Nick Hancock: Strength Training for Ultrarunners, CCC Recap & Building Maximum Mileage Coaching Success

If you haven't had a moment to do so yet , please consider heading over to your favorite podcast app hit , follow , rate the show and , if you're getting something of value , leave a review and let others know . My name's Richard Gleave . I have been running ultras now since 2017 .

I've taken on and finished numerous ultra distances , all the way up through 220 miles , and I am unashamedly a member of the back of the pack , just like many of you . Now , today , I am thrilled to welcome a fellow UK inhabitant , mr Nick Hancock , to the show .

Nick is a UK athletics licensed and UESCA ultra running certified coach who's transformed his passion for running into a career , helping countless athletes improve their performance through tailored training plans .

With a background in competitive racing and a focus on balancing strength training with running , nick brings a wealth of knowledge to our discussion today , where we're planning to dive into the what , why , when and how of strength training for slower ultra runners . So join us as we are about to get into it right after this .

So can you give us kind of the breakdown of the importance of incorporating strength training into any ultra runners routine , really , but especially if it makes a difference for back of the pack runners like us ?

I guess I do tend to find myself at the more front end of the of the pack , but I coach people at all ends of the pack and I always say I actually think that I actually think that back of the pack runners have more to be gained from doing strength training than perhaps an elite , because they're out there for longer .

They need more strength , they need their muscles to be able to cope with the demands of being out there for longer .

So that's kind of one of the first things that I would say straight away is that I think , yeah , I think somebody who is spending more time out there could just do with that ability to endure the demands of ultra running , and certainly strength training is one of the most effective ways of doing that .

The other thing that we hope to gain from strength training it's not 100% certain that strength training does actually prevent injury . Strength training does actually prevent injury and I think that's a word I always use really carefully that preventing injury is . Injury is always , always multifactorial . So strength training isn't going to stop you from getting injured .

But before everybody runs to cancel their gym memberships , you know , we hope that it does do that . You know , I I actually always have this saying and it's from a book and I can never remember what the author is but um , weak things break , um . So you know , if we can be stronger , then we are ultimately going to certainly help prevent injury .

We're not going to prevent it , help prevent injury . So you know , that's one of the things that we we hear most often about . Why should I do strength training ? It's we we tend to hear that it is because we want to prevent injury .

However , some of the other things that you're going to gain from it are , you know , like I've already sort of touched on , you're going to gain more strength in your muscles and more muscular endurance through that sort of even just if I just spoke from an anecdotal personal basis n of one basis , ever since I started doing more strength training and really sort

of doing the right strength training , I definitely don't feel the same aches and pains that I used to before I started doing strength training , particularly towards the back end of races . You know when , when you are starting to break down , you are starting to get tired . You know your form starting to collapse .

I don't get that as much now , particularly things like the aching glutes or , in the ultra marathon context , the you know , particularly the really hilly ones or the mountainous ones . My quads don't get as smashed up as they used to . Yeah , the big turning point for me was actually when I got Achilles tendonitis .

That was sort of a big one , the big turning point for when I really started knuckling down on my strength training , because any physio is actually any good physio worth their salt is going to give you rehab through the means of strength training .

Any physio is actually any good physio worth their salt is going to give you rehab through the means of strength training . And it was sort of from there that I really started making sure I was . I was doing my strength training on a on a weekly basis and , touch wood , I haven't become injured since . But I would also say I've become .

I've become faster through it and in an ultra marathon context , faster because I'm able to keep moving for longer , just more consistent . Yeah , yeah , particularly . You know , as I say , when things start to break down , you know form is better , I'm able to keep upright better , I'm not sort of dragging myself for long .

So yeah , and you know just from the clients I work with , that is quite often , one of the biggest things that they will say is that they just felt stronger . That work with that is quite often one of the biggest things that they will say is that they just felt stronger . That word I felt stronger . I felt strong through the race .

It's because they do not just strength work , but they do the right strength work yeah , and we'll get into that in a minute .

Is that just me , or is that something we could throw out there as well ?

You know , they're sort of usually back to some semblance of normal running within a week or two . Yeah , depending on the length of the ultra that they've done , which , quite honestly , I don't think most of them would if they didn't do strength training .

among all the running that I'm doing . So do you have any thoughts on how we can sort of effectively integrate some level of strength training into what is presumably already a busy schedule in life ? Should we be making room for it , or can we fit it in in some other ways as we're going , so as not to impact the running training itself ?

In fact , I think it would probably improve your running purely because you're building that strength , which is another part of the reason why we need , as runners , to do strength training is because you know we get a lot of muscular endurance from just going out and doing the running .

I know I can probably hear the people screaming at the , you know , at their headphones right now saying , oh , yeah , but you know , just go and do some hill running . Yes , hill running does build running specific strength , but it builds strength only to a certain point .

We need to be lifting heavy weights ideally to build strength , because that's what us runners are missing in the grand scheme . So , yeah , it would depend on someone's schedule

. I would say , in the very , very rare occasions I've coached people who don't do strength training which is very , very rare now I mean I'm talking unicorn rare I had one guy who could only run three days a week . He just had a crazy job . He's a lead pharmacist for a hospital .

Lots of hours , lots of time on his feet and also if he did any more running his wife would probably kill him . So family commitments basically .

So he could only run three days a week and there was no other opportunity whatsoever to get a strength training session in , because it would mean cannibalizing one of those runs which he was an ultra runner and we were . Actually we were working towards a 148 mile canal race which he completed .

So in the times where he could do some strength training , it was in his house , it was with bands or a couple of kettlebells that he had .

Yeah , and we would keep it to pretty short sessions three or four times a week , and when I say short , I'm talking like 10 minutes tops , because you know it was kind of well , I'll just do something quickly in my lunch hour or before the kids go to bed , or after the kids have gone to bed , whatever it might be .

But I do think there and I do sort of sort of a similar thing , I do like 20 minutes in the morning when nobody else is up and I just have some , some dumbbells , and you know , there's stuff you can do with that .

That , I think , is still a reasonably good strength training , but it's just fitting it in around around time that you already have , or making a short amount of time I think , the point being that I don't think you have to feel like you've got to go to the gym for an hour and find that space just to get some benefit from strength training .

I actually , you know , I say to my athletes if , if I've given them , if I've given them a strength session or , you know , if it's before I've started coaching somebody or just generally chatting with somebody , if they're doing more than about 40 minutes 30 to 40 minutes of strength training at any one time , then they're doing too much .

Because the thing with strength training is that it's it's very demanding on the central nervous system and it can take quite a lot to recover from .

If you do too much of it like if you do your strength session , and then for the next three days you're suffering from huge doms , you know , delayed onset , muscle soreness , and I think you know , I think everybody in the world has , uh , you know who's tried some sort of fitness program or something that's had bombs at some point in their life ?

You know how debilitating that can be . So yeah , I always say that if you've gone to that point where you need that much recovery , you've done way too much , and it . It surprises people when I say , well , so okay , what would a strength session look like ?

You know , for most of my athletes and for me , I generally do two sets of each exercise because that's you know . You print off any strength training program from the internet and everything is like three sets of 15 , for example , three sets of 12 . So that's kind of getting into the realms of what bodybuilders need to do to be able to build muscle .

We're getting into that hypertrophy muscle growth range of things . Actually , what we need to be doing because we want to develop strength is actually ideally more weight , less repetitions and not too many sets so that you end up having to do , you know , spend three days recovering from it and then that impacting on the quality of your running .

So for me , a typical sort of strength session for me or one of my athletes would be two sets of five to six repetitions per exercise and we might be talking six exercises that target , depending on where you are in your strength training plan .

Exercises that target depend on where you are in your strength training plan , but it'll be things like squats , deadlifts , bench press , rows and overhead press and those are your five compound movements . Those are kind of the five big movements that a bench press , for example .

A bench press is not a chest exercise , it's actually a full body exercise when it's done properly . Squats , it's not leg day , squats are whole body . In fact , you stand to gain more core strength from doing proper squats than you would do from doing a hundred crunches .

Don't really see any need to do any more , for for the most part anyway , I mean , I think if you are in a , in a period where you're , let's say , your a race is nine months away , then maybe you could spend six weeks doing three or four strength sessions a week if you really really wanted to , if you really wanted to sort of put yourself through that kind

of structured training program . But you know , for for most people 90 of people , I'd say , you know , who like even like me you know I don't ever really do more than two sessions a week because my race calendar is pretty full yeah my a race isn't nine months away .

I've got races pretty much every month , so you know they might not be all the a races , but I certainly don't want to be spending four days in the gym . So two a week is for me the sweet spot .

And those five exercises would be split between the two so , for example , you wouldn't want to do your squats and deadlifts on the same day because they're two big exercises . That would be a challenge . Yeah , that's quite a lot for your central nervous system . So I I tend to separate squats and deadlifts out .

I tend to separate bench press and overhead press out , so they're on two separate days pack .

They are full body exercises that benefit your entire central nervous system , your entire posterior chain . You know , you name it . It's , it's there to support , support you particularly . You know something like a squat , because of the demand on the whole body as soon as you get towards , you know , start getting towards the end of your race .

That's where your squats come in , because you , you've , you've built a strong body all over . Yeah , it , uh it really helps with your posture . So , but then there's other things . You know you want to think about unilateral exercises .

So , uh , unilateral meaning single , so single leg stuff , and you might want to do single leg , single leg split squats , single leg deadlifts , single leg glute bridges .

There's a whole raft , raft of exercises out there that are going to support you on race day , and not forgetting your upper body as well , and not just supporting on race day , but supporting your training in general .

And you know , especially for bigger races where there's required gear and you know the weight starts to build up a bit , yeah , when you put all that in your pack and you start running , I mean you're going to need a bit of a bit of something to to help kind of offset that as well , I would imagine .

Are there some common mistakes maybe that we should look to avoid , especially when , if we're going to start strength training , if we're just moving into it , you know , what would you see as some common mistakes that we make aside from , maybe , just as we talked about doing too much , especially too soon , I would imagine , with the DOMS and so on , affecting the

rest of your running . But are there any other mistakes you've seen people make ? Yeah , a hundred percent .

You know , I talked about using heavy weights and obviously that is all relevant . I can squat 140 kilos , but I've got athletes I coach that can squat 30 kilos because that's heavy for them and then they build from there . So heavy should be relative to you .

Heavy doesn't mean that you need to go and start throwing 45-pound plates on every bar that you come across . So , uh , I lost my train of thought there yeah , common mistakes , we're going for common mistakes um , yeah , so the the thing with youtube videos is that they will tend to be not enough weight and then kind of leading on to the sort of .

The next common mistake that people make is is doing too many repetitions . Okay , yeah , interesting the sort of the , the logical trade of thought that people have is okay . So I'm going to be running and I'm going to do tens of thousands of steps when I do my run or my race .

So therefore I should do loads and loads and loads and loads of lunges , or loads and loads and loads and loads of lunges , or loads and loads and loads and loads of squats , because that's going to . You know , I need that muscular endurance . You can't really build that kind of muscular endurance in the gym .

You can build muscular endurance , but not that kind of muscular endurance . The muscular endurance that we're looking to build in the gym is through strength .

And the other thing that doing too many reps is a mistake is that when we are training for our races , we are constantly looking to manage fatigue , right , you know where we don't want to run too much because we need to be able to recover . If you are then adding in loads of repetitions with not much weight , you're just adding to that fatigue .

When you lift heavy weight for smaller amounts of repetitions , you you don't build that kind of fatigue .

You do put pressure on the central nervous system , but not you don't add so much to the fatigue with short , smaller amounts of repetitions , because you're getting the thing when , when you do lots of repetitions for it to when it starts feeling heavy , you've probably already done 10 , 15 , 20 , 30 repetitions which didn't really do much .

If you add enough weight , enough weight to maybe lift five repetitions and leave one or two in reserve , you're pretty much straight away getting into the heavy lifting and that's um . That's probably the biggest mistake I see people making is is assuming that because we're doing lots of running , you need to do lots of repetitions and you don't .

You do lots of repetitions when you go out running okay , so so do less , less reps , heavier weight yeah . Perfect , and I kind of touched on it earlier Don't spend too long doing it . If you're , if you're doing . You know , if you're in the gym for longer than 30 , 40 minutes doing your strength training , you've probably done too much .

training . But also , what about taper ? How should I be approaching , or should I be doing any strength training as I taper into final week , two weeks , whatever it is before my race , final week two weeks or whatever it is before my race ? Should I be ditching strength training at that , or do I keep it and instead kind of pull down on on the volume ?

Where does strength training fit into ? Kind of off-season , the peak training and then particularly the taper ?

Then they could probably be doing maybe three or four strength sessions with some lighter weight , more repetitions , probably less running , because maybe you want to build some additional muscle before you then go into . You know , doing your heavier stuff , you start running more . More muscle will will translate into better strength .

The closer you get to race day , the more specific you want to be getting with your strength training . So and progressing your strength training as well . So you know , if you've been been doing single leg split squats , for example , you know , change that up to single leg split squat , squat with your foot in a trx band .

There's so many variations that we could go through . Um , you know , I won't , uh , won't dwell on that too much . And then when you do get into the taper , very similar to your running is you should reduce the volume but keep the intensity . Okay , so we do that with our running .

We we should be keeping , we should be reducing the volume as we go into taper , but you can keep the intensity . So if you've been doing race pace practice , you would continue to do race pace practice right up until a few days before the race . You would just do less of it . And it's exactly the same with strength training .

If you've been , if you've been squatting 50 kilos in the last couple of weeks , then keep it at 50 kilos . But instead of doing two sets , do one set .

I think most of us know what we should be doing from a running perspective with with the volume there . So , uh , yeah , okay interesting one .

that let's say that strength session might have been on the Thursday or Friday in their normal week . Then in that case I would cut that strength session out and say don't do any strength that day .

You know , use that extra time to go and get a pre-race massage or have a hot bath or , yeah , good sleep , you know , sleep some more , particularly if it's a long ultra where you you know you need sleep . Just spend that week getting extra sleep .

But from a strength perspective , is there benefit from doing strength and running the same day , or would you say we should be doing strength training kind of on an off day from running ? Can we maximize running if we add it with strength , or should we be separating the two to allow for some recovery time in between , to allow ?

So the science says that the most optimal way would be to keep your hard days hard and your easy days easy . I tend to find that doing if I've got a session as in a running you know , hard running session and a strength session on the same day programs I find that's too much .

Busy jobs tend to be sort of 30 to 60 years of age .

Yeah , the science says this . The science says that the science is generally done on 25 year old sub elite male athletes . I'm not a 25 year old sub elite male athlete , and neither are probably all of the people listening to this podcast , or you know the kind of people that I work with in my coaching business .

So so yeah , sometimes the science can move to one side , should we say ?

Right , you know you better than anyone , and so if you are trying to do strength training on the same day that you're , you know , maybe you do strength in the morning and you run in the evening , or vice versa , whatever it is , if you're trying that and it's not working , like it's really impacting your ability to perform one or other of those as you're

supposed to per your plan , then I would say change it and and try again . But I think it's that for me , you've got to listen to your body a little bit , and if you are able to do that , great , and the moment you're not , I would say it's probably time to look at changing it perhaps . But , um , yeah , 100 .

Yeah , you know , they've got work , they've got kids , they've got stuff to do , so you've got no choice but to do a hard run and then your strength training the next day . I would always try and keep it that way around . You know our priority here is running Right . So try and run first and then do your strength training later .

If you're doing that on the same day , then get your run in , and if you are going to do your strength training close to your run , do it straight after .

It is , as you've kind of alluded to , like the 30 to 60 . And , yeah , there's a few people either side of that , but that's generally where we land with the ultra running group .

So there may well be a few folks on the higher end of that who might feel intimidated by strength training , especially if you're going to the gym where you've got all those big dudes who are 20 years old , grunting a lot and dropping weights . Do you have any thoughts about where should those folks start ?

Is it okay to start at home with some resistance bands that we talked about earlier and some of the body weight stuff and then kind of work up to dumbbells and whatever else you want to do or like ? Where would that ?

But if you didn't want to go to the gym or you didn't have access to one or cost , you know there's so many reasons why not to and that's , that's totally fine

. I actually have a guy who I coach lives in the middle of nowhere in Scotland . He also doesn't have a garage at home . You know he's not able to set up a squat rack and that kind of thing . So there's some great stuff out there nowadays , great equipment available out there . Um , certainly in the UK and I'm sure in the U S .

Uh , you guys have got them over there .

But there are adjustable dumbbells where all you do is you turn the dial on the end of the dumbbell and it'll I mean , we've got dumbbells here that range I'm thinking in pounds , you know anything from sort of four pounds all the way up to 80 pounds , wow , and it's just one set of dumbbells , yeah , and all you do is turn the dial , you pick them up and

it'll be the weight that you've selected . So they're super space-saving . They're not super cheap , but they're not super expensive either , and you can get so much done with just a pair of dumbbells .

I do tend to say to people unless you are really really really starting from ground zero , then don't do body weight . For the most part Okay , because you're getting body weight for the most part Okay , because you're getting body weight done through your running anyway .

Body weight will only really build strength to a very limited point and usually body weight is kind of sort of phase one , maybe phase two in a rehab program . That's kind of where , from a physiotherapist , if you get injured , that's where a physiotherapist will start you out is kind of body weight stuff .

When we're talking about getting strong , then we need to be adding resistance , right . So I tend to say , for the most part , body weight isn't really going to help much .

So I really did want to make space in the chat here to ask you about that and to kind of because I know certainly over here UTMB is as big as it is , I'm sure , in Europe and everybody looks to I want to go do UTMB and so I think , prior to coming on air , I was just saying I think people kind of sometimes overlook CCC and maybe even OCC as a place

to start and kind of get your feet wet in alpine running on the technical terrain over there . So if I can ask , and if you have a few minutes to talk about your CCC experience , what made you choose that race and how did that fit into your overall racing goals and how is the ? Well , maybe we'll get to how it went first and then I'll ask how your ?

Yeah , the dacha sponsorship was not very good for the environmentalists out there , firing corinne malcolm who's you know kind of the voice of utmb commentary . That was not very good .

Let's , let's not beat about the bush , but in terms of the race organization , in terms of the community out there , the , the buzz just awesome . I would highly recommend anybody going through said UTMB pyramid scheme to get there , cause it was , it was absolutely incredible and France is just fantastic and the scenery you just don't think you can beat it really .

But yeah , what a race . I mean , particularly for people coming from from your side of the pond and I I know quite a few American coaches and athletes that say the same thing is that the ascents and descents are very steep . I don't think you kind of have that steepness for the most part of the races that go on in the US .

The kit requirements is definitely a big change , because a lot of races in the US you don't really need poles , or in fact , some of them , them , you're not even allowed poles , right , right , absolutely the mandatory kit requirements aren't very stringent .

But over in europe our mandatory kit requirements are a bit over the top , if I'm honest , particularly at ccc where they called , you know , utmb .

In fact , the whole whole week they called the hot kit was needed because it was pretty warm so you had to have additional bottles but you still had to carry thermal bottoms , thermal top , waterproof top , waterproof bottoms . So yeah , the kit is is pretty , pretty crazy really . But aside from that , an amazing race .

I personally I started a little bit far back so I had to quite a bit of working my way through the field to do . I think I must have started somewhere because I I'd done a big race already in the uk at the end of july . So I probably still had a little bit of fatigue in my legs from that , or certainly thought I would .

So I thought I'll just go in , enjoy the experience and not worry too much about where I place . But my racing head came on and I I think I'm the competitive edge kicked in . Huh , huh , yeah , I think I made my way from something like 2000th up to about 340th at one point . Wow .

I mean obviously I've watched it on tv , but just to think about being there in the midst of that , with all that you know , with all the streets and the people hanging out the windows and all that just sends a chill up your spine I mean there's a real buzz .

It's pretty steep , lots of the big chain backs and yeah , once you kind of got past the first aid station it opened up a bit and yeah , like from a personal perspective , I was feeling great , like really good . I was running super well . My running ability , you know , flats and the downhills were certainly helping me .

I was overtaking people a lot and , and yeah , just having a great time .

Really , my , my feeling was good , my hydration , I thought , was really good and because I kind of learned my lesson from the race I'd done at the end of July in the Lake District , because it was pretty warm that day and I just didn't drink enough and couldn't fuel Still did okay , but anyway .

So , in my bid to stay super , super hydrated , because there were fountains everywhere in the Alps , so I said , right , I'm going to make sure I drink from all the fountains , I'm going to stay really , really hydrated . But I think , in my bid to stay hydrated , I drank so much plain water that I think I went slightly hyponatremic .

Oh , yikes , yeah , my hands and face started , yeah , started tingling , and and I was . This was coming out of triant , which is about 70k into the race , uh , of 100k yeah , that's . I want to say that's probably two thirds , three quarters of the way , yeah yeah , I got about a third of the way out of the climb of uh from triant .

I left treon , like you know , waving at uh , at the at the aid station camera you know the live stream and I was in great spirits , I was loving it . Yeah , I was like , oh my god , I'm gonna finish this in in 12 hours . I'm , I'm flying here .

A third of the way up the climb I just started feeling really nauseous and then I puked and kept puking and I kept trying to push on . But I was so far away from the next aid station that , just from a safety aspect , I just had to . I had no choice but to call it in .

So , yeah , unfortunately DNF'd , but it is definitely a DNF that I do not regret because it was the right call to make at the time and I loved it .

Maybe I'll do an episode on . They are basically still tickets so effectively

you know like .

But I got my two running stones , which basically meant I had two tickets in the lottery and I entered CCC because that was a race I'd qualified to do . I could have done OCC or CCC . I wanted to do the 100K , so , yeah , I got through that way .

So , yeah , yeah , it's not one I would recommend as a first for sure , because , purely because you have to qualify for it and even if you could just go and do it , you've got altitude to think about , you've got serious amounts of elevation . I mean , you know the and the climbs are the climb . I actually that that was where my undoing came was brutal .

I wasn't too bad with the actual climb itself , but yeah , tough , like you know , lots of switchbacks , very steep , lots of routes and it was hot , hot , humid . So , yeah , I wouldn't say it's . I definitely wouldn't say it's a , it's a first-timers race , but I would definitely recommend it to anybody to try and qualify to get over there .

And qualification basically means finish a UTMB race somewhere in the world .

Well , I say wonderful , yeah , I mean I know that was a good race . That was a great , great local race . From what I can tell , I wonder how that's now gonna go , now that it's under utmb banner but I guess reserve judgment there is and until we see , but that's on my list of racing .

I have a list of uk races that I still need to come and do , but that's on it , so still jane and fergie , the race directors .

Mystified by it , yeah , just amazing , just a magical race I know , man , this is maybe just me .

If you want a running holiday , pick a coastal race in the uk and come over and do one , two of those .

I actually got timed out at branthwaite I think , which is fairly early on , but weather , weather related and and you talked about technical descents . There are some technical descents on one or two of those early first 30 mile hills . Shall we ?

I did about nine , nine was it nine or nine and a half thousand feet of climbing in like 34 miles through the lake district and it was pitch black and , sideways , rain and wind , and I actually slipped on one of those technical descents and found out later I had fractured my humerus but managed to carry on and I hit Brant's weight with three minutes to spare

and I was shivering and needed to warm up and I didn't have time to do what I needed to do . But yeah , I mean it . Just you know weather related stuff and all good . Now , Nick , you also have , as we talked about earlier on your coaching business , now Maximum Mileage Coaching . Tell us about the coaching side of things for you . How did this come about ?

What kind of services do you offer and is there a particular coaching , if I can say it correctly , coaching ethos that you lead with ? What's maximum mileage all about ?

congratulations , and that was kind of after already six , seven , eight weeks in a row of not hearing anything . No , you know . You know , she used training peaks . No feedback , no , nothing at all . So I was kind of like well , this is terrible what you know why am I ? not hearing from my coach .

You know , surely I should be getting some feedback , and particularly having some sort of you know , well done , you've got a pb like a great race . So , uh , and I had some you know , a couple of other coaches afterwards , and one was amazing guy called mike . I learned quite a lot from him .

But I was kind of in the process of thinking , well , the quality of coaching in in the uk isn't great . I'd quite like to maybe impart my running knowledge on on people , because , sort of gone from being a back of the pack runner myself , you know , my first ever 5k was like 36 minutes and so my first marathon was a total disaster zone .

So you and me both , yeah , but you know , improved over the years , became a total geek with all my running books which I've got above my head on the shelf here and , just incidentally , in my corporate job , my , my job was in charge of learning and development for , you know , several companies over the years .

So I kind of always been in that kind of realms of I . I love helping people improve and I thought , well , perhaps I could do that with my running . So I decided to get my UK athletics license . I paid for myself to do that .

I got my USCA ultra running certification and , yeah , just kind of alongside my day job , I thought , well , maybe I'll start , see if some of my friends want some coaching and started doing that some for free and then started charging maybe 20 pound a month and and then , yeah , just over the last sort of nearly four years I just kept plugging away really for

the first couple of years and then certainly the last year and a half two years I've really sort of proven that I get results for people and I could maybe turn this into an actual business , have a bit of freedom in my life . So it's been a real labor of love over the last few years .

But I've actually recently just two months ago gone full time as a coach . Now I've got a great group , group of athletes and I use that word athletes and because everybody's an athlete and you know I coach people from you know . I've got a few that are sub three hour marathoners , right up to six hour marathoners .

I've got a couple of ultra runners that I coach that find themselves on podiums and I've got some ultra runners that are quite happy just to be coached to have a nice day out for their , for their races . So , yeah , yeah , I don't work with any elite athletes and , quite frankly , I don't want to . I wouldn't want to .

I like working with people who , like me , have got , yeah , they want to run , run a good race , whatever their goal is , whether that's just to do it comfortably or or do a time or whatever it might be . But yeah , you know people with kids , people with jobs , people with stuff going on , that people I can relate to .

So , yeah , I love it , I really really love it . And , yeah , being able to do it now full-time has really helped with our family situation , because my , my wife , unfortunately isn't , isn't well , which is a strange thing to say , because she looks and is generally very well , but unfortunately she she does have secondary breast cancer that spreads to her brain .

So you know , it's a bit of a you only live once sort of opportunity really , and it really helps us from a family side of things and yeah , she really inspires me and really supports me and so , yeah , it kind of helps with our family situation as well , now that I don't have a boss to uh to say , oh god , I can't come to that meeting , I've got to take

my wife to the clinic or whatever it might be yeah , you are the boss .

What are some of the challenges you found from from sort of starting your own small business essentially ?

one of them . There were just so many people that became running coaches , particularly on Instagram . You know it's full of Instagram coaches . I am on Instagram , but I don't really get any clients from Instagram . Most of my clients come from well , usually word of mouth or Google .

And , incidentally , I've got three clients in the US One of them's in Colorado , in Boulder , one's in Ohio and one in Illinois , and I have had somebody in Florida as well .

So the beauty of all the effort that I put into my website is that it does get noticed across the globe , does get noticed across the globe , and uh , and then the beauty of the world that we live in now is that we've got the technology to be able to coach people from afar without ever even meeting them .

It's uh , it sounds crazy , but I get great results from it . Yeah , and I always say , unless you know , if you want a coach , that's in person , great , but unless you're running around them on a track , say , if as soon as you start running down the road and you turn around the corner , you're remote anyway .

It's like right , okay , so what kit do you have to have , which usually isn't a lot ? No , no , it's like right , okay , so what ? What kit do you have to have , which usually isn't a lot ? no , no , it's very different which which then kind of does help with right .

Okay , so how fast are they able to run it , which is usually faster because they're carrying less equipment ? But also , what are the crewing requirements that they're going to need ? Because in the uk and europe , yes , you are allowed crew for the most part , but not all the time . I mean , you'll probably remember , with lakeland you're not allowed crew .

So , yeah , I think that's kind of one of the biggest differences . Is is really getting into the , the detail , even more so with the racing , because I haven't done a lot of racing in the us . I've done some running in the us , but not a lot of racing .

So kind of my my knowledge of races in the us is is usually from studying past years , watching youtube from past years yeah but yeah , really sort of working with my clients on uh , on their strategies .

Is is a little bit , a little bit more different , because it usually means where you know who have you got crewing for you , whereas in the uk you can kind of get away with it yeah , especially on longer races , it's really something that's done a lot .

yeah , you have to think about because you're trying to organize a crew and then where are they going to be and how are they going to get for to aid from aid station , aid station , what are they going to do in between ?

How fast are you going to travel so that , because you've got to figure out when you're going to be at each of these crew accessible stations and how far are they from where your crew ? I mean it's this whole . It's like it adds 100% to your race prep logistically and a whole bunch of stress to a race potentially too .

So I do think that's something to consider as part of racing , which may or may not be applicable in other races , other parts of the world . For sure , yeah , absolutely .

Now , nick , each episode one of the other things we like to do here on the show is just a fun little section we like to choose a song to add to the free Spotify Choose to Enjoy playlist , something family-friendly that lifts you up or motivates you or just kind of keeps you moving while you're out on the trail .

Now you picked kind of a different song for for the group here I would say I can change it on the fly , if you know . No , no , I think I think it's great . Uh , do you want to let us know which song you chose and then why this one kind of resonated or jumped out for you to pick ?

It's got a really , really good baseline to it , and the reason I like this is so , with everything going on with my wife , I actually and I also had inguinal hernia surgery at the uh , in fact almost exactly one year to the date , and with all of that I'd actually put quite a bit of weight on .

I wasn't really sort of feeling myself , and then I entered a mountain assault in the brecon beacons in in wales in uk yeah , yeah , yeah , in february . It's actually a race I've done twice before , but this version they they called it the extreme version .

Uh , it went up and over some of the the penavan route yes , um anyway so I went into that race very kind of not not my usual sort of competitive self . I just went out just to have a day in the mountains really and I started way back .

I had no intention of sort of moving through the field but , yeah , sort of after we kind of got over the fans and the sort of initial tough bit I wasn't being a little bit overweight at the time as well , I was not really moving uphill as well as I have done in the past , but kind of when we got up to this sort of boggy , very boggy section it's like

three or four miles of I'm not kidding sort of chest high bogs in in some places . But I moved very well over that type of ground and I just started moving really well . I started overtaking people and I just started feeling a bit more like myself .

And then I got to the middle , the halfway checkpoint , and one of my athletes on my coaching group said oh , nick's moved up like a hundred hundred places . He's running really well . I saw this text . I was like , oh my god , where am I in the field then ?

So I text my athletes and while I was at the aid station they , they said you're in , you're in 40th . I was like okay , I started well well back , so that's pretty cool .

And then it got a lot more runnable and I just started finding that I was running really well and , even though my belly was bouncing up and down a little bit , I was sort of knocking out a few sub seven minute miles . At mile 34 , mile 37 .

My athletes are like he's , he's overtaking people left front antenna here and my heckles went up and I just went into right , let's go , let's go .

It's been a really terrible couple of years with my wife's health and , yeah , I've not really raced my best recently and everything . I just had a moment of I'm back , let's go , let's do this and uh , yeah , it was this song that kind of just got my got my goosebumps going Brilliant , brilliant .

Folks in the US , if you're listening to this , you may not be familiar with Drum and Bass , but I would say , go and listen to this tune . It's got this relentless energy about it . Listen to this tune .

It's got this relentless energy about it and if you listen closely to the lyrics , if you can get to them , it definitely has that sort of determination to push through challenges and not giving up vibe to it . So obviously that's pretty relevant in our ultra running world .

It's a great song and it's fast and it's got a great beat , so it'll get your heart pumping as you go , for sure , and I'll make sure I get that song added to the playlist so that folks out there can enjoy it as much as you do .

Thank you so much again , nick , for coming on and sharing your knowledge about strength training , tying it in for us as back of the pack runners , too .

Tying it in for us as back of the pack runners to , I think , your tips on how to incorporate strength and the exercises that you talked about , and making sure we remember recovery and the timing of some of the strength that we do . I'm sure that will help out our listeners . A ton and that's an English ton , not an American ton .

I definitely appreciate your time and all of your insights and I look forward to seeing how you bounce back after your recent CCCDNF .

. Yeah , yeah yeah , now , nick , for anyone interested in talking with you about the services that you were just telling us about , for maximum mileage , where can individuals go to check out what you have to offer , learn some more and maybe even connect with you ?

While you're out there on the internet searching for more information about Nick and about his coaching business , don't forget you can also subscribe to this show as well . Get notified each time a new episode comes out and , of course , follow , share and like . It would be very much appreciated . Doing any of those things really helps promote the show .

It helps get the word out and that in turn , increases the chances of other runners like you and I finding the information that awesome guests like Nick have given up their time to come on the show and share with us .

You can find this show on Instagram , facebook and over at choose to endurecom , so be sure to head over to any of those spots , check us out , say hello , drop us a text message or a line info at choose to endurecom is our email address .

Feel free to suggest a topic if you have a moment Really like getting those interactions and hearing what you guys have to say so , until then , go practice some strength training so that you can continue to run long , run strong , and keep choosing to endure .