Running on Vibes and a Prayer? Good Luck With That
Breathing Nose v Mouth + My Marathon Training Update
Quick Hits
🤞🏽F*ck Luck: You Either Trained Right or You Didn’t
🤞🏽F*ck Luck: You Either Trained Right or You Didn’t
“Good luck in your race.”
Every time I hear it, I throw up a little in my mouth. I get it because it’s a thing people say.
I feel like it’s similar to saying “hope your car drives well” to a master mechanic who’s been tuning every bolt, cleaning the fuel lines, and studying the road for months. It’s not about luck because there’s no horseshoe or rabbit’s foot that’s gonna save you.
A runner I know wanted to “will power” his way through his third marathon and run sub 3 hours and 30 minutes. Before this, the fastest he ran was 3 hours 50 minutes, so a jump of 20 minutes is quite a lot, but if we can put people on the Moon… this guy can, through smart training and a long enough time horizon, lower his marathon by 20 minutes, right?
His training was spotty at best. His biggest run was 14 miles (23km), and everything else was a half-hearted mess. What happened on race day? His brain shut all that sh*t down.
Because he never trained his body to handle it, his brain went, “No, Sir! We’ve never done this before. I’m going to slow down ATP production to all the vital muscles and make this hurt cuz you’re trying to kill us, and I can’t be having that.”
That’s not a lack of mindset but more like your brain/body doing its job.
So yeah, here’s what I really think mental prep is made of — and it’s not what the motivational quote accounts would have you believe. It’s these three based things:
You did the proper training.
Yes, obviously. But so many people think intervals with recovery breaks are going to get them to the finish line of an uninterrupted 13.1 or 26.2. If you’ve been doing this for a few years and are really racing your hardest, then it most likely won’t.
In training, you have to run as much of the race distance at your target pace (in a smart way) without stopping if you want your best time. Is there a risk of overtraining? Sure. Is it worth it? Depends.
Do you actually want your best time or just want to finish feeling like a bad a$$ for Instagram?You have the right pacing strategy.
No, you cannot go out 20 seconds per km/mile faster than anything you’ve ever done in training and “just hope for the best.” That’s not strategy — that’s diabolic sabotage. Your brain/body is like, “Cool story bro, but we’ve never done this before,” and then you blow up at mile 18 and start looking for a medical tent to cry in.You’ve been there before, either in training or in life — so you know you can do it.
When it gets hard (and it will), there’s this magical moment where your brain checks for receipts. If you’ve never suffered like this before, it pulls the “danger-danger” alarm. But if you have, even just once — It’ll go, “Alright, we’ve kinda sorta been here before. Let’s suffer a tiny bit more... but I think we can survive.”
I’m just tired of the mind-over-matter, David-Goggins-lite inspiration porn (even though I do love David Goggins!). Everyone wants to talk about digging deep without planting the damn seeds first.
Racing is just the test. Training is the studying. Strategy is the cheat sheet. And luck? That’s for the casinos.
Instead of saying “Good Luck” to a runner, maybe try saying “I know you’ll do your best”. That puts the onus on the runner and not their crossed fingers and four leaf clovers.
But maybe I’m being too harsh on these Lucky Charms runners. Am I? Let me know in the comments 👇🏽 or respond to this email. Or don’t. I’ll be over here doing strides and muttering about ATP in the corner.
😮💨 How To Breath While Running (Nose v Mouth)
Should runners breathe through their nose or mouth?
Should you breathe through your nose or mouth when running? It’s a highly controversial topic.
Breathing through your mouth gets more air into your lungs, which is the key to helping most runners perform at their best. We’ll explain why we’re proponents of mouth breathing for running faster, and we’ll list the circumstances we recommend breathing through your nose.
We hear the critics: “Kipchoge breathes through his nose and look at how fast he is!” Yeah, well. You aren’t Kipchoge.
We’ll talk about the latest research and the Kenyans – and we’re going to go deep. So hang on tight.
Why you should breathe through your mouth to increase your speed
First of all, let’s step back a level and talk about your nose.
Evolution put a nose on your face to make sure that the air that gets into your lungs is clean. Your nose hairs filter out dust and the length of your nose warms air up when it’s cold outside.
It’s no surprise that your nose isn’t the fastest way to get air into your lungs. Go ahead: do this easy experiment yourself. Take a deep breath in through your nose. Exhale. Now take a deep breath in through your mouth. Which was faster? Of course it was your mouth. It’s just a giant hole that sucks in air.
Since breathing through your nose is a harder way to get air, you have to work harder when you’re doing it. A 2018 study published in the International Journal of Kinesiology and Sports Science showed that breathing through your nose makes your heart rate higher than breathing through your mouth, when running at the same pace.
Generally, the nostrils just aren’t big enough to get enough air in through your nose for high-performance running. At an easy, slow pace, yes, you can get enough oxygen in. But if you’re training hard, you’re not going to get enough air in the lungs breathing through your nose. If you’re hitting your threshold into race pace, you’ll need to breathe through your mouth to get enough oxygen.
Watch, read and listen to the rest on your next run or workout.
🏃♂️Sub-3 Hour Marathon Update (10 Days To Race)
Training has been exactly what I planned—but also way different. I ramped up to a peak week of 127 km (78 miles), which was the goal. But the hardest part hasn’t been the runs themselves. It’s been the day after. Or even two days after. That’s when things get tricky.
Where it really gets weird, though, is in the sequencing—what workouts I do next, how I eat, and how I sleep. That’s been the difference between holding it together or watching the wheels fall off. And last week? They fell off.
Since I only train for one half-marathon a year—usually over 8 to 12 weeks—I’m used to doing long runs fasted. That works fine when the run tops out at 90 minutes at Zone 2.
But this marathon block is a different beast. I’ve been pushing my Zone 2 and dipping into low Zone 3 for way longer than 10–15 km (6–10 miles). That kind of effort demands carbs—before, during, and after. No way around it.
I know some elites do a fasted long run 4–6 weeks out from race day. I didn’t fit that in. So I subbed in a medium-long run and tried eating 60 minutes into it.
Problem was, I did that run three days after my hardest workout of the week—coming off my biggest training load so far. Bad move. The run itself felt okay, but towards the end, I felt something fizzle out of my body. Like, I could actually feel my carb stores vanishing in real time. Later that day, I was fried—mentally, physically, completely. It felt like I’d run 30 km (18 miles), not just 16 km (10 miles). Something was way off.
The next three days, I was sluggish. That’s when it hit me. I was still recovering from the high-volume week, skating the edge of “danger.” The medium-long run wasn’t the issue—it was the timing. It was pure straw-meets-camel’s-back poetry.
Once I’m in that weakened state, anything can tip me over. Even an easy run. That week, my hamstring cramped twice. Then, on Sunday, when I thought I was in the clear, it hit again—hard.
I’ll be fine. But I’m dialing it all back now. No way I’m showing up to the start line at 68%.
Lots of lessons this week. I’m glad I pushed my body (smartly). Still, any time you play this game—pushing human limits—there’s always a line. And sometimes, you don’t see it until you’ve stepped over it.