The Running Public

What race to choose. When to pull the plug on a race. What race series fits my skillset? How long do I have before I start to succumb to father time? The decisions never stop, so how do you work your way through them?

We have an open mic and a backlog of listener questions, so let’s do this thing! Brakken tries to fight through training induced brain fog while also showing off his impressively bad math skills.

You’re one month out from race day and you’re not quite where you want to be, fitness-wise. What to do? We got you!

In his first episode, Nick was in the middle of the lowest point of his life due to medical issues. In Part 2, he discusses his re-emergence in the competitive race field and his improved mental game!

Kirk took down a course record this weekend while Brakken chased some nostalgia. They also answer some of your top recent, and not so recent, questions.

Get ready to laugh, cry, cringe, and learn! This is an all time episode with ultra endurance athlete Justin Hamilton, and we’re not going to spoil the story by giving a preview. Enjoy!

We’ve been receiving lots of requests for an episode describing how to approach each obstacle at a Spartan Race, so here it is! Come for the nerdy OCR talk, stay for the Bachelor in Paradise talk!

Danish National Champion. European Champion. Runner-up at World Champs. Ida is a force in any endurance sport she enters, despite not finding running until her early twenties!

We list the shoes we use/would use/recommend for every type of race: 5k and under, 10k to Half Marathon, and Marathon to Ultra. PLUS we break it down by terrain type: road, smooth trail, technical trail, and sloppy trail. Boom.

Spring time = trails are opening. It also means the trails are at their most vulnerable. Master trail builder Adam Buck drops by to walk us through proper trail etiquette!

The good folks on the message boards over at Letsrun had an interesting question: What is the simplest plan for getting faster? We decided to answer it!

We had a bunch of our Running Public athletes racing over the past two weeks, with many of them seeking meaning after a tough race. It can be tough to analyze your races without help at times, so today we break down our own personal race lessons that we’ve learned over the past two decades!

Kirk raced again and, surprise, he’s still super fit! Today we go in depth on the things this race taught us and how you can be better for it.

The multiple time European OCR champ is in the midst of a comeback from a devastating leg injury. Hear him talk his progression as a runner, his love of training, and his painful journey back to the top!

We’ve noticed a trend of athletes practicing one stride and racing with a different stride once fatigue sets in. Let’s combat that together!

Random episode content? Yup. Great info about training and Kirk’s Bachelor days? Double yup.

Kirk raced. He learned some stuff. We tell you all about the stuff. Also, a discussion on incline intervals during race week!

Roles reverse as Kirk drops in for a running therapy sesh with the esteemed Dr Brakken Kraker!

It has been a while since some of you raced. Here’s our refresher on what to do and what not to do on race week!

Doc DeWindt welcomes Brakken and Running to his therapy couch in order to help them work on their relationship. They make some great progress in today’s session!

Cross training is the subject of so many of the messages we receive each month, and for good reason! Today we talk about the different types of cross training and how to use it for building fitness vs recovery.

From playing 11 years in Major League Baseball to going sub 23 hours at the Western States 100, Eric has lived a sporting life that few athletes can equal!

Kirk is sick. Brakken just had COVID. It feels like the entire world is either coming down with or just getting over something. How should we approach training while sick??

Shawn Roberts is a competitor through and through. From running the 800m and 1500m at Georgia Tech and then with the NJNY track team to the trails and mud of OCR, Shawn has been laser focused on winning every step of the way. His mindset and approach to life and training is on full display in this episode!

Is there such thing as spending too much time in Base Building phase? Let’s dive in!

Kris has an unbelievable combination of maybe the best athletic range and the most unique life story of anyone we have ever had on this show (all apologies to Ryan Atkins and Stephen Menya). Good luck not becoming a Kris fan after this one!

We’re cleaning out our closet! All your remaining questions from 2021 will be answered today! There are some good ones, some tough ones, and a zombie apocalypse question. We’ve got it all!

January is upon us and race schedules are being released. It is the time of year when many runners are faced with the dilemma of what races to sign up for and how to go about being fit for those races. Today we walk you through how we attack this process!

Cali Schweikhart joins us for our 200th episode, and we couldn’t ask for a better guest to represent everything the Running Public stands for! Her story is one of athletic pursuits, personal demons, health challenges, and continuing redemption. Oh, and she’s teaming up with Brakken to attempt a world record a week from now! Enjoy the episode and thank you all so much for the support over these past two years!

Brakken and Kirk break down and react to Spartan’s big Age Group and Elite Series announcement. This is about as close to a hot take episode as you’re going to get!

From juvenile delinquent to the fastest person to run self supported around the United Kingdom, Chris is not your typical distance runner. Come for his wild story, stay for his killer accent. http://chriscoastrun.co.uk/

Kirk and Brakken recap their highs and lows from 2021 and then preview what is in store for 2022. Thanks for being here with us the entire time!

We’re back from our holiday break with a phenomenal entry in our Philosophy of Training series. Becca Jones is an Ultra runner, Ultra Coach, and co-race director of the Tennessee Mile and the Mid State Mile Last man standing race. Get your notebooks ready!

Aerobic Threshold. Anaerobic Threshold. Lactate Threshold. Ventilatory Threshold 1. Ventilatory Threshold 2. So many threshold terms. So much confusion! Let’s break it all down!

Kirk raced this weekend, so we begin with the recap before moving into what we all love about training: The Quality Workouts!

Rich Ryan makes Running Public history with his 4th appearance on the show! As always, he brings a wealth of information for runners and strength athletes alike. Have the notebook ready!

Brakken hobbles to the mic to recap the Tennessee Mile, then the boys break down the Spartan World Championship.

When it comes to knowing the ins and outs of how the human body responds to both endurance and strength training, Alec Blenis is as good as anyone. Grab a pen and pad, and get ready for a few hours of knowledge bombs.

The Mid Week Long Run, or Medium Long Run, is one of our favorite types of runs. Get pumped to dive into this little rascal! FYI, we start with a chat about Brakken’s upcoming Ultra before breaking down the Spartan World Championship race, also this coming weekend. Skip to 42:10 to get right to the MWLR talk.

Steeplechase national champ, 2:21 marathoner, high school coach, and author Joey Keillor joins the Philosophy of Training series this week. If you’ve ever struggled with underperforming or overtraining, this one is for you!

Long Runs should be a staple of most runners’ programming, but we often let these slide out of use. Let’s refresh to ourselves why they are so important! We talk a good bit about Brakken’s race, so skip to 30:00 if you want just the Long Run info!

Kirk and Brakken each take on the same questions they’ve been asking other coaches during the past few Philosophy of Training episodes. Let’s see how they hold up under the pressure!

New series alert! We’re getting back to the basics on Tuesdays, focusing on the Fundamental pieces of running. Today we break down the principles of Easy and Recovery runs. They are very simple and very similar, but they are also the run types most often completed incorrectly!

Acclaimed author and coach Matt Fitzgerald joins us to chat through his philosophy of training. Along the way we delve into his evolution as a writer, his experiences living and training with a pro running group, and his current health battle.

We’ve received a lot of questions regarding the TRP Plan on Training Peaks recently, and with our off season build beginning this week it is a good time to give a complete breakdown of what’s in store for our athletes this year! We cover the weekly format, style of training, and yearly flow.

We take a break from our Coaches Series to clean house. We have so many listener questions unanswered that we just need to get through them. We start with Black Friday gift guides for runners, then get into the nitty gritty training questions!

The boys get chatty about life and running, but they manage to answer a few listener questions along the way!

Week Two of our series brings us Ian Hosek. Ian learned his craft while working at Nike and continues to apply his training principles today, with an emphasis on racing the trails and in the mountains.

We begin with chit chat, move to a breakdown of the Richard Diaz Flow Training episode, then finish up with some tough love and motivation!