to keep going because you've got to get back to the car. Little things like that can teach us about how to handle hitting the wall. And the question is mentally in those processes, did you stop and just start to walk? And why did you start to walk? Were you actually tired? Did your legs give out? We have to dig into those things to know why you stopped running and just started walking.

Kamal Datta: Right, get to come back. I see. Mm-hmm. Right.

Krista Gail Austin: Why did it happen? You know you have to get back to the car, right? Asking people.

Kamal Datta: That is true. Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: Right, asking people to tell you what's going on inside their heads, even in a simple scenario like that, where we have to achieve it, is where coaching actually comes in, Kamal, to understand what causes people mentally ⁓ to hit that wall. Are they just kind of going nuts because they're out there and they just can't focus any longer? That might be it. You know, I've had those clients where

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ huh.

Krista Gail Austin: They just mentally cannot focus long enough. Others, it's just like, hey, know, I just I didn't really want to do this. Most marathon runners I've come across that choose to run New York, Boston, different races like this. They've got other things that are going to keep them going to the finish line. So let's take a look at a six hour marathon runner. I'm like, what keeps them going for six hours on New York's course? Well, it's because they put their friends around them and they're doing it together.

Kamal Datta: Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: And that's the only thing that's keeping them going while they're out there is that they've got friends to do it with and they've got this goal that they're going to do this together. That is what actually pushes them through the marathon. No matter how glycogen depleted they are, how little energy they consume, how much of a run walk they've got to make it. So there's a lot of different things we can use to actually get us to push through something. The question is, what do you need in order to do it?

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. I see. So you like to come up with a strategic approach. Whatever the goal is, you say, running a two hour or a four hour or a six hour marathon, what would take you to the finish line? Irrespective of physical, you know, the throughput that you'll go through that day. That's what I think you're suggesting.

Krista Gail Austin: Right. Yeah. I mean, you just have to decide that you're going to finish it. And I've worked with clients that say, Krista, I just need to finish it. How am I going to finish a half marathon? A marathon. OK. I've had the client that said, I just want to be able to actually run a mile. I can walk a mile now. I just want to be able to truly run the entire mile.

Kamal Datta: ⁓ Yeah. Right, right.

Krista Gail Austin: and not stop.

Kamal Datta: Yeah, Krista, I'm curious about the scenario because I consider I'm running. I'm from tech. So I take data as an input like to end up and improve. So I'll give you this example. So I was running New York City Marathon last November, November 2nd. So again, my goal was around four, a little over four hours marathon. And when I was crossing the Bronx, I don't know if you have seen the crowd in Bronx after you come out of the Verrazano Bridge. It's wild, it's loud. And I never trained, I knew that the New York crowd is super supportive, but I didn't know that that loud. So it made me in a discomfort. So what I did was I pushed myself to go faster so that can go through that stretch fast. And in the process, I think it was not in my training. I usually would not go probably a minute or two faster than I would run a mile. I was so, because I saw my watch, it was 170. I was like, I never run 170 heart rate. So I need to cool it down. So I need to pass through this fast so that I can do my heart rate to go to my regular pace. And in the process, mile 16, I got cramps and it never left me till mile 20. I crossed the finish line. How do you avoid this is a decision my between my years that took based on the data I saw on the race day, which was dumb literally. How do you recommend someone to not make this kind of dumb decisions on the race day? I think it's coming back to our first step is kind of how do you adapt? And I don't know if I can simulate this kind of scenario when I'm training.

Krista Gail Austin: Yeah, well, I think you learn by doing right and that's the biggest thing Kamala's that Obviously no one had warned you about what happened what was gonna happen, right? And they didn't say, know, come all this is how you usually train Do we need to prepare you to?

Kamal Datta: Yeah, yeah. Right. Right. Right.

Krista Gail Austin: experience this within the environment, right? Typically in high performance sport, we will use things that prepare athletes for that. So if we were going into the 2008 games, we had a sport where, you ⁓ know, our athletes weren't... the favorite athletes in that country to win. We knew they had a high potential to win, to create Olympic history. We actually took sound, right, that they might hear during that competition and put it on in training from being booed to loud noises, just different things like that. to actually prepare them mentally to have to compete and to actually compartmentalize. That's what needed to be done for you because you're not used to training that way. And you're the person that does not gain energy out of being in that crowd, right? There's some people that will intentionally slow down in a section like that. And they're like, all right, we're with the crowd. know, they're really enjoying it. And there's someone like you that decides to take on.

Kamal Datta: Right. Right, right. Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: We have to prepare you because you don't care for it. You know, there's other people that are taking some recovery time as they go through that section, right? Like, sweet, I'm gonna do a recovery mile or something, right? And they're just going to enjoy it. So it comes back to preparation and then in the adaptability, you know, now that you've learned this about yourself for the next race, you need to just tell yourself you're not allowed to do this. Okay, like.

Kamal Datta: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: You know this about yourself now. ⁓ You paid the price once. ⁓ You know, it's kind that's first New York City Marathon. You know, he knew it was going to be cold and he had a beanie. He had like the sleeves and everything and it's like you told him that it was going to be cold. Went through this with Dayton too and when he ran New York one time and you're like, hey, don't take it off. It's cold. They take it off anyway.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: And these are professional runners. They've been told not to take off the very clothing that's going to keep them warm.

Kamal Datta: Mmm.

Krista Gail Austin: And you know, after Meb's first marathon in New York, he's like, yeah, I'm not doing this again. And the next thing you know, a few years later, he actually wins an Olympic medal in the marathon, right? You have to learn those lessons. And forever and a day, he's like, OK, you do not take your beanie off or your arm warmers, whatever it is that you need to stay warm during certain components of marathons, including New York's marathon. know, Nathan, he learned the same thing. And he's just like, oh, my gosh, I'm

Kamal Datta: Hahaha Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: became hypothermic. Best athletes in the world learn it, but they learn from their mistakes. ⁓ And in those scenarios, you have no means to adapt. You've shed your clothing and you gave it away to the crowd. It's kind of like giving away your carbohydrate bottle too early on and someone picking it up or whatever. You can't go back for it. They don't carry gels. So learn from your own.

Kamal Datta: I see. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: but then also from the errors of even the greatest athletes in the world. I mean, they talk about these things, about how they made the errors. Like when Desiree Linden was getting ready to break the world record in the 50K, we did her session with Josh Cox. Josh Cox is known for the error he made when he went after the world record in the 50K.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: And he kind of gave a few tips like, don't do these things. This is a really bad idea, Desi. And she took those tips on board and benefits from it. Connor Manz today is being mentored by Meb. And he's really taking on board all the lessons that Meb can teach him about the marathon. ⁓ And that's how we create success. We pass on our knowledge. We learn by doing.

Kamal Datta: you ⁓ okay. I see. Yeah, yeah. that's a great tip. Is there any other cognitive drills someone can do for the last 10k Krista other than what you touched on so far?

Krista Gail Austin: You know, so you can always, you know, force yourself to do cognitive drills as you're running, ⁓ or you could also run your 20 miles, come back in if you want to, get on the bike, take your iPad and do cognitive ⁓ training sessions on the app, just to force your brain to do work, which is really what it's going to have to do on the day. can take a look at something like that. I don't know for sure if it will work, but it is a... know, different type of stressor cognitively that can teach you to push through. So that might be something that, you know, you do just to force the brain to work underneath an extended time period. You're like, I can't do more than 20 miles in training, but I can make my run finish at home, come back, get on the bike and stay doing light cycling while I do cognitive drills that get harder and harder and force my brain to work.

Kamal Datta: ⁓ wow, that's fascinating. That's fascinating to hear that. Okay, great. I'll give it a try, Krista, that you suggested. What else? Anything else that you would recommend?

Krista Gail Austin: You could try it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean you might even try increasing your duration of sleep as you go into a marathon Let's say you're the person that only sleeps seven hours a night Maybe you sleep eight or nine hours a night as you actually go into the marathon Okay

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: That might be a strategy just to enhance overall recovery. They call it sleep banking to enhance cognitive performance. It can only work underneath certain circumstances, but it's something someone might try if they're hitting the wall or having challenges on the cognitive side with the marathon.

Kamal Datta: I see. I'm actually going to talk to, I don't know if you know her, Dr. Amy Bender, actually on the concept of sleep banking. So think next week I'm chatting with her, but I'm curious. These sleep and the performance are definitely interconnected. from your understanding and for the cognitive drill you're suggesting that definitely is one of the things that I should experiment with is increasing my sleep. Would it impact go longer being mentally alert? Is that kind of the direction you're recommending? Okay.

Krista Gail Austin: Right, underneath the scenario of the marathon, that might work, but it also might not work. Unfortunately, the research in the area of sleep banking is not thorough enough, Kamal, for us to truly make any strong conclusions. All we can do is to actually go out and experiment with it.

Kamal Datta: I see.

Krista Gail Austin: The biggest challenge is that it's done underneath very specific circumstances and without appropriate controls. Like they use two groups of runners and on top of that they're ultra runners. Ultra runners expend energy differently than a marathon runner. And just because they do well on like a cognitive task that's tied to a computer,

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I see. I see.

Krista Gail Austin: doesn't mean that they're going to do well once they're at the very point that you may hit the wall in ultra marathon running. They're not one and the same. Those cognitive skills do not match. One is what we call a far transfer cognitive test, which is like a psychomotor vigilance test or something of that nature. And then there's what's known as near transfer, where the cognitive test reflects very specifically what you're going to experience, whether it's

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: the marathon or combat or sport shooting what have you. Typically we suggest you measure everything through near transfer so you can understand what is truly working. We just don't have studies like that and every circumstance is different. I actually got asked this by a group of police and they said you know is there anything to sleep banking and

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Okay?

Krista Gail Austin: ⁓ I said, look, sleep banking is probably not what we have evidence for in your population. The police do shift work and we have not truly evaluated underneath the type of stressors they undergo the concept of sleep banking. And I said, look, we just don't know if we have the evidence for it. What we have evidence for is for you to pay back.

Kamal Datta: Right.

Krista Gail Austin: your sleep debt actually that you incur as a function of your shift work. So that's where a lot of the research we draw on, if it's not specific enough, Kamal, to the circumstance, we can't make inference really. We can just tell people, look, we're going to try this with you. We're going to see if it works. And is it really going to hurt you to sleep maybe one or two more hours leading, you know, in the few nights prior to a marathon?

Kamal Datta: Right. I see. Yeah. you

Krista Gail Austin: Not really unless you need to get up very early. Okay. And that instance, it's going to hurt you possibly because your circadian rhythm is then altered. When you sleep bank, you alter your body's circadian rhythm. If you are then sleeping until let's say six or seven in the morning in order to sleep bank and on race day, you've got to be up at 5 a.m. Doesn't work.

Kamal Datta: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: you're actually then going to harm performance. Okay. So little things like that about sleep banking we don't actually know.

Kamal Datta: So this is a topic that me and my wife, you know, defar. So I am in this camp where I want to wake up on the similar time every day. ⁓ And my wife would be like, OK, I'll wake up early in the weekdays, but I'm banking on the weekends. So she'll wake up late on the weekends. we differentiate. I think she more follows the sleep banking concept than me. It's like, I don't care what time I sleep, but I'm waking up almost around the same time. need to my tea in the morning at the same time and start getting my brain going. But I don't know if there is a one camp versus the other or both are equally to prove that it's right. I don't know, I'm not done in our faces, but I don't know what is your take there.

Krista Gail Austin: Yeah. So the question is, is your wife paying back debt that she's incurred with sleep over the course of the week? So everyone is a little bit different. In your case, if you're getting all your sleep that you're supposed to seven plus hours a night, you don't really have any disruptions throughout the week. You feel good. You're sleeping good. You probably want to stay on that same time clock.

Kamal Datta: Right. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: Whereas let's say in your wife's case, she's getting up with the kids throughout the week. I don't know, maybe there's something like that. Or she stays working extra late. She goes to bed at 11 o'clock rather than the usual nine o'clock or something like that. And she needs to recoup those couple of hours over the weekend.

Kamal Datta: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: That is called paying back sleep debt because she's only sleeping maybe five to six hours a night during the week. So she needs on the weekends to pay back that debt. Otherwise, if that's not what she's doing, we probably would tell her, look, if seven to eight hours is what you're sleeping every night, you're getting sufficient sleep for an adult. You don't want to extend that on the weekends because you will alter your actual circadian rhythm.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: ⁓ And the question is, does it hurt you when you go back into the week? There's a lot of people where it can hurt them to sleep bank past what the body needs.

Kamal Datta: Right. Yeah. Yeah. What is the impact of breaking the circadian rhythm on the performance side of things? Like I'm running. ⁓ I have a part view of this question, but I'm curious your take on if I'm breaking my circadian rhythm, what is the impact on my performance on race day?

Krista Gail Austin: Well, depends on where you're racing and the actual break in the circadian rhythm. Okay. So like this past week, I actually flew from Colorado to South Carolina. Okay. South Carolina is two hours ahead of us. And because of how my flight was designed, I actually got in and went to bed at the same time I would typically go to bed in Colorado. OK, so in all reality, I didn't go anywhere and do anything where I truly broke my normative circadian rhythm and I still made sure I slept long enough.

Kamal Datta: I see, I see. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: that it matched the number of hours of sleep I typically get when I'm at home anyway. Okay, so I felt pretty good even though I switched time zones. If I was racing, I would have been fine because of the time of day I had to actually appear at. In this case, it was to give a presentation, but let's say it's for a race. I need to be there at 8 a.m. for that presentation. ⁓ Let's say you're gonna race at 8 a.m. That's fine because I'm usually up by five or six in the morning.

Kamal Datta: Right.

Krista Gail Austin: I had the same actual timeline as I do when I'm back home. Does that make sense, Kamal? There was no detriment. The tougher part was coming around, was coming back with delayed flights, to be honest. You know, I have been up.

Kamal Datta: I see, see. Yeah, yeah, right, right. Yeah. Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: Right, I've been up for an extra couple of hours in the day, right, so it's on a different time zone. And then on top of that, the flight kept getting delayed so that instead of the normal 16 hours that I go in a day, I ended up going for about, you know, I would say about 18 because of the flight delays. That's when you got to come around and bank sleep. And the irony of it was I needed to get up.

Kamal Datta: Right. Mm-hmm. Right. Right.

Krista Gail Austin: the next morning and be somewhere at a certain point in time. And I'm like, okay, well, I'm just going to have to do this the next morning. Right. And so I actually slept in on Saturday to pay back the sleep debt I had acquired over a couple of days. Right. Whereas this morning I didn't. I was back up at my normal routine.

Kamal Datta: ⁓ okay, okay. I see, I see. Okay, okay. So I think you used both strategies. So you are probably on the count that you are waking up on the same time frame assuming that you have the regular sleep that you plan to have. And if there's a debt that you're doing the sleep banking concept. Okay.

Krista Gail Austin: Yeah, yes, my circadian rhythm didn't change, right?

Kamal Datta: I was thinking of more of like I'm considering running Sydney marathon this early fall, late summer, like it's the end of August. That's a 12 hour gap. So I'm thinking in terms of like if I have to be there to get myself used to how many days is good enough? Is it a week? Do I need to be there more than a week? Cause you need to plan it out, know, all this work and all. That's the question like, and how do you... adjust your kind of sleep routine to make sure that you're ready on the race. Otherwise you'd be like jet lag when you're running the race. And I don't know what can happen. Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: Right, so this is what I would recommend to you. First and foremost, ensure you know when your race is going to start, race time, and then work your way backwards so that you choose the right flight and how many days you need to shift your body in terms of the window that you're going to be operating in. Sometimes you can start that shift back home before ever getting on the plane.

Kamal Datta: Yeah. That's a great idea.

Krista Gail Austin: Other times you can't. Most elite athletes shift their circadian rhythm in advance and shorten the amount of time they're actually out of country when they go to do a race like that. They don't want to be away from home for too long or any longer than they need to just because they won't have their normal food, their normal bed, factors of that nature that make them consistent. and if you impact your consistency as you're going into a race for too long, you might actually not do great. So let's look at the scenario that actually happened to Matt Emmons, a legend in sports shooting, when he went to the 2016 games. He is always as consistent as possible, has his routine, got to Brazil and could not sleep. And it was enough.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: Impairment in sleep that he despite being number one in the world couldn't compete well You can see the same thing happening to a marathon runner is that you may think you're doing yourself a favor by getting there early And in all reality you can't sleep Because it's a different bed

Kamal Datta: Right.

Krista Gail Austin: That's not a good thing, right? You thought you were gonna enhance performance by getting there and adapting to the time zone. And instead, because you can't sleep in the bed that you have at the hotel or Airbnb, whatever it is, you actually do more harm. So that's something where intentionally you need to understand, you know, maybe the pillows they have at the hotel, the comfort of the bed you'll sleep in when you're in Sydney.

Kamal Datta: Yep. Yeah. That's a very good one. Mm-hmm. right?

Krista Gail Austin: just factors like that as to how well or how well not you're going to travel. ⁓ Usually three days away from home and most people start missing their bed. They start missing the food that they're accustomed to. So it.

Kamal Datta: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, right. That is so true. That is so true. Now that's a very good point that the trainer, especially if there's a zone difference, right? You know, you know, all the... big world marathon majors, lot of international travelers, Flying across time zones. And this is something to consider as they train for it, because it's a impact on them. And as you pointed out, getting early is probably not, may not be the best answer. And some people may adjust well. I can sleep anywhere. Some people may not, right? I'm in the camp where, no, I cannot sleep well in the hotels. I don't know what it is, but. ⁓ If it is the case, then you have to make sure that you have a plan B, which is I think you're saying how do you train ahead of time, the example you gave when you are locally in that space. Now, let's go to the last round where talking about the three areas that we touched on, how do you make it individualized? So these are the great frameworks that, you what you give a great examples of working it for elites. You gave some frameworks that can work for everyday runner. So if I'm to take that, let's take example of readiness. How do you make it individualized that I, as a John Doe, know, hey, I'm ready? What would be one or two or three key metrics that I can look for for readiness point of view?

Krista Gail Austin: So when I'm talking to the everyday person, I think about the three core pillars they're gonna have to support for the marathon, which is the physical, nutritional, and mental. And the question is, how are they going to address each of those pillars for succeeding in the marathon? That's how they're gonna individualize. Some people might turn around to the mental one and they might say, Krista, all I gotta do is get good sleep, right?

Kamal Datta: Sure, yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: On the nutritional side, may be that their stomach is so sensitive, all they can do is find the right gel or carbohydrate product for actual racing. And that's it. That's all they're going to do.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: Okay, and physically if they've got the right coach, the right training program for them, they know that they're going to be confident in that. So I try to look at those three pillars, the physical, nutritional, and mental side of the marathon and ask people to individualize based off of that. Now they might need to incorporate something like a social component, right, because maybe the entire family travels with them. to go to the marathon or they're doing the marathon as part of a family vacation and their spouse and children are just giving them time to go do that particular marathon, right? While they're on vacation. Then you've got to put a social component to it. But keep those as your three core and then add the other components as needed.

Kamal Datta: Yeah. Right. That's great. ⁓ Thank you for sharing that. ⁓ You recently focused on ⁓ female athlete physiology and individualized assessments. And I think you refer to as the standard training plan, maybe a myth. Can you expand on what do you mean by that?

Krista Gail Austin: Hey, Kamal, you just cut out.

Kamal Datta: Can you hear me now?

Krista Gail Austin: Now I can hear you.

Kamal Datta: Okay, let me, I'll start there. So what I was referring to is you recently focused on the female athlete physiology and individualized assessments, which refers to the standard training plan, maybe a myth. I was curious if you want to expand on why do you think a standard training plan may be a myth?

Krista Gail Austin: So you're breaking up again. I'm not sure if you can hear me.

Kamal Datta: I can't hear you. Am I audible now?

Krista Gail Austin: You're cutting in and out. I have all the bars on my wifi, but you're cutting in and out.

Kamal Datta: Maybe me. All right, let me give it a try. How about now? Is it better now?

Krista Gail Austin: Yeah, better now.

Kamal Datta: Okay, okay. ⁓ Talking about one size fits all versus how can someone make it individualized, was wondering your take on why a standard training plan may be a myth. Talking about one size fits all versus how can someone make it individualized, I was referring to that you think that the standard training plan that ⁓ sometimes maybe people can just go Google and get a training plan, maybe a myth. I was wondering if you want to share your take on why a standard training plan may be a myth.

Krista Gail Austin: Yeah, so just from the perspective of, you know, standard training plan being a myth. I've worked with people, what I've learned ⁓ that you have to incorporate a lot of what we call today flexible periodization that fits the actual human, the actual individual that you're working with. ⁓ everyone has a plan that they're going to go out and execute on for the marathon, let's say. But let's say ⁓ happens. Yeah, so just from the perspective of, you know, standard training plan being a myth. When I've worked with people, what I've learned is that you have to incorporate a lot of what we call today flexible periodization that fits the actual human, the actual individual that you're working with. And everyone has a plan that they're going to go out and execute on for the marathon, let's say. But let's say life happens.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: and you can't hit certain workouts. The question is, what are you going to do to help that person get to the line and get them as ready as possible? And that's where individualization actually comes in. And even then, if you take a look at female physiology, there are some women that have no symptomology during their menstrual cycle. They can handle progressive loading. And then there's others where you actually have to accommodate and you can't hit certain workouts. The question is, what are you going to do to help that person get to the line and get them as ready as possible? And that's where individualization actually comes in. And even then, if you take a look at female physiology, there are some women that have no symptomology during their menstrual cycle. They can handle standardized progressive loading. And then there's others where you actually have to accommodate

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: the luteal phase and the menses or one or the other. And so you restructure their training to accommodate that. not a standard plan. Most plans just have a progressive build. ⁓ so we're always trying to find the best training methods to allow us to impose a training stimulus on people. the luteal phase and the menses or one or the other. And so you restructure their training to accommodate that. That's not a standard plan. Most plans just have a progressive build. And so we're always trying to find the best training methods to allow us to impose a training stimulus on people. And when you take a look at some elite athletes,

Kamal Datta: I see. I see. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: and some of the actual training they do, like very specific training sessions for the marathon, you can't just look at it as it's a 15 mile tempo. In all reality, if you break down the type of 15 mile tempo they do, they have surges in their actual tempo. So let's say they average 450 a mile for a marathon.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: runner that's a male at 7,700 feet of altitude. If they have put three miles in somewhere along there that are 430 or faster, that's not your standard 15-mile tempo. Most people think of a 15-mile tempo as just running a certain pace for 15 miles, right? You always have to be creating the variation in even a training session like that so that they have a new stimulus and that they can adapt.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: You know, the better trained they are, the less standardized it becomes. The more hectic their life, the less standardized the training program becomes. So to say that there's a standardized approach to imposing a training stimulus, I think is a little bit of a farce because I've never been able to do that with anyone if they're truly wanting individualized training. They're seeking it out for reason. It's because

Kamal Datta: makes sense.

Krista Gail Austin: a cookie cut program is not working for them. There's some really great cookie cut programs out there on the market that we can go buy. You can use rate of perceived effort to guide the training and you will run a great marathon if you can just fit the square peg into a square peg. But if you take the square peg, you try to put it into a round hole with someone, it just doesn't work. Oftentimes, that's what's happening.

Kamal Datta: Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: And I'm like, why are people trying to put a square peg into a round hole all the time? It just it doesn't work. It happens all the time when I'm training tactical personnel. People give them a training plan they think they're going to execute on that training plan and that they're going to get a certain outcome. It never works out that way. Never.

Kamal Datta: Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: And so you have to be prepared to modify and adapt it to what they need to actually help the tactical personnel meet their goals. So that's where your ability to do that on the athlete side, the marathon side, we learn it there. You have to do it even better in a setting like that. ⁓ You know, it's just how much variance can you throw in to meet the adaptation someone wants.

Kamal Datta: So why doesn't it work? I think you're really doing a very good ⁓ factor. So you have a plan, you get to a person to execute a tactical plan, and you said most of the times it doesn't work. Is it because that plan was not made for that person A? Is that the main reason?

Krista Gail Austin: In the tactical population, I would just tell you it's a function of their schedule and the fact that you've got a roll workouts, you've got a lot of surprises that come up in their day, and you can't just anticipate that they're going to have a schedule like most people. So we're always flipping things. Maybe we repeat weeks. ⁓

Kamal Datta: I see.

Krista Gail Austin: You know, we find shorter ways to get a certain job done. Maybe they want to train for something that's a little longer. But all of a sudden their job changes and they're like, no, you got to go back to changing me for like a two mile event. So I had one of my tactical personnel say, oh, Chris, I want to train to run a mile in five minutes. He had huge changes at work and all of sudden he's like, OK, we're not going to be able to take the time to train for the five minute mile. I don't want to do that anymore. Train me to run 100 K, but we're going to put it further out. So they'll ask you to do things like that and the question is will we get to the line of the 100k to be honest or do we need to adapt for something else that comes up with work.

Kamal Datta: That makes sense. Krista, think to wrap up our individualization part, I have to ask you the role of technology for... Because we have a data overload. You have a gadget for now, every metric that you can measure. And it's overwhelming for a runner, John Doe or Jane Doe. How do you navigate this technology overload or information overload? to actually figure out kind of the areas that you laid out, the three key areas that, okay, if you look at this technology, the data that is throwing it at you, and how do you reduce the noise? I think what it's time to get to.

Krista Gail Austin: Yeah. I think the challenge with technology is it keeps coming to people and saying, we're going to do this for you. We're going to do that. And it's defining things that are not really scientifically valid. All right. So when you're a coach or a sports scientist, you have to look at it and say, where does it belong for this individual, for this team? And what is the return on investment that it's going to give us? Most great coaches don't coach off of technology. Maybe we have tech, the question is how are we going to use it or do we even use it to write training? Like I don't use tech to write training. I've been writing it that long. So you come to me, I might use it just to keep track of how well the workout is going to give me some kind of insight in terms of your heart rate, maybe how you respond to a certain perception of effort or how hard it is for you to run a certain pace or how much of a training load we can actually achieve during this.

Kamal Datta: Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: training block before you need a recovery week so that I can design training better. And people are like, why do you design training this way, Krista? I'm like, ⁓ that's years of experience. I learned off of certain profiles that they just can't tolerate certain types of loading patterns. So I'll use it just to help me keep track better of how I provide it loading to the athlete.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: but I'm really not training off of it. Either you know how to write the training as a coach for an individualized plan or you don't. That's really one of my key takeaways is that tech cannot tell you how to write a smarter training plan. Either you can write that training plan because you've coached enough, you have enough sets and reps under your belt.

Kamal Datta: I

Krista Gail Austin: that you can get the person to align with a new training stimulus and create what you really need to create. ⁓ The tech should only be there to give you the feedback that maybe you're looking for and you need to know when to throw the tech out the door. Some of these tech measures.

Kamal Datta: That is so true, yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: You know, some of these tech measures, I mean, they're not even valid, but they're selling it to people. And then they're putting their faith into a tech measure that isn't really valid and scientifically based. It's not even like common sense based. It isn't even, you know, valid from the coaching lab. OK, as a coach, they might come in and go. What? What is this supposed to do? And I've seen that for years with coaches. We went through that period in the NBA when Catapult first came out and the coaches were just like, what are we supposed to do with this? We've never coached with it, but we've won NBA titles. You know, ⁓ and so you're like, hey, let's see if we can find a place for this tech.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: and your coaching and decide how you are going to utilize it. That's what I've seen with every great world-class coach is that they might use a certain level of tech a certain way, but it doesn't mean that another coach is going to come along and use it that way. they'll have their own means. ⁓ And the question is, how are they gonna get the athlete there? They'll figure it out. But I've seen a lot of tech tossed to the side by coaches because it's not capable of being as artistic as the coaches. ⁓ It actually is too regimented.

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm. I see.

Krista Gail Austin: to provide any type of prescription on the training side. So the question is how are going to use it? What role does it play for you either as a coach or as an athlete?

Kamal Datta: What would be an example of a metric that you would say that is not science-backed but technology pushes on, say, individual athletes?

Krista Gail Austin: So a metric that's out there that's not scientifically valid, it might be something like a readiness score from one of these sleep devices. None of those scores are valid. ⁓

Kamal Datta: Mm-hmm.

Krista Gail Austin: And it's concerning to see it because they'll be like, hey, here's what my aura ring is telling me. And aura is great for certain things. Like, it's great for a sleeping heart rate. It's great for tracking how long they've been in bed and maybe even the number of times they woke up at night. Right. But when it comes to understanding readiness, that they don't have the validity to demonstrate that it can truly measure that and that can mess with someone's head.

Kamal Datta: Yeah. Yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: And they're like, ⁓ my gosh, I'm not ready to do my workout today. Or the application of the metric is not appropriate. So let's take heart rate variability. Heart rate variability is not specific nor sensitive enough to tell us anything really. It just tells us an indicator of where the body is at. That's all it's doing. But people will try to guide training off of HRV. I'm like, don't do that. There's a lot of things that can influence it, whether it's what you ate. Like eating can suppress heart rate variability. How does that tell you whether or not you're ready to train?

Kamal Datta: wow. So you refer to that messing up with your brain. And I used one of the ⁓ sleeping tracking devices for some couple of months. And then it really... I started to mess up my head in a sense that you the morning you wake up you get the score that your recovery and it's like I probably know if I had a good sleep or not without even that telling me but when you give a number or with the color coded green red yellow or kind of, and if it's red, I'm starting my day on the wrong foot. And I see a trigger effect on, hey, I had this, you know, X, Y, things I want to conquer the day. Now I messed up that, ⁓ you didn't have a good sleep. Now you have to come up with the plan B. So I relate exactly what you mean by when you said that it can really mess up with your head. So thank you for calling it out. But I didn't realize that it is not validated by science. So thank you for sharing.

Krista Gail Austin: Yeah, you know with the sleep devices I tell hey people, you know can look at these and get two things hopefully. How long they're sleeping for and the resting heart rate and the question is what factors are influencing those two metrics? Okay, maybe it's what you eat before bed. Maybe it's your sleep time routine. Maybe it's your ability to tolerate a certain training load. Maybe it's how you handle life stress, work stress while you're training at a certain level. Just the amount of hours you sleep and the heart rate while you're sleeping can tell you a lot. So that's where if you want to invest in your sleep device, use those two metrics and run them alongside, Kamal, your actual perception of sleep. and what might be altering your actual objective and subjective measures of sleep. Use them together, not apart.

Kamal Datta: I see. Now that makes total sense and probably that awareness is equally important just having a device just to track slip ⁓ and actually do something about being aware of that fact that I need to do that subjective part what is influencing what that kind of the pendulum to understanding. All right. Thank you, Krista. So let's move to our final round, the rapid fire round. I have a couple of questions and whatever comes to your mind first so you can answer. don't have to... And you can expand as you feel as needed. ⁓ What is the most underrated brain food for fueling your brain?

Krista Gail Austin: What is the most underrated brain food? I think it's protein. People don't understand how much protein can help prevent fatigue. It's a key part of fatigue management that I try to teach people. So I think it's the fact that they don't know that protein is such a fatigue management tool, especially for the brain.

Kamal Datta: Thank you. ⁓ I don't know, you didn't get a chance to talk about the nutrition guide that did came up. I think the protein rank higher than maybe the previous guideline that was there, which I think aligns with what you were just recommending.

Krista Gail Austin: Yeah, I mean the thing about the new dietary guidelines is

Kamal Datta: Next one. Yeah. Now go ahead.

Krista Gail Austin: Yeah, the thing about the new dietary guidelines is that a lot of it is it's just giving you more permission to increase your consumption of protein and to also let you know that it's OK to have some red meat and whole milk, right? They didn't say to go eat a whole bunch of it or for it to be a ketogenic diet. They're just giving you

Kamal Datta: That's true. Yeah, yeah.

Krista Gail Austin: They're just giving you more permission to increase the protein content of the diet and also to bring back in certain food groups. And if you design your nutrition correctly, I will just tell you, you don't have to worry about saturated fat. ⁓ You can do it very well without increasing saturated fat intake if you choose the right protein sources.

Kamal Datta: That makes total sense. Thank you. Next one. One metric on a Garmin or a Whoop or Aura that runners should actually care about.

Krista Gail Austin: I would say on an aura ring is the number of hours you're sleeping a night.

Kamal Datta: That's a good one. Thank you. ⁓ Next one. What is the biggest lesson the military taught you about sport?

Krista Gail Austin: I think you can take some of the military concepts from an environment perspective and teach athletes to be more adaptable. I don't know that the military aspects really taught me anything for sport because the two have been so interchangeable for me. Like I used more of my sport background to be successful in the military environment rather than the other way around. ⁓ But I will say this probably the most influential thing I've taken from the military into sport is the time I spent with Marine Recom. We had a very, very good leader as the company commander and I think he influenced me the most in terms of how you lead. That's what I would tell you.

Kamal Datta: I see. Oh, thank you. Next one, maybe a tough one. If you could give a runner one tactical advantage that costs $0 and takes five minutes a day, what would it be?

Krista Gail Austin: Ensuring mobility. Mobility of your joints is huge with regards to being able to put force into the ground. Most runners do not do the mobility work which takes five minutes a day that they need to do. If you do five minutes a day of mobility work with a foam roller, stretch rope, you're going to put that much force into the ground and it is truly a great advantage.

Kamal Datta: Krista, thank you so much for sharing your background, your expertise. ⁓ And I think we touched on all the four pillars that or four layers that you talked What can people about your work?

Krista Gail Austin: So you can always connect with me on my website Krista Austin comm or you reach out via LinkedIn Always happy to connect and you know, definitely I've got blogs out there. I've got other podcasts You know that regularly doing so always just kind of Google search for that and you'll you'll find out where I am and what I'm up to

Kamal Datta: Great. It has been a pleasure, Krista, to chat with you and learn so much about personal life benefited a lot learning different concepts and then you expanding on those concepts. So thank you so much for joining the pod.

Krista Gail Austin: Great to speak with you, Kamal. I really enjoyed it ⁓ and I hope you have a great of your Sunday.

Kamal Datta: Thank you.