Rucking Pace Explained: Train Smarter, Finish Stronger

0:00 Are you starting your rucks too fast and paying for it miles into the ruck? If you're anything like me, you think that getting faster means pushing harder. But the athletes who consistently perform well during long rucks and endurance events usually do the opposite. They know when to hold back, how to manage their effort, and why pacing is one of the most important skills you can develop. In this episode, performance coach and return guest on the pod, Sam Svetkovsky, explains how to find your ideal training pace, why easy days build better endurance, how to pace yourself for races and long distance events, and the common mistakes that leave ruckers exhausted before they reach the finish line. You're listening to the Rucker's Edge podcast, a show all about rucking that is designed to help you improve your rucking routine, lose weight, and ultimately gain your strength and energy back. Each episode dives into the science, stories, and strategies behind rucking. You'll learn from top ruckers, coaches, health experts, and performance specialists who break down what it takes to train smarter, recover faster, and stay ready for the next challenge.

0:57 So whether you're new to rucking or an experienced rucker that's already logged hundreds of miles, this is the show for you. I'm your host, Spencer. Thanks for listening in. Today's guest, again, is Sam Svetkovsky. She's a performance coach over at Omni Athlete Training. Sam works with endurance athletes competing in everything from ultra marathons to long -distance ruck events. She's helping them build smarter training plans, improve pacing, and perform their best on race day. So in this conversation, she shares practical pacing strategies that every Rucker can apply immediately, whether you're training for your first event or your next endurance challenge. All right. Please enjoy my conversation with Sam. Sam, thanks for joining me again here on the Rucker's Edge podcast. It's really great to have you back. Thank you. I'm excited to be back. Today we're talking about pace and you have a lot of experience with pace. You had a busy June in which you were doing a lot of sort of pace work. I think you were coaching Jen Tillard with a 100 miler and you also did some ultra marathon pacing work too. So busy June for you.

2:01 Recording this here in July. I understand next month you might have some more things. So I'm glad that you carved out some time to talk about this. But yeah, let's get into pacing. I kind of want to talk about why pacing with a ruck is different than running or any other form of exercise. So I guess I kind of want to talk about what the load actually does to our bodies and how we should be adapting or changing our pace as opposed to running or something else. I don't know if you have any insights to offer on that. Yeah, no, absolutely. I hear this a lot where...

2:41 People will start to get into rucking and especially if they've run before and they're like, oh, I can just go for the same exact run just with a ruck on my back, even if it's, you know, 10, 15 pounds. And I think that's just it's just such a naive way to look at it. Right. And then they go and they do that. And that's often when we start to see those injuries. I think, though, when we really look at rucking, what what it is, it's it's. we're not just managing the movement or the pace, right? We're managing a load now. And so it becomes more about like this energy efficiency rather than just pacing over time. So we need to be able to balance those two things out. In terms of talking about efficiency, do you think when it comes to pacing under load, is it more important to think about our... our efforts that we're putting into it as opposed to, you know, trying to stick to like a hard time or anything like that, if that question makes sense. Yeah, no, it definitely does. And I mean, we do that with running too, right? It's more about saying exactly that. Like, I like to use the example of like running uphill versus running on a flat, right? And we can say that, okay, I'm rucking versus running or I'm rucking with more weight or less weight. But let's use the hill analogy because I think everybody can picture this. If you're holding whatever your pace is on a flat, if you maintain that exact same effort as you start to go uphill, your pace

4:11 naturally drops, right? And so that's the same idea like if we think about adding load. So if I'm moving at whatever pace it is normally without that additional weight, if I can maintain that same effort, my pace will likely pull back or drop a bit compared to what I'm used to. But you're also changing things like your mechanics of how you're moving. Like it's not the exact same thing as a walk or a run. And so there's a lot more to think about like as you add that weight, especially as that weight gets higher and higher. Oh, for sure. Yeah, immediately when you start rocking with weight for the first time and you cover maybe a quarter of a mile when you're used to walking a quarter of a mile and your heart rate is already pumping, you're like, okay, I need to start adapting here or maybe not adjusting here is what I'm looking for. You brought up, yeah, comparing it to walking up or down a hill. It's a great analogy. I really like that. And speaking of that, yeah, I guess doing research for this, one thing that came up. Well, one thing that I thought about was hiking different terrain and perceived exertion.

5:20 And that's kind of why I asked you about effort adjusted pace sort of situation. I guess specifically, do you coach using that method or do you go into like technical details in terms of like timing or anything like that? I guess what I'm asking is when you approach training someone for the first time and pace, what do you tell them to think about, I guess, when it comes to like perceived exertion? Yeah, it really depends on what they're training for. But we can use, I mean, Jenna is a great example, right? She's familiar with wrecking and maybe hasn't like trained in it as consistently leading up to her events. And so when she had started and working with me and she ended up completing her 100 miler, which was incredible, she... What we did was actually kind of slow her down, right? She was used to going to CrossFit and going hard at very high intensities. And it was really about just maintaining over longer periods of time. And so there's a lot of different methods that we will use. Like we will use heart rate training zones. You can use the standard ones. There's another one. that we utilize called MAF, which is maximum aerobic function, which is just like a shifted view of like those heart rate zones. So it's not the same exact one that's typically programmed on your Garmin watch or whatever watch you're using. And then you use like different types of training, right? Like you will do higher intensity days, but for shorter periods of time. If you look at some of her and

6:53 other athletes like training notes, sometimes in there will be like, I need you to take this so easy. And it's just like very dramatic of like, I want you to feel like you did nothing after this. And the fact is, like, we're still moving. We're still doing this work. But a lot of times we perceive our easy as not really that easy. Right. Like if I go out for an easy run and. My heart rate is, you know, 160 and I'm sweating and I'm gas and I can't talk that entire time. It's not an easy run, even if I say it is. Right. There's a lot of vital signs that show us what is an easy versus not. But the like the simplest one and you don't need technology to follow it is the talk test. Right. Can you hold the conversation while you're moving? And that's a lot of where when you start to get into these like longer. rucking or running or any endurance effort a lot of your time is spent in that you know conversation or easier pace because you just need to stay there for so long gotcha yeah that that makes sense isn't that a good tell to tell if you're in like your heart rate zone too i think that's sort of what's recommended it's like if you can carry a conversation and um yeah feel like you can You can keep going at that at that pace. You're in zone two. Totally.

8:22 What would happen to someone's event performance if they train too hard all the time and not scale back like you talked about with what you did with Jen? Yeah, I think that just leaves the burnout. You know, it leaves the burnout. It leaves the injury. It doesn't actually prepare you for what you're trying to do. If the idea here is that. You need to sustain not just within your sessions, but you need to be durable and sustainable over the entire time that you're training and then going into that event. And I think I like I've seen this and I've done it myself. Right. Going into a go rock event and not really knowing what it was about. especially these like longer 12, 24 hour ones, I would just go to the gym normally throughout that whole week, do my normal thing. And then the next day go into this, you know, go rock tough or heavy, not even thinking about it and not realizing like how much fatigue was on my body at that point. And understanding that all of these sessions don't have to be intense all the time. It's, it's almost like it. It should be frustrating how easy it feels sometimes because we're so used to such like a quick stimulus of, hey, that was such a good workout. I sweat, my muscles hurt, I'm gassed, I'm laying on the ground, right?

9:44 And if you continually do that over and over again, you never are really building that true base and you're never giving yourself the time to recover properly either. And there's there's a lot of things like as you get closer to race day, should you be doing more race specific things? Absolutely. Like I actually had this conversation with George, the owner of Omni Athlete the other day, where we were talking about how to practice fueling and nutrition for longer endurance events. And the fact is, like, it's really hard to simulate what it's going to feel like. after five, six, 12, 24 hours, right? But we can't realistically do that in training. And so there's different ways that you can do it. And that is going about by, hey, maybe I do one long ruck every week.

10:44 I don't need to do three or four long rucks, like one long ruck every week. And in that, I'm practicing my nutrition, but I also know and can start to see, oh, maybe around hour three, hour four, that's where things start to feel a little bit different. And so it's like, yes, you need to be specific to what you're training for, but doing things at your race pace or just long and hard durations all the time. doesn't set you up for that same success as if you're consistently building over the weeks and months leading up. Yeah. I mean, that sounds like if you're not pushing as hard as your event pacing or effort, the consistency key is, or the consistency aspect of that is the key part, the vital part is keeping your body used to going and moving without extended amounts of breaks. Okay. So let's transition to, maybe formulating or implementing how to find your pace and that we want to establish.

11:51 I'm thinking you're the expert. I'm just kind of thinking in terms of my research, I was like, okay, so someone should probably establish their baseline and then figure out what their training pace would be and then understanding where they should target, where they should be for their event pace, how fast they want to go. I guess any events here we could talk about? compared to a GoRuck or a Greenbrae Fitness type of event. But let's start with baseline. If someone's getting into rucking for the first time, they want to compete in some sort of event or a race, what's like a simple way to find their baseline, I guess?

12:33 Yeah, you can do a simple test, right? And you can do any duration that's kind of fit to where your fitness level is as well. A lot of times we'll look at like a 60 or it's really like a 45 minute effort and sustaining a heart rate or an easy pace below like 150. And that shifts a little based on the age and everything else and some other factors. But generally, like you could use. If you want to use a hard number, right, you do 150 or do 180 minus your age and then stay right at or below that heart rate zone. So for me, 34, 180 minus 34 is what? 146. Is that right? Yeah. So and then there's like a little bit of shifting like you get plus or minus depending on like your basically fitness age or your if you're advanced versus beginner. But if you stay below, let's just use 150. or right around that for 60 minutes, see how far you go.

13:36 And then after your, you know, four week, eight week, 12 week training block, you can retest that again. And that's like a really good way to like measure just like how, how am I sustaining at this heart rate over the time? So if I can maintain that same heart rate, but then my pace starts to go up, that's where we start to see you, you get to that point. The other question is like, oh, well, what pace should I be at? It really depends on, you know, the type of event you're doing too, right? Like we say GORUCK, GORUCK's a little challenging, right? It's a team event. You got to kind of stay with everybody else. And we do know those are like a little, I don't want to say slow moving, but you are moving as a team. You're carrying a lot of stuff.

14:23 And so that's more about just like consistency of movement over time. But for something that is self -paced, right, like a rucking race, Greenbrae Fitness is a great example. It's. Again, it's it's can you at what point do you feel like you're gassed, right, like where I can't talk. And so if you use that as your barometer, if you're not using a heart rate zone or a heart rate number. it's a really good place. So how far can I push to this not being able to talk point, but also maintain it? And a lot of times when people do these tests, they're like, wow, that was so slow.

15:10 Right. Because because, again, we perceive our efforts so differently than, you know, like you'll go on Strava and be like, oh, recovery run. Right. If it's a slower run than you're used to or recovery ruck. And it's like, no, these things aren't necessarily recovery. They're actually what build that aerobic base. Yeah. Is that is that test? Is that applicable to beginners and experienced ruckers across the board? Yeah, absolutely. Is that method used for running and swimming or any sport? Yeah, I had mentioned it earlier, just like that MAF method, M -A -F. And that's that 180 minus your age. And again, there's little buffers of like, hey, if you're a beginner, it actually goes lower. And if you've been doing it for three, four, five years, you actually get a slightly higher heart rate. Probably the most simple way to do it. I've had people that don't have heart rate monitors. And so it's more of like, hey, use that conversation pace. And so don't go above where you could completely have a full conversation and complete sentences.

16:24 Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Good deal. Once someone sort of knows what pace they should be targeting, how do they turn that into a event strategy for long distance rucks? I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah, it does. Because I suffer from going out too hard. Too fast. And we'll hit on the stakes later. Right. I know. It's just that you're excited. Right. So you're like, oh, yeah, let's get let's attack this. And you're like, oh, gosh. So how do you how do you how do you how do you build a strategy around the pace that you're targeting? Yeah, it's it's interesting. And it depends on the distances and often the athlete themselves and just like where some of their strengths and weaknesses are. And so. We can just continue to use Jen as an example because I think it's a good one.

17:14 It's showing true distance with wrecking. And so in her training, she was doing 10 -mile loops similar to what the course was, right? And so she would do a 10 -mile loop, she would get to her car, she would refuel, and she would go again. And the cues and guidance in that, Those loops were, I need you to go at a pace before, like we were kind of deciding was like, I need you to go at a pace that you think you could do for 50 miles. Right. Because the idea is that you, once you get, let's say if you're doing a hundred, if you get to that 50 mile marker, you should feel like it was too easy. That first 50 miles was too easy. Right. Because if you had. I actually looked this up because I was trying to think of a way to explain this, but, and I really liked what someone had said, where it's like, if you have a hundred dollars to spend and you have like, let's say it's 24 hours, let's say a race is a 24 hour cutoff. You have a hundred dollars to spend a hundred miles to get right. If you spend $50 in that first eight hours, then you only have $50 left for the rest of it. Right.

18:31 And so it's like, it's the same idea. If I spend. you know, 50 % of my energy in that first half or even before that, let's say I've spent 50 % in the first third of it, I have way less to get through the rest of the time. And so when we start looking at like true paces, so I forget what the exact timing was for the 100 miler, but let's say you had to sustain a 20 minute mile pace to get in. under the time or to whatever the time like hack you have for yourself. What you can do, right, you have to also factor in things are going to change, things are going to go wrong, like you have to eat, you might want to sleep for a few minutes, those types of things, especially once you get past that 24 hour mark, is you can go under like the pace that you want or go a little bit slower than the pace you want and start to turn it on. As you keep going. So like, it's like the, the back half might be faster than the front half, which, which does happen very often. Um, if you train it properly and you don't go out too hot, right from the beginning, the other pieces, like, I think what, what we had discussed was, let's say it was a 20 minute pace, like to get under the time that she was aiming for. We were gauging for about like a 19 minute mile in that first half. Because what happens is it's not that she

20:03 couldn't sustain the same pace at the second half. Like she definitely could. But what's going to happen is that effort feels different. Right. And so it's like if you're wasting, not wasting, but if you're spending all of your energy up front to go faster to try to bank time, you're not going to be able to have that push at the end. And so it's, you know. And it's more about, again, that energy management, right? If you can sustain a 20 minute mile for the entire effort, that's great. But mile one and mile 50 and mile 99 are all going to feel very different. And so it's saying, can I reserve some of that energy spend for later so I can sustain the effort I need to and the pace I need to without burning out and like burning everything to the ground right away? Because that last few miles like burn the ships. Right. Yeah. So that's thank you so much for that insight. And I would imagine the athlete has to have that at the forefront of their mind almost constantly. And should should the athletes be asking themselves, OK, do I need to back off? Do I need to push based off of how much obviously how much further you have to go and how you're feeling? You constantly have to be thinking about that, I imagine, especially over a long distance, like 100 miles. Yeah, but trail math can get you pretty bad. And that is like one of I think that's one of the big benefits

21:33 of working with a crew or working with a coach that you can communicate with throughout is that it's really easy to get sucked into this this mindset of like, oh, I don't have enough time. Right. Yeah. And we often underestimate how much time we have when we're in the moment. A really good example of this was at Operation Apollo with Greenbrae Fitness. Dustin, Dustin Parsons, he was crushing like he was crushing the event and he got to think checkpoint three. So probably. for those of you who don't know, it's a 68 mile rock, 25 pounds. There's four checkpoints with water and like very bare minimum food. So you're basically self -supporting throughout and you have a 24 hour time, uh, cut to, to finish the race. And so he had gotten to, I want to say it was checkpoint three really quickly. So what is that? Like mile 40 or mile? Yeah. Mile 35, 40. And he laid down and he slept, I want to say, for four or five hours, whereas most people like the night before I was up at checkpoint to everybody was like, oh, I'm so tired. I don't feel good. My stomach hurts. I don't know if I can do this. And I looked right at them and I said, you have so much time. Right. Like and

23:04 he just proved that. Yeah. It's one of those things where when you are feeling. bad for yourself, you often start to get through this like dark cycle of, oh, I don't have time unless I move faster. And like, I've done it myself. I like in a backyard, the last loop I didn't make, I was doing really bad time math. Like I knew where I needed to run. I wasn't doing it. And then at some point I kind of self -sabotaged of like, oh, well now I'm not going to make it anymore. And realistically, I probably could have made it. I just had to do what I needed to do. It's just like, yeah. If you start doing that math too much and like bird dogging your watch, this is where it's so important to like train at these paces because you get comfortable moving at this, you know, slower pace or what feels slower. Does that sort of feel like, so growing up playing baseball, I pitched and our coach was always talking about muscle memory. I would imagine after moving for that distance at that pace.

24:09 Over and over and over. Does that sort of become muscle memory at that point? For sure. And then you just get better at it too. And I know this shifts away from rucking, but you look at like elite ultra marathoners and they're holding eight minute paces, sometimes under eight minute paces at the same heart rate zone. We're holding 12, 13, 14 minute miles. Right. And so it's like, it's just one of those things that. This is where going by that feel, it takes time. You need to have the data behind it to show, hey, you are actually moving in these paces you should be. But then you can start to feel what that actually feels like. I joke about it, but I can generally tell when my heart rate clicks over. to about one it's about 154 155 now because i know because i can feel like the slight changes in my body and then i know when i'm hitting um like threshold as well and and where you know it starts to really like my muscles start to get a little bit tighter and all i have to do is stop and walk or slow down for 30 seconds 60 seconds and then my body just everything changes and so it's like you start to like you need the data behind it but you also need to work through how does this feel in those and and not like again not bird dogging it but understanding just like sometimes you

25:41 just got to move More with Sam in just a moment, including the work she puts into pacing ultra marathon runners, which I found absolutely fascinating. But first, do you know a fellow rucker or endurance athlete struggling to find their pace? If so, please text this episode to them. Sharing this episode would not only help them, it will also help the show grow, which will then help even more people improve their health and lives. Thanks. Okay, back to it. So before we go into mistakes, I am curious about... The work that you do pacing athletes for ultras and whatnot. You mentioned the phrase bird jogging. That's what I do in my longer efforts. And through my Garmin, I now have figured out how to find I've been putting off for so long, how to put the pace alert on, which has been an experience just because I'm still I'm struggling to stay within pace. And it's constantly you're going too fast. You're going too slow. You're going too fast. You're going too slow. So I definitely see the value in having someone pace. you at those long events and efforts like ultras. Take us into that world.

26:50 So when people call you for help, what specifically are they asking for? What do you provide? Like, are you involved in their training or do you just show up at the events? I mean, they're asking for a babysitter. Got you. No, so. Oh, you're joking. I was like, I mean, I don't know. I could use a babysitter out with the trail. No, for sure. Hey, time to drink. Time to fuel. It is exactly that a lot of the time. But, you know, it is it is different. Sometimes it is athletes that we're working with others. It's a connection that we have through other athletes. And, you know, there's there's two components, especially in ultra running. There's the crewing and then there's the pacing. And so. The crewing aspect is really important because you're helping your runner like in those. moments at eight stations and you are assessing where they are and kind of talking through like what they need to do um and it is there's one strategy or there's some strategy to it for sure there's i mean there definitely is when you start to get to these multi -day events like how do we make sure that they sleep enough to get to that next aid station that next checkpoint but then there's the pacing right so you're actually with them and i always i talk about it it's kind of like the um if you ever watch like a horse race and then when the horses walk out there's the horse next to them that's just like the buddy and keeps them calm that's kind of your job as the pacer is like

28:21 i it's a joke but it is like truly like taking care of a toddler at times where you're like hey you have to eat you have to drink you know you have to keep moving and It's not sometimes it is about pacing in the sense of like, hey, we really got to, you know, kind of keep moving. Right. And it's not necessarily, hey, we have to hold this 20 minute mile or whatever it is, but it's it's keeping them moving forward. And other times this happened when I was out at Cocodona. We kept joking our runner, Mark, he. kept trying to drop us as like pacers and crew because he was just like moving way faster through certain sections than we thought but I was out running with him and he had passed the 200 mile mark at this point and How long is that race? I can't remember. So, Cocodona is 250. Oh, okay. Gotcha.

29:15 So, we're, it's day, what, four or something? Okay. Day three, day four. I'm with him. He passes 200 miles. It's super exciting. We're moving. We get to this A station, or we're nearing an A station. And all of a sudden, he just starts running. Like, he's holding, like, a 9, 930 minute pace, mile pace. I'm going and I'm texting the crew, our crew back there. And I'm like, guys, Mark's trying to drop me like this is crazy. And we did this for it was maybe a mile or so. And he's definitely just having fun. Right. And he looks at me. He's like, oh, yeah, we should probably slow down. And so sometimes sometimes it is saying, hey, you know what? We do need to pull back a little, too. And helping them just, you know, stay stay on track. But yeah, it's a super, honestly, if you get an opportunity to like crew or pace for an ultra, it's an incredible experience. And it helps teach, like I keep saying, now I've been able to help and support two 200 milers and then have also volunteered at them as well. You learn so much just by working with other people. Right. You start to see like what works for nutrition, what does work for pace.

30:37 Right. Like everyone says, oh, ultra running is not running because you don't run all the time. Well, yeah, you're going up and down mountains. You're not going to run the entire thing. Right. Like it's how do you manage again that effort, that pace? And so, you know, I look to even my own training and right now I'm training for a 200 miler and. A lot of my training is take this easy uphill. You need to practice using poles. Moderate efforts downhill. Okay, reset, go again. And the line in there, it's not exact, but it's like set the ego aside, right? It's not about paces necessarily. It's about being able to stay on your feet for four or five hours, finish, and then say, oh, I could go do that again. Right.

31:26 Yeah. Finish. Achieve it. Yeah. So quick question. If you're doing a 200 miler, who's pacing the pacer for that 200 miler? I have a few people. Clint Carr might actually be out, which would be fun. Rucker, he's come to the dark side of running. Oh, has he? A little bit. Don't tell him I told you. Everyone knows now. No, he's done it all. Then the coach I work with and then maybe another friend. But yeah. Cool. Cool. Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing that insight into that world. It's fascinating. I guess it's, is it ultra season right now? Because I'm certainly seeing a bunch of races, a bunch of highlights. Yeah, there's the, what is it? The Grand Slam of all the 200s is still going on. There's a bunch, the triple crown, like everything's still happening. And yeah, I mean, you asked the question, like if anyone needs actual ultra running, pacing, crewing, it is something that we provide. Over at Omni Athlete Training. correct yeah good deal let's get into uh before we wrap up let's talk about mistakes um because there are so many mistakes and misconceptions with with pacing first one we already talked about hot start going out way too fast and and coming back what uh what's a good way to prevent that from happening i guess first is recognizing that you do this but what's another way or is there a mental thought maybe or how do how do we prevent ourselves from doing that I want to think of it like as if you're lifting like a barbell or some dumbbells, like

32:58 take an easy. So let's say most listeners are able to lift a pair of 10 pound dumbbells and do curls pretty easily. Right. If not, pick whatever weights in your mind. And so if you start and you just start repping those out, those first. 5, 10 are going to feel super easy. The first 20, 50 are going to feel easy. But if you keep going at that same, try to stay at that same pace, like eventually you're going to slow down. And so I kind of look at it like that, right? It's the same thing. I think we have a hard time sometimes translating like why running or rucking is harder than it is. And so I think it's just like. Like I said, like it should it should almost feel it should feel way too easy. That is one from the start. And, you know, everyone says stick to your race plan. It's hard to do it when people start sprinting off the start line, like everyone gets caught up in it. And so goes to an idea of like the same way we shouldn't let our feelings like or are like emotions or feelings like dictate if we. train or workout like we shouldn't let like the feeling of oh i feel good dictate that pace coming out um because you're gonna feel good from the start yeah right it should feel too conservative it should feel you

34:28 know it's it's the tortoise and the hare story absolutely yeah it's it's definitely a mental aspect at that point just uh yeah being Being, yeah, we're thinking about your training almost. And like you said. And I'm not saying like, I'm not saying like be, be lazy. I'm not saying, you know, don't try, but you need to follow the plan that you have and you should stay at that very sustainable pace from the start. Gotcha. Another mistake. I think we've talked about all these mistakes already, but it's definitely worth talking about again, because it's so prevalent. The no easy day, I guess, aspect of training.

35:09 I know for like marathon running or any long distance event, I think like we just discussed just previously, there's like a taper, right? I feel like maybe a lot of people don't really do that. So, you know, how should someone approach like a taper before an event? Yeah, there's definitely like different schools of thought on this. And it depends also on the distance. I think before, again, Jen with the 100 -miler, her taper was probably 10 days or so of very easy efforts. She was still moving, doing some rucking, some running, moving the body, a little bit of very light strength training, keeping everything sharp.

35:55 And I think there's this misconception that you're going to lose fitness in that. seven ten days let's say and you're not and you're not going to gain fitness either if anything like that's your you need to give your body that break like keep moving a little bit go for walks things of that nature do something specific to your race whatever it is and also in that time you're doing things like making sure you're sleeping you're eating well right we are hydrating um taking care of other stuff that if you're traveling for this race, right. There's a lot of other stressors that can go on and recovering isn't just, you know, or like this taper isn't just, oh, I'm doing less work. You're doing work in other areas too. Um, and so, yeah, I like anything, you know, five days, seven days, 10 days. It's interesting because I've done different. types of tapers before races for like for myself and i think for each person you can kind of feel and like get into a groove of what works and what doesn't um i i use this example so last year i ran a backyard ultra in october and i did a little over 100 miles and then i ran another one the first weekend in november so four weeks

37:26 apart let's say In that time between, I think I ran a total of, I don't know, 20, 30 miles. Because it wasn't important to continue to build fitness. And I ended up doing 80 -something at the second one. There was nothing about building fitness. There was nothing else that I would do to make myself fitter for that second race. What was important was recovering my body, moving it, continuing just like... going through some of that, but eating food, all of these things, because you don't need to rebuild that much, right? Like we talked about these 200s. There's four 200 milers that people will do, all four of them, over basically the span of the summer.

38:14 Like, do you think they're running as much as, like, they were before, like, they were training for this? No. Oh, goodness. They're spending that time recovering. Unless you're Andy Glaze and doing 100 miles a week. Yeah. Power to them. Power to them. Yeah. But, like, think about, like, ourselves, right? Like, take that time. Give your body the break it needs. Recover in the ways that you need to. Doing things like sleeping. getting back on track with that because especially if you're going to do a 24 hour plus event like your sleep's going to be messed up for a bit yeah oh yeah absolutely um there were some other misconceptions that we previously talked about like obsessing over pace per mile type stuff but are there any that we haven't covered already that you see frequently mistakes misconceptions no and i think we we said it earlier of just the you know thinking you don't have enough time like it there's a we might have said this before in the last one but it's you should never make a decision when you're tired hungry or your heart rate is too high right and so it's like okay a decision to quit could be one of those but it's also like a decision to you know make an adjustment to what I'm doing I think is one of those as well. So it's like, you have to stop and assess for a split second. Like it's okay. Like if you get lost, should you just keep going in the direction you're going? No, like

39:47 you have to stop, take a look at your map, like assess where you're at and then figure out like where to go next. Like if you're going the wrong direction and you just keep moving, you're going to end up further away. And I think that's what can happen with, you know, pace as well as like, okay, if I think, This is just the right decision because I'm not really sure and I'm not thinking about it. I just go like you can always take a second to reassess and figure out where you're at. That's a great point. Appreciate that, Sam. Well, this is a really excellent conversation. I was you definitely delivered. You provided so much insight into pacing. I'm going to start applying this to my own training now. But just briefly before we go, if someone's looking to.

40:32 you know, fix their pacing issues or, you know, figure out what their baseline or training pace should be? What's one thing that you think that they should do before their next ruck? Yeah, I think the first thing is that you do one of those, you know, if you're doing a longer effort, like make sure that first hour you are not. exhausting your breathing right again the conversation go on if bring somebody with you and have a conversation the whole time yeah if it's hard you know or get on the phone um or sing or something you know sing your music um i think that's the thing like it's it's not about chasing like a specific pace right it's about that effort and keeping it at that effort that you can sustain Excellent.

41:18 Thank you for all of that, Sam. Really appreciate it. Thanks again for joining us. And where can people reach you if they are looking for some pacing help or just training help in general? Yeah, for sure. Instagram probably is the best spot, samstrap. And then check out Omni Athlete Training as well. The website, you can also email me, sam at omniathletetraining .com. Awesome. Thanks again, Sam. Cool. Thank you. All right. That was my conversation with Sam Svetkovsky. I provided links in the show notes to Sam's Instagram account if you want to reach out to her and maybe seek some guidance or some of her coaching. If you found this episode helpful, subscribe to the show so you're notified of new episodes. In the next episode, I chat with Jen Tillard, one of the athletes that Sam coaches. We talk about what it took for her to complete a 100 -mile ruck in under 36 hours. Okay, that's it for today. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rucker's Edge.