Transcript
0:00 What's it take to reach your goal? Why aren't you getting the PRs you desperately want? What should you do when you're on a plateau, you're working hard, but you're just not getting that breakthrough? And for coaches, how in the world do you build a dynasty? How do you set up the culture for sustained excellence? Today, we're talking about what it takes to be great, excellent, reach your goals, everything in the world that will help you run faster or coach your athletes to higher levels.
0:36 And to do that, I've brought in my good friend and colleague, Brad Stulberg, who just wrote the book, The Way of Excellence, which uncovers all of this. And we're going to talk about it for runners. So, Brad, I want to start off with this. Was once a runner right? Is it about the trial of miles? It is indeed about the trial of miles. The way that I like to think about this is there is no secret, and that is the secret, that there is none. It's fundamentals over fads, it's consistency over intensity, it's progress over perfection, and most important, it's all of this over and over and over again.
1:20 And what I mean by that is that are there other factors of excellence? Absolutely. But the most important thing is to show up day in and day out and to nail the fundamentals and to get the reps in and to amass those miles. That's not only how your body changes, how your physiology adapts, how you become faster, but that's also how what's in between your ears, your mind changes, how your character changes. There is no shortcut to becoming excellence. I wish there was. If there was, I wouldn't write a book, I'd sell a supplement called the excellent supplement, but no supplement exists. The most important thing is doing the work. Now, what we can go into, and I'm sure we will, is there's a lot of ways to do the work and some ways are better than others, some ways are reckless, some ways are great.
2:06 But if you're looking for the the secret or the shortcut, the secret or the shortcut is get the rubber on your shoes a little bit less than it was last month. Yeah, so this is really important. This is why we have this no YouTube channel or whatever I have is because if you look around the world, especially on social media, like the influencer coaches will just obsess over if you just do this workout. If you just follow this program, then I'm going to guarantee you something.
2:36 And I think what you do such a good job in your book elucidating as that like that's the shortcut that might make you feel better in a week, but it gives you a sense of like insecurity or it's filling this void that that doesn't push you along the long haul. That's right. There's a difference between doing something to make you yourself feel really tired or like you did something really hard in the moment and get like that little dopamine hit of I feel like I did the four by four workout that everyone's telling me to do and it was freaking hard and now I'm toast and actual performance and progress. And too often we confuse a heroic day or a heroic feeling with creating a heroic body of work and creating progress. Because you know much better than me, Steve, that if all you did was make yourself feel tired, you're not going to get faster. Like that's not how training works, that's not how adaptation works. So, how training and adaptation works is you have to have a heroic body of work. You're not interested just in acute fatigue, you're interested in generating chronic fatigue and chronic fatigue that you can actually adapt to. So, maybe the first big mindset shift with genuine excellence, not the pseudo hustle culture internet running influencer excellence, but the actual excellence is that you've got to sign up to play the long game and you've got to actually enjoy the pursuit in the path and the process of what you're doing.
4:02 And you have to relinquish the drive or the urge to succumb to quick fixes because those quick fixes, they fade really, really quickly and then you very easily end up on this hamster wheel of chasing one fad after the next and never really getting faster. So, what in the world do you tell someone who's watching this, listening to this, who maybe sometimes feels the pull to succumb to the Strava workout heroism, who knows because they're watching that like, "Hey, I need consistency over the long time. I need to stack months and months of days." But they sign on to their social media, they sign on to their Strava account and they see Johnny or Jill who they compete against in the Turkey Trot and they say, "Oh, man, they crushed that four by mile workout. I need to go do the same thing and run faster in order to prove myself."
4:54 I think that the inputs that you surround yourself with are really important here. So, part of the reason I wrote this book is just as a reminder to people is you read it, hopefully, to reaffirm. Maybe you even get a year or two out of it that like, "Hey, excellence is a long game and you have to really commit to the path." So, I truly think like watching YouTube shows like this one, listening to podcasts like our podcast, reading books like this, like really creating an intellectual or a mindset environment of things that are reminders to stay on the path. That's thing number one. thing number two that I would say is the same thing goes with people. So, you want to make sure that you have a coach, you have an accountability group, if you have a training partner, a running club that is also very much of this ethos that, "Hey, like there is no secret. You have to commit to your program and you have to execute on your program." And then I would also say that you shouldn't compare your training to someone else's training unless you know everything else that's going on in their life, their training history, and what their ultimate goals are. Because Johnny might have crushed that four by one mile workout and Johnny might be peaking for the Boston Marathon and Johnny might run it faster than you are this year. But then Johnny might never run another faster step in his life. Or Johnny might have been a an all-American collegiate runner in you picked this sport up when you were 28. So, I just think that you got to avoid the comparison trap. You have to find a program that works for you, you have to find a mental approach that works for you, and then you have to commit to it and then surround yourself with things that are reminders to stay on that path. So, that's one of the biggest problems I I've seen nowadays compared to even 10, 20 years ago.
6:28 And I recently had a conversation with actually an elite marathoner who was like, "Oh, I saw so-and-so's training program." And they start comparing themselves to so-and-so who was has a lot of success and they've done these workouts and they're like, "Should I do that workout?" And it reminds me of the chapter in your book on confidence. Because too often I think we externalize our confidence and like say, "Okay, if I just do this workout or if I can just copy this training program of someone successful, then I'll feel confident and be ready to go." But it it doesn't work that way.
7:08 Genuine confidence doesn't come from that. It's a great point and and I'm glad that you gleaned that from the confidence chapter. I think that's right. I think what we're looking for in that situation is reassurance. And you look for reassurance when you feel doubt. And you could argue that doubt is the opposite of confidence. So, I'm not sure if my training's great or I'm not sure if I can do this. So, let me go look at what all these other athletes are doing and then find something that feels better and I'll reassure myself by saying if I just do that, then I'll be better. And you're right, that is just a lack of confidence in oneself and a lack of confidence in one training program. I think that it is totally normal to have those feelings. I mean, I have those feelings as an athlete. I think that all athletes have those feelings. The problem isn't having those feelings, it's when you act on them and you start to bounce around and go on forums and just completely abandon your training because of some bright and shiny object that popped up on your feed. so, what's the opposite of that? I think the opposite of that is committing to a training block and executing that training block before you reevaluate. Because I know that you wouldn't say this, Steve, at least I don't think you would. You would never say like you shouldn't go look around at what other people are doing cuz there's there's stuff to learn. Like that's how you get better. But you shouldn't do that in the middle of a training block.
8:21 So, commit to your block, execute your block, see what you get out of it, and then you can go, you can zoom out, you can look, and even then unless you were training recklessly and something went catastrophically wrong, you shouldn't reinvent the wheel training block to training block. But sure, if you want to try to add in a key workout or you want to shift your strength work from two by three minutes up a sustained hill to six by 30 seconds up a shorter hill, like those are the those are the fun tweaks.
8:48 Like that's all a part of excellence is being curious and making those tweaks. But but you don't do that in the middle of a training block. Like once you sign up, once you're on a path to Rome, you got to stay on that path and see if it gets you there. That's such a good point and a common mistake. The way I see it, and you got at this in the book as well, is there's a time for kind of like fun exploration and there's a time for acting and committing.
9:11 And I my favorite story on this is the the former world record holder in the marathon, Buddy Edelen, American, who days before running a big race changes his training and his coach, this was way back in the day, so they were corresponding by letters, his coach writes in the margins, "This is a manifestation of uncertainty." Yep. And his his point was like days before a race is not the time to experiment. Yep.
9:43 >> Like don't do something stupid. But so often that pull, that insecurity, those doubts like push us to like, "This is the time to experiment." When in fact we've got it backwards. Like the time to evaluate an experiment is when you're sitting there saying, "Hey, I've got 5 months to the Boston Marathon. How am I going to change this training block from the last time I I went through this?" Could you talk about a little bit of that dichotomy and how you hold those two ideas at once? Yeah, so I think that you're 100% right, Steve. People switch this and they get it wrong. And the reason for this is at the start of a training block, you don't have any insecurity. Like you're really secure.
10:20 You're excited. You're stoked. You've got your plan in front of you. You're thinking about how great it's going to be to execute. In the final 2 weeks before a race when you're peaking, no one's peak workout ever goes perfectly. Or maybe if you're lucky, your peak workout goes perfectly two or three times in your whole career. So, what happens is your peak workout doesn't go perfectly and now you're like, "Oh, crap. I'm going to go try to cling on to something else." And you like take this desperation Hail Mary when you don't actually need a Hail Mary. What you need is just to taper a little bit and let your training work.
10:48 The term that I introduced in the book for this is something that I got from a conversation with a wonderful sprint coach, guy named Stu McMillan. And he calls them safe-to-fail experiments. And that's how he thinks about looking at what others are doing and tweaking training. And what he says by this is if you're going to experiment with a new approach or a new workout, it has to be safe-to-fail. Meaning if it blows up on you and it doesn't work, it's not going to be catastrophic. So, it is not a safe-to-fail experiment 3 weeks out before your A race to go try to do some big workout because someone else did it. Because if that blows up on you, you're going to take a match to your last 5 months of training and potentially torch it.
11:29 And even if you don't torch it physically, mentally, if you don't execute the workout because your training didn't build up to it, you're going to torch your confidence. So, what happens is you go looking for confidence and you end up less confident because you did a workout you weren't supposed to do. And And this happens. It's like an addiction. And I've fallen for this trap as an athlete, so I empathize. I know this happens. What happens is you do the workout cuz you're searching for confidence and then after you do it, you're like, "Oh, crap. Probably shouldn't have done that. And I burned my match in this workout instead of saved it for race day." So, that's bad.
11:58 That is not a safe-to-fail experiment cuz you failed the experiment, it could could be catastrophic for your training. The time to do a safe-to-fail experiment is in the first couple weeks of your training block where you're like, "Yeah, I'm going to make those marginal tweaks and see how my body responds." And if it responds well, great. I can make this a staple of this training block. But if it doesn't respond, I'm okay cuz I still have 4 months and I can go back to what I've done in the past. And way too often athletes and coaches, not not so much coaches, but athletes invert this.
12:25 I want to get really tactical because I think this is one of the brilliant things you do in the book is at the end of every chapter there's the like so what, how can we apply this? So, if a runner is is feeling this pull to do that like last-minute workout to prove themselves, if those doubts and fears that we all have are pulling them towards action, like what are some actionable steps you can tell that athlete in that last week leading up to the race to be to to deal with that, to navigate that situation?
12:57 Don't judge yourself for having those feelings, but find the reassurance in healthier ways. So, what's a healthier way? It's kind of a hard sell for the book, but pick up The Way of Excellence. Pick up a book like this and read it to remind you like, "Hey, these are normal doubts. You've done the work, stay on the path." Call your coach and tell your coach, "Coach, I'm feeling this doubt. I'm feeling this uncertainty. I saw this workout. I know I shouldn't do it, but like just remind me that I've done the training." Call a training partner and have them do that.
13:27 Alternatively, go do something completely disconnected from running that you're excited about. You know, go read a big novel. go try to like get into woodwork for the first time. Don't go play hockey because you could tear your ACL and that would mess up your marathon, but you get the point. Like take that nervous energy and exert it somewhere else. Cuz the worst thing that you could do when you're in the midst of this peak is to sit on Instagram or Let's Run and look at all the workouts that other people are doing.
13:54 so so like trade that environment and trade that reassurance seeking for reminding yourself that you've committed to a path, that you've done the training, that you've put in the evidence. Go reflect on your training journal. You know, pull up your training journal. Look at all the work that you did. Or take that nervous energy and apply it somewhere else. So, I have one elite marathoner that I work with who does this brilliantly where she saves all the like TV shows she wants to watch and all the books that she like has wanted to read for the last several months for the week of the marathon. And she calls it like it it's a bench fest of things she's looking forward to because she knows like she's going to drive herself nuts if she's just sitting in a hotel room like thinking about the race and thinking about all of this stuff.
14:44 So, you got to give yourself something else to do and look forward to. That's right. And then and then just remember like the the inclination to seek reassurance is just a natural human drive when there's uncertainty, but there are ways to do it that can derail your training and then there are ways to do it that can support your training. And you want to do the latter. I mean, it reminds me of the the classic Roger Bannister story that's seldom told for whatever reason, but you know, on the train ride up to the track, all he is doing is telling everyone, "It's too windy. I don't want to take this. I don't know if I'm ready." And then his coach and advisor, who just happened to literally be on the same train, it wasn't planned, comes up and says like essentially, paraphrasing, "Hey man, your training has gone great.
15:31 Why not just take the shot? Like we don't know what's going to happen, but take the shot." And he ultimately does and breaks history. And if he doesn't, maybe we're talking about John Landy who broke the barrier, you know, a month later because Bannister just said, "No, today's not the day. It's a little windy. I don't feel perfect. Like I'm going to I'm going to wait till the perfect day." And I think too often what happens is we self-sabotage our way out of performing because of the natural doubts and insecurities and fears that literally the best in the world experience as well. That's right. And that's the job of a good coach. And if you don't have a good coach, that's the job of coaching yourself. And it's not beating yourself up. It's not lying to yourself and saying, "Oh, there's no reason to have these doubts." I mean, my understanding is it was a windy day when Bannister broke the record. So, it's like you can't lie to himself and be like it's a perfect day. It wasn't. But what you can tell yourself is like, "Hey, these doubts are normal. They're because I care. But I'm going to show up, stick to my process, let it rip, and see what happens." I want to switch gears slightly to a topic that you cover, that you like, that I think has infiltrated the running endurance world, which is this idea that you can get 1% better every day. That if you just, you know, make the small tweaks, etc. and just try and get 1% better, eventually that adds up to some huge breakthrough.
16:54 And it's it's a popular idea. So, can you kind of dismantle that a little bit? Yeah, well, before I dismantle it, first I want to agree with it. And I want to agree with the ethos of it. So, the ethos of get 1% better every day is that you don't have to swing for home runs, you just need to put the ball in play. >> >> And that by being consistent, by being good enough over and over and over again, you get better, those gains compound.
17:19 And as a mindset, I think that's great. Like you don't want to go into a workout trying to get 100% better. You just like want to want to nudge things up a little bit. And for beginners and intermediate runners, you actually can get 1% better every day. Maybe it's not every day, but every week, every training cycle. The gains are very linear. And you can see the progress very concretely on the time on your stopwatch in a workout, on your PR in a race. And yes, there will be some snafus, but generally speaking like you put in work and you get better. And if you don't do it recklessly, you do get a couple percent better with every training cycle, with every week.
17:57 And then what happens is once you become quite intermediate or advanced or elite, you actually stop getting 1% better every day. Because if Steve, in your prime, you got 1% better every day, you would have run a 2:48 mile by the end of college. Okay, quick >> >> quick note. That's what I thought in in fifth grade. I literally thought, "Hey, I improve by in the mile. If I just keep training, like in 5 years I'll have the world record." Yeah, and so as a mindset, it's great. But then what happens is people people say that they just believe it as a mindset, but then when you actually start making progress, you start to believe it literally and you get addicted to the progress. And there's nothing wrong with that. The best thing for a beginner is seeing those concrete gains. Like it's it's incredible to have those concrete gains as a beginner. You want those concrete gains. It keeps you coming back.
18:44 But then eventually you get really good. And you know, you you stop getting 1% better every day. And now you're on this plateau. And now the gains might take a couple months, a year. For some athletes, might take more than a year. And at this point, the drive has to shift, the motivation has to shift from tangible, concrete improvements on your stopwatch or on the race time to a curiosity and a joy and a satisfaction that comes from just the sport itself.
19:16 So, instead of saying, "Oh, you know, I took my marathon from 3:30 down to 3:15 or I took it from 3:00 to 2:55." You know, Sara Hall's not saying, "I took my marathon from 2:26 to 2:24 and now I'm going to go to 2:22." Like she That That expectation's not there. What's there is how can I fall in love with the sport? How can I get really curious about the training? How can I figure out what I respond to better? How can I understand the feel of a perfect tempo run? Because you can do a tempo run at a 5-minute mile and it can feel like A or it can feel like B. And then you get to experiment with well, do I prefer A or B and at what point of the training all these sub variables that have nothing to do with concrete improvement, but are fascinating and you get curious about them and that what keeps you coming back. So, there's this switch that happens for everyone. Get the 1% better every day is a mindset, great. Yes, be consistent. But as a practice, you want to use that while it's still working for you.
20:11 But then once the honeymoon period ends and the concrete trackable linear progress stops, the motivation has to switch from get 1% better every day to fall in love with the process and get really curious about the sport and what I can get out of myself. That's so true as an athlete and it's also true as a coach. A coach has to set that expectation for their athletes. I mean this is I'm glad you mentioned Sara Hall because that is her ethos and this is also why she's been in the sport at elite level literally from high school all the way now into her 40s still competing because of that curiosity. If it was just the I need to set that PR, I need to get a little bit better, like she would have been quit long ago. And I think this is what you see in people who have that sustainable excellence. And even more so, people who once their maybe competitive careers are done or on they're on the downside because of aging that we can't escape who are still out there, who are still getting at it. The masters runners listening to this know this for sure because you have to figure out what's the point? Why do I keep going? Why am I still doing these 400 meter repeats on the track where inevitably I'm going to get slower?
21:23 Yeah, that's 100% right. And I think that so a great example that I have from this and he's not a runner, but Layne Norton is a world champion powerlifter for his his weight class. And I talked to Layne about his mindset and his mindset is 1% better every day, be consistent. But he's like, if I believed in that and I got addicted to progress, I would have been out of the sport a decade ago. Because a decade ago Layne Norton deadlifted between 713 and 718 pounds for his biggest lift.
21:54 Okay? It took him a decade to nudge that number up to 723. A decade to gain 5 pounds on a deadlift. We're talking about People might think running is boring, deadlifting makes running look like an action movie. Deadlifting, you're literally just lifting up a heavy bar from the ground to your hips, okay? The most boring thing ever and you get addicted to that concrete progress. That's what keeps you coming back, but when you're Layne Norton, there is no more concrete progress. You're on the plateau for a decade. And I asked him, I'm like, how the hell did you stick with it? And he's like, I'm just endlessly curious about the sport and about what I can do in the sport. In the feel of the tension coming out of the bar, in the feel of the tension in my hips, in my foot position and all of these small things that kept me coming back, that's what kept me coming back.
22:40 And then because he kept showing up and kept coming back, he put himself in a position to win and eventually he had the quote unquote breakthrough. So, that to me is like this perfect example of like why if Layne wanted to get 1% better every day, he would have quit and now he's the best in the world for his aging class. So, piggybacking off that a little bit. Part of that is like goals. And with deadlifting, with running, because it's just so cut and dry, goals tend to come quick and easy and we love them. But you have a wonderful section in the book on goal setting.
23:15 So, I'm wondering if you can expand on that for runners as like how in the world do we handle and set goals? Goal setting is so important because you you got to pick the right mountain to climb and then you spend 99% of your time on the side of the mountain. So, to be really literal, the metaphor here is the goal is the race or the time or the distance you want to master and then the side of the mountain is the months and some cases the years you're going to spend training for it.
23:40 So, how do you set the right goals? I I start by asking myself like, what are the values that I really want to embody in this? And you could say that as a person, like I want to value hard work, wisdom, learning, development, growth, but you could also say that in the sport. So, I want to value speed. Like I really want to develop speed in this training cycle. I want to work on strength endurance. or I want to put myself in a position where I'm going to have to do over mileage, more than I've ever done before. So, you're not starting with saying I want to run a 240 marathon because everyone else is, you're starting with like what's the actual quality that you want to develop. And this is not for pros. For pros, it's a little bit different cuz you're getting paid, but this is for people who set their own goals, okay?
24:24 And and even pros I think do this. So, what's the quality you want to develop? What's the kind of training you want to do? And then you could say, all right, what goal is going to allow me to train in that way? Is it a 5K? Is it a 10K? Is it a marathon? Is it actually not saying I want to go from 245 to 240 in the marathon? Is it saying I want to try to run three marathons this season and see if I can run them all between 242 and 247. Like there's so many different permutations of goals, but too often what happens is we attach to a goal because we see other people doing it and then that dictates the training that we're going to do and we're miserable cuz we don't actually want to do that training instead of saying, what kind of training do I want to do? What do I value? What kind of quality do I want to develop? And then let me go find a goal to match that quality.
25:11 Okay, I want to cover two more things here. One on the individual side and then one on the team side. The individual side is something that we're talking about goals that we all face, which is when you fall short. When you when you fail, when you don't hit that sub 3-hour marathon or the sub 4-mile or even if it's not outcome, you walk away from a bad race and you're like, I spent months training for this, what do I do?
25:39 How in the world do you handle failure in a productive way? I think you got to let it hurt because it does and you have to give yourself time and space to process the hurt and you can let yourself be miserable for a set period of time. I think the important part is it's got to be a set period of time. Call it the 48-hour rule or the 24-hour rule or the 72-hour rule, the actual hours don't matter. What matters is saying that I'm going to allow myself X amount of time to mope in the sadness and the feelings and to really process them, but then I'm going to get back to doing the work itself.
26:13 And the bigger the failure, the more time it takes. Now, some runners might listen and say, Brad, you're crazy. I just failed at a marathon and you're saying I only have 48 hours before I have to start training again. I can't even walk down the stairs. Well, I don't mean you necessarily need to do your first workout 48 hours later, but let's say that you say this is about a 48-hour processing time. What that might mean is 48 hours later, you start to just journal about, you know, what do I think the next race might look like?
26:38 Do I want to run another marathon? Do I want to go down in distance? Or maybe you call your training partner and you start to share with them. Like here's what didn't go well about the race, here's why it hurt, but here's how I'm thinking about the next thing. So, I think we often get this wrong because we do one of two extremes and they're both wrong. The first extreme is we just repress all the negativity, we act like we're not sad and we immediately think about the next goal.
27:00 Doesn't make any sense. It it it sucks to fail. Let it hurt. Feel those feelings. The second extreme is we feel those feelings and we become Debbie Downer and we wallow in them forever. And instead of having a bad race suck for a day or two, it sucks for two months and then after two months it's really hard to get back into the training cuz we've just been ruminating for two months. So, it's about the Goldilocks effect of like, how can I process this, but how can I also gently and at the same time firmly nudge myself back on the path, back to the next goal? And you know what, Steve, the same thing's true after success. People always talk about this with failure, but it's even more disorienting after success because success we think we're just going to be happy and content and fulfilled forever, but we're not. And if we try to celebrate for too long, then that's really messes with your mind because then you're like, why isn't this feel good anymore? And the answer is cuz like we're built to strive, we're built to keep going, to keep pushing. So, much like failure, you want to savor the win and celebrate it, but then you also kind of want to get back to the work.
27:56 All right. Last question here, Brad. Before we get at it, just a reminder, The Way of Excellence, out now. Get your copy, you won't regret it. It's phenomenal and it will help you I'm not going to be an influencer guarantee a PR, but it will help you enjoy the sport and help you on your journey towards those possible PRs. Excellence in team setting. So, we've got a lot of coaches who watch and listen to this. And as you know having done sports for a long time at a high level, all that stuff, like culture, the team, like standards, we hear all these kind of buzzwords.
28:40 What advice would you give to maybe a high school coach who's saying like, hey, like I want to create the right atmosphere where like excellence is something that like we try to chase? I would look at a coach who's been one of my role models as a coach and just as an overall high performing person and who I think is genuinely excellent and who has won about as much as anyone else and that's coach Steve Kerr, coach Kerr of the Golden State Warriors.
29:09 And I would just look at how they do it there. And I've emailed with coach Kerr about this. The top of the tree, the Warriors kind of hierarchy of how they function is excellence. It's excellence and love and I think excellence and love are actually two of the same things in many more ways than we think. It's not winning. It's excellence. Underneath it is intensity, joy, competing and winning. So, winning is very important, but winning's not the main thing and winning is balanced out or there's checks against winning, which are things like joy, competitiveness, and intensity.
29:49 And I think too often what happens is we put winning at the top, and then there aren't any other things on the same level as winning. So, winning becomes everything. It creates a really high-pressure environment. It creates an environment where people self-handicap, like we talked about earlier, cuz they're scared. It creates an environment where you have doping and unethical behavior. A lot of burnout comes in that environment. I'm not saying, "Let's all hold hands and sing Kumbaya, and winning doesn't matter." I firmly believe that winning should be on the second level, but it shouldn't stand alone. What should stand alone is the pursuit of excellence, because that's a path that knows no end. And then on a second level, you have winning along with other things that your culture values, that you think contribute to excellence. Things like love, things like consistency, things like intensity, things like joy, things like teamwork, things like discipline. Those are all attributes that have the same weight as winning, because those are the attributes that get you to winning. And I just think too often the mess up we have is people put winning on the top, and they don't realize that actually winning is a byproduct of the pursuit of excellence.
30:54 Couldn't have said it better. All right. If you're watching this, go buy Brad's book, Way of Excellence. Just came out. Couldn't recommend it enough. Steve Kerr, the legend himself, gives a blurb. An absolutely beautiful book. I can't top that. Links are below in the show notes, and somewhere up here. So, click now. Get it. Thanks so much, Brad, for taking time to come and talk and explain your view of excellence to coaches and runners to help them enjoy the sport and stay at it for a long enough time, so hopefully they get some great PRs. Or if they're like me, and will never see a PR again, still keep at it and enjoy it because of all the good stuff it brings.
31:44 You don't know that, Steve. Never say never. offline, everyone, Steve told me that if this episode generates a thousand sales of The Way of Excellence, he's going to train for the marathon. So, buy the book. Hopefully you'll love the book, but even if you don't, you'll get to see Steve train for the marathon. dreams, dreams. One >> I just made all that up. One day. All right, everyone. Thanks for watching. Take care.